What will 5G be? What it will not be is an incremental advance on 4G. The previous four generations of cellular technology have each been a major paradigm shift that has broken backward compatibility. Indeed, 5G will need to be a paradigm shift that includes very high carrier frequencies with massive bandwidths, extreme base station and device densities, and unprecedented numbers of antennas. However, unlike the previous four generations, it will also be highly integrative: tying any new 5G air interface and spectrum together with LTE and WiFi to provide universal high-rate coverage and a seamless user experience. To support this, the core network will also have to reach unprecedented levels of flexibility and intelligence, spectrum regulation will need to be rethought and improved, and energy and cost efficiencies will become even more critical considerations. This paper discusses all of these topics, identifying key challenges for future research and preliminary 5G standardization activities, while providing a comprehensive overview of the current literature, and in particular of the papers appearing in this special issue.

What Will 5G Be

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

In this paper, the deployment of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) as a flying base station used to provide the fly wireless communications to a given geographical area is analyzed. In particular, the coexistence between the UAV, that is transmitting data in the downlink, and an underlaid device-to-device (D2D) communication network is considered. For this model, a tractable analytical framework for the coverage and rate analysis is derived. Two scenarios are considered: a static UAV and a mobile UAV. In the first scenario, the average coverage probability and the system sum-rate for the users in the area are derived as a function of the UAV altitude and the number of D2D users. In the second scenario, using the disk covering problem, the minimum number of stop points that the UAV needs to visit in order to completely cover the area is computed. Furthermore, considering multiple retransmissions for the UAV and D2D users, the overall outage probability of the D2D users is derived. Simulation and analytical results show that, depending on the density of D2D users, the optimal values for the UAV altitude, which lead to the maximum system sum-rate and coverage probability, exist. Moreover, our results also show that, by enabling the UAV to intelligently move over the target area, the total required transmit power of UAV while covering the entire area, can be minimized. Finally, in order to provide full coverage for the area of interest, the tradeoff between the coverage and delay, in terms of the number of stop points, is discussed.

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Unmanned Aerial Vehicle With Underlaid Device-to-Device Communications: Performance and Tradeoffs

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 three-dimensional 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.

We explore the feasibility of interference alignment in signal vector space-based only on beamforming-for K-user MIMO interference channels. Our main contribution is to relate the feasibility issue to the problem of determining the solvability of a multivariate polynomial system which is considered extensively in algebraic geometry. It is well known, e.g., from Bezout's theorem, that generic polynomial systems are solvable if and only if the number of equations does not exceed the number of variables. Following this intuition, we classify signal space interference alignment problems as either proper or improper based on the number of equations and variables. Rigorous connections between feasible and proper systems are made through Bernshtein's theorem for the case where each transmitter uses only one beamforming vector. The multibeam case introduces dependencies among the coefficients of a polynomial system so that the system is no longer generic in the sense required by both theorems. In this case, we show that the connection between feasible and proper systems can be further strengthened (since the equivalency between feasible and proper systems does not always hold) by including standard information theoretic outer bounds in the feasibility analysis.

On Feasibility of Interference Alignment in MIMO Interference Networks

This paper proposes a random network model for a device-to-device (D2D) underlaid cellular system using stochastic geometry and develops centralized and distributed power control algorithms. The goal of centralized power control is twofold: ensure that the cellular users have sufficient coverage probability by limiting the interference created by underlaid D2D users, while scheduling as many D2D links as possible. For the distributed power control method, the optimal on–off power control strategy is proposed, which maximizes the sum rate of the D2D links. Expressions are derived for the coverage probabilities of cellular, D2D links, and the sum rate of the D2D links in terms of the density of D2D links and the path-loss exponent. The analysis reveals the impact of key system parameters on the network performance. For example, the bottleneck of D2D underlaid cellular networks is the cross-tier interference between D2D links and the cellular user, not the D2D intratier interference when the density of D2D links is sparse. Simulation results verify the exactness of the derived coverage probabilities and the sum rate of D2D links.

