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Published work

42 published item(s)

preprint2026arXiv

Bridging the Cognitive Gap: A Unified Memory Paradigm for 6G Agentic AI-RAN

As 6G evolves, the radio access network must transcend traditional automation to embrace agentic AI capable of perception, reasoning, and evolution. A fundamental cognitive gap persists in current disaggregated architectures, where interfaces force the physical layer to compress high-dimensional states into low-dimensional metrics, trapping reasoning agents behind a semantic bottleneck. This article envisions a shift from interface-bound to memory-centric architectures. We propose a unified memory paradigm that dissolves the boundaries between sensing and reasoning by mapping biological memory hierarchies onto heterogeneous computing fabrics. Enabled by emerging coherent interconnects, this approach creates a cognitive continuum where microsecond-level reflexes, millisecond-level reasoning, and long-term evolution share state across time scales. By replacing message passing with zero-copy observability, we empower AI agents to bridge the gap between real-time responsiveness and long-horizon context for truly autonomous 6G networks.

preprint2026arXiv

CoCo-Fed: A Unified Framework for Memory- and Communication-Efficient Federated Learning at the Wireless Edge

The deployment of large-scale neural networks within the Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) architecture is pivotal for enabling native edge intelligence. However, this paradigm faces two critical bottlenecks: the prohibitive memory footprint required for local training on resource-constrained gNBs, and the saturation of bandwidth-limited backhaul links during the global aggregation of high-dimensional model updates. To address these challenges, we propose CoCo-Fed, a novel Compression and Combination-based Federated learning framework that unifies local memory efficiency and global communication reduction. Locally, CoCo-Fed breaks the memory wall by performing a double-dimension down-projection of gradients, adapting the optimizer to operate on low-rank structures without introducing additional inference parameters/latency. Globally, we introduce a transmission protocol based on orthogonal subspace superposition, where layer-wise updates are projected and superimposed into a single consolidated matrix per gNB, drastically reducing the backhaul traffic. Beyond empirical designs, we establish a rigorous theoretical foundation, proving the convergence of CoCo-Fed even under unsupervised learning conditions suitable for wireless sensing tasks. Extensive simulations on an angle-of-arrival estimation task demonstrate that CoCo-Fed significantly outperforms state-of-the-art baselines in both memory and communication efficiency while maintaining robust convergence under non-IID settings.

preprint2026arXiv

FedVSSAM: Mitigating Flatness Incompatibility in Sharpness-Aware Federated Learning

Sharpness-aware minimization (SAM) is an effective method for improving the generalization of federated learning (FL) by steering local training toward flat minima. Under data heterogeneity, however, device-side SAM searches for locally flat basins that are incompatible with the flat region preferred by the global objective. We identify this structural failure mode as flatness incompatibility, which explains why improving local flatness alone may provide limited training and generalization improvement for the global model. We reveal that flatness incompatibility arises from data heterogeneity and the friendly adversary phenomenon, and is further amplified by local updates and partial device participation. To mitigate this issue, we propose Federated Learning with variance-suppressed sharpness-aware minimization (FedVSSAM), which constructs a variance-suppressed adjusted direction and uses it consistently in local flatness search, local descent, and global update. FedVSSAM anchors both perturbation and update directions to a more stable global direction, instead of correcting only an isolated local perturbation. We establish non-convex convergence guarantees of FedVSSAM and prove that the mean-square deviation between the adjusted direction and the global gradient is effectively controlled. Experiments demonstrate that FedVSSAM mitigates flatness incompatibility and outperforms the baselines across diverse FL settings.

preprint2026arXiv

On the Sequence Reconstruction Problem for the Single-Deletion Two-Substitution Channel

The Levenshtein sequence reconstruction problem studies the reconstruction of a transmitted sequence from multiple erroneous copies of it. A fundamental question in this field is to determine the minimum number of erroneous copies required to guarantee correct reconstruction of the original sequence. This problem is equivalent to determining the maximum possible intersection size of two error balls associated with the underlying channel. Existing research on the sequence reconstruction problem has largely focused on channels with a single type of error, such as insertions, deletions, or substitutions alone. However, relatively little is known for channels that involve a mixture of error types, for instance, channels allowing both deletions and substitutions. In this work, we study the sequence reconstruction problem for the single-deletion two-substitution channel, which allows one deletion and at most two substitutions applied to the transmitted sequence. Specifically, we prove that if two $q$-ary length-$n$ sequences have the Hamming distance $d\geq 2$, where $q\geq 2$ is any fixed integer, then the intersection size of their error balls under the single-deletion two-substitution channel is upper bounded by $(q^2-1)n^2-(3q^2+5q-5)n+O_q(1)$, where $O_q(1)$ is a constant independent from $n$ but dependent on $q$. Moreover, we show that this upper bound is tight up to an additive constant.

preprint2026arXiv

OptiVote: Non-Coherent FSO Over-the-Air Majority Vote for Communication-Efficient Distributed Federated Learning in Space Data Centers

The rapid deployment of mega-constellations is driving the long-term vision of space data centers (SDCs), where interconnected satellites form in-orbit distributed computing and learning infrastructures. Enabling distributed federated learning in such systems is challenging because iterative training requires frequent aggregation over inter-satellite links that are bandwidth- and energy-constrained, and the link conditions can be highly dynamic. In this work, we exploit over-the-air computation (AirComp) as an in-network aggregation primitive. However, conventional coherent AirComp relies on stringent phase alignment, which is difficult to maintain in space environments due to satellite jitter and Doppler effects. To overcome this limitation, we propose OptiVote, a robust and communication-efficient non-coherent free-space optical (FSO) AirComp framework for federated learning toward Space Data Centers. OptiVote integrates sign stochastic gradient descent (signSGD) with a majority-vote (MV) aggregation principle and pulse-position modulation (PPM), where each satellite conveys local gradient signs by activating orthogonal PPM time slots. The aggregation node performs MV detection via non-coherent energy accumulation, transforming phase-sensitive field superposition into phase-agnostic optical intensity combining, thereby eliminating the need for precise phase synchronization and improving resilience under dynamic impairments. To mitigate aggregation bias induced by heterogeneous FSO channels, we further develop an importance-aware, channel state information (CSI)-free dynamic power control scheme that balances received energies without additional signaling. We provide theoretical analysis by characterizing the aggregate error probability under statistical FSO channels and establishing convergence guarantees for non-convex objectives.

