This paper proposes a new channel access procedure to mitigate the channel access contention in next generation of Wireless Local-Area Networks (WLANs) by allowing cooperation among devices belonging to same network, while maintaining high flexibility in terms of how each device may contend the medium. After introducing the details of the proposed procedure, which is here referred to as sharing-based protocol, an analytical analysis is provided to compare it with the two state-of-art protocols currently adopted in IEEE 802.11 standard, i.e, Enhanced Distributed Channel Access (EDCA)-based and trigger-based protocol. In this regards, closed form expressions are derived to evaluate the success probability of channel access for each protocol. In order to show the merit of the proposed procedure, a comprehensive system level analysis is also provided, which highlights that the proposed procedure outperforms the two state-of-art protocols in terms of mitigating the End-to-End (E2E) delay and allowing a better spectrum utilization by reducing the overall congestion in the system.

The deployment of Internet of Things (IoT) technologies in unlicensed spectrum is a candidate feature for 5G to support massive connections of IoT devices. Current IoT unlicensed band technologies, such as Sigfox and LoRa, are all at an early stage of deployment without a significant market share. In this context, the MulteFire (MF) Alliance has envisioned to adapt the cellular NB-IoT design to operate within the Sub-1 GHz unlicensed spectrum. However, the diverse regulatory requirements within this unlicensed band put a hurdle to the worldwide deployment of unlicensed band IoT technologies. To settle this challenge, MF has designed a specific framework for narrow-band (NB)-IoT systems operating on unlicensed spectrum (NB-IoT-U), which can be utilized under both the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) and European Telecommunication Standards Institute (ETSI) regulatory requirements. In this paper, enhanced synchronization and physical broadcasting signals are proposed based upon the framework designed by MF with the aim to allow a more robust detection, and to fulfil the coverage targets set for this technology. Furthermore, in order to allow the system to operate as a frequency hopping spread spectrum (FHSS) system, a novel frequency hopping pattern generator compliant with the regulatory requirements is designed, and its performance is evaluated.

Future wireless networks are expected to adopt many different network technologies and architectures that promise to greatly enhance data rate and provide ubiquitous coverage for end users, all while enabling higher spectral efficiency. These benefits come with an increased risk of co-channel interference and possible correlation in the aggregated interference, which impacts the communication performance. This paper introduces a mathematical framework to quantify the spatial correlation of the interference in finite and clustered wireless networks with signals subject to Rayleigh fading. Expressions are derived for the correlation coefficient of the outage probability when the interferers are located according to some of the most common point processes used in the literature to model the spatial distribution of the devices: binomial point process (i.e., relay networks with fixed users), Poisson point process (i.e., heterogeneous cellular networks), and Thomas point process (i.e., device-to-device networks).

Deployment of Long Term Evolution (LTE) in unlicensed spectrum has been a candidate feature to meet the explosive growth of traffic demand since 3GPP release 13. To further explore the advantage of unlicensed bands, in this context the operation of both uplink and downlink has been supported and studied in the subsequent releases. However, it has been identified that scheduled uplink transmission performance in unlicensed spectrum is significantly degraded due to the double listen-before-talk (LBT) requirements at both eNB when sending the uplink grant, and at the scheduled UEs before transmission. In this paper, in order to overcome this issue, a novel uplink transmission scheme, which does not require any grant, is proposed, and the details regarding the system design are provided. By modeling the dynamics in time of the LBT for both a system that employs a conventional uplink scheme, as well as the proposed scheme, it is verified through analytical evaluation that the double LBT scheme for uplink transmission greatly reduces the channel access probability for the UE, and leads consequently to performance loss, while the proposed scheme is able to alleviate this issue. System level simulation results, compliant with the LTE standard, show that the proposed scheme can achieve a significant performance gain in terms of throughput with negligible performance loss for the downlink, and other technologies operating in the same spectrum.

