The advent of the 6G era aims for ubiquitous connectivity, with the integration of non-terrestrial networks (NTN) offering extensive coverage and enhanced capacity. As manufacturing advances and user demands evolve, space-air-ground integrated networks (SAGIN) with computational capabilities emerge as a viable solution for services requiring low latency and high computational power. Resource management within joint communication and computing-embedded SAGIN (JCC-SAGIN) presents greater complexity than traditional terrestrial networks. This complexity arises from the spatiotemporal dynamics of network topology and service demand, the interdependency of large-scale resource variables, and intricate tradeoffs among various performance metrics. Thus, a thorough examination of resource management strategies in JCC-SAGIN is crucial, emphasizing the role of non-terrestrial platforms with processing capabilities in 6G. This paper begins by reviewing the architecture, enabling technologies, and applications in JCC-SAGIN. Then, we offer a detailed overview of resource management modeling and optimization methods, encompassing both traditional optimization approaches and learning-based intelligent decision-making frameworks. Finally, we outline the prospective research directions in JCC-SAGIN.
27 October 2015 in IEEE Internet of Things Journal
With the increasing popularity of WLAN infrastructure, WiFi fingerprint-based indoor positioning systems have received considerable attention recently. Much existing work in this aspect adopts classification techniques that match a vector of radio signal strengths (RSSs) reported by a mobile station (MS) to pretrained reference fingerprints sampled from different access points (APs) at different reference points (RPs) with known positions. However, in the calculation of signal distances between different RSS vectors, existing techniques fail to consider the fact that equal RSS differences at different RSS levels may not mean equal differences in geometrical distances in complex indoor environment. To address this issue, in this paper, we propose a feature-scaling-based k-nearest neighbor (FS-kNN) algorithm for achieving improved localization accuracy. In FS-kNN, we build a novel RSS-level-based FS model, which introduces RSS-level-based scaling weights in the computation of effective signal distances between signal vector reported by a MS and reference fingerprints in a radio map. Experimental results show that FS-kNN can achieve an average location error as low as 1.70 m, which is superior to existing work.
23 January 2012 in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications
The link quality variation of wireless channels has been a challenging issue in data communications until recent explicit exploration in utilizing this characteristic. The same broadcast transmission may be perceived significantly differently, and usually independently, by receivers at different geographic locations. Furthermore, even the same stationary receiver may experience drastic link quality fluctuation over time. The combination of link-quality variation with the broadcasting nature of wireless channels has revealed a direction in the research of wireless networking, namely, cooperative communication. Research on cooperative communication started to attract interests in the community at the physical layer but more recently its importance and usability have also been realized at upper layers of the network protocol stack. In this article, we tackle the problem of opportunistic data transfer in mobile ad hoc networks. Our solution is called Cooperative Opportunistic Routing in Mobile Ad hoc Networks (CORMAN). It is a pure network layer scheme that can be built atop off-the-shelf wireless networking equipment. Nodes in the network use a lightweight proactive source routing protocol to determine a list of intermediate nodes that the data packets should follow en route to the destination. Here, when a data packet is broadcast by an upstream node and has happened to be received by a downstream node further along the route, it continues its way from there and thus will arrive at the destination node sooner. This is achieved through cooperative data communication at the link and network layers. This work is a powerful extension to the pioneering work of ExOR. We test CORMAN and compare it to AODV, and observe significant performance improvement in varying mobile settings.
For the purpose of localization and time synchronization of underwater sensor networks, buoys are generally distributed on the sea surface of the area of interest, serving as fixed anchors. However, this method is not economical and has poor scalability. An alternative is to employ an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV) as a mobile anchor. By receiving the periodical broadcast signals from the AUV, any sensor in the communication range can measure time of arrival of received packets and obtain a series of nonlinear equations. In this paper, we proposed an efficient linear algorithm to solve the nonlinear equations, and gave closed-form positioning and synchronization error analysis. Besides, we show that the proposed method can approach the Cramer-Rao lower bound by both theoretical analysis and simulation.
Mobile crowdsensing has wide application perspectives and tremendous advantages over traditional sensor networks due to its low cost, extensive coverage, and high sensing accuracy properties. Task assignment is a crucial issue in mobile crowdsensing systems which is intended to achieve a good tradeoff between task quality and task cost. The design of efficient task assignment mechanisms has attracted a lot of attention and much work has been carried out. In this article, we present a comprehensive survey of state-of-the-art task assignment mechanisms in mobile crowdsensing systems. We will first introduce several fundamental issues in task assignment and classify existing mechanisms based on different design criteria. Then we introduce how each of the existing mechanisms works and discuss their merits and deficiencies. Finally, we discuss challenging issues and point out some future directions in this area.
Wireless sensor networks with mobile sinks, mWSNs, have attracted a lot of attention recently. This is because sink mobility can greatly alleviate the hotspot issue in WSNs and further prolong the network lifetime. However, sink mobility also causes unexpected changes in network topology and data routing paths, which can largely affect the routing performance in such networks. Design of efficient routing protocols for mWSNs has been a critical issue, and much work has been carried out in this aspect. In this article, we first classify existing protocols based on different design criteria and then present a survey of the state-of-the-art routing protocols in this area. We illustrate how each of the protocols works, and discuss their advantages and disadvantages. Finally, we point out some future directions for efficient routing in mWSNs.