A Structural Property of Solutions to Path Optimization Problems in Random Access Networks

We perform a new analysis of the performance of the wideband code-division multiple access (W-CDMA) randomized slotted-offset random access channel (RAC) with Nakagami-m fading and compare it with that of a comparable randomized slotted-ALOHA-based RAC. Previously, it was shown that the W-CDMA RAC is fast, robust and simple to implement (see Esmailzadeh, R. and Gustafsson, M., Proc. 1997 IEEE ICUPC Conf, p.43-7, 1997). However, it was assumed that any random access packet arrival events involving multiple packets from cochannel mobile stations would result in lost packets. Closed-form equations are developed for the collision process of the arriving random access packets in slotted-offset and slotted-ALOHA RACs. An analysis is developed of the signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio of a packet involved in a multipacket DS-CDMA collision with a generalized Nakagami fading channel and diversity reception at the base station. A closed-form equation is developed for the bit error rate and packet throughput of the slotted-offset- and slotted-ALOHA-based RACs. The results of the analysis show that considerable improvement in the RAC performance can be achieved when multiple arrival collisions, on the same timeslot and with the same signature code, are partially resolved. The results also show the RAC's sensitivity to fading severity, packet E/sub b//N/sub 0/, spreading gain and number of base station receive selection diversity antennas. Compared to the randomized slotted-ALOHA designs, W-CDMA RAC performs as well in light fading conditions and slightly worse in severe fading conditions.

Random access channel (RACH) procedures in modern wireless communications are generally based on multi-channel slotted-ALOHA, which can be optimized by flexibly organizing devices' transmission and retransmission. However, due to the lack of information about the traffic generation statistics and the occurrence of random collision, optimizing RACH in an exact manner is generally challenging. In this article, we first summarize the general structure of optimization for different RACH schemes, and then review existing RACH optimization methods based on machine learning (ML) and non-ML techniques. We demonstrate that the ML-based methods can better optimize RACH schemes compared to non-ML-based methods due to their capability in solving high-complexity long-term optimization problems. To further improve the RACH performance, we introduce a decoupled learning strategy (DLS) for access control optimization, which individually executes two sub-tasks: traffic prediction and access control configuration. In detail, the traffic prediction relies on an online supervised learning method adopting recurrent neural networks that can accurately capture traffic statistics over consecutive frames, while the access control configuration uses either a non-ML-based controller or a cooperatively trained deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based controller selected depending on the complexity of different random access schemes. Numerical results show that the DLS optimizer considerably outperforms conventional DRL optimizers in terms of higher training efficiency and better access performance.

Random access channel is incorporated in IEEE 802.16 WiMAX system to transport contention-based messages in the uplink, such as bandwidth requests generated by best effort applications, from mobile stations (MSs) to the base station(BS). Regarding the packet transmissions in the random access channel, delay, throughput and power consumption are usually considered as major performance metrics. We propose an enhanced power calibration protocol to optimize the system performance in terms of channel access delay, system throughput and MS transmit power consumption. Optimal selection of power levels is formulated in order to maximize the achievable throughput while being subject to power consumption constraint of mobile stations. Our scheme can substitute the random backoff mechanism in the current the WiMAX uplink random access channel, as it can accomplish a significantly improved access delay performance without an increment of design complexity. Simulations are conducted to validate our protocol and confirm its performance superiority as compared to the random channel access method used in the current WiMAX.

Massive Machine-Type Communications using LTE networks is the focus of this work aimed at realization of future Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm. Random Access Channel is the bottleneck in random access procedure which is designed for low-rate HTC connections. In MTC, when there are a large number of devices, congestion occurs in Random Access Channel. Access Class Barring (ACB) and preamble slicing are two main approaches proposed to control RACH congestion. These schemes have limited improvements over the base approach. In this paper, we propose a complementary approach that can be used in conjunction with these methods. Our approach is based on the concept of local relays and spatial preamble reuse. Assuming random selection of preambles by the devices, we developed a heuristic to select a set of local relays to act as an aggregator node for random access requests of the devices in its vicinity. The relays perform random access procedure on behalf of their members to eNodeB. The simulations show that using RACH relays reduces preamble collisions and hence is a promising technique to scale and move up the random access success rate.