preprint2025arXiv

Empower Low-Altitude Economy: A Reliability-Aware Dynamic Weighting Allocation for Multi-modal UAV Beam Prediction

The low-altitude economy (LAE) is rapidly expanding driven by urban air mobility, logistics drones, and aerial sensing, while fast and accurate beam prediction in uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) communications is crucial for achieving reliable connectivity. Current research is shifting from single-signal to multi-modal collaborative approaches. However, existing multi-modal methods mostly employ fixed or empirical weights, assuming equal reliability across modalities at any given moment. Indeed, the importance of different modalities fluctuates dramatically with UAV motion scenarios, and static weighting amplifies the negative impact of degraded modalities. Furthermore, modal mismatch and weak alignment further undermine cross-scenario generalization. To this end, we propose a reliability-aware dynamic weighting scheme applied to a semantic-aware multi-modal beam prediction framework, named SaM2B. Specifically, SaM2B leverages lightweight cues such as environmental visual, flight posture, and geospatial data to adaptively allocate contributions across modalities at different time points through reliability-aware dynamic weight updates. Moreover, by utilizing cross-modal contrastive learning, we align the "multi-source representation beam semantics" associated with specific beam information to a shared semantic space, thereby enhancing discriminative power and robustness under modal noise and distribution shifts. Experiments on real-world low-altitude UAV datasets show that SaM2B achieves more satisfactory results than baseline methods.

preprint2024arXiv

An Edge-Cloud Collaboration Framework for Generative AI Service Provision with Synergetic Big Cloud Model and Small Edge Models

Generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) offers various services to users through content creation, which is believed to be one of the most important components in future networks. However, training and deploying big artificial intelligence models (BAIMs) introduces substantial computational and communication overhead.This poses a critical challenge to centralized approaches, due to the need of high-performance computing infrastructure and the reliability, secrecy and timeliness issues in long-distance access of cloud services. Therefore, there is an urging need to decentralize the services, partly moving them from the cloud to the edge and establishing native GenAI services to enable private, timely, and personalized experiences. In this paper, we propose a brand-new bottom-up BAIM architecture with synergetic big cloud model and small edge models, and design a distributed training framework and a task-oriented deployment scheme for efficient provision of native GenAI services. The proposed framework can facilitate collaborative intelligence, enhance adaptability, gather edge knowledge and alleviate edge-cloud burden. The effectiveness of the proposed framework is demonstrated through an image generation use case. Finally, we outline fundamental research directions to fully exploit the collaborative potential of edge and cloud for native GenAI and BAIM applications.

preprint2024arXiv

OFDM-Based Digital Semantic Communication with Importance Awareness

Semantic communication (SemCom) has received considerable attention for its ability to reduce data transmission size while maintaining task performance. However, existing works mainly focus on analog SemCom with simple channel models, which may limit its practical application. To reduce this gap, we propose an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)-based SemCom system that is compatible with existing digital communication infrastructures. In the considered system, the extracted semantics is quantized by scalar quantizers, transformed into OFDM signal, and then transmitted over the frequency-selective channel. Moreover, we propose a semantic importance measurement method to build the relationship between target task and semantic features. Based on semantic importance, we formulate a sub-carrier and bit allocation problem to maximize communication performance. However, the optimization objective function cannot be accurately characterized using a mathematical expression due to the neural network-based semantic codec. Given the complex nature of the problem, we first propose a low-complexity sub-carrier allocation method that assigns sub-carriers with better channel conditions to more critical semantics. Then, we propose a deep reinforcement learning-based bit allocation algorithm with dynamic action space. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed system achieves 9.7% and 28.7% performance gains compared to analog SemCom and conventional bit-based communication systems, respectively.

preprint2023arXiv

Beyond ADMM: A Unified Client-variance-reduced Adaptive Federated Learning Framework

As a novel distributed learning paradigm, federated learning (FL) faces serious challenges in dealing with massive clients with heterogeneous data distribution and computation and communication resources. Various client-variance-reduction schemes and client sampling strategies have been respectively introduced to improve the robustness of FL. Among others, primal-dual algorithms such as the alternating direction of method multipliers (ADMM) have been found being resilient to data distribution and outperform most of the primal-only FL algorithms. However, the reason behind remains a mystery still. In this paper, we firstly reveal the fact that the federated ADMM is essentially a client-variance-reduced algorithm. While this explains the inherent robustness of federated ADMM, the vanilla version of it lacks the ability to be adaptive to the degree of client heterogeneity. Besides, the global model at the server under client sampling is biased which slows down the practical convergence. To go beyond ADMM, we propose a novel primal-dual FL algorithm, termed FedVRA, that allows one to adaptively control the variance-reduction level and biasness of the global model. In addition, FedVRA unifies several representative FL algorithms in the sense that they are either special instances of FedVRA or are close to it. Extensions of FedVRA to semi/un-supervised learning are also presented. Experiments based on (semi-)supervised image classification tasks demonstrate superiority of FedVRA over the existing schemes in learning scenarios with massive heterogeneous clients and client sampling.

