Deep Echo State Q-Network (DEQN) and Its Application in Dynamic Spectrum Sharing for 5G and Beyond

Deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has been shown to be successful in many application domains. Combining recurrent neural networks (RNNs) and DRL further enables DRL to be applicable in non-Markovian environments by capturing temporal information. However, training of both DRL and RNNs is known to be challenging requiring a large amount of training data to achieve convergence. In many targeted applications, such as those used in the fifth-generation (5G) cellular communication, the environment is highly dynamic, while the available training data is very limited. Therefore, it is extremely important to develop DRL strategies that are capable of capturing the temporal correlation of the dynamic environment requiring limited training overhead. In this article, we introduce the deep echo state Q-network (DEQN) that can adapt to the highly dynamic environment in a short period of time with limited training data. We evaluate the performance of the introduced DEQN method under the dynamic spectrum sharing (DSS) scenario, which is a promising technology in 5G and future 6G networks to increase the spectrum utilization. Compared with conventional spectrum management policy that grants a fixed spectrum band to a single system for exclusive access, DSS allows the secondary system to share the spectrum with the primary system. Our work sheds light on the application of an efficient DRL framework in highly dynamic environments with limited available training data.