Diverse Quality Of Service Requirements Research Articles

Empowering Light Fidelity-Enabled Internet of Things with Hybrid Fuzzy-Particle Swarm Optimization Power Allocation for Enhanced Energy Efficiency and Quality of Service

This paper proposes a hybrid fuzzy-Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) approach for power allocation in bidirectional Light Fidelity (LiFi)-enabled Internet of Things (IoT) communication systems. The approach integrates fuzzy logic and PSO to achieve efficient and robust power allocation, considering energy efficiency and Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. The hybrid approach leverages flexibility of fuzzy logic to handle uncertainties and variations in system parameters, such as channel conditions and QoS requirements. Fuzzy sets and membership functions are defined to represent linguistic variables, and fuzzy rules are formulated based on expert knowledge and system-specific considerations. This allows the approach to adaptively adjust power allocation based on varying channel conditions and QoS requirements, enhancing the robustness of the power allocation strategy. The PSO algorithm is employed for iterative optimization to explore for ideal power allocation solution. The particles in swarm signify possible power allocation configuration, and its position in the search space corresponds to a specific power allocation. The particles update their positions based on local best-known positions and globally best-known positions, allowing the swarm to converge toward the optimal solution. Through extensive simulations and analysis, the proposed hybrid fuzzy-PSO approach is evaluated with regard to energy efficiency and QoS satisfaction. The results demonstrate its effectiveness in achieving energy-efficient power allocation while meeting diverse QoS requirements. The proposed approach outperforms existing methods such as channel- and Orthogonal Multiple Access (OMA)-based power allocation schemes.

Confidence based compressed sensing approach with QoS differentiation for reliable grant-free access

With the rapid development of 5G technology, numerous intelligent terminals can be successively connected to a network. This brings significant challenges to existing network access because it increases the collision probability. It is essential for Grant-free random access (GF-RA) to ensure low delay and reliable transmission. Due to multiuser interference and varying environments, user detection can be complicated, which leads to unreliable transmission. To address the limitations above, research on the GF-RA method based on compressed sensing is carried out and it includes the following: (1) The confidence-weighted orthogonal matching pursuit method is used for estimating the number of active users and overcomes the constraint of sparse condition. (2) The confidence-weighted simultaneous hard thresholding (SHT) method is used for active user detection (AUD), which can improve the performance of the SHT algorithm. (3) We conduct collision probability analysis to not only provide the performance upper bound using the multiple preambles method but also infer the collision probability relationship with different priorities. This is helpful to realize diverse quality of service requirements. The numerical results prove that the proposed method is valid for non sparse signals and can realize a high success access rate.

Performance analysis of partial NOMA-based layered D2D communications

Conventionally, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has traditionally been implemented separately from orthogonal multiple access (OMA), aiming to improve the capacity of multi-user systems. However, a recent study has ventured beyond this conventional approach by integrating OMA and NOMA proportionally within the same system. In spite of these advancements, the consideration towards optimizing multi-user systems remains incomplete especially when user service requirements vary significantly. Therefore, this paper explores a novel layered device-to-device (D2D) partial NOMA (P-NOMA) scheme, which introduces a hybrid power-domain access method into multi-user systems. The analysis primarily focuses on evaluating both the system performance and the impact of various parameters on it. In contrast to conventional fully overlapped NOMA signals, P-NOMA signals are partially overlapped with an overlap rate that can be determined based on quality-of-service (QoS) requirements. Simulation results demonstrate that judicious utilization of P-NOMA can effectively enhance overall system performance, particularly in terms of sum rate (SR) metrics, while also flexibly accommodating diverse QoS requirements for multiple users.

