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Zhu Han

Publications and source records attributed to Zhu Han.

At least 415 records · Page 23Linked to original sources

Reinforcement Learning for a Cellular Internet of UAVs: Protocol Design, Trajectory Control, and Resource Management

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can be powerful Internet-of-Things components to execute sensing tasks over the next-generation cellular networks, which are generally referred to as the cellular Internet of UAVs. However, due to the high mobility of UAVs and the shadowing in the air-to-ground channels, UAVs operate in an environment with dynamics and uncertainties. Therefore, UAVs need to improve the quality of service (QoS) of sensing and communication without complete information, which makes reinforcement learning suitable to be employed in the cellular Internet of UAVs. In this article, we propose a distributed sense-and-send protocol to coordinate the UAVs for sensing and transmission. Then, we apply reinforcement learning in the cellular Internet of UAVs to solve key problems such as trajectory control and resource management. Finally, we point out several potential future research directions.

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Hybrid Beamforming for Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface based Multi-user Communications: Achievable Rates with Limited Discrete Phase Shifts

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) has drawn considerable attention from the research society recently, which creates favorable propagation conditions by controlling the phase shifts of the reflected waves at the surface, thereby enhancing wireless transmissions. In this paper, we study a downlink multi-user system where the transmission from a multi-antenna base station (BS) to various users is achieved by the RIS reflecting the incident signals of the BS towards the users. Unlike most existing works, we consider the practical case where only a limited number of discrete phase shifts can be realized by the finite-sized RIS. Based on the reflection-dominated one-hop propagation model between the BS and users via the RIS, a hybrid beamforming scheme is proposed and the sum-rate maximization problem is formulated. Specifically, the continuous digital beamforming and discrete RIS-based analog beamforming are performed at the BS and the RIS, respectively, and an iterative algorithm is designed to solve this problem. Both theoretical analysis and numerical validations show that the RIS-based system can achieve a good sum-rate performance by setting a reasonable size of RIS and a small number of discrete phase shifts.

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Sub-Channel Allocation for Device-to-Device Underlaying Full-Duplex mmWave Small Cells using Coalition Formation Games

The small cells in millimeter wave (mmWave) have been utilized extensively for the fifth generation (5G) mobile networks. And full-duplex (FD) communications become possible with the development of self-interference (SI) cancellation technology. In this paper, we focus on the optimal allocation of the sub-channels in the small cells deployed densely underlying the mmWave networks. In order to improve the resource utilization and network capacity, device-to-device (D2D) communications are adopted in networks. For maximizing the system throughput, we propose a cooperative sub-channel allocation approach based on coalition formation game, and theoretically prove the convergence of the proposed allocation algorithm. The utility of the coalition formation game is closely related to the sum system throughput in this paper, and each link makes an individual decision to leave or join any coalition based on the principle of maximizing the utility. Besides, a threshold of the minimum transmission rate is given to improve the system fairness. Through extensive simulations, we demonstrate that our proposed scheme has a near-optimal performance on sum throughput. In addition, we verify the low complexity of the proposed scheme by simulating the number of switch operations.

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A Predictive On-Demand Placement of UAV Base Stations Using Echo State Network

The unmanned aerial vehicles base stations (UAV-BSs) have great potential in being widely used in many dynamic application scenarios. In those scenarios, the movements of served user equipments (UEs) are inevitable, so the UAV-BSs needs to be re-positioned dynamically for providing seamless services. In this paper, we propose a system framework consisting of UEs clustering, UAV-BS placement, UEs trajectories prediction, and UAV-BS reposition matching scheme, to serve the UEs seamlessly as well as minimize the energy cost of UAV-BSs' reposition trajectories. An Echo State Network (ESN) based algorithm for predicting the future trajectories of UEs and a Kuhn-Munkres-based algorithm for finding the energy-efficient reposition trajectories of UAV-BSs is designed, respectively. We conduct a simulation using a real open dataset for performance validation. The simulation results indicate that the proposed framework achieves high prediction accuracy and provides the energy-efficient matching scheme.

