Low-complexity Online Research Articles

CFLIT: Coexisting Federated Learning and Information Transfer

Future wireless networks are expected to support diverse mobile services, including artificial intelligence (AI) services and ubiquitous data transmissions. Federated learning (FL), as a revolutionary learning approach, enables collaborative AI model training across distributed mobile edge devices. By exploiting the superposition property of multiple-access channels, over-the-air computation allows concurrent model uploading from massive devices over the same radio resources, and thus significantly reduces the communication cost of FL. In this paper, we study the <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">coexistence</i> of over-the-air FL and traditional information transfer (IT) in a mobile edge network, where an access point (AP) coordinates a set of devices for over-the-air FL and serves multiple devices for information transfer in the meantime. We propose a <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">coexisting federated learning and information transfer (CFLIT)</i> communication framework, where the FL and IT devices share the wireless spectrum in an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system. Under this framework, we aim to maximize the IT data rate and guarantee a given FL convergence performance by optimizing the long-term radio resource allocation. A key challenge that limits the spectrum efficiency of the coexisting system lies in the large overhead incurred by frequent communication between the server and edge devices for FL model aggregation. To address the challenge, we rigorously analyze the impact of the computation-to-communication ratio on the convergence of over-the-air FL in wireless fading channels. The analysis reveals the existence of an optimal computation-to-communication ratio that minimizes the amount of radio resources needed for over-the-air FL to converge to a given error tolerance. Based on the analysis, we propose a low-complexity online algorithm to jointly optimize the radio resource allocation for both the FL devices and IT devices. We further derive an analytical expression of the achievable data rate of IT users. Extensive numerical simulations verify the superior performance of the proposed design for the coexistence of FL and IT devices in wireless cellular systems.

Distribution-Oblivious Online Algorithms for Age-of-Information Penalty Minimization

The ever-increasing needs of supporting real-time applications have spurred new studies on minimizing Age-of-Information (AoI), a novel metric characterizing the data freshness of the system. This work studies the single-queue information update system and strengthens the seminal results of Sun et al. on the following fronts: (i) When designing the optimal offline schemes with full knowledge of the delay distributions, a new fixed-point-based method is proposed with quadratic convergence rate, an order-of-magnitude improvement over the state-of-the-art; (ii) When the distributional knowledge is unavailable (which is the norm in practice), two new low-complexity online algorithms are proposed, which provably attain the optimal average AoI penalty; and (iii) the online schemes also admit a modular architecture, which allows the designer to upgrade certain components to handle additional practical challenges. Two such upgrades are proposed for the situations: (iii.1) The AoI penalty function is also unknown and must be estimated on the fly, and (iii.2) the unknown delay distribution is Markovian instead of i.i.d. The performance of our schemes is either provably optimal or within 3% of the omniscient optimal offline solutions in all simulation scenarios.

Low-Complexity Online Calibration for Large-Scale Multi-Beam Antennas

High-throughput satellite communication based on large-scale multi-beam antennas is a promising technology for sixth-generation (6G) mobile networks. Conventional online calibration methods for large-scale antennas after satellite launch are restricted by communication signals. This paper proposes an online calibration method of amplitude and phase errors without disturbing the normal communication traffic. Two important aspects of calibration are discussed, i.e., closed-form expressions of calibration accuracy and hardware complexity. Simulation results show that theoretical approximation results are close to simulation results when the number of antennas is less than half of the code length. The relative amplitude and phase performance deteriorate by 6.12 dB and 40.96 deg, respectively, when the power is lower than the reference 20 dB. Finally, a calibration experimental system with eight beams is built for verification.

