arXiv subjects

Qixun Zhang

Publications and source records attributed to Qixun Zhang.

31 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

Sensing-assisted Accurate and Fast Beam Management for Cellular-connected mmWave UAV Network

Beam management, including initial access (IA) and beam tracking, is essential to the millimeter-wave Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) network. However, conventional communication-only and feedback-based schemes suffer a high delay and low accuracy of beam alignment since they only enable the receiver to passively hear the information of the transmitter from the radio domain. This paper presents a novel sensing-assisted beam management approach, the first solution that fully utilizes the information from the visual domain to improve communication performance. We employ both integrated sensing and communication and computer vision techniques and design an extended Kalman filtering method for beam tracking and prediction. Besides, we also propose a novel dual identity association solution to distinguish multiple UAVs in dynamic environments. Real-world experiments and numerical results show that the proposed solution outperforms the conventional methods in IA delay, association accuracy, tracking error, and communication performance.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2023

Topology-Aware Resilient Routing Protocol for FANETs: An Adaptive Q-Learning Approach

Flying ad hoc networks (FANETs) play a crucial role in numerous military and civil applications since it shortens mission duration and enhances coverage significantly compared with a single unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Whereas, designing an energy-efficient FANET routing protocol with a high packet delivery rate (PDR) and low delay is challenging owing to the dynamic topology changes. In this article, we propose a topology-aware resilient routing strategy based on adaptive Q-learning (TARRAQ) to accurately capture topology changes with low overhead and make routing decisions in a distributed and autonomous way. First, we analyze the dynamic behavior of UAV nodes via the queuing theory, and then the closed-form solutions of neighbors' change rate (NCR) and neighbors' change interarrival time (NCIT) distribution are derived. Based on the real-time NCR and NCIT, a resilient sensing interval (SI) is determined by defining the expected sensing delay of network events. Besides, we also present an adaptive Q-learning approach that enables UAVs to make distributed, autonomous, and adaptive routing decisions, where the above SI ensures that the action space can be updated in time at a low cost. The simulation results verify the accuracy of the topology dynamic analysis model and also prove that our TARRAQ outperforms the Q-learning-based topology-aware routing (QTAR), mobility prediction-based virtual routing (MPVR), and greedy perimeter stateless routing based on energy-efficient hello (EE-Hello) in terms of 25.23%, 20.24%, and 13.73% lower overhead, 9.41%, 14.77%, and 16.70% higher PDR, and 5.12%, 15.65%, and 11.31% lower energy consumption, respectively.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2023

Toward Trusted and Swift UAV Communication: ISAC-Enabled Dual Identity Mapping

The UAV network has recently emerged as a capable carrier for ubiquitous wireless intelligent communication in the B5G/6G era. Nevertheless, the separation of dual identity raises challenges from the perspective of communication efficiency and security, including tedious communication feedback and malicious Sybil attacks. Meanwhile, thanks to the emerging integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) technology, the sensing ability incorporated in communication advances crucial opportunities for accurately and efficiently mapping identity from dual domains. This tutorial discusses the exciting intersection of ISAC and the future intelligent and efficient UAV network. We first describe the motivation scenario and present the framework of the proposed novel ISAC-enabled dual identity solution. The detailed modules of identity production, mapping, management, and authentication are discussed. By endowing UAVs with an advanced capability: opening their eyes when communicating with each other, we detail three typical applications and the advantages of our proposal. Finally, a series of key enabling techniques, open challenges, and potential solutions for ISAC-enabled dual-domain identity are discussed. This tutorial for the intelligent and efficient UAV network brings new insight on providing dual-domain identity via ISAC technology, with an eye on trusted and swift communication research tailored for the 6G UAV network.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2023

Toward Intelligent and Efficient 6G Networks: JCSC Enabled On-Purpose Machine Communications

Driven by the vision of "intelligent connection of everything" toward 6G, the collective intelligence of networked machines can be fully exploited to improve system efficiency by shifting the paradigm of wireless communication design from naive maximalist approaches to intelligent value-based approaches. In this article, we propose an on-purpose machine communication framework enabled by joint communication, sensing, and computation (JCSC) technology, which employs machine semantics as the interactive information flow. Naturally, there are potential technical barriers to be solved before the widespread adoption of on-purpose communications, including the conception of machine purpose, fast and concise networking strategy, and semantics-aware information exchange mechanism during the process of task-oriented cooperation. Hence, we discuss enabling technologies complemented by a range of open challenges. The simulation result shows that the proposed framework can significantly reduce networking overhead and improve communication efficiency.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2023

Seeing is Believing: Detecting Sybil Attack in FANET by Matching Visual and Auditory Domains