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Data-Driven 3D Placement of UAV Base Stations for Arbitrarily Distributed Crowds

In this paper, we consider an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV)-assisted cellular system which consists of multiple UAV base stations (BSs) cooperating the terrestrial BSs. In such a heterogeneous network, for cellular operators, the problem is how to determine the appropriate number, locations, and altitudes of UAV-BSs to improve the system sumrate as well as satisfy the demands of arbitrarily flash crowds on data rates. We propose a data-driven 3D placement of UAV-BSs for providing an effective placement result with a feasible computational cost. The proposed algorithm searches for the appropriate number, location, coverage, and altitude of each UAV-BS in the serving area with the maximized system sumrate in polynomial time so as to guarantee the minimum data rate requirement of UE. The simulation results show that the proposed approach can improve system sumrate in comparison with the case without UAV-BSs.

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Coverage Analysis of Integrated Sub-6GHz-mmWave Cellular Networks with Hotspots

Deploying Sub-6GHz networks together with millimeter wave (mmWave) is a promising solution to achieve high data rates in traffic hotspots while guaranteeing sufficient coverage, where mmWave small cells are densely deployed to provide high quality of service. In this paper, we propose an analytical framework to investigate the integrated Sub-6GHz-mmWave cellular networks, in which the Sub-6GHz base stations (BSs) are modeled as a Poisson point process, and the mmWave BSs are clustered following a Poisson cluster process in traffic hotspots. We conduct stochastic geometry-based analysis and derive the performance metrics including the association probability, signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio coverage probability and average achievable rate, which are validated to be accurate by Monte Carlo simulations. We analyze the impact of various deployment parameters on the network performance to give insights on the network design. In particular, it is shown that deploying mmWave small cells in traffic hotspots will outperform both traditional Sub-6GHz heterogeneous network and isolated mmWave system in terms of the coverage probability. It can also be shown that extremely high and extremely small association weight for mmWave BSs will deteriorate the performance for cell edge users and cell interior users, respectively. Moreover, there exists an optimal pre-decided dispersion parameter of mmWave BSs that contributes to the maximum coverage probability.

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UAV-Enabled Uplink Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access System: Joint Deployment and Power Control

In order to overcome the inherent latency in multi-user unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) networks with orthogonal multiple access (OMA). In this paper, we investigate the UAV enabled uplink non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) network, where a UAV is deployed to collect the messages transmitted by ground users. In order to maximize the sum rate of all users and to meet the quality of service (QoS) requirement, we formulate an optimization problem, in which the UAV deployment position and the power control are jointly optimized. This problem is non-convex and some variables are binary, and thus it is a typical NP hard problem. In this paper, an iterative algorithm is proposed with the assistance of successive convex approximate (SCA) technique and the penalty function method. In order to reduce the high computational complexity of the iterative algorithm, a low complexity approximation algorithm is then proposed, which can achieve a similar performance compared to the iterative algorithm. Compared with OMA scheme and conventional NOMA scheme, numerical results show that our proposed algorithms can efficiently improve the sum rate.

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Wireless Network Slicing: Generalized Kelly Mechanism Based Resource Allocation