Unlocking QoS Potential: Integrating IoT services and Monte Carlo Control for heterogeneous IoT device management in gateways

The exponential surge in IoT devices has presented significant challenges in managing network traffic and maintaining Quality of Service (QoS) in IoT networks. To tackle these challenges, ongoing efforts are focused on developing innovative solutions that leverage advanced traffic management techniques, robust QoS mechanisms, and enhanced security protocols. Addressing these obstacles is crucial for the continued growth and success of the IoT system, enabling seamless integration of smart devices and revolutionizing multiple industries and sectors by providing unparalleled connectivity and intelligence. This article proposes an innovative approach to enhance the management of heterogeneous IoT devices and ensure Quality of Service (QoS) in IoT networks. Integrating device categories into the QoS policy aims to optimize overall performance while addressing the diverse QoS requirements of different device categories. The benefits of considering device categories include tailored resource allocation, improved user satisfaction, customized QoS handling, and scalability. The proposed approach utilizes the Monte Carlo Control algorithm to learn an optimal QoS policy through simulations of traffic scenarios. Our paper highlights Monte Carlo Control’s (MCC) rapid learning in diverse IoT settings, peaking at 50 episodes, compared to Q-learning’s 100 episodes and dynamic programming’s 200 episodes. Specifically, in audio IoT, MCC achieved 730 packets/second throughput with a 50 ms delay, outperforming QL (723 packets/second, 134 ms) and DP (700 packets/second, 171 ms). These results underscore MCC’s vital role in elevating IoT Quality of Service, making it pivotal for system performance and user experience optimization.

A Resource Allocation Scheme for Packet Delay Minimization in Multi-Tier Cellular-Based IoT Networks

With advances in Internet of Things (IoT) technologies, billions of devices are becoming connected, which can result in the unprecedented sensing and control of the physical environments. IoT devices have diverse quality of service (QoS) requirements, including data rate, latency, reliability, and energy consumption. Meeting the diverse QoS requirements presents great challenges to existing fifth-generation (5G) cellular networks, especially in unprecedented scenarios in 5G networks, such as connected vehicle networks, where strict data packet latency may be required. The IoT devices with these scenarios have higher requirements on the packet latency in networking, which is essential to the utilization of 5G networks. In this paper, we propose a multi-tier cellular-based IoT network to address this challenge, with a particular focus on meeting application latency requirements. In the multi-tier network, access points (APs) can relay and forward packets from IoT devices or other APs, which can support higher data rates with multi-hops between IoT devices and cellular base stations. However, as multiple-hop relaying may cause additional delay, which is crucial to delay-sensitive applications, we develop new schemes to mitigate the adverse impact. Firstly, we design a traffic-prioritization scheduling scheme to classify packets with different priorities in each AP based on the age of information (AoI). Then, we design different channel-access protocols for the transmission of packets according to their priorities to ensure the QoS in networking and the effective utilization of the limited network resources. A queuing-theory-based theoretical model is proposed to analyze the packet delay for each type of packet at each tier of the multi-tier IoT networks. An optimal algorithm for the distribution of spectrum and power resources is developed to reduce the overall packet delay in a multi-tier way. The numerical results achieved in a two-tier cellular-based IoT network show that the target packet delay for delay-sensitive applications can be achieved without a large cost in terms of traffic fairness.

Decentralized Configuration of TSCH-Based IoT Networks for Distinctive QoS: A Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach

The IEEE 802.15.4 Time-Slotted Channel Hopping (TSCH) is widely used as a reliable, low-power, and low-cost communication technology for many industrial Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks. In many applications, Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements are different for heterogeneous nodes, necessitating non-equal parameter settings per node. This results in a very large configuration space making space exploration complex and time-consuming. Moreover, network state and QoS requirements may change over time. Thus, run-time configuration mechanisms are needed for making decisions about proper node settings to consistently satisfy diverse and dynamic QoS requirements. In this paper, we propose a run-time decentralized self-optimization framework based on Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) for parameter configuration of a multi-hop TSCH network. DRL adopts neural networks as approximate functions to speed up the process of converging to QoS-satisfying configurations. Simulation results show that our proposed framework enables the network to use the right configuration settings according to the diverse QoS demands of different nodes. Moreover, it is shown that the convergence time of the learning framework is in the order of a few minutes which is acceptable for many IoT applications.

