Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communications Using Proactive
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1 Ultra-Reliable and Low-Latency Communications Using Proactive Multi-cell Association Chun-Hung Liu, Senior Member, IEEE, Di-Chun Liang, Kwang-Cheng Chen, Fellow, IEEE, and Rung-Hung Gau, Senior Member, IEEE Abstract—Attaining reliable communications traditionally re- in large networking latency of tens to hundreds of millisec- lies on a closed-loop methodology but inevitably incurs a good onds. This indicates that there exists a tradeoff between high amount of networking latency thanks to complicated feedback reliability and low latency in system network architecture mechanism and signaling storm. Such a closed-loop methodology thus shackles the current cellular network with a tradeoff and subsequent communication protocols of mobile commu- between high reliability and low latency. To completely avoid nication networks. Such a reliability-latency tradeoff problem the latency induced by closed-loop communication, this paper intrinsically impedes the existing cellular systems to extend aims to study how to jointly employ open-loop communication their services in mission-critical communication contexts with and multi-cell association in a heterogeneous network (HetNet) so ultra high reliability and low latency constraints, such as as to achieve ultra-reliable and low-latency communications. We first introduce how mobile users in a HetNet adopt the proposed wireless control and automation in industrial environments, proactive multi-cell association (PMCA) scheme to form their vehicle-to-vehicle communications, and the tactile internet virtual cell that consists of multiple access points (APs) and then which allows controlling both real and virtual objects with analyze the communication reliability and latency performances. real-time haptic feedback [4], [5]. We show that the communication reliability can be significantly improved by the PMCA scheme and maximized by optimizing the The message transmission time for mission-critical applica- densities of the users and the APs. The analyses of the uplink tions needs to be on the order of milliseconds (ms) because and downlink delays are also accomplished, which show that the human reaction time is on the order of tens of milliseconds extremely low latency can be fulfilled in the virtual cell of a single [6] or less toward 1 ms for fully autonomous application user if the PMCA scheme is adopted and the radio resources of scenarios. The end-to-end latency of the LTE systems is each AP are appropriately allocated. usually in the range of 30 ∼ 100 ms, which cannot be further Index Terms—Ultra reliable and low latency communications, reduced because the backbone network of the LTE systems network coverage, open-loop communication, cell association, typically uses a delivery mechanism which is not optimized cellular network, stochastic geometry. for latency-sensitive services. To reduce the end-to-end latency in the cellular systems like LTE, it is necessary to fundamen- I. INTRODUCTION tally change the system architecture relying on the closed- HE international telecommunication union has identi- loop communication and backbone links. The latency of the T fied ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC), backbone link can be significantly reduced by appropriate machine-type communication (mMTC) and enhanced mobile communication architecture and implementation of network broadband (eMBB) as the three pillar services in the fifth protocols to construct the dedicated connection for URLLC generation (5G) mobile communication that aims to provide services [7]. To reduce the latency in the physical layer, good connectivity for many various communication applica- transmission overhead needs to be suppressed by streamlining tions [1]–[3]. Among these three services, URLLC remains the the grant-free transmission mechanism of the physical layer access and allocating resources properly [8]. Nonetheless, arXiv:1903.09739v6 [cs.IT] 22 Jan 2021 most challenging technology due to the need of completely new system design in order to achieve the extremely high reducing the latency in the communication and backbone links system reliability and low latency in 5G cellular systems. is still insufficient to effectively perform ultra low-latency Existing mobile communication systems, such as long-term transmission in the current LTE systems because most of the evolution (LTE) systems and its predecessors, were promi- transmission latency is incurred by the control signaling (e.g., nently designed to achieve the goal of high throughput in grant and pilot signaling usually takes 0:3 ∼ 0:4 ms per mobile communications, yet they can also achieve highly scheduling). Accordingly, the most important and essential reliable communications in the physical layer at the expense means that enables URLLC in 5G heterogeneous cellular net- of complicated closed-loop protocol stack to inevitably result works (HetNets) toward the target latency of one millisecond is to disruptively redesign the transmission protocols in the C.-H. Liu is with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engi- physical layer of HetNets [5], [9]. neering, Mississippi State University, Starkville, MS 39762, USA. (e-mail: [email protected]) K.-C. Chen is with the Department of Electrical Engineering, University of South Florida, Tampa, FL 33620, USA. (e-mail: [email protected]) A. Motivation and Prior Related Work D.-C. Liang and R.-H. Gau are with the Institute of Communica- tions Engineering and Department of Electrical and Computer Engineer- ing, National Chiao Tung University, Hsinchu 30010, Taiwan. (e-mail: To effectively reduce latency in 5G HetNets, the essential [email protected]; [email protected]) approach is to adopt (feedback-free) open-loop communica- 2 tion1 so that no retransmission is needed and receivers can exploited in the network. Accordingly, all the analyses in this save time in performing additional processing and protocol. paper are conducted according to the assumption that all APs Open-loop communication has a distinct advantage to signif- and users are equipped with a single antenna and they thus icantly reduce control signaling overhead for power control accomplish the following contributions: and channel estimation in cellular systems if compared with • To enhance the communication reliability between users closed-loop communication. As such, in this paper we focus and APs, we propose the proactive multi-cell association on how to fulfill URLLC through open-loop communication (PMCA) scheme in which each user proactively asso- in a HetNet owing to the fact that extremely reliable open- ciates with multiple nearby APs and adopts open-loop loop communication is the key to low latency. All the existing communication to send URLLC messages to the APs URLLC works in the literature are hardly dedicated to study- associated with it as well as receive URLLC messages ing the open-loop communication or without retransmission from them. The PMCA scheme is completely different (typically see [10]–[18]). Some of the recent works focus on from any prior association schemes in the literature due how to perform URLLC in wireless systems by employing to multi-cell association and transmission, which was also retransmissions, short packet designs and their corresponding addressed in the recent standard of 3GPP for enhanced estimation algorithms for point-to-point transmission [10]– URLLC as an effective means to enhance communication [13]. Reference [10], for example, studied the energy-latency reliability if compared with retransmission [21]. tradeoff problem in URLLC systems with hybrid automatic • The distribution of the number of the users associating repeat request (HARQ), whereas reference [11] proposed an with an AP in each tier is accurately derived, which is efficient receiver design that is able to exploit useful infor- first found to the best of our knowledge. It importantly mation in the data transmission period so as to improve the reveals that the void AP phenomenon exists in the PMCA reliability of short packet transmission. scheme and needs to be considered in the analysis of There are some of the recent works that investigated re- ultra-reliable communications. source allocation problems in wireless networks under the • The uplink non-collision reliability of a user in the cell of URLLC constraint. In [14], the authors studied how to min- an AP is found for the proactive open-loop communica- imize the required system bandwidth as well as optimize tion and thereby we can characterize the uplink communi- the resource allocation schemes to maximize URLLC loads, cation reliability of a virtual cell for the non-collaborative whereas the problem of optimizing resource allocation in the and collaborative AP cases in a low-complexity form. short block length regime for URLLC was investigated in [15]. • From the analyses of the communication reliability in Reference [16] studied how to jointly optimize uplink and the uplink and downlink, the communication reliability downlink bandwidth configuration and delay components to is shown to be significantly influenced by the densities minimize the total required bandwidth and end-to-end delay. of the users and the APs and the number of the APs in Furthermore, there are few recent works that looked into a virtual cell. The PMCA scheme indeed improves the the URLLC design from the perspective of physical-layer communication reliability of a user and make it achieve system interfaces and wireless channel characteristics. The the target value of 99:999% when appropriately deploying