Wireless network slicing (i.e., network virtualization) is one of the potential technologies for addressing the issue of rapidly growing demand in mobile data services related to 5G cellular networks. It logically decouples the current cellular networks into two entities; infrastructure providers (InPs) and mobile virtual network operators (MVNOs). The resources of base stations (e.g., resource blocks, transmission power, antennas) which are owned by the InP are shared to multiple MVNOs who need resources for their mobile users. Specifically, the physical resources of an InP are abstracted into multiple isolated network slices, which are then allocated to MVNO's mobile users. In this paper, two-level allocation problem in network slicing is examined, whilst enabling efficient resource utilization, inter-slice isolation (i.e., no interference amongst slices), and intra-slice isolation (i.e., no interference between users in the same slice). A generalized Kelly mechanism (GKM) is also designed, based on which the upper level of the resource allocation issue (i.e., between the InP and MVNOs) is addressed. The benefit of using such a resource bidding and allocation framework is that the seller (InP) does not need to know the true valuation of the bidders (MVNOs). For solving the lower level of resource allocation issue (i.e., between MVNOs and their mobile users), the optimal resource allocation is derived from each MVNO to its mobile users by using KKT conditions. Then, bandwidth resources are allocated to the users of MVNOs. Finally, the results of simulation are presented to verify the theoretical analysis of our proposed two-level resource allocation problem in wireless network slicing.

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Time-Varying Downlink Channel Tracking for Quantized Massive MIMO Networks

This paper proposes a Bayesian downlink channel estimation algorithm for time-varying massive MIMO networks. In particular, the quantization effects at the receiver are considered. In order to fully exploit the sparsity and time correlations of channels, we formulate the time-varying massive MIMO channel as the simultaneously sparse signal model. Then, we propose a sparse Bayesian learning (SBL) framework to learn the model parameters of the sparse virtual channel. To reduce complexity, we employ the expectation maximization (EM) algorithm to achieve the approximated solution. Specifically, the factor graph and the general approximate message passing (GAMP) algorithms are used to compute the desired posterior statistics in the expectation step, so that high-dimensional integrals over the marginal distributions can be avoided. The non-zero supporting vector of a virtual channel is then obtained from channel statistics by a k-means clustering algorithm. After that, the reduced dimensional GAMP based scheme is applied to make the full use of the channel temporal correlation so as to enhance the virtual channel tracking accuracy. Finally, we demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed schemes through simulations.

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A Deep Spatio-Temporal Fuzzy Neural Network for Passenger Demand Prediction

In spite of its importance, passenger demand prediction is a highly challenging problem, because the demand is simultaneously influenced by the complex interactions among many spatial and temporal factors and other external factors such as weather. To address this problem, we propose a Spatio-TEmporal Fuzzy neural Network (STEF-Net) to accurately predict passenger demands incorporating the complex interactions of all known important factors. We design an end-to-end learning framework with different neural networks modeling different factors. Specifically, we propose to capture spatio-temporal feature interactions via a convolutional long short-term memory network and model external factors via a fuzzy neural network that handles data uncertainty significantly better than deterministic methods. To keep the temporal relations when fusing two networks and emphasize discriminative spatio-temporal feature interactions, we employ a novel feature fusion method with a convolution operation and an attention layer. As far as we know, our work is the first to fuse a deep recurrent neural network and a fuzzy neural network to model complex spatial-temporal feature interactions with additional uncertain input features for predictive learning. Experiments on a large-scale real-world dataset show that our model achieves more than 10% improvement over the state-of-the-art approaches.

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Cooperation Techniques for A Cellular Internet of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are powerful Internet-of-Things components to provide sensing and communications in the air due to their advantages in mobility and flexibility. As aerial users, UAVs are envisioned to support various sensing applications in the next generation cellular systems, which have been studied by the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). However, the Quality-of-Services (QoS) of the cellular link between the UAV and the base station may not be guaranteed when UAVs are at the cell edge or experiencing deep fading. In this article, we first introduce the non-cooperative cellular Internet of UAVs. Then we propose a cooperative sense-and-send protocol, in which a UAV can upload sensory data with the help of a UAV relay, to provide a better communication QoS for the sensing tasks. Key techniques including trajectory design and radio resource management that support the cooperative cellular Internet of UAVs are presented in detail. Finally, the extended cooperative cellular Internet of UAVs is discussed for QoS improvement with some open issues, such as massive multiple-input multiple-output systems, millimeter-wave, and cognitive communications.