Virtual Network Embedding for NGSO Systems: Algorithmic Solution and SDN-Testbed Validation

Non-Geostationary Orbit satellite (NGSO) is an essential element in 5G Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTNs), which can operate either independently or as complementary parts to terrestrial systems to boost the network capacity, coverage and resilience. Due to the highly dynamic topologies, one of the challenges in NGSO is how to harmonize the network virtualized resources to satisfy diverse quality of service requirements in an efficient manner. In this paper, we investigate Virtual Network Embedding (VNE) for integrated NGSO-terrestrial systems while considering dynamic topologies. We propose a Mixed Binary Linear Programming (MBLP) formulation for a Dynamic Topology-Aware VNE (DTA-VNE) algorithm. Given priori information about the network’s evolution over time, DTA-VNE plans the embedding for each Virtual Network Request (VNR) over its lifetime. In a highly dynamic environment, the VNE decision can be varying for different VNRs at the expense of a considerable cost of migrating traffic and reconfiguring resources. DTA-VNE aims at minimizing this migration cost to avoid unnecessary re-mappings. To tackle the exponential complexity of the MBLP, we propose an efficient algorithm based on relaxation approaches (DTA-R) to solve large-scale problems. In numerical results, the effectiveness of the proposed DTA-R is demonstrated with much lower migration cost than the conventional implementations. The trade-off between the computation time and migration cost of DTA-R is studied. Finally, we test DTA-R and the baselines in our developed MultI-layer awaRe SDN-based testbed for SAtellite-Terrestrial networks (MIRSAT) to precisely quantify the packet lost for each migration. DTA-R proved to reduce the packet lost by ~2.5-5% compared to baselines.

Statistical Learning-Based Adaptive Network Access for the Industrial Internet of Things

Industrial Internet-of-Things (IIoT) applications generate data in varying amounts with diverse quality of service requirements. The adaptive network access approach and distributed resource management in IIoT networks can reduce the communication overheads caused by centralized resource management approaches. In this regard, statistical learning is a promising tool for addressing decision-making problems in a dynamic environment. This paper considers uplink dominant IIoT networks in which massive devices generate delay-sensitive and delay-tolerant data and communicate over shared radio resources. We propose a novel grant-free access scheme using a statistical learning approach that enables IIoT entities to perform delay-sensitive and delay-tolerant transmissions over dynamically partitioned resources in a prioritized manner. In order to improve utilization of available radio resources, we design an adaptive network access mechanism operating in a semi-distributed manner. This mechanism enables end devices to use their transmission history to choose between static and dynamic resource allocation-based grant-free schemes in a dynamic environment. Simulation results show that average latency and resource utilization vary in grant-free access schemes employing static and dynamic resource allocations. Thus, compared to a single transmission scheme, the proposed adaptive network access offers better channel utilization while meeting the application-specific latency bound in IIoT networks.

Machine Learning for 6G Enhanced Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Services

Ultra-reliable and low-latency communications (URLLC), as one of the major communication services of the fifth-generation (5G) and the sixth-generation (6G) cellular networks, is critical to supporting a variety of emerging mission-critical applications. However, the modern mobile networks could not satisfy the latency and reliability requirements, as well as other Quality of Service (QoS) requirements, including spectrum efficiency, energy efficiency, capacity, jitter, round-trip delay, network coverage, etc. To fulfill diverse QoS requirements for various URLLC applications, machine learning (ML) solutions are promising for future 6G networks. In this article, we first categorize the 6G URLLC vision into three connectivity characteristics, including ubiquitous connectivity, deep connectivity, and holographic connectivity, with their corresponding unique QoS requirements. We then identify potential challenges in meeting these connectivity requirements, and investigate promising ML solutions to achieve the intelligent connectivity for the 6G URLLC service. We further discuss how to implement the ML algorithms to guarantee the QoS requirements for different URLLC scenarios, including mobility URLLC, massive URLLC, and broadband URLLC. Finally, we present a case study of downlink URLLC channel access problems, solved by centralized deep reinforcement learning (CDRL) and federated DRL (FDRL), respectively, which validates the effectiveness of machine learning for URLLC services.

