Slawomir Stanczak

Alexandros Palaios, Christian L. Vielhaus, Daniel F. Külzer et al.

As cellular networks evolve towards the 6th generation, machine learning is seen as a key enabling technology to improve the capabilities of the network. Machine learning provides a methodology for predictive systems, which can make networks become proactive. This proactive behavior of the network can be leveraged to sustain, for example, a specific quality of service requirement. With predictive quality of service, a wide variety of new use cases, both safety- and entertainment-related, are emerging, especially in the automotive sector. Therefore, in this work, we consider maximum throughput prediction enhancing, for example, streaming or high-definition mapping applications. We discuss the entire machine learning workflow highlighting less regarded aspects such as the detailed sampling procedures, the in-depth analysis of the dataset characteristics, the effects of splits in the provided results, and the data availability. Reliable machine learning models need to face a lot of challenges during their lifecycle. We highlight how confidence can be built on machine learning technologies by better understanding the underlying characteristics of the collected data. We discuss feature engineering and the effects of different splits for the training processes, showcasing that random splits might overestimate performance by more than twofold. Moreover, we investigate diverse sets of input features, where network information proved to be most effective, cutting the error by half. Part of our contribution is the validation of multiple machine learning models within diverse scenarios. We also use explainable AI to show that machine learning can learn underlying principles of wireless networks without being explicitly programmed. Our data is collected from a deployed network that was under full control of the measurement team and covered different vehicular scenarios and radio environments.

Mariam Yahya, Setareh Maghsudi, Slawomir Stanczak

Federated learning (FL) involves several devices that collaboratively train a shared model without transferring their local data. FL reduces the communication overhead, making it a promising learning method in UAV-enhanced wireless networks with scarce energy resources. Despite the potential, implementing FL in UAV-enhanced networks is challenging, as conventional UAV placement methods that maximize coverage increase the FL delay significantly. Moreover, the uncertainty and lack of a priori information about crucial variables, such as channel quality, exacerbate the problem. In this paper, we first analyze the statistical characteristics of a UAV-enhanced wireless sensor network (WSN) with energy harvesting. We then develop a model and solution based on the multi-objective multi-armed bandit theory to maximize the network coverage while minimizing the FL delay. Besides, we propose another solution that is particularly useful with large action sets and strict energy constraints at the UAVs. Our proposal uses a scalarized best-arm identification algorithm to find the optimal arms that maximize the ratio of the expected reward to the expected energy cost by sequentially eliminating one or more arms in each round. Then, we derive the upper bound on the error probability of our multi-objective and cost-aware algorithm. Numerical results show the effectiveness of our approach.

Navneet Agrawal, Yuqin Qiu, Matthias Frey et al.

Lagrange coded computation (LCC) is essential to solving problems about matrix polynomials in a coded distributed fashion; nevertheless, it can only solve the problems that are representable as matrix polynomials. In this paper, we propose AICC, an AI-aided learning approach that is inspired by LCC but also uses deep neural networks (DNNs). It is appropriate for coded computation of more general functions. Numerical simulations demonstrate the suitability of the proposed approach for the coded computation of different matrix functions that are often utilized in digital signal processing.

Rodrigo Hernangomez, Igor Bjelakovic, Lorenzo Servadei et al.

Commercial radar sensing is gaining relevance and machine learning algorithms constitute one of the key components that are enabling the spread of this radio technology into areas like surveillance or healthcare. However, radar datasets are still scarce and generalization cannot be yet achieved for all radar systems, environment conditions or design parameters. A certain degree of fine tuning is, therefore, usually required to deploy machine-learning-enabled radar applications. In this work, we consider the problem of unsupervised domain adaptation across radar configurations in the context of deep-learning human activity classification using frequency-modulated continuous-wave. For that, we focus on the theory-inspired technique of Margin Disparity Discrepancy, which has already been proved successful in the area of computer vision. Our experiments extend this technique to radar data, achieving a comparable accuracy to fewshot supervised approaches for the same classification problem.

