Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The long-term vision of wireless networks (6G) warrants a novel approach to network design for Tactile Internet, connected vehicles and Industrial Internet of Things, which poses unique requirements to support: 1) multiple performance objectives of high data rate and ultrareliable low latency (URLLC) communication at the same time (e.g. for immersive virtual reality (IVR)), and 2) heterogeneous traffic including haptic, voice and video. The millimeter wave (mmWave) radio is adopted in both cellular and WLAN networks for high data rate (up to Gbps) communication. It employs directional beamforming for spatial diversity that is also vital for low latency. However, achieving URLLC is challenging because it needs alignment of all the functions along the communication path to work in cohort to provide optimal delay control. The focus of this proposal is on the design of network functions for URLLC at two stages of communication path: 1) medium access control for channel access, and 2) caching for content access. Both are critical for URLLC because they can cause significant delays through excessive channel contention and long content download path. In industries, wireless positioning and sensor network connects sensors, controllers, and actuators for industrial automation tasks such as object tracking, inventory control, fault diagnosis, emergency response, video monitoring, and robotic control. This requires aperiodic transmission of sensing data; high rate video streaming; and ultrareliable low latency transmission of localization, emergency, haptic and fault diagnostic data. In industrial plants signal propagation experiences deep fading. We plan to develop an adaptive medium access control scheme. It incorporates clustering and scheduling that adapt to node mobility, aperiodic traffic surge, and variable sleep time. The directional beamforming antenna for mmWave communication mitigates transient fading, but it impacts the selection of readers for localization and cluster head because of Deafness that are addressed in this research. Information Centric Network (ICN) is a new paradigm of network design that allows distribution of content inside the network through ubiquitous in-network caching and makes it accessible along the shortest path through content routing. The ICN integrates caching in the network by enabling the routers to not only forward the content but also cache it to reduce future request latency. The support for mobility (location independent content request) and multicast (forwarding content to multiple downstream routers through request aggregation) is intrinsic to ICN. The risk of ubiquitous in-network caching in ICN is its susceptibility to security threats. Security threats are more severe and complex in ICN because their targets are both networking (routing) and computing (caching) functions and resources. Another goal of this proposal is to develop a secure hierarchical ICN caching for low latency content access.