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Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation for beyond 5G and IoT Systems

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A special issue of Sensors (ISSN 1424-8220). This special issue belongs to the section "Sensor Networks".

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (31 March 2021) | Viewed by 35827

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Special Issue Editors

Prof. Dr. Romano Fantacci

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Guest Editor

Department of Information Engineering, University of Florence, Florence, Italy
Interests: resource allocation; internet of things; radio spectrum management; cellular radio; 5G mobile communication; access protocols; game theory; protocols; radio access networks; wireless channels; Zigbee; array signal processing; channel allocation; chaos; multicast communication; radiofrequency interference; telecommunication congestion control; telecommunication power management; telecommunication security; time series; wide-area networks; wireless sensors networks; big data; internet

Dr. Laura Pierucci

E-Mail Website
Guest Editor

Department of Information Engineering, University of Florence, Florence, Italy
Interests: 5G/6G mobile communication; MIMO techniques; device-to-device communications; machine-to-machine communications; access protocols; multicast communication; radiofrequency interference; channel allocation; relay networks; wireless sensor networks; internet of things; low power wireless area networks; 6LowPAN; cooperative communication; physical layer security; energy consumption; machine learning
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Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

Revolutionizing our lives, works, and manufacturing processes, the internet of things (IoT) will connect tens of billions of resource-limited mobiles, e.g., mobile devices, sensors, and wearable computing devices, to the Internet via cellular networks. The constrained battery and limited computation capacities of devices pose significant challenges for designing IoT. Moreover, the available spectrum resources are far from enough to support the new beyond 5G and IoT communication systems.

Resource allocation for traditional multiple-access communication systems has been widely studied, including TDMA, OFDMA, and code-division multiple access (CDMA), and it has already been designed for existing networks such as cognitive radio and heterogeneous networks. It is very challenging for current multiple-access techniques to support massive access over the limited radio spectrum.

A prominent strategy for improving spectral efficiency is non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), where each sub-channel is allowed to serve multiple terminals at the same time, and hence it has received considerable attention as a promising candidate for 5G and beyond.

In addition to this, the recent use of the software-defined networking (SDN) paradigm and the application of artificial intelligence methodologies have made significant improvements in performing energy-efficient resource allocation possible in different application scenarios.

This Special Issue seeks innovative works on a wide range of research topics, spanning both theoretical and systems research, including results from industry and academic/industrial collaborations, related but not restricted to the following topics:

Energy efficiency using SDN technology
Energy-efficient user association and beamforming for fog/edge
Energy-efficient offloading techniques
Radio access networks
Energy-efficient resource allocation in NOMA
Power transfer (SWIPT) non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA)
Energy-efficient maximization-oriented resource allocation in ultra-dense networks: Centralized and distributed algorithms
Energy efficiency in massive MIMO
Energy-efficient massive access for IoT
Energy-efficient massive MTC (mMTC)
Energy-efficient software-defined networking (SDN) and NFV for IoT
Energy efficiency for social IoT networks
Energy efficiency for IoT networks in smart manufacturing (industry 4.0)
Energy efficiency using machine learning techniques
Energy efficiency using games theory

Prof. Dr. Romano Fantacci
Dr. Laura Pierucci
Guest Editors

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Keywords

Energy efficient (EE)
Resources allocation
Software-defined networking
Internet of things (IoT)
Beyond 5G

Published Papers (13 papers)

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Research

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16 pages, 676 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Energy-Constrained Design of Joint NOMA-Diversity Schemes with Imperfect Interference Cancellation

by Fulvio Babich, Giulia Buttazzoni, Francesca Vatta and Massimiliano Comisso

Sensors 2021, 21(12), 4194; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21124194 - 18 Jun 2021

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1484

Abstract

This study proposes a set of novel random access protocols combining Packet Repetition (PR) schemes, such as Contention Resolution Diversity Slotted Aloha (CRDSA) and Irregular Repetition SA (IRSA), with Non Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA). Differently from previous NOMA/CRDSA and NOMA/IRSA proposals, this work analytically derives the energy levels considering two realistic elements: the residual interference due to imperfect Interference Cancellation (IC), and the presence of requirements on the power spent for the transmission. More precisely, the energy-limited scenario is based on the relationship between the average available energy and the selected code modulation pair, thus being of specific interest for the implementation of the Internet of Things (IoT) technology in forthcoming fifth-generation (5G) systems. Moreover, a theoretical model based on the density evolution method is developed and numerically validated by extensive simulations to evaluate the limiting throughput and to explore the actual performance of different NOMA/PR schemes in energy-constrained scenarios. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation for beyond 5G and IoT Systems)