Power Control for D2D Underlaid Cellular Networks: Modeling, Algorithms, and Analysis

This paper considers a device-to-device (D2D) underlaid cellular network where an uplink cellular user communicates with the base station while multiple direct D2D links share the uplink spectrum. This paper proposes a random network model based on stochastic geometry and develops centralized and distributed power control algorithms. The goal of the proposed power control algorithms is two-fold: ensure the cellular users have sufficient coverage probability by limiting the interference created by underlaid D2D users, while also attempting to support as many D2D links as possible. For the distributed power control method, expressions for the coverage probabilities of cellular and D2D links are derived and a lower bound on the sum rate of the D2D links is provided. The analysis reveals the impact of key system parameters on the network performance. For example, the bottleneck of D2D underlaid cellular networks is the cross-tier interference between D2D links and the cellular user, not the D2D intra-tier interference. Numerical results show the gains of the proposed power control algorithms and accuracy of the analysis.

Power Control for D2D Underlaid Cellular Networks: Modeling, Algorithms and Analysis

In this paper, we study a network information flow problem for a multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) Gaussian wireless network with three users each equipped with M antennas and a single intermediate relay equipped with N antennas. In this network, each user intends to convey independent messages for two different users via the intermediate relay while receiving two independent messages from the other two users. This is a generalized version of the two-way relay channel for the three-user case. We will call it a "MIMO Y channel." For this MIMO Y channel, we show that the capacity is 3M log(SNR) + o(log(SNR)) if N ≥ ⌈3M/2⌉ by using two novel signaling techniques, which are signal space alignment for network coding, and network-coding-aware interference nulling beamforming.

Degrees of Freedom of the MIMO Y Channel: Signal Space Alignment for Network Coding

The interference alignment (IA) is a promising technique to effectively mitigate interferences in wireless communication systems. To show the potential benefits of such an IA scheme, this letter focuses on a two-cell multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) Gaussian interfering broadcast channels (MIMO-IFBC) with M transmit antennas and N receive antennas. It corresponds to a downlink scenario for cellular networks with two base stations (BSs) with M transmit antennas per BS, and two users with N receive antennas per user, on the cell-boundary of each BS. In this scenario, we propose a novel IA technique jointly designing transmit and receive beamforming vectors in a closed-form expression without iterative computation. It is also analytically shown that the proposed IA algorithm achieves the optimal degrees of freedom (DoF) of 2N in the case of [¾N] ≤ M <; 2N. The simulations demonstrate that not only the analytical results are valid, but the sum-rate of our proposed scheme also outperforms those of conventional techniques, especially in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime.

On the Design of Interference Alignment Scheme for Two-Cell MIMO Interfering Broadcast Channels

This paper characterizes the performance of coordinated beamforming with dynamic clustering. A downlink model based on stochastic geometry is put forth to analyze the performance of such a base station (BS) coordination strategy. Analytical expressions for the complementary cumulative distribution function (CCDF) of the instantaneous signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) are derived in terms of relevant system parameters, chiefly the number of BSs forming the coordination clusters, the number of antennas per BS, and the pathloss exponent. Utilizing this CCDF, with pilot overheads further incorporated into the analysis, we formulate the optimization of the BS coordination clusters for a given fading coherence. Our results indicate that: 1) coordinated beamforming is most beneficial to users that are in the outer part of their cells yet in the inner part of their coordination cluster and that 2) the optimal cluster cardinality for the typical user is small and it scales with the fading coherence. Simulation results verify the exactness of the SIR distributions derived for stochastic geometries, which are further compared with the corresponding distributions for deterministic grid networks.

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Namyoon Lee

Papers

Power Control for D2D Underlaid Cellular Networks: Modeling, Algorithms, and Analysis

Power Control for D2D Underlaid Cellular Networks: Modeling, Algorithms and Analysis

Degrees of Freedom of the MIMO Y Channel: Signal Space Alignment for Network Coding

On the Design of Interference Alignment Scheme for Two-Cell MIMO Interfering Broadcast Channels

Spectral Efficiency of Dynamic Coordinated Beamforming: A Stochastic Geometry Approach