Non-convex Optimization for Resource Allocation in Wireless Device-to-Device Communications

The disputation will be held digitally, because of the Corona covid-19-situation. Spectators may follow the disputation digitally – link is available below.

Mohamed Gafar Ahmed Elnourani of the Faculty of Engineering Science at the University of Agder has submitted his thesis entitled “Non-convex Optimization for Resource Allocation in Wireless Device-to-Device Communications “ and will defend the thesis for the PhD-degree Friday 9 October 2020.

He has followed the PhD Programme at the Faculty of Engineering and Science with Specialization in ICT at the University of Agder.

Summary of the Thesis by Mohamed Elnourani:

Non-convex Optimization for Resource Allocation in Wireless Device-to-Device Communications 

Device-to-Device (D2D) communication is considered one of the key frameworks to provide suitable solutions for the exponentially increasing data traffic in last generation wireless networks.

Moreover, within this context, it enables various applications such as Machine-to-Machine (M2M) and Internet of Things (IoT).

In D2D communications, mobile terminals are given temporary permissions to communicate directly among themselves in a specified cellular communication channel that in some cases are used at the same time by other cellular users. This case is called underlay D2D and is more challenging to use because it requires an advance resource allocation mechanism that assign resources to each D2D pair while managing the interference between the D2D pairs and the classical cellular users.

In this PhD Thesis, we focus on the resource allocation for underlay D2D communications in several communication environments with different device capabilities and applications, which often results in non-convex optimization problems that are computationally demanding and require the design of novel algorithms.

For each application scenario, we propose several algorithms that are computationally efficient and are proven to converge in a finite number of iterations.

We provide convergence guarantees for our algorithms and we also evaluate them through extensive numerical experiments, showing a favorable performance, as compared to the existing state-of-the-art alternatives.

Disputation facts:

The trial lecture and the public defence will take place online, via the Zoom conferencing app (link below)

Associate Professor Morgan Konnestad, Department of Information and Communication Technology, Faculty of Engineering Science at the University of Agder, will chair the disputation.

The trial lecture at 10:15 hours

Public defence at 12:15 hours

Given topic for trial lecture: “Machine Learning for Resource Allocation in Wireless Networks”

Thesis Title: “Non-convex Optimization for Resource Allocation in Wireless Device-to-Device Communications”

Search for the thesis in AURA - Agder University Research Archive, a digital archive of scientific papers, theses and dissertations from the academic staff and students at the University of Agder.

The Thesis is available here:

https://uia.brage.unit.no/uia-xmlui/handle/11250/2683655

PhD Thesis Godfrey Mayende final_print

The Candidate: Mohamed Gafar Ahmed Elnourani (1983, Jeddah, Saudi Arabia) Bachelor of Science (Honors) First Class in Electrical Engineering, with major in Telecommunication Engineering from University of Khartoum, Sudan. (2005) M.Sc. Degree in Electrical Engineering with emphasis on Radio communications from Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH), Sweden. (2008), M.Sc. Degree in Electrical Engineering with emphasis on Signal processing from Blekinge Institute of Technology (BTH), Sweden (2009). Present position as a PhD Research fellow at WISENET Center, Department of ICT, University of Agder.

Opponents:

First opponent: Professor Carlo Fischione, KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Sweden

Second opponent: Professor Kimmo Kansanen, NTNU - Norwegian University of Science and Technology

Associate Professor Lei Jiao, Department of Information and Communication Technology, University of Agder, is appointed as the administrator for the assessment commitee.

Supervisors were Professor Baltasar Beferull-Lozano, Department of Information and Communication Technology, UiA (main supervisor) and Associate Professor Daniel Romero, Department of Information and Communication Technology, UiA  (co-supervisor)

What to do as an audience member:

The disputation is open to the public, but to follow the trial lecture and the public defence, which is transmitted via the Zoom conferencing app, you have to register as an audience member.

We ask audience members to join the virtual trial lecture at 10:05 at the earliest and the public defense at 12:05 at the earliest. After these times, you can leave and rejoin the meeting at any time. Further, we ask audience members to turn off their microphone and camera and keep them turned off throughout the event. You do this at the bottom left of the image when in Zoom. We recommend you use ‘Speaker view’. You select that at the top right corner of the video window when in Zoom.

Opponent ex auditorio:

The chair invites members of the public to pose questions ex auditorio in the introduction to the public defense, with deadlines. Questions can be submitted to the chair, Associate Professor Morgan Konnestad at e-mail morgan.konnestad@uia.no