preprint2022arXiv

Analysis of Age of Information in Dual Updating Systems

We study the average Age of Information (AoI) and peak AoI (PAoI) of a dual-queue status update system that monitors a common stochastic process. Although the double queue parallel transmission is instrumental in reducing AoI, the out of order of data arrivals also imposes a significant challenge to the performance analysis. We consider two settings: the M-M system where the service time of two servers is exponentially distributed; the M-D system in which the service time of one server is exponentially distributed and that of the other is deterministic. For the two dual-queue systems, closed-form expressions of average AoI and PAoI are derived by resorting to the graphic method and state flow graph analysis method. Our analysis reveals that compared with the single-queue system with an exponentially distributed service time, the average PAoI and the average AoI of the M-M system can be reduced by 33.3% and 37.5%, respectively. For the M-D system, the reduction in average PAoI and the average AoI are 27.7% and 39.7%, respectively. Numerical results show that the two dual-queue systems also outperform the M/M/2 single queue dual-server system with optimized arrival rate in terms of average AoI and PAoI.

preprint2022arXiv

Coverage Analysis for Cellular-Connected Random 3D Mobile UAVs with Directional Antennas

This letter proposes an analytical framework to evaluate the coverage performance of a cellular-connected unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) network in which UAV user equipments (UAV-UEs) are equipped with directional antennas and move according to a three-dimensional (3D) mobility model. The ground base stations (GBSs) equipped with practical down-tilted antennas are distributed according to a Poisson point process (PPP). With tools from stochastic geometry, we derive the handover probability and coverage probability of a random UAV-UE under the strongest average received signal strength (RSS) association strategy. The proposed analytical framework allows to investigate the effect of UAV-UE antenna beamwidth, mobility speed, cell association, and vertical motions on both the handover probability and coverage probability. We conclude that the optimal UAV-UE antenna beamwidth decreases with the GBS density, and the omnidirectional antenna model is preferred in the sparse network scenario. What's more, the superiority of the strongest average RSS association over the nearest association diminishes with the increment of GBS density.

preprint2022arXiv

Facing to Latency of Hyperledger Fabric for Blockchain-enabled IoT: Modeling and Analysis

Hyperledger Fabric (HLF), one of the most popular private blockchains, has recently received attention for blockchain-enabled Internet of Things (IoT). However, for IoT applications to handle time-sensitive data, the processing latency in HLF has emerged as a new challenge. In this article, therefore, we establish a practical HLF latency model for HLF-enabled IoT. We first discuss the structure and transaction flow of HLF-enabled IoT. After implementing real HLF, we capture the latencies that each transaction experiences and show that the total latency of HLF can be modeled as a Gamma distribution, which is validated by conducting a goodness-of-fit test (i.e., the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) test). We also provide the parameter values of the modeled latency distribution for various HLF environments. Furthermore, we explore the impacts of three important HLF parameters including transaction generation rate, block size, and block-generation timeout on the HLF latency. As a result, this article provides design insights on minimizing the latency for HLF-enabled IoT.

preprint2022arXiv

FedCorr: Multi-Stage Federated Learning for Label Noise Correction

Federated learning (FL) is a privacy-preserving distributed learning paradigm that enables clients to jointly train a global model. In real-world FL implementations, client data could have label noise, and different clients could have vastly different label noise levels. Although there exist methods in centralized learning for tackling label noise, such methods do not perform well on heterogeneous label noise in FL settings, due to the typically smaller sizes of client datasets and data privacy requirements in FL. In this paper, we propose $\texttt{FedCorr}$, a general multi-stage framework to tackle heterogeneous label noise in FL, without making any assumptions on the noise models of local clients, while still maintaining client data privacy. In particular, (1) $\texttt{FedCorr}$ dynamically identifies noisy clients by exploiting the dimensionalities of the model prediction subspaces independently measured on all clients, and then identifies incorrect labels on noisy clients based on per-sample losses. To deal with data heterogeneity and to increase training stability, we propose an adaptive local proximal regularization term that is based on estimated local noise levels. (2) We further finetune the global model on identified clean clients and correct the noisy labels for the remaining noisy clients after finetuning. (3) Finally, we apply the usual training on all clients to make full use of all local data. Experiments conducted on CIFAR-10/100 with federated synthetic label noise, and on a real-world noisy dataset, Clothing1M, demonstrate that $\texttt{FedCorr}$ is robust to label noise and substantially outperforms the state-of-the-art methods at multiple noise levels.

preprint2022arXiv

Federated Stochastic Gradient Descent Begets Self-Induced Momentum

Federated learning (FL) is an emerging machine learning method that can be applied in mobile edge systems, in which a server and a host of clients collaboratively train a statistical model utilizing the data and computation resources of the clients without directly exposing their privacy-sensitive data. We show that running stochastic gradient descent (SGD) in such a setting can be viewed as adding a momentum-like term to the global aggregation process. Based on this finding, we further analyze the convergence rate of a federated learning system by accounting for the effects of parameter staleness and communication resources. These results advance the understanding of the Federated SGD algorithm, and also forges a link between staleness analysis and federated computing systems, which can be useful for systems designers.

preprint2022arXiv

Joint User Association and Resource Pricing for Metaverse: Distributed and Centralized Approaches

Metaverse as the next-generation Internet provides users with physical-virtual world interactions. To improve the quality of immersive experience, users access to Metaverse service providers (MSPs) and purchase bandwidth resource to reduce the communication latency of the Metaverse services. The MSPs decide selling price of the bandwidth resource to maximize the revenue. This leads to a joint user association and resource pricing problem between all users and MSPs. To tackle the problem, we formulate a Stackelberg game where the MSPs are game leaders and users are game followers. We resolve the Stackelberg equilibrium via the distributed and centralized approaches, according to different privacy requirements. In the distributed approach, the MSPs compete against each other to maximize the individual revenue, and a user selects an MSP in a probabilistic manner. The Stackelberg equilibrium is achieved in a privacy-friendly way. In the centralized approach, all MSPs and users accept the unified management and their strategies are instructed. The centralized approach acquires the superior decision-making performance but sacrifices the privacy of the game players. Finally, we provide numerical results to demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our schemes.

