The next radio access network (RAN) generation, open RAN (O-RAN), aims to enable more flexibility and openness, including efficient service slicing, and to lower the operational costs in 5G and beyond wireless networks. Nevertheless, strictly satisfying quality-of-service requirements while establishing priorities and promoting balance between the significantly heterogeneous services remains a key research problem. In this paper, we use network slicing to study the service-aware baseband resource allocation and virtual network function (VNF) activation in O-RAN systems. The limited fronthaul capacity and end-to-end delay constraints are simultaneously considered. Optimizing baseband resources includes O-RAN radio unit (O-RU), physical resource block (PRB) assignment, and power allocation. The main problem is a mixed-integer non-linear programming problem that is non-trivial to solve. Consequently, we break it down into two different steps and propose an iterative algorithm that finds a near-optimal solution. In the first step, we reformulate and simplify the problem to find the power allocation, PRB assignment, and the number of VNFs. In the second step, the O-RU association is resolved. The proposed method is validated via simulations, which achieve a higher data rate and lower end-to-end delay than existing methods.

Abstract In this paper, the problem of opportunistic spectrum sharing for the next generation of wireless systems empowered by the cloud radio access network (C‐RAN) is studied. More precisely, low‐priority users employ cooperative spectrum sensing to detect a vacant portion of the spectrum that is not currently used by high‐priority users. The authors' aim is to maximize the overall throughput of the low‐priority users while guaranteeing the quality of service of the high‐priority users. This objective is attained by optimally adjusting spectrum sensing time, with respect to target probabilities of detection and false alarm, as well as dynamically allocating C‐RAN resources, that is, powers, sub‐carriers, remote radio heads, and base‐band units. To solve this problem, which is non‐convex and NP‐hard, a low‐complex iterative solution is proposed. Numerical results demonstrate the necessity of sensing time adjustment as well as effectiveness of the proposed solution.

This paper studies a resource allocation problem where a set of users within a specific region is served by cloud radio access network (C-RAN) structure consisting of a set of base-band units (BBUs) connected to a set of radio remote heads (RRHs) equipped with a large number of antennas via limited capacity front-haul links. User association to each RRH, BBU and front-haul link is essential to achieve high rates for cell-edge users under network limitations. We introduce two types of optimization variables to formulate this resource allocation problem: (i) C-RAN user association factor (UAF) including RRH, BBU and front-haul allocation for each user and (ii) power allocation vector. The formulated optimization problem is non-convex with high computational complexity. An efficient two-level iterative approach is proposed. The higher level consists of two steps where, in each step, one of these two optimization variables is fixed to derive the other. At the lower level, by applying different transformations and convexification techniques, the optimization problem in each step is broken down into a sequence of geometric programming (GP) problems to be solved by the successive convex approximation (SCA). Simulation results reveal the effectiveness of the proposed approach to increase the total throughput of network, specifically for cell-edge users. It outperforms the traditional user association approach, in which, each user is first assigned to the RRH with the largest average value of signal strength, and then, based on this fixed user association, front-haul link association and power allocation are optimized.

Software defined networking (SDN) is a promising technology in fifth generation wireless networks (5G) where due to the adoption of a centralized SDN-controller, resources such as processing and storage, can be utilized in an optimal manner. Although SDN was first considered with a logically centralized controller, due to delay, reliability, and scalability challenges, moving towards multiple distributed controllers is inevitable. In distributed control schemes, an assignment that associates a controller with each switch leads to three challenges of (1) Computational complexity, since the assignment is an NP-hard problem, (2) Resource and energy efficiency, to obtain an assignment with the lowest number of controllers in order to reduce resource and energy consumption, and (3) Dynamicity, where a dynamic approach of assignment is required to adapt to the network’s traffic changes. In this paper, we investigate the controller-switch assignment problem given the aforementioned challenges, and propose efficient algorithms for static and dynamic scenarios, that even achieve quantitative optimality guarantees in special cases. As shown through simulations, the proposed lower complexity algorithms not only outperform earlier works but also approach the performance of exhaustive search schemes, in some scenarios.

