WiVi-2020 aims to have significant progress beyond the state of the art in the areas of 5G indoor communications. The research work is split in three areas:
(i) Spectrum coexistence and offloading: Here, the work focuses on techniques for the seamless coexistence of heterogeneous networking technologies, using concepts from software defined radios and fog computing. So far, the project has worked on resource allocation algorithms to maximize the spectral efficiency and the sum rate of all the user devices. Additionally, hybrid resource allocation schemes have been defined to minimize the interference with respect to the QoS of the supported applications.
(ii) Indoor heterogeneous access:
Here, the focus is on developing scalable multi-criteria infrastructure planning for indoor dense wireless networks. To achieve this, the project considered the underlay M2M communications via resource sharing optimization and considering energy restrictions. So far, a scalable model for allocation of fog resources has been developed for multi-tier fog infrastructures including end user devices. Furthermore, the benefits of using SDNs for the reliable integration of heterogeneous technologies have been investigated, with a focus on improving the mobility management techniques using local handover management for indoor femto-cell networks, showing improvements on the energy efficiency and handover latency compared to standard 3GPP techniques.
(iii) Virtualized networks based on Application Defined Networking:
Here, the target is to exploit ADN and network virtualization for optimizing service provisioning in heterogeneous networks. The project has worked on advancing the concepts of Age of Information and Value of Information proposing two novel metrics: the cost and the value of information update. Additionally, the project worked on optimization of resource allocation for heterogeneous networks, considering QoS service differentiation for core and access networks, proposing a novel optimal resource allocation algorithm for achieving predefined throughput and delay performance for selected groups/slices .
The scientific impact of the project is significant, since it aims to provide models and algorithms that will improve the performance of future heterogeneous deployments within buildings. The impact will be increased with many targeted scientific publications in high ranked conferences, journals and magazines. Additionally, the industrial impact is ensured with the activities of the industrial partners, both dedicated to support the exploitation of the results in various ways. By achieving improved performance in network deployments within buildings, end users will be experiencing faster and more reliable internet connection speeds and better services with improved quality.
