In this paper, we propose a modularized framework for communication processes applicable to crash and Byzantine fault-tolerant consensus protocols. We abstract basic communication components and show that the communication process of the classic consensus protocols such as RAFT, single-decree Paxos, PBFT, and Hotstuff, can be represented by the combination of communication components. Based on the proposed framework, we develop an approach to analyze the consensus reliability of different protocols, where link loss and node failure are measured as a probability. We propose two latency optimization methods and implement a RAFT system to verify our theoretical analysis and the effectiveness of the proposed latency optimization methods. We also discuss decreasing consensus failure rate by adjusting protocol designs. This paper provides theoretical guidance for the design of future consensus systems with a low consensus failure rate and latency under the possible communication loss.

With the significant advances in generative AI (GAI) and the proliferation of mobile devices, providing high-quality AI-generated content (AIGC) services via wireless networks is becoming the future direction. However, the primary challenges of AIGC service delivery in wireless networks lie in unstable channels, limited bandwidth resources, and unevenly distributed computational resources. In this paper, we employ semantic communication (SemCom) in diffusion-based GAI models to propose a resource-aware workload-adjustable transceiver (ROUTE) for AIGC delivery in dynamic wireless networks. Specifically, to relieve the communication resource bottleneck, SemCom is utilized to prioritize semantic information of the generated content. Then, to improve computational resource utilization in both edge and local and reduce AIGC semantic distortion in transmission, modified diffusion-based models are applied to adjust the computing workload and semantic density in cooperative content generation. Simulations verify the superiority of our proposed ROUTE in terms of latency and content quality compared to conventional AIGC approaches.

Semantic communication (SemCom) has been recently deemed a promising technique to shape next-generation wireless networks with a focus on meaning delivery for significant spectrum savings and efficient information exchanges. It is foreseen that device-to-device (D2D) SemCom underlying cellular networks will be a very common and practical architecture, and in this paper, we jointly address the energy efficiency-driven power control and spectrum reuse problems for D2D SemCom networks. Concretely, we first construct a semantic triplet-based transmission model for both cellular and D2D SemCom users. Then, by taking into account each user's SemCom service preference, we leverage a novel metric of semantic value to determine the unique energy efficiency. Next, a corresponding energy efficiency maximization problem is formulated with variables of power and spectrum allocation subject to several SemCom-related and practical constraints. Afterward, we propose an optimal resource management scheme by employing a fractional-to-subtractive transformation approach and developing a threestage method with low computational complexity. Numerical results demonstrate the performance superiority of our proposed scheme in energy efficiency compared with two benchmarks.

The deep learning models has significantly advanced dexterous manipulation techniques for multi-fingered hand grasping. However, the contact information-guided grasping in cluttered environments remains largely underexplored. To address this gap, we have developed ContactDexNet, a method for generating multi-fingered hand grasp samples in cluttered settings through contact semantic map. We introduce a contact semantic conditional variational autoencoder network (CoSe-CVAE) for creating comprehensive contact semantic map from object point cloud. We utilize grasp detection method to estimate hand grasp poses from the contact semantic map. Finally, an unified grasp evaluation model PointNetGPD++ is designed to assess grasp quality and collision probability, substantially improving the reliability of identifying optimal grasps in cluttered scenarios. Our grasp generation method has demonstrated remarkable success, outperforming state-of-the-art (SOTA) methods by at least 4.7%, with 81.0% average grasping success rate in real-world single-object grasping using a known hand, and by at least 9.0% when using an unknown hand. Moreover, in cluttered scenes, our method attains a 76.7% success rate, outperforming the SOTA method by 6.3%. We also proposed the multi-modal multi-fingered grasping dataset generation method. Our multi-fingered hand grasping dataset outperforms previous datasets in scene diversity, modality diversity. More details and supplementary materials can be found at https://sites.google.com/view/contact-dexnet.

Recent advances in Byzantine Fault-Tolerant State Machine Replication have led to practical protocols for partially synchronous or asynchronous networks by combining classical methods with modern cryptographic tools like verifiable random functions. Despite improved performance in throughput and latency, these protocols remain limited by the FLP impossibility and the Dwork-Lynch-Stockmeyer bound, tolerating at most ⌊(n − 1) /3⌋ adversaries. In contrast, Proof-of-Work (PoW) achieves up to ⌊(n − 1) /2⌋ fault tolerance under asynchrony, albeit with high energy costs and probabilistic finality. Protocols like Avalanche similarly exceed the ⌊(n − 1) /3⌋ bound by relaxing deterministic guarantees. In this paper, we propose Halpha, a leaderless consensus protocol that tolerates nearly half Byzantine faults with overwhelming probability. Unlike PoW and Avalanche, which provide probabilistic finality post-termination, Halpha relaxes liveness during proposal. It leverages a probabilistic multi-valued validated Byzantine agreement (P-MVBA) to propose transaction sets, ensuring each referenced transaction is seen by at least one honest node. While P-MVBA may halt, it progresses under the intermittent existence of a bounded-delay interval, and ensures consistency with overwhelming probability without synchrony. Halpha then runs multiple asynchronous binary agreement instances, using verifiable random functions to support randomized liveness under Byzantine conditions and achieves finality when synchrony arrives. Experiments show Halpha achieves safety with high probability and low-latency deterministic finality in normal cases.

Multi-modal image fusion, particularly between infrared (IR) and visible (VIS) images, integrates complementary information from diverse imaging sources to enhance perception in applications like autonomous driving and surveillance. While IR images capture thermal radiation and VIS images provide rich texture details, existing fusion methods face challenges in preserving infrared thermal signatures under high illumination, where overexposed VIS regions dominate fusion outputs. To address the above problems, we propose XOR-Fuse, a novel logical operation-driven fusion framework that explicitly captures complementary pixel-level discrepancies between IR and VIS modalities. The XOR-Fuse defines the pixel-wise analogy for the logical XOR operation, which rectifies the suppression of IR features caused by conventional maximum-intensity fusion rules under high illumination. To further reinforce IR feature preservation, we integrate multi-scale Gabor wavelet filtering and wavelet decomposition for illumination-invariant texture extraction and VGG-based semantic constraints, ensuring structural congruence between IR and VIS details. Experiments on MSRS, RoadScene, and TNO datasets demonstrate significant improvements over four baseline models (DeepFuse, SDNet, U2Fusion, and DATFuse). For instance, the enhanced DeepFuse achieves SD=48.27 and VIF=0.62 on MSRS, outperforming the original model (SD=33.79, VIF=0.42). Qualitative results under variable illumination confirm the recovery of suppressed IR details while retaining VIS textures.

This paper proposes a novel joint transceiver optimization framework for multi-carrier (MC) waveform design. Unlike conventional orthogonal frequency division multiplexing, which employs memoryless modulation and fixed inverse discrete Fourier transform-based waveform generation, our approach utilizes neural network (NN)-based modulation with memory and NN-driven waveform generation at the transmitter. On the receiver side, a large-kernel attention-based NN replaces the traditional demodulation process, effectively mitigating large-span inter-carrier interference. This architecture provides enhanced flexibility for MC waveform optimization, allowing better adaptation to spectral emission mask constraints and maximizing the utilization of allocated spectrum resources. Additionally, it achieves significant spectral efficiency gains across diverse channel conditions, including additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and linear time-varying (LTV) channels with delay and Doppler spread. Numerical evaluations demonstrate significant bit error rate performance improvements, with up to 10 dB signal-to-noise ratio gain in LTV channels and approximately 6 dB gain in AWGN channels, underscoring the superiority of the proposed framework over state-of-the-art schemes.

With the significant advances in AI-generated content (AIGC) and the proliferation of mobile devices, providing high-quality AIGC services via wireless networks is becoming the future direction. However, the primary challenges of AIGC services provisioning in wireless networks lie in unstable channels, limited bandwidth resources, and unevenly distributed computational resources. To this end, this paper proposes a semantic communication (SemCom)-empowered AIGC (SemAIGC) generation and transmission framework, where only semantic information of the content rather than all the binary bits should be generated and transmitted by using SemCom. Specifically, SemAIGC integrates diffusion models within the semantic encoder and decoder to design a workload-adjustable transceiver thereby allowing adjustment of computational resource utilization in edge and local. In addition, aresource-aware workloadtrade-off (ROOT) scheme is devised to intelligently make workload adaptation decisions for the transceiver, thus efficiently generating, transmitting, and fine-tuning content as per dynamic wireless channel conditions and service requirements. Simulations verify the superiority of our proposed SemAIGC framework in terms of latency and content quality compared to conventional approaches.

This paper jointly investigates user association (UA), mode selection (MS), and bandwidth allocation (BA) problems in a novel and practical next-generation cellular network where two modes of semantic communication (SemCom) and conventional bit communication (BitCom) coexist, namely hybrid semantic/bit communication network (HSB-Net). Concretely, we first identify a unified performance metric of message throughput for both SemCom and BitCom links. Next, we comprehensively develop a knowledge matching-aware two-stage tandem packet queuing model and theoretically derive the average packet loss ratio and queuing latency. Combined with several practical constraints, we then formulate a joint optimization problem for UA, MS, and BA to maximize the overall message throughput of HSB-Net. Afterward, we propose an optimal resource management strategy by employing a Lagrange primal-dual method and devising a preference list-based heuristic algorithm. Finally, numerical results validate the performance superiority of our proposed strategy compared with different benchmarks.

Blockchain is an eminent technique to enhance the safety and robustness of the Internet of Things (IoT) network, due to its traits of decentralisation and transparency. Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) blockchain consensus mechanism is well suited for wireless networks because of its low-computing requirement, low latency and high throughput. In this paper, we investigate the implementation of the base station (BS)-enabled wireless PBFT network, where the inter-node communications go through the BS in the normal case operation. The performance under such a scheme is analysed and evaluated through three metrics: consensus success probability, communication complexity, and average node transmit power. Results show that the proposed framework achieves higher scalability, lower communication complexity, and lower average node transmit power.

