F EAT UR E

AI and ML in
Telecommunication
Systems:
THE CASE OF INTELLIGENT AND DYNAMIC SPECTRUM
MANAGEMENT IN WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS

Globalisation, and the growing scale of

industrialisation, have led to the formation of
complex nexus environments. Demanding countries,
such as South Africa, approach sustainable growth
in a transdisciplinary manner. The problems affecting
the nexus issues are diverse and practically
challenging to experiment, as the interrelations
between various industrial sectors, or critical
economic actors, have become too complicated with
BY | PROF F. NELWAMONDO
multiple response vectors to consider. PROF F. MEKURIA, CSIR NGEI

Accordingly, South Africa needs to
stay relevant in a complex world of
exponential growth in smart integrated
technologies, while trading off between
economic growth, social development
and environmental sustainability.
Understanding these nexus issues and
how actions in one sector are likely to
impact other areas is critical to ensure
sustainable development. Accordingly,
emerging technologies such as
Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine
Learning (ML) techniques are opening
a plethora of possibilities to improve
the way technological and natural
resources are being optimally utilised.
The definition of artificial intelligence
(AI) varies, however, for this article,
we will adopt that AI is defined as a
collection of Cyber-Physical Systems,
which can perceive or sense their
environment, share-data, analyse
and process the accumulated sensor
data, generate actionable insights and
finally take a set of reasoned actions to
maximise the likelihood of achieving a
particular goal. Artificial Intelligence (AI)
and ML techniques have been applied
in many telecommunications scenarios
which support other technologies such
as self-driving cars and self-healing
network-controllers, amongst many
others.
The emergence of the digital society
requires the use of techniques to build
wireless networks that are optimally
operated, with network resources that
are optimally utilised for the provision
of improved quality of service.
Apart from this, and specifically for
emerging economies, AI-enabled
network automation combined with
green and self-healing networks can
help in extending digital connectivity
to underserved rural communities
by allowing remote network
management. The recent International
Telecommunications Union (ITU) and
the United Nations (UN) organised
multi-stakeholder world forum on

