Oussama Habachi

Infinite horizon optimal impulsive control with applications to Internet congestion control

We investigate infinite-horizon deterministic optimal control problems with both gradual and impulsive controls, where any finitely many impulses are allowed simultaneously. Both discounted and long-run time-average criteria are considered. We establish very general and at the same time natural conditions, under which the dynamic programming approach results in an optimal feedback policy. The established theoretical results are applied to the Internet congestion control, and by solving analytically and nontrivially the underlying optimal control problems, we obtain a simple threshold-based active queue management scheme, which takes into account the main parameters of the transmission control protocols, and improves the fairness among the connections in a given network.

Toward fully coordinated multi-level multi-carrier energy efficient networks

Enabling coordination between products from different vendors is a key characteristic of the design philosophy behind future wireless communication networks. As an example, different devices may have different implementations, leading to different user experiences. A similar story emerges when devices running different physical and link layer protocols share frequencies in the same spectrum in order to maximize the system-wide spectral efficiency. In such situations, coordinating multiple interfering devices presents a significant challenge not only from an interworking perspective (as a result of reduced infrastructure), but also from an implementation point of view. The following question may then naturally arise: How to accommodate integrating such heterogeneous wireless devices seamlessly? One approach is to coordinate the spectrum in a centralized manner. However, the desired autonomous feature of future wireless systems makes the use of a central authority for spectrum management less appealing. Alternately, intelligent spectrum coordination have spurred great interest and excitement in the recent years. This paper presents a multi-level (hierarchical) power control game where users jointly choose their channel and power control selfishly in order to maximize their individual energy efficiency. By hierarchical, we mean that some users decision priority is higher/lower than the others. We propose two simple and nearly-optimal algorithms that ensure complete spectrum coordination among users. Interestingly, it turns out that the complexity of the two proposed algorithms is, in the worst case, quadratic in the number of users, whereas the complexity of the optimal solution (obtained through exhaustive search) is N!. These results offer hope that such simple and accurate power control algorithms can be designed around competition, as hierarchical behavior does not only improve the mechanisms performance but also leads to simpler distributed power control algorithms.

Security, privacy and safety evaluation of dynamic and static fleets of drones

Interconnected everyday objects, either via public or private networks, are gradually becoming reality in modern life — often referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT) or Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS). One stand-out example are those systems based on Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs). Fleets of such vehicles (drones) are prophesied to assume multiple roles from mundane to high-sensitive applications, such as prompt pizza or shopping deliveries to the home, or to deployment on battlefields for battlefield and combat missions. Drones, which we refer to as UAVs in this paper, can operate either individually (solo missions) or as part of a fleet (group missions), with and without constant connection with a base station. The base station acts as the command centre to manage the drones activities; however, an independent, localised and effective fleet control is necessary, potentially based on swarm intelligence, for several reasons: 1) an increase in the number of drone fleets; 2) fleet size might reach tens of UAVs; 3) making time-critical decisions by such fleets in the wild; 4) potential communication congestion and latency; and 5) in some cases, working in challenging terrains that hinders or mandates limited communication with a control centre, e.g. operations spanning long period of times or military usage of fleets in enemy territory. This self-aware, mission-focused and independent fleet of drones may utilise swarm intelligence for a), air-traffic or flight control management, b) obstacle avoidance, c) self-preservation (while maintaining the mission criteria), d) autonomous collaboration with other fleets in the wild, and e) assuring the security, privacy and safety of physical (drones itself) and virtual (data, software) assets. In this paper, we investigate the challenges faced by fleet of drones and propose a potential course of action on how to overcome them.

