Grant: Canada Research Chairs

This proposal is on technologies that will enable next generation (5G) wireless cellular networks; these networks will facilitate the provision of ubiquitous and affordable ultra-high speed wireless connectivity. 5G networks will not be limited to supporting only cellular mobile phones; rather such advanced networks will support a plethora of devices with different capabilities in a truly pervasive wireless environment facilitating human-to-human, human-to-machine, and machine-to-machine communications. This connectivity will enable various services such as e-health, e-government, e-learning, and e-business, which are expected to result in an improved quality of life and a better functioning society. As such, broadband wireless connectivity will become an inseparable part of our lives, and in a not too distant future, ubiquitous (anytime, anywhere) and affordable broadband (very high speed) wireless connectivity will be one of the most important measures in determining the extent of development in societies. The combination of a number of advanced technologies will collectively form the backbone of the 5G networks. We consider a highly complex radio access network architecture augmented with such network elements as wireless relays of various kinds, distributed antenna ports, and macro-, micro- and femto-Base Stations. Advanced radio resource management strategies and algorithms will play a crucial role in making these network elements (many of which may be self-organizing) work coherently.The proposed research will encompass the physical, medium access control, and networking layers of the protocol stack with a cross-layer design approach. The focus will be on the coherent integration of sophisticated radio resource management techniques (often autonomous) with certain advanced physical layer operations in a distributed and heterogeneous radio access network.