5G Cooperative Wireless Networks

Dear Colleagues,

The increasing demand for even higher data rates compared to current cellular networks, leads scientific progress towards standardization and implementation of fifth-generation (5G) mobile-cellular networks. In this context, the potential exploitation of the unlicensed spectrum band via millimeter wave (mmWave) transmission is of utmost importance, since large bandwidth channels can be achieved with more efficient spectrum utilization. Additional challenging technologies, such as non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), massive – MIMO transmission as well as flexible network deployment with nomadic nodes (e.g., drones, UAVs, etc.) are also candidate solutions for 5G topologies.

All the aforementioned technologies would benefit from a knowledge of accurate locations of mobile terminals (MTs). In cooperative localization, device-to-device (D2D) communications remove the need for all MTs to be connected to multiple base stations (BSs), and, thus, long-range BS transmissions are replaced with multi-hop communications among the densely located MTs. Therefore, not only total radiated power can be reduced, but significantly reduced transmission delays can be achieved as well, which are particularly important for bandwidth-demanding operations in the full vision of 5G, such as autonomous driving. Other related aspects in the physical layer include cooperative MIMO, which is an advanced technology that can effectively exploit the spatial domain of mobile fading channels to bring significant performance improvements to wireless communication systems.

Apart from physical layer design aspects, another area posing significant challenges in 5G-LTE networking is NFV/SDN management. In particular, this challenge is related to intermittent connectivity between the management and orchestration (MANO) platform and the radio access nodes. Such cases arise when nodes might be offline, due to battery constraints or due to node mobility. This is a challenge to NFV orchestration, as the MANO system can neither deploy nor configure virtual network functions over those nodes, despite the involved NFV resources being online but transiently unreachable. Hence, adjacent cooperation algorithms between such nomadic nodes are vital for proper network functioning.

This Special Issue is seeking high-quality submissions that highlight emerging applications and address recent breakthroughs in the design and implementation of advanced cooperative transmission and networking algorithms in the context of 5G networks.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to the following:

• Device-to-device (D2D) channel modeling in the context of 5G networks
• Cooperative localization techniques
• Advanced radio resource management algorithms for node-to-device communications and dynamic bandwidth allocations
• Cooperative techniques in heterogeneous networks
• Vehicular communications in the context of small-cell 5G networks
• Machine learning algorithms for the enhancement of cooperative resource allocations in 5G networks
• Cooperative MIMO techniques with the use of distributed antennas
• Cooperative communications in cognitive 5G networks
• NFV/SDN management in resource-constrained devices/nodes
• Cooperative techniques for ultra-low-latency applications

Prof. Panagiotis Trakadas
Prof. Panagiotis Gkonis
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

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• Cooperative communications
• device to device communications
• Cooperative networking
• Management and Orchestration
• Network Function Virtualization
• Network Slicing
• Cognitive 5G networks
• Cooperative MIMO
• Ultra-low latency 5G applications