32 | wattnow | July 2020

the subject of ‘Artificial Intelligence
for Good’ (AI4Good): ai4good.org,
identified and gave directions on how
to get a profitable and ethical use of AI
and associated technologies.
There is now a strong belief these
can bring a new wave of beneficial
applications and rejuvenate the concept
of intelligent, green and resource-
effective wireless communications
systems. Exciting opportunities are
seemingly emerging when one realises
that telecommunications systems
generate large amounts of data, every
minute of the day. If these data are
made available and are harnessed
adequately, it would be possible to
generate actionable insights to improve
wireless systems planning, network
operations, efficient and quality of
service (QoS) provisioning of network
services.
The telecommunications industry
has warmed up to AI and associated
technologies, and this is expected
to result in significant breakthroughs
with applications for improved
wireless communication network
operations, radio resource utilisation,
business process and QoS based
end-user services. Wireless industry
leaders recently gathered at the IEEE
world forum on the 5th generation
wireless ICT standards, in Germany.
It was predicted that AI and ML
techniques would achieve significant
breakthroughs in applications for
wireless communications networks,
in the operational, business and QoS
based end-user services3-4.
The predictions were that in the short
term (1 to 3 years) and long-term (4 to
10 years), AI/ML applications would
flourish in all layers of the wireless
network design and operational levels.
The vast quantities of data will fuel
what the existing and future wireless
systems generate.
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 F EAT UR E c ont inues fro m p a g e 3 3
As billions of customers are added
every year to the networked society,
and the demand for high bandwidth
applications increases, wireless
networks will become so complicated
that managing existing network
operations will become crucial for the
survival of mobile network operators.
The need to derive desired ‘intelligent’
outcomes and actionable insights
based on data analytics by applying AI
is expected to untangle the enormous
complexities associated with emerging
wireless systems such as 5G and
beyond. The possibilities related to
AI for reliable, automated and self-
optimising networks, where real-time
and intelligent optimisation of network
resources, green network operation and
control with improved quality of service
provision for any wireless service
is now within reach of all network
operators. Dynamic and intelligent
management of spectrum resources
for wireless communications is already
becoming a big challenge. Essential
34 | wattnow | July 2020
applications of AI and ML algorithms
are expected to be in the multi-variable
resource optimisation problems, such
as in smart cities and wireless digital
connectivity. Picture X shows the
complexity of integrated optimisation
for an application of AI/ML in a city’s
resources and activities optimisation
using AI tools and techniques. The
AI/ML is based on extensive multi-
variable data derived from smart
sensing devices placed in diverse
sectors involving health, transport,
power supply, water resource and ICT
wireless infrastructure management.
As cities and metros become more
densely populated, several sectors
will be equipped with smart sensors
to collect relevant and accurate data,
for the ML algorithms to work on, and
build interrelated systems and models
to optimise the multi-variable resource
utilisation. Smart sensors will play an
essential role in guaranteeing the data
accuracy and integrity, which shall
Picture X: Smart City application of AI/ML.
be crucial to the operation and the
resultant actionable insights of AI/ML
algorithms. Questions such as the ones
below would need to be answered to
get reasonable solutions through the
use of AI tools and ML algorithms:
How do we:
(1) avoid traffic congestion in big
metros with the optimal routing of
traffic throughout the city?
(2) predict power supply demand and
avoid high-cost to consumers?
(3) predict network bandwidth
demand and re-route network
bandwidth resources where it is
most needed, without affecting
the quality of service to other
customers?’
DIGITAL CONNECTIVITY AND
COMPLEXITY AND AI/ML
APPLICATION
As presented in Picture X, digital
connectivity and secure transfer of
information between the different
infrastructure components, ubiquitous
sensors, and datacentres storing the
relevant information for data processing
and analytics, play an essential role.
Due to the flexibility associated with
wireless connectivity, most of these
communications are going to happen
over the wireless interface.
AI and ML are expected to transform
wireless digital connectivity, from the
current semi-automatic networks and
their management systems into a self-
healing, self-learning, intelligent data-
steered and fully automatic resource
optimisation networks. Therefore, the
need to derive desired ‘intelligent’
outcomes from wireless network data
and performing ML-based analytics to
produce actionable insights becomes
a crucial differentiator and the tool to
address the enormous complexities
associated with future wireless
systems. The demand for supporting
different connectivity applications to
private personal customers, industry
applications and provide public societal
Picture Y: A composite picture of future wireless communications network infrastructure.
services has resulted in various
wireless technologies addressing
different sectors as shown in Picture Y.
AI and ML, with reasonable data
integrity and ethical considerations,