On the Two-User Multi-Carrier Joint Channel Selection and Power Control Game

In this paper, we propose a hierarchical game approach to model the energy efficiency maximization problem, where transmitters individually choose their channel assignment and power control. We conduct a thorough analysis of the existence, uniqueness, and characterization of the Stackelberg equilibrium. Interestingly, we formally show that a spectrum orthogonalization naturally occurs when users decide sequentially about their transmitting carriers and powers, delivering a binary channel assignment. Both analytical and simulation results are provided for assessing and improving the performances in terms of energy efficiency and spectrum utilization between the simultaneous-move game (with synchronous decision makers), the social welfare (in a centralized manner), and the proposed Stackelberg (hierarchical) game. For the first time, we provide tight closed-form bounds on the spectral efficiency of such a model, including correlation across carriers and users. We show that the spectrum orthogonalization capability induced by the proposed hierarchical game model enables the wireless network to achieve the spectral efficiency improvement while still enjoying a high energy efficiency.

Optimal energy-delay tradeoff for opportunistic spectrum access in cognitive radio networks

Cognitive radio (CR) has been considered as a promising technology to enhance spectrum efficiency via opportunistic transmission at link level. Basic CR features allow secondary users (SUs) to transmit only when the licensed channel is not occupied by primary users (PUs). However, waiting for an idle time slot may lead to large packet delays and high energy consumption. We further consider that the SU may decide, at any moment, to use another dedicated way of communication (4G) in order to transmit his packets. Thus, we consider an Opportunistic Spectrum Access (OSA) mechanism that takes into account packet delay and energy consumption. We formulate the OSA problem as a Partially Observable Markov Decision Process (POMDP) by explicitly considering the energy consumption as well as packets’ delay, which are often ignored in existing OSA solutions. Specifically, we consider a POMDP with an average reward criterion. We derive structural properties of the value function and we show the existence of optimal strategies in the class of the threshold strategies. For implementation purposes, we propose online learning mechanisms that estimate the PU activity and determine the appropriate threshold strategy on the fly. In particular, numerical illustrations validate our theoretical findings.

Joint delay and energy minimization for instantly decodable network coding

In this paper, we investigate the cooperative data exchange (CDE) using instantly decodable network coding (IDNC) across the wireless nodes. We model the problem using the cooperative game theory in partition form. Unlike most of existing works concerning IDNC, we focus not only on the decoding delay, but also the consumed energy in order to increase the network lifetime. A distributed merge-and-split algorithm is proposed to form coalitions that maximize their utilities in terms of energy consumption and delay experienced by all the receivers. Indeed, the proposed algorithm enables the wireless nodes to self-organize into independent disjoint coalitions and the resulting clustered network structure is characterized through stability notion. Simulation results show that the cooperation between nodes not only reduces the energy consumption, but also the IDNC completion time. Note also that the proposed solution reduces the complexity of the CDE which makes the network more scalable and more reliable.

Channel Coherence Classification with Frame-Shifting in Massive MIMO Systems

This paper considers the uplink pilot overhead in a time division duplexing (TDD) massive Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) mobile systems. A common scenario of conventional massive MIMO systems is a Base Station (BS) serving all user terminals (UTs) in the cell with the same TDD frame format that fits the coherence interval of the worst-case scenario of user mobility (e.g. a moving train with velocity 300 Km/s). Furthermore, the BS has to estimate all the channels each time-slot for all users even for those with long coherence intervals. In fact, within the same cell, sensors or pedestrian with low mobility UTs (e.g. moving 1.38 m/s) share the same short TDD frame and thus are obliged to upload their pilots each time-slot. The channel coherence interval of the pedestrian UTs with a carrier frequency of 1.9 GHz can be as long as 60 times that of the train passenger users. In other words, conventional techniques waste 59-uploaded pilot sequences for channel estimation. In this paper, we are aware of the resources waste due to various coherence intervals among different user mobility. We classify users based on their coherence interval length, and we propose to skip uploading pilots of UTs with large coherence intervals. Then, we shift frames with the same pilot reused sequence toward an empty pilot time-slot. Simulation results had proved that the proposed technique overcome the performance of conventional massive MIMO systems in both energy and spectral efficiency.