Petar Popovski

Five disruptive technology directions for 5G

New research directions will lead to fundamental changes in the design of future fifth generation (5G) cellular networks. This article describes five technologies that could lead to both architectural and component disruptive design changes: device-centric architectures, millimeter wave, massive MIMO, smarter devices, and native support for machine-to-machine communications. The key ideas for each technology are described, along with their potential impact on 5G and the research challenges that remain.

Physical Network Coding in Two-Way Wireless Relay Channels

It has recently been recognized that the wireless networks represent a fertile ground for devising communication modes based on network coding. A particularly suitable application of the network coding arises for the two-way relay channels, where two nodes communicate with each other assisted by using a third, relay node. Such a scenario enables application of physical network coding, where the network coding is either done (a) jointly with the channel coding or (b) through physical combining of the communication flows over the multiple access channel. In this paper we first group the existing schemes for physical network coding into two generic schemes, termed 3-step and 2-step scheme, respectively. We investigate the conditions for maximization of the two-way rate for each individual scheme: (1) the decode-and-forward (DF) 3-step schemes (2) three different schemes with two steps: amplify-and-forward (AF), JDF and denoise-and-forward (DNF). While the DNF scheme has a potential to offer the best two-way rate, the most interesting result of the paper is that, for some SNR configurations of the source - relay links, JDF yields identical maximal two-way rate as the upper bound on the rate for DNF.

Optimized constellations for two-way wireless relaying with physical network coding

We investigate modulation schemes optimized for two-way wireless relaying systems, for which network coding is employed at the physical layer. We consider network coding based on denoise-and-forward (DNF) protocol, which consists of two stages: multiple access (MA) stage, where two terminals transmit simultaneously towards a relay, and broadcast (BC) stage, where the relay transmits towards the both terminals. We introduce a design principle of modulation and network coding, considering the superposed constellations during the MA stage. For the case of QPSK modulations at the MA stage, we show that QPSK constellations with an exclusive-or (XOR) network coding do not always offer the best transmission for the BC stage, and that there are several channel conditions in which unconventional 5-ary constellations lead to a better throughput performance. Through the use of sphere packing, we optimize the constellation for such an irregular network coding. We further discuss the design issue of the modulation in the case when the relay exploits diversity receptions such as multiple-antenna diversity and path diversity in frequency-selective fading. In addition, we apply our design strategy to a relaying system using higher-level modulations of 16QAM in the MA stage. Performance evaluations confirm that the proposed scheme can significantly improve end-to-end throughput for two-way relaying systems.

The Anti-Packets Can Increase the Achievable Throughput of a Wireless Multi-Hop Network

This paper considers relaying techniques that increase the achievable throughput in multi-hop wireless networks by taking advantage of the bi-directional traffic flow. Such a relaying technique is termed relaying with Bi-directional Amplification of Throughput (BAT-relaying). The BAT-relaying is utilizing the concept of anti-packets, defined for bi-directional traffic flows. The relay node combines the anti-packets that are destined for different nodes and broadcasts the combined packet. Two BAT-relaying techniques have been proposed previously, Decode-and-Forward (DF) BAT-relaying and Amplify-and-Forward (AF) BAT-relaying. While in DF the relay node combines the packets by an XOR operation, AF BAT-relaying utilizes the inherent packet combining provided by the multiple access channel. In an errorless channel, AF has always higher achievable throughput than DF, but in noisy channels the noise amplification can severely degrade the performance of AF. In this paper we introduce a new scheme for BAT-relaying, termed Denoise-And-Forward (DNF) BAT-Relaying. The DNF BAT-relaying also makes use of the combining provided by the multiple access channel, but it removes the noise from the combined anti-packets before broadcasting to the destinations. While in the noiseless channel DNF and AF offer the same throughput performance which is superior to DF BAT-relaying, in large regions of the lower SNR values DNF BAT-relaying has the best throughput performance of all three schemes. Due to the unconventional nature of the BAT-relaying schemes, there are many open issues for further investigation. The design of a practical DNF scheme concerns several protocol layers, including modulation and coding.

Wireless network coding by amplify-and-forward for bi-directional traffic flows

This paper introduces and analyzes relaying techniques that increase the achievable throughput in multi-hop wireless networks by applying network coding over bi-directional traffic flows. We term each such technique as bi-directional amplification of throughput (BAT)-relaying. While network coding is normally performed by combining decoded packets, here we introduce a relaying method based on amplify-and-forward (AF), where the relay node utilizes the inherent combining of packets provided by simultaneous transmissions over a multiple access channel. Under low noise levels, AF BAT-relaying offers a superior throughput performance. The unconventionality of AF BAT relaying opens many possibilities for further research.