With the excessive growth in mobile users' traffic, radio resource management (RRM) techniques should undergo revolutionary changes to be competent enough to meet the ever-increasing users' demands. Virtualized wireless network (VWN) has emerged as a satisfactory solution in the fifth-generation (5G) cellular networks ensuring the required quality-of-service (QoS) of distinct slices. Yet, it seems that tackling RRM problems in VWNs using conventional optimization is not practical for real-time applications. In this paper, driven by the advancements of machine learning, we consider the throughput maximization problem in a cloud radio access network (C-RAN) assisted softly virtualized wireless network supporting different types of services and solve it with a deep Q-learning (DQL) algorithm. The performance of the proposed policy is thoroughly evaluated via simulation results with respect to the isolation rate, penalty value as well as the discount factor. It is shown that our proposed policy achieves a higher sum rate compared to the existing baseline namely a greedy search-based power allocation strategy.

Ultra-low latency is the most important requirement of the Tactile Internet (TI), which is one of the proposed services for the next-generation wireless network (NGWN), e.g., fifthgeneration (5G) network. In this paper, a new queuing model for the TI is proposed for the cloud radio access network (CRAN) architecture of the NGWN by applying power domain non-orthogonal multiple access (PD-NOMA) technology. In this model, we consider both the radio remote head (RRH) and baseband processing unit (BBU) queuing delays for each endto-end (E2E) connection between a pair of tactile users. In our setup, to minimize the transmit power of users subject to guaranteeing an acceptable delay of users, and fronthaul and access constraints, we formulate a resource allocation (RA) problem. Furthermore, we dynamically set the fronthaul and access links to minimize the total transmit power. Given that the proposed RA problem is highly non-convex, in order to solve it, we utilize diverse transformation techniques such as successive convex approximation (SCA) and difference of two convex functions (DC). Numerical results show that by dynamic adjustment of the access and fronthaul delays, transmit power reduces in comparison with the fixed approach per each connection. Also, energy efficiency of orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) and PD-NOMA are compared for our setup.

Missing data is a challenge in many applications, including intelligent transportation systems (ITS). In this paper, we study traffic speed and travel time estimations in ITS, where portions of collected data are missing due to sensor instability and communication errors at collection points. These practical issues can be remediated by missing data analysis, which are mainly categorized as either statistical or machine learning (ML)-based approaches. Statistical methods require the priori probability distribution of the data which is unknown in our application. Therefore, we focus on an ML-based approach, Multi-Directional Recurrent Neural Network (M-RNN). M-RNN utilizes both temporal and spatial characteristics of the data. We evaluate the effectiveness of this approach on a TomTom dataset containing spatio-temporal measurements of average vehicle speed and travel time in the Greater Toronto Area (GTA). We evaluate the method under various conditions, where the results demonstrate that M-RNN outperforms existing solutions, e.g., spline interpolation and matrix completion, by up to 58% decreases in Root Mean Square Error (RMSE).

In this paper, we propose a novel framework for 5G and beyond (5G+) heterogeneous wireless networks consisting of macro aerial base stations (MABSs), small aerial base stations (SABSs), and ground base stations (GBSs) with two types of access technologies: power domain non-orthogonal multiple access (PD-NOMA) and orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA). We aim to maximize the total network profit under some practical network constraints, e.g., NOMA and OFDMA limitations, transmit power (TP) maximum limits, and isolation of the virtualized wireless network. We formulate the resource allocation problem encompassing joint TP allocation, ABS altitude determination, user association, and sub-carrier allocation parameters. Our optimization problem is mixed integer non-linear programming (MINLP) with high computational complexity. To propose a practical approach with reduced computational complexity, we use an alternate method where the main optimization is broken down into three sub-problems with lower computational complexity. We do this by adopting successive convex approximation (SCA), geometric programming (GP), and mesh adaptive direct search (MADS) to solve each of the resulting problems, and find power allocation, altitudes of ABSs, and assignment parameters, respectively. Simulation results reveal that our proposed scenario can improve the overall network profit by up to 47 percent compared to the case where the TPs and ABS altitudes are fixed. Besides, finding the ABS altitude with fixed TPs can improve the network profit by 20 percent compared to the power allocation case with fixed ABS altitudes. Our proposed heterogeneous approach improves the network profit by up to 18, 16, 15, and 10 percent in suburban, urban, dense urban, and high-rise urban environments, respectively, compared to the cases with homogeneous ABSs.