preprint2022arXiv

Minimizing Age-upon-Decisions in Bufferless System: Service Scheduling and Decision Interval

In Internet of Things (IoT), the decision timeliness of time-sensitive applications is jointly affected by the statistics of update process and decision process. This work considers an update-and-decision system with a Poisson-arrival bufferless queue, where updates are delivered and processed for making decisions with exponential or periodic intervals. We use age-upon-decisions (AuD) to characterize timeliness of updates at decision moments, and the missing probability to specify whether updates are useful for decision-making. Our theoretical analyses 1) present the average AuDs and the missing probabilities for bufferless systems with exponential or deterministic decision intervals under different service time distributions; 2) show that for service scheduling, the deterministic service time achieves a lower average AuD and a smaller missing probability than the uniformly distributed and the negative exponentially distributed service time; 3) prove that the average AuD of periodical decision system is larger than and will eventually drop to that of Poisson decision system along with the increase of decision rate; however, the missing probability in periodical decision system is smaller than that of Poisson decision system. The numerical results and simulations verify the correctness of our analyses, and demonstrate that the bufferless systems outperform the systems applying infinite buffer length.

preprint2022arXiv

Server Free Wireless Federated Learning: Architecture, Algorithm, and Analysis

We demonstrate that merely analog transmissions and match filtering can realize the function of an edge server in federated learning (FL). Therefore, a network with massively distributed user equipments (UEs) can achieve large-scale FL without an edge server. We also develop a training algorithm that allows UEs to continuously perform local computing without being interrupted by the global parameter uploading, which exploits the full potential of UEs' processing power. We derive convergence rates for the proposed schemes to quantify their training efficiency. The analyses reveal that when the interference obeys a Gaussian distribution, the proposed algorithm retrieves the convergence rate of a server-based FL. But if the interference distribution is heavy-tailed, then the heavier the tail, the slower the algorithm converges. Nonetheless, the system run time can be largely reduced by enabling computation in parallel with communication, whereas the gain is particularly pronounced when communication latency is high. These findings are corroborated via excessive simulations.

preprint2022arXiv

Towards Federated Long-Tailed Learning

Data privacy and class imbalance are the norm rather than the exception in many machine learning tasks. Recent attempts have been launched to, on one side, address the problem of learning from pervasive private data, and on the other side, learn from long-tailed data. However, both assumptions might hold in practical applications, while an effective method to simultaneously alleviate both issues is yet under development. In this paper, we focus on learning with long-tailed (LT) data distributions under the context of the popular privacy-preserved federated learning (FL) framework. We characterize three scenarios with different local or global long-tailed data distributions in the FL framework, and highlight the corresponding challenges. The preliminary results under different scenarios reveal that substantial future work are of high necessity to better resolve the characterized federated long-tailed learning tasks.

preprint2022arXiv

UAV Trajectory, User Association and Power Control for Multi-UAV Enabled Energy Harvesting Communications: Offline Design and Online Reinforcement Learning

In this paper, we consider multiple solar-powered wireless nodes which utilize the harvested solar energy to transmit collected data to multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the uplink. In this context, we jointly design UAV flight trajectories, UAV-node communication associations, and uplink power control to effectively utilize the harvested energy and manage co-channel interference within a finite time horizon. To ensure the fairness of wireless nodes, the design goal is to maximize the worst user rate. The joint design problem is highly non-convex and requires causal (future) knowledge of the instantaneous energy state information (ESI) and channel state information (CSI), which are difficult to predict in reality. To overcome these challenges, we propose an offline method based on convex optimization that only utilizes the average ESI and CSI. The problem is solved by three convex subproblems with successive convex approximation (SCA) and alternative optimization. We further design an online convex-assisted reinforcement learning (CARL) method to improve the system performance based on real-time environmental information. An idea of multi-UAV regulated flight corridors, based on the optimal offline UAV trajectories, is proposed to avoid unnecessary flight exploration by UAVs and enables us to improve the learning efficiency and system performance, as compared with the conventional reinforcement learning (RL) method. Computer simulations are used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed methods. The proposed CARL method provides 25% and 12% improvement on the worst user rate over the offline and conventional RL methods.

preprint2021arXiv

Distributed Reinforcement Learning for Privacy-Preserving Dynamic Edge Caching

Mobile edge computing (MEC) is a prominent computing paradigm which expands the application fields of wireless communication. Due to the limitation of the capacities of user equipments and MEC servers, edge caching (EC) optimization is crucial to the effective utilization of the caching resources in MEC-enabled wireless networks. However, the dynamics and complexities of content popularities over space and time as well as the privacy preservation of users pose significant challenges to EC optimization. In this paper, a privacy-preserving distributed deep deterministic policy gradient (P2D3PG) algorithm is proposed to maximize the cache hit rates of devices in the MEC networks. Specifically, we consider the fact that content popularities are dynamic, complicated and unobservable, and formulate the maximization of cache hit rates on devices as distributed problems under the constraints of privacy preservation. In particular, we convert the distributed optimizations into distributed model-free Markov decision process problems and then introduce a privacy-preserving federated learning method for popularity prediction. Subsequently, a P2D3PG algorithm is developed based on distributed reinforcement learning to solve the distributed problems. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed approach in improving EC hit rate over the baseline methods while preserving user privacy.

preprint2021arXiv

Fresh, Fair and Energy-Efficient Content Provision in a Private and Cache-Enabled UAV Network

