Statistical Device Activity Detection for OFDM-based Massive Grant-Free Access

Existing works on grant-free access, proposed to support massive machine-type communication (mMTC) for the Internet of things (IoT), mainly concentrate on narrow band systems under flat fading. However, little is known about massive grant-free access for wideband systems under frequency-selective fading. This paper investigates massive grant-free access in a wideband system under frequency-selective fading. First, we present an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)-based massive grant-free access scheme. Then, we propose two different but equivalent models for the received pilot signal, which are essential for designing various device activity detection and channel estimation methods for OFDM-based massive grant-free access. One directly models the received signal for actual devices, whereas the other can be interpreted as a signal model for virtual devices. Next, we investigate statistical device activity detection under frequency-selective Rayleigh fading based on the two signal models. We first model device activities as unknown deterministic quantities and propose three maximum likelihood (ML) estimation-based device activity detection methods with different detection accuracies and computation times. We also model device activities as random variables with a known joint distribution and propose three maximum a posterior probability (MAP) estimation-based device activity methods, which further enhance the accuracies of the corresponding ML estimation-based methods. Optimization techniques and matrix analysis are applied in designing and analyzing these methods. Finally, numerical results show that the proposed statistical device activity detection methods outperform existing state-of-the-art device activity detection methods under frequency-selective Rayleigh fading.

An Optimization Framework for Federated Edge Learning

The optimal design of federated learning (FL) algorithms for solving general machine learning (ML) problems in practical edge computing systems with quantized message passing remains an open problem. This paper considers an edge computing system where the server and workers have possibly different computing and communication capabilities and employ quantization before transmitting messages. To explore the full potential of FL in such an edge computing system, we first present a general FL algorithm, namely GenQSGD, parameterized by the numbers of global and local iterations, mini-batch size, and step size sequence. Then, we analyze its convergence for an arbitrary step size sequence and specify the convergence results under three commonly adopted step size rules, namely the constant, exponential, and diminishing step size rules. Next, we optimize the algorithm parameters to minimize the energy cost under the time constraint and convergence error constraint, with the focus on the overall implementing process of FL. Specifically, for any given step size sequence under each considered step size rule, we optimize the numbers of global and local iterations and mini-batch size to optimally implement FL for applications with preset step size sequences. We also optimize the step size sequence along with these algorithm parameters to explore the full potential of FL. The resulting optimization problems are challenging non-convex problems with non-differentiable constraint functions. We propose iterative algorithms to obtain KKT points using general inner approximation (GIA) and tricks for solving complementary geometric programming (CGP). Finally, we numerically demonstrate the remarkable gains of GenQSGD with optimized algorithm parameters over existing FL algorithms and reveal the significance of optimally designing general FL algorithms.

Optimization-Based GenQSGD for Federated Edge Learning

Optimal algorithm design for federated learning (FL) remains an open problem. This paper explores the full potential of FL in practical edge computing systems where workers may have different computation and communication capabilities, and quantized intermediate model updates are sent between the server and workers. First, we present a general quantized parallel mini-batch stochastic gradient descent (SGD) algorithm for FL, namely GenQSGD, which is parameterized by the number of global iterations, the numbers of local iterations at all workers, and the mini-batch size. We also analyze its convergence error for any choice of the algorithm parameters. Then, we optimize the algorithm parameters to minimize the energy cost under the time constraint and convergence error constraint. The optimization problem is a challenging non-convex problem with non-differentiable constraint functions. We propose an iterative algorithm to obtain a KKT point using advanced optimization techniques. Numerical results demonstrate the significant gains of GenQSGD over existing FL algorithms and reveal the importance of optimally designing FL algorithms.

Energy-efficient Cooperative Offloading for Edge Computing-enabled Vehicular Networks

Edge computing technology has great potential to improve various computation-intensive applications in vehicular networks by providing sufficient computation resources for vehicles. However, it is still a challenge to fully unleash the potential of edge computing in edge computing-enabled vehicular networks. In this paper, we develop the energy-efficient cooperative offloading scheme for edge computing-enabled vehicular networks, which splits the task into multiple subtasks and offloads them to different roadside units (RSUs) located ahead along the route of the vehicle. We first establish novel cooperative offloading models for the offline and online scenarios in edge computing-enabled vehicular networks. In each offloading scenario, we formulate the total energy minimization with respect to the task splitting ratio, computation resource, and communication resource. In the offline scenario, we equivalently transform the original problem to a convex problem and obtain optimal solutions for multi-vehicle case and single-vehicle case, respectively. Furthermore, we show that the method proposed for the offline scenario can also be applied to solve the optimization problem in the online scenario. Finally, through numerical results, by analyzing the impact of network parameters on the total energy consumption, we verify that our proposed solution consumes lower energy than baseline schemes.

