Karl-Ludwig Besser

Bile Peng, Karl-Ludwig Besser, Ramprasad Raghunath et al.

This work presents a machine learning approach to optimize the energy efficiency (EE) in a multi-cell wireless network. This optimization problem is non-convex and its global optimum is difficult to find. In the literature, either simple but suboptimal approaches or optimal methods with high complexity and poor scalability are proposed. In contrast, we propose a machine learning framework to approach the global optimum. While the neural network (NN) training takes moderate time, application with the trained model requires very low computational complexity. In particular, we introduce a novel objective function based on stochastic actions to solve the non-convex optimization problem. Besides, we design a dedicated NN architecture for the multi-cell network optimization problems that is permutation-equivariant. It classifies channels according to their roles in the EE computation. In this way, we encode our domain knowledge into the NN design and shed light into the black box of machine learning. Training and testing results show that the proposed method without supervision and with reasonable computational effort achieves an EE close to the global optimum found by the branch-and-bound algorithm. Hence, the proposed approach balances between computational complexity and performance.

Irshad A. Meer, Karl-Ludwig Besser, Mustafa Ozger et al.

Multi-connectivity involves dynamic cluster formation among distributed access points (APs) and coordinated resource allocation from these APs, highlighting the need for efficient mobility management strategies for users with multi-connectivity. In this paper, we propose a novel mobility management scheme for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that uses dynamic cluster reconfiguration with energy-efficient power allocation in a wireless interference network. Our objective encompasses meeting stringent reliability demands, minimizing joint power consumption, and reducing the frequency of cluster reconfiguration. To achieve these objectives, we propose a hierarchical multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (H-MADRL) framework, specifically tailored for dynamic clustering and power allocation. The edge cloud connected with a set of APs through low latency optical back-haul links hosts the high-level agent responsible for the optimal clustering policy, while low-level agents reside in the APs and are responsible for the power allocation policy. To further improve the learning efficiency, we propose a novel action-observation transition-driven learning algorithm that allows the low-level agents to use the action space from the high-level agent as part of the local observation space. This allows the lower-level agents to share partial information about the clustering policy and allocate the power more efficiently. The simulation results demonstrate that our proposed distributed algorithm achieves comparable performance to the centralized algorithm. Additionally, it offers better scalability, as the decision time for clustering and power allocation increases by only 10% when doubling the number of APs, compared to a 90% increase observed with the centralized approach.

Bho Matthiesen, Alessio Zappone, Karl-L. Besser et al.

This work develops a novel power control framework for energy-efficient power control in wireless networks. The proposed method is a new branch-and-bound procedure based on problem-specific bounds for energy-efficiency maximization that allow for faster convergence. This enables to find the global solution for all of the most common energy-efficient power control problems with a complexity that, although still exponential in the number of variables, is much lower than other available global optimization frameworks. Moreover, the reduced complexity of the proposed framework allows its practical implementation through the use of deep neural networks. Specifically, thanks to its reduced complexity, the proposed method can be used to train an artificial neural network to predict the optimal resource allocation. This is in contrast with other power control methods based on deep learning, which train the neural network based on suboptimal power allocations due to the large complexity that generating large training sets of optimal power allocations would have with available global optimization methods. As a benchmark, we also develop a novel first-order optimal power allocation algorithm. Numerical results show that a neural network can be trained to predict the optimal power allocation policy.