Random access channels (RACHs) in cellular networks are normally designed for Poisson-distributed arrivals with a constant rate. Unexpected bursty arrivals may result in severely collisions in RACHs and thus, degrade users' service qualities. This paper presents an analytical model to investigate the transient behavior of the RACHs with bursty arrivals generated in a specific time interval in OFDMA wireless networks. The proposed model considers the effect of new arrivals and the real-world implementation constraints of the OFDMA random access procedure such as periodic access characteristic, uniform random backoff policy, and power-ramping effect. The average number of contending and success mobile stations (MSs) in each random-access slot are then derived using the proposed model. The accuracy of the proposed model was verified through computer simulations and the results show the accuracy of the analysis.

This paper presents the optimum random access channel (RACH) structure in terms of the number of control signaling bits accommodated and the transmission bandwidth based on the link budget in order to satisfy the coverage requirement for the single-carrier (SC)-FDMA based E-UTRA uplink. First, we propose grouping of the RACH purposes to reduce the number of control signaling bits to be conveyed by the RACH. By employing the proposed purpose-grouping scheme, only a four-bit random ID and a two-bit purpose grouping index for the non-synchronized RACH are required. Simulation evaluations including a system-level simulation show that the non-synchronized RACH comprising a 0.5-msec preamble signature sequence can convey the aforementioned 6-bit control signal at the cell edge when the inter-site distance (ISD) is 500 m under full channel load conditions with one-cell frequency reuse. It is also shown, however, that a RACH longer than one-sub-frame, e.g., 1.0 msec, is necessary to support the ISD of 1732 m assuming the same conditions. We also show that although there is no distinct difference in the transmission bandwidth from 1.25 to 5 MHz from the viewpoint of the misdetection probability, a 1.25-MHz transmission bandwidth for the RACH is suitable from the viewpoints of flexible resource assignment in the time domain and small number of option in the transmission bandwidth.

Random access channel (RACH) is usually used for initial channel access, bandwidth request, etc. In this paper, we analyze the throughput and access delay performance of the RACH in an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) system. A closed-form expression of the RACH throughput is presented and its mean access delays under both binary exponential and uniform backoff policies have also been derived. Moreover, to further improve the utilization of RACH in an OFDMA system, we propose a novel message transmission scheme in a shared RACH. The message in the proposed scheme can be sent implicitly in the cyclic-shifted preambles which make the transmission much more reliable in a contention based RACH. Meanwhile, performance of the preamble detection has also been improved by the redundant information conveyed in messages. Finally, simulation results will demonstrate performance gains of the proposed scheme.

This paper addresses self-optimization of the random access channel (RACH) in the Third-Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long-Term Evolution (LTE). Ensuring satisfactory random access (RA) performance in terms of access delay (AD) is crucial for reducing the delays associated with initial access and handovers. The feasibility of self-optimization is investigated by means of simulations, where the coupling between several parameters and the RACH performance in terms of AD is provided. We present two candidate feedback control algorithms that automatically adjust key RACH parameters to meet specified AD targets.

NarrowBand-Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is a new 3GPP radio access technology designed to provide better coverage for Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networks. To provide reliable connections with extended coverage, a repetition transmission scheme and up to three Coverage Enhancement (CE) groups are introduced into NB-IoT during both Random Access CHannel (RACH) procedure and data transmission procedure, where each CE group is configured with different repetition values and transmission resources. To characterize the RACH performance of the NB-IoT network with three CE groups, this paper develops a novel traffic-aware spatio-temporal model to analyze the RACH success probability, where both the preamble transmission outage and the collision events of each CE group jointly determine the traffic evolution and the RACH success probability. Based on this analytical model, we derive the analytical expression for the RACH success probability of a randomly chosen IoT device in each CE group over multiple time slots with different RACH schemes, including baseline, back-off (BO), access class barring (ACB), and hybrid ACB and BO schemes (ACB&BO). Our results have shown that the RACH success probabilities of the devices in three CE groups outperform that of a single CE group network but not for all the groups, which is affected by the choice of the categorizing parameters.This mathematical model and analytical framework can be applied to evaluate the performance of multiple group users of other networks with spatial separations.

