Multi-Scale Wireless Access Virtualization Schemes for the Sustainable Development of the New Digital Societies and Shared Economies

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It was only 10 years ago when Steve Jobs introduced the Apple iPhone to the world. Few people at the time could predict the impact smartphones, and other connected devices, would have on the way we communicate with each other. But these significant advances in wireless devices, along with future 5G (5th generation) wireless communications standards, converge to thrust the world into the always-on always-connected era that we already live in today. And with the rise of the Internet of Things (IoT) in commercial, industrial, and residential applications, device-to-device (D2D) communications will take off as well. All of these devices already combine to create every single day an astonishing amount of fixed or mobile data worth of over 2.5 quintillion bytes. As the drive for more devices and more data pushes ever forward, more so with the advent of virtual or augmented reality and the tactile Internet, boundaries have to be pushed faraway to enable paradigm-shifting “smart communications” and make this data-driven device-powered world of digital societies and shared economies a reality. 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 (“coms for coms”) to deployment (“coms” 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 a novel context called multi-scale wireless access virtualization (MS-WAV) we apply here at both PHY (physical) and MAC (medium access control) layers. Virtualization is a fundamental paradigm shift already poised to push these strategies to a full-fledged scale of flexibility, manageability and efficiency in cost, spectrum and power. It is, however, envisioned today for the “big or less so big” infrastructure side, i.e., Cloud or Fog RANs (Radio Access Networks). “Call it cooperation between giants or the strong”. We push farther the WAV concept to a new multi-scale level whereby direct collaboration between “small” or "tiny" devices of any type for cooperative consumption of any resources they are willing to share (bandwidth, processing, power, memory, etc.) becomes possible without the middlemen, “the giants or the strong in resources”. “Call it democratization in the shared economy”. By achieving this immediate goal, the long-term objective of this program is to enable the sustainable development of pervasive and smart applications of wireless in the 21st-century digital societies and shared economies.