Wireless Scheduling to Optimize Age of Information Based on Earliest Update Time

Recently, has been recognized that there is a practical limitation with the original notion of Age of Information (AoI) metric in terms of quantifying the freshness of information content. A new metric, called Age of Incorrect Information (AoII), has been proposed. In this article, we introduce the notion of AoII+ metric by modifying AoII with practical considerations. Then, we investigate a scheduling problem to minimize AoII+ in an IoT data collection network. We derive a theoretical lower bound for the minimum AoII+. Then, we present Heh—a low-complexity online scheduler to minimize AoII+. The design of Heh is based on the estimation of a novel offline scheduling priority metric without any future knowledge. We prove that at each time, transmitting one source with the largest offline scheduling priority metric minimizes AoII+. Through extensive simulations, we show that the lower bound is very tight and that the AoII+ obtained by Heh is close to optimal.

Online Radio Access Technology Selection Algorithms in a 5G Multi-RAT Network

In today's wireless networks, a variety of Radio Access Technologies (RATs) are present. However, each RAT being controlled individually leads to suboptimal utilization of network resources. Due to the remarkable growth of data traffic, interworking among different RATs is becoming necessary to overcome the problem of suboptimal resource utilization. Users can be offloaded from one RAT to another based on loads of different networks, channel conditions and priority of users. We consider the optimal RAT selection problem in a Fifth Generation (5G) New Radio (NR)-Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) network where we aim to maximize the total system throughput subject to constraints on the blocking probability of high priority users and the offloading probability of low priority users. The problem is formulated as a Constrained Markov Decision Process (CMDP). We reduce the effective dimensionality of the action space by eliminating the provably suboptimal actions. We propose low-complexity online heuristics for RAT selection which can operate without the knowledge regarding the statistics of system dynamics. Network Simulator-3 (ns-3) simulations reveal that the proposed algorithms outperform traditional RAT selection algorithms under realistic network scenarios including user mobility.

Three-Dimensional Trajectory Designs for Unmanned Aerial Vehicle-Enabled Communications With Kinematic Constraints

In this paper, we propose novel three-dimensional (3-D) trajectory designs for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled communications, where a single UAV needs to adaptively determine its locations in a timely manner in order to provide radio coverage to terrestrial mobile users. Taking the kinematic constraints on the speed and the turning angle of the UAV into account, we formulate a UAV trajectory optimization problem to maximize the average throughput of the considered system, while satisfying the coverage requirements of the mobile users simultaneously. To solve this NP-hard problem, we first propose an offline trajectory design algorithm that can determine the whole trajectory of the UAV, assuming that the global information (e.g., channel state information and the users’ location information at all time slots) is known <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">a priori</i> . Then, we propose two low-complexity online algorithms that utilize the past and current information of the system only. Numerical results are provided to verify the effectiveness of our proposed algorithms. Moreover, we show that our proposed online algorithms can achieve almost the same system performance as the proposed offline algorithm, while inducing significant lower computational complexity.

Joint Online Optimization of Data Sampling Rate and Preprocessing Mode for Edge–Cloud Collaboration-Enabled Industrial IoT

Edge–cloud collaboration is critical in the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) for serving computation-intensive tasks (e.g., bearing fault monitoring) that require low-response delay, low energy consumption, and high processing accuracy. In this article, an energy-efficient resource management framework for IIoT with closed-loop control on end devices, edge servers, and cloud center is studied. In the considered model, each edge server aggregates the data collected by industrial sensors (i.e., end devices) and forms computation tasks for corresponding data analysis. In order to minimize the system-wide energy consumption, while maintaining a guaranteed service delay and a satisfied data processing accuracy for each IIoT application, a joint optimization of: 1) sensors’ sampling rate adaption; 2) edge servers’ preprocessing mode selection; and 3) edge–cloud communication and computing resource allocation is formulated. Further taking into account the time-varying channel conditions and randomness of data arrivals, we propose a low-complexity online algorithm, which solves the problem in a dynamic manner. Particularly, the Lyapunov optimization method is first utilized to decompose the long-term problem into a series of instant ones [mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problems], and then a Markov approximation algorithm is applied to solve such instant problems to near optimum with the consideration of future impacts. Performance analyses and simulation results show that the proposed algorithm is feasible under long-term service satisfaction constraints, and its energy consumption and service delay are approximately 20% and 28% lower than those of the benchmark schemes, respectively.

