Ubiquitous sensors and smart devices from factories and communities are generating massive amounts of data, and ever-increasing computing power is driving the core of computation and services from ...the cloud to the edge of the network. As an important enabler broadly changing people's lives, from face recognition to ambitious smart factories and cities, developments of artificial intelligence (especially deep learning, DL) based applications and services are thriving. However, due to efficiency and latency issues, the current cloud computing service architecture hinders the vision of "providing artificial intelligence for every person and every organization at everywhere". Thus, unleashing DL services using resources at the network edge near the data sources has emerged as a desirable solution. Therefore, edge intelligence , aiming to facilitate the deployment of DL services by edge computing, has received significant attention. In addition, DL, as the representative technique of artificial intelligence, can be integrated into edge computing frameworks to build intelligent edge for dynamic, adaptive edge maintenance and management. With regard to mutually beneficial edge intelligence and intelligent edge , this paper introduces and discusses: 1) the application scenarios of both; 2) the practical implementation methods and enabling technologies, namely DL training and inference in the customized edge computing framework; 3) challenges and future trends of more pervasive and fine-grained intelligence. We believe that by consolidating information scattered across the communication, networking, and DL areas, this survey can help readers to understand the connections between enabling technologies while promoting further discussions on the fusion of edge intelligence and intelligent edge , i.e., Edge DL.
Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is a promising technique for the fifth generation mobile communication due to its high spectral efficiency. By applying superposition coding and successive ...interference cancellation techniques at the receiver, multiple users can be multiplexed on the same subchannel in NOMA systems. Previous works focus on subchannel assignment and power allocation to achieve the maximization of sum rate; however, the energy-efficient resource allocation problem has not been well studied for NOMA systems. In this paper, we aim to optimize subchannel assignment and power allocation to maximize the energy efficiency for the downlink NOMA network. Assuming perfect knowledge of the channel state information at base station, we propose a low-complexity suboptimal algorithm, which includes energy-efficient subchannel assignment and power proportional factors determination for subchannel multiplexed users. We also propose a novel power allocation across subchannels to further maximize energy efficiency. Since both optimization problems are non-convex, difference of convex programming is used to transform and approximate the original non-convex problems to convex optimization problems. Solutions to the resulting optimization problems can be obtained by solving the convex sub-problems iteratively. Simulation results show that the NOMA system equipped with the proposed algorithms yields much better sum rate and energy efficiency performance than the conventional orthogonal frequency division multiple access scheme.
The evolution of smartphones together with increasing computational power has empowered developers to create innovative context-aware applications for recognizing user-related social and cognitive ...activities in any situation and at any location. The existence and awareness of the context provide the capability of being conscious of physical environments or situations around mobile device users. This allows network services to respond proactively and intelligently based on such awareness. The key idea behind context-aware applications is to encourage users to collect, analyze, and share local sensory knowledge in the purpose for a large-scale community use by creating a smart network. The desired network is capable of making autonomous logical decisions to actuate environmental objects and also assist individuals. However, many open challenges remain, which are mostly arisen because the middleware services provided in mobile devices have limited resources in terms of power, memory, and bandwidth. Thus, it becomes critically important to study how the drawbacks can be elaborated and resolved and, at the same time, better understand the opportunities for the research community to contribute to the context-awareness. To this end, this paper surveys the literature over the period of 1991-2014 from the emerging concepts to applications of context-awareness in mobile platforms by providing up-to-date research and future research directions. Moreover, it points out the challenges faced in this regard and enlightens them by proposing possible solutions.
As one of the key components of the smart grid, advanced metering infrastructure brings many potential advantages such as load management and demand response. However, computerizing the metering ...system also introduces numerous new vectors for energy theft. In this paper, we present a novel consumption pattern-based energy theft detector, which leverages the predictability property of customers' normal and malicious consumption patterns. Using distribution transformer meters, areas with a high probability of energy theft are short listed, and by monitoring abnormalities in consumption patterns, suspicious customers are identified. Application of appropriate classification and clustering techniques, as well as concurrent use of transformer meters and anomaly detectors, make the algorithm robust against nonmalicious changes in usage pattern, and provide a high and adjustable performance with a low-sampling rate. Therefore, the proposed method does not invade customers' privacy. Extensive experiments on a real dataset of 5000 customers show a high performance for the proposed method.
The concept of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) is becoming increasingly obscure due to the recent findings of heterogeneous populations with different levels of stemness within MSCs isolated by ...traditional plastic adherence. MSCs were originally identified in bone marrow and later detected in many other tissues. Currently, no cloning based on single surface marker is capable of isolating cells that satisfy the minimal criteria of MSCs from various tissue environments. Markers that associate with the stemness of MSCs await to be elucidated. A number of candidate MSC surface markers or markers possibly related to their stemness have been brought forward so far, including Stro-1, SSEA-4, CD271, and CD146, yet there is a large difference in their expression in various sources of MSCs. The exact identity of MSCs in vivo is not yet clear, although reports have suggested they may have a fibroblastic or pericytic origin. In this review, we revisit the reported expression of surface molecules in MSCs from various sources, aiming to assess their potential as MSC markers and define the critical panel for future investigation. We also discuss the relationship of MSCs to fibroblasts and pericytes in an attempt to shed light on their identity in vivo.
