The next wave of wireless technologies is proliferating in connecting things among themselves as well as to humans. In the era of the Internet of things (IoT), billions of sensors, machines, vehicles, drones, and robots will be connected, making the world around us smarter. The IoT will encompass devices that must wirelessly communicate a diverse set of data gathered from the environment for myriad new applications. The ultimate goal is to extract insights from this data and develop solutions that improve quality of life and generate new revenue. Providing large-scale, long-lasting, reliable, and near real-time connectivity is the major challenge in enabling a smart connected world. This paper provides a comprehensive survey on existing and emerging communication solutions for serving IoT applications in the context of cellular, wide-area, as well as non-terrestrial networks. Specifically, wireless technology enhancements for providing IoT access in fifth-generation (5G) and beyond cellular networks, and communication networks over the unlicensed spectrum are presented. Aligned with the main key performance indicators of 5G and beyond 5G networks, we investigate solutions and standards that enable energy efficiency, reliability, low latency, and scalability (connection density) of current and future IoT networks. The solutions include grant-free access and channel coding for short-packet communications, non-orthogonal multiple access, and on-device intelligence. Further, a vision of new paradigm shifts in communication networks in the 2030s is provided, and the integration of the associated new technologies like artificial intelligence, non-terrestrial networks, and new spectra is elaborated. Finally, future research directions toward beyond 5G IoT networks are pointed out.

Cellular, Wide-Area, and Non-Terrestrial IoT: A Survey on 5G Advances and the Road Towards 6G.

The next wave of wireless technologies is proliferating in connecting things among themselves as well as to humans. In the era of the Internet of Things (IoT), billions of sensors, machines, vehicles, drones, and robots will be connected, making the world around us smarter. The IoT will encompass devices that must wirelessly communicate a diverse set of data gathered from the environment for myriad new applications. The ultimate goal is to extract insights from this data and develop solutions that improve quality of life and generate new revenue. Providing large-scale, long-lasting, reliable, and near real-time connectivity is the major challenge in enabling a smart connected world. This paper provides a comprehensive survey on existing and emerging communication solutions for serving IoT applications in the context of cellular, wide-area, as well as non-terrestrial networks. Specifically, wireless technology enhancements for providing IoT access in the fifth-generation (5G) and beyond cellular networks, and communication networks over the unlicensed spectrum are presented. Aligned with the main key performance indicators of 5G and beyond 5G networks, we investigate solutions and standards that enable energy efficiency, reliability, low latency, and scalability (connection density) of current and future IoT networks. The solutions include grant-free access and channel coding for short-packet communications, non-orthogonal multiple access, and on-device intelligence. Further, a vision of new paradigm shifts in communication networks in the 2030s is provided, and the integration of the associated new technologies like artificial intelligence, non-terrestrial networks, and new spectra is elaborated. In particular, the potential of using emerging deep learning and federated learning techniques for enhancing the efficiency and security of IoT communication are discussed, and their promises and challenges are introduced. Finally, future research directions toward beyond 5G IoT networks are pointed out. 

Cellular, Wide-Area, and Non-Terrestrial IoT: A Survey on 5G Advances and the Road Toward 6G

This paper introduces a wireless communication protocol for industrial control systems that uses channel quality awareness to dynamically create network-device cooperation and assist the nodes in momentary poor channel conditions. To that point, channel state information is used to identify nodes with strong and weak channel conditions. We show that strong nodes in the network are best to be served in a single-hop transmission with transmission rate adapted to their instantaneous channel conditions. Meanwhile, the remainder of time-frequency resources is used to serve the nodes with weak channel condition using a two-hop transmission with cooperative communication among all the nodes to meet the target reliability in their communication with the controller. We formulate the achievable multi-user and multi-antenna diversity gain in the low-latency regime, and propose a new scheme for exploiting those on-demand , in favor of reliability and efficiency. The proposed transmission scheme is therefore dubbed adaptive network-device cooperation (ANDCoop), since it is able to adaptively allocate cooperation resources while enjoying the multi-user diversity gain of the network. We formulate the optimization problem of associating nodes to each group and dividing resources between the two groups. Numerical solutions show significant improvement in spectral efficiency and system reliability compared to the existing schemes in the literature. System design incorporating the proposed transmission strategy can thus reduce infrastructure cost for future private wireless networks.