Due to the explosion of mobile users and the ever-increasing heterogeneity and scale of wireless networks, traditional communication protocols and optimizing methods can not satisfy future wireless network (FWN) requirements. As promising technologies, artificial intelligence (AI) and blockchain are deemed as the solution for the FWN. AI, famous for its big data processing ability, will enable the FWN to self-update itself to better adapt to the dynamic network condition. Blockchain, as a distributed ledger, can guarantee data integrity, security, and privacy. In this survey, we overview the concept of AI and blockchain and present their state-of-the-art applications in wireless networks. The potential of AI and blockchain is still huge and waiting to be fully explored in wireless networks. Therefore, we introduce how AI and blockchain can assist each other in FWNs. Furthermore, we explore the current constraints of applying both technologies in the FWNs. In the final part, we discuss the future direction of the deployment of AI and blockchain in FWNs.

With the fourth industrial revolution, the construction of the Internet of Things (IoT) has developed vigorously, and machine learning is also widely used in IoT management and data processing. Given the existence of massive distributed and private datasets generated by a large number of IoT devices, centralized machine learning is unsatisfactory. Therefore, federated learning (FL), as a distributed learning method, becomes a promising solution. In FL, clients can train models by transferring model parameters to the aggregation server while keeping private data locally. However, FL still relies on a central server, which has questionable reliability. The single point of failure and limited communication resources also hinder the application of FL in the IoT. In this paper, we propose a voting consensus based decentralized federated learning method (VCDFL) by incorporating the leader-candidate-follower hierarchical management method and the consensus based leader election mechanism to solve the single point of failure and exclude outlier models for accelerating convergence during aggregation. Then, we propose a joint decision method to exchange decision information rather than model transfer between clients to further protect privacy and reduce communication overhead while ensuring accuracy. Furthermore, we mathematically derive the probability of successfully electing a leader, the communication efficiency and the joint decision accuracy. We conduct our method in an image recognition scenario. The results show that our joint decision mechanism promotes the accuracy of both system and local decision-making. Meanwhile, the proposed scheme greatly reduces communication costs compared to benchmark learning methods.

Life on Earth depends on healthy oceans, which supply a large percentage of the planet’s oxygen, food, and energy. However, the oceans are under threat from climate change, which is devastating the marine ecosystem and the economic and social systems that depend on it. The Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT), a global interconnection of underwater objects, enables round-the-clock monitoring of the oceans. It provides high-resolution data for training machine learning (ML) algorithms for rapidly evaluating potential climate change solutions and speeding up decision making. The sensors in conventional IoUT are battery powered, which limits their lifetime, and constitutes environmental hazards when they die. In this article, we propose a sustainable scheme to improve the throughput and enable wireless charging of underwater networks, enabling them to potentially operate indefinitely. The scheme is based on simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) from an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) used for data collection. We model the problem of jointly maximizing throughput and harvested power as a Markov decision process (MDP), and develop a model-free reinforcement learning (RL) solution. The model’s reward function incentivises the AUV to find optimal trajectories that maximize throughput and power transfer to the underwater nodes while minimising its own energy consumption. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first attempt at using RL for this application. The scheme is implemented in an open 3-D RL environment specifically developed in MATLAB for this study. The performance results show up 207% improvement in energy efficiency compared to those of a random trajectory scheme used as a baseline model.

As a novel distributed machine learning approach, federated learning (FL) is proposed to train a global model while preserving data privacy. However, some studies manifest that adversaries can still recover private information from the gradients. Differential privacy (DP) is a rigorous mathematical tool to protect records in a database against leakage. It has been widely applied in FL by perturbing the gradients. Nevertheless, while using DP in FL, the convergence performance of the global model is inevitably degraded. In this paper, we implement a DP-based FL scheme, which achieves local DP (LDP) by adding well-designed Gaussian noise on the gradients before clients upload them to the server. After that, we propose two strategies to improve the convergence performance of the DP-based FL. Both methods are realized by modifying the local objective function to limit the effect of LDP noise on convergence without degrading the privacy protection level. We then provide the detailed framework which adopts the LDP scheme and two strategies. The framework on different machine learning models is tested by simulation results, which show that our framework can improve the convergence performance up to 40% faster under different noise compared with other DP-based FL. Finally, we show the theoretical convergence guarantee of our proposed framework by first presenting the expected decrease in the global loss function for one round of training and then providing the upper convergence bound after multiple communication rounds.

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) has been identified as a promising disruptive innovation to realize a faster, safer and more efficient communication system. In this paper, we study the broad beamwidth design of RIS. A problem is formulated to achieve broadbeam with maximum and equal power gain within a pre-defined angular region given constraints of the unit modulus weights of RIS. Since the formulated problem is non-convex, where the optimal solution cannot be analytically obtained, we propose the difference-of-convex-based semi-definite programming (DC-SDP) algorithm. In addition, as important guidance of signal coverage for arbitrary angular regions, we mathematically derive the relationship between the angular range of the spatial sector and the maximum average received power. The upper bounds of the average received power with different RIS configurations are also obtained, where uniform rectangular array (URA) and uniform linear array (ULA) are considered. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of our derivations and verify that our proposed DC-SDP algorithm is applicable in practical applications and outperforms other baseline methods. Overall, this work can be viewed as a foundation for the practical implementation of RIS on coverage enhancement and can also be seen as an initial step towards achieving channel estimation.

For multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) frequency diverse array (FDA) communications, this paper proposes a frequency offsets index modulation (FOIM) scheme, which conveys extra information by selecting transmitting frequency offsets from a frequency offsets pool. To improve system spectral efficiency, we firstly design an orthogonal baseband waveform for FDA with the exact expression, then the corresponding receiver structure is proposed. Further, considering that the traditional maximum likelihood (ML) detection algorithm suffers from high complexity, an output combined maximum likelihood (OCML) approach is presented. Moreover, the closed-form expressions for the upper bound on bit error rates (BERs) of both ML and OCML methods are derived, as well as the counterpart of the system capacity. The simulation results show that the capacity of the proposed FOIM scheme outperforms the MIMO scheme, and meanwhile, our method achieves a higher communication rate when compared with the quadrature spatial modulation (QSM) scheme. Additionally, the proposed OCML algorithm can lead the BER performance of FOIM to be superior to that of the aforementioned approaches with significantly lower computational complexity.

Pattern reconfigurable multiple-input multiple-output (PR-MIMO) can manipulate the wireless channel according to different communication requirements. In this paper, we discuss the potential of constructive interference (CI)-based symbol-level precoding (CI-SLP) in PR-MIMO communication systems. The joint design problem that optimizes the SLP strategy and the radiation pattern of PR-MIMO for phase-shift keying (PSK) modulation is formulated to maximize the worst serviced user’s communication quality. Since the optimization variables are softly-coupled, we employ the alternating optimization framework to decompose the joint design problem into the SLP design sub-problem and the pattern design sub-problem. We simplify the pattern design sub-problem and propose an interior-point algorithm, where a sequential optimization-based scheme is further proposed as a sub-optimal solution with low complexity. Furthermore, the discussion is extended to quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) modulated systems, where a special stopping criterion is proposed to guarantee the performance gain of the proposed scheme. The practical realization of the designed reconfigurable antenna array is also discussed, where we propose a design scheme using programmable metasurface antennas based on time-division switching to enable quick and adaptive pattern reconfiguration. Numerical results demonstrate that the radiation pattern configurability can further enhance the benefit of SLP over conventional precoding approaches.

In this paper, we focus on reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided resource allocation under base stations (BSs)‘ non-cooperation scheme, where the RIS is solely controlled by one BS and should not affect the communication of the adjacent BS. The minimum quality-of-service (QoS) of users served by the RIS-aided BS, minimum effects on the channel quality of the adjacent BS, the sub-channel assignment rule, and the total transmit power constraint are taken into account. Based on these constraints, the sum-rate of users served by the RIS-aided BS is maximized by jointly optimizing the RIS passive beamforming, power allocation, and sub-channel assignment. To tackle the non-convex problem, an efficient algorithm exploiting the techniques of block coordinate descent (BCD) is developed. A two-sided matching (TSM) algorithm is firstly applied to solve the discrete sub-channel assignment optimization. Then the power allocation and RIS passive beamforming are optimized iteratively. To address the non-convexity in optimizing the power allocation and RIS beamforming, a successive convex upper bound approx-imation method and a multi-ratio fractional programming (FP) with Taylor series approximation-based successive cancellation algorithm (SCA) are used, respectively. The convergence of simulation results proves the validity of our proposed algorithm, and the effects of the numbers of RIS elements and the total transmit power are studied.

Due to the sharp growth of employing mobile devices and IoT (Internet of Things) sensors in daily life, tremendous generated or collected data become one of the most valuable assets for not only users but also numerous applications, which provide various services using user data. However, a large portion of such data is possessed by only a few giant companies in a centralized manner. This incurs the concerns of how user data are harnessed and used and who can use such data because of many cases of privacy violence and data leakage. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a decentralized data sharing marketplace using Ethereum to enable users to share their data in a privacy-preserving and self-governing manner. Users can only share parts of the data from their devices they want to share in the marketplace and gain rewards from the bidding of buyers anonymously. Furthermore, a federated learning use case is demonstrated as a privacy-enhanced application of the proposed marketplace to encourage users to share processed data to avoid raw data leakage.

Secret key generation in physical layer security exploits the unpredictable random nature of wireless channels. The millimeter-wave (mmWave) channels have limited multipath and channel randomness in static environments. In this paper, for mmWave secret key generation of physical layer security, we use a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) to induce randomness directly in wireless environments, without adding complexity to transceivers. We consider RIS to have continuous individual phase shifts (CIPS) and derive the RIS-assisted reflection channel distribution with its parameters. Then, we propose continuous group phase shifts (CGPS) to increase the randomness specifically at legal parties. Since the continuous phase shifts are expensive to implement, we analyze discrete individual phase shifts (DIPS) and derive the corresponding channel distribution, which is dependent on the quantization bit. We then derive the secret key rate (SKR) to evaluate the randomness performance. With the simulation results verifying the analytical results, this work explains the mathematical principles and lays a foundation for future mmWave evaluation and optimization of artificial channel randomness.

