Multiple access (MA) is a crucial part of any wireless system and refers to techniques that make use of the resource dimensions (e.g., time, frequency, power, antenna, code, and message) to serve multiple users/devices/machines/ services, ideally in the most efficient way. Given the increasing need of multifunctional wireless networks for integrated communications, sensing, localization, and computing, coupled with the surge of machine learning (ML)/artificial intelligence (AI) in wireless networks, MA techniques are expected to experience a paradigm shift in 6G and beyond. In this article, we provide a tutorial, survey, and outlook on past, emerging, and future MA techniques and pay particular attention to how wireless network intelligence and multifunctionality will lead to a rethinking of those techniques. This article starts with an overview of orthogonal, physical-layer multicasting, space domain, power domain (PD), rate-splitting, code-domain MAs, MAs in other domains, and random access (RA), and highlights the importance of conducting research in universal MA (UMA) to shrink instead of grow the knowledge tree of MA schemes by providing a unified understanding of MA schemes across all resource dimensions. It then jumps into rethinking MA schemes in the era of wireless network intelligence, covering AI for MA such as AI-empowered resource allocation, optimization, channel estimation, and receiver designs, for different MA schemes, and MA for AI such as federated learning (FL)/edge intelligence and over-the-air computation (AirComp). We then discuss MA for network multifunctionality and the interplay between MA and integrated sensing, localization, and communications, covering MA for joint sensing and communications, multimodal sensing-aided communications, multimodal sensing and digital twin-assisted communications, and communication-aided sensing/localization systems. We finish with studying MA for emerging intelligent applications such as semantic communications (SeComs), virtual reality (VR), and smart radio and reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs), before presenting a roadmap toward 6G standardization. Throughout the text, we also point out numerous directions that are promising for future research.

This paper studies the physical-layer benefits of low latency operation in long-term evolution (LTE) networks. Latency reduction can be achieved by reducing the transmission time interval (TTI) from 1ms to the duration of only a few orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing symbols. The TTI shortening potentially enables faster link adaptation, thereby enhancing system performance. However, enabling low latency operation in a backward compatible manner requires a careful design and performance characterization. This paper conducts a link-level performance analysis of a low latency LTE network in both downlink and uplink with different transmission schemes and under various operating regimes. Our results reveal that a low latency LTE network can provide reasonable link-level performance improvements as compared to a legacy LTE network.

In this paper we consider a heterogeneous LTE network where femto cells are randomly deployed in a macro network. Femto cells are modeled as closed cells, namely only group member UEs can be associated with the femto cells. We demonstrate that inter-cell interference may prevent reliable operations for non-member UEs that are in proximity of a closed cell, which thus experience outage. We show how some of the novel features introduced in the Rel-10 specifications of the LTE standard can be leveraged by a suitable inter-cell interference coordination scheme (ICIC), which relies upon resource partitioning among different nodes to reduce the inter-cell interference problem. Additional significant improvements can be achieved when the proposed ICIC scheme is associated to a simple yet effective autonomous power control algorithm, described in detail in the paper, and further gains are demonstrated for UEs employing interference cancellation of broadcast interfering signals. We finally propose an enhanced ICIC method, based on a tighter coordination between macro and femto nodes, whose significant performance improvements advocate for suitable updates to the future LTE specifications.

In this paper we consider a heterogeneous LTE network where femto cells are randomly deployed in a macro network according to the two models described in [1], namely dual-strip and NxN. Femto cells are modeled as closed cells, namely only group member UEs can be associated with the femto cells. Therefore, dominant interference may be experienced by non-member UEs that are in proximity of a closed cell and leave these UEs in outage. We show geometry performance in a practical deployment, and discuss an autonomous power control method, which allows to dramatically reduce the outage probability, and we evaluate a resource partitioning method between macro and femto cells that further improves the performance of macro users.

This paper characterizes the SER for a non-ideal OFDM system with either M-PSK or M-QAM constellations operating over a frequency-selective, time-varying, Rayleigh fading channel. The imperfections that we consider are inter-carrier interference (ICI) and/or inter-symbol interference (ISI), imperfect time and frequency synchronization, and noisy channel estimates. We consider an MRC receiver with L diversity branches. We present SER characterizations with and without ISI, and show that the effect of ISI, especially for higher order modulation schemes, e.g., 8PSK and above, can be very severe, irrespective of the number of diversity branches.

Studies of channel estimation techniques for OFDM systems often assume idealized conditions such as a cyclic prefix (CP) long enough to absorb the entire channel delay spread, or perfect time and frequency synchronization at the receiver. This paper studies the impact of removing these assumptions. We characterize the mean square error (MSE) of various linear channel estimation methods, and we derive analytical expressions for the BER performance. The derivations are kept generic so that they apply to both time-division and frequency-division multiplexing of the pilot signal and the data subcarriers. The analysis is specialized to the BER performance characterization of OFDM-based UWB systems for different realistic channel estimation methods with residual time and frequency errors. The effect of inter-carrier interference (ICI) on channel estimation is shown to be small. However, inter-symbol interference (ISI) severely impacts the quality of the channel estimates and hence can yield a large (>2 dB) data demodulation performance degradation.

Most OFDM analyses assume idealized conditions when it comes to the waveform at the receiver in terms of time and frequency synchronization. In addition, often a cyclic prefix (CP) longer than the channel delay spread is assumed, and thus the impact of the possible inter-symbol interference (ISI) from adjacent OFDM symbols is not a consideration. This work provides a consolidated framework for study and analysis of OFDM systems with imperfections. The imperfections include time and frequency synchronization errors, and channel delay spread beyond the CP duration. Transmit as well as receive filtering operations are explicitly modeled, and different receiver detection criteria are considered. The use of an OFDM waveform for UWB applications is known to be a promising choice to simplify the receiver design and to maximize the bandwidth scalability, as well as the adaptation to various spectrum allocations. We present bit error rate (BER) sensitivity analysis to key system parameters for OFDM-based UWB applications. From these sensitivity analyses, we see graceful performance degradation with decreasing CP length and increasing residual frequency error. The performance degradation can be much more critical for timing synchronization errors.