Significance of channel failures on network performance in CRNs with reserved spectrum

It is well understood that in wireless networks, channel failures, which are typically caused by equipment or power failures as well as intrinsic features in radio transmissions, such as fading and shadowing, can easily result in network performance degradation. Therefore, fast recovery from channel failures is an important measure that should be incorporated with those networks. Consequently, in a cognitive radio network (CRN), channel failures can cause significant performance degradation in both primary and secondary networks. Instead, retainability, i.e., the capability of providing continuous connection for users must be guaranteed even if a significant network element is disrupted. In…

Channel Occupancy-Based Dynamic Spectrum Leasing in Multichannel CRNs: Strategies and Performance Evaluation

Spectrum leasing has been proposed as an effective approach for enabling more flexible spectrum utilization in CRNs. In CRNs, a primary network (PN) which consists of multiple primary users (PUs) can lease part of the licensed spectrum to secondary users (SUs) in exchange for operational benefits. The focus of this study is to investigate how and to what extent the PN allows spectrum leasing in CRNs, considering the QoS requirements of the PN and the secondary network (SN). Correspondingly, we propose two dynamic spectrum leasing strategies, which can improve the QoS performance of SUs while ensuring sufficient remuneration for PUs. In order to dynamically adjust the portion of leased bandw…

Preamble Reservation Based Access for Grouped mMTC Devices with URLLC Requirements

Author's accepted manuscript (postprint). © 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. Available from 16/07/2021. Ultra-reliable low latency communication (URLLC) and massive machine type communications (mMTC) are two of the three major technological pillars in 5G. For medium access in mMTC scenarios, e.g., smart cities, a major bottleneck for achieving reli…

Preamble Transmission Prediction for mMTC Bursty Traffic : A Machine Learning based Approach

The evolution of Internet of things (IoT) towards massive IoT in recent years has stimulated a surge of traffic volume among which a huge amount of traffic is generated in the form of massive machine type communications. Consequently, existing network infrastructure is facing challenges when handling rapidly growing traffic load, especially under bursty traffic conditions which may more often lead to congestion. By proactively predicting the occurrence of congestion, we can implement necessary means and conceivably avoid congestion. In this paper, we propose a machine learning (ML) based model for predicting successful preamble transmissions at a base station and subsequently forecasting th…

Cellular Networks: An Evolution from 1G to 4G

Dynamic Spectrum Reservation for CR Networks in the Presence of Channel Failures: Channel Allocation and Reliability Analysis

[EN] Providing channel access opportunities for new service requests and guaranteeing continuous connections for ongoing flows until service completion are two challenges for service provisioning in wireless networks. Channel failures, which are typically caused by hardware and software failures or/and by intrinsic instability in radio transmissions, can easily result in network performance degradation. In cognitive radio networks (CRNs), secondary transmissions are inherently vulnerable to connection breaks due to licensed users' arrivals as well as channel failures. To explore the advantages of channel reservation on performance improvement in error-prone channels, we propose and analyze …

Performance evaluation of three dynamic channel access strategies for spectrum leasing in CRNs

Spectrum leasing in cognitive radio networks (CRNs) allows the primary network (PN) to lease a certain fraction of its licensed bandwidth to the secondary network (SN). The motivation for such a concept is to enhance the performance of SNs while improving channel utilization. Meanwhile, the license owners of the channels can also gain benefits through spectrum leasing in terms of either monetary rewards or cooperative communications. In this paper, we propose three dynamic channel access strategies for spectrum leasing in multi-channel CRNs. A common characteristic of all these strategies is that the priority for channel access over the leased spectrum is given to SNs and the unleased spect…

Complexity analysis of spectrum access strategies with channel aggregation in CR networks

Cognitive radio has been introduced to increase spectrum utilization efficiency. To further improve bandwidth utilization of cognitive radio users, channel aggregation (CA) techniques can be adopted for spectrum access. In this paper, we analyze the complexity of three CA strategies, in terms of required amount of handshakes for channel adaptation due to primary and secondary user activities. Continuous time Markov chain models are developed to evaluate the total number of handshakes required per unit time by different CA strategies and the analytical results are validated by simulations. Numerical results reveal that the complexity of CA strategies depends on the capability and the design …