can be applied to improve wireless
network operations and management,
network resource optimisation,
business and service provision layers,
in future wireless networks. Wireless
communications industry players
have several pilot RD, and I projects
involving AI and ML for Radio Access
Network Data analytics, autonomous
network orchestration and network
slicing. Real-time data analytics
based on network operations data, to
produce business insight for end-user
applications and QoS improvement
for networked services are now
possible using AI/ML techniques.
The application of the same tools has
been proven to predict, accurately,
network latency, backhaul status,
data-plane traffic flow statistics, usage
and pattern data, amongst others. AI
and new applications of Data Science
have shown the enormous benefit of
deriving insights from these wireless
infrastructure generated data sources.
Finally, one of the essential uses of
AI in telecoms is an improvement in
the reliability and security of wireless
networks. Intelligently identifying
vulnerable nodes in the complex
network infrastructure, as shown in
Picture Y, and providing the necessary
dynamic protection is one of the
essential applications of AI which
mobile operator industry is expected to
deploy in the upcoming 5G and future
wireless networks.
AI IN DYNAMIC SPECTRUM
SHARING AND SENSING
AI applications for dynamic spectrum
sharing (DSS) with re-enforcement
learning methods are expected
to improve the implementation of
dynamic spectrum management in
future wireless networks for all bands
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 F EAT UR E c ont inues fro m p a g e 3 5
of interest. The current activity of
spectrum sharing based on Television
White Spaces (TVWSs) is just the
beginnings of a wave of applications
for AI-enabled spectrum sharing and
sensing. Several spectrum sensing
algorithms such as estimator-
correlator (EC) detector, the semi-
blind energy detector and the blindly
combined energy detection (BCED)
have been developed recently, all
aimed at improving Dynamic Spectrum
Management (DSM) for emerging
network technologies. All of these tools
have their shortcomings, for example,
they depend heavily on the accurate
knowledge of noise power, which is
usually uncertain, and this makes some
of these algorithms unsuitable for the
practical environment. The lack of prior
knowledge would result in performance
degradation. ML techniques have
been adopted to develop cooperative
spectrum sensing (CSS) framework.
Compared with traditional CSS
techniques, an ML framework brings
the following two advantages: (1) it
is robust to the changes in the radio
environment; and (2) it can achieve a
better performance in terms of device
classification accuracy and spectrum
assignment1-2.
Traditional Dynamic Spectrum
Access (DSA) mechanisms require a
centralised control node responsible
for allocating the spectrum resources
to network devices. A central node
would collect the global network
information, such as the position
information of customer-premise
36 | wattnow | July 2020
devices, base station power levels, and
channel state information, amongst
others. Such comprehensive network
information is, however, necessary
to avoid interference, although
it presents significant signalling
overhead on the system. Interference
avoidance in the presence of a large
number of users can result in very
high data-intensive process delaying
network operations. An intelligent DSA
framework with deep reinforcement
learning and re-configurable network
devices is expected to provide
superior performance on sequential
decision-making tasks, enabling more
flexible and smart DSA mechanisms1-2.
Furthermore, the combination of
software-defined radios (SDRs),
artificial intelligence and cognitive
radio technologies5, will open the way
for brilliant network technologies5,
with ubiquitous and instant responses
to reconfigure wireless networks,
cognitive customer devices and on-
demand quality of service provision
anywhere and anytime.
WAY FORWARD
In conclusion, AI is here to stay,
and it will shape and transform the
telecommunication space for good.
It is therefore essential for all of us
to embrace it as it will address the
emerging issues in communications
and networking. The benefits of AI are
already visible in many applications,
including dynamic network resource
access, intelligent QoS control,
wireless caching, network reliability
and cyber-security, which are all crucial
to next-generation networks, such
as 5G and beyond. Deducting from
the discussions above, the future of
telecommunications is intertwined
with Artificial Intelligence, and network
operators and service providers are
better prepared for the new intelligent
paradigm.
REFERENCES
1. N.C. Luong, D.T. Hoang, S.
Gong, D. Niyato, P. Wang, Y.-C.
Liang, D.I. Kim, Applications of
deep reinforcement learning in
communications and networking: a
survey. IEEE Commun. Surv, Tutor.
(2019)
2. O. Naparstek, K. Cohen, Deep
multi-user reinforcement learning
for distributed dynamic spectrum
access. IEEE Trans. Wirel.
Commun. 18(1), 310–323 (2019).
3. Report on Panel Discussion
“Industry Perspective for Artificial
Intelligence applications in
Wireless Communications” IEEE
World Forum on 5G, Oct. 30-Nov2,
2019, Dresden Germany.
4. F. Mekuria, C. Miguel, et.al., “
Deploying Artificial Intelligence in
the Wireless Infrastructure: The
Challenges ahead”, Proceedings
of the IEEE Future Networks
Conference, 30 Oct- Nov. 2, 2019,
Dresden Germany.
5. J.H. Reed, et. Al., “A survey of
Artificial Intelligence for Cognitive
Radios”. IEEE Transactions on
Vehicular Technologies Magazine,
Vol.59. No.4-2018.