This paper investigates the multi-valued fault-tolerant distributed consensus problem that pursues exact output. To this end, the voting validity, which requires the consensus output of non-faulty nodes to be the exact plurality of the input of non-faulty nodes, is investigated. Considering a specific distribution of non-faulty votes, we first give the impossibility results and a tight lower bound of system tolerance achieving agreement, termination and voting validity. A practical consensus algorithm that satisfies voting validity in the Byzantine fault model is proposed subsequently. To ensure the exactness of outputs in any non-faulty vote distribution, we further propose safety-critical tolerance and a corresponding protocol that prioritizes voting validity over termination property. To refine the proposed protocols, we propose an incremental threshold algorithm that accelerates protocol operation speed. We also optimize consensus algorithms with the local broadcast model to enhance the protocol’s fault tolerance ability.

The Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) architecture has been identified as a promising technology for enhanced network deployment, innovation, improved competition, and reduction of capital and operating expenses (CAPEX/OPEX) of 5G and beyond networks because of its open interfaces, disaggregated network entities and functions, virtualization of network hardware and software, and intelligent control. However, the effect of this improved technology on the energy consumption of the RAN needs to be carefully investigated, so that the many advantages that can be obtained from the O-RAN are not overwhelmed by increased energy consumption. Hence, in this paper, we investigate the O-RAN from an Energy efficiency (EE) perspective by reviewing the state-of-the-art power consumption models, and EE techniques that have been proposed to minimize the energy consumption of O-RAN. In addition, the challenges associated with the optimization of the EE of O-RAN and opportunities for further research are highlighted.

Vehicular Ad-hoc Networks (VANETs) play an essential role in traffic safety and travel efficiency. However, due to the variable network topology of VANETs, malicious vehicles can easily invade the network to disrupt the network integrity. Moreover, compromised Roadside Units (RSUs) may pose a tremendous threat to network. Thus, we propose a distributed trust model to resist malicious vehicles and compromised RSUs by a mutual supervision mechanism between vehicles and RSUs. Three stages of this model ensure the trustworthiness of participants, including trust evaluation, adjudication, and vehicle appeal mechanism. In the trust evaluation stage, message receivers calculate three types of trust values (i.e., direct, indirect, and combined trust values) and upload them to RSUs. Then, RSUs dynamically update the trust threshold by aggregating vehicular trust values. In the adjudication stage, RSUs punish/reward vehicles by comparing the trust threshold to aggregated trust values. In the vehicle appeal stage, vehicles appeal to other RSUs if they have received the undesired punishment by an RSU. Then, multiple RSUs jointly judge whether a vehicle is successfully appealed, and the misjudging RSU will be punished. Extensive simulations show that the proposed model effectively identifies malicious vehicles with the presence of compromised RSUs.

Recent data leak scandals, together with the under-utilization of collected data (estimated that around 90% of data never leaves a device’s local storage), limits the applicability and potential of novel data driven applications. Thus, novel ways to treat data, in which users are guaranteed control, usability, and privacy over their generated data are needed. In this paper we propose a novel privacy-preserving blockchain framework for a data sharing marketplace. The proposed framework allows users (such as sensors and devices) that generate data to store it in external servers, while the blockchain is utilized to record buy and sell transactions between parties, as well as perform access control by generating access sequences whenever trades are performed. A novel perspective over data ownership is presented, in which whoever generates the data has completed ownership and control over it and the blockchain transactions are only utilized to guarantee temporary access to it. The proposed blockchain framework also supports different types of data and provides, via the distributed and openness of the framework, quality, timeliness and similarity control over the data stored in the marketplace. In this context, different types of applications that can benefit from this framework are presented and open problems are discussed.

Deep learning enhanced Internet of Things (IoT) is advancing the transformation toward smart manufacturing. Intelligent robot guidance is one of the most potential deep learning + IoT applications in the manufacturing industry. However, low costs, efficient computing, and extremely high localization accuracy are mandatory requirements for vision robot guidance, particularly in operational factories. Therefore, in this work, a low-cost edge computing-based IoT system is developed based on an innovative fine-grained attention model (FGAM). FGAM integrates a deep-learning-based attention model to detect the region of interest (ROI) and an optimized conventional computer vision model to perform fine-grained localization concentrating on the ROI. Trained with only 100 images collected from real production line, the proposed FGAM has shown superior performance over multiple benchmark models when validated using operational data. Eventually, the FGAM-based edge computing system has been deployed on a welding robot in a real-world factory for mass production. After the assembly of about 6000 products, the deployed system has achieved averaged overall process and transmission time down to 200 ms and overall localization accuracy up to 99.998%.

The centralized system becomes less efficient, secure, and resilient as the network size and heterogeneity increase due to its inherent single point of failure issues. Distributed consensus mechanisms characterized by decentralization, autonomy, parallelism, and fault-tolerance can meet the increasing demands of safety and security in critical interconnected systems. This article establishes a Node and Link probabilistic failure model in the presence of node and communication link failures for a representative crash fault-tolerant distributed consensus protocol: RAFT. The analytical results in terms of the probability density function and the mean value of consensus reliability are derived. Two important reliability performance indicators, Reliability Gain and Tolerance Gain are proposed to indicate the linear relationship between the consensus reliability and two basic parameters, i.e., the joint failure rate and the maximum number of tolerant faulty nodes, which provide the theoretical guidance for quickly deploying an RAFT system. The special case of a distributed consensus network with already a certain number of failures and its adverse impact are evaluated. The Markov probabilistic models, definitions of Reliability Gain and Tolerance Gain, and the analysis methods proposed in this article can be extended to other consensus mechanisms.

Connected critical autonomous systems (C-CASs) are envisioned to significantly change our life and work styles through emerging vertical applications, such as autonomous vehicles and cooperative robots. However, as the scale of the connected nodes continues to grow, their heterogeneity and cybersecurity threats are more eminent, and conventional centralized communications and decision-making methodology are reaching their limit. This article is the first exploration of a trustworthy and fault-tolerant framework for C-CAS for achieving hyperreliable global decision making in a trustless environment, where the connected sensors/nodes are less reliable due to either communication failure or local decision error (e.g., by sensing algorithm/AI, etc.). The proposed framework is based on two iconic distributed consensus (DC) mechanisms: 1) practical Byzantine fault tolerance (PBFT) and 2) Raft, under the proposed perception-initiative-consensus-action (PICA) protocol with wireless connections among the nodes. We first analytically derived consensus reliability in six different system models. The other fundamental performance metrics, such as the consensus throughput and latency, node scalability, and reliability gain are also analytically derived. These analytical results provide basic design guidelines for wireless DC (WDC) usage in the C-CAS systems. The results show that WDC significantly improves overall system reliability with the increasing number of participating nodes.

The mission-critical decisions are usually made by a central node in connected autonomous systems enabled by IoT, AI and 5G etc. The reliability of decision-making largely depends on the condition of the central node, which can have unaffordable costs and low scalability in a massive-scale mobility network. Therefore, mission-critical IoT networks have been seeking new methods to achieve the growing reliability and latency requirement of cooperative decision-making. The distributed consensus protocol, which has been widely used in distributed computing systems, can provide robustness to the liveness of mission-critical decisions that may encounter node faults. This article first analytically derives the performance of two distributed consensus protocols: Raft and Hotstuff BFT, with the extra synchronization phases. In the presence of communication failure, the results are compared with the analytically derived performance of a centralized consensus. The comparison indicates the strengths and weaknesses of these consensus mechanisms from the perspective of full consensus reliability and communication latency, which provides guidelines for deploying the appropriate distributed autonomous systems in the future.

Cooperative autonomous driving has emerged as an appealing paradigm to expand the perception range of vehicles and improve driving safety by sharing local sensing data and driving intentions. However, the constrained communication resource and unstable link quality seriously restrict the coordination and reliability of driving decisions. The distributed consensus mechanism is a potential approach to address the problem. This paper proposes a fast and efficient vehicular consensus framework to improve the coordination and reliability of driving decisions in delay-sensitive applications. We first design a Raft empowered two-hop consensus mechanism with dynamic negotiation. Moreover, we theoretically analyze the performance of the mechanism in terms of successful consensus ratio, latency, and link quality by leveraging Jensen's inequality and binomial distribution. In addition, an adaptive joint design algorithm for consensus process and communication is put forward to minimize the consensus delay while satisfying the requirements of vehicular resources and coordination degree. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed scheme can improve the reliability of critical decisions by 15.4% compared with existing approaches.

Although the interconnection of all things based on 5G and AI has become an incremental trend in all walks of life, its centralized design has many challenges and drawbacks when applied to industrial and life scenarios. In the field of autonomous driving (a.k.a., auto-driving), the centralized vehicle-to-everything (V2X) system depends heavily on the stability of the central node, and there is seldom a mechanism to guarantee the security, stability and timeliness of information in highly dynamic auto-driving scenarios. In this paper, we first design and implement the AIR-RAFT system that supports wireless distributed consensus for IoT. AIR-RAFT is a complete embedded system based on the Raft consensus algorithm and can be potentially installed on auto-driving vehicles. It can not only achieve wireless consensus to ensure the consistency and security of V2X data but also can synchronize the actions among the vehicles in a distributed manner though all cars are not trusted each other. In addition, we originally propose the “selective edge decision layer” for the AIR-RAFT system which can share part of the decision privilege in auto-driving cars. In practical performance evaluations, the AIR-RAFT based auto-driving vehicles stably achieve multi-node (3–7) wireless data consensus and actions synchronization that maintain good working stability within 350 m centered on the leader.

In recent years, due to the increasing concern about data privacy security, federated learning, whose clients only synchronize the model rather than the personal data, has developed rapidly. However, the traditional federated learning system still has a high dependence on the central server, an unguaranteed enthusiasm of clients and reliability of the central server, and extremely high consumption of communication resources. Therefore, we propose Clustered Hierarchical Distributed Federated Learning to solve the above problems. We motivate the participation of clients by clustering and solve the dependence on the central server through distributed architecture. We apply a hierarchical segmented gossip protocol and feedback mechanism for in-cluster model exchange and gossip protocol for communication between clusters to make full use of bandwidth and have good training convergence. Experimental results demonstrate that our method has better performance with less communication resource consumption.