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13 pages, 296 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Beam Allocation and Power Optimization for Energy-Efficiency in Multiuser mmWave Massive MIMO System

by Saidiwaerdi Maimaiti, Gang Chuai, Weidong Gao and Jinxi Zhang

Sensors 2021, 21(7), 2550; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21072550 - 6 Apr 2021

Cited by 2 | Viewed by 1868

Abstract

This paper studies beam allocation and power optimization scheme to decrease the hardware cost and downlink power consumption of a multiuser millimeter wave (mmWave) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system. Our target is to improve energy efficiency (EE) and decrease power consumption without obvious system performance loss. To this end, we propose a beam allocation and power optimization scheme. First, the problem of beam allocation and power optimization is formulated as a multivariate mixed-integer non-linear programming problem. Second, due to the non-convexity of this problem, we decompose it into two sub-problems which are beam allocation and power optimization. Finally, the beam allocation problem is solved by using a convex optimization technique. We solve the power optimization problem in two steps. First, the non-convex problem is converted into a convex problem by using a quadratic transformation scheme. The second step implements Lagrange dual and sub-gradient methods to solve the optimization problem. Performance analysis and simulation results show that the proposed algorithm performs almost identical to the exhaustive search (ES) method, while the greedy beam allocation and suboptimal beam allocation methods are far from the ES. Furthermore, experiment results demonstrated that our proposed algorithm outperforms the compared the greedy beam allocation method and the suboptimal beam allocation scheme in terms of average service ratio. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation for beyond 5G and IoT Systems)

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20 pages, 3900 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Dynamic Set Planning for Coordinated Multi-Point in B4G/5G Networks

by Jia-Ming Liang, Ching-Kuo Hsu, Jen-Jee Chen, Po-Han Lin, Po-Min Hsu and Tzung-Shi Chen

Sensors 2021, 21(5), 1752; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21051752 - 3 Mar 2021

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1768

Abstract

Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) is an important technique in B4G/5G networks. With CoMP, multiple base stations can be clustered to compose a cooperating set to improve system throughput, especially for the users in cell edges. Existed studies have discussed how to mitigate overloading scenarios and enhance system throughput with CoMP statically. However, static cooperation fixes the set size and neglects the fast-changing of B4G/5G networks. Thus, this paper provides a full study of off-peak hours and overloading scenarios. During off-peak hours, we propose to reduce BSs’ transmission power and use the free radio resource to save energy while guaranteeing users’ QoS. In addition, if large-scale activities happen with crowds gathering or in peak hours, we dynamically compose the cooperating set based on instant traffic requests to adjust base stations’ BSs’ transmission power; thus, the system will efficiently offload the traffic to the member cells which have available radio resources in the cooperating set. Experimental results show that the proposed schemes enhance system throughput, radio resource utilization, and energy efficiency, compared to other existing schemes. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation for beyond 5G and IoT Systems)

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15 pages, 1960 KiB

Open AccessArticle

User-Cell Association for Security and Energy Efficiency in Ultra-Dense Heterogeneous Networks

by Dania Marabissi, Lorenzo Mucchi and Simone Morosi

Sensors 2021, 21(2), 508; https://doi.org/10.3390/s21020508 - 13 Jan 2021

Cited by 12 | Viewed by 1778

Abstract

The last decades have been characterized by an exponential increase in digital services. The demand is foreseen to further increase in the next years, and mobile networks will have to mandatorily supply connections to enable digital services with very different requirements, from ultra high speed to ultra low latency. The deployment and the coexistence of cells of different size, from femto to macro, will be one of the key elements for providing such pervasive wireless connection: the ultra dense networks (UDN) paradigm. How to associate users and base stations is one of the most investigated research topics. Many criteria can be drawn, from minimization of power consumption to optimization of throughput. In this paper we propose a new utility to optimize two of the most important features of future mobile connection: security and energy consumption. By using our utility it is possible to jointly select the base station to be activated in a UDN, and associate users to the base stations with the aim of maximizing the secure throughput by spending the minimum energy. Moreover, we propose a heuristic that allows to achieve performance very close to the optimal one with reduced complexity. Effectiveness of the proposed approach is proved by means of comparison with benchmark approaches. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation for beyond 5G and IoT Systems)