Swarm and Location-Based QoS Routing Algorithm in MEO/LEO Double-Layered Satellite Networks

In this paper, we mainly research on the QoS (Quality of Service) routing algorithms for MEO/LEO (medium Earth orbit/low Earth orbit) double-layered satellite networks. In this type of networks, the rapidly changing network topology due to relative motion of satellites is one of the main challenges when designing an efficient routing algorithm. Specifically, the issues of high rerouting overhead and traffic routing with diverse QoS requirements remain to be resolved. This paper proposed a M-BMDP (modified bandwidth constrained minimum delay path) routing algorithm based on swarm and location for MEO/LEO double-layered satellite networks. This algorithm forms a set of LEO groups according to the footprint of MEO satellites and chooses the relative MEO satellites as its group manager. For delay sensitive traffic, the algorithm can improve the QoS as the cost of packet loss based on hop limit. And for users located in reversed crevice zone, the traffic can route through one MEO satellite to reduce the time delay. The simulation results show that the M-BMDP algorithm performs better in rerouting delay, overhead and pack loss rate compared with existing solutions.

Uncertainty quantification and consideration in ML-aided traffic-driven service provisioning

The network traffic prediction problem has been extensively studied in the literature through the application of statistical linear models and more recently through the application of machine learning (ML). In fact, ML has proven its capabilities on accurately modeling the non-linear nature of network traffic, outperforming conventional statistical linear models. Without doubt, model accuracy constitutes an important evaluation metric. In a network environment, however, where uncertainty may lead to erroneous service provisioning decisions (e.g., violations of the quality-of-service (QoS) requirements), it does not provide any information of how much the traffic predictions can be trusted. Hence, in this work the focus is on addressing traffic prediction uncertainty by leveraging the capabilities of Monte Carlo (MC) dropout inference. The proposed framework is compared with a margin-based technique, traditionally used to compensate for traffic prediction uncertainty, demonstrating that the MC dropout inference framework results in significant spectrum savings, as opposed to the baseline, myopic, margin-based scheme. Even though a small penalty is observed on the unpredictable traffic, this is successfully handled on-line with a reduced operational overhead compared to the case where prediction uncertainty is completely ignored. Importantly, it is shown that, unlike the margin-based framework, the MC dropout inference framework can be used for the provisioning of services with diverse QoS requirements.

An Optimized LTE-Based Technique for Drone Base Station Dynamic 3D Placement and Resource Allocation in Delay-Sensitive M2M Networks

Drones are expected to facilitate extending wireless networks’ access for both human users and smart machine-type-communication devices (MTCDs) with strict and diverse quality of service (QoS) requirements. In this paper, we propose an optimal solution for the dynamic placement of an LTE drone-mounted base station to maximize the coverage of the MTCDs deployed over a large geographical area. The resulting technique jointly optimizes the drone's 3D positioning to maximize coverage and allocates the network resources in such a way that gives high priority to the delay-sensitive machine-to-machine (M2M) traffic. This optimization algorithm determines the optimal bound of the solution. Since it cannot be used in real-time operations due to its computational complexity, we also introduce a heuristic technique that offers a near-optimal solution with much reduced complexity. We conduct several simulation evaluations to assess the proposed techniques. These results are compared to those of other drone placement approaches. The comparisons show that the proposed techniques offer significantly better results in the communication coverage while fulfilling the diverse QoS requirements of the deployed M2M network. Moreover, the heuristic-based technique is shown to succeed in finding solutions close to the optimal bound with a considerable reduction of complexity over the exact algorithm.

SO-RAN: Dynamic RAN Slicing via Joint Functional Splitting and MEC Placement

Next-Generation (NG) mobile networks are expected to revolutionize wireless communication systems, facilitating the deployment of critical applications with stringent Quality of Service (QoS) requirements. Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) and Radio Access Network (RAN) slicing are considered vital mechanisms of upcoming NG systems as they allow creation of end-to-end isolated RAN slices and increase of serving mobile data traffic on edge. The efficient deployment of RAN functions promises flexible and disaggregated architectures for the diversified needs of NG networks. In this work, we propose a novel optimization approach that minimizes RAN/MEC economic costs and maximizes served traffic. This framework creates isolated RAN slices by optimal placement of RAN and MEC functions per slice, which solves the problem of operating cost-efficient edge networks and increases the served traffic with diverse QoS requirements. We first formulate our framework as a convex and linear problem and then decompose it using a distributed method that accelerates the performance and guarantees the optimal global solution. Our results show that our proposed work better uses the spectrum, and there is a trade-off between the achieved throughput and the cost incurred to the network.

