IEEE Communications Magazine

Massive multiple-input multiple-output antenna systems, millimeter-wave communications, and ultra-dense networks have been widely perceived as the three key enablers that facilitate the development and deployment of 5G systems. This article discusses the intelligent agent that combines sensing, learning, and optimizing to facilitate these enablers. We present a flexible, rapidly deployable, and cr... View full abstract»

In modern wireless communication systems, wireless channel modeling has always been a fundamental task in system design and performance optimization. Traditional channel modeling methods, such as ray-tracing and geometry- based stochastic channel models, require in-depth domain-specific knowledge and technical expertise in radio signal propagations across electromagnetic fields. To avoid these dif... View full abstract»

Knowledge of information about the propagation channel in which a wireless system operates enables better, more efficient approaches for signal transmissions. Therefore, channel state information (CSI) plays a pivotal role in the system performance. The importance of CSI is in fact growing in the upcoming 5G and beyond systems, for example, for the implementation of massive multiple-input multiple... View full abstract»

Optical wireless communication (OWC) is a promising technology for future wireless communications due to its potential for cost-effective network deployment and high data rate. There are several implementation issues in OWC that have not been encountered in radio frequency wireless communications. First, practical OWC transmitters need illumination control on color, intensity, luminance, and so on... View full abstract»

Supporting ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC) is a major challenge of 5G wireless networks. Stringent delay and reliability requirements need to be satisfied for both scheduled and non-scheduled URLLC traffic to enable a diverse set of 5G applications. Although physical and media access control layer solutions have been investigated to satisfy scheduled URLLC traffic, there is lack ... View full abstract»

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication is a key technology of fifth generation wireless systems to achieve the expected 1000x data rate. With large bandwidth at the mmWave band, the link capacity between users and base stations (BSs) can be much higher compared to sub-6 GHz wireless systems. Meanwhile, due to the high cost of infrastructure upgrade, it would be difficult for operators to drastical... View full abstract»

Multi-access edge computing (MEC), which is deployed in the proximity area of the mobile user side as a supplement to the traditional remote cloud center, has been regarded as a promising technique for 5G heterogeneous networks. With the assistance of MEC, mobile users can access computing resource effectively. Also, congestion in the core network can be alleviated by offloading. To adapt in stoch... View full abstract»

ML has been increasingly adopted in wireless communications, with popular techniques, such as supervised, unsupervised, and reinforcement learning, applied to traffic classification, channel encoding/ decoding, and cognitive radio. This article discusses a different class of ML technique, stochastic online learning, and its promising applications to MEC. Based on stochastic gradient descent, stoch... View full abstract»

The Internet of Things (IoT) is a novel network that transforms our future by interconnecting everything. With the rapid deployment of IoT devices and applications, a large amount of data is introduced into the network. Hence, we may suffer spectrum scarcity issue due to the massive data. Cognitive radio (CR) is a potential solution for addressing this issue, which can improve spectrum efficiency ... View full abstract»

Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) is envisioned as one of the most prominent technologies for the Internet of Things. The recent release of BLE mesh has attracted interest from both the industrial and academic communities, with new proposals for optimizing its performance being published on a regular basis. However, the majority of these publications rely on analysis and simulations, potentially neglecti... View full abstract»

Constant expansion of Internet of Things (IoT) devices creates considerable convenience for peoples' daily lives; however, it also brings about some challenges. Advanced modern techniques equip IoT devices with additional sensory and communication modules, enabling them to perform more functions than just sensing, but it also means that these devices may consume more energy. Many IoT devices are p... View full abstract»

The increasing population in the world forces humans to improve farm yields using advanced technologies. The Internet of Things (IoT) is one promising technique to achieve precision agriculture, which is expected to greatly increase yields. However, the large-scale application of IoT systems in agriculture is facing challenges such as huge investment in agriculture IoT systems and non-tech-savvy f... View full abstract»

The notion of a fast uplink grant is emerging as a promising solution for enabling massive machine type communication (MTC) in the Internet of Things over cellular networks. By using the fast uplink grant, machine type devices (MTDs) will no longer require RA channels to send scheduling requests. Instead, uplink resources can be actively allocated to MTDs by a base station. In this article, the ch... View full abstract»

With the ongoing worldwide development of IoT, an unprecedented number of IoT devices imperatively consume a substantial amount of energy. IoT devices have been predicted to be the leading energy guzzler in Information and Communications Technology by 2020. In considering the finite amount of brown energy sources along with their potential harmful impacts to the climate and environment, we propose... View full abstract»

5G Internet of Things (5G IoT), which is currently under development by 3GPP, paves the way for connecting diverse categories of devices to the IoT via cellular networks. For battery-powered low-cost IoT devices, wake-up radio (WuR) appears as an eminent technique for prolonging the lifetime of such devices, thanks to its outstanding energy consumption performance. However, only some small-size ba... View full abstract»