Renato Luis Garrido Cavalcante, Tomasz Piotrowski, Slawomir Stanczak

We introduce a unified framework for analyzing utility regions of wireless networks, with a focus on signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) and achievable rate regions. The framework provides valuable insights into interference patterns of modern network architectures, including extremely large MIMO and cell-less networks. A central contribution is a simple characterization of feasible utility regions using the concept of spectral radius of nonlinear mappings. This characterization provides a powerful mathematical tool for wireless system design and analysis. For example, it allows us to generalize existing characterizations of the weak Pareto boundary using compact notation. It also allows us to derive tractable sufficient conditions for the identification of convex utility regions. This property is particularly important because, on the weak Pareto boundary, it guarantees that time sharing (or user grouping) cannot simultaneously improve the utilities of all users. Beyond geometrical insights, these sufficient conditions have two key implications. First, they identify a family of (weighted) sum-rate maximization problems that are inherently convex, thus paving the way for the development of efficient, provably optimal solvers for this family. Second, they provide justification for formulating sum-rate maximization problems directly in terms of achievable rates, rather than SINR levels. Our theoretical insights also motivate an alternative to the concept of favorable propagation in the massive MIMO literature -- one that explicitly accounts for self-interference and the beamforming strategy.

Yuzhen Ke, Zoran Utkovski, Mehdi Heshmati et al.

An important use case of next-generation wireless systems is device-edge co-inference, where a semantic task is partitioned between a device and an edge server. The device carries out data collection and partial processing of the data, while the remote server completes the given task based on information received from the device. It is often required that processing and communication be run as efficiently as possible at the device, while more computing resources are available at the edge. To address such scenarios, we introduce a new system solution, termed neuromorphic wireless device-edge co-inference. According to it, the device runs sensing, processing, and communication units using neuromorphic hardware, while the server employs conventional radio and computing technologies. The proposed system is designed using a transmitter-centric information-theoretic criterion that targets a reduction of the communication overhead, while retaining the most relevant information for the end-to-end semantic task of interest. Numerical results on standard data sets validate the proposed architecture, and a preliminary testbed realization is reported.

Hammad Zafar, Zoran Utkovski, Martin Kasparick et al.

This paper addresses the problem of decentralized spectrum sharing in vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication networks. The aim is to provide resource-efficient coexistence of vehicle-to-infrastructure(V2I) and vehicle-to-vehicle(V2V) links. A recent work on the topic proposes a multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) approach based on deep Q-learning, which leverages a fingerprint-based deep Q-network (DQN) architecture. This work considers an extension of this framework by combining Double Q-learning (via Double DQN) and transfer learning. The motivation behind is that Double Q-learning can alleviate the problem of overestimation of the action values present in conventional Q-learning, while transfer learning can leverage knowledge acquired by an expert model to accelerate learning in the MARL setting. The proposed algorithm is evaluated in a realistic V2X setting, with synthetic data generated based on a geometry-based propagation model that incorporates location-specific geographical descriptors of the simulated environment(outlines of buildings, foliage, and vehicles). The advantages of the proposed approach are demonstrated via numerical simulations.

Daniyal Amir Awan, Renato L. G. Cavalcante, Slawomir Stanczak

Learning of the cell-load in radio access networks (RANs) has to be performed within a short time period. Therefore, we propose a learning framework that is robust against uncertainties resulting from the need for learning based on a relatively small training sample set. To this end, we incorporate prior knowledge about the cell-load in the learning framework. For example, an inherent property of the cell-load is that it is monotonic in downlink (data) rates. To obtain additional prior knowledge we first study the feasible rate region, i.e., the set of all vectors of user rates that can be supported by the network. We prove that the feasible rate region is compact. Moreover, we show the existence of a Lipschitz function that maps feasible rate vectors to cell-load vectors. With these results in hand, we present a learning technique that guarantees a minimum approximation error in the worst-case scenario by using prior knowledge and a small training sample set. Simulations in the network simulator NS3 demonstrate that the proposed method exhibits better robustness and accuracy than standard multivariate learning techniques, especially for small training sample sets.

Daniyal Amir Awan, Renato L. G. Cavalcante, Zoran Utkovski et al.

Cloud-radio access network (C-RAN) can enable cell-less operation by connecting distributed remote radio heads (RRHs) via fronthaul links to a powerful central unit. In conventional C-RAN, baseband signals are forwarded after quantization/ compression to the central unit for centralized processing to keep the complexity of the RRHs low. However, the limited capacity of the fronthaul is thought to be a significant bottleneck in the ability of C-RAN to support large systems (e.g. massive machine-type communications (mMTC)). Therefore, in contrast to the conventional C-RAN, we propose a learning-based system in which the detection is performed locally at each RRH and only the likelihood information is conveyed to the CU. To this end, we develop a general set-theoretic learningmethod to estimate likelihood functions. The method can be used to extend existing detection methods to the C-RAN setting.

Matthias Mehlhose, Daniyal Amir Awan, Renato L. G. Cavalcante et al.