To preserve participants' privacy, Federated Learning (FL) has been proposed to let participants collaboratively train a global model by sharing their training gradients instead of their raw data. However, several studies have shown that con-ventional FL is insufficient to protect privacy from adversaries, as even from gradients, useful information can still be recovered. To obtain stronger privacy protection, Differential Privacy (DP) has been proposed on the server's side and the clients' side. Although adding artificial noise to the raw data can enhance users' privacy, the accuracy performance of the FL is inevitably degraded. In addition, although the communication overhead caused by the FL is much smaller than that of centralized learning, it still becomes a bottleneck of the learning performance and utilization efficiency due to its frequent parameters exchange. To tackle these problems, we propose a new FL framework via applying DP both locally and centrally in order to strengthen the protection of par-ticipants' privacy. To improve the accuracy performance of the model, we also apply sparse gradients and Momentum Gradient Descent on the server's side and the clients' side. Moreover, using sparse gradients can reduce the total communication costs. We provide the experiments to evaluate our proposed framework and the results show that our framework not only outperforms other DP-based FL frameworks in terms of the model accuracy but also provides a more powerful privacy guarantee. Besides, our framework can save up to 90% of communication costs while achieving the best accuracy performance.

Blockchain, as a constantly evolving Peer-to-Peer (P2P) distributed ledger technology with characteristics, such as decentralization, security, interoperation, and trust establishment, can potentially lower the costs of the underpinning infrastructure and maintenance compared with conventional centralized systems. Consequently, the distributed structure of blockchain is naturally suitable for the Internet of Things (IoT), which can be used to build secure and trusted IoT. Despite the advances made in applying blockchain to IoT in the past few years, some research challenges remain to be addressed, including the poor scalability, heterogeneous IoT devices, and the impact of integration on network performance.

As promising candidate frequency bands, millimeter wave (mmWave) and terahertz (THz) communications can provide ultrahigh transmission rate to enable vehicle-to-everything (V2X) networks for connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs). However, beam alignment is extremely challenging in mmWave/THz communications due to its narrow beam width and fast mobility of CAV. In this article, we propose a new joint communication and control algorithm for beam alignment, where the mutual positive effect of communications and motion control of CAV on each other is discussed. Specifically, we first provide a framework to show the interaction between motion control of CAV and beam alignment of transmission from base station (BS) to CAV. Then, we analyze the effect of CAV control on beam alignment in communications, where a theorem is obtained to show the closed-form expression of their relationship. Finally, we discuss the CAV control design affected by beam alignment. Simulation results show remarkable performance of the proposed method.

Blockchain technology is becoming the cornerstone for the development and deployment of other technologies like Federated Learning (FL) and the Internet of Things (IoT), as it plays a critical role in data sharing and incentives. Blockchains supports decentralization, data-privacy protection, security, and reliability. Assuring secure data sharing in mobile computing and FL is challenging because of untrustworthy participants and unknown data quality. Blockchain provides trust in decentralized environments without requiring trusted third parties. By using smart contracts, blockchain has been able to supporting rich decentralized applications. However, the scalability of blockchain is a challenge that prevents its wide adoption by high-performance applications. To address the blockchain scalability issue, various blockchain sharding technologies and off-chain solutions have been proposed. To improve the network throughput, blockchain sharding divides the entire network into several smaller parallel groups and exploits fast consensus algorithms in blockchain shards. Off-chain solutions, such as payment channel networks (PCNs), transfer the slow on-chain transactions to the off-chain environment, in which transactions can be accelerated. Without consensus and on-chain expensive operations, off-chain scalable solutions significantly reduce transaction costs and increase transaction throughput. This special issue aims to provide a forum for the presentation of state-of-the-art research approaches that advance the construction of intelligent blockchain systems. A total of 27 articles were accepted after a two-round rigorous review process. Based on their topics, we have grouped the accepted articles into four categories: blockchain-based federated learning systems, blockchain and the IoT, blockchain scalability, and high-performance blockchains. In what follows, we introduce these articles and their contributions.

Since the coronavirus disease 19 (COVID-19) outbreak, the epidemiological analysis has raised a strong requirement for more effective and accurate contact tracing solution. However, the existing contact tracing solutions either lacked the evaluation of tracing proximity or the features used for the tracing proximity evaluation were susceptible to certain negative environmental factors (e.g., body shielding). In this article, we propose a novel distance estimation algorithm based on machine learning for contact tracing: DISTERNING, where we leverage machine learning algorithms including Learning Vector Quantization, Regression, and Deep Feed-forward (DFF) Neural Network, data processing methods, and digital filters to process the Bluetooth signal information collected by the mobile phone for contact distance estimation. A contact tracing scheme based on edge computing is also proposed for algorithm deployment due to the requirements of the computational power. Compared with the existing contact tracing solutions, our algorithm considers the factors that have significant negative influence on the Bluetooth signal for distance estimation in reality. The evaluation results show that when the collected Bluetooth signal is influenced by real-world negative environmental factors, employing our proposed algorithm DISTERNING can keep the accuracy of the estimated distance reliable. The output distance can be combined with some medical models to conduct infection risk assessments.

In this paper, we model, analyze and optimize the multi-user and multi-order-reflection (MUMOR) intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) networks. We first derive a complete MUMOR IRS network model applicable for the arbitrary times of reflections, size and number of IRSs/reflectors. The optimal condition for achieving sum rate upper bound with one IRS in a closed-form function and the analytical condition to achieve interference-free transmission are derived, respectively. Leveraging this optimal condition, we obtain the MUMOR sum rate upper bound of the IRS network with different network topologies, where the linear graph (LG), complete graph (CG) and null graph (NG) topologies are considered. Simulation results verify our theories and derivations and demonstrate that the sum rate upper bounds of different network topologies are under a$K$-fold improvement given$K$-piece IRS.

Faster-than-Nyquist signaling (FTNS) has already been shown to increase the communication capacity on certain channels such as additive white Gaussian noise and block flat multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) Rayleigh fading channels. The following issues, however, remain unresolved: 1) whether FTNS enables a capacity increase in generalized MIMO Rayleigh fading channels that are selective in time, frequency, and space; and 2) how channel selectivities affect the capacity and if present, the FTN capacity gain. To address the issues, this paper firstly investigates the ergodic capacity of MIMO-FTN transmission over triply-selective fading channels. We derive a low-complexity approximate capacity formula and also show how it degenerates in other channel models, such as doubly-selective single-input single-output fading channels, which can be considered as the special cases of triply-selective fading channels. The capacity evaluation results obtained under different channel conditions show that: 1) MIMO-FTN outperforms MIMO-Nyquist in terms of capacity; 2) the FTN gains are nearly consistent, while the FTN gains obtained in the frequency-selective fading channels are slightly higher than those obtained in the flat fading channels.

Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces (IRS) show a revolutionary potential for wireless communications. In this paper, a single IRS is used to achieve distributed multi-user beamforming and interference-free transmission. We first establish the IRS assisted multi-user system model and formulate an optimization problem called multi-user linearly constrained minimum variance (MU-LCMV) beamformer, under the criterion of minimizing the overall received signal power subject to a certain level of power response (e.g., unit power response) at desired signal directions and arbitrary low power response (e.g., zero power response) at the interference directions. A closed-form amplitude-unconstrained phase-continuous (AUPC) solution is derived first, then an amplitude-constrained phase-continuous (ACPC) solution is obtained by using sequential quadratic programming (SQP). Given the solutions, the IRS beam pattern shows that to achieve multi-user ($N$pairs of transceivers,$N > 1$) transmission through a single surface, up to$N-1$redundant beams are generated, significantly affecting power efficiency. The directions of the redundant beams are mathematically derived. The effect of mutual coupling on IRS is also analyzed to show the characteristic of side lobes. Simulation results verify the existence and accuracy of the redundant beam directions. This work can potentially enhance state-of-the-art wireless communication systems ranging from transceiver design, system and architecture design, network deployment and self-organizing-network operations.

The application of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) over orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) modulation is envisioned to provide high-data-rate wireless transmission in high-mobility environments. However, in these communication scenarios, the multiple-dimensional interference, which can generate from space, delay and Doppler domains, challenges the channel equalization and symbol detection at the MIMO-OTFS receiver. To tackle this issue, we propose a time-space domain channel equalizer, relying on the mathematical least squares minimum residual algorithm, to remove the channel distortion on data symbols. The proposed channel equalizer adopts a recursion method to achieve symbol estimates, which can realize fast convergence by leveraging the sparsity of MIMO-OTFS channel matrix. Instead of directly remapping the equalized OTFS symbols into data bits, we develop an enhanced data detection (EDD) scheme to iteratively demodulate the superposed multi-antenna signal. The EDD can not only realize the linear-complexity interference cancellation, but also efficiently reap the spatial and multi-path diversities of MIMO-OTFS channel. The simulations show the proposed channel equalization and EDD algorithms enable the MIMO-OTFS receiver to robustly demodulate multi-stream 256-ary quadrature amplitude modulation symbols, under a maximum velocity of 550 km/h at 5.9 GHz carrier frequency.

Due to the distributed characteristics of Federated Learning (FL), the vulnerability of global model and coordination of devices are the main obstacle. As a promising solution of decentralization, scalability and security, leveraging blockchain in FL has attracted much attention in recent years. However, the traditional consensus mechanisms designed for blockchain like Proof of Work (PoW) would cause extreme resource consumption, which reduces the efficiency of FL greatly, especially when the participating devices are wireless and resource-limited. In order to address device asynchrony and anomaly detection in FL while avoiding the extra resource consumption caused by blockchain, this paper introduces a framework for empowering FL using Direct Acyclic Graph (DAG)-based blockchain systematically (DAG-FL). Accordingly, DAG-FL is first introduced from a three-layer architecture in details, and then two algorithms DAG-FL Controlling and DAG-FL Updating are designed running on different nodes to elaborate the operation of DAG-FL consensus mechanism. The extensive simulations show that DAG-FL can achieve the better performance in terms of training efficiency and model accuracy compared with the typical existing on-device federated learning systems as the benchmarks.

The design of sharding aims to solve the scalability challenge in a blockchain network. Typically, by splitting the whole blockchain network into smaller shards, the transaction throughput can be significantly improved. However, distributing fewer attesting nodes for transactions in a shard may cause higher security risks. This paper analyzes the security level of transaction verification in different types of shards and transactions. The analyzed result indicates that the size of shards and validating nodes number may influence the transaction security in shards. And the random distribution of attesting nodes can reduce such influence and improve the reliability of consensus in shards.