The integration of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and millimeter wave (mmWave) wireless systems has been recently proposed to provide high data rate aerial links for next generation wireless networks. However, establishing UAV-based mmWave links is quite challenging due to the random fluctuations of hovering UAVs which can induce antenna gain mismatch between transmitter and receiver. To assess the benefit of UAV-based mmWave links, in this paper, tractable, closed-form statistical channel models are derived for three UAV communication scenarios: (i) a direct UAV-to-UAV link, (ii) an aerial relay link in which source, relay, and destination are hovering UAVs, and (iii) a relay link in which a hovering UAV connects a ground source to a ground destination. The accuracy of the derived analytical expressions is corroborated by performing Monte-Carlo simulations. Numerical results are then used to study the effect of antenna directivity gain under different channel conditions for establishing reliable UAV-based mmWave links in terms of achieving minimum outage probability. It is shown that the performance of such links is largely dependent on the random fluctuations of hovering UAVs. Moreover, higher antenna directivity gains achieve better performance at low SNR regime. Nevertheless, at the high SNR regime, lower antenna directivity gains result in a more reliable communication link. The developed results can therefore be applied as a benchmark for finding the optimal antenna directivity gain of UAVs under the different levels of instability without resorting to time-consuming simulations.

This paper aims at investigating the problem of energy efficiency (EE) maximization for uplink multi-cell networks via a joint design of sub-channel assignment, power control, and antenna selection. We study the problem under two practical scenarios. In the first scenario, known as conventional antenna selection (CAS), there is only one radio frequency (RF) chain available at the mobile user and all the sub-channels for each user can be assigned to one of the antennas. For the second scenario, known as generalized antenna selection (GAS), the number of RF chains is equal to the number of antennas and the messages of each user can transmit over its assigned sub-channels via different antennas. The resource allocation design is formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem (MOOP) and then converted into a single objective optimization problem (SOOP) via the weighted Tchebycheff method. The considered problem is a mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) which is generally intractable. To address this problem, a penalty function is introduced to handle the binary variable constraints. In order to obtain a computationally efficient suboptimal solution, the majorization minimization (MM) approach is proposed where a surrogate function serves as the lower bound of the objective function. Furthermore, we propose another low-complexity practical algorithm to further reduce the computational cost. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method and unveil an interesting trade-off between EE and SE for two considered scenarios.

In this paper, a novel framework for dynamic multiple access technology selection among orthogonal multiple access (OMA) and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) techniques is proposed. For this setup, a joint resource allocation problem is formulated in which a new set of access technology selection parameters along with power and subcarrier are allocated for each user based on each user's channel state information. Here, a novel utility function is defined to take into account the rate and costs of access technologies. This cost reflects both the complexity of performing successive interference cancellation and the complexity incurred to guarantee a desired bit error rate. This utility function can inherently capture the tradeoff between OMA and NOMA. Due to the non-convexity of the proposed resource allocation problem, a successive convex approximation is developed in which a two-step iterative algorithm is applied. In the first step, called access technology selection, the problem is transformed into a linear integer programming problem, and then, in the second step, a nonconvex problem, referred to power allocation problem, is solved via the difference-of-convex-functions (DC) programming. Moreover, the closed-form solution for power allocation in the second step is derived. For diverse network performance criteria such as rate, simulation results show that the proposed new dynamic access technology selection outperforms single-technology OMA or NOMA multiple access solutions.

