6G Mitola Radio: Cognitive Brain That Has Collective Intelligence

在5G在全球范围内推出的同时，关于6G的讨论已经形成。一种一致的观点是，6G移动无线电应该得到巨大智能的支持，这种智能使每个无线电能够做出明智的决定，随着时间的推移优化其体验质量，并以建设性的方式影响网络。此外，6G移动无线电将不仅仅是通信设备，还将在适当的时候提供计算、安全、能源服务等。“智能”无线电并不是一个新概念。事实上，早在1998年，米托拉就正式提出了这一概念，并创造了认知无线电(许多人也称米托拉无线电)。这个概念指的是一种未来的移动通信设备，它超越了任何硬件的灵活性，并被赋予了根据环境及其需求随时随地访问频谱的智能。这个概念是笼统的，因为在今天的情况下，“需要”一词可以包括超越通信的能力，如计算、安全等。然而，经过20年的努力，进展有限。在动态频谱共享方面，5G拥有LAA、LWA等共享频谱技术，但智能仍停留在非常基本的先听后谈(LBT)水平。真正的Mitola电台的僵局似乎是需要根据非常有限的当地信息(当地观察和行动)做出决定，这些决定不仅应该有利于自己，而且应该有利于整个网络(全球影响力)，而不需要这种或那种形式的合作带来的开销。换句话说，关键是集体情报(相对于个人情报)，这种情报使每个无线电能够与其他共存的无线电集体评估和优化其行动和政策，而不是直接与它们交谈。如果理想的Mitola无线电在6G中成功实现，将有几个步骤的变化。首先，频谱利用率将始终处于最高水平，可用的频谱资源丰富，资源分配实际上是以自组织的方式完成的，没有任何协调开销。因此，管理资源的延迟将显著减少。隐藏的终端问题也将被消除，因为Mitola无线电应该拥有通过与无线电环境交互来识别它们的情报，并优化其行动以避免它们。此外，米托拉无线电不仅可以有效地共享频谱，还可以作为服务提供商利用其能量和计算资源来协助网络。在没有协调或合作的情况下，集体情报要求每个无线电单独建立网络的全球情报。为了实现这一点，人工智能(AI)可能是一个方便的想法，但一个无线电(即学习代理)的最佳动作依赖于另一个无线电(另一个学习代理)的动作的事实困扰着最先进的AI算法，使它们非常无效。与整个文献不同，本项目的新奇之处在于开发了一种以博弈论的视角来丰富深度强化学习的智能收集机制。这种整合将使Mitola Radio具备集体智能的大脑力量(从本地行动到全球影响力)，并产生一种整体方法，以优化Mitola Radio启用的多功能无线通信和服务网络的参数和基本功能。该项目团队包括BT和东芝，这两家公司都积极参与5G的开发，并热衷于领导6G技术的研究。他们将在确保项目成果具有重大相关性方面发挥重要作用，他们的专业知识将对该项目试验台示范者的发展至关重要。他们还将托管PDRA，利用他们的设施对拟议的算法进行测试。

While 5G is being launched worldwide, discussion for 6G is already taking shape. One unanimous view is that 6G mobile radios should be empowered by great intelligence, the kind of intelligence that allows each radio to make wise decisions that optimise its quality-of-experience over time and impact the network in a constructive way. In addition, 6G mobile radios will be more than just communication devices, providing also computation, security, energy services and etc. when appropriate. 'Intelligent' radio is not a new concept. In fact, back in 1998, Mitola formalised this concept and coined it cognitive radio, (also known as Mitola radio by many). This concept refers to a futuristic mobile communication device that goes beyond the possession of any hardware flexibility and is gifted the intelligence to access the spectrum anytime anywhere according to the environment and its need. The notion is general in that the term 'need' can include beyond-communication capability, such as computing, security and etc. in today's scenarios.After 20 years of effort, however, progress has been limited. For dynamic spectrum sharing, 5G has shared spectrum technologies such as LAA, LWA, etc, but the intelligence remains at a very basic listen-before-talk (LBT) level. The deadlock for a genuine Mitola radio appears to be the need to make decisions based on very limited local information (local observations and actions) that should not only benefit itself but the entire network as a whole (global influence), without the overhead of one form of cooperation or another. In other words, the key is collective intelligence (as opposed to individual intelligence), one that enables each radio to evaluate and optimise its action and policy collectively with other coexisting radios without talking to them directly.There will be several step changes if the ideal Mitola radio is successfully realised in 6G. First, spectrum utilisation will always be at the maximum with abundant spectrum resources available, and resource allocation is literally done in a self-organising fashion without any overhead for coordination. Latency for managing the resources will be significantly reduced as a result. Hidden terminal problem will also be eliminated because Mitola radio should possess the intelligence to identify them through interacting with the radio environment and optimise its action to avoid them. Furthermore, it will also be possible for Mitola radios to share not only the spectrum efficiently but also assist the network as service providers using their energy and computing resources.Without coordination or cooperation, collective intelligence demands each radio establishing global intelligence of the network by itself. To achieve this, artificial intelligence (AI) may come as a convenient idea but the fact that the best action of one radio (i.e., a learning agent) is dependent on the action of another radio (another learning agent) troubles the state-of-the-art AI algorithms, making them highly ineffective. Different from the entire literature, this project's novelty is to develop an intelligence gathering mechanism that takes the game-theoretic perspective to enrich deep reinforcement learning. Such integration will equip Mitola radio the brain power of collective intelligence (from local action to global influence), and result in a holistic approach to optimise the parameters and essential functionalities for Mitola radio enabled multi-function wireless communications and services networks.The project team includes BT and Toshiba, both of which have been active in the development of 5G and are keen to lead the research of 6G technologies. They will play an instrumental role in ensuring that the project outcomes are of great relevance, and their expertise will be crucial in the development of the testbed demonstrators of this project. They will also host the PDRAs to carry out tests of the proposed algorithms using their facilities.