Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging domain that promises ubiquitous connection to the Internet, turning common objects into connected devices. The IoT paradigm is changing the way people interact with things around them. It paves the way for creating pervasively connected infrastructures to support innovative services and promises better flexibility and efficiency. Such advantages are attractive not only for consumer applications, but also for the industrial domain. Over the last few years, we have been witnessing the IoT paradigm making its way into the industry marketplace with purposely designed solutions. In this paper, we clarify the concepts of IoT, Industrial IoT, and Industry 4.0. We highlight the opportunities brought in by this paradigm shift as well as the challenges for its realization. In particular, we focus on the challenges associated with the need of energy efficiency, real-time performance, coexistence, interoperability, and security and privacy. We also provide a systematic overview of the state-of-the-art research efforts and potential research directions to solve Industrial IoT challenges.

Industrial Internet of Things: Challenges, Opportunities, and Directions

The use of flying platforms such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), popularly known as drones, is rapidly growing. In particular, with their inherent attributes such as mobility, flexibility, and adaptive altitude, UAVs admit several key potential applications in wireless systems. On the one hand, UAVs can be used as aerial base stations to enhance coverage, capacity, reliability, and energy efficiency of wireless networks. On the other hand, UAVs can operate as flying mobile terminals within a cellular network. Such cellular-connected UAVs can enable several applications ranging from real-time video streaming to item delivery. In this paper, a comprehensive tutorial on the potential benefits and applications of UAVs in wireless communications is presented. Moreover, the important challenges and the fundamental tradeoffs in UAV-enabled wireless networks are thoroughly investigated. In particular, the key UAV challenges such as 3D deployment, performance analysis, channel modeling, and energy efficiency are explored along with representative results. Then, open problems and potential research directions pertaining to UAV communications are introduced. Finally, various analytical frameworks and mathematical tools, such as optimization theory, machine learning, stochastic geometry, transport theory, and game theory are described. The use of such tools for addressing unique UAV problems is also presented. In a nutshell, this tutorial provides key guidelines on how to analyze, optimize, and design UAV-based wireless communication systems.

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A Tutorial on UAVs for Wireless Networks: Applications, Challenges, and Open Problems

Low power wide area (LPWA) networks are attracting a lot of attention primarily because of their ability to offer affordable connectivity to the low-power devices distributed over very large geographical areas. In realizing the vision of the Internet of Things, LPWA technologies complement and sometimes supersede the conventional cellular and short range wireless technologies in performance for various emerging smart city and machine-to-machine applications. This review paper presents the design goals and the techniques, which different LPWA technologies exploit to offer wide-area coverage to low-power devices at the expense of low data rates. We survey several emerging LPWA technologies and the standardization activities carried out by different standards development organizations (e.g., IEEE, IETF, 3GPP, ETSI) as well as the industrial consortia built around individual LPWA technologies (e.g., LoRa Alliance, Weightless-SIG, and Dash7 alliance). We further note that LPWA technologies adopt similar approaches, thus sharing similar limitations and challenges. This paper expands on these research challenges and identifies potential directions to address them. While the proprietary LPWA technologies are already hitting the market with large nationwide roll-outs, this paper encourages an active engagement of the research community in solving problems that will shape the connectivity of tens of billions of devices in the next decade.

Low Power Wide Area Networks: An Overview

Single carrier frequency division multiple access (SC FDMA), a modified form of orthogonal FDMA (OFDMA), is a promising technique for high data rate uplink communications in future cellular systems. SC-FDMA has similar throughput performance and essentially the same overall complexity as OFDMA. A principal advantage of SC-FDMA is the peak-to-average power ratio (PARR), which is lower than that of OFDMA. SC FDMA is currently a strong candidate for the uplink multiple access scheme in the long term evolution of cellular systems under consideration by the third generation partnership project (3GPP). In this paper, we give an overview of SC-FDMA. We also analyze the effects of subcarrier mapping on throughput and PARR. Among the possible subcarrier mapping approaches, we find that localized FDMA (LFDMA) with channel-dependent scheduling (CDS) results in higher throughput than interleaved FDMA (JFDMA). However, the PARR performance of IFDMA is better than that of LFDMA. As in other communications systems there are complex tradeoffs between design parameters and performance in an SC-FDMA system

Single carrier FDMA for uplink wireless transmission

The IoT paradigm holds the promise to revolutionize the way we live and work by means of a wealth of new services, based on seamless interactions between a large amount of heterogeneous devices. After decades of conceptual inception of the IoT, in recent years a large variety of communication technologies has gradually emerged, reflecting a large diversity of application domains and of communication requirements. Such heterogeneity and fragmentation of the connectivity landscape is currently hampering the full realization of the IoT vision, by posing several complex integration challenges. In this context, the advent of 5G cellular systems, with the availability of a connectivity technology, which is at once truly ubiquitous, reliable, scalable, and cost-efficient, is considered as a potentially key driver for the yet-to emerge global IoT. In the present paper, we analyze in detail the potential of 5G technologies for the IoT, by considering both the technological and standardization aspects. We review the present-day IoT connectivity landscape, as well as the main 5G enablers for the IoT. Last but not least, we illustrate the massive business shifts that a tight link between IoT and 5G may cause in the operator and vendors ecosystem.