Performance Analyses of Uplink MU-OFDMA Hybrid Access MAC in IEEE 802.11ax WLANs

Future wireless local area networks (WLANs) are expected to have numerous stations (STAs) with diverse Quality of Service requirements. IEEE 802.11ax is the current WLAN standard proposed to meet these requirements. This article analyzes the uplink-multiuser-orthogonal frequency division multiple access-hybrid access (HA) mechanism of the 802.11ax system under error-prone channel conditions. We propose an enhanced Markov chain model for analyzing such a WLAN system. By solving the system model, we derive vital systems performance metrics, such as aggregate and per-STA throughput, random access (RA) capability packet loss probability, mean delay, jitter, fairness, and worst-case delay bounds. Our analysis also considers different physical (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) layer aspects, such as channel bandwidth, the number of resource units (RUs), packet aggregation feature, fading, path-loss, modulation and coding schemes (MCS), etc. Furthermore, we have studied the MCS link adaptation-based dynamic HA process where the RUs are dynamically adapted between scheduled access and RA mechanisms. Additionally, to capture the role of PHY and MAC layer parameters on multi-Basic service set scenarios, we have integrated the Markov chain-based modeling with the stochastic geometry-based model. Our analytical model has been validated against extensive simulations, and the tradeoff between the metrics is studied.

Adaptive QoS-aware multipath congestion control for live streaming

Nowadays, the popularization of live streaming bring challenges in providing customized Quality of Service (QoS) and satisfying diverse Quality of Experience (QoE) requirements. Multipath TCP (MPTCP), designed for bandwidth and reliability in aggregating transmission, has the potential to improve live streaming performance with multiple simultaneously transmitting paths. However, the existing multipath congestion control algorithms (CCAs) of MPTCP fail to adapt to diverse network environments and different QoS requirements. We study the problem with extensive experiments to observe the limitations of current multipath CCAs. To tackle these problems and support stable and customized live streaming, we propose ACCeSS, an adaptive QoS-aware multipath congestion control framework. ACCeSS is able to promptly adapt to network changes and QoS requirements with a novel control policy optimization phase. In order to adjust and stimulate improvement on the preferred performance metric, ACCeSS exploits Random Forest Regressing (RFR) method to perform QoS-specific utility function optimization. Besides, ACCeSS is implemented and deployed in a multipath live streaming system. We compare it with other multipath CCAs in the Linux kernel and evaluate their performance in both emulated and real-world networks. It is revealed that ACCeSS outperforms classic multipath CCAs and the state-of-the-art learning-based multipath CCA, with better environment adaptive capability of QoS and higher QoE for live streaming.

Performance model for factory automation in 5G networks

The fifth generation (5G) of mobile networks is emerging as a key enabler of modern factory automation (FA) applications that ensure timely and reliable data exchange between network components. Network slicing (NS), which shares an underlying infrastructure with different applications and ensures application isolation, is the key 5G technology to support the diverse quality of service requirements of modern FA applications. In this article, an end-to-end (E2E) NS solution is proposed for FA applications in a 5G network. Regression approaches are used to construct a performance model for each slice to map the service level agreement to the network attributes. Interference coordination approaches for switched beam systems are proposed to optimize radio access network (RAN) performance models. A case study of a non-public network is used to show the proposed NS solution. Simulation result shows that for services with different QoS requirements, different IC approaches should be used as optimization methods. Design prediction using regression approach has been evaluated and shows that the prediction successful rate increases when more existing data are used.

Intelligent Content Precaching Scheme for Platoon-Based Edge Vehicular Networks

To provide various onboard entertainment services, the ever-increased Internet contents to be exchanged among remote data centers, roadside units (RSUs), and vehicles demand reliable and fast content dissemination in the vehicular networks. Edge precaching technology is expected to provide flexible and low-latency content dissemination by allowing edge nodes (i.e., RSUs and vehicles) to precache contents. However, the content dissemination process of edge precaching still suffers from high mobility and highly dynamic topology of vehicular networks. The recently proposed platoon-based vehicular network has potentials to mitigate the mobility challenges, but need to deal with multihop wireless content dissemination’s latency and reliability issues. Additionally, the network resources are limited in edge nodes, whereas various onboard Internet services with different Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements share the same resource pool by the same network resource scheduling policy, thereby decaying the network performance. Based on the above observations, to cope with the challenging content precaching problem under diverse QoS requirements in a platoon-based edge vehicular network, we first abstract two isolated virtual content service slices with different QoS requirements based on network slicing technology to provide on-demand customized services. Then, we propose an intelligent deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based content precaching scheme, which optimally matches the available communication resources and limited caching capacities in the edge vehicular network. The scheme jointly considers the impacts of content precaching policy and multihop wireless transmission on the content precaching performance. Simulation results show that our proposed DRL-based content precaching scheme achieves a competitive performance of reliability and latency comparing with other state-of-the-art algorithms.