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) massive multiple input multiple input (MIMO) has shown great potential in user equipment (UE) localization of 5G wireless communication systems. However, mmWave signals usually suffer from non-line-of-sight (NLOS) propagation, which will affect mmWave MIMO-based UE localization performance. Hence, it is non-trivial to reveal how NLOS propagation affect mmWave-based UE localization performance. In this paper, we give a unified analysis framework for UE localization performance gain from harnessing NLOS propagation. Firstly, a closed-form Cramer-Rao lower bound on mmWave MIMO-based UE localization is derived to shed lights on its performance limit. Secondly, NLOS propagation-caused localization error for conventional UE localization methods without harnessing multipath effect is analysed. Finally, the information contribution from NLOS channel is quantified, which sheds light on how to smartly harness NLOS propagation and the associated UE localization performance gain.

In this paper, we are interested in the joint estimate of user equipment (UE) location and orientation for millimeter-wave multi-input-multi-output (mmWave MIMO) systems. In practice, mmWave signals suffer from small-scale fading, which degrades UE localization. Moreover, mmWave MIMO-based UE localization is a non-convex optimization problem, and the bruteforce application of conventional optimization methods will result in a poor solution or lead to large computational cost. In order to address the above challenges, we propose a novel simultaneous localization and channel estimate (SLCE) algorithm, where the UE location parameters and small-scale fading coefficients are jointly optimized. In such a case, the disturbance of small-scale fading on UE localization is alleviated. Thanks to our problem-specific update rule design, the proposed SLCE algorithm achieves a large performance gain over existing baseline methods.

Millimeter-wave (mm-wave) communication, which has already been a part of the fifth generation of mobile communication networks (5G), would result in ultra dense small cell deployments due to its limited coverage characteristics. To enable seamless handovers between indoor and outdoor environments, a mobility prediction of an indoor user is studied by deploying Markov chains. Based on the effect of external factors on the user's mobility, a simulation scenario is created to model the trajectory of an indoor user w.r.t the most visited areas before leaving the indoor environment. Based on that, a method for initializing the transition matrix of Markov chains is proposed, via Q-learning. The proposed solution is compared to a standard online learning Markov chain model in terms of different mobility models and learning rates. Results show that the proposed solution is always able to outperform the standard method in terms of prediction accuracy.

The outbreak of the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has exposed an urgent need for effective contact tracing solutions through mobile phone applications to prevent the infection from spreading further. However, due to the nature of contact tracing, public concern on privacy issues has been a bottleneck to the existing solutions, which is significantly affecting the uptake of contact tracing applications across the globe. In this article, we present a blockchain-enabled privacy-preserving contact tracing scheme: BeepTrace, where we propose to adopt blockchain bridging the user/patient and the authorized solvers to desensitize the user ID and location information. Compared with recently proposed contact tracing solutions, our approach shows higher security and privacy with the additional advantages of being battery friendly and globally accessible. Results show viability in terms of the required resource at both server and mobile phone perspectives. Through breaking the privacy concerns of the public, the proposed BeepTrace solution can provide a timely framework for authorities, companies, software developers, and researchers to fast develop and deploy effective digital contact tracing applications, to conquer the COVID-19 pandemic soon. Meanwhile, the open initiative of BeepTrace allows worldwide collaborations, integrate existing tracing and positioning solutions with the help of blockchain technology.

Orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) has shown to be a promising modulation technology that achieves the robust wireless transmission in high-mobility environments. The high mobility incurred Doppler effect in OTFS system, is represented as a continuous and relatively large band in the Doppler frequency. It yields the equivalent channel responses (ECRs) in the system change significantly within one symbol block, posing a challenge to channel estimation (CE) or tracking. In order to tackle this issue, in this paper, a set of transform-domain basis functions is designed to span a low-dimensional subspace for modeling the OTFS channel. Then, the CE can be performed by estimating a few projection coefficients of ECRs in the developed subspace, with training pilots. According to the individual transmission characteristic of OTFS signal, we propose a corner-inserted pilot pattern, which targets the low pilot overhead and satisfactory CE performance. Moreover, an OTFS signal detector, leveraging the time-domain channel equalization, linear-complexity interference cancellation and delay-Doppler domain maximal ratio combining detection, is developed to retrieve the transmitted data symbols. The simulations show the precisely estimated ECRs enable the detector to ideally demodulate 256-ary quadrature amplitude modulation signaling, under a velocity of 550 km/h at 5.9 GHz carrier frequency.

Orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) is a two-dimensional modulation scheme realized in the delay-Doppler domain, which targets the robust wireless transmissions in high-mobility environments. In such scenarios, OTFS signal suffers from multipath channel with continuous Doppler spread, which results in significant inter-symbol interference and inter-Doppler interference (IDI). In this article, we analyze the interference generation mechanism, and compare statistical distributions of the IDI in two typical cases, i.e., limited-Doppler-shift channel and continuous-Doppler-spread channel (CoDSC). Focusing on the OTFS signal transmission over the CoDSC, our study firstly indicates that the widespread IDI incurs a computational burden for the element-wise detector like the message passing in the state-of-the-art works. Addressing this challenge, we propose a block-wise OTFS receiver by exploiting the structure and characteristics of the OTFS transmission matrix. In the receiver, we deliberately design an iteration strategy among the least squares minimum residual based channel equalizer, reliability-based symbol detector and interference eliminator, which can realize fast convergence by leveraging the sparsity of channel matrix. The simulations demonstrate that, in the CoDSC, the proposed scheme achieves much less detection error, and meanwhile reduces the computational complexity by an order of magnitude, compared with the state-of-the-art OTFS receivers.

In this paper, we study the average packet error probability (APEP) and effective throughput (ET) of the control link in unmanned-aerial-vehicle (UAV) communications, where the ground central station (GCS) sends control signals to the UAV that requires ultra-reliable and low-latency communications (URLLC). To ensure the low latency, short packets are adopted for the control signal. As a result, the Shannon capacity theorem cannot be adopted here due to its assumption of infinite channel blocklength. We consider both free space (FS) and 3-Dimensional (3D) channel models by assuming that the locations of the UAV are randomly distributed within a restricted space. We first characterize the statistical characteristics of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for both FS and 3D models. Then, the closed-form analytical expressions of APEP and ET are derived by using Gaussian-Chebyshev quadrature. Also, the lower bounds are derived to obtain more insights. Finally, we obtain the optimal value of packet length with the objective of maximizing the ET by applying one-dimensional search. Our analytical results are verified by the Monte-Carlo simulations.

Network slicing (NS) has been identified as one of the most promising architectural technologies for future mobile network systems to meet the extremely diversified service requirements of users. In radio access networks (RAN) slicing, service provisioning for slice users becomes much more complicated than that in traditional mobile networks, as the constraints of both user physical association with base station (BS) and logical association with NS should be considered. In other words, the user-BS-NS three layer association relationship should be addressed in provisioning tailored service for diversified use cases with various quality of service (QoS) requirements. Therefore, service provisioning in RAN slicing becomes an essential yet challenging issue for 5G and beyond systems. In this paper, we propose a unified framework for service provisioning in RAN slicing with aim of maximizing resource utilization while guaranteeing QoS of users. The framework consists of two steps. The first step is to identify a set of slice users whose QoS can be satisfied simultaneously; while the second step performs joint slice association and bandwidth allocation with aim to minimize bandwidth consumption. Numerical results show that in typical scenarios, our proposed service provisioning framework can achieve significant performance gain in terms of the number of serving users and wireless bandwidth utilization compared with traditional schemes.

Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT) consensus mechanism shows a great potential to break the performance bottleneck of the Proof-of-Work (PoW)-based blockchain systems, which typically support only dozens of transactions per second and require minutes to hours for transaction confirmation. However, due to frequent inter-node communications, PBFT mechanism has a poor node scalability and thus it is typically adopted in small networks. To enable PBFT in large systems such as massive Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems and blockchain, in this article, a scalable multi-layer PBFT-based consensus mechanism is proposed by hierarchically grouping nodes into different layers and limiting the communication within the group. We first propose an optimal double-layer PBFT and show that the communication complexity is significantly reduced. Specifically, we prove that when the nodes are evenly distributed within the sub-groups in the second layer, the communication complexity is minimized. The security threshold is analyzed based on faulty probability determined (FPD) and faulty number determined (FND) models, respectively. We also provide a practical protocol for the proposed double-layer PBFT system. Finally, the results are extended to arbitrary-layer PBFT systems with communication complexity and security analysis. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the analytical results.

Keeping patients' sensitive information secured and untampered in the e-Health system is of paramount importance. Emerging as a promising technology to build a secure and reliable distributed ledger, blockchain can protect data from being falsified, which has attracted much attention from both academia and industry. However, with limited computational resources, medical IoT devices do not have efficient ability to fulfill the functionalities as a full node in wireless blockchain network (WBN). Facing this dilemma, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) brings us dawn and hope through offloading the high resource demanding blockchain functionalities at the IoT devices to the MEC. However, aiming to maximize the mining profit, most of existing offloading strategies have ignored the other needs of wireless devices, e.g., faster transaction writing. In this paper, according to different needs, blockchain nodes are firstly divided into two categories. One is blockchain users whose needs are faster transaction uploading, the other is blockchain miners whose goals are maximum revenue. Then, to maximize both the utilities of blockchain users and blockchain miners, a Stackelberg game is introduced to formulate the interaction between them. From the simulation results, this game is proved to converge to a unique optimal equilibrium.

5G communication systems and beyond are envisioned to support an extremely diverse set of use cases with different performance requirements. These different requirements necessitate the use of different numerologies for increased flexibility. Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) can potentially attain this flexibility by superimposing user signals while offering improved spectral efficiency (SE). However, users with different numerologies have different symbol durations. When combined with NOMA, this changes the nature of the interference the users impose on each other. This paper investigates a multinumerology NOMA (MN-NOMA) scheme using successive interference cancellation (SIC) as an enabler for coexistence of users with with different numerologies. Analytical expressions for the inter-numerology interference (INI) experienced by each user at the receiver are derived, where mean-squared error (MSE) is the metric used to quantity INI. Using the MSE expressions, we analytically derive achievable rates for each user in the MN-NOMA system. These expressions are then evaluated and used to compare the SE performance of MN-NOMA with that of its single-numerology counterpart. The proposed scheme can achieve the desired flexibility in supporting diverse use cases in future wireless networks. The scheme also gains the SE benefits of NOMA compared to both multinumerology and single numerology orthogonal multiple access (OMA) schemes.

