TUT-01: Communication Networks Design: Model-Based, AI-Driven, or Both?
Alessio Zappone, Paris-Saclay University / CNRS, France; Marco Di Renzo, Paris-Saclay University / CNRS, France; Merouane Debbah, Huawei France R&D, France
Data-driven approaches are not new to wireless communications, but their implementation through deep learning techniques has never been considered in the past. However, the situation is rapidly changing, and very recently the use of deep learning has started being envisioned for wireless communications. Indeed, the increasing complexity of wireless networks makes it harder and harder to come up with theoretical models that are at the same time accurate and tractable. The rising complexity of 5G and beyond 5G networks is exceeding the modeling and optimization possibilities of standard mathematical tools. Nevertheless, purely data-driven approaches require a huge amount of data to operate, which might be difficult and/or expensive to acquire in practical large-scale scenarios. In this context, the specific field of communication theory presents a major opportunity thanks to the availability of many more theoretical models compared to other fields of science. Indeed, despite being usually inaccurate and/or cumbersome, available communication models still provide important prior information that should be exploited. Accordingly, the aim of this tutorial is to put forth the idea that theoretical modeling and data-driven approaches are not two contrasting paradigms, but should rather be used jointly to get the most out of them.
TUT-02: Cellular Internet of UAVs for 5G and Beyond
Kaigui Bian, Peking University, China; Lingyang Song, Peking University, China; Zhu Han, University of Houston, USA
The emerging unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been playing an increasing role in the military, public, and civil applications. Unlike terrestrial cellular networks, UAV communications have many distinctive features such as high dynamic network topologies and weakly connected communication links. The aim of this tutorial is to bring together control, signal processing engineers, computer and information scientists, applied mathematicians and statisticians, as well as systems engineers to carve out the role that analytical and experimental engineering has to play in UAV research and development. This proposal will emphasize on UAV technologies and applications for cellular networks. There are four main objectives. The first objective is to provide an introduction to the UAV paradigm, from 5G and beyond communication perspective. The second objective is to introduce the key methods, including optimization, game, and graph theory, for UAV applications, in a comprehensive way. The third objective is to discuss UAV assisted cellular communications. The fourth objective is to present the state-of-the-art for cellular network assisted UAV sensing. Many examples will be illustrated in details so as to provide wide scope for general audiences.
TUT-03: Millimeter-Wave Communication: Advances and New Trends
Zhenyu Xiao, BeihangUniversity, China; Yonghui Li, The University of Sydney, Australia; Xiang-Gen Xia, University of Delaware, USA
The past decade has witnessed a rapid development of mobile Internet, which increases the bandwidth requirement of wireless access. To meet this demand, it is necessary to move from the existing micro-wave bands toward higher frequency, i.e., the millimeter wave (mmWave) band. In the past a few years, both the academia and industry have made great effort in exploring the applications of mmWave band in both wireless local area network and cellular mobile networks. Significant progress has been achieved in various aspects, e.g., beamforming and channel estimation. Meanwhile, as non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication develop rapidly, the academia also attempts to consider NOMA in mmWave communication to address its multi-user problem, and to use mmWave communication on the UAV to adapt its feature of high mobility. In this tutorial, we will first overview the main technical progress of mmWave communication; then we report the recent research results in mmWave communication with NOMA (mmWave-NOMA); finally, we introduce research progress and challenges of mmWave UAV communication.
TUT-04: Internet of Vehicles: when Edge Computing and Learning Meet Intelligent Transport
Yan Zhang, University of Oslo, Norway; Ke Zhang, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Internet of Vehicles (IoV) aims to exploit the state-of-the-art ICT (Information & Communications Technologies) to achieve sustainable and secure transport systems. The tutorial will cover the state-of-the-art topics in the emerging area of Internet of Vehicles, including Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) and learning approaches in Intelligent Transport Systems enabled by a synergy among these paradigms. In this tutorial, we will first introduce the main communication and computation techniques. Then, we will provide a thorough perspective on how mobile edge computing concepts can be adapted for vehicular communication networks. This may become a very interesting research topic and a very promising application related to mobile edge computing. In this scenario, we will focus on resource allocation, models and optimization problems, and various offloading and caching techniques. Next, we will present our ideas on utilizing deep Q-learning, deep reinforcement learning for data transmission, offloading and content distribution in intelligent transport systems. The approach and the solutions in this context will result in highly efficient interconnection and synergy among various types of components in the transport sector.
TUT-05: Hybrid Beamforming for 5G Millimeter-Wave Systems
Jun Zhang, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University; Xianghao Yu, Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg (FAU)
The upcoming 5G network needs to achieve substantially larger link capacity and ultra-low latency to support emerging mobile applications. The millimeter-wave (mm-wave) band stands out as an effective approach to further boost the network capacity. Large-scale antenna arrays are needed to fully exploit the performance gains of mm-wave communications, which brings formidable challenges to algorithm design and hardware implementation. Hybrid beamforming is recently proposed as a cost-effective alternative, which can significantly reduce hardware cost and power consumption. Nevertheless, the design of hybrid beamforming differs fundamentally from that of the fully digital one. This tutorial will present recent developments in this active area, including effective hardware structures and beamforming algorithms. A holistic approach will be taken, emphasizing on the three decisive aspects: 1) hardware efficiency (HE), i.e., the required hardware components; 2) computational efficiency (CE) of the associated beamforming algorithm; and 3) achievable spectral efficiency (SE). Through systematic comparison, the interplay and tradeoff among the three design aspects will be demonstrated, and promising candidates for hybrid beamforming in 5G mm-wave systems will be identified.
TUT-06: Quantum Communications
Robert Malaney,The University of New South Wales, Australia
This tutorial introduces the key concepts and principles that underpin the emerging and exciting new world of quantum communications. The course is particularly aimed at Engineers wishing to develop an understanding of Quantum Communications for the first time. Quantum Networks are anticipated to be the core networking technologies of the 21st century. In fact, these communication systems have already appeared in the commercial world in many variations, and recently China launched the World’s first quantum-enabled satellite. The tutorial introduces the key concepts important for understanding, testing, analyzing and improving the performance of real-world quantum communication networks. Designed from an engineering perspective the tutorial will first introduce the basic quantum physics that underlies quantum communication principles. It will then provide an overview of currently deployed quantum networks, discussing their relationship to classical communication systems. Potential research topics for the beginning quantum engineer will also be discussed.