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13 pages, 674 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Improving CSI Prediction Accuracy with Deep Echo State Networks in 5G Networks

by Tommaso Pecorella, Romano Fantacci and Benedetta Picano

Sensors 2020, 20(22), 6475; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20226475 - 12 Nov 2020

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1982

Abstract

The forthcoming fifth-generation networks require improvements in cognitive radio intelligence, going towards more smart and aware radio systems. In the emerging radio intelligence approach, the empowerment of cognitive capabilities is performed through the adoption of machine learning techniques. This paper investigates the combined application of the convolutional and recurrent neural networks for the channel state information forecasting, providing a multivariate scalar time series prediction by taking into account the multiple factors dependence of the channel state conditions. Finally, the system performance has been analyzed in terms of prediction accuracy expressed as absolute deviation error and mean percentage error, in comparison with an alternative machine learning method recently proposed in the literature with the aim at solving the same prediction problem. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation for beyond 5G and IoT Systems)

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12 pages, 510 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Capacitated House Allocation Game for the Energy Efficient Relays Selection in 5G Multicast Context

by Francesco Chiti, Romano Fantacci, Benedetta Picano and Laura Pierucci

Sensors 2020, 20(18), 5347; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20185347 - 18 Sep 2020

Viewed by 1728

Abstract

The upcoming fifth generation (5G) wireless networks making use of higher-frequency spectrum bands suffer from serious propagation issues due to high path loss and beam directivity requirements. This promotes the device-to-device communications to boost the transmission reliability at the network edges, providing remarkable benefits in terms of the energy and spectrum efficiency, essential for a wide class of sensors networks and Internet-of-Things. More in general, applications where devices are usually constrained in computational and transmission range capabilities. In such a context, the selection of the proper number of devices arranged as a relay plays a crucial role. Towards this goal, this paper proposes an efficient relay selection scheme minimizing both the delivery transmission delay and the overall energy consumption, i.e., the overall number of relays to be used. By focusing on a multicast content delivery application scenario the problem of interest is formulated as a one-sided preferences matching game. In addition, the strategy designed takes into account specific information, named reputation coefficient, associated to each device jointly with link propagation conditions for allowing the selection of suitable relays for disseminating the content among the devices. The effectiveness of the proposed solution is underpinned by computer simulations, and the performance is evaluated in terms of power consumption, end-to-end delay, and number of selected relays. As confirmed by results, the proposed approach improves network performance compared to the greedy approach, the random algorithm, a scheme previously proposed in literature, and with two game theory-based strategies. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation for beyond 5G and IoT Systems)

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15 pages, 1093 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Energy Efficient Constellation for Wireless Connectivity of IoT Devices

by Lorenzo Mucchi, Luca Simone Ronga and Sara Jayousi

Sensors 2020, 20(14), 3991; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20143991 - 17 Jul 2020

Cited by 1 | Viewed by 1850

Abstract

Reducing energy consumption is one of the most important task of the approaching Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm. Existing communication standards, such as 3G/4G, use complex protocols (active mode, sleep modes) in order to address the waste of energy. These protocols are forced to transmit when one frame is only partially filled with information symbols. The hard task to adapt the power-saving mode with low latency to the discontinuity of the source is mainly due to the fact that the receiver cannot know a priori when the source has something to transmit. In this paper, we propose a modified signalling/constellation which can save energy by mapping a zero-energy symbol in the information source. This paper addresses the fundamentals of this new technique: the maximum a posteriori probability (MAP) criterion, the probability of error, the (energy) entropy, the (energy) capacity as well as the energy cost of the proposed technique are derived for the binary signalling case. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation for beyond 5G and IoT Systems)

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20 pages, 1986 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Hybrid Interweave–Underlay Countrywide Millimeter-Wave Spectrum Access and Reuse Technique for CR Indoor Small Cells in 5G/6G Era

by Rony Kumer Saha

Sensors 2020, 20(14), 3979; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20143979 - 17 Jul 2020