Hidden Markov Model Based Machine Learning for mMTC Device Cell Association in 5G Networks

Massive machine-type communication (mMTC) is expected to play a pivotal role in emerging 5G networks. Considering the dense deployment of small cells and the existence of heterogeneous cells, an MTC device can discover multiple cells for association. Under traditional cell association mechanisms, MTC devices are typically associated with an eNodeB with highest signal strength. However, the selected eNodeB may not be able to handle mMTC requests due to network congestion and overload. Therefore, reliable cell association would provide a smarter solution to facilitate mMTC connections. To enable such a solution, a hidden Markov model (HMM) based machine learning (ML) technique is proposed in …

Time-Space Domain Availability Analysis Under Reliability Impairments

Availability and reliability are two essential metrics for the design, deployment, and operation of future ultra-reliable low latency communication (URLLC) networks. Despite a vast amount of research efforts toward URLLC, very little attention has been made on the ultra-reliable communication (URC) aspect of URLLC from a dependability perspective. As an effort toward achieving anytime and anywhere communication, this letter consolidates a dependability theory-based availability concept for individual users by taking into account reliability impairments that affect URC in both spatial and temporal domains . To this end, we perform per-user availability analysis by considering channel status …

Per-user availability for ultra-reliable communication in 5G: Concept and analysis

Emerging 5G mobile networks envisage ultra-reliable communication (URC) as one of the major requirements for anytime anywhere communication. Although URC has recently attracted a lot of attention in the research community, existing work seems to rely on approaching reliability merely from a time domain perspective. However, both time and space domain parameters affect reliability and need to be investigated. This paper introduces a dependability theory based definition for per-user availability targeted at 5G networks. The advocated definition promotes both space and time domain components for URC provisioning. Furthermore, we perform reliability and availability analysis and simulations co…

Priority Enabled Grant-Free Access With Dynamic Slot Allocation for Heterogeneous mMTC Traffic in 5G NR Networks

Although grant-based mechanisms have been a predominant approach for wireless access for years, the additional latency required for initial handshake message exchange and the extra control overhead for packet transmissions have stimulated the emergence of grant-free (GF) transmission. GF access provides a promising mechanism for carrying low and moderate traffic with small data and fits especially well for massive machine type communications (mMTC) applications. Despite a surge of interest in GF access, how to handle heterogeneous mMTC traffic based on GF mechanisms has not been investigated in depth. In this paper, we propose a priority enabled GF access scheme which performs dynamic slot …

Cell Association for MTC Devices in 5G Networks: Schemes and Performance Evaluation

Fifth generation (5G) networks offer tremendous opportunities for Internet of things applications by facilitating massive machine-type communications (MTC). As many MTC devices are battery powered and intend to stay often in the sleep or power-saving mode, cell (re)association needs to be performed when a device wakes up. On the other hand, 5G networks are usually deployed as heterogeneous networks consisting of both macro and small cells under which a single device may be covered by multiple radio access technologies (RATs) simultaneously. Therefore, it is imperative to design effective cell association schemes for the purpose of efficient connectivity and resource utilization, especially …

Priority-based initial access for URLLC traffic in massive IoT networks: Schemes and performance analysis

Abstract At a density of one million devices per square kilometer, the10’s of billions of devices, objects, and machines that form a massive Internet of things (mIoT) require ubiquitous connectivity. Among a massive number of IoT devices, a portion of them require ultra-reliable low latency communication (URLLC) provided via fifth generation (5G) networks, bringing many new challenges due to the stringent service requirements. Albeit a surge of research efforts on URLLC and mIoT, access mechanisms which include both URLLC and massive machine type communications (mMTC) have not yet been investigated in-depth. In this paper, we propose three novel schemes to facilitate priority-based initial …

A dynamic channel access strategy for underlay cognitive radio networks: Markov modelling and performance evaluation

