Enabling Radio Access Strategies for Pervasive and Smart Applications of Wireless in the New Digital Economy

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Wireless communications lie today at the very heart of many key applications that strongly impact most aspects of our daily life. Fundamental paradigm shifts are yet expected due to ongoing developments in wireless. These paradigm shifts shall allow communication infrastructure to self-organize seamlessly for optimized spectrum-, cost- and energy-efficiency. In the new realm of the internet of things (IoT), they shall also enable communication links to take place not only between persons, but also between smart machines (such as home appliances), devices and vehicles (M2M/D2D/V2V), connections due to reach tens of billions by 2020. These paradigm shifts are poised to enable truly smart communications in the future. Parallel developments in wireless due to successful integration with new sensor and radar systems have recently sprang the emergence of new smart monitoring applications in health, environment, safety, security, etc. And cross-fertilization between smart communications and monitoring allow wireless to stand today as a crucial enabler of future applications in smart management of power grids, vehicles, homes, cities, etc. Due to their increasing pervasiveness, these three smart applications of wireless (communications, monitoring and management) are deeply shaping today the 21st-century digital economy. The short-term objective of this research program is to tackle the transformative challenges smart communications will shortly face at the radio access level in its current shift from installation (communications for communications) to deployment (communications to the service of new applications). In order to meet the expected data crunch, we seek to devise novel radio access strategies that enable truly smart communications by rethinking some of the key technical drivers foreseen today within the context of HetNet virtualization at both PHY and MAC layers. Virtualization is a fundamental paradigm shift that is pledged to push these strategies to a full-fledged scale of flexibility, manageability and efficiency in cost, spectrum and power. By achieving this immediate goal, the long-term objective of this program is to enable pervasive and smart applications of wireless in the 21st century digital economy.