The latest developments and recent progress on the key technologies enabling next-generation 6G mobile networks
Toward 6G: A New Era of Convergence offers an up-to-date guide to the emerging 6G vision by describing new human-centric services made possible by combinations of mobile robots, avatars, and smartphones, which will be increasingly replaced with wearable displays and haptic interfaces that provide immersive extended reality (XR) experiences. The authors - noted experts on the topic - include a review of their work and information on the recent progress on the Tactile Internet and multi-sensory haptic communications. The book highlights decentralized edge computing in particular via Ethereum blockchain technologies, most notably the so-called decentralized autonomous organization (DAO) for crowdsourcing of human skills to solve problems that machines (such as autonomous artificial intelligence agents and robots) alone cannot solve well.
The book also contains a review of the most recent and ongoing work on XR (including virtual/augmented/mixed reality). Specifically, the book describes the implications of the transition from the current gadgets-based Internet to a future Internet that is evolving from bearables (such as smartphones), moves towards wearables (for example Amazon's recently launched voice-controlled Echo Loop ring, glasses, and earbuds), and then finally progresses to nearables with embedded computing technologies and intelligent provisioning mechanisms for the delivery of human-intended services, including sixth-sense perceptions, in a 6G post-smartphone era. This important text:
- Offers a review of the 6G network architectures and key enabling technologies
- Explains why 6G should not be a mere exploration of more spectrum at high-frequency bands, but rather a convergence of upcoming technological trends
- Describes the Tactile Internet's human-in-the-loop centric design principles and haptic communications models
- Includes analytical frameworks to estimate the fluid orchestration of human + machine co-activities across unified communication network infrastructures
- Explores the performance gains of cooperative computation offloading with communications and computation limitations in both fronthaul and backhaul
Written for students, network researchers, professionals, engineers, and practitioners, Toward 6G: A New Era of Convergence explores the most recent advances on the key technologies enabling next-generation 6G mobile networks, with an emphasis on their seamless convergence.
Table of Contents
Author Biographies xi
Foreword xiii
Preface xv
Acknowledgments xvii
Acronyms xix
1 The 6G Vision 1
1.1 Introduction 1
1.2 Evolution of Mobile Networks and Internet 3
1.3 6G Network Architectures and Key Enabling Technologies 6
1.3.1 Four-Tier Networks: Space-Air-Ground-Underwater 6
1.3.2 Key Enabling Technologies 7
1.3.2.1 Millimeter-Wave and Terahertz Communications 7
1.3.2.2 Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces 8
1.3.2.3 From Network Softwarization to Network Intelligentization 9
1.4 Toward 6G: A New Era of Convergence 11
1.5 Scope and Outline of Book 13
1.5.1 Scope 13
1.5.2 Outline 14
2 Immersive Tactile Internet Experiences via Edge Intelligence 19
2.1 Introduction 19
2.2 The Tactile Internet: Automation or Augmentation of the Human? 26
2.3 Haptic Traffic Characterization 32
2.3.1 Teleoperation Experiments 33
2.3.1.1 6-DoF Teleoperation without Deadband Coding 33
2.3.1.2 1-DoF Teleoperation with Deadband Coding 33