In this paper, we investigate a private and cache-enabled unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) network for content provision. Aiming at delivering fresh, fair, and energy-efficient content files to terrestrial users, we formulate a joint UAV caching, UAV trajectory, and UAV transmit power optimization problem. This problem is confirmed to be a sequential decision problem with mixed-integer non-convex constraints, which is intractable directly. To this end, we propose a novel algorithm based on the techniques of subproblem decomposition and convex approximation. Particularly, we first propose to decompose the sequential decision problem into multiple repeated optimization subproblems via a Lyapunov technique. Next, an iterative optimization scheme incorporating a successive convex approximation (SCA) technique is explored to tackle the challenging mixed-integer non-convex subproblems. Besides, we analyze the convergence and computational complexity of the proposed algorithm and derive the theoretical value of the expected peak age of information (PAoI) to estimate the content freshness. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can achieve the expected PAoI close to the theoretical value and is more 22.11% and 70.51% energy-efficient and fairer than benchmark algorithms.

preprint2021arXiv

Let's Share VMs: Optimal Placement and Pricing across Base Stations in MEC Systems

In mobile edge computing (MEC) systems, users offload computationally intensive tasks to edge servers at base stations. However, with unequal demand across the network, there might be excess demand at some locations and underutilized resources at other locations. To address such load-unbalanced problem in MEC systems, in this paper we propose virtual machines (VMs) sharing across base stations. Specifically, we consider the joint VM placement and pricing problem across base stations to match demand and supply and maximize revenue at the network level. To make this problem tractable, we decompose it into master and slave problems. For the placement master problem, we propose a Markov approximation algorithm MAP on the design of a continuous time Markov chain. As for the pricing slave problem, we propose OPA - an optimal VM pricing auction, where all users are truthful. Furthermore, given users' potential untruthful behaviors, we propose an incentive compatible auction iCAT along with a partitioning mechanism PUFF, for which we prove incentive compatibility and revenue guarantees. Finally, we combine MAP and OPA or PUFF to solve the original problem, and analyze the optimality gap. Simulation results show that collaborative base stations increases revenue by up to 50%.

preprint2021arXiv

Optimizing Age of Information in Random-Access Poisson Networks

Timeliness is an emerging requirement for many Internet of Things (IoT) applications. In IoT networks, where a large-number of nodes are distributed, severe interference may incur during the transmission phase which causes age of information (AoI) degradation. It is therefore important to study the performance limit of AoI as well as how to achieve such limit. In this paper, we aim to optimize the AoI in random access Poisson networks. By taking into account the spatio-temporal interactions amongst the transmitters, an expression of the peak AoI is derived, based on explicit expressions of the optimal peak AoI and the corresponding optimal system parameters including the packet arrival rate and the channel access probability are further derived. It is shown that with a given packet arrival rate (resp. a given channel access probability), the optimal channel access probability (resp. the optimal packet arrival rate), is equal to one under a small node deployment density, and decrease monotonically as the spatial deployment density increases due to the severe interference caused by spatio-temproal coupling between transmitters. When joint tuning of the packet arrival rate and channel access probability is performed, the optimal channel access probability is always set to be one. Moreover, with the sole tuning of the channel access probability, it is found that the optimal peak AoI performance can be improved with a smaller packet arrival rate only when the node deployment density is high, which is contrast to the case of the sole tuning of the packet arrival rate, where a higher channel access probability always leads to better optimal peak AoI regardless of the node deployment density. In all the cases of optimal tuning of system parameters, the optimal peak AoI linearly grows with the node deployment density as opposed to an exponential growth with fixed system parameters.

preprint2021arXiv

RAN Slicing for Massive IoT and Bursty URLLC Service Multiplexing: Analysis and Optimization

Future wireless networks are envisioned to serve massive Internet of things (mIoT) via some radio access technologies, where the random access channel (RACH) procedure should be exploited for IoT devices to access the networks. However, the theoretical analysis of the RACH procedure for massive IoT devices is challenging. To address this challenge, we first correlate the RACH request of an IoT device with the status of its maintained queue and analyze the evolution of the queue status. Based on the analysis result, we then derive the closed-form expression of the random access (RA) success probability, which is a significant indicator characterizing the RACH procedure of the device. Besides, considering the agreement on converging different services onto a shared infrastructure, we investigate the RAN slicing for mIoT and bursty ultra-reliable and low latency communications (URLLC) service multiplexing. Specifically, we formulate the RAN slicing problem as an optimization one to maximize the total RA success probabilities of all IoT devices and provide URLLC services for URLLC devices in an energy-efficient way. A slice resource optimization (SRO) algorithm exploiting relaxation and approximation with provable tightness and error bound is then proposed to mitigate the optimization problem. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed SRO algorithm can effectively implement the service multiplexing of mIoT and bursty URLLC traffic.

preprint2020arXiv

A Unified Framework for SINR Analysis in Poisson Networks with Traffic Dynamics

We study the performance of wireless links for a class of Poisson networks, in which packets arrive at the transmitters following Bernoulli processes. By combining stochastic geometry with queueing theory, two fundamental measures are analyzed, namely the transmission success probability and the meta distribution of signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR). Different from the conventional approaches that assume independent active states across the nodes and use homogeneous point processes to model the locations of interferers, our analysis accounts for the interdependency amongst active states of the transmitters in space and arrives at a non-homogeneous point process for the modeling of interferers' positions, which leads to a more accurate characterization of the SINR. The accuracy of the theoretical results is verified by simulations, and the developed framework is then used to devise design guidelines for the deployment strategies of wireless networks.

preprint2020arXiv

Adaptive Anomaly Detection for IoT Data in Hierarchical Edge Computing

Advances in deep neural networks (DNN) greatly bolster real-time detection of anomalous IoT data. However, IoT devices can barely afford complex DNN models due to limited computational power and energy supply. While one can offload anomaly detection tasks to the cloud, it incurs long delay and requires large bandwidth when thousands of IoT devices stream data to the cloud concurrently. In this paper, we propose an adaptive anomaly detection approach for hierarchical edge computing (HEC) systems to solve this problem. Specifically, we first construct three anomaly detection DNN models of increasing complexity, and associate them with the three layers of HEC from bottom to top, i.e., IoT devices, edge servers, and cloud. Then, we design an adaptive scheme to select one of the models based on the contextual information extracted from input data, to perform anomaly detection. The selection is formulated as a contextual bandit problem and is characterized by a single-step Markov decision process, with an objective of achieving high detection accuracy and low detection delay simultaneously. We evaluate our proposed approach using a real IoT dataset, and demonstrate that it reduces detection delay by 84% while maintaining almost the same accuracy as compared to offloading detection tasks to the cloud. In addition, our evaluation also shows that it outperforms other baseline schemes.