Cited by 9 | Viewed by 1920

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a hybrid interweave–underlay spectrum access and reuse technique for the dynamic spectrum access and reuse of the countrywide 28 GHz millimeter-wave (mmWave) spectrum to in-building small cells of each mobile network operator (MNO) in a country. For the spectrum access, the proposed technique explores both interweave and underlay spectrum access techniques, whereas, for the spectrum reuse, it considers reusing the countrywide spectrum to each three-dimensional (3D) cluster of small cells in a building. To access the countrywide spectrum, each MNO is considered by paying a licensing fee following its number of subscribers. We present the 3D clustering of in-building of small cells and derive average capacity, spectral efficiency (SE), and energy efficiency (EE). We then perform extensive numerical and simulation results and analyses for an MNO of a country consisting of four MNOs. It is shown that, for no spectrum reuse to in-building small cells, the proposed technique improves average capacity and SE by 3.63 and 2.42 times, respectively, whereas EE improves by 72.79%. However, for vertical spatial reuse of six times (as an example) to small cells in a building, average capacity, SE, and EE improve further by 21.77 times, 14.51 times, and 95.66%, respectively. Moreover, the proposed technique can satisfy SE and EE requirements for sixth-generation (6G) mobile systems by horizontal spatial reuse of the countrywide spectrum to small cells of about 40.62%, 9.37%, and 6.25% less buildings than that required by the traditional static licensed spectrum access (SLSA) technique. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation for beyond 5G and IoT Systems)

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20 pages, 755 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Toward Resilient Wireless Sensor Networks: A Virtualized Perspective

by Adnan Rashid, Tommaso Pecorella and Francesco Chiti

Sensors 2020, 20(14), 3902; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20143902 - 13 Jul 2020

Cited by 3 | Viewed by 2625

Abstract

The Internet of Things (IoT) has been one of the main focus areas of the research community in recent years, the requirements of which help network administrators to design and ensure the functionalities and resources of each device. Generally, two types of devices—constrained and unconstrained devices—are typical in the IoT environment. Devices with limited resources—for example, sensors and actuators—are known as constrained devices. Unconstrained devices includes gateways or border routers. Such devices are challenging in terms of their deployment because of their connectivity, channel selection, multiple interfaces, local and global address assignment, address resolution, remote access, mobility, routing, border router scope and security. To deal with these services, the availability of the IoT system ensures that the desired network services are available even in the presence of denial-of-service attacks, and the use of the system has become a difficult but mandatory task for network designers. To this end, we present a novel design for wireless sensor networks (WSNs) to address these challenges by shifting mandatory functionalities from unreliable to reliable and stable domains. The main contribution of our work consists in addressing the core network requirements for IoT systems and pointing out several guidelines for the design of standard virtualized protocols and functions. In addition, we propose a novel architecture which improves IoT systems, lending them more resilience and robustness, together with highlighting and some important open research topics. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation for beyond 5G and IoT Systems)

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18 pages, 1447 KiB

Open AccessArticle

GRAFT: A Model for Evaluating Actuator Systems in Terms of Force Production

by Hamza Baniata, Ahmad Sharieh, Sami Mahmood and Attila Kertesz

Sensors 2020, 20(7), 1894; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20071894 - 29 Mar 2020

Viewed by 2655

Abstract

In the scope of evaluation methodologies for Internet of Things (IoT) systems, some approaches concern security, while others latency. However, some methodologies evaluate systems that contain active entities, so-called actuators. In this paper, we propose a novel methodology for evaluating such systems with actuator components using Graph Representation of the Angle of the Force and Time (GRAFT). GRAFT facilitates easy computation of the net force produced by physical or mechanical acts occurring on a daily basis on Earth. We use laws and definitions of physics describing the relations between Speed, Distance, and Time (SDT), apply them in a heliocentric system, and model the considered systems with a graph. The continuous movement of the Earth was shown to be weakening the total produced net force in some systems. We considered this weakening issue a problem, and we propose two possible solutions to overcome it by using restoration values, or reordering actuator sessions, in GRAFT to arrive to a more force-efficient system. We compared our default GRAFT algorithm to a special implementation using the Clock-Angle-Problem (CAP) for sessions. We also study and discuss an IoT-focused case for validating our approach, and we present a detailed explanation of the proposed GRAFT algorithm. The experimental results show the ability of GRAFT to provide highly accurate results, which also exemplifies that our GRAFT approach is programmable, hence deployable in real life scenarios. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation for beyond 5G and IoT Systems)

