Year: 2024
Type: article
Abstract: In narrowband Internet of Things, the cell can be divided into up to three coverage enhancement (CE) levels, each associated with a narrowband physical random access channel (NPRACH) that has a CE level-specific configuration. Providing resources to NPRACHs increases the success rate of the random access procedure but detracts resources from the uplink carrier for other transmissions. To effectively address this tradeoff we propose to adjust the NPRACH parameters along with the power thresholds that determine the CE levels, which allows to control at the same time the traffic distribution between CE levels and the resources allocated to each CE level. Since the traffic is dynamic and random, reinforcement learning (RL) is a suitable approach for finding an optimal control policy, but its inherent sample inefficiency is a drawback for online learning in an operational network. To overcome this issue, we propose a new model-based RL algorithm that achieves high efficiency even in the early stages of learning.
Source: IEEE Internet of Things Journal
Authors: Juan J. Alcaraz, Juan-Carlos Sanchez-Aarnoutse, Alejandro-Santos Martinez-Sala, Francisco-Javier Gonzalez-Castaño
Institutions: Universidad Politécnica de Cartagena, Universidade de Vigo
Language: English
Topic: IoT Networks and Protocols
Subfield: Electrical and Electronic Engineering
Field: Engineering
Domain: Physical Sciences
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W4404627945