preprint2020arXiv

Age of Information in Random Access Networks: A Spatiotemporal Study

We investigate the age-of-information (AoI) in the context of random access networks, in which transmitters need to send a sequence of information packets to intended receivers over shared spectrum. We establish an analytical framework that accounts for the key features of a wireless system, including the fading, path loss, network topology, as well as the spatial interactions amongst the queues. A closed-form expression is derived to quantify the network average AoI and its accuracy is verified via simulations. Our analysis unveils several unconventional behaviors of AoI in such a setting. For instance, even when the packet transmissions are scheduled in a last-come first-serve (LCFS) order whereby the newly incoming packets can replace the undelivered ones, the network average AoI may not monotonically decline with respect to the packet arrival rates, if the infrastructure is densely deployed. Moreover, the ALOHA protocol is shown to be instrumental in reducing the AoI when the packet arrival rates are high, yet it cannot contribute to decreasing the AoI in the regime of infrequent packet arrivals.

preprint2020arXiv

AoI and Energy Consumption Oriented Dynamic Status Updating in Caching Enabled IoT Networks

Caching has been regarded as a promising technique to alleviate energy consumption of sensors in Internet of Things (IoT) networks by responding to users' requests with the data packets stored in the edge caching node (ECN). For real-time applications in caching enabled IoT networks, it is essential to develop dynamic status update strategies to strike a balance between the information freshness experienced by users and energy consumed by the sensor, which, however, is not well addressed. In this paper, we first depict the evolution of information freshness, in terms of age of information (AoI), at each user. Then, we formulate a dynamic status update optimization problem to minimize the expectation of a long term accumulative cost, which jointly considers the users' AoI and sensor's energy consumption. To solve this problem, a Markov Decision Process (MDP) is formulated to cast the status updating procedure, and a model-free reinforcement learning algorithm is proposed, with which the challenge brought by the unknown of the formulated MDP's dynamics can be addressed. Finally, simulations are conducted to validate the convergence of our proposed algorithm and its effectiveness compared with the zero-wait baseline policy.

preprint2020arXiv

Contextual-Bandit Anomaly Detection for IoT Data in Distributed Hierarchical Edge Computing

Advances in deep neural networks (DNN) greatly bolster real-time detection of anomalous IoT data. However, IoT devices can hardly afford complex DNN models, and offloading anomaly detection tasks to the cloud incurs long delay. In this paper, we propose and build a demo for an adaptive anomaly detection approach for distributed hierarchical edge computing (HEC) systems to solve this problem, for both univariate and multivariate IoT data. First, we construct multiple anomaly detection DNN models with increasing complexity, and associate each model with a layer in HEC from bottom to top. Then, we design an adaptive scheme to select one of these models on the fly, based on the contextual information extracted from each input data. The model selection is formulated as a contextual bandit problem characterized by a single-step Markov decision process, and is solved using a reinforcement learning policy network. We build an HEC testbed, implement our proposed approach, and evaluate it using real IoT datasets. The demo shows that our proposed approach significantly reduces detection delay (e.g., by 71.4% for univariate dataset) without sacrificing accuracy, as compared to offloading detection tasks to the cloud. We also compare it with other baseline schemes and demonstrate that it achieves the best accuracy-delay tradeoff. Our demo is also available online: https://rebrand.ly/91a71

preprint2020arXiv

Coordinated Container Migration and Base Station Handover in Mobile Edge Computing

Offloading computationally intensive tasks from mobile users (MUs) to a virtualized environment such as containers on a nearby edge server, can significantly reduce processing time and hence end-to-end (E2E) delay. However, when users are mobile, such containers need to be migrated to other edge servers located closer to the MUs to keep the E2E delay low. Meanwhile, the mobility of MUs necessitates handover among base stations in order to keep the wireless connections between MUs and base stations uninterrupted. In this paper, we address the joint problem of container migration and base-station handover by proposing a coordinated migration-handover mechanism, with the objective of achieving low E2E delay and minimizing service interruption. The mechanism determines the optimal destinations and time for migration and handover in a coordinated manner, along with a delta checkpoint technique that we propose. We implement a testbed edge computing system with our proposed coordinated migration-handover mechanism, and evaluate the performance using real-world applications implemented with Docker container (an industry-standard). The results demonstrate that our mechanism achieves 30%-40% lower service downtime and 13%-22% lower E2E delay as compared to other mechanisms. Our work is instrumental in offering smooth user experience in mobile edge computing.

preprint2020arXiv

Effect of Spatial and Temporal Traffic Statistics on the Performance of Wireless Networks

The traffic in wireless networks has become diverse and fluctuating both spatially and temporally due to the emergence of new wireless applications and the complexity of scenarios. The purpose of this paper is to quantitatively analyze the impact of the wireless traffic, which fluctuates both spatially and temporally, on the performance of the wireless networks. Specially, we propose to combine the tools from stochastic geometry and queueing theory to model the spatial and temporal fluctuation of traffic, which to our best knowledge has seldom been evaluated analytically. We derive the spatial and temporal statistics, the total arrival rate, the stability of queues and the delay of users by considering two different spatial properties of traffic, i.e., the uniformly and non-uniformly distributed cases. The numerical results indicate that although the fluctuation of traffic (reflected by the variance of total arrival rate) when the users are clustered is much fiercer than that when the users are uniformly distributed, the unstable probability is smaller. Our work provides a useful reference for the design of wireless networks when the complex spatio-temporal fluctuation of the traffic is considered.