In future wireless networks, network functions virtualization lays the foundations for establishing a new dynamic resource management framework to efficiently utilize network resources. In this paper, a network service can be viewed as a chain of virtual network functions (VNFs), called a service function chain (SFC), served via placement, admission control (AC), and embedding into network infrastructure, based on the resource management objectives and the state of network. To fully exploit such a potential and reach higher network performance, resource management stages should be jointly performed. To this end, two main challenges are: how to present a system model that formulates the desired resource allocation problem for different types of SFCs as well as different features, and how to tackle the computational complexity of the problem and solve it in a tractable manner. In this paper, we address these two issues and solve the joint problem of AC and SFC embedding. We introduce a comprehensive system model, and formulate the joint task as a mixed integer linear programming. This formulation encompasses splittable VNF and multi-path routing scenarios. We employ relaxation, reformulation, and successive convex approximation methods to solve the problem. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed schemes outperform the earlier works.

In this paper, we study the problem of delay minimization in network function virtualization-based networks. In such systems, the ultimate goal of any request is to compute a sequence of functions in the network, where each function can be computed at only a specific subset of network nodes. In conventional approaches, for each function, we choose one node from the corresponding subset of the nodes to compute that function. In contrast, in this paper, we allow each function to be computed in more than one node, redundantly in parallel, to respond to a given request. We argue that such redundancy in computation not only improves the reliability of the network but also, perhaps surprisingly, reduces the overall transmission delay. In particular, we establish that by judiciously choosing the subset of nodes which compute each function, in conjunction with a linear network coding scheme to deliver the result of each computation, we can characterize and achieve the optimal end-to-end transmission delay. In addition, we show that using such technique, it is possible to significantly reduce the transmission delay as compared to the conventional approaches. In fact, in some scenarios, such reduction can even scale with the size of the network, where by increasing the number of nodes that can compute the given function in parallel by a multiplicative factor, the end-to-end delay will also decrease by the same factor. Moreover, we show that while finding the subset of nodes for each computation, in general, is a complex integer program, approximation algorithms can be proposed to reduce the computational complexity. In fact, for the case where the number of computing nodes for a given function is upper bounded by a constant, a dynamic programming scheme can be proposed to find the optimum subsets in polynomial times. Our numerical simulations confirm the achieved gain in performance in comparison with conventional approaches.

We study a resource allocation problem for the uplink of a virtualized massive multiple-input multiple-output system, where the antennas at the base station are priced and virtualized among the service providers (SPs). The mobile network operator (MNO) who owns the infrastructure decides the price per antenna, and a Stackelberg game is formulated for the net profit maximization of the MNO, while the minimum rate requirements of SPs are satisfied. To solve the bi-level optimization problem of the MNO, we first derive the closed-form best responses of the SPs with respect to the pricing strategies of the MNO, such that the problem of the MNO can be reduced to a single-level optimization. Then, via transformations and approximations, we cast the MNO's problem with integer constraints into a signomial geometric program (SGP), and we propose an iterative algorithm based on the successive convex approximation (SCA) to solve the SGP. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm has performance close to the global optimum. Moreover, the interactions between the MNO and SPs in different scenarios are explored via simulations.

In this work, we investigate the uplink resource allocation problem for virtualized wireless networks (VWNs) supported by multi-carrier non-orthogonal multiple access (MC-NOMA) and present a sensitivity analysis of such a system to imperfect successive interference cancellation (SIC) and various system parameters. The proposed algorithm for power and sub-carrier allocation is derived from the non-convex optimization minimizing power subject to rate and sub-carrier reservations, for which an optimal solution is NP-hard. To develop an efficient solution, we decompose the optimization into separate power and sub-carrier allocation problems and propose an iterative algorithm based on successive convex approximation and complementary geometric programming. Simulation results demonstrate that compared to orthogonal multiple access, for imperfect SIC with residual interference even up to 10%, the proposed algorithm for MC-NOMA can offer significant improvement in spectrum and power efficiency.