The flying ad hoc network (FANET) will play a crucial role in the B5G/6G era since it provides wide coverage and on-demand deployment services in a distributed manner. The detection of Sybil attacks is essential to ensure trusted communication in FANET. Nevertheless, the conventional methods only utilize the untrusted information that UAV nodes passively ``heard'' from the ``auditory" domain (AD), resulting in severe communication disruptions and even collision accidents. In this paper, we present a novel VA-matching solution that matches the neighbors observed from both the AD and the ``visual'' domain (VD), which is the first solution that enables UAVs to accurately correlate what they ``see'' from VD and ``hear'' from AD to detect the Sybil attacks. Relative entropy is utilized to describe the similarity of observed characteristics from dual domains. The dynamic weight algorithm is proposed to distinguish neighbors according to the characteristics' popularity. The matching model of neighbors observed from AD and VD is established and solved by the vampire bat optimizer. Experiment results show that the proposed VA-matching solution removes the unreliability of individual characteristics and single domains. It significantly outperforms the conventional RSSI-based method in detecting Sybil attacks. Furthermore, it has strong robustness and achieves high precision and recall rates.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2023

Specific Beamforming for Multi-UAV Networks: A Dual Identity-based ISAC Approach

Beam alignment is essential to compensate for the high path loss in the millimeter-wave (mmWave) Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) network. The integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) technology has been envisioned as a promising solution to enable efficient beam alignment in the dynamic UAV network. However, since the digital identity (D-ID) is not contained in the reflected echoes, the conventional ISAC solution has to either periodically feed back the D-ID to distinguish beams for multi-UAVs or suffer the beam errors induced by the separation of D-ID and physical identity (P-ID). This paper presents a novel dual identity association (DIA)-based ISAC approach, the first solution that enables specific, fast, and accurate beamforming towards multiple UAVs. In particular, the P-IDs extracted from echo signals are distinguished dynamically by calculating the feature similarity according to their prevalence, and thus the DIA is accurately achieved. We also present the extended Kalman filtering scheme to track and predict P-IDs, and the specific beam is thereby effectively aligned toward the intended UAVs in dynamic networks. Numerical results show that the proposed DIA-based ISAC solution significantly outperforms the conventional methods in association accuracy and communication performance.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2023

Dual Identities Enabled Low-Latency Visual Networking for UAV Emergency Communication

The Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) swarm networks will play a crucial role in the B5G/6G network thanks to its appealing features, such as wide coverage and on-demand deployment. Emergency communication (EC) is essential to promptly inform UAVs of potential danger to avoid accidents, whereas the conventional communication-only feedback-based methods, which separate the digital and physical identities (DPI), bring intolerable latency and disturb the unintended receivers. In this paper, we present a novel DPI-Mapping solution to match the identities (IDs) of UAVs from dual domains for visual networking, which is the first solution that enables UAVs to communicate promptly with what they see without the tedious exchange of beacons. The IDs are distinguished dynamically by defining feature similarity, and the asymmetric IDs from different domains are matched via the proposed bio-inspired matching algorithm. We also consider Kalman filtering to combine the IDs and predict the states for accurate mapping. Experiment results show that the DPI-Mapping reduces individual inaccuracy of features and significantly outperforms the conventional broadcast-based and feedback-based methods in EC latency. Furthermore, it also reduces the disturbing messages without sacrificing the hit rate.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2023

Joint Communication, Sensing and Computation enabled 6G Intelligent Machine System

With the rapid development of the smart city, high-level autonomous driving, intelligent manufacturing, and etc., the stringent industrial-level requirements of the extremely low latency and high reliability for communication and new trends for sub-centimeter sensing have transcended the abilities of 5G and call for the development of 6G. Based on analyzing the function design of the communication, sensing and the emerging intelligent computation systems, we propose the joint communication, sensing and computation (JCSC) framework for 6G intelligent machine-type communication (IMTC) network to realize low latency and high reliability of communication, highly accurate sensing and fast environment adaption. In the proposed JCSC framework, the communication, sensing and computation abilities cooperate to benefit each other by utilizing the unified hardware, resource and protocol design. Sensing information is exploited as priori information to enhance the reliability and latency performance of wireless communication and to optimize the resource utilization of the communication network, which further improves the distributed computation and cooperative sensing ability. We propose the promising enabling technologies such as joint communication and sensing (JCS) technique, JCSC wireless networking techniques and intelligent computation techniques. We also summarize the challenges to achieve the JCSC framework. Then, we introduce the intelligent flexible manufacturing as a typical use case of the IMTC with JCSC framework, where the enabling technologies are deployed. Finally, we present the simulation results to prove the feasibility of the JCSC framework by evaluating the JCS waveform, the JCSC enabled neighbor discovery (ND) and medium access control (MAC).

cs.NI↗

arXiv2022

5G PRS-Based Sensing: A Sensing Reference Signal Approach for Joint Sensing and Communication System