Vehicular networks enable vehicles to generate and broadcast messages in order to improve traffic safety and efficiency. However, due to the nontrusted environments, it is difficult for vehicles to ...evaluate the credibilities of received messages. In this paper, we propose a decentralized trust management system in vehicular networks based on blockchain techniques. In this system, vehicles can validate the received messages from neighboring vehicles using Bayesian Inference Model. Based on the validation result, the vehicle will generate a rating for each message source vehicle. With the ratings uploaded from vehicles, roadside units (RSUs) calculate the trust value offsets of involved vehicles and pack these data into a "block." Then, each RSU will try to add their "blocks" to the trust blockchain which is maintained by all the RSUs. By employing the joint proof-of-work (PoW) and proof-of-stake consensus mechanism, the more total value of offsets (stake) is in the block, the easier RSU can find the nonce for the hash function (PoW). In this way, all RSUs collaboratively maintain an updated, reliable, and consistent trust blockchain. Simulation results reveal that the proposed system is effective and feasible in collecting, calculating, and storing trust values in vehicular networks.
Driven by the quality of experience (QoE) requirement of video streaming applications in the smart city, smart education, immersive service, and connected vehicle scenarios, the existing network ...poses significant challenges, including ultra-high bandwidth, ultra-large storage, and ultra-low latency requirements, etc. Multi-access edge computing (MEC) is a potential technology, which can provide computation-intensive and caching-intensive services for video streaming applications to satisfy the requirement of QoE. Thus, focusing on video streaming schemes, a comprehensive summary of the state of the art applying MEC to video streaming is surveyed. Firstly, the related overview and background knowledge are reviewed. Secondly, resource allocation issues have been discussed. Thirdly, the enabling technologies for video streaming are summarized by taking account of caching, computing, and networking. Then, a taxonomy of MEC enabled video streaming applications is classified. Finally, challenges and future research directions are given.
To tackle the contradiction between the computation intensive applications and the resource-hungry mobile user equipments (UEs), mobile edge computing (MEC) has been provisioned as a promising ...solution, which enables the UEs to offload the tasks to the MEC servers. Considering the characteristics of small cell networks (SCNs), integrating MEC into SCNs is natural. But in terms of the high interference, multi-access property, and limited resources of small cell base stations (SBSs), an efficient computation offloading scheme is essential. However, there still lack comprehensive studies on this problem in the densely deployed SCNs. In this paper, we study the energy-efficient computation offloading management scheme in the MEC system with SCNs. The aim of this paper is to minimize the energy consumption of all UEs via jointly optimizing computation offloading decision making, spectrum, power, and computation resource allocation. Specially, the UEs need not only to decide whether to offload but also to determine where to offload. First, we present the computation offloading model and formulate this problem as a mix integer non-linear programming problem, which is NP-hard. Taking advantages of genetic algorithm (GA) and particle swarm optimization (PSO), we design a suboptimal algorithm named as hierarchical GA and PSO-based computation algorithm to solve this problem. Finally, the convergence of this algorithm is studied by simulation, and the performance of the proposed algorithm is verified by comparing with the other baseline algorithms.
Recent advances in self-interference cancellation techniques enable in-band full-duplex wireless systems, which transmit and receive simultaneously in the same frequency band with high spectrum ...efficiency. As a typical application of in-band full-duplex wireless, in-band full-duplex relaying (FDR) is a promising technology to integrate the merits of in-band full-duplex wireless and relaying technology. However, several significant research challenges remain to be addressed before its widespread deployment, including small-size full-duplex device design, channel modeling and estimation, cross-layer/joint resource management, interference management, security, etc. In this paper, we provide a brief survey on some of the works that have already been done for in-band FDR, and discuss the related research issues and challenges. We identify several important aspects of in-band FDR: basics, enabling technologies, information-theoretical performance analysis, key design issues and challenges. Finally, we also explore some broader perspectives for in-band FDR.
Ultra dense cloud small cell network (UDCSNet), which combines cloud computing and massive deployment of small cells, is a promising technology for 5G LTE-U mobile communications because it can ...accommodate the anticipated explosive growth of mobile users' data traffic. As a result, fronthauling becomes a challenging problem in 5G LTE-U UDCSNet. In this article, we present an overview of the challenges and requirements of the fronthaul technology in 5G LTE-U UDCSNets. We survey the advantages and challenges for various candidate fronthaul technologies such as optical fiber, millimeter- wave-based unlicensed spectrum, Wi-Fibased unlicensed spectrum, sub-6-GHz-based licensed spectrum, and free-space optical-based unlicensed spectrum.