ML and MAP Device Activity Detections for Grant-Free Massive Access in Multi-Cell Networks

Device activity detection is one main challenge in grant-free massive access, which is recently proposed to support massive machine-type communications (mMTC). Existing solutions for device activity detection fail to consider inter-cell interference generated by massive IoT devices or important prior information on device activities and inter-cell interference. In this paper, given different numbers of observations and network parameters, we consider both non-cooperative device activity detection and cooperative device activity detection in a multi-cell network, consisting of many access points (APs) and IoT devices. Under each activity detection mechanism, we consider the joint maximum likelihood (ML) estimation and joint maximum a posterior probability (MAP) estimation of both device activities and interference powers, utilizing tools from probability, stochastic geometry, and optimization. Each estimation problem is a challenging non-convex problem, and a coordinate descent algorithm is proposed to obtain a stationary point. Each proposed joint ML estimation extends the existing one for a single-cell network by considering the estimation of interference powers, together with the estimation of device activities. Each proposed joint MAP estimation further enhances the corresponding joint ML estimation by exploiting prior distributions of device activities and interference powers. The proposed joint ML estimation and joint MAP estimation under cooperative detection outperform the respective ones under non-cooperative detection at the costs of increasing backhaul burden, knowledge of network parameters, and computational complexities.

Sample-based and Feature-based Federated Learning via Mini-batch SSCA

Due to the resource consumption for transmitting massive data and the concern for exposing sensitive data, it is impossible or undesirable to upload clients' local databases to a central server. Thus, federated learning has become a hot research area in enabling the collaborative training of machine learning models among multiple clients that hold sensitive local data. Nevertheless, unconstrained federated optimization has been studied mainly using stochastic gradient descent (SGD), which may converge slowly, and constrained federated optimization, which is more challenging, has not been investigated so far. This paper investigates sample-based and feature-based federated optimization, respectively, and considers both the unconstrained problem and the constrained problem for each of them. We propose federated learning algorithms using stochastic successive convex approximation (SSCA) and mini-batch techniques. We show that the proposed algorithms can preserve data privacy through the model aggregation mechanism, and their security can be enhanced via additional privacy mechanisms. We also show that the proposed algorithms converge to Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) points of the respective federated optimization problems. Besides, we customize the proposed algorithms to application examples and show that all updates have closed-form expressions. Finally, numerical experiments demonstrate the inherent advantages of the proposed algorithms in convergence speeds, communication costs, and model specifications.

Sample-based Federated Learning via Mini-batch SSCA

In this paper, we investigate unconstrained and constrained sample-based federated optimization, respectively. For each problem, we propose a privacy preserving algorithm using stochastic successive convex approximation (SSCA) techniques, and show that it can converge to a Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) point. To the best of our knowledge, SSCA has not been used for solving federated optimization, and federated optimization with nonconvex constraints has not been investigated. Next, we customize the two proposed SSCA-based algorithms to two application examples, and provide closed-form solutions for the respective approximate convex problems at each iteration of SSCA. Finally, numerical experiments demonstrate inherent advantages of the proposed algorithms in terms of convergence speed, communication cost and model specification.

Graph Attention Tracking

Siamese network based trackers formulate the visual tracking task as a similarity matching problem. Almost all popular Siamese trackers realize the similarity learning via convolutional feature cross-correlation between a target branch and a search branch. However, since the size of target feature region needs to be pre-fixed, these cross-correlation base methods suffer from either reserving much adverse background information or missing a great deal of foreground information. Moreover, the global matching between the target and search region also largely neglects the target structure and part-level information. In this paper, to solve the above issues, we propose a simple target-aware Siamese graph attention network for general object tracking. We propose to establish part-to-part correspondence between the target and the search region with a complete bipartite graph, and apply the graph attention mechanism to propagate target information from the template feature to the search feature. Further, instead of using the pre-fixed region cropping for template-feature-area selection, we investigate a target-aware area selection mechanism to fit the size and aspect ratio variations of different objects. Experiments on challenging benchmarks including GOT-10k, UAV123, OTB-100 and LaSOT demonstrate that the proposed SiamGAT outperforms many state-of-the-art trackers and achieves leading performance. Code is available at: https://git.io/SiamGAT

Jointly Sparse Signal Recovery and Support Recovery via Deep Learning with Applications in MIMO-based Grant-Free Random Access

In this paper, we investigate jointly sparse signal recovery and jointly sparse support recovery in Multiple Measurement Vector (MMV) models for complex signals, which arise in many applications in communications and signal processing. Recent key applications include channel estimation and device activity detection in MIMO-based grant-free random access which is proposed to support massive machine-type communications (mMTC) for Internet of Things (IoT). Utilizing techniques in compressive sensing, optimization and deep learning, we propose two model-driven approaches, based on the standard auto-encoder structure for real numbers. One is to jointly design the common measurement matrix and jointly sparse signal recovery method, and the other aims to jointly design the common measurement matrix and jointly sparse support recovery method. The proposed model-driven approaches can effectively utilize features of sparsity patterns in designing common measurement matrices and adjusting model-driven decoders, and can greatly benefit from the underlying state-of-the-art recovery methods with theoretical guarantee. Hence, the obtained common measurement matrices and recovery methods can significantly outperform the underlying advanced recovery methods. We conduct extensive numerical results on channel estimation and device activity detection in MIMO-based grant-free random access. The numerical results show that the proposed approaches provide pilot sequences and channel estimation or device activity detection methods which can achieve higher estimation or detection accuracy with shorter computation time than existing ones. Furthermore, the numerical results explain how such gains are achieved via the proposed approaches.