Bi-directional Amplification of Throughput in a Wireless Multi-Hop Network

In wireless networks, the shared broadcast medium enables interactions among nodes and thus introduction of novel communication modes. This paper introduces and analyzes relaying techniques that increase the achievable throughput in multi-hop wireless networks by taking advantage of the bi-directional traffic flow. Such a relaying technique is termed relaying with bi-directional amplification of throughput (BAT-relaying). The BAT-relaying is utilizing the concept of anti-packets, defined for bi-directional traffic flows. The relay node combines the packets (anti-packets) that are destined for different nodes and broadcasts the combined packet. The first variant, termed decode-and-forward (DF) BAT-relaying, has been proposed before in the literature. It combines the packets by using the XOR operation, which makes such proposal closely related to the network coding approaches. We proposed another type of BAT-relaying based on amplify-and-forward (AF), which utilizes the inherent packet combining that emerges from simultaneous utilization of a multiple access channel. We analyze the achievable throughput of the DF and AF BAT-relaying, regarding the impact of the traffic asymmetry and the channel errors. The unconventionality of this relaying, in particular AF BAT-relaying, opens many possibilities for further research

Denoising Strategy for Convolutionally-Coded Bidirectional Relaying

In this paper, we present a forwarding strategy for two-stage bidirectional relaying in which trellis-coded modulation (TCM) is employed. We reveal that adaptive network coding cannot resolve distance shortening occurred at specific channel conditions when a certain TCM is used. To overcome this issue, we introduce an improved amplify-and-forward (AF) scheme termed pseudo AF (PAF). The proposed strategy adaptively switches network coding and PAF according to the channel information. Computer simulations demonstrate that the proposed approach can improve throughput performance.

Buffer-Aided Relaying with Adaptive Link Selection

In this paper, we consider a simple network consisting of a source, a half-duplex decode-and-forward relay, and a destination. We propose a new relaying protocol employing adaptive link selection, i.e., in any given time slot, based on the channel state information of the source-relay and the relay-destination link a decision is made whether the source or the relay transmits. In order to avoid data loss at the relay, adaptive link selection requires the relay to be equipped with a buffer such that data can be queued until the relay-destination link is selected for transmission. We study both delay-constrained and delay-unconstrained transmission. For the delay-unconstrained case, we characterize the optimal link selection policy, derive the corresponding throughput, and develop an optimal power allocation scheme. For the delay-constrained case, we propose to starve the buffer of the relay by choosing the decision threshold of the link selection policy smaller than the optimal one and derive a corresponding upper bound on the average delay. Furthermore, we propose a modified link selection protocol which avoids buffer overflow by limiting the queue size. Our analytical and numerical results show that buffer-aided relaying with adaptive link selection achieves significant throughput gains compared to conventional relaying protocols with and without buffers where the relay employs a fixed schedule for reception and transmission.

Millimeter Wave Cellular Networks: A MAC Layer Perspective

The millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequency band is seen as a key enabler of multigigabit wireless access in future cellular networks. In order to overcome the propagation challenges, mmWave systems use a large number of antenna elements both at the base station and at the user equipment, which leads to high directivity gains, fully directional communications, and possible noise-limited operations. The fundamental differences between mmWave networks and traditional ones challenge the classical design constraints, objectives, and available degrees of freedom. This paper addresses the implications that highly directional communication has on the design of an efficient medium access control (MAC) layer. The paper discusses key MAC layer issues, such as synchronization, random access, handover, channelization, interference management, scheduling, and association. This paper provides an integrated view on MAC layer issues for cellular networks, identifies new challenges and tradeoffs, and provides novel insights and solution approaches.

Robust Networked Control Scheme for Distributed Secondary Control of Islanded Microgrids

Distributed secondary control (DSC) is a new approach for microgrids (MGs) by which frequency, voltage, and power can be regulated by using only local unit controllers. Such a solution is necessary for anticipated scenarios that have an increased number of distributed generators (DGs) within the MG. Due to the constrained traffic pattern required by the secondary control, it is viable to implement a dedicated local area communication functionality among the local controllers. This paper presents a new wireless-based robust communication algorithm for the DSC of MGs. The algorithm tightly couples the communication and the control functionality, such that the transmission errors are absorbed through an averaging operation performed in each local controller, resulting in a very high reliability. Furthermore, transmissions from each DG are periodic and prescheduled broadcasts, and in this way, contention over the shared wireless medium is avoided. Real-time simulation and experimental results are presented in order to evaluate the feasibility and robustness endowed by the proposed algorithm. The results indicate that the proposed algorithm is very robust with respect to communication impairments, such as packet delays and random packet losses.