Pinyi Ren

A survey on dynamic spectrum access protocols for distributed cognitive wireless networks

With the rapid development of wireless communications technologies, radio spectrum has become a type of extremely scarce resources in meeting the increasing demands for broadband wireless services. However, the traditional static spectrum allocation policy leads to severe spectrum underutilization and spectrum shortage problems. The cognitive radio (CR) technology can detect the occupancy of the spectrum and enable the dynamic spectrum access (DSA) to fill the spectrum hole caused by the static allocation policy, and thus has been widely recognized as an efficient approach to solve the above problems. The distributed cognitive wireless network (CWN), which does not have central entities, is one of the major networking architectures applying the CR technology. Correspondingly, the design of DSA in distributed CWNs is crucial, yet challenging, to increasing the utilization efficiency of the wireless spectrum with dynamically-varying occupancy statuses. In this article, we present a survey on DSA protocols for distributed CWNs. In particular, we first address the challenges in the design and implementation of distributed DSA protocols. Then, we categorize the existing distributed DSA protocols based on different criteria, such as spectrum sharing modes, spectrum allocation behaviors, spectrum access modes, the usage of common control channel, spectrum usage strategies, the number of radios, and spectrum sensing techniques. We also discuss the advantages and disadvantages of each category under diverse classification criterion. Moreover, we make a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art distributed DSA protocols using different spectrum access modes, which can be categorized into contention-based, time-slotted, and hybrid protocols. Through the study, we find out that most of distributed DSA protocols fall into the contention-based and hybrid protocols. In addition, the ongoing standardization efforts are also reviewed. Finally, several open research issues for the distributed DSA protocols are presented, such as spectrum handoff based protocols, spectrum prediction based protocols, adaptation of the spectrum-sharing modes, protocols with cooperative spectrum sensing, as well as distributed collision avoidance mechanisms.

CAD-MAC: A Channel-Aggregation Diversity Based MAC Protocol for Spectrum and Energy Efficient Cognitive Ad Hoc Networks

In cognitive Ad Hoc networks (CAHN), because the contentions and mutual interferences among secondary nodes are inevitable as well as secondary nodes usually have limited power budget, spectrum efficiency and energy efficiency are critically important to the CAHN, especially for the medium access control (MAC) protocol design. Aiming at improving both spectrum and energy efficiencies, we in this paper propose a diversity technology called Channel-Aggregation Diversity (CAD), through which each node can utilize multiple channels simultaneously and efficiently allocate the upper-bounded power resource with only one data radio. Based on the proposed CAD technology, we further develop a CAD-based MAC (CAD-MAC) protocol, which enables the secondary nodes to sufficiently use available channel resources under the upper-bounded power and transmit multiple data packets in one transmission process subject to the transmission-time fairness constraint. In order to improve the performance of CAHNs, we propose two joint power-channel allocation schemes. In the first scheme, we aim at maximizing the data transmission rate. By converting the joint power-channel allocation to the Multiple-Choice Knapsack Problem, we derive the optimal allocation policy through dynamic programming. In the second scheme, our objective is to optimize the energy efficiency and we obtain the corresponding allocation policy through fractional programming. Simulation results show that our proposed CAD-MAC protocol can efficiently increase the spectrum and energy efficiencies as well as the throughput of the CAHN compared with existing protocols. Moreover, the energy efficiency of the CAHN can be further improved by adopting the energy efficiency optimization based resource allocation scheme.

Security-Aware Relaying Scheme for Cooperative Networks With Untrusted Relay Nodes

This paper studies the problem of secure transmission in dual-hop cooperative networks with untrusted relays, where each relay acts as both a potential helper and an eavesdropper. A security-aware relaying scheme is proposed, which employs the alternate jamming and secrecy-enhanced relay selection to prevent the confidential message from being eavesdropped by the untrusted relays. To evaluate the performance of the proposed strategies, we derive the lower bound of the achievable ergodic secrecy rate (ESR), and conduct the asymptotic analysis to examine how the ESR scales as the number of relays increases.

