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State of the Art in beyond 5G and 6G Radio Communications Networks

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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: 25 November 2024 | Viewed by 9675

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Special Issue Editors

Dr. Jonathan Prados-Garzon

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Guest Editor

Department of Signal Theory, Telematics and Communications, University of Granada, 18014 Granada, Spain
Interests: NFV; 5G; network slicing; private networks

Dr. Oscar Adamuz-Hinojosa

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Guest Editor

Department of Signal Theory, Telematics and Communications, University of Granada, 18071 Granada, Spain
Interests: NFV and Network Slicing in 5G/Beyond 5G RAN

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The most recent contributions to the 3GPP standards (from Release 15 to Release 17) aim to serve as a key enabler for the evolution of the 5G Networks. Specifically, they have already allowed the mobile network operators to deploy and operate the first commercial 5G networks. Now, the research community and the industry have begun to explore the first solutions to implement beyond 5G and 6G networks. The main goal of these solutions will be to support services beyond enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), massive machine-type communication (mMTC), and ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC). For instance, holographic telepresence has sub-millisecond latency and higher than 1 Tbps bandwidth requirements. Another example is the Internet of Everything (IoE) which will require connection densities higher than 10^7 devices per km2, seven nines of network availability, sub-millisecond latency, per-user data rates above 1 Gbps, and 100 times the energy efficiency offered by 5G networks. Therefore, beyond 5G and 6G networks are expected to extend 5G capabilities to higher levels where millions of connected devices and applications could operate seamlessly with unprecedented trust and security levels, ultra-low-latency and extremely high bandwidth. Due to the large amount of recent scientific contributions around beyond 5G and 6G networks, review articles on this research field becomes crucial to accelerate the assimilation and understanding of all of these advancements into the existing body of knowledge.

The objective of this Special Issue (SI) is to survey the most-recent solutions in the literature which shed light on those technological aspects that will make a reality the deployment and operation of beyond 5G and 6G Radio Access Networks (RAN). Topics covered will include but are not limited to:

Management architectures for Beyond 5G and 6G RAN.
Channel modeling and signal processing for terahertz communications.
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) for Beyond 5G and 6G RAN.
Big Data Analytics for Beyond 5G and 6G RAN.
Non-Terrestial Networks (NTR) in Beyond 5G and 6G Communications.
Antenna Systems for Beyond 5G and 6G.
Location awareness for Beyond 5G and 6G.
Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs) for Beyond 5G and 6G networks.
Security aspects on Beyond 5G and 6G RAN.
Network slicing in Beyond 5G and 6G RAN.
TSN and Beyond 5G and 6G RAN integration.
Emerging technologies and use cases in Beyond 5G and 6G RAN.
Enabling Deterministic Networking in Beyond 5G and 6G RAN.
Quantum Communications for Beyond 5G and 6G.
Zero-touch networking in Beyond 5G and 6G.

Dr. Jonathan Prados-Garzon
Dr. Oscar Adamuz-Hinojosa
Guest Editors

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Keywords

Beyond 5G and 6G
Management architectures
Channel modeling
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML)
Network Slicing
Deterministic Networking
Non-Terrestial Networks
Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces

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Research

17 pages, 2086 KiB

Open AccessArticle

6G-Powered Efficient Resource Control through IRS-UE Association

by Ali Alqahtani, Ashu Taneja, Jarallah Alqahtani and Nayef Alqahtani

Sensors 2023, 23(21), 8713; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23218713 - 25 Oct 2023

Viewed by 958

Abstract

The widespread popularity of live streaming, cloud gaming, mobile video streaming, and many real-time applications relies on high-speed data to ensure low latency and seamless user experience. This large high-speed data demand has led to the development of next-generation or sixth-generation (6G) communication technology. It aims to offer high-speed communication support to multiple applications and interactive services simultaneously. But the vulnerability of node communication to the changing propagation environment often leads to call drops, data loss, and high latency. This paper presents a 6G-enabled wireless network that makes use of multiple intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs). The distributed IRSs enhance the robustness of transmission but the increased overhead owing to multiple IRSs is the main challenge. To overcome this, efficient resource control is introduced, which associates sets of IRSs to user equipment (UE). An algorithm, namely IUABP (IRS-UE association based on pilots), is proposed; it offers selective resource control. Furthermore, the performance of the distributed IRS system is evaluated based on the achievable sum rate for different IRS numbers, reflecting elements, and transmit powers. We observed that the proposed association scheme offers an improvement of 30% in the achieved sum rate using N = 50 and R = 5 at a transmit power of 12 dBm. We also discuss the comparison with two other association schemes, namely, distance-based association and random association. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State of the Art in beyond 5G and 6G Radio Communications Networks)