Blockchain-enabled wireless network has been recognized as an emerging network architecture to be widely employed into the Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems for establishing trust and consensus mechanisms without the involvement of a third party. However, the uncertainty and vulnerability of wireless channels among the IoT nodes may pose a serious challenge to facilitate the deployment of blockchain in wireless networks. In this paper, we first present a generic system model for blockchain enabled wireless networks with multiple communication connections, where the number of communication connections between a client IoT node and the blockchain full nodes can be any arbitrary positive integer to satisfy different security requirements. Based on the proposed spatial-temporal network model, we theoretically calculate the transmission successful probability and the required communication throughput to support a wireless blockchain network. Finally, simulation results validate the accuracy of our theoretical analysis.

The impact of communication transmission delay on the original blockchain, has not been well considered and studied since it is primarily designed in stable wired communication environment with high communication capacity. However, in a wireless scenario, due to the scarcity of spectrum resource, a blockchain user may have to compete for wireless channel to broadcast transactions following media access control (MAC) mechanism. As a result, the communication transmission delay may be significant and pose a bottleneck on the blockchain system performance and security. To facilitate blockchain applications in wireless industrial Internet of Things (IIoTs), this article aims to investigate whether the widely used MAC mechanism, carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA), is suitable for wireless blockchain networks or not. Based on tangle, as an example to analyze the system performance in term of confirmation delay, transaction per second and transaction loss probability by considering the impact of queueing and transmission delay caused by CSMA/CA. Next, a stochastic model is proposed to analyze the security issue taking into account the malicious double-spending attack. Simulation results provide valuable insights when running blockchain in wireless network, the performance would be limited by the traditional CSMA/CA protocol. Meanwhile, we demonstrate that the probability of launching a successful double-spending attack would be affected by CSMA/CA as well.

Network slicing is identified as a fundamental architectural technology for future mobile networks since it can logically separate networks into multiple slices and provide tailored quality of service (QoS). However, the introduction of network slicing into radio access networks (RAN) can greatly increase user handover complexity in cellular networks. Specifically, both physical resource constraints on base stations (BSs) and logical connection constraints on network slices (NSs) should be considered when making a handover decision. Moreover, various service types call for an intelligent handover scheme to guarantee the diversified QoS requirements. As such, in this article, a multiagent reinforcement LEarning based Smart handover Scheme, named LESS, is proposed, with the purpose of minimizing handover cost while maintaining user QoS. Due to the large action space introduced by multiple users and the data sparsity caused by user mobility, conventional reinforcement learning algorithms cannot be applied directly. To solve these difficulties, LESS exploits the unique characteristics of slicing in designing two algorithms: 1) LESS-DL, a distributed Q-learning algorithm to make handover decisions with reduced action space but without compromising handover performance; 2) LESS-QVU, a modified Q-value update algorithm which exploits slice traffic similarity to improve the accuracy of Q-value evaluation with limited data. Thus, LESS uses LESS-DL to choose the target BS and NS when a handover occurs, while Q-values are updated by using LESS-QVU. The convergence of LESS is theoretically proved in this article. Simulation results show that LESS can significantly improve network performance. In more detail, the number of handovers, handover cost and outage probability are reduced by around 50%, 65%, and 45%, respectively, when compared with traditional methods.

Direct Acyclic Graph (DAG)-based ledger and the corresponding consensus algorithm has been identified as a promising technology for Internet of Things (IoT). Compared with Proof-of-Work (PoW) and Proof-of-Stake (PoS) that have been widely used in blockchain, the consensus mechanism designed on DAG structure (simply called as DAG consensus) can overcome some shortcomings such as high resource consumption, high transaction fee, low transaction throughput and long confirmation delay. However, the theoretic analysis on the DAG consensus is an untapped venue to be explored. To this end, based on one of the most typical DAG consensuses, Tangle, we investigate the impact of network load on the performance and security of the DAG-based ledger. Considering unsteady network load, we first propose a Markov chain model to capture the behavior of DAG consensus process under dynamic load conditions. The key performance metrics, i.e., cumulative weight and confirmation delay are analysed based on the proposed model. Then, we leverage a stochastic model to analyse the probability of a successful double-spending attack in different network load regimes. The results can provide an insightful understanding of DAG consensus process, e.g., how the network load affects the confirmation delay and the probability of a successful attack. Meanwhile, we also demonstrate the trade-off between security level and confirmation delay, which can act as a guidance for practical deployment of DAG-based ledgers.

Mixed-numerology transmission is proposed to support a variety of communication scenarios with diverse requirements. However, as the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) remains as the basic waveform, the peak-to average power ratio (PAPR) problem is still cumbersome. In this paper, based on the iterative clipping and filtering (ICF) and optimization methods, we investigate the PAPR reduction in the mixed-numerology systems. We first illustrate that the direct extension of classical ICF brings about the accumulation of inter-numerology interference (INI) due to the repeated execution. By exploiting the clipping noise rather than the clipped signal, the noise-shaped ICF (NS-ICF) method is then proposed without increasing the INI. Next, we address the in-band distortion minimization problem subject to the PAPR constraint. By reformulation, the resulting model is separable in both the objective function and the constraints, and well suited for the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) approach. The ADMM-based algorithms are then developed to split the original problem into several subproblems which can be easily solved with closed-form solutions. Furthermore, the applications of the proposed PAPR reduction methods combined with filtering and windowing techniques are also shown to be effective.

The flexibility in supporting heterogeneous services with vastly different technical requirements is one of the distinguishing characteristics of the fifth generation (5G) communication systems and beyond. One viable solution is to divide the system bandwidth into several bandwidth parts (BWPs), each having a distinct numerology optimized for a particular service. However, multiplexing of mixed numerologies over a unified physical infrastructure comes at the cost of induced interference. In this paper, we develop an analytical system model for inter-numerology interference (InterNI) analysis in orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems with and without filter processing in the presence of mixed numerologies. With the analytical model, the level of InterNI is quantified by the developed analytical metric, which is expressed as a function of several system parameters. This leads to an analysis and evaluation of these parameters for meeting a given distortion target. Moreover, a case study on power allocation utilizing the derived analysis is presented, where an optimization problem of maximizing the sum rate is formulated, and a solution is also provided. It is also demonstrated that a filtered-OFDM system better accommodates the coexistence of mixed numerologies. The proposed model provides an accurate analytical guidance for the multi-service design in 5G and beyond systems.

A clear understanding of mixed-numerology signals multiplexing and isolation in the physical layer is of importance to enable spectrum efficient radio access network (RAN) slicing, where the available access resource is divided into slices to cater to services/users with optimal individual design. In this paper, a RAN slicing framework is proposed and systematically analyzed from the physical layer perspective. According to the baseband and radio frequency (RF) configurations imparities among slices, we categorize four scenarios and elaborate on the numerology relationships of slices configurations. By considering the most generic scenario, system models are established for both uplink and downlink transmissions. Besides, a low out of band emission (OoBE) waveform is implemented in the system for the sake of signal isolation and inter-service/slice-band-interference (ISBI) mitigation. We propose two theorems as the basis of algorithms design in the established system, which generalize the original circular convolution property of discrete Fourier transform (DFT). Moreover, ISBI cancellation algorithms are proposed based on a collaboration detection scheme, where joint slices signal models are implemented. The framework proposed in the paper establishes a foundation to underpin extremely diverse use cases in 5G that implement on a common infrastructure.

Recent advances in meta-materials offer the prospect of deploying smart surfaces, or intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRS), that can manipulate electromagnetic (EM) channels and expand their achievable capacity. In this paper, we investigate the programmable channel of multi-user multiple input and multiple output (MU-MIMO) transmission and beamforming using meta-surface with multiple elements. We first model the MU-MIMO channel, and the optimal solution is derived based on the proposed multi-user Linearly Constrained Minimum Variance (MU-LCMV) beamformer. The beam pattern is analyzed, which shows that a single set of optimal weights can form multiple interference-free beams with redundant beams to be formed to achieve the multi-stream MIMO transmission in typical configurations. The mathematical relationships of the beams are derived with different surface configurations. Extensive simulations verify the results. This work is fundamental and can potentially enhance any state-of-the-art wireless communication systems ranging from transceiver design, system and architecture design, network deployment, and self-organizing-network operations.

Distributed systems are crucial to the full realization of the Internet of Thing (IoT) ecosystem as it mitigates the challenges of trust, security, and scalability associated with the traditional centralized approach. In this paper, we present an analytical modeling framework for Practical Byzantine Fault Tolerance (PBFT)-a consensus method for blockchain in IoT networks. We define the viable area for the wireless PBFT networks which guarantees the minimum number of replica nodes required for achieving the protocol's safety and liveliness. We also present an analytical framework for obtaining the viable area which we later utilize for power optimization. Results show that significant energy saving can be achieved with the utilization of the viable area concept in wireless PBFT networks. The proposed framework can serve as a theoretical guidance for practical PBFT based wireless blockchain network deployment.

An index modulation (IM) assisted Discrete Cosine Transform based Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (DCT-OFDM) with Enhanced Transmitter Design (termed as EDCT-OFDM-IM) is proposed. It amalgamates the concept of Discrete Cosine Transform assisted Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (DCT-OFDM) and Index Modulation (IM) to exploit the design freedom provided by the double number of available subcarrier under the same bandwidth. In the proposed EDCT-OFDM-IM scheme, the maximum likelihood (ML) detector used for symbol bits and index bits recovering is derived and the sophisticated designing guidelines for EDCT-OFDM-IM are provided. Based on the derived pairwise error event probability, a theoretical upper bound on the average bit-error probability (ABEP) of EDCT-OFDM-IM is provided over multipath fading channels. Furthermore, the maximum peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) of our proposed EDCT-OFDM-IM scheme is derived and compared to than the general Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) based OFDM-IM counterpart.