Security Enhancement for IoT Communications Exposed to Eavesdroppers With Uncertain Locations

The Internet of Things (IoT) depicts a bright future, where any devices having sensorial and computing capabilities can interact with each other. Among all existing technologies, the techniques for the fifth generation (5G) systems are the main driving force for the actualization of IoT concept. However, due to the heterogeneous environment in 5G networks and the broadcast nature of radio propagation, the security assurance against eavesdropping is a vital yet challenging task. In this paper, we focus on the transmission design for secure relay communications in IoT networks, where the communication is exposed to eavesdroppers with unknown number and locations. The randomize-and-forward relay strategy specially designed for secure multi-hop communications is employed in our transmission protocol. First, we consider a single-antenna scenario, where all the devices in the network are equipped with the single antenna. We derive the expression for the secrecy outage probability of the two-hop transmission. Following this, a secrecy-rate-maximization problem subject to a secrecy-outage-probability constraint is formulated. The optimal power allocation and codeword rate design are obtained. Furthermore, we generalize the above analyses to a more generic scenario, where the relay and eavesdroppers are equipped with multiple antennas. Numerical results show that the proper use of relay transmission can enhance the secrecy throughput and extend the secure coverage range.

Delay and Throughput Oriented Continuous Spectrum Sensing Schemes in Cognitive Radio Networks

Periodic spectrum sensing over the entire primary user (PU) band always interrupts the secondary user (SU) data transmission in the sensing interval, which may degrade the quality of service of the SU. To alleviate this problem, we divide the PU band into two subbands, one for opportunistic SU data transmission, and the other for continuous spectrum sensing. Based on the PU band division, we propose a delay oriented continuous spectrum sensing (DO-CSS) scheme for delay sensitive SU services. In the DO-CSS scheme, the average SU transmission delay is reduced by selecting the proper bandwidth for spectrum sensing within each frame. Since different SUs may have different requirements on their quality of services, we further propose a throughput oriented continuous spectrum sensing (TO-CSS) scheme. In the TO-CSS scheme, the achievable average SU throughput is maximized by choosing the optimal sensing bandwidth within multiple adjacent frames. Both theoretical analyses and simulation results show that compared with the conventional periodical spectrum sensing scheme, the average transmission delay of the SU is reduced without degradation in the maximum achievable throughput by using the proposed DO-CSS scheme, and both the delay performance and achievable SU throughput are further improved by using the proposed TO-CSS scheme.

Interference-controlled D2D routing aided by knowledge extraction at cellular infrastructure towards ubiquitous CPS

AbstractDevice-to-device (D2D) networks underlaying cellular networks are widely recognized as one of the major approaches for ubiquitous information acquisition and exchange, which features the future cyber-physical systems (CPSs). In this paper, we propose the interference-controlled D2D routing designs underlaying cellular networks, i.e. sharing/reusing the cellular spectrum, to support multi-hop D2D transmissions and thus enhancing the flexibility of CPS. The unique feature and challenge for this task include threefolds. First, the huge density of device nodes in future cellular networks yields huge amount of information to process. Second, as device nodes in cellular networks do not maintain the routing table, the route selection via low-complexity knowledge-extraction approach over huge amount of information needs to be performed by the base station (BS). Third, the interference generated by reusing cellular spectrum needs to be thoroughly controlled. To address these issues, we in this work consider two D2D networking scenarios that allow D2D users to share the uplink and downlink spectrum of cellular networks, respectively. Our objective for routing is hop-count minimization such that the delay and power consumptions can be decreased. In particular, we propose a maximum rate towards destination (MR-D) routing algorithm for the scenario sharing uplink spectrum and a MR-D advanced (MR-DA) routing algorithm for the scenario sharing downlink spectrum, respectively. Both algorithms have low computational complexity and thus meaningful for practical systems. Furthermore, our routing designs can avoid the violation of tolerable interferences to cellular users as well as to fulfil the rate requirement of D2D services. Also conducted are abundant simulation evaluations to demonstrate the advantages of our proposed schemes as compared to the baseline schemes including the farthest neighbour routing and closest to destination routing scheme.