In this paper, we address a power-efficient resource allocation problem in virtualized wireless networks (VWNs) using non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA). In this set-up, the resources of one base station (BS) are shared among different service providers (slices), where the minimum reserved rate is considered for each slice for guaranteeing their isolation. The formulated resource allocation problem aiming to minimize the total transmit power subject to the isolation constraints is non-convex and suffers from high computational complexity. By applying complementary geometric programming (CGP) to convert the non-convex problem into the convex form, we develop an efficient iterative approach with low computational complexity to solve the proposed problem. Illustrative simulation results on the performance evaluation of VWN using OFDMA and NOMA indicate significant performance improvement in the VWN when NOMA is used.

This paper proposes hybrid TDMA-CSMA for virtualized wireless networks, aiming to meet their isolation requirements. In this scheme, high-load users with non-empty queues are proper and potential candidates for TDMA, while others can compete using p-persistent CSMA. At each superframe, AP decides on TDMA-CSMA scheduling by taking into account traffic parameters of users and slice reservations to maximize the network utilization, while maintaining slice isolation. The corresponding optimization problem is formulated to dynamically schedule users for TDMA phase and optimally pick p parameter for remaining CSMA users. Using complementary geometric programming (CGP) and monomial approximations, an iterative algorithm is developed to find the optimal solution. The simulation results reveal the performance gains of the proposed algorithm in improving the throughput and keeping isolation in a virtualized wireless network.

This paper investigates the resource allocation problem for a virtualized wireless network (VWN) in which each base station (BS) is equipped with a large number of antennas and due to the pilot contamination error, the perfect estimation of channel state information (CSI) is not available. In this case, the duration of pilot sequence transmission plays a critical role on the achieved VWN throughput. Therefore, we consider this parameter as a new optimization variable and propose a novel utility function for the resource allocation problem. The proposed optimization problem is non-convex with high computational complexity. To address this issue, by applying relaxation and variable transformation techniques, we propose a two-step iterative algorithm in which the allocation of power, sub-carrier and number of antennas is first established and then used to optimize the pilot duration. Simulation results reveal that proper pilot duration design improves the VWN performance.

This paper proposes a delay-aware resource provisioning policy for virtualized wireless networks (VWNs) to minimize the total average transmit power while holding the minimum required average rate of each slice and maximum average packet transmission delay for each user. The proposed cross-layer optimization problem is inherently non-convex and has high computational complexity. To develop an efficient solution, we first transform cross-layer dependent constraints into physical layer dependent ones. Afterwards, we apply different convexification techniques based on variable transformations and relaxations, and propose an iterative algorithm to reach the optimal solution. Simulation results illustrate the effects of the required average packet transmission delay and minimum average slice rate on the total transmission power in VWN.

The ergodic resource allocation (ERA) problem for uplink transmission in underlay cognitive radio networks (CRNs) is investigated. The objective is to maximize the ergodic sum-rate of secondary users (SUs) considering the unavailability of perfect channel state information (CSI), and subject to transmit power limitations of SUs, and the interference threshold constraint to guarantee the quality of service of primary users. Since with average-based formulation of ERA, the interference threshold constraint and transmit power limitations of SUs do not hold instantaneously, one can replace the average-based constraints in ERA with their outage-based counterparts. For the uncertainty on the CSI values, we utilize the robust optimization theory where the uncertain parameters are modeled as a sum of the estimated value and error which is assumed to be bounded. We then map the considered ERA problems to their robust counterparts. Generally, the robust approaches degrade the performance (e.g., sum rate of SU), as they conservatively consider the error to be in the maximum extent and try to preserve the constrains under any condition of error (worst-case scenario). We aim to moderate this effect by using appropriate models for uncertain parameters, relaxing the worst-case scenario, and stochastically preserving the constraints. Moreover, robust problems are in general non-convex and suffer from high computational complexity due to the existence of uncertain system parameters. Therefore, we use effective suboptimal approaches to solve them with a reasonable complexity. This includes methods based on chance constraint approach as well as an iterative scheme. The proposed solutions provide a trade-off between robustness, performance, and complexity. Simulation results reveal that by using the proposed schemes, stable sum-rate of SUs in the presence of CSI uncertainties can be achieved while the instantaneous power and interference constraints are met with a desired probability.