In this paper, we investigate the resource management for radio access network slicing from user access control and wireless bandwidth allocation perspectives. First, to guarantee users' QoS, we propose two admission control (AC) policies to select admissible users from the perspective of optimizing the QoS and the number of serving users respectively. Then, to optimize the bandwidth utilization for the selected admissible users, we investigate the slice association and bandwidth allocation (SABA) problem and propose network centric and UE centric SABA policies respectively. Numerical results show that in typical scenarios, our proposed AC and SABA policies can significantly outperform traditional policies in terms of wireless bandwidth utilization and number of admissible users.

Network slicing (NS) has been identified as a fundamental technology for future mobile networks to meet extremely diverse communication requirements by providing tailored quality of service (QoS). However, due to the introduction of NS into radio access networks (RAN) forming a UE-BS-NS three-layer association, handoff becomes very complicated and cannot be resolved by conventional policies. In this paper, we propose a multi-agent reinforcement LEarning based Smart handoff policy with data Sharing, named LESS, to reduce handoff cost while maintaining user QoS requirements in RAN slicing. Considering the large action space introduced by multiple users and the data sparsity problem due to user mobility, LESS is designed to have two components: 1) LESS-DL, a modified distributed Q-learning algorithm with small action space to make handoff decisions; 2) LESS-DS, a data sharing mechanism using limited data to improve the accuracy of handoff decisions made by LESS-DL. The proposed LESS mechanism uses LESS-DL to choose both the target base station and NS when a handoff occurs, and then updates the Q-values of each user according to LESS-DS. Numerical results show that in typical scenarios, LESS can significantly reduce the handoff cost when compared with traditional handoff policies without learning.

Three-dimensional (3D) convolutional networks have been proven to be able to explore spatial context and spectral information simultaneously for super-resolution (SR). However, such kind of network can't be practically designed very `deep' due to the long training time and GPU memory limitations involved in 3D convolution. Instead, in this paper, spatial context and spectral information in hyperspectral images (HSIs) are explored using Two-dimensional (2D) and One-dimenional (1D) convolution, separately. Therefore, a novel 2D-1D generative adversarial network architecture (2D-1D-HSRGAN) is proposed for SR of HSIs. Specifically, the generator network consists of a spatial network and a spectral network, in which spatial network is trained with the least absolute deviations loss function to explore spatial context by 2D convolution and spectral network is trained with the spectral angle mapper (SAM) loss function to extract spectral information by 1D convolution. Experimental results over two real HSIs demonstrate that the proposed 2D-1D-HSRGAN clearly outperforms several state-of-the-art algorithms.

Super-resolution (SR) of hyperspectral images (HSIs) aims to enhance the spatial/spectral resolution of hyperspectral imagery and the super-resolved results will benefit many remote sensing applications. A generative adversarial network for HSIs super-resolution (HSRGAN) is proposed in this paper. Specifically, HSRGAN constructs spectral and spatial blocks with residual network in generator to effectively learn spectral and spatial features from HSIs. Furthermore, a new loss function which combines the pixel-wise loss and adversarial loss together is designed to guide the generator to recover images approximating the original HSIs and with finer texture details. Quantitative and qualitative results demonstrate that the proposed HSRGAN is superior to the state of the art methods like SRCNN and SRGAN for HSIs spatial SR.

In this paper, multi-unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) enabled mobile edge computing (MEC), i.e., UAVE is studied, where several UAVs are deployed as flying MEC platform to provide computing resource to ground user equipments (UEs). Compared to the traditional fixed location MEC, UAV enabled MEC (i.e., UAVE) is particular useful in case of temporary events, emergency situations and on-demand services, due to its high flexibility, low cost and easy deployment features. However, operation of UAVE faces several challenges, two of which are how to achieve both 1) the association between multiple UEs and UAVs and 2) the resource allocation from UAVs to UEs, while minimizing the energy consumption for all the UEs. To address this, we formulate the above problem into a mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP), which is difficult to be solved in general, especially in the large-scale scenario. We then propose a Reinforcement Learning (RL)-based user Association and resource Allocation (RLAA) algorithm to tackle this problem efficiently and effectively. Numerical results show that the proposed RLAA can achieve the optimal performance with comparison to the exhaustive search in small scale, and have considerable performance gain over other typical algorithms in large-scale cases.

As one of the most important communication scenarios in the comingfifth generation (5G) cellular networks, ultra-reliable and low-latency communication (URLLC) is promising to enable real-time wireless control systems. However, one of the biggest challenges is that how to integrate URLLC and control performance together to maximize the overall system performance. In this paper, we investigate the resource allocation for URLLC uplink in real-time wireless control systems. Specifically, we first discuss the relationship between communication and control performance. Based on that, we convert the hybrid co-design problem into a regular wireless resource allocation problem. Then, we propose an iteration algorithm to obtain the optimal wireless resource allocation. Simulation results indicate the performance of our method.

Packetized predictive control (PPC) is an effective solution to ensure the robustness of the control system over unreliable wireless links. However, conventional wireless transmission methods in PPC suffer from either high wireless resource consumption or poor performance of real-time control due to the separately design of the two parts. To deal with the issue, we propose a communication-control co-design approach to achieve good trade-off between real-time control performance and communication energy efficiency. Our results demonstrate the advantages of the communication-control co-design.

Blockchain has shown a great potential in Internet of Things (IoT) ecosystems for establishing trust and consensus mechanisms without involvement of any third party. Understanding the relationship between communication and blockchain as well as the performance constraints posing on the counterparts can facilitate designing a dedicated blockchain-enabled IoT systems. In this paper, we establish an analytical model for the blockchain-enabled wireless IoT system. By considering spatio-temporal domain Poisson distribution, i.e., node geographical distribution in spatial domain and transaction arrival rate in time domain are both modeled as Poisson point process (PPP), we first derive the distribution of signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR), blockchain transaction successful rate as well as overall throughput. Based on the system model and performance analysis, we design an algorithm to determine the optimal full function node deployment for blockchain system under the criterion of maximizing transaction throughput. Finally, the security performance is analyzed in the proposed networks with three typical attacks. Solutions such as physical layer security are presented and discussed to keep the system secure under these attacks. Numerical results validate the accuracy of our theoretical analysis and optimal node deployment algorithm.

In this paper, the performance of indoor Terahertz (THz) communication systems with one-bit digital-to- analog converters (DACs) is investigated. Array-of- subarrays architecture is assumed for the antennas at the access points, where each RF chain uniquely activates a disjoint subset of antennas, each of which is connected to an exclusive phase shifter. Hybrid precoding, including maximum ratio transmission (MRT) and zero-forcing (ZF) precoding, is considered. The best beamsteering direction for the phase shifter in the large subarray antenna regime is first proved to be the direction of the line-of-sight (LoS) path. Subsequently, the closed-form expression of the lower- bound of the achievable rate in the large subarray antenna regime is derived, which is the same for both MRT and ZF and is independent of the transmit power. Numerical results validating the analysis are provided as well.

In time-division-duplexing (TDD) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, channel reciprocity is exploited to overcome the overwhelming pilot training and the feedback overhead. However, in practical scenarios, the imperfections in channel reciprocity, mainly caused by radio-frequency mismatches among the antennas at the base station side, can significantly degrade the system performance and might become a performance limiting factor. In order to compensate for these imperfections, we present and investigate two new calibration schemes for TDD-based massive multi-user MIMO systems, namely, relative calibration and inverse calibration. In particular, the design of the proposed inverse calibration takes into account a compound effect of channel reciprocity error and channel estimation error. We further derive closed-form expressions for the ergodic sum rate, assuming maximum ratio transmissions with the compound effect of both errors. We demonstrate that the inverse calibration scheme outperforms the traditional relative calibration scheme. The proposed analytical results are also verified by simulated illustrations.

In this paper, we establish a comprehensive uplink system model for in-band and guard-band Narrowband Internet of Things (NB-IoT) with arbitrary sample duration in the NB-IoT device. The mathematical expressions of received LTE and NB-IoT signals are derived. Moreover, the close-form interference power on the LTE signal from the adjacent NB-IoT signal is given analytically. The result shows that the sample duration of NB-IoT device has significant impact on its desired signal and on the interference to the LTE user equipment (UE). Numerical results show that the analytical expressions match the simulated ones perfectly, which verifies the effectiveness of proposed system model and derivations. The work in this paper provides a valid guidance for NB-IoT system deployment and co-existence analysis.

Filtered orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (F-OFDM) system is a promising waveform for 5G and beyond to enable the multi-service system and spectrum efficient network slicing. However, the performance for F-OFDM systems has not been systematically analyzed in the literature. In this paper, we first establish a mathematical model for an F-OFDM system and derive the conditions to achieve the interference-free one-tap channel equalization. In the practical cases (e.g., insufficient guard interval, asynchronous transmission, and so on), the analytical expressions for inter-symbol interference, inter-carrier interference, and adjacent-carrier interference are derived, where the last term is considered as one of the key factors for asynchronous transmissions. Based on the framework, an optimal power compensation matrix is derived to make all of the subcarriers having the same ergodic performance. Another key contribution of this paper is that we propose a multi-rate F-OFDM system to enable low-complexity low-cost communication scenarios, such as narrow-band Internet of Things, at the cost of generating inter-subband interference (ISubBI). Low computational complexity algorithms are proposed to cancel the ISubBI. The result shows that the derived analytical expressions match the simulation results, and the proposed ISubBI cancelation algorithms can significantly save the original F-OFDM complexity (up to 100 times) without significant performance loss.

This paper proposes a low-complexity hybrid beamforming design for multi-antenna communication systems. The hybrid beamformer is comprised of a baseband digital beamformer and a constant modulus analog beamformer in the radio frequency (RF) part of the system. As in singular-value-decomposition (SVD)-based beamforming, hybrid beamforming design aims to generate parallel data streams in multi-antenna systems, however, due to the constant modulus constraint of the analog beamformer, the problem cannot be solved similarly. To address this problem, mathematical expressions of the parallel data streams are derived in this paper and desired and interfering signals are specified per stream. The analog beamformers are designed by maximizing the power of desired signal while minimizing the sum-power of interfering signals. Finally, digital beamformers are derived by defining the equivalent channel observed by the transmitter/receiver. Regardless of the number of the antennas or type of channel, the proposed approach can be applied to a wide range of MIMO systems with hybrid structure wherein the number of the antennas is more than the number of the RF chains. In particular, the proposed algorithm is verified for sparse channels that emulate mm-wave transmission as well as rich scattering environments. In order to validate the optimality, the results are compared with those of the state-of-the-art and it is demonstrated that the performance of the proposed method outperforms state-of-the-art techniques, regardless of type of the channel and/or system configuration.