2.3.1.3 Packetization 33
2.3.2 Packet Interarrival Times 34
2.3.3 Sample Autocorrelation 39
2.4 FiWi Access Networks: Revisited for Clouds and Cloudlets 41
2.4.1 FiWi: EPON and WLAN 42
2.4.2 C-RAN: Cloud vs. Cloudlet 45
2.4.3 Low-Latency FiWi Enhanced LTE-A HetNets 45
2.5 Delay Analysis 48
2.5.1 Assumptions 48
2.5.2 Local Teleoperation 48
2.5.3 Nonlocal Teleoperation 53
2.6 Edge Sample Forecast 54
2.7 Results 58
2.8 Conclusions 63
3 Context- and Self-Awareness for Human-Agent-Robot Task Coordination 65
3.1 Introduction 65
3.2 System Model 67
3.2.1 Network Architecture 67
3.2.2 Energy and Motion Models of Mobile Robots 69
3.3 Context-Aware Multirobot Task Coordination 71
3.3.1 Illustrative Case Study 71
3.3.2 Problem Formulation 72
3.3.3 The Proposed Algorithm 76
3.4 Self-Aware Optimal Motion Planning 77
3.5 Delay and Reliability Analysis 81
3.5.1 Delay Analysis 81
3.5.1.1 Transmission Delay from MU to OLT 83
3.5.1.2 Transmission Delay from OLT to MR 84
3.5.1.3 End-to-End Delay from MR to MU 84
3.5.2 Reliability Analysis 84
3.6 Results 86
3.7 Conclusion 93
4 Delay-Constrained Teleoperation Task Scheduling and Assignment 95
4.1 Introduction 95
4.2 System Model and Network Architecture 97
4.3 Problem Statement 99
4.3.1 Problem Formulation 99
4.3.2 Model Scalability 102
4.4 Algorithmic Solution 103
4.4.1 Illustrative Case Study 103
4.4.2 Proposed Task Coordination Algorithm 104
4.4.3 Complexity Analysis 106
4.5 Delay Analysis 106
4.5.1 Local Teleoperation 108
4.5.2 Nonlocal Teleoperation 109
4.6 Results 109
4.7 Discussion 118
4.8 Conclusion 118
5 Cooperative Computation Offloading in FiWi-Enhanced Mobile Networks 121
5.1 Introduction 121
5.2 System Model 124
5.3 Energy-Delay Analysis of the Proposed Cooperative Offloading 126
5.3.1 Average Response Time 127
5.3.1.1 Delay Analysis of WiFi Users 130
5.3.1.2 Delay Analysis of 4G LTE-A Users 130
5.3.1.3 Delay Analysis of Backhaul EPON 131
5.3.2 Average Energy Consumption per Task 132
5.4 Energy-Delay Trade-off via Self-Organization 134
5.5 Results 137
5.6 Conclusions 145
6 Decentralization via Blockchain 147
6.1 Introduction 147
6.2 Blockchain Technologies 150
6.2.1 Ethereum vs. Bitcoin Blockchains 150
6.2.2 Ethereum: The DAO 154
6.3 Blockchain IoT and Edge Computing 155
6.3.1 Blockchain IoT (BIoT): Recent Progress and Related Work 155
6.3.2 Blockchain Enabled Edge Computing 157
6.4 Decentralizing the Tactile Internet 158
6.4.1 AI-enhanced MEC 159
6.4.2 Crowdsourcing 160
6.5 Nudging: From Judge Contract to Nudge Contract 162
6.5.1 Cognitive Assistance: From AI to Intelligence Amplification (IA) 162
6.5.2 HITL Hybrid-Augmented Intelligence 162
6.5.3 Decentralized Self-Organizing Cooperative (DSOC) 163
6.5.4 Nudge Contract: Nudging via Smart Contract 163
6.6 Conclusions 165
7 XR in the 6G Post-Smartphone Era 167
7.1 Introduction 167
7.2 6G Vision: Putting (Internet of No) Things in Perspective 169
7.3 Extended Reality (XR): Unleashing Its Full Potential 170
7.3.1 The Reality-Virtuality Continuum 170
7.3.2 The Multiverse: An Architecture of Advanced XR Experiences 171
7.4 Internet of No Things: Invisible-to-Visible (I2V) Technologies 173
7.4.1 Extrasensory Perception Network (ESPN) 175
7.4.2 Nonlocal Awareness of Space and Time: Mimicking the Quantum Realm 176
7.4.2.1 Precognition 178
7.4.2.2 Eternalism 178
7.5 Results 180
7.6 Conclusions 181
Appendix A Proof of Lemmas 183
A.1 Proof of Lemma 3.1 183
A.2 Proof of Lemma 3.2 184
A.3 Proof of Lemma 3.3 185
A.4 Proof of Lemma 5.1 186
Bibliography 191
Index 203
