Internet of Things (IoT) devices can apply mobile edge computing (MEC) and energy harvesting (EH) to provide high-level experiences for computational intensive applications and concurrently to prolong the lifetime of the battery. In this paper, we propose a reinforcement learning (RL) based offloading scheme for an IoT device with EH to select the edge device and the offloading rate according to the current battery level, the previous radio transmission rate to each edge device, and the predicted amount of the harvested energy. This scheme enables the IoT device to optimize the offloading policy without knowledge of the MEC model, the energy consumption model, and the computation latency model. Further, we present a deep RL-based offloading scheme to further accelerate the learning speed. Their performance bounds in terms of the energy consumption, computation latency, and utility are provided for three typical offloading scenarios and verified via simulations for an IoT device that uses wireless power transfer for energy harvesting. Simulation results show that the proposed RL-based offloading scheme reduces the energy consumption, computation latency, and task drop rate, and thus increases the utility of the IoT device in the dynamic MEC in comparison with the benchmark offloading schemes.

In this tutorial paper, we look into the evolution and prospect of network architecture and propose a novel conceptual architecture for the 6th generation (6G) networks. The proposed architecture has two key elements, i.e., holistic network virtualization and pervasive artificial intelligence (AI). The holistic network virtualization consists of network slicing and digital twin, from the aspects of service provision and service demand, respectively, to incorporate service-centric and user-centric networking. The pervasive network intelligence integrates AI into future networks from the perspectives of networking for AI and AI for networking, respectively. Building on holistic network virtualization and pervasive network intelligence, the proposed architecture can facilitate three types of interplay, i.e., the interplay between digital twin and network slicing paradigms, between model-driven and data-driven methods for network management, and between virtualization and AI, to maximize the flexibility, scalability, adaptivity, and intelligence for 6G networks. We also identify challenges and open issues related to the proposed architecture. By providing our vision, we aim to inspire further discussions and developments on the potential architecture of 6G.

Split learning (SL) is a collaborative learning framework, which can train an artificial intelligence (AI) model between a device and an edge server by splitting the AI model into a device-side model and a server-side model at a cut layer. The existing SL approach conducts the training process sequentially across devices, which incurs significant training latency especially when the number of devices is large. In this paper, we design a novel SL scheme to reduce the training latency, named Cluster-based Parallel SL (CPSL) which conducts model training in a “first-parallel-then-sequential” manner. Specifically, the CPSL is to partition devices into several clusters, parallelly train device-side models in each cluster and aggregate them, and then sequentially train the whole AI model across clusters, thereby parallelizing the training process and reducing training latency. Furthermore, we propose a resource management algorithm to minimize the training latency of CPSL considering device heterogeneity and network dynamics in wireless networks. This is achieved by stochastically optimizing the cut layer selection, device clustering, and radio spectrum allocation. The proposed two-timescale algorithm can jointly make the cut layer selection decision in a large timescale and device clustering and radio spectrum allocation decisions in a small timescale. Extensive simulation results on non-independent and identically distributed data demonstrate that the proposed solution can greatly reduce the training latency as compared with the existing SL benchmarks, while adapting to network dynamics.

The integration of communications with different scales, diverse radio access technologies, and various network resources renders next-generation wireless networks (NGWNs) highly heterogeneous and dynamic. Emerging use cases and applications, such as machine to machine communications, autonomous driving, and factory automation, have stringent requirements in terms of reliability, latency, throughput, and so on. Such requirements pose new challenges to architecture design, network management, and resource orchestration in NGWNs. Starting from illustrating these challenges, this paper aims at providing a good understanding of the overall architecture of NGWNs and three specific research problems under this architecture. First, we introduce a network-slicing based architecture and explain why and where artificial intelligence (AI) should be incorporated into this architecture. Second, the motivation, research challenges, existing works, and potential future directions related to applying AI-based approaches in three research problems are described in detail, i.e., flexible radio access network slicing, automated radio access technology selection, and mobile edge caching and content delivery. In summary, this paper highlights the benefits and potentials of AI-based approaches in the research of NGWNs.

Internet-of-Vehicles (IoV) connects vehicles, sensors, pedestrians, mobile devices, and the Internet with advanced communication and networking technologies, which can enhance road safety, improve road traffic management, and support immerse user experience. However, the increasing number of vehicles and other IoV devices, high vehicle mobility, and diverse service requirements render the operation and management of IoV intractable. Software-defined networking (SDN) and network function virtualization (NFV) technologies offer potential solutions to achieve flexible and automated network management, global network optimization, and efficient network resource orchestration with cost-effectiveness and are envisioned as a key enabler to future IoV. In this article, we provide an overview of SDN/NFV-enabled IoV, in which SDN/NFV technologies are leveraged to enhance the performance of IoV and enable diverse IoV scenarios and applications. In particular, the IoV and SDN/NFV technologies are first introduced. Then, the state-of-the-art research works are surveyed comprehensively, which is categorized into topics according to the role that the SDN/NFV technologies play in IoV, i.e., enhancing the performance of data communication, computing, and caching, respectively. Some open research issues are discussed for future directions.

Frequency hopping-based anti-jamming techniques are not always applicable in vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) due to the high mobility of onboard units (OBUs) and the large-scale network topology. In this paper, we use unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to relay the message of an OBU and improve the communication performance of VANETs against smart jammers that observe the ongoing OBU and UAV communication status and even induce the UAV to use a specific relay strategy and then attack it accordingly. More specifically, the UAV relays the OBU message to another roadside unit (RSU) with a better radio transmission condition if the serving RSU is heavily jammed or interfered. The interactions between a UAV and a smart jammer are formulated as an anti-jamming UAV relay game, in which the UAV decides whether or not to relay the OBU message to another RSU, and the jammer observes the UAV and VANET strategy and chooses the jamming power accordingly. The Nash equilibria of the UAV relay game are derived to reveal how the optimal UAV relay strategy depends on the transmit cost and the UAV channel model. A hotbooting policy hill climbing (PHC)-based UAV relay strategy is proposed to help VANET resist jamming in the dynamic game without being aware of the VANET model and the jamming model. Simulation results show that the proposed relay strategy can efficiently reduce the bit error rate of the OBU message and thus increase the utility of the VANET compared with a Q-learning based scheme.