The emerging joint sensing and communication (JSC) technology is expected to support new applications and services, such as autonomous driving and extended reality (XR), in the future wireless communication systems. Pilot (or reference) signals in wireless communications usually have good passive detection performance, strong anti-noise capability and good auto-correlation characteristics, hence they bear the potential for applying in radar sensing. In this paper, we investigate how to apply the positioning reference signal (PRS) of the 5th generation (5G) mobile communications in radar sensing. This approach has the unique benefit of compatibility with the most advanced mobile communication system available so far. Thus, the PRS can be regarded as a sensing reference signal to simultaneously realize the functions of radar sensing, communication and positioning in a convenient manner. Firstly, we propose a PRS based radar sensing scheme and analyze its range and velocity estimation performance, based on which we propose a method that improves the accuracy of velocity estimation by using multiple frames. Furthermore, the Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) of the range and velocity estimation for PRS based radar sensing and the CRLB of the range estimation for PRS based positioning are derived. Our analysis and simulation results demonstrate the feasibility and superiority of PRS over other pilot signals in radar sensing. Finally, some suggestions for the future 5G-Advanced and 6th generation (6G) frame structure design containing the sensing reference signal are derived based on our study.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2022

Vehicular Connectivity on Complex Trajectories: Roadway-Geometry Aware ISAC Beam-tracking

In this paper, we propose sensing-assisted beamforming designs for vehicles on arbitrarily shaped roads by relying on integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) signalling.Specifically, we aim to address the limitations of conventional ISAC beam-tracking schemes that do not apply to complex road geometries. To improve the tracking accuracy and communication quality of service (QoS) in vehicle to infrastructure (V2I) networks, it is essential to model the complicated roadway geometry. To that end, we impose the curvilinear coordinate system (CCS) in an interacting multiple model extended Kalman filter (IMM-EKF) framework. By doing so, both the position and the motion of the vehicle on a complicated road can be explicitly modeled and precisely tracked attributing to the benefits from the CCS. Furthermore, an optimization problem is formulated to maximize the array gain through dynamically adjusting the array size and thereby controlling the beamwidth, which takes the performance loss caused by beam misalignment into account.Numerical simulations demonstrate that the roadway geometry-aware ISAC beamforming approach outperforms the communication-only based and ISAC kinematic-only based technique in the tracking performance. Moreover, the effectiveness of the dynamic beamwidth design is also verified by our numerical results.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2021

Design and Performance Evaluation of Joint Sensing and Communication Integrated System for 5G MmWave Enabled CAVs

The safety of connected automated vehicles (CAVs) relies on the reliable and efficient raw data sharing from multiple types of sensors. The 5G millimeter wave (mmWave) communication technology can enhance the environment sensing ability of different isolated vehicles. In this paper, a joint sensing and communication integrated system (JSCIS) is designed to support the dynamic frame structure configuration for sensing and communication dual functions based on the 5G New Radio protocol in the mmWave frequency band, which can solve the low latency and high data rate problems of raw sensing data sharing among CAVs. To evaluate the timeliness of raw sensing data transmission, the best time duration allocation ratio of sensing and communication dual functions for one vehicle is achieved by modeling the M/M/1 queuing problem using the age of information (AoI) in this paper. Furthermore, the resource allocation optimization problem among multiple CAVs is formulated as a non-cooperative game using the radar mutual information as a key indicator. And the feasibility and existence of pure strategy Nash equilibrium (NE) are proved theoretically, and a centralized time resource allocation (CTRA) algorithm is proposed to achieve the best feasible pure strategy NE. Finally, both simulation and hardware testbed are designed, and the results show that the proposed CTRA algorithm can improve the radar total mutual information by 26%, and the feasibility of the proposed JSCIS is achieved with an acceptable radar ranging accuracy within 0.25 m, as well as a stable data rate of 2.8 Gbps using the 28 GHz mmWave frequency band.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2017

Android Multi-Level System Permission Management Approach

With the expansion of the market share occupied by the Android platform, security issues (especially application security) have become attention focus of researchers. In fact, the existing methods lack the capabilities to manage application permissions without root privilege. This study proposes a dynamic management mechanism of Android application permissions based on security policies. The paper first describes the permissions by security policies, then implementes permission checking code and request evaluation algorithm in Android framework layer. Experimental results indicate that the presented approach succeeds in permission management of Android applications, and its system overhead is low, which makes it an effective method for Android permission management.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2013

On the Construction of Radio Environment Maps for Cognitive Radio Networks

The Radio Environment Map (REM) provides an effective approach to Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) in Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs). Previous results on REM construction show that there exists a tradeoff between the number of measurements (sensors) and REM accuracy. In this paper, we analyze this tradeoff and determine that the REM error is a decreasing and convex function of the number of measurements (sensors). The concept of geographic entropy is introduced to quantify this relationship. And the influence of sensor deployment on REM accuracy is examined using information theory techniques. The results obtained in this paper are applicable not only for the REM, but also for wireless sensor network deployment.

cs.NI↗