This paper investigates the dynamic resource provisioning with queue stability in wireless virtualized networks (WVN). Aiming to maximize the total average rate of WVN over a transmission frame, a dynamic resource provisioning policy is proposed, while a minimum average required rate of each slice and a stable-queue constraint of WVN are preserved. Based on Lyapunov drift-plus-penalty algorithm and variable transformation techniques, an iterative algorithm is proposed for joint power and sub-carrier allocation. Performance of the proposed algorithm is evaluated by simulations performed investigate the effects of various system parameters on the average rate of WVN and queue stability.

This paper presents an adaptive hybrid TDMA-CSMA MAC protocol to improve network performance and isolation among service providers (SPs) in a virtualized 802.11 network. Aiming to increase network efficiency, wireless virtual-ization provides the means to slice available resources among different SPs, with an urge to keep different slices isolated. Hybrid TDMA-CSMA can be a proper MAC candidate in such scenario benefiting from both the TDMA isolation power and the CSMA opportunistic nature. In this paper, we propose a dynamic MAC that schedules high-traffic users in the TDMA phase with variable size to be determined. Then, the rest of active users compete to access the channel through CSMA. The objective is to search for a scheduling that maximizes the expected sum throughput subject to SP reservations. In the absence of arrival traffic statistics, this scheduling is modeled as a multi-armed bandit (MAB) problem, in which each arm corresponds to a possible scheduling. Due to the dependency between the arms, existing policies are not directly applicable in this problem. Thus, we present an index-based policy where we update and decide based on learning indexes assigned to each user instead of each arm. To update the indexes, in addition to TDMA information, observations from CSMA phase are used, which adds a new exploration phase for the proposed MAB problem. Throughput and isolation performance of the proposed self-exploration-aided index-based policy (SIP) are evaluated by numerical results.

This paper studies joint resource provisioning and admission control in wireless virtualized networks (WVN), where one base station of an OFDMA-based wireless network is virtualized into two types of slices with resource-based and rate-based reservations. Aiming to maximize the total rate of WVN, first, the resource provisioning optimization problems are formulated by guaranteeing a minimum requirement for each slice. Via constraint relaxation and variable transformations, an iterative algorithm is developed for power and sub-carrier allocation. Due to the channel variations, WVN suffers from non-zero outage probability, i.e., slice requirements cannot always be met. To prevent this issue, we present an admission control algorithm in which slice requirements are dynamically adjusted based on channel state information. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithms.

This paper considers the use of a friendly full-duplex (FD) relay to increase the secrecy rate over a fading channel between the legitimate source and destination in the presence of a naive or informed eavesdropper. Naive eavesdropper can only decode the received signals either from the source or from the relay, while informed eavesdropper can overhear signals transmitted from both the source and relay. Accordingly, we compare the achievable secrecy rates of FD relay with traditional half-duplex (HD) relay in terms of the channel state information (CSI) between nodes, eavesdropper types, and the self-interference (SI) in FD-Relay. We consider the non-convex power allocation problems for the developed FD-relay to maximize the secrecy rate under the power constraints and develop an efficient iterative algorithm based on the difference-of-two-concave-functions (DC) programming. The analytical and simulation results confirm that FD relay offers significant improvements in the secrecy rate over the HD-Relay.