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32 pages, 7323 KiB

Open AccessArticle

On Maximizing Energy and Spectral Efficiencies Using Small Cells in 5G and Beyond Networks

by Rony Kumer Saha

Sensors 2020, 20(6), 1676; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20061676 - 17 Mar 2020

Cited by 7 | Viewed by 3174

Abstract

Addressing high capacity at low power as a key design goal envisages achieving high spectral efficiency (SE) and energy efficiency (EE) for the next-generation mobile networks. Because most data are generated in indoor environments, an ultra-dense deployment of small cells (SCs), particularly within multistory buildings in urban areas, is revealed as an effective technique to improve SE and EE by numerous studies. In this paper, we present a framework exploiting the four most interconnected-domain, including, power, time, frequency, and space, in the perspectives of SE and EE. Unlike existing literature, the framework takes advantage of higher degrees of freedom to maximize SE and EE using in-building SCs for 5G and beyond mobile networks. We derive average capacity, SE, and EE metrics, along with defining the condition for optimality of SE and EE and developing an algorithm for the framework. An extensive system-level evaluation is performed to show the impact of each domain on SE and EE. It is shown that employing multiband enabled SC base stations (SBSs) to increase operating spectrum in frequency-domain, reusing spectrum to SBSs more than once per building in spatial-domain, switching on and off each in-building SBS based on traffic availability to reduce SBS power consumption in power-domain, and using eICIC to avoid co-channel interference due to sharing spectrum with SBSs in time-domain can achieve massive SE and EE. Finally, we show that the proposed framework can satisfy SE, EE, as well as user experience data rate requirements for 5G and beyond mobile networks. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation for beyond 5G and IoT Systems)

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16 pages, 2499 KiB

Open AccessArticle

A Resource Allocation Mechanism Based on Weighted Efficiency Interference-Aware for D2D Underlaid Communication

by Jingzhao Li, Xiaoming Zhang, Yuan Feng and Kuan-Ching Li

Sensors 2019, 19(14), 3194; https://doi.org/10.3390/s19143194 - 19 Jul 2019

Cited by 11 | Viewed by 2915

Abstract

Device-to-device (D2D) communication is a promising technique for direct communication to enhance the performance of cellular networks. In order to improve the system throughput and utilization of spectrum resource, a resource allocation mechanism for D2D underlaid communication is proposed in this paper where D2D pairs reuse the resource blocks (RBs) of cellular uplink users, adopting a matching matrix to disclose the results of resource allocation. Details of the proposed resource allocation mechanism focused are listed as: the transmit power of D2D pairs are determined by themselves with the distributed power control method, and D2D pairs are assigned to different clusters that are the intended user sets of RBs, according to the threshold of the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR). The weighted efficiency interference-aware (WE-I-A) algorithm is proposed and applied subsequently to promote the system throughput by optimizing the matching of D2D pairs and RBs, where each D2D pair is weighted based on the SINR to compete for the priority of RBs fairly. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm contributes to a good performance on the system throughput even if the uplink state is limited. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation for beyond 5G and IoT Systems)

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Review

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12 pages, 596 KiB

Open AccessReview

Magnetic and Electric Energy Harvesting Technologies in Power Grids: A Review

by Feng Yang, Lin Du, Huizong Yu and Peilin Huang

Sensors 2020, 20(5), 1496; https://doi.org/10.3390/s20051496 - 9 Mar 2020

Cited by 32 | Viewed by 8316

Abstract

With the development of intelligent modern power systems, real-time sensing and monitoring of system operating conditions have become one of the enabling technologies. Due to their flexibility, robustness and broad serviceable scope, wireless sensor networks have become a promising candidate for achieving the condition monitoring in a power grid. In order to solve the problematic power supplies of the sensors, energy harvesting (EH) technology has attracted increasing research interest. The motivation of this paper is to investigate the profiles of harnessing the electric and magnetic fields and facilitate the further application of energy scavenging techniques in the context of power systems. In this paper, the fundamentals, current status, challenges, and future prospects of the two most applicable EH methods in the grid—magnetic field energy harvesting (MEH) and electric field energy harvesting (EEH) are reviewed. The characteristics of the magnetic field and electric field under typical scenarios in power systems is analyzed first. Then the MEH and EEH are classified and reviewed respectively according to the structural difference of energy harvesters, which have been further evaluated based on the comparison of advantages and disadvantages for the future development trend. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation for beyond 5G and IoT Systems)

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