Future 5th generation (5G) networks are expected to enable three key services -enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), massive machine type communications (mMTC) and ultra-reliable and low latency communications (URLLC). As per the 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) URLLC requirements, it is expected that the reliability of one transmission of a 32 byte packet will be at least 99.999% and the latency will be at most 1 ms. This unprecedented level of reliability and latency will yield various new applications such as smart grids, industrial automation and intelligent transport systems. In this survey we present potential future URLLC applications, and summarize the corresponding reliability and latency requirements. We provide a comprehensive discussion on physical (PHY) and medium access control (MAC) layer techniques that enable URLLC, addressing both licensed and unlicensed bands. The paper evaluates the relevant PHY and MAC techniques for their ability to improve the reliability and reduce the latency. We identify that enabling long-term evolution (LTE) to coexist in the unlicensed spectrum is also a potential enabler of URLLC in the unlicensed band, and provide numerical evaluations. Lastly, the paper discusses the potential future research directions and challenges in achieving the URLLC requirements.

In recent years, the Internet of Things (IoT) has been studied in the context of the Metaverse to provide users with immersive cyber-virtual experiences in mixed-reality environments. This survey introduces six typical IoT applications in the Metaverse, including collaborative healthcare, education, smart city, entertainment, real estate, and socialization. In the IoT-inspired Metaverse, we also comprehensively survey four pillar technologies that enable augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR), namely, responsible artificial intelligence (AI), high-speed data communications, cost-effective mobile edge computing (MEC), and digital twins. According to the physical-world demands, we outline the current industrial efforts and seven key requirements for building the IoT-inspired Metaverse: immersion, variety, economy, civility, interactivity, authenticity, and independence. In addition, this survey describes the open issues in the IoT-inspired Metaverse, which need to be addressed to eventually achieve the convergence of physical and cyber worlds.

Distributed machine learning (DML) techniques, such as federated learning, partitioned learning, and distributed reinforcement learning, have been increasingly applied to wireless communications. This is due to improved capabilities of terminal devices, explosively growing data volume, congestion in the radio interfaces, and increasing concern of data privacy. The unique features of wireless systems, such as large scale, geographically dispersed deployment, user mobility, and the massive amount of data, give rise to new challenges in the design of DML techniques. There is a clear gap in the existing literature that the DML techniques are yet to be systematically reviewed for their applicability to wireless systems. This survey bridges the gap by providing a contemporary and comprehensive survey of DML techniques with a focus on wireless networks. Specifically, we review the latest applications of DML in power control, spectrum management, user association, and edge cloud computing. The optimality, accuracy, convergence rate, computation cost, and communication overhead of DML are analyzed. We also discuss the potential adversarial attacks faced by DML applications, and describe state-of-the-art countermeasures to preserve privacy and security. Last but not least, we point out a number of key issues yet to be addressed, and collate potentially interesting and challenging topics for future research.

Over the past decade, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) have provided pervasive, efficient, and cost-effective solutions for data collection and communications. Their excellent mobility, flexibility, and fast deployment enable UAVs to be extensively utilized in agriculture, medical, rescue missions, smart cities, and intelligent transportation systems. Machine learning (ML) has been increasingly demonstrating its capability of improving the automation and operation precision of UAVs and many UAV-assisted applications, such as communications, sensing, and data collection. The ongoing amalgamation of UAV and ML techniques is creating a significant synergy and empowering UAVs with unprecedented intelligence and autonomy. This survey aims to provide a timely and comprehensive overview of ML techniques used in UAV operations and communications and identify the potential growth areas and research gaps. We emphasize the four key components of UAV operations and communications to which ML can significantly contribute, namely, perception and feature extraction, feature interpretation and regeneration, trajectory and mission planning, and aerodynamic control and operation. We classify the latest popular ML tools based on their applications to the four components and conduct gap analyses. This survey also takes a step forward by pointing out significant challenges in the upcoming realm of ML-aided automated UAV operations and communications. It is revealed that different ML techniques dominate the applications to the four key modules of UAV operations and communications. While there is an increasing trend of cross-module designs, little effort has been devoted to an end-to-end ML framework, from perception and feature extraction to aerodynamic control and operation. It is also unveiled that the reliability and trust of ML in UAV operations and applications require significant attention before the full automation of UAVs and potential cooperation between UAVs and humans come to fruition.

Dynamic topology, fast-changing channels and the time sensitivity of safety-related services present challenges to the status quo of resource allocation for cellular-underlaying vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications. In this paper, we investigate a novel federated multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (FedMARL) approach for the decentralized joint optimization of channel selection and power control for V2V communication. The approach takes advantage of both deep reinforcement learning (DRL) and federated learning (FL), satisfying the reliability and delay requirements of V2V communication while maximizing the transmit rates of cellular links. Specifically, we elaborately construct individual V2V agent implement by the dueling double deep Q-network (D3QN), and design the reward function to train V2V agents collaboratively. As a result, each agent individually optimizes channel selection and power level based on its local observations, including the instantaneous channel state information (CSI) of corresponding V2V link, the instantaneous co-channel interference from the cellular link, the previous channels selections of nearby V2V pairs, and the queue backlog at the V2V transmitter. Another important aspect is that we incorporate FL to alleviate the training instability problem induced by cooperative multi-agent environment. The local DRL models of different V2V agents are federated periodically, addressing the limitations of partial observability on the entire network status for individual agent, and accelerating the training process of multi-agent learning. Validated via simulations, the proposed FedMARL scheme shows superiority to the baselines in terms of the cellular sum-rate and the V2V packet delivery rate.

Adversarial attacks and defenses in machine learning and deep neural network (DNN) have been gaining significant attention due to the rapidly growing applications of deep learning in communication networks. This survey provides a comprehensive overview of the recent advancements in the field of adversarial attack and defense techniques, with a focus on DNN-based classification models for communication applications. Specifically, we conduct a comprehensive classification of recent adversarial attack methods and state-of-the-art adversarial defense techniques based on attack principles, and present them in visually appealing tables and tree diagrams. This is based on a rigorous evaluation of the existing works, including an analysis of their strengths and limitations. We also categorize the methods into counter-attack detection and robustness enhancement, with a specific focus on regularizationbased methods for enhancing robustness. New avenues of attack are also explored, including search-based, decision-based, dropbased, and physical-world attacks, and a hierarchical classification of the latest defense methods is provided, highlighting the challenges of balancing training costs with performance, maintaining clean accuracy, overcoming the effect of gradient masking, and ensuring method transferability. At last, the lessons learned and open challenges are summarized with future research opportunities recommended.