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38 pages, 1522 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Dynamic Resource Allocation for Network Slicing with Multi-Tenants in 5G Two-Tier Networks

by Jia-You Lin, Ping-Hung Chou and Ren-Hung Hwang

Sensors 2023, 23(10), 4698; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23104698 - 12 May 2023

Cited by 5 | Viewed by 2778

Abstract

Virtualization is a core 5G network technology which helps telecom companies significantly reduce capital expenditure and operating expenses by deploying multiple services on the same hardware infrastructure. However, providing QoS-guaranteed services for multi-tenants poses a significant challenge due to multi-tenant service diversity. Network slicing has been proposed as a means of addressing this problem by isolating computing and communication resources for the different tenants of different services. However, optimizing the allocation of the network and computation resources across multiple network slices is a critical but extremely difficult problem. Accordingly, this study proposes two heuristic algorithms, namely Minimum Cost Resource Allocation (MCRA) and Fast Latency Decrease Resource Allocation (FLDRA), to perform dynamic path routing and resource allocation for multi-tenant network slices in a two-tier architecture. The simulation results show that both algorithms significantly outperform the Upper-tier First with Latency-bounded Overprovisioning Prevention (UFLOP) algorithm proposed in previous work. Furthermore, the MCRA algorithm achieves a higher resource utilization than the FLDRA algorithm. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State of the Art in beyond 5G and 6G Radio Communications Networks)

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16 pages, 560 KiB

Open AccessArticle

Joint Method of Moments (JMoM) and Successive Moment Cancellation (SMC) Multiuser Time Synchronization for ZP-OFDM-Based Waveforms Applicable to Joint Communication and Sensing

by Koosha Pourtahmasi Roshandeh, Mostafa Mohammadkarimi and Masoud Ardakani

Sensors 2023, 23(7), 3660; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23073660 - 31 Mar 2023

Viewed by 1339

Abstract

It has been recently shown that zero padding (ZP)-orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is a promising candidate for 6G wireless systems requiring joint communication and sensing. In this paper, we consider a multiuser uplink scenario where users are separated in power domain, i.e., non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), and use ZP-OFDM signals. The uplink transmission is grant-free and users are allowed to transmit asynchronously. In this setup, we address the problem of time synchronization by estimating the timing offset (TO) of all the users. We propose two non-data-aided (NDA) estimators, i.e., the joint method of moment (JMoM) and the successive moment cancellation (SMC), that employ the periodicity of the second order moment (SoM) of the received samples for TO estimation. Moreover, the coding assisted (CA) version of the proposed estimators, i.e., CA-JMoM and CA-SMC, are developed for the case of short observation samples. We also extend the proposed estimators to multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. The effectiveness of the proposed estimators is evaluated in terms of lock-in probability under various practical scenarios. Simulation results show that the JMoM estimator can reach the lock-in probability of one for the moderate range of

E_{b} / N_{0}

values. While existing NDA TO estimators in the literature either offer low lock-in probability, high computational complexity that prevents them from being employed in MIMO systems, or are designed for single-user scenarios, the proposed estimators in this paper address all of these issues. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State of the Art in beyond 5G and 6G Radio Communications Networks)

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17 pages, 2068 KiB

Open AccessEditor’s ChoiceArticle

On the Design of a Network Digital Twin for the Radio Access Network in 5G and Beyond

by Irene Vilà, Oriol Sallent and Jordi Pérez-Romero

Sensors 2023, 23(3), 1197; https://doi.org/10.3390/s23031197 - 20 Jan 2023

Cited by 13 | Viewed by 3714

Abstract

A Network Digital Twin (NDT) is a high-fidelity digital mirror of a real network. Given the increasing complexity of 5G and beyond networks, the use of an NDT becomes useful as a platform for testing configurations and algorithms prior to their application in the real network, as well as for predicting the performance of such algorithms under different conditions. While an NDT can be defined for the different subsystems of the network, this paper proposes an NDT architecture focusing on the Radio Access Network (RAN), describing the components to represent and model the operation of the different RAN elements, and to perform emulations. Different application use cases are identified, and among them, the paper puts the focus on the training of Reinforcement Learning (RL) solutions for the RAN. For this use case, the paper introduces a framework aligned with O-RAN specifications and discusses the functionalities needed to integrate the NDT. This use case is illustrated with the description of a RAN NDT implementation used for training an RL-based capacity-sharing solution for network slicing. Presented results demonstrate that the implemented RAN NDT is a suitable platform to successfully train the RL solution, achieving service-level agreement satisfaction values above 85%. Full article

(This article belongs to the Special Issue State of the Art in beyond 5G and 6G Radio Communications Networks)

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