Spectrum Sharing for Massive Internet-of-Things Communications

Speaker: Ghaith Hattab
Affiliation: UCLA Ph.D. Candidate

Abstract:  The emergence of the massive Internet-of-things (IoT) market, i.e., applications with large-scale deployment of Internet-enabled devices, is transforming many sectors including cities, retail, logistics, and agriculture. For example, initiatives for smarter cities have pushed integrating IoT devices with street lights to reduce energy consumption, with traffic signals and parking meters to improve transportation, and with bikes and e-scooters for fleet management. Such trend to connect more IoT devices over wide areas is set to continue, bringing many connectivity challenges due to the unique traffic characteristics of massive IoT and the density of IoT devices.

In this talk, we present spectrum sharing solutions tailored for massive IoT. In the first part of the talk, we discuss how massive IoT connectivity can be established over the unlicensed bands in the presence of other networks with more powerful end-devices. In particular, we propose a protocol based on ultra-narrowband communications, where IoT devices use random access. We show that the protocol enables a single base station (BS) to support thousands of devices, yet it is only suitable for low-rate applications. For applications with higher rates, coordinated access over wider bands is necessary. To this end, we propose a distributed wideband sensing architecture that achieves a fair coexistence with incumbents by identifying resources at a fine spectral resolution and aggressively reusing them over space. In the second part of the talk, we discuss how cellular networks can support massive IoT over licensed bands, leveraging drones as IoT data aggregators. We present a shared spectrum access protocol that maximizes the energy-efficiency of IoT devices while still protecting existing cellular users from interference. The protocol is shown to outperform current cellular IoT solutions such as access class barring and resource splitting.

Biography:  Ghaith Hattab is pursuing a PhD degree in Electrical and Computer Engineering Department at UCLA. He received his M.Sc degree from Queen’s University, Kingston ON, Canada, and his B.Sc degree from American University of Sharjah (AUS), Sharjah, United Arab Emirates (UAE), all in Electrical Engineering. His research interests lie in the areas of wireless communications and networking, with emphasis on spectrum sharing and coexistence of wireless systems. He has held research internships at Nokia Bell Labs, IL, USA, and Qualcomm Research, CA, USA.

For more information, contact Prof. Danijela Cabric (danijela@ee.ucla.edu)

Date/Time:
Date(s) - Feb 26, 2019
2:00 pm - 4:00 pm

Location:
E-IV Tesla Room #53-125
420 Westwood Plaza - 5th Flr., Los Angeles CA 90095