Unlike in overlay cognitive radio networks, secondary users in underlay cognitive radio networks can access licensed spectrum even at the presence of a primary user, given that the interference caused by the secondary transmission is lower than a pre-specified threshold. Based on this underlay access principle, we propose in this paper a dynamic channel access strategy for multi-channel cognitive radio networks. Different from existing underlay access techniques, channel assembling, spectrum adaptation and restricted channel occupancy are also considered in the proposed strategy in order to achieve better performance in the secondary network. Accordingly, a partial channel occupancy mode, w…

System times and channel availability analyses in multi-channel cognitive radio networks

Channel accessibility by a secondary user (SU) in cognitive radio networks (CRNs) depends on the availability of the spectrum based on primary user and other SU activities. A new SU request may be blocked and an ongoing SU service may also be discarded if no sufficient spectrum is available. So far, little work has been done to analyze the reliability and availability aspects of CRNs from the perspective of the dependability theory. In this paper, we introduce the concept of availability for spectrum access in multi-channel CRNs, which is defined as the fraction of time that a CRN can allocate at least the minimum number of required channels for a new SU request. Through a proposed continuo…

System Times and Channel Availability for Secondary Transmissions in CRNs: A Dependability Theory based Analysis

[EN] Reliability is of fundamental importance for the performance of secondary networks in cognitive radio networks (CRNs). To date, most studies have focused on predicting reliability parameters based on prior statistics of traffic patterns from user behavior. In this paper, we define a few reliability metrics for channel access in multichannel CRNs that are analogous to the concepts of reliability and availability in classical dependability theory. Continuous-time Markov chains are employed to model channel available and unavailable time intervals based on channel occupancy status. The impact on user access opportunities based on channel availability is investigated by analyzing the stead…

On the Performance of Channel Assembling and Fragmentation in Cognitive Radio Networks

[EN] Flexible channel allocation may be applied to multi-channel cognitive radio networks (CRNs) through either channel assembling (CA) or channel fragmentation (CF). While CA allows one secondary user (SU) occupy multiple channels when primary users (PUs) are absent, CF provides finer granularity for channel occupancy by allocating a portion of one channel to an SU flow. In this paper, we investigate the impact of CF together with CA for SU flows by proposing a channel access strategy which activates both CF and CA and correspondingly evaluating its performance. In addition, we also consider a novel scenario where CA is enabled for PU flows. The performance evaluation is conducted based on…

A Joint Time-Space Domain Analysis for Ultra-Reliable Communication in 5G Networks

Reliable communication is a fundamental service level agreement criterion in wireless networks. Moreover, it is a performance indicator for ultra- reliable communication (URC) in emerging 5G networks. In URC, the quality of the delivered services to end-users ultimately depends on the availability of network resources as well as the quality of the received signal. Therefore, in order to analyze URC in cellular networks, both time- dependent spectrum availability and space-dependent service quality need to be considered. In this paper, we present a combined time and space domain analysis on network reliability based on a continuous time Markov chain model. To this end, we introduce a new rel…

Dependability-Based Reliability Analysis in URC Networks: Availability in the Space Domain

Ultra-reliable low latency communication (URLLC), which refers to achieving almost 100% reliability at a certain (satisfactory) level of services and stringent latency, is one of the key requirements for 5G networks. However, most prior studies on reliable communication did not address space domain analysis. Neither were they pursued from a dependability perspective. This paper addresses the ultra-reliable communication (URC) aspect of URLLC and aims at advocating the concept of URC from a dependability perspective in the space domain. We perform in-depth analysis on URC considering both the spatial characteristics of cell deployment and user distributions, as well as service requirements. …

Channel Assembling with Priority-Based Queues in Cognitive Radio Networks: Strategies and Performance Evaluation

[EN] With the implementation of channel assembling (CA) techniques, higher data rate can be achieved for secondary users in multi-channel cognitive radio networks. Recent studies which are based on loss systems show that maximal capacity can be achieved using dynamic CA strategies. However the channel allocation schemes suffer from high blocking and forced termination when primary users become active. In this paper, we propose to introduce queues for secondary users so that those flows that would otherwise be blocked or forcibly terminated could be buffered and possibly served later. More specifically, in a multi-channel network with heterogeneous traffic, two queues are separately allocate…