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Resource Allocation for Device-to-Device Communications in Multi-Cell Multi-Band Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

Heterogeneous cellular networks (HCNs) with millimeter wave (mm-wave) communications are considered as a promising technology for the fifth generation mobile networks. Mm-wave has the potential to provide multiple gigabit data rate due to the broad spectrum. Unfortunately, additional free space path loss is also caused by the high carrier frequency. On the other hand, mm-wave signals are sensitive to obstacles and more vulnerable to blocking effects. To address this issue, highly directional narrow beams are utilized in mm-wave networks. Additionally, device-to-device (D2D) users make full use of their proximity and share uplink spectrum resources in HCNs to increase the spectrum efficiency and network capacity. Towards the caused complex interferences, the combination of D2D-enabled HCNs with small cells densely deployed and mm-wave communications poses a big challenge to the resource allocation problems. In this paper, we formulate the optimization problem of D2D communication spectrum resource allocation among multiple micro-wave bands and multiple mm-wave bands in HCNs. Then, considering the totally different propagation conditions on the two bands, a heuristic algorithm is proposed to maximize the system transmission rate and approximate the solutions with sufficient accuracies. Compared with other practical schemes, we carry out extensive simulations with different system parameters, and demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed scheme. In addition, the optimality and complexity are simulated to further verify effectiveness and efficiency.

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A Survey of Optimization Approaches for Wireless Physical Layer Security

Due to the malicious attacks in wireless networks, physical layer security has attracted increasing concerns from both academia and industry. The research on physical layer security mainly focuses either on the secrecy capacity/achievable secrecy rate/capacity-equivocation region from the perspective of information theory, or on the security designs from the viewpoints of optimization and signal processing. Because of its importance in security designs, the latter research direction is surveyed in a comprehensive way in this paper. The survey begins with typical wiretap channel models to cover common scenarios and systems. The topics on physical-layer security designs are then summarized from resource allocation, beamforming/precoding, and antenna/node selection and cooperation. Based on the aforementioned schemes, the performance metrics and fundamental optimization problems are discussed, which are generally adopted in security designs. Thereafter, the state of the art of optimization approaches on each research topic of physical layer security is reviewed from four categories of optimization problems, such as secrecy rate maximization, secrecy outrage probability minimization, power consumption minimization, and secure energy efficiency maximization. Furthermore, the impacts of channel state information on optimization and design are discussed. Finally, the survey concludes with the observations on potential future directions and open challenges.

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Hybrid Beamformer Design for High Dynamic Range Ambient Backscatter Receivers

In bi-static Ambient Backscatter Communications (AmBC) systems, the direct path from the ambient source to the receiver can be several orders of magnitude stronger than the scattered path modulated by the AmBC device. Because of the large power difference between these two signals, the receiver needs to operate at a large dynamic range. In this paper, we propose a novel analog-digital hybrid null-steering beamformer which allows the backscatter receiver to detect and decode the weak AmBC-modulated signal buried in the strong direct path signals and the noise without requiring the instantaneous channel state information. The analog cancellation of the strong signal components allow the receiver automatic gain control to adjust to the level of the weak AmBC signals. This hence allows common analog-to-digital converters to be used for sampling the signal. After cancelling the strong components, the ambient source signal appears as zero mean fast fading from the AmBC system point of view. We use the direct path signal component to track the phase of the unknown ambient signal. In order to avoid channel estimation, we propose AmBC to use orthogonal channelization codes.

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Cloud/fog computing resource management and pricing for blockchain networks

The mining process in blockchain requires solving a proof-of-work puzzle, which is resource expensive to implement in mobile devices due to the high computing power and energy needed. In this paper, we, for the first time, consider edge computing as an enabler for mobile blockchain. In particular, we study edge computing resource management and pricing to support mobile blockchain applications in which the mining process of miners can be offloaded to an edge computing service provider. We formulate a two-stage Stackelberg game to jointly maximize the profit of the edge computing service provider and the individual utilities of the miners. In the first stage, the service provider sets the price of edge computing nodes. In the second stage, the miners decide on the service demand to purchase based on the observed prices. We apply the backward induction to analyze the sub-game perfect equilibrium in each stage for both uniform and discriminatory pricing schemes. For the uniform pricing where the same price is applied to all miners, the existence and uniqueness of Stackelberg equilibrium are validated by identifying the best response strategies of the miners. For the discriminatory pricing where the different prices are applied to different miners, the Stackelberg equilibrium is proved to exist and be unique by capitalizing on the Variational Inequality theory. Further, the real experimental results are employed to justify our proposed model.