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Internet of Things in the 5G Era: Enablers, Architecture, and Business Models

The present invention relates to a method and device for enhancing coverage of a power-limited mobile terminal by sending information relating to a single Hybrid Automatic Repeat Request (HARQ) process from the mobile terminal to a base station using several transmission time intervals.

Method and Arrangement for Retransmission Using HARQ

Solutions for high data rates and local coverage have been developed over a couple of years in the area of wireless local area networking. The quality of service, security, mobility, and high throughput are key components that drive the standards for broadband wireless multimedia communications presently being developed in Europe as well as in the United States and Japan for the 5 GHz band. These technologies are well suited to complement third-generation cellular networks. HiperLAN type 2 (HiperLAN2) is one of these systems, which is being specified by the ETSI project BRAN. The core parts of the specification were finalized at the end of 1999. Almost total harmonization has been achieved between the standardization bodies in Europe and Japan (ETSI and ARIB, respectively). HiperLAN2 will provide data rates up to 54 Mb/s, and is intended for local communications in indoor and outdoor environments. An overview of the HiperLAN2 standard is presented together with exemplary link and system performance results.

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HiperLAN2: broadband wireless communications at 5 GHz

Driven by the unprecedented increase of mobile data traffic, D2D communications technology is rapidly moving into the mainstream of the 5G networking landscape. While D2D connectivity originally emerged as a technology enabler for public safety services, it is likely to remain at the heart of the 5G ecosystem by spawning a wide diversity of proximate applications and services. In this work, we argue that the widespread adoption of the direct communications paradigm is unlikely without embracing the concepts of trust and social-aware cooperation between end users and network operators. However, such adoption remains conditional on identifying adequate incentives that engage humans and their connected devices in a plethora of collective activities. To this end, the mission of our research is to advance the vision of social-aware and trusted D2D connectivity, as well as to facilitate its further adoption. We begin by reviewing the various types of underlying incentives with the emphasis on sociality and trust, discuss these factors specifically for humans and for networked devices (machines), and also propose a novel framework allowing construction of much needed incentive-aware D2D applications. Our supportive system-level performance evaluations suggest that trusted and social-aware direct connectivity has the potential to decisively augment network performance. We conclude by outlining the future perspectives of its development across the research and standardization sectors.

Toward trusted, social-aware D2D connectivity: bridging across the technology and sociality realms

A radio communications link is established between radio stations, and a semi-persistent radio resource is allocated to support data transmission over the communications link. The semi-persistent radio resource is associated with a corresponding automatic repeat request (ARQ) process identifier. Non-limiting examples of a semi-persistent radio resource include a regularly scheduled transmission time interval, frame, subframe, or time slot during which to transmit a data unit over the radio interface. Retransmission is requested of a data unit transmitted using the semi-persistent radio resource. The ARQ process identifier associated with the semi-persistent resource is used to match a retransmission of a data unit dynamically scheduled on the communications link with the requested data unit retransmission. In a preferred example embodiment, the ARQ process identifier is a hybrid ARQ (HARQ) process, where a retransmitted data unit is combined with a previously-received version of the data unit.

(h)arq for semi-persistent scheduling

The wireless edge is about distributing intelligence to wireless devices wherein the distribution of accurate time reference is essential for time-critical machine-type communication (cMTC). In 5G-based cMTC, enabling time synchronization in the wireless edge means moving beyond the current synchronization needs and solutions in 5G radio access. In this article, we analyze the device-level synchronization needs of potential cMTC applications: industrial automation, power distribution, vehicular communication, and live audio/video production. We present an overthe- air synchronization scheme comprising 5G air interface parameters and discuss their associated timing errors. We evaluate the estimation error in device-to-base-station propagation delay from timing advance under random errors and show how to reduce the estimation error. In the end, we identify the random errors specific to dense multipath fading environments and discuss countermeasures.

Johan Torsner

Papers

Method and Arrangement for Retransmission Using HARQ

HiperLAN2: broadband wireless communications at 5 GHz

Toward trusted, social-aware D2D connectivity: bridging across the technology and sociality realms

(h)arq for semi-persistent scheduling

Time Synchronization in 5G Wireless Edge: Requirements and Solutions for Critical-MTC