Adaptive Wireless Video Streaming: Joint Transcoding and Transmission Resource Allocation

The emerging mobile edge computing (MEC) technology has been recently applied to improve adaptive bitrate (ABR) streaming service quality under time-varying wireless channels. In this paper, we consider a heterogeneous multi-user MEC-enabled video streaming network with time-varying wireless channels in sequential time frames. In particular, we aim to design an online joint transcoding and transmission resource allocation algorithm to maximize the ABR streaming user’s quality of experience (QoE) subject to the bandwidth and CPU constraints. The algorithm is “online” in the sense that the bitrate and resource allocation decisions made at each frame depend only on the observation of past events. We formulate the problem as a mixed integer non-linear programming (MINLP) that jointly determines bitrate adaptation, bandwidth allocation, and CPU cycle assignment. To cope with the challenge arising from the coupling decisions of adjacent frames, we propose a low-complexity online algorithm, named OCCA. Specifically, by introducing queueing model constraints, we transform the offline non-conex MINLP problem into a multi-frame problem. Then, we analytically decouple the multi-stage(frame) problem to multiple per-frame convex subproblems that can be solved with high robustness and low computational complexity. We perform simulations with realistic scenarios to evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithm. Results manifest that compared with state-of-the-art approaches, our proposed algorithm can provide 97.84% (on average) extra QoE.

Opportunistic Temporal Fair Mode Selection and User Scheduling in Full-Duplex Systems

In-band full-duplex (FD) communication has emerged as one of the promising techniques to improve data rates in next generation wireless systems. Typical FD scenarios considered in the literature assume FD base stations (BSs) and half-duplex (HD) users activated either in uplink (UL) or downlink (DL), where inter-user interference (IUI) is treated as noise at the DL user. This paper considers more general FD scenarios where an arbitrary fraction of the users are capable of FD and/or they can perform successive interference cancellation (SIC) to mitigate IUI. Consequently, one user can be activated in either UL or DL (HD-UL and HD-DL modes), or simultaneously in both directions requiring self-interference mitigation (SIM) at that user (FD-SIM mode). Furthermore, two users can be scheduled, one in UL and the other in DL (both operating in HD), where the DL user can treat IUI as noise (FD-IN mode) or perform SIC to mitigate IUI (FD-SIC mode). This paper studies opportunistic mode selection and user scheduling under long-term and short-term temporal fairness in single-carrier and multi-carrier (OFDM) FD systems, with the goal of maximizing system utility (e.g. sum-rate). First, the feasible region of temporal demands is characterized for both long-term and short-term fairness. Subsequently, optimal temporal fair schedulers as well as practical low-complexity online algorithms are devised. Simulation results demonstrate that using SIC to mitigate IUI as well as having FD capability at users can improve FD throughput gains significantly especially, when user distribution is concentrated around a few hotspots.

Online computation offloading and trajectory scheduling for UAV-enabled wireless powered mobile edge computing

The unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled mobile edge computing (MEC) architecture is expected to be a powerful technique to facilitate 5G and beyond ubiquitous wireless connectivity and diverse vertical applications and services, anytime and anywhere. Wireless power transfer (WPT) is another promising technology to prolong the operation time of low-power wireless devices in the era of Internet of Things (IoT). However, the integration of WPT and UAV-enabled MEC systems is far from being well studied, especially in dynamic environments. In order to tackle this issue, this paper aims to investigate the stochastic computation offloading and trajectory scheduling for the UAV-enabled wireless powered MEC system. A UAV offers both RF wireless power transmission and computation services for IoT devices. Considering the stochastic task arrivals and random channel conditions, a long-term average energy-efficiency (EE) minimization problem is formulated. Due to non-convexity and the time domain coupling of the variables in the formulated problem, a low-complexity online computation offloading and trajectory scheduling algorithm (OCOTSA) is proposed by exploiting Lyapunov optimization. Simulation results verify that there exists a balance between EE and the service delay, and demonstrate that the system EE performance obtained by the proposed scheme outperforms other benchmark schemes.