preprint2020arXiv

Energy-Aware Offloading in Time-Sensitive Networks with Mobile Edge Computing

Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) enables rich services in close proximity to the end users to provide high quality of experience (QoE) and contributes to energy conservation compared with local computing, but results in increased communication latency. In this paper, we investigate how to jointly optimize task offloading and resource allocation to minimize the energy consumption in an orthogonal frequency division multiple access-based MEC networks, where the time-sensitive tasks can be processed at both local users and MEC server via partial offloading. Since the optimization variables of the problem are strongly coupled, we first decompose the orignal problem into three subproblems named as offloading selection (PO ), transmission power optimization (PT ), and subcarriers and computing resource allocation (PS ), and then propose an iterative algorithm to deal with them in a sequence. To be specific, we derive the closed-form solution for PO , employ the equivalent parametric convex programming to cope with the objective function which is in the form of sum of ratios in PT , and deal with PS by an alternating way in the dual domain due to its NP-hardness. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm outperforms the existing schemes.

preprint2020arXiv

Enhancing Physical Layer Security of Random Caching in Large-Scale Multi-Antenna Heterogeneous Wireless Networks

In this paper, we propose a novel secure random caching scheme for large-scale multi-antenna heterogeneous wireless networks, where the base stations (BSs) deliver randomly cached confidential contents to the legitimate users in the presence of passive eavesdroppers as well as active jammers. In order to safeguard the content delivery, we consider that the BSs transmits the artificial noise together with the useful signals. By using tools from stochastic geometry, we first analyze the average reliable transmission probability (RTP) and the average confidential transmission probability (CTP), which take both the impact of the eavesdroppers and the impact of the jammers into consideration. We further provide tight upper and lower bounds on the average RTP. These analytical results enable us to obtain rich insights into the behaviors of the average RTP and the average CTP with respect to key system parameters. Moreover, we optimize the caching distribution of the files to maximize the average RTP of the system, while satisfying the constraints on the caching size and the average CTP. Through numerical results, we show that our proposed secure random caching scheme can effectively boost the secrecy performance of the system compared to the existing solutions.

preprint2020arXiv

Joint Optimal Software Caching, Computation Offloading and Communications Resource Allocation for Mobile Edge Computing

As software may be used by multiple users, caching popular software at the wireless edge has been considered to save computation and communications resources for mobile edge computing (MEC). However, fetching uncached software from the core network and multicasting popular software to users have so far been ignored. Thus, existing design is incomplete and less practical. In this paper, we propose a joint caching, computation and communications mechanism which involves software fetching, caching and multicasting, as well as task input data uploading, task executing (with non-negligible time duration) and computation result downloading, and mathematically characterize it. Then, we optimize the joint caching, offloading and time allocation policy to minimize the weighted sum energy consumption subject to the caching and deadline constraints. The problem is a challenging two-timescale mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem, and is NP-hard in general. We convert it into an equivalent convex MINLP problem by using some appropriate transformations and propose two low-complexity algorithms to obtain suboptimal solutions of the original non-convex MINLP problem. Specifically, the first suboptimal solution is obtained by solving a relaxed convex problem using the consensus alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM), and then rounding its optimal solution properly. The second suboptimal solution is proposed by obtaining a stationary point of an equivalent difference of convex (DC) problem using the penalty convex-concave procedure (Penalty-CCP) and ADMM. Finally, by numerical results, we show that the proposed solutions outperform existing schemes and reveal their advantages in efficiently utilizing storage, computation and communications resources.

preprint2020arXiv

Mobile Data Transactions in Device-to-Device Communication Networks: Pricing and Auction

Device-to-Device (D2D) communication is offering smart phone users a choice to share files with each other without communicating with the cellular network. In this paper, we discuss the behaviors of two characters in the D2D data transaction model from an economic point of view: the data buyers who wish to buy a certain quantity of data, as well as the data sellers who wish to sell data through the D2D network. The optimal price and purchasing strategies are analyzed and deduced based on game theory.

preprint2020arXiv

Multi-Armed Bandit Based Client Scheduling for Federated Learning

By exploiting the computing power and local data of distributed clients, federated learning (FL) features ubiquitous properties such as reduction of communication overhead and preserving data privacy. In each communication round of FL, the clients update local models based on their own data and upload their local updates via wireless channels. However, latency caused by hundreds to thousands of communication rounds remains a bottleneck in FL. To minimize the training latency, this work provides a multi-armed bandit-based framework for online client scheduling (CS) in FL without knowing wireless channel state information and statistical characteristics of clients. Firstly, we propose a CS algorithm based on the upper confidence bound policy (CS-UCB) for ideal scenarios where local datasets of clients are independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) and balanced. An upper bound of the expected performance regret of the proposed CS-UCB algorithm is provided, which indicates that the regret grows logarithmically over communication rounds. Then, to address non-ideal scenarios with non-i.i.d. and unbalanced properties of local datasets and varying availability of clients, we further propose a CS algorithm based on the UCB policy and virtual queue technique (CS-UCB-Q). An upper bound is also derived, which shows that the expected performance regret of the proposed CS-UCB-Q algorithm can have a sub-linear growth over communication rounds under certain conditions. Besides, the convergence performance of FL training is also analyzed. Finally, simulation results validate the efficiency of the proposed algorithms.