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Resource Allocation for Device-to-Device Communications Underlaying Heterogeneous Cellular Networks Using Coalitional Games

Heterogeneous cellular networks (HCNs) with millimeter wave (mmWave) communications included are emerging as a promising candidate for the fifth generation mobile network. With highly directional antenna arrays, mmWave links are able to provide several-Gbps transmission rate. However, mmWave links are easily blocked without line of sight. On the other hand, D2D communications have been proposed to support many content based applications, and need to share resources with users in HCNs to improve spectral reuse and enhance system capacity. Consequently, an efficient resource allocation scheme for D2D pairs among both mmWave and the cellular carrier band is needed. In this paper, we first formulate the problem of the resource allocation among mmWave and the cellular band for multiple D2D pairs from the view point of game theory. Then, with the characteristics of cellular and mmWave communications considered, we propose a coalition formation game to maximize the system sum rate in statistical average sense. We also theoretically prove that our proposed game converges to a Nash-stable equilibrium and further reaches the near-optimal solution with fast convergence rate. Through extensive simulations under various system parameters, we demonstrate the superior performance of our scheme in terms of the system sum rate compared with several other practical schemes.

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Game-Theoretic Approaches for Wireless Communications with Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

Wireless communications with unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) offer a promising solution to provide cost-effective wireless connectivity and extend coverage. In recent years, the area of wireless communications for UAV system design and optimization has been receiving enormous attention from the research community. However, there are still existing challenges that are far from solved. To cope with those challenges, researchers have been exploring the applicability of game-theoretic approaches. This paper surveys the existing game-theoretic solutions and presents a number of novel solutions which are designed to optimize energy consumption, enhance network coverage, and improve connectivity in wireless communications with UAVs. We present main game components and the elements they represent in wireless communications with UAVs first and then give a classification of the current used game-theoretic approaches. We identify main problems in wireless communications with UAVs in which game theory has been used to find solutions. We provide a case to show the merits of applying game theory in wireless communication with UAVs. Finally, we discuss shortcomings of the traditional game-theoretic approaches and propose mean field game (MFG) as an appropriate method for solving novel technical problems in massive UAVs networks.

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Learning to Entangle Radio Resources in Vehicular Communications: An Oblivious Game-Theoretic Perspective

This paper studies the problem of non-cooperative radio resource scheduling in a vehicle-to-vehicle communication network. The technical challenges lie in high vehicle mobility and data traffic variations. Over the discrete scheduling slots, each vehicle user equipment (VUE)-pair competes with other VUE-pairs in the coverage of a road side unit (RSU) for the limited frequency to transmit queued packets. The frequency allocation at the beginning of each slot by the RSU is regulated following a sealed second-price auction. Each VUE-pair aims to optimize the expected long-term performance. Such interactions among VUE-pairs are modelled as a stochastic game with a semi-continuous global network state space. By defining a partitioned control policy, we transform the stochastic game into an equivalent game with a global queue state space of finite size. We adopt an oblivious equilibrium (OE) to approximate the Markov perfect equilibrium (MPE), which characterizes the optimal solution to the equivalent game. The OE solution is theoretically proven to be with an asymptotic Markov equilibrium property. Due to the lack of a priori knowledge of network dynamics, we derive an online algorithm to learn the OE policies. Numerical simulations validate the theoretical analysis and show the effectiveness of the proposed online learning algorithm.

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