In this paper, we examine the use of a friendly full-duplex (FD) relay to increase the secrecy rate over a fading channel between the legitimate source and the destination in the presence of residual self-interference (SI) and eavesdropper. In particular, we consider two different protocols based on the FD capability of relay: 1) FD transmission (FDT), in which the FD-Relay receives and sends data concurrently; 2) FD-Relay with jamming (FDJ), where first, the FD-Relay simultaneously receives data and sends jamming to the eavesdropper; then, it forwards the data, while the source jams the eavesdropper. We first develop the secrecy rate expressions for half-duplex transmission (HDT), half-duplex with jamming (HDJ), FDT, and FDJ relaying protocols, and then use them to derive their performance properties in terms of the channel gains between nodes, eavesdropper types, and more importantly, the SI level in FD-Relay. We further investigate the non-convex power allocation problems for the developed FDT and FDJ to maximize the secrecy rate under the power constraints. In particular, we develop an efficient iterative algorithm based on the difference-of-two-concave-functions programming. Analytical and simulation results show the strong influence of SI level on the achieved secrecy rate of the FDT and the FDJ. For sufficiently low SI, FDT achieves a much higher secrecy rate than FDJ, HDJ, and HDT. However, for higher SI, FDJ becomes more effective in enhancing the achieved secrecy rate. The results also indicate that adaptive power allocation can significantly improve the performance and confirm that the proposed FDT and FDJ outperform the HDT and the HDJ.

This paper proposes a jointly cooperative relay and jamming protocol based on full-duplex (FD) capable relay to increase the source-destination secrecy rate in the presence of different types of eavesdroppers. In this so called FD-Relay with jamming (FDJ) protocol, the FD-Relay, first, simultaneously receives data and sends jamming to the eavesdropper, and, then, forwards the data, while the source jams the eavesdropper. Achievable secrecy rates of the proposed FDJ in the presence of different eavesdropper types and self-interference (SI) are derived and compared with those of the traditional half-duplex (HD) relay. The adaptive power allocation for secrecy rate maximization in a multi-carrier scenario for both proposed FDJ and HD-Relay is formulated as a non-convex optimization problem and corresponding iterative solution algorithm is developed using the difference-of-two-concave-functions (DC) programming technique. The simulation results confirm that FDJ offers significant improvements in the secrecy rate over the HD-Relay.

In this paper, the dynamic power allocation problem over the multiple-access channel (MAC) against overhearing of eavesdroppers is investigated with the objective to maximize the users' secrecy rate under transmitted power constraints. Lyapunov drift approach is applied to derive the sub-optimal solution for this inherent non-convex optimization problem. Convergence condition and performance of the developed algorithm are investigated. Simulation results indicate that it outperforms the difference- of-two-convex-functions (DC) programming with much less computation time, and its achieved secrecy rate is close to the global optimum solution.

In this paper, we introduce a new cooperative paradigm for secure communication in cognitive radio networks (CRNs) where secondary users (SUs) are allowed to access the spectrum of primary users (PUs) as long as they preserve the secure communication of PUs in the presence of malicious eavesdroppers. To do so, the SU transmission is divided into two hops: at first hop, the SU transmitter sends the information to a relay set and the SU receiver acts as a friendly jammer to disturb the overhearing of eavesdroppers and at the second hop, one of the relays is selected to pass the information to the SU receiver and the SU transmitter acts as a friendly jammer for the PU. In this new setup, the time duration for each hop, the power transmissions of all nodes in CRN, and relay selection at the second hop are allocated in such a way that the secrecy rate of the SU is maximized subject to the minimum required PU's secrecy rate. From primary service perspective, this transforms the possibly disturbing secondary service activities into a beneficial network element. We investigate instantaneous and ergodic resource allocation problems for perfect and imperfect channel state information (CSI). Since these problems are non-convex, we propose a solution based on decomposition of main optimization problem into three subproblems related to the power allocation, time allocation, and relay selection. We show that the power allocation problem can be transformed into a generalized geometric programming (GGP) model via the so-called scaled algorithm and it can be solved very efficiently. Simulation results indicate that in terms of the secondary secrecy rate, the proposed setup outperforms the conventional setup in which the secrecy rate of the PU is not guaranteed.