Conventional multiuser detection techniques either require a large number of antennas at the receiver for a desired performance, or they are too complex for practical implementation. Moreover, many of these techniques, such as successive interference cancellation (SIC), suffer from errors in parameter estimation (user channels, covariance matrix, noise variance, etc.) that is performed before detection of user data symbols. As an alternative to conventional methods, this paper proposes and demonstrates a low-complexity practical Machine Learning (ML) based receiver that achieves similar (and at times better) performance to the SIC receiver. The proposed receiver does not require parameter estimation; instead it uses supervised learning to detect the user modulation symbols directly. We perform comparisons with minimum mean square error (MMSE) and SIC receivers in terms of symbol error rate (SER) and complexity.

Daniyal Amir Awan, Renato L. G. Cavalcante, Masahiro Yukawa et al.

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has emerged as a promising radio access technique for enabling the performance enhancements promised by the fifth-generation (5G) networks in terms of connectivity, low latency, and high spectrum efficiency. In the NOMA uplink, successive interference cancellation (SIC) based detection with device clustering has been suggested. In the case of multiple receive antennas, SIC can be combined with the minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) beamforming. However, there exists a tradeoff between the NOMA cluster size and the incurred SIC error. Larger clusters lead to larger errors but they are desirable from the spectrum efficiency and connectivity point of view. We propose a novel online learning based detection for the NOMA uplink. In particular, we design an online adaptive filter in the sum space of linear and Gaussian reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHSs). Such a sum space design is robust against variations of a dynamic wireless network that can deteriorate the performance of a purely nonlinear adaptive filter. We demonstrate by simulations that the proposed method outperforms the MMSE-SIC based detection for large cluster sizes.

Steffen Limmer, Slawomir Stanczak

This paper introduces Laplace techniques for designing a neural network, with the goal of estimating simplex-constraint sparse vectors from compressed measurements. To this end, we recast the problem of MMSE estimation (w.r.t. a pre-defined uniform input distribution) as the problem of computing the centroid of some polytope that results from the intersection of the simplex and an affine subspace determined by the measurements. Owing to the specific structure, it is shown that the centroid can be computed analytically by extending a recent result that facilitates the volume computation of polytopes via Laplace transformations. A main insight of this paper is that the desired volume and centroid computations can be performed by a classical deep neural network comprising threshold functions, rectified linear (ReLU) and rectified polynomial (ReP) activation functions. The proposed construction of a deep neural network for sparse recovery is completely analytic so that time-consuming training procedures are not necessary. Furthermore, we show that the number of layers in our construction is equal to the number of measurements which might enable novel low-latency sparse recovery algorithms for a larger class of signals than that assumed in this paper. To assess the applicability of the proposed uniform input distribution, we showcase the recovery performance on samples that are soft-classification vectors generated by two standard datasets. As both volume and centroid computation are known to be computationally hard, the network width grows exponentially in the worst-case. It can be, however, decreased by inducing sparse connectivity in the neural network via a well-suited basis of the affine subspace. Finally, the presented analytical construction may serve as a viable initialization to be further optimized and trained using particular input datasets at hand.

Wojciech Samek, Slawomir Stanczak, Thomas Wiegand

The areas of machine learning and communication technology are converging. Today's communications systems generate a huge amount of traffic data, which can help to significantly enhance the design and management of networks and communication components when combined with advanced machine learning methods. Furthermore, recently developed end-to-end training procedures offer new ways to jointly optimize the components of a communication system. Also in many emerging application fields of communication technology, e.g., smart cities or internet of things, machine learning methods are of central importance. This paper gives an overview over the use of machine learning in different areas of communications and discusses two exemplar applications in wireless networking. Furthermore, it identifies promising future research topics and discusses their potential impact.

Martin Kasparick, Renato L. G. Cavalcante, Stefan Valentin et al.

In this paper, we address the problem of reconstructing coverage maps from path-loss measurements in cellular networks. We propose and evaluate two kernel-based adaptive online algorithms as an alternative to typical offline methods. The proposed algorithms are application-tailored extensions of powerful iterative methods such as the adaptive projected subgradient method and a state-of-the-art adaptive multikernel method. Assuming that the moving trajectories of users are available, it is shown how side information can be incorporated in the algorithms to improve their convergence performance and the quality of the estimation. The complexity is significantly reduced by imposing sparsity-awareness in the sense that the algorithms exploit the compressibility of the measurement data to reduce the amount of data which is saved and processed. Finally, we present extensive simulations based on realistic data to show that our algorithms provide fast, robust estimates of coverage maps in real-world scenarios. Envisioned applications include path-loss prediction along trajectories of mobile users as a building block for anticipatory buffering or traffic offloading.