preprint2020arXiv

Multicast eMBB and Bursty URLLC Service Multiplexing in a CoMP-Enabled RAN

This paper is concerned with slicing a radio access network (RAN) for simultaneously serving two typical 5G and beyond use cases, i.e., enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) and ultra-reliable and low latency communications (URLLC). Although many researches have been conducted to tackle this issue, few of them have considered the impact of bursty URLLC. The bursty characteristic of URLLC traffic may significantly increase the difficulty of RAN slicing on the aspect of ensuring a ultra-low packet blocking probability. To reduce the packet blocking probability, we re-visit the structure of physical resource blocks (PRBs) orchestrated for bursty URLLC traffic in the time-frequency plane based on our theoretical results. Meanwhile, we formulate the problem of slicing a RAN enabling coordinated multi-point (CoMP) transmissions for multicast eMBB and bursty URLLC service multiplexing as a multi-timescale optimization problem. The goal of this problem is to maximize multicast eMBB and bursty URLLC slice utilities, subject to physical resource constraints. To mitigate this thorny multi-timescale problem, we transform it into multiple single timescale problems by exploring the fundamental principle of a sample average approximation (SAA) technique. Next, an iterative algorithm with provable performance guarantees is developed to obtain solutions to these single timescale problems and aggregate the obtained solutions into those of the multi-timescale problem. We also design a prototype for the CoMP-enabled RAN slicing system incorporating with multicast eMBB and bursty URLLC traffic and compare the proposed iterative algorithm with the state-of-the-art algorithm to verify the effectiveness of the algorithm.

preprint2020arXiv

On Safeguarding Privacy and Security in the Framework of Federated Learning

Motivated by the advancing computational capacity of wireless end-user equipment (UE), as well as the increasing concerns about sharing private data, a new machine learning (ML) paradigm has emerged, namely federated learning (FL). Specifically, FL allows a decoupling of data provision at UEs and ML model aggregation at a central unit. By training model locally, FL is capable of avoiding data leakage from the UEs, thereby preserving privacy and security to some extend. However, even if raw data are not disclosed from UEs, individual's private information can still be extracted by some recently discovered attacks in the FL architecture. In this work, we analyze the privacy and security issues in FL, and raise several challenges on preserving privacy and security when designing FL systems. In addition, we provide extensive simulation results to illustrate the discussed issues and possible solutions.

preprint2020arXiv

Online Resource Procurement and Allocation in a Hybrid Edge-Cloud Computing System

By acquiring cloud-like capacities at the edge of a network, edge computing is expected to significantly improve user experience. In this paper, we formulate a hybrid edge-cloud computing system where an edge device with limited local resources can rent more from a cloud node and perform resource allocation to serve its users. The resource procurement and allocation decisions depend not only on the cloud's multiple rental options but also on the edge's local processing cost and capacity. We first propose an offline algorithm whose decisions are made with full information of future demand. Then, an online algorithm is proposed where the edge node makes irrevocable decisions in each timeslot without future information of demand. We show that both algorithms have constant performance bounds from the offline optimum. Numerical results acquired with Google cluster-usage traces indicate that the cost of the edge node can be substantially reduced by using the proposed algorithms, up to $80\%$ in comparison with baseline algorithms. We also observe how the cloud's pricing structure and edge's local cost influence the procurement decisions.

preprint2020arXiv

Optimal Pricing for Job Offloading in the MEC System with Two Priority Classes

Multi-Access edge computing (MEC) is an emerging paradigm where users offload computationally intensive jobs to the Access Point (AP). Given that the AP's resources are shared by selfish users, pricing is a useful tool for incentivising users to internalize the negative externality of delay they cause to other users. Nevertheless, different users have different negative valuations towards delay as some are more delay sensitive. To serve heterogeneous users, we propose a priority pricing scheme where users can get served first for a higher price. Our goal is to find the prices such that in decision making, users will choose the class and the offloading frequency that jointly maximize social welfare. With the assumption that the AP knows users' profit functions, we derive in semi-closed form the optimal prices. However in practice, the reporting of users's profit information incurs a large signalling overhead. Besides, in reality users might falsely report their private profit information. To overcome this, we further propose a learning-based pricing mechanism where no knowledge of individual user profit functions is required. At equilibrium, the optimal prices and average edge delays are learnt, and users have chosen the correct priority class and offload at the socially optimal frequency.

preprint2020arXiv

Optimizing Information Freshness in Wireless Networks: A Stochastic Geometry Approach

Optimization of information freshness in wireless networks has usually been performed based on queueing analysis that captures only the temporal traffic dynamics associated with the transmitters and receivers. However, the effect of interference, which is mainly dominated by the interferers' geographic locations, is not well understood. In this paper, we leverage a spatiotemporal model, which allows one to characterize the age of information (AoI) from a joint queueing-geometry perspective, for the design of a decentralized scheduling policy that exploits local observation to make transmission decisions that minimize the AoI. To quantify the performance, we also derive accurate and tractable expressions for the peak AoI. Numerical results reveal that: i) the packet arrival rate directly affects the service process due to queueing interactions, ii) the proposed scheme can adapt to traffic variations and largely reduce the peak AoI, and iii) the proposed scheme scales well as the network grows in size. This is done by adaptively adjusting the radio access probability at each transmitter to the change of the ambient environment.

preprint2020arXiv

Why is My Secret Leaked? Discovering Vulnerabilities in Device-to-Device File Sharing

The number of active users of Wi-Fi Direct Device-to-Device file sharing applications on Android has exceeded 1.8 billion. Wi-Fi Direct, also known as Wi-Fi P2P, is commonly used for peer-to-peer, high-speed file transfer between mobile devices, as well as a close proximity connection mode for wireless cameras, network printers, TVs and other IoT and mobile devices. For its end users, such type of direct file transfer does not incur cellular data charges. However, despite the popularity of such applications, we observe that the software vendors tend to prioritize the ease of user flow over the security in their implementations, which leads to serious security flaws. We perform a comprehensive security analysis in the context of security and usability and report our findings in the form of 17 Common Vulnerabilities and Exposures (CVE) which have been disclosed to the corresponding vendors. To address the similar flaws at the early stage of the application design, we propose a joint consideration of security and usability for such applications and their protocols that can be visualized in form of a customised User Journey Map (UJM).