Guest Editorial Special Issue on Machine Learning in Wireless Communication—Part I

Machine learning and data driven approaches have recently received much attention as a key enabler for future 5G and beyond wireless networks. Yet, the evolution towards learning-based data driven networks is still in its infancy, and much of the realization of the promised benefits requires thorough research and development. Fundamental questions remain as to where and how ML can really complement the well-established, well-tested communication systems designed over the last four decades. Moreover, adaptation of machine learning methods is likely needed to realize their full potential in the wireless context. This is particularly challenging for the lower layers of the protocol stack, where the constraints, problem formulation, and even the objectives may fundamentally differ from the typical scenarios to which machine learning has been successfully applied in recent years. In addition, a thorough understanding of the fundamental performance limits is also essential in order to establish quality-of-service guarantees that are common in communication system design. Such challenges, which lie at the core of the special issue, can be categorized into a number of research topics ranging from the optization of neural networks architectures that are suited to wireless communication links (inclusing autoencoders, generative adversarial networks, reinforcement based networks etc) to performance analysis, to the acceleration of data-driven training, and possibly in distributed settings. The application domains within the wireless realm are also quite diverse in nature with promising preliminary results in the area of physical layer design and resource allocation as well as for network service orchestrations. Testbeds and experimental evaluations are also begining to be reported.