Machine Learning and Cognitive Technology for Intelligent Wireless Networks

The ability to dynamically and efficiently allocate resources to meet the need of growing diversity in services and user behavior marks the future of wireless networks, giving rise to intelligent processing, which aims at enabling the system to perceive and assess the available resources, to autonomously learn to adapt to the perceived wireless environment, and to reconfigure its operating mode to maximize the utility of the available resources. The perception capability and reconfigurability are the essential features of cognitive technology while modern machine learning techniques project effectiveness in system adaptation. In this paper, we discuss the development of the cognitive technology and machine learning techniques and emphasize their roles in improving both spectrum and energy efficiency of the future wireless networks. We describe in detail the state-of-the-art of cognitive technology, covering spectrum sensing and access approaches that may enhance spectrum utilization and curtail energy consumption. We discuss powerful machine learning algorithms that enable spectrum- and energy-efficient communications in dynamic wireless environments. We also present practical applications of these techniques to the existing and future wireless communication systems, such as heterogeneous networks and device-to-device communications, and identify some research opportunities and challenges in cognitive technology and machine learning as applied to future wireless networks.