Multi-Relay Assisted Computation Offloading for Multi-Access Edge Computing Systems With Energy Harvesting

In multi-access edge computing systems with energy harvesting (MEC-EH), the mobile devices are empowered with unstable energy harvested from renewable energy sources. To prolong the life of mobile devices, as many computation-intensive tasks as possible should be offloaded to the MEC server. However, when the system states of mobile device and MEC server are unstable, e.g. poor communication channel conditions, a great number of tasks will be executed locally, leading to a long execution time. Even worse, some tasks may be dropped due to low energy levels. To address this problem, in this paper, we propose a multi-relay assisted computation offloading framework for MEC-EH systems. In this framework, a computation task can be executed by offloading to the MEC server with the help of multiple relay nodes, such as the neighboring nodes. We introduce execution cost as a performance metric to incorporate both the task execution time and task failure. We then develop a low-complexity online algorithm, namely MRACO algorithm, to minimize the average execution cost. MRACO algorithm can select the optimal execution strategy for each task from (1) executing the task locally, (2) offloading it to the MEC server directly, (3) offloading it to the MEC server with the help of the most suitable neighboring nodes, and (4) simply dropping it. Moreover, we also develop an algorithm for selecting the suitable neighboring devices to act as relays and determining the optimal task splitting ratio between them. Finally, performance evaluation shows that the proposed MRACO algorithm greatly outperforms the benchmarks in terms of both average execution time and task drop rate.

Online Algorithms for Optimizing Age of Information in the IoT Systems with Multi-Slot Status Delivery

Age of information (AoI) is recently proposed to measure the freshness of information, which provides a new performance metric for the real-time Internet of Things (IoT). In this letter, we investigate low complexity online algorithms to minimize the average AoI in an IoT system where the nodes are scheduled to sample the status with multiple packets and send it to the destination through noisy channels. Three online policies are proposed: Greedy policy, Max-Ratio policy and Lyapunov drift policy. Simulation results show that our online algorithms outperform the existing suboptimal algorithm and the Lyapunov drift policy yields the best performance.

DPoS: Decentralized, Privacy-Preserving, and Low-Complexity Online Slicing for Multi-Tenant Networks

Network slicing is the key to enable virtualized resource sharing among vertical industries in the era of 5G communication. Efficient resource allocation is of vital importance to realize network slicing in real-world business scenarios. To deal with the high algorithm complexity, privacy leakage, and unrealistic offline setting of current network slicing algorithms, in this paper we propose a fully decentralized and low-complexity online algorithm, DPoS, for multi-resource slicing. We first formulate the problem as a global social welfare maximization problem. Next, we design the online algorithm DPoS based on the primal-dual approach and posted price mechanism. In DPoS, each tenant is incentivized to make its own decision based on its true preferences without disclosing any private information to the mobile virtual network operator and other tenants. We provide a rigorous theoretical analysis to show that DPoS has the optimal competitive ratio when the cost function of each resource is linear. Extensive simulation experiments are conducted to evaluate the performance of DPoS. The results show that DPoS can not only achieve close-to-offline-optimal performance, but also have low algorithmic overheads.

Two-Timescale Uplink Channel Estimation for Dual-Hop MIMO Relay Multi-User Systems

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) relay systems have received great attention for the development of future wireless networks, since they can be invoked for improving system capacity and extending the coverage area. Considering the fixed base station (BS) and relay station (RS) and the highly mobile users (UEs), the dual-hop MIMO relay channel possesses the two-timescale characteristics, i.e., the UEs-RS channel varies in a short-timescale manner whereas the RS-BS channel varies in a long-timescale manner. In order to acquire the knowledge of all individual channels at the BS directly, we propose two-timescale channel estimation algorithms with one-stage training (OST) scheme based on the above time-varying channel characteristics. Specifically, the two-timescale channel estimation problem is firstly formulated as an approximate maximum likelihood (AML) problem. Then, we design batch algorithm to solve the resultant optimization problem. Moreover, to overcome the drawbacks of batch algorithm, a low-complexity online algorithm is also proposed based on the two-stage stochastic optimization framework. Finally, simulation results are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed two-timescale channel estimation algorithms.