In this paper, the problem of random access contention between machine type devices (MTDs) in the uplink of a wireless cellular network is studied. In particular, the possibility of forming cooperative groups to coordinate the MTDs’ requests for the random access channel (RACH) is analyzed. The problem is formulated as a stochastic coalition formation game in which the MTDs are the players that seek to form cooperative coalitions to optimize a utility function that captures each MTD’s energy consumption and time-varying queue length. Within each coalition, an MTD acts as a coalition head that sends the access requests of the coalition members over the RACH. One key feature of this game is its ability to cope with stochastic environments in which the arrival requests of MTDs and the packet success rate over RACH are dynamically time-varying. The proposed stochastic coalitional game is composed of multiple stages, each of which corresponds to a coalitional game in stochastic characteristic form that is played by the MTDs at each time step. To solve this game, a novel distributed coalition formation algorithm is proposed and shown to converge to a stable MTD partition. Simulation results show that, on the average, the proposed stochastic coalition formation algorithm can reduce the average fail ratio and energy consumption of up to 36% and 31% for a cluster-based distribution of MTDs, respectively, compared with a noncooperative case. Moreover, when the MTDs are more sensitive to the energy consumption (queue length), the coalitions’ size will increase (decrease).

The emergence of networks of many devices in the context of cyber-physical systems motivates novel solutions for communication over random access channels. Currently deployed random access protocols attempt to avoid collisions, and target the performance of a scheduled multiple access system (a strategy known to be only suboptimal from the information-theoretic perspective). In contrast, in this paper, we allow collisions among the transmissions of different users. We consider code design for random access channels with erasures in which the number of users in each frame is unknown at the transmitters but known at the receiver, and we present a two-layer coding architecture for joint contention resolution and erasure correction. For random LDPC codes based on this scheme, the density evolution is asymptotically analyzed, which enables optimized code design for maximized throughput with constrained outage. The results demonstrate that the proposed low-complexity scheme approaches the outage capacity of the random access channel with erasures when the average number of active users is small.

The Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) is one of the fastest growing Internet of Things (IoT) access protocols. It operates in the license free 868 MHz band and gives everyone the possibility to create their own small sensor networks. The drawback of this technology is often unscheduled or random channel access, which leads to message collisions and potential data loss. For that reason, recent literature studies alternative approaches for LoRaWAN channel access. In this work, state-of-the-art random channel access is compared with alternative approaches from the literature by means of collision probability. Furthermore, a time scheduled channel access methodology is presented to completely avoid collisions in LoRaWAN. For this approach, an exhaustive simulation study was conducted and the performance was evaluated with random access cross-traffic. In a general theoretical analysis the limits of the time scheduled approach are discussed to comply with duty cycle regulations in LoRaWAN.

To support a high density of mobile devices and its connections by means of rapid increase of mobile devices as well as small cells, various studies related to random access such as the random access load, better uplink resource utilization and interference among random access attempts have been developed for enhanced long-term evolution (LTE) system and 5G communication technology. In this paper, we discuss about the technical issues of random access resource configuration in time division duplex (TDD) mode and propose an improved method of it to make better uplink resource utilization on frequency domains and to minimize interference among random access attempts for physical random access channel (PRACH) resource allocation point of view, but it can also easily extend the LTE system. The proposed method is compared with LTE TDD PRACH configuration method through theoretical analysis. It shows that the proposed method provides better resource utilization for PRACH and physical uplink shared channel resources (PUSCH), allows flexible resource utilization in uplink scheduling, and is intuitive and effective in cell deployment with random access channel optimization in terms of random access resource configuration.

We address efficient data gathering from a network of distributed sensors deployed in a challenging field environment with limited power and bandwidth. Utilizing the low-rank property of the sensing field, we leverage results from the matrix completion theory to integrate the sensing procedure with a simple and robust communication scheme based on random channel access. Results show that the space-time map of the sensing field can be recovered efficiently, using only a small subset of sensor measurements, collected over a fading random access channel.

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