The vast majority of today's wireless communication systems operate in the microwave spectrum below 3 GHz, which is experiencing severe shortage and has become a crowded resource. To meet the 1000x growth challenge in mobile broadband traffic, the millimeter wave (mmWave) band, operating at frequencies between 20 and 300 GHz, has been identified for next-generation (5G) cellular systems. While the use of mmWave band addresses the pressing needs of more wireless spectrum, it brings a new set of unique technical challenges such as severe path loss and undesired coverage holes. To this end, Device-to-Device (D2D) networks are proposed to employ short-range wireless links to establish opportunistic connections between mobile users. In this project, we will explore a diversity of application-oriented problems in D2D, culminating in the formulation of both new fundamental theories and advanced technologies that contribute to the development of next-generation mobile communication systems. This project will effectively stimulate multi-disciplinary collaboration across a broad spectrum of fields, including anthropology, communications, computer science, economics, public health, demography, and sociology. It will also effectively enrich courses by implementation and experimental activities, providing students with hands-on experience.

The project includes two research thrusts to design, implement, evaluate, and prototype new protocols and algorithms, in support of efficient data gathering and dissemination in D2D. First, a class of applications involve large-scale data gathering from mobile devices. Although crowdsourcing has been discussed in recent years, the marriage of crowdsourcing and D2D creates new, interesting research problems, due to the unique non-deterministic network paradigm. We investigate several dimensions in support of D2D-based crowdsourcing, including a competition-based participant recruitment scheme for delay-sensitive applications and an effective quest algorithm to deliver crowdsourcing requests. Second, efficient data dissemination is indispensable in many D2D applications. In contrast to the prior work that focuses on classical multicasting from a source to a given set of receivers, we propose to investigate a unique and interesting problem where the receivers are not explicitly known. In such settings, a natural approach is to distribute data at some depositories, that further deliver the content to interested data consumers upon requests. Under this framework, we devise algorithms to choose optimal depositories for maximizing the total profit and develop new incentive schemes to enable efficient dissemination.

• Hongyi Wu, Old Dominion University

• Elman Bashar
• Yanyan Han
• Yang Liu
• Rui Ning
• Ting Ning
• Zhipeng Yang

• Yanyan Han, Tie Luo, Deshi Li, and Hongyi Wu, "Competition-Based Participant Recruitment for Delay-Sensitive Crowdsourcing Applications in D2D Networks", in IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, Vol, 15, No. 12, pp. 2987-2999, 2016.
• Yanyan Han, Zhipeng Yang, Deshi Li, and Hongyi Wu, "A New Data Transmission Strategy in Mobile D2D Networks — Deterministic, Greedy, or Planned Opportunistic Routing?", in IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, Vol, 66, No. 1, pp. 594-609, 2017.
• Ting Ning, Yang Liu, Zhipeng Yang, and Hongyi Wu, "Incentive Mechanisms for Data Dissemination in Autonomous Mobile Social Networks", in IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, Vol. 16, No. 11, pp. 3084-3099, 2017.
• Yanyan Han and Hongyi Wu, "Minimum-Cost Crowdsourcing with Coverage Guarantee in Mobile Opportunistic D2D Networks", in IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, Vol, 16, No. 10, pp. 2806-2818, 2017.
• Yanyan Han and Hongyi Wu, "Network Resource Constrained Traffic Allocation for Delay Sensitive Mobile Crowdsourcing", in IEEE Transactions on Communications, Vol, 66, No. 8, pp. 3471-3484, 2018.
• Elman Bashar, Yang Liu, BaiJun Wu, and Hongyi Wu, "Delay-Constrained Profit Maximization for Data Deposition in Mobile Opportunistic Device-to-Device Networks", in IEEE International Symposium on a World of Wireless, Mobile and Multimedia Networks (WOWMOM), Chania, Greece, June 12-15, 2018.
• P. Paul, H. Wu, C. Xin, and M. Song, "Beamforming Oriented Topology Control for mmWave Networks", in IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, in-press, 2019.
• T. Liu, B. Wu, W. Xu, X. Cao, J. Peng, and H. Wu, "Learning an Effective Charging Scheme for Mobile Devices", in Proceedings of IEEE International Parallel & Distributed Processing Symposium (IPDPS), 2020.

This project stimulates multi-disciplinary collaboration and enriches courses (including ECE 416/516 and ECE 419/519) by implementation and experimental activities, providing students with hands-on experience. Several graduate students (at PhD level) have been involved in this project. They have produced several research papers published in high profiled journals. Three of them have graduated and joined industrial research lab and universities as research scientist and assistant professors.