Energy-Efficient Data Uploading for Cellular-Connected UAV Systems

Integrating unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) into cellular networks offers a promising solution to support their efficient operations and achieve high-quality communication with the ground. In this paper, we consider a cellular-connected UAV communication system, in which one energy-constrained UAV flies from a given initial location to a final location while uploading data to the ground base stations (GBSs) along its flight. We study the joint design of UAV operation time, communication scheduling, as well as UAV trajectory and transmit power to maximize the data uploading throughput, subject to the communication quality of service (QoS) requirement and UAV energy budget constraints. We first consider an offline design approach by utilizing only the channel distribution information (CDI) that is available prior to the UAV's flight, which is formulated as a non-convex optimization problem and challenging to solve. By using path disretization and successive convex approximation (SCA) techniques, an efficient alternating optimization algorithm is proposed, which can converge to a solution that satisfies the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions. Then, we further study the online design approach by utilizing the instantaneous channel state information (CSI) that is available to the UAV in real time along its flight. As the online design problem has similar structure as that of the offline design, an adaptive online optimization algorithm is proposed. To further reduce the computational complexity, a low-complexity online algorithm based on receding horizon optimization (RHO) is developed by utilizing a combined offline and online design approach. Simulations are conducted to corroborate our study and the results demonstrate the performance gain of proposed designs as compared to various baseline schemes. Furthermore, our results unveil the tradeoff between system throughput and UAV endurance in the considered system.

Low Complexity Channel Prediction Using TFOS-ELM Method for Massive MIMO Systems

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology can potentially help to achieve high data rates for multiuser communication. To achieve better performance, the channel state information (CSI) is estimated by the pilot. However, the estimated CSI cannot be used in downlinks when the mobile speed is very high, since it becomes outdated due to the rapid channel variation. In a massive MIMO system, the issue of outdated CSI is serious when using traditional techniques. Therefore, in order to obtain accurate CSI, the prediction of future CSI is required. In this paper, a low complexity online extreme learning machine (ELM) is proposed for the online prediction of the fast fading channel. First, we introduce the structure of the online sequential extreme learning machine (OS-ELM) and combine the training process of the OS-ELM with a forgetting mechanism (FM) to predict fast changing channels. Second, we use the truncated polynomial expansion (TPE) to reduce the computational complexity of the OS-ELM with the FM (FOS-ELM). In addition, the performance of the proposed algorithm is verified through simulation results, and we apply channel prediction in the precoding process. It is shown that the communication quality is improved by our channel prediction algorithm.

Optimal and Low-Complexity Dynamic Spectrum Access for RF-Powered Ambient Backscatter System With Online Reinforcement Learning

Ambient backscatter has been introduced with a wide range of applications for low power wireless communications. In this article, we propose an optimal and low-complexity dynamic spectrum access framework for RF-powered ambient backscatter system. In this system, the secondary transmitter not only harvests energy from ambient signals (from incumbent users), but also backscatters these signals to its receiver for data transmission. Under the dynamics of the ambient signals, we first adopt the Markov decision process (MDP) framework to obtain the optimal policy for the secondary transmitter, aiming to maximize the system throughput. However, the MDP-based optimization requires complete knowledge of environment parameters, e.g., the probability of a channel to be idle and the probability of a successful packet transmission, that may not be practical to obtain. To cope with such incomplete knowledge of the environment, we develop a low-complexity online reinforcement learning algorithm that allows the secondary transmitter to "learn" from its decisions and then attain the optimal policy. Simulation results show that the proposed learning algorithm not only efficiently deals with the dynamics of the environment, but also improves the average throughput up to 50% and reduces the blocking probability and delay up to 80% compared with conventional methods.

