T9: 6G Software-Defined Radio Access Networks with Intelligent Reconfigurable Surfaces and UAV Communications
Organizer: Li-Chun Wang, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
Abstract: With the ever-increasing various new mobile services, such as meta verse, we can envisage that the upcoming sixth generation (6G) networks with numerous devices will demand extremely high-performance interconnections over a large territory. However, under strenuous scenarios such as diverse mobility, extreme density, and the uncontrollable random nature of wireless channels environments, achieving such a goal is a big challenge, especially when different kinds of aerial and ground mobile devices use different multiple radio access technologies to coexist in a wireless network. To meet such a demand, flexible and sustainable radio access network (RAN) techniques to meet very diverse needs and massive connectivity is of utmost importance. Key driving applications for 6G include smart cities, smart factories, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), multidimensional detection services, metaverse applications, etc. These applications require the transformation of existing RAN techniques to reach the key performance metrics of 6G networks.
From a holistic aspect of delay, throughput, massive interconnectivity, extended coverage, etc., we discuss the potential solutions for 6G RAN:
(1) AI-enabled flexible RAN : Applying deep reinforce learning network slicing techniques on top of software-defined networking (SDN) for handling massive interconnectivity and heterogeneous traffic patterns, and multi tenant heterogeneous RAN.
(2) UAV-enabled cellular network: As a cost-effective aerial platform, UAVs can provide reliable air to-ground (A2G) line-ofsight (LOS) transmission and controllable maneuverability.
(3) Reconfigurable intelligent reconfigurable surface (RIS): This recent metamaterial technology can provide a feasible solution to alleviating the uncontrollability of wireless propagation environments such that the random characteristics of wireless channels are no longer completely uncontrollable.
In this tutorial, we will introduce the comprehensive background of UAV communications and RIS based beamforming. We discuss the main advantages in RIS-assisted UAV communications and identify some future research challenges.
Li-Chun Wang
Bio: Li-Chun Wang (M’96 — SM’06 — F’11) received Ph. D. degree from the Georgia Institute of Technology, Atlanta, in 1996. From 1996 to 2000, he was with AT&T Laboratories, where he was a Senior Technical Staff Member in the Wireless Communications Research Department. Since August 2000, he has joined the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering of National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University in Taiwan and is jointly appointed by the Department of Computer Science and Information Engineering of the same university.
Dr. Wang was elected to the IEEE Fellow in 2011 for his contributions to cellular architectures and radio resource management in wireless networks. He won the Distinguished Research Award of the National Science Council, Taiwan (2012). He was the co-recipients of IEEE Communications Society Asia-Pacific Board Best Award (2015), Y. Z. Hsu Scientific Paper Award (2013), and IEEE Jack Neubauer Best Paper Award (1997). His current research interests are in the areas of software-defined mobile networks, heterogeneous networks, and data-driven intelligent wireless communications. He holds 19 US patents, has published over 200 journal and conference papers, and co-edited a book, “Key Technologies for 5G Wireless Systems,” (Cambridge University Press 2017). He was recognized as Top 2% Scientists Worldwide in a study from Stanford University.