We develop a robust formalism for power control games in unlicensed bands between two groups of users competing for the spectrum: informed-users (leaders) who have advanced capabilities to extract side-information about other users and their strategies, and uninformed-users (followers) who can only observe the aggregate interference caused by others. Such nominal leader-follower games have been previously studied in the power control literature; however, these prior works fail to capture an important aspect of such interactions: the side-information and observations made by users may be uncertain, which has an important impact on users' strategies and network performance. Thus, in this paper we propose a new, robust game-theoretic formalism and solution which takes these uncertainties into account. Specifically, each group chooses its actions by solving its respective worst-case robust optimization problems. We show how various types of uncertainties affect the social utility of each group, and identify in which deployment scenarios the social utility of the robust game is higher than that of the nominal game. Importantly, we show that robust solutions in such games are more energy efficient. Finally, our theoretical formalism, analysis and solutions are complemented by simulations.

We propose a robust distributed uplink power allocation algorithm for underlay cognitive radio networks (CRNs) with a view to maximizing the social utility of secondary users (SUs) when channel gains from SUs to primary base stations, and interference caused by primary users (PUs) to the SUs' base station are uncertain. In doing so, we utilize the worst case robust optimization to keep the interference caused by SUs to each primary base station below a given threshold, and satisfy each SU's quality of service in terms of its required SINR for all realizations of uncertain parameters. We model each uncertain parameter by a bounded distance between its estimated and exact values, and formulate the robust power allocation problem via protection values for constraints. We demonstrate that the convexity of our problem is preserved, and converts into a geometric programming problem, which we solve via a distributed algorithm by using Lagrange dual decomposition. To reduce the cost of robustness, defined as the reduction in the social utility of SUs and the increase in message passing, we utilize the D-norm approach to trade off between robustness and optimality, and propose a distributed power allocation algorithm with infrequent message passing. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of our proposed approach.

We obtain the robust Nash equilibrium (RNE) for a wide range of multi-user communications networks under uncertainty by utilizing the robust optimization theory for the worst-case uncertainties. To do so, we consider the uncertainty as a distance between the estimated and the actual values of the system parameters as a general norm function, and utilize the finite-dimensions variational inequalities (VI) to derive the conditions for existence and uniqueness of RNE. Two effects of uncertainty on the performance of the system are investigated: the difference between the achieved social utility at the RNE and the Nash equilibrium (NE) of the nominal game, and the distance between the deployed strategies of users at the RNE and at the NE. We quantify these two effects for the cases of unique NE and multiple NEs, and show that when the NE is unique, the achieved social utility at the RNE is always less than that of the NE. Interestingly, the worst-case robustness approach may lead to a higher social utility at the RNE in the multiple NEs scenario. Considering uncertainty at RNE introduces coupling between users, and hence, developing distributed algorithms for reaching RNE is more challenging as compared to the NE in the nominal game. However, for some special forms of utilities and norm functions, we propose simultaneous and sequential distributed algorithms; and investigate the performance of the robust game for power control in interference channels, and for flow control in Jackson networks.

We propose a scheme for maintaining the requested SIR of each user under uncertainty of system parameters in the power control of interference limited wireless networks. In doing so, we keep the outage probability of users below their predefined threshold with minimal power consumption. To reduce the complexity, we apply the notion of chance constraint robust optimization to the outage probability. This approach preserves the convexity of the problem and maintains its tractability. For solving the reformulated problem, a distributed probabilistic robust power algorithm is developed based on the standard interference function and local convergence, which utilizes infrequent message passing. We derive the conditions for the convergence of our algorithm, and prove the optimality of the equilibrium.