Online Routing and Scheduling With Capacity Redundancy for Timely Delivery Guarantees in Multihop Networks

It has been shown that it is impossible to achieve stringent timely delivery guarantees in a large network without having complete information of all future packet arrivals. In order to maintain desirable performance in the presence of uncertainty of future, a viable approach is to add redundancy by increasing link capacities. This paper studies the amount of capacity needed to provide stringent timely delivery guarantees. We propose a low-complexity online algorithm and prove that it only requires a small amount of redundancy to guarantee the timely delivery of most packets. Furthermore, we show that in large networks with very high timely delivery requirements, the redundancy needed by our policy is at most twice as large as the theoretical lower bound. For practical implementation, we propose a distributed protocol based on this centralized policy. Without adding redundancy, we further propose a low-complexity order-optimal online policy for the network. The simulation results show that our policies achieve much better performance than the other state-of-the-art policies.

Online digital offset mismatch compensation for high-speed time-interleaved ADC in real-time optical OFDM receiver.

The time-interleaved analog-to-digital converter (TI-ADC) is a good option to realize high-speed data conversion for both single-carrier and multi-carrier optical communication systems. Offset mismatch is one of its drawbacks, which causes distortion in the sampled data and degrades the bit error rate (BER) performance of communication systems. In this article, a low-complexity online digital offset mismatch compensation (OMC) scheme based on time-domain averaging is proposed and implemented with a commercial off-the-shelf field programmable gate array (FPGA) chip for high-speed optical OFDM communications. The proposed OMC scheme is experimentally demonstrated in real-time direct-detection optical OFDM receiver with a 5 GS/s TI-ADC. The experimental results show that the BER performance can be improved by more than an order of magnitude, by using the proposed OMC scheme, for both 16- and 64-QAM modulation formats. The receiver sensitivity can be improved by more than 5-dB in terms of the received optical power at the BER of 1e-3. What's more, the real-time measured BER performance is similar to that of by using offline DSP approaches and has good stability during the measurement period. Numerical simulations are performed under additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel to fully verify the performance of the OMC scheme. It exhibits that the error floor in BER performance can be eliminated by using the OMC scheme and a negligible signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) penalty can be achieved compared with that of offset mismatch-free case.

Low-complexity online correction and calibration of pedestrian dead reckoning using map matching and GPS

ABSTRACT Dead Reckoning is a relative positioning scheme that is used to infer the change of position relative to a point of origin by measuring the traveled distance and orientation change. Pedestrian Dead Reckoning (PDR) applies this concept to walking persons. The method can be used to track someone's movement in a building after a known landmark like the building's entrance is registered. Here, the movement of a foot and the corresponding direction change is measured and summed up, to infer the current position. Measuring and integrating the corresponding physical parameters, e.g. using inertial sensors, introduces small errors that accumulate quickly into large distance errors. Knowledge of a buildings geography may reduce these errors as it can be used to keep the estimated position from moving through walls and onto likely paths. In this paper, we use building maps to improve localization based on a single foot-mounted inertial sensor. We describe our localization method using zero velocity updates to accurately compute the length of individual steps and a Madgwick filter to determine the step orientation. Even though the computation of individual steps is quite accurate, small errors still accumulate in the long term. We show how correction algorithms using likely and unlikely paths can rectify errors intrinsic to pedestrian dead reckoning tasks, such as orientation and displacement drift, and discuss restrictions and disadvantages of these algorithms. We also present a method of deriving the initial position and orientation from GPS measurements. We verify our PDR correction methods analyzing the corrected and raw trajectories of six participants walking four routes of varying length and complexity through an office building, walking each route three times. Our quantitative results show an endpoint accuracy improvement of up to 60 when using likely paths and 23 when using unlikely paths. However, both approaches can also decrease accuracy in certain scenarios. We identify those scenarios and offer further ideas for improving Pedestrian Dead Reckoning methods.