Fifth-generation (5G) cellular networks are expected to exhibit at least three primary physical-layer differences relative to fourth-generation (4G) ones: millimeter-wave propagation, massive antenna arrays, and densification of base stations. As in 4G systems, such as LTE, 5G systems are likely to continue to use single-carrier frequency-division multiple-access on the uplink due to its advantageous peak-to-average power ratio. Moreover, 5G systems are likely to use frequency hopping on the uplink to help randomize interference and provide diversity against frequency-selective fading. In this paper, the implications of these and other physical-layer features on uplink performance are assessed using a novel millimeter-wave propagation model featuring distance-dependent parameters that characterize the path-loss, shadowing, and fading. The analysis proceeds by first fixing the location of the mobile devices and finding the performance conditioned on the topology. The spatially averaged performance is then found by averaging with respect to the location of the mobile devices. The analysis allows for the use of actual base-station topologies and the propagation model can leverage empirical millimeter-wave measurements. The benefits of base-station densification, highly directional sectorization, frequency hopping, a large available bandwidth, and a high code rate are illustrated. The minor importance of fractional power control is shown.

In a centralized or cloud radio access network, certain portions of the digital baseband processing of a group of several radio access points are processed at a central data center. Centralization improves the flexibility, scalability, and utilization of computational assets. However, the performance depends critically on how the limited data processing resources are allocated to serve the needs of the different wireless devices. As the processing load imposed by each device depends on its allocated transmission rate and channel quality, the rate- allocation aspect of the scheduling should take into account the available computing resources. In this paper, two computationally aware schedulers are proposed that have the objective of maximizing the system sum-rate while satisfying a constraint on the offered computational load. The first scheduler optimally allocates resources and is implemented according to a water-filling algorithm. The second scheduler is suboptimal, but uses a simpler and intuitive complexity-cut-off approach. The performance of both schedulers is evaluated using an LTE- compliant system level simulator. It is found that both schedulers avoid outages that are caused by an overflow of computational load (i.e., computational outages) at the cost of a slight loss of sum-rate.

Geographic routing protocols greatly reduce the requirements of topology storage and provide flexibility in the accommodation of the dynamic behavior of mobile ad hoc networks. This paper presents performance evaluations and comparisons of two geographic routing protocols and the popular AODV protocol. The tradeoffs among the average path reliabilities, average conditional delays, average conditional numbers of hops, and area spectral efficiencies and the effects of various parameters are illustrated for finite ad hoc networks with randomly placed mobiles. This paper uses a dual method of closed-form analysis and simple simulation that is applicable to most routing protocols and provides a much more realistic performance evaluation than has previously been possible. Some features included in the new analysis are shadowing, exclusion and guard zones, distance-dependent fading, and interference correlation.

In a centralized radio access network (RAN), the signals from multiple radio access points (RAPs) are centrally processed in a data center. A centralized RAN enables advanced interference coordination strategies while leveraging the elastic provisioning of data processing resources. It is particularly well suited for dense deployments, such as within a large building where the RAPs are connected via fiber and where many cells are underutilized. This paper considers the computational requirements of a centralized RAN with the goal of illuminating the benefits of pooling computational resources. A new analytical framework is proposed for quantifying the computational load associated with the centralized processing of uplink signals in the presence of block Rayleigh fading, a distance-dependent path loss, and fractional power control. Several new performance metrics are defined, including the computational outage probability, the outage complexity, the computational gain, the computational diversity, and the complexity-rate tradeoff. The validity of the analytical framework is confirmed by numerically comparing it with a simulator compliant with the 3GPP LTE standard. Using the developed metrics, it is shown that centralizing computing resources provides a higher net throughput per computational resource as compared with local processing.

Centralized radio access network architectures consolidate the baseband operation towards a cloud-based platform, thereby allowing for efficient utilization of computing assets, effective inter-cell coordination, and exploitation of global channel state information. This paper considers the interplay between computational efficiency and data throughput that is fundamental to centralized RAN. It introduces the concept of computational outage in mobile networks, and applies it to the analysis of complexity constrained dense centralized RAN networks. The framework is applied to single-cell and multi-cell scenarios using parameters drawn from the LTE standard. It is found that in computationally limited networks, the effective throughput can be improved by using a computationally aware policy for selecting the modulation and coding scheme, which sacrifices spectral efficiency in order to reduce the computational outage probability. When signals of multiple base stations are processed centrally, a computational diversity benefit emerges, and the benefit grows with increasing user density.

