Resource Optimization of wireless access networks, software defined networks and cloud computing for the Internet of Things

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Next generation Internet, commonly referred to as the Internet of Things (IoT), has the potential to improve our daily lives significantly. The IoT will allow global interconnection of heterogeneous smart objects through mobile-based machine-to-machine (M2M) communications. The list of smart objects includes smartphones, smart cars, homes and cities and IoT is expected to find applications in transportation, healthcare, smart environment (home, office, plant) and social networks. IoT presents many new challenges in the scale of the number of devices to be connected, communications, robustness, security and big data. It is expected that the number of devices to be deployed in IoT to reach trillions. Most of the mobile devices to be connected have limited processing power, storage and battery life. Cloud computing will provide the additional computing power and storage needed by mobile devices. Large amount of raw data will be continuously collected through real-time sensors and stored in clouds for analysis and inference, which will create new knowledge. Wireless communications is expected to play a critical role in IoT as it is to provide access to mobile users, sensor networking etc. The demand for higher data rates and massive number of wireless devices with differing quality of service (QoS) requirements to be connected to the Internet is creating new challenges for next generation (5G) wireless networks. It is envisioned that 5G networks will meet these demands through very dense deployments, moving into millimeter wavelengths spectrum and centralized processing. It is expected that 5G technology will result in hierarchical and heterogeneous network architecture (HetNet). HetNet will have multi-tier cell architecture with cell sizes ranging from macro to small cells. As networks become denser, interference management will become more critical due to multi-cell interference. As a result, centralized control of radio access networks through software-defined-network (SDN) management has been proposed for efficient resource allocation and interference management. A very important goal of this research proposal is development and optimization of network architectures and communication protocols for 5G networks. We will consider optimization of resource allocation, energy efficiency and QoS provisioning in 5G networks that maximizes network utility. We will develop optimization tools for design of the networks as well as heuristic algorithms for online implementation. We will also consider optimization of resource allocation in cloud computing centers under job quality of service (QoS) requirements. The proposed research program will make contributions to 5G wireless networks, SDN and cloud computing centers, which will contribute to the realization of IoT. The proposed research will benefit the telecommunications industry in Canada which is a strategic economic sector.