Q-Soft: QoS-Aware Traffic Forwarding in Software-Defined Cyber–Physical Systems

The next-generation cyber–physical systems (CPSs) with heterogeneous applications have diverse Quality-of-Service (QoS) requirements in terms of throughput, end-to-end latency, and packet drop reliability. To meet such diverse QoS requirements, in this article, we propose a QoS-aware traffic forwarding scheme in software-defined CPS. The proposed scheme is presented as a two-stage optimization framework to minimize the associated costs in traffic forwarding. In the first stage, we aim to minimize the required number of “candidate” switches for a given network to minimize network deployment costs. In the second stage, we design a comprehensive cost function considering end-to-end delay, flow-rule utilization, and link utilization in the network. Based on the designed cost function, we formulate another optimization problem for optimal traffic forwarding (OTF). As solving OTF is NP-hard, we propose an efficient greedy-heuristic approach to solve the problem while considering application-specific QoS requirements. Further, we propose a packet-tagging method to assist the controller in mitigating rule congestion at the software-defined networking devices, and hence improve the overall network performance. Extensive results show that the proposed scheme minimizes the network delay and QoS-violated flows by up to 50% and 90%, respectively, compared to the state-of-the-art schemes.

Where do all my smart home data go? Context-aware data generation and forwarding for edge-based microservices over shared IoT infrastructure

With the explosion of the Internet of Things (IoT) devices, the advent of the edge computing paradigm, and the rise of intelligent applications for smart infrastructure surveillance, in-network data management is gaining a lot of research attention these days. The challenge lies in accommodating multiple application microservices with varying Quality of Service (QoS) requirements to share the sensing infrastructure for better resource utilization. In this work, we propose a novel data collection framework, CaDGen (Context-aware Data Generation) for such a shared IoT infrastructure that enables integrated data filtration and forwarding towards minimizing the resource consumption footprint for the IoT infrastructure. The proposed filtration mechanism utilizes the contextual information associated with the running application for determining the relevance of the data. Whereas the proposed forwarding policy aims to satisfy the diverse QoS requirements for the running applications by selecting the suitable next-hop forwarder based on the microservices distribution across different edge devices. A thorough performance evaluation of CaDGen through a testbed implementation as well as a simulation study for diverse setups reveals promising results concerning network resource utilization, scalability, energy conservation, and distribution of computation for optimal service provisioning. It is observed that the CaDGen can achieve nearly 35% reduction in the generated data for a moderately dynamic scenario without compromising on the data quality.

Joint Power and User Grouping Optimization in Cell-Free Massive MIMO Systems

To relieve the stress on channel estimation and decoding complexity in cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, user grouping problem is investigated in this paper, where access points (APs) based on time-division duplex (TDD) are considered to serve users on different time resources and the same frequency resource. In addition, when quality of service (QoS) requirements are considered, widely-used max-min power control is no longer applicable. We derive the minimum power constraints under diverse QoS requirements considering user grouping. Based on the analysis, we formulate the joint power and user grouping problem under QoS constraints, aiming at minimizing the total transmit power. A generalized benders decomposition (GBD) based algorithm is proposed, where the primal problem and master problem are solved iteratively to approach the optimal solution. Simulation results demonstrate that by user grouping, the number of users served in cell-free MIMO systems can be as much as the number of APs without increasing the complexity of channel estimation and decoding. Furthermore, with the proposed user grouping strategy, the power consumption can be reduced by 2–3 dB compared with the reference user grouping strategy, and by 7 dB compared with the total transmit power without grouping.