Universal filtered multicarrier (UFMC) is a low complexity promising waveform that provides quasi‐orthogonal property among subcarriers. In addition, it can achieve much better out‐of‐band emission performance than orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system. Authors have proposed a hardware platform to implement a UFMC transmitter in this paper. Highly reduced complexity schemes for IFFT, filtering, and spectrum shifting are realized on actual hardware. This helps to achieve overall architecture of the transmitter at the cost of minimal FPGA resource usage. Hence, the overall design uses only 1038 slice registers, 1154 slice LUTs, and 64 multipliers of Xilinx Virtex‐7 XC7VX330t device. A throughput of 773.5 Msamples/sec at an operational frequency of 364 MHz is achieved. This throughput is adequate for processing 50 Physical Resource Blocks (PRB) of LTE 10 MHz channelization in required time. The presented architecture provides a latency of only 2% of one LTE 10MHz channelization symbol due to the implementation of pipelining at different levels. Although the presented hardware design in its current form meets LTE 10MHz channelization throughput requirements, further increase in throughput is possible due to the scalable nature of the architecture. To the best of our knowledge, this work is first ever FPGA solution for UFMC transmitter presented in the literature.

The discrete cosine transform (DCT) based multicarrier modulation (MCM) system is regarded as one of the promising transmission techniques for future wireless communications. By employing cosine basis as orthogonal functions for multiplexing each real-valued symbol with symbol period of T, it is able to maintain the subcarrier orthogonality while reducing frequency spacing to 1/(2T) Hz, which is only half of that compared to discrete Fourier transform (DFT) based multicarrier systems. In this paper, following one of the effective transmission models by which zeros are inserted as guard sequence and the DCT operation at the receiver is replaced by DFT of double length, we reformulate and evaluate three classic detection methods by appropriately processing the post-DFT signals both for single antenna and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) DCT-MCM systems. In all cases, we show that with our reformulated detection approaches, DCT-MCM schemes can outperform, in terms of error-rate, conventional OFDM-based systems.

This paper presents a complex-valued discrete multicarrier modulation (MCM) system based on the real-valued discrete Hartley transform (DHT) and its inverse (IDHT). Unlike the conventional discrete Fourier transform (DFT), the DHT cannot diagonalize multipath fading channels due to its inherent properties, and this results in mutual interference between subcarriers of the same mirror-symmetrical pair. We explore this interference pattern in order to seek an optimal solution to utilize channel diversity for enhancing the bit error rate (BER) performance of the system. It is shown that the optimal channel diversity gain can be achieved via pairwise maximum likelihood (ML) detection, taking into account not only the subcarrier's own channel quality but also the channel state information of its mirror-symmetrical peer. Performance analysis indicates that DHT-based MCM can mitigate fast fading effects by averaging channel power gains of each mirror-symmetrical pair of subcarriers. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme has a substantial improvement in BER over the conventional DFT-based MCM system.

We propose channel estimation algorithms and pilot signal optimization for the universal filtered multi-carrier (UFMC) system based on the comb-type pilot pattern. By considering the least square linear interpolation (LSLI), discrete Fourier transform (DFT), minimum mean square error (MMSE) and relaxed MMSE (RMMSE) channel estimators, we formulate the pilot signals optimization problem by minimizing the estimation MSE subject to the power constraint on pilot tones. The closed-form optimal solutions and minimum MSE are derived for LSLI, DFT, MMSE and RMMSE estimators.

Network slicing has been identified as one of the most important features for 5G and beyond to enable operators to utilize networks on an as-a-service basis and meet the wide range of use cases. In physical layer, the frequency and time resources are split into slices to cater for the services with individual optimal designs, resulting in services/slices having different baseband numerologies (e.g., subcarrier spacing) and / or radio frequency (RF) front-end configurations. In such a system, the multi-service signal multiplexing and isolation among the service/slices are critical for the Physical-Layer Network Slicing (PNS) since orthogonality is destroyed and significant inter-service/ slice-band-interference (ISBI) may be generated. In this paper, we first categorize four PNS cases according to the baseband and RF configurations among the slices. The system model is established by considering a low out of band emission (OoBE) waveform operating in the service/slice frequency band to mitigate the ISBI. The desired signal and interference for the two slices are derived. Consequently, one-tap channel equalization algorithms are proposed based on the derived model. The developed system models establish a framework for further interference analysis, ISBI cancelation algorithms, system design and parameter selection (e.g., guard band), to enable spectrum efficient network slicing.

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing with index modulation (OFDM-IM), which uses the subcarrier indices as a source of information, has attracted considerable interest recently. Motivated by the index modulation (IM) concept, we build a circular convolution filter bank multicarrier with index modulation (C-FBMC-IM) system in this paper. The advantages of the C-FBMC-IM system are investigated by comparing the interference power with the conventional C-FBMC system. As some subcarriers carry nothing but zeros, the minimum mean square error (MMSE) equalization bias power will be smaller comparing to the conventional C-FBMC system. As a result, our C-FBMC-IM system outperforms the conventional C-FBMC system. The simulation results demonstrate that both BER and spectral efficiency improvement can be achieved when we apply IM into the C-FBMC system.

Channel reciprocity in time-division duplexing (TDD) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems can be exploited to reduce the overhead required for the acquisition of channel state information (CSI). However, perfect reciprocity is unrealistic in practical systems due to random radio-frequency (RF) circuit mismatches in uplink and downlink channels. This can result in a significant degradation in the performance of linear precoding schemes, which are sensitive to the accuracy of the CSI. In this paper, we model and analyse the impact of RF mismatches on the performance of linear precoding in a TDD multi-user massive MIMO system, by taking the channel estimation error into considerations. We use the truncated Gaussian distribution to model the RF mismatch, and derive closed-form expressions of the output signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio for maximum ratio transmission and zero forcing precoders. We further investigate the asymptotic performance of the derived expressions, to provide valuable insights into the practical system designs, including useful guidelines for the selection of the effective precoding schemes. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the validity and accuracy of the proposed analytical results.

Flexibly supporting multiple services, each with different communication requirements and frame structure, has been identified as one of the most significant and promising characteristics of next generation and beyond wireless communication systems. However, integrating multiple frame structures with different subcarrier spacing in one radio carrier may result in significant inter-service-band-interference (ISBI). In this paper, a framework for multi-service (MS) systems is established based on a subband filtered multi-carrier system. The subband filtering implementations and both asynchronous and generalized synchronous (GS) MS subband filtered multi-carrier (SFMC) systems have been proposed. Based on the GS-MS-SFMC system, the system model with ISBI is derived and a number of properties on ISBI are given. In addition, low-complexity ISBI cancelation algorithms are proposed by precoding the information symbols at the transmitter. For asynchronous MS-SFMC system in the presence of transceiver imperfections, including carrier frequency offset, timing offset, and phase noise, a complete analytical system model is established in terms of desired signal, inter-symbol-interference, inter-carrier-interference, ISBI, and noise. Thereafter, new channel equalization algorithms are proposed by considering the errors and imperfections. Numerical analysis shows that the analytical results match the simulation results, and the proposed ISBI cancelation and equalization algorithms can significantly improve the system performance in comparison with the existing algorithms.

To flexibly support diverse communication requirements (e.g., throughput, latency, massive connection, etc.) for the next generation wireless communications, one viable solution is to divide the system bandwidth into several service subbands, each for a different type of service. In such a multi-service (MS) system, each service has its optimal frame structure while the services are isolated by subband filtering. In this paper, a framework for multi-service (MS) system is established based on subband filtered multi-carrier (SFMC) modulation. We consider both single-rate (SR) and multi-rate (MR) signal processing as two different MS-SFMC implementations, each having different performance and computational complexity. By comparison, the SR system outperforms the MR system in terms of performance while the MR system has a significantly reduced computational complexity than the SR system. Numerical results show the effectiveness of our analysis and the proposed systems. These proposed SR and MR MS-SFMC systems provide guidelines for next generation wireless system frame structure optimization and algorithm design.

Recently proposed universal filtered multicarrier (UFMC) system is not an orthogonal system in multipath channel environments and might cause significant performance loss. In this paper, the authors propose a cyclic prefix (CP) based UFMC system and first analyze the conditions for interference-free one-tap equalization in the absence of transceiver imperfections. Then the corresponding signal model and output signal-to-noise ratio expression are derived. In the presence of carrier frequency offset, timing offset, and insufficient CP length, the authors establish an analytical system model as a summation of desired signal, intersymbol interference, intercarrier interference, and noise. New channel equalization algorithms are proposed based on the derived analytical signal model. Numerical results show that the derived model matches the simulation results precisely, and the proposed equalization algorithms improve the UFMC system performance in terms of bit error rate.

Small cell (SCell) and Software Define Network (SDN) are two key enablers to meet the evolutional requirements of future telecommunication networks, but still on the initial study stage with lots of challenges faced. In this paper, the problem of mobility management in SDN-integrated LTE (Long Term Evolution) mobile backhaul network is investigated. An 802.1ad double tagging scheme is designed for traffic forwarding between Serving Gateway (S-GW) and SCell with QoS (Quality of Service) differentiation support. In addition, a dynamic localized forwarding scheme is proposed for packet delivery of the ongoing traffic session to facilitate the mobility of UE within a dense SCell network. With this proposal, the data packets of an ongoing session can be forwarded from the source SCell to the target SCell instead of switching the whole forwarding path, which can drastically save the path-switch signalling cost in this SDN network. Numerical results show that compared with traditional path switch policy, more than 50% signalling cost can be reduced, even considering the impact on the forwarding path deletion when session ceases. The performance of data delivery is also analysed, which demonstrates the introduced extra delivery cost is acceptable and even negligible in case of short forwarding chain or large backhaul latency.