A new accurate analysis is presented for an OFDM-based multicast-broadcast single-frequency network (MBSFN). The topology of the network is modeled by a constrained random spatial model involving a fixed number of base stations placed over a finite area with a minimum separation. The analysis is driven by a new closed-form expression for the conditional outage probability at each location of the network, where the conditioning is with respect to the network realization. The analysis accounts for the diversity combining of signals transmitted by different base stations of a given MBSFN area, and also accounts for the interference caused by the base stations of other MBSFN areas. The analysis features a flexible channel model, accounting for path loss, Nakagami fading, and correlated shadowing. The analysis is used to investigate the influence of the minimum base-station separation and provides insight regarding the optimal size of the MBSFN areas. In order to highlight the percentage of the network that will fail to successfully receive the broadcast, the area below an outage threshold (ABOT) is here used and defined as the fraction of the network that provides an outage probability (averaged over the fading) that meets a threshold.

Multi-cell cooperation (MCC) mitigates intercell interference and improves throughput at the cell edge. This paper considers a cooperative downlink, whereby cell-edge mobiles are served by multiple cooperative base stations. The cooperating base stations transmit identical signals over paths with non-identical path losses, and the receiving mobile performs diversity combining. The analysis in this paper is driven by a new expression for the conditional outage probability when signals arriving over different paths are combined in the presence of noise and interference, where the conditioning is with respect to the network topology and shadowing. The channel model accounts for path loss, shadowing, and Nakagami fading, and the Nakagami fading parameters do not need to be identical for all paths. To study performance over a wide class of network topologies, a random spatial model is adopted, and performance is found by statistically characterizing the rates provided on the downlinks. To model realistic networks, the model requires a minimum separation among base stations. Having adopted a realistic model and an accurate analysis, the paper proceeds to determine performance under several resource-allocation policies and provides insight regarding how the cell edge should be defined.

A new analysis is presented for the direct-sequence code-division multiple access (DS-CDMA) cellular uplink. For a given network topology, closed-form expressions are found for the outage probability and rate of each uplink in the presence of path-dependent Nakagami fading and log-normal shadowing. The topology may be arbitrary or modeled by a random spatial distribution for a fixed number of base stations and mobiles placed over a finite area with the separations among them constrained to exceed a minimum distance. The analysis is more detailed and accurate than existing ones and facilitates the resolution of network design issues, including the influence of the minimum base-station separation, the role of the spreading factor, and the impact of various power-control and rate-control policies. It is shown that once power control is established, the rate can be allocated according to a fixed-rate or variable-rate policy with the objective of either meeting an outage constraint or maximizing throughput. An advantage of the variable-rate policy is that it allows an outage constraint to be enforced on every uplink, whereas the fixed-rate policy can only meet an average outage constraint.

This paper considers ad hoc networks that use the combination of coded continuous-phase frequency-shift keying (CPFSK) and frequency-hopping multiple access. Although CPFSK has a compact spectrum, some of the signal power inevitably splatters into adjacent frequency channels, thereby causing adjacent-channel interference (ACI). The amount of ACI is controlled by setting the fractional in-band power; i.e., the fraction of the signal power that lies within the band of each frequency channel. While this quantity is often selected arbitrarily, a tradeoff is involved in the choice. This paper presents a new analysis of frequency-hopping ad hoc networks that carefully incorporates the effect of ACI. The analysis accounts for the shadowing, Nakagami fading, CPFSK modulation index, code rate, number of frequency channels, fractional in-band power, and spatial distribution of the interfering mobiles. Expressions are presented for both outage probability and transmission capacity. With the objective of maximizing the transmission capacity, the optimal fractional in-band power that should be contained in each frequency channel is identified.

A new analysis is presented for the direct-sequence code-division multiple access (DS-CDMA) cellular uplink. For a given network topology, closed-form expressions are found for the outage probability and rate of each uplink in the presence of path-dependent Nakagami fading and shadowing. The topology may be arbitrary or modeled by a random spatial distribution with a fixed number of base stations and mobiles placed over a finite area. The analysis is more detailed and accurate than existing ones and facilitates the resolution of network design issues including the influence of the minimum base-station separation, the role of the spreading factor, and the impact of various power-control and rate-control policies. It is shown that once power control is established, the rate can be allocated according to a fixed-rate or variable-rate policy with the objective of either meeting an outage constraint or maximizing throughput. An advantage of variable-rate power control is that it allows an outage constraint to be enforced on every uplink, which is impossible when a fixed rate is used throughout the network.