Two Birds With One Stone: Towards Secure and Interference-Free D2D Transmissions via Constellation Rotation

This paper studies the cooperative device-to-device (D2D) transmissions in cellular networks, where two D2D users communicate bidirectionally with each other and simultaneously serve as relays to assist the two-way transmissions between two cellular users. For this scenario, both cellular and D2D links share the same spectrum, thus creating mutual interference. In addition to that, a security problem also exists since the cellular users want to keep their messages secret from the D2D users and vice versa. To address these two issues, a security-embedded interference avoidance scheme is proposed in this paper. By exploiting the constellation rotation technique, the proposed scheme can create interference-free links for both D2D and cellular communications, thereby significantly improving the system error performance. Moreover, our scheme also provides an inherent secrecy protection at the physical layer, which makes the information exchange between cellular users and that between D2D users confidential from each other.

Packet level performance analysis in wireless user-relaying networks

In this paper, the impact of user relaying on the behavior of a relay node, which acts as the source node at the same time, is analyzed in a wireless relay network at the packet level. The analysis process models the behavior of the relay node as a queueing system and represents the service for its own packet transmission as an M/G/1-type Markov chain. By considering the fact that the maximum number of packet arrivals is ordinarily limited in a practical system, the M/G/1-type Markov chain is further reformatted into a quasi-birth-death (QBD) process through re-blocking so as to simplify the analysis and obtain the associated performance, such as average packet transmission delay. As an application of the results arising from the analysis, a new relay node selection scheme, based on a utility function approach that jointly considers the channel and the queue conditions at the relay node, is proposed. Numerical results show that the proposed analysis model is quite accurate and the proposed relay node selection scheme is effective in balancing cooperative diversity gain and packet transmission delay.

Security enhancement for video transmission via noise aggregation in immersive systems

The interest in the field of immersive audio/visual systems exists for many years from both of the commercialization point of view and the research perspective. Technological advancements in the field of cameras, video display along with the processing hardware lead the way to a new generation of immersive systems. On one hand, advancement in video compression schemes like MPEG and H.264/AVC, and transmission technologies like and 3G and 4G LTE enhanced the feeling of virtual presence. However, on the other hand the secure transmission of immersive audio/visual contents over wireless networks is a challenge, as it suffers from the potential malicious attacks. One type of typical malicious attack is passive eavesdropping. The goal of this paper is to propose a solution to enhance the secure wireless transmissions of Video in Immersive Systems via simple yet effective physical-layer approach. To reduce the chance that that the passive eavesdropper extracts information, we present a physical-layer security method, termed noise aggregation, for the secure video transmission to legitimate receiver. Theoretical analyses and simulation results demonstrate that our method is able to effectively limit the amount of information eavesdropped by the unauthorized user at bit level, and thus significantly enhancing security for video distribution.

Traffic-aware ACB scheme for massive access in machine-to-machine networks

Supporting massive access of machine-type devices in a short period is a critical challenge in machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. We in this paper propose a traffic-aware Access Class Barring (ACB) scheme to improve the scalability of M2M networks. Unlike traditional ACB scheme, our proposed scheme aim at dynamically regulating the parameter of access probability, called barring factor, based on network load, thus accommodating much more M2M devices as well as lowering the access delay. To achieve this goal, we first develop a Markov-Chain based traffic-load estimation scheme according to the collision status. Then, we propose a spectrum of functions to control the barring factor varying with the estimated traffic load. Also provided is a set of simulations results, demonstrating that our proposed traffic-aware scheme significantly outperforms the traditional ACB scheme in terms of not only access success probability, but also average access delay.