A key distinction between today's and tomorrow's wireless networks is the appetite for reliability to enable emerging mission-critical services such as ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) and hyper-reliable low-latency communication (HRLLC), the staple mission-critical services in IMT-2020 (5G) and IMT-2023 (6G), for which reliable and resilient communication is a must. However, achieving ultra-reliable communication is challenging because of these services' stringent reliability and latency requirements and the stochastic nature of wireless networks. A natural way of increasing reliability and reducing latency is to provision additional network resources to compensate for uncertainty in wireless networks caused by fading, interference, mobility, and time-varying network load, among others. Thus, an important step to enable mission-critical services is to identify and quantify what it takes to support ultra-reliable communication in mobile networks -- a process often referred to as dimensioning. This dissertation focuses on resource dimensioning, notably spectrum, for ultra-reliable wireless communication. This dissertation proposes a set of methods for spectrum dimensioning based on concepts from risk analysis, extreme value theory, and meta distributions. These methods reveal that each ``nine'' in reliability (e.g., five-nines in 99.999%) roughly translates into an order of magnitude increase in the required bandwidth. In ultra-reliability regimes, the required bandwidth can be in the order of tens of gigahertz, far beyond what is typically available in today's networks, making it challenging to provision resources for ultra-reliable communication. Accordingly, this dissertation also investigates alternative approaches to provide resources to enable ultra-reliable communication services in mobile networks. Particularly, this dissertation considers multi-operator network sharing and multi-connectivity as alternatives to make additional network resources available to enhance network reliability and proposes multi-operator connectivity sharing, which combines multi-operator network sharing with multi-connectivity. Our studies, based on simulations, real-world data analysis, and mathematical models, suggest that multi-operator connectivity sharing -- in which mobiles multi-connect to base stations of operators in a sharing arrangement -- can reduce the required bandwidth significantly because underlying operators tend to exhibit characteristics attractive to reliability, such as complementary coverage during periods of impaired connectivity, facilitating the support for ultra-reliable communication in future mobile networks. / Doctor of Philosophy / A key distinction between today's and tomorrow's wireless networks is the appetite for reliability to enable emerging mission-critical services in 5G and 6G, for which ultra-reliable communication is a must. However, achieving ultra-reliable communication is challenging because of these services' stringent reliability and latency requirements and the stochastic nature of wireless networks. Reliability often comes at the cost of additional network resources to compensate for uncertainty in wireless networks. Thus, an important step to enable ultra-reliable communication is to identify and quantify what it takes to support mission-critical services in mobile networks -- a process often denoted as dimensioning. This dissertation focuses on spectrum dimensioning and proposes a set of methods to identify suitable spectrum bands and required bandwidth for ultra-reliable communication.
These methods reveal that the spectrum needs for ultra-reliable communication can be beyond what is typically available in today's networks, making it challenging to provide adequate resources to support ultra-reliable communication services in mobile networks. Alternatively, we propose multi-operator connectivity sharing: mobiles simultaneously connect to multiple base stations of different operators. Our studies suggest that multi-operator connectivity sharing can reduce the spectrum needs in ultra-reliability regimes significantly, being an attractive alternative to enable ultra-reliable communication in future mobile networks.
| Identifer | oai:union.ndltd.org:VTETD/oai:vtechworks.lib.vt.edu:10919/116706 |
| Date | 28 November 2023 |
| Creators | Gomes Santos Goncalves, Andre Vinicius |
| Contributors | Electrical and Computer Engineering, Pereira da Silva, Luiz Antonio, Kibilda, Jacek, Reed, Jeffrey H., Dhillon, Harpreet Singh, Hasan, Shaddi Husein |
| Publisher | Virginia Tech |
| Source Sets | Virginia Tech Theses and Dissertation |
| Language | English |
| Detected Language | English |
| Type | Dissertation |
| Format | ETD, application/pdf |
| Rights | Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International, http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc/4.0/ |
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