Exploiting Diversity for Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Wireless Control

This paper introduces a wireless communication protocol for industrial control systems that uses channel quality awareness to dynamically create network-device cooperation and assist the nodes in momentary poor channel conditions. To that point, channel state information is used to identify nodes with strong and weak channel conditions. We show that strong nodes in the network are best to be served in a single-hop transmission with transmission rate adapted to their instantaneous channel conditions. Meanwhile, the remainder of time-frequency resources is used to serve the nodes with weak channel condition using a two-hop transmission with cooperative communication among all the nodes to meet the target reliability in their communication with the controller. We formulate the achievable multi-user and multi-antenna diversity gain in the low-latency regime, and propose a new scheme for exploiting those on demand, in favor of reliability and efficiency. The proposed transmission scheme is therefore dubbed adaptive network-device cooperation (ANDCoop), since it is able to adaptively allocate cooperation resources while enjoying the multi-user diversity gain of the network. We formulate the optimization problem of associating nodes to each group and dividing resources between the two groups. Numerical solutions show significant improvement in spectral efficiency and system reliability compared to the existing schemes in the literature. System design incorporating the proposed transmission strategy can thus reduce infrastructure cost for future private wireless networks.

Industry 4.0 is a new paradigm of digitalization and automation that demands high data rates and real-time ultra-reliable agile communication. Industrial communication at sub-6 GHz industrial, scientific, and medical (ISM) bands has some serious impediments, such as interference, spectral congestion, and limited bandwidth. These limitations hinder the high throughput and reliability requirements of modern industrial applications and mission-critical scenarios. In this paper, we critically assess the potential of the 60 GHz millimeter-wave (mmWave) ISM band as an enabler for ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) in smart manufacturing, smart factories, and mission-critical operations in Industry 4.0 and beyond. A holistic overview of 60 GHz wireless standards and key performance indicators are discussed. Then the review of 60 GHz smart antenna systems facilitating agile communication for Industry 4.0 and beyond is presented. We envisage that the use of 60 GHz communication and smart antenna systems are crucial for modern industrial communication so that URLLC in Industry 4.0 and beyond could soar to its full potential.

Millimeter-Wave Smart Antenna Solutions for URLLC in Industry 4.0 and Beyond

Automation enabled by ultra-reliable and low latency 5G connectivity is expected to transform the industrial landscape over the next decade. Given the spectrum crunch in bands below 6 GHz, there is significant interest in exploring the use of millimeter wave (mmWave) bands for industrial automation. The harsh propagation conditions at high frequencies raise questions about the viability of providing ultra-reliable and low latency connectivity in these bands. Furthermore, the use of analog beamforming with narrow beams implies limited frequency multiplexing opportunity despite the wider bandwidths available, which in turn results in larger waiting times for packet transmission. We study the propagation in a factory floor using ray tracing, which shows that received signal strength is sufficiently large even when the line-of-sight (LoS) signal is blocked. To improve the latency performance, we propose an adaptive beam selection method that chooses the best set of beams across multiple users to reduce the overall latency for all users. We show through simulations that our proposed greedy algorithm performs better than the state-of-the-art algorithm, and that there is more improvement possible.

Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications In MmWave For Factory Floor Automation

This paper investigates the use of beamforming millimeter-wave (mmWave) repeaters in wireless industrial control systems. We study deployment of mmWave in a factory floor with several production lines and a multitude of devices that periodically receive packets from the controller via a hub access point (AP). We propose to use beamforming repeaters as an alternative to the so-called multi-transmission reception point (multi-TRP) technology, where wireless fronthaul links from the hub TRP to the repeaters substitute the bulky wired links to the different TRPs. The proposed wireless TRP is then demonstrated to extend communication coverage across the factory floor, while improving end-to-end link reliability via over-the-air combining of the signal from the repeater and the hub TRP. We formulate the optimization problem of associating TRPs and beams to each user for the objective of minimizing the overall scheduling latency while satisfying reliable communication to all users. To tackle such a problem, we propose a low-complexity greedy algorithm, which through extensive simulations is shown to significantly reduce system- level scheduling latency compared to the existing schemes in the literature. In our simulations, the effects of most objects on radio wave propagation are accurately modeled using a ray-tracing tool.

Jakub Mazgula

Papers

Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications In MmWave For Factory Floor Automation

Beam Selection for Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency Communication in Industrial Environment with Beamforming Repeaters