Telecommun Syst
DOI 10.1007/s11235-017-0350-z
Neighbors’ interference situation-aware power control scheme
for dense 5G mobile communication system
Zeeshan Kaleem1 · Ayaz Ahmad1 · Mubashir Husain Rehmani1
© Springer Science+Business Media, LLC 2017
Abstract The next generation mobile communication (5G)
systems is targeting very high data rate by deploying more
number of small cells, but this deployment results in high
cross-tier interference because of using the same frequency
band. To solve this challenge, an efficient power control
scheme is desired specially for the case of uplink scenario.
Thus, to solve this challenge, we propose the neighbors’ inter-
ference situation-aware uplink power control (IA-ULPC)
scheme to reduce the cross-tier interference. In this scheme,
we consider the interference situation of the neighbor cells
while controlling the power of the users. Moreover, we also
derive the target signal-to-interference and noise-ratio (P0 )
equation to dynamically adjust it based on the neighbors’
base station interference situation. We compare the per-
formance of the proposed IA-ULPC with the conventional
fractional power control scheme (C-FPC). The extensive
system-level simulations are carried out to prove the valid-
ity of the proposed IA-ULPC scheme which almost doubles
the user average throughput and also decreases the interfer-
ence around 20% in dense two-tier heterogeneous network
environment as compared to C-FPC.
Keywords Uplink power control · 5G systems · HetNet ·
Uplink interference reduction
B Ayaz Ahmad
ayaz.uet@gmail.com
Zeeshan Kaleem
zeeshankaleem@gmail.com
1 Department of Electrical Engineering, COMSATS Institute of
Information Technology, Wah Campus, Wah Cantt, Pakistan
1 Introduction
The next generation mobile communication systems (5G)
are targeting 1000× increase in data rate [5]. To achieve
that target number of schemes are proposed in the literature,
such as utilization of higher frequency bands, more num-
ber of antennas, and deployment of low power small cells.
The more effective way among the above mentioned tech-
niques is the deployment of another tier of low-power small
cells, specifically indoor femtocells (FeNB), by reusing the
same frequency band. This deployment environment is also
named as the heterogeneous network (HetNet) environment.
The femtocells are deployed in areas where there is problem
in coverage or people demands high data rate. Thus, there
are more number of femtocells as compared with macrocells
in the deployed region. This makes the cellular environ-
ment more complex and difficult to manage because there is
high co-channel interference. Nevertheless, different types of
co-channel interference arises by using the same frequency
bands between macro cells (eNB) and femtocells. The major
interference scenario of interest in this paper is the uplink
(UL) interference from femto user equipment (FUE) and
macro user equipment (MUE) to the uplink traffic of eNB and
FeNB, respectively as shown by dotted red signal in the Fig. 1.
There is possibility of seven uplink interference scenar-
ios in a HetNet, as seen in Fig. 1. The uplink interferences
at eNB are numbered as 1–3 are caused by the MUE/FUE
in macrocell area. Similary, uplink interference at the FeNB
caused by the MUE/FUE in the same or neighboring macro-
cell coverage are labeled as 4–7.
2 Related work and contributions
In 3rd generation partnership project (3GPP) uplink, the
data is transmitted by the physical uplink shared channel
123

Fig. 1 System model and uplink interference scenarios under two-tier HetNet environment
(PUSCH) whose transmission power can be calculated as
[1]:
PPUSCH = min{Pmax , (10 log10 (MPUSCH ) + P0_PUSCH + α P L}
(1)
where α is the cell-specific pathloss compensation factor
that lies within the range of [0, 1], P L is the downlink
pathloss estimate of the cell, MPUSCH are the numbers of
allocated resource blocks to each UE, Pmax is the UE
maximum allowed allocated power, and P0_PUSCH is the
parameter to control SINR target on PUSCH. It is broad-
casted by the higher layer through the system information
block 2 (SIB2).
P0_PUSCH can be expressed as in cell-specific and user-
specific parameters: P0_PUSCH = P0_cell + P0_U E , where
P0_cell has the range of [−126, 24] dBm and P0_U E has the
range of [−8,7] dBm as specified in [1]. Moreover, the uplink
power control is divided into two main parts, i.e., open-loop
power control and closed-loop power control [1]. In open
loop power control, there is no feedback from the base sta-
tion to compensate the power fluctuation due to channel and
123
Z. Kaleem et al.
will be calculated based on P L only as P = P0_PUSCH + P L.
The 3GPP further enhanced the open-loop power control by
introducing the pathloss compensation factor α, and hence
called as fractional power control (FPC). This factor gives
more benefits to the cell-edge users, because it will not
fully compensate the P L during power calculation and it
can be represented as P = P0_PUSCH + α P L. Moreover,
FPC is proposed to adjust the user power in order to achieve
the necessary signal quality by minimizing the interference
from the other cells [14]. The user located at the cell-edge
usually have high pathloss, thus they are forced to trans-
mit at a low signal to interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR),
which in turn reduces interference to the surrounding cells
[7].
As discussed above that co-channel interference is the
main problem in the HetNet environmet because the conven-
tioal FPC (C-FPC) did not completely solve this problem.
Thus, to reduce the co-channel interference problem, the
power control techniques are proposed in the literature. The
schemes like UL power control based on resource usage
aggregation [13], UL power control by learning the uplink
interference [8], UL power control scheme with varying
Neighbors’ interference situation-aware power control scheme for dense 5G mobile…
interference [2], and the UL power control scheme [3] for
sum-rate maximization with per-user transmit power con-
straint are proposed.
These proposed power control scheme in the literature has
limitations that they are not suitable for the HetNet environ-
ment, since the interference situation in HetNet environment
is very much different as compared to the homogeneous
environment. Similarly, the user power control schemes that
focused on the HetNet environment such as quality of service
(QoS) based user power control scheme is proposed in [4],
but this scheme allocates the user power based on their QoS
requirements, and neglects the interference situation of the
users. Similarly, in [11] authors discusses the power head-
room report based user power control scheme. This scheme
also have problem that it only considers the users remaining
power by neglecting the nearby user interference situation. In
our previous work, we proposed user-specific interference-
aware power control scheme suitable for HetNet scenario
[12].
Moreover, the schemes discussed above are not suitable
for HetNet environment because the SINR target is set only
based on the pathloss. That is, the users with high pathloss
will be considered as cell-edge users and thus would have low
SINR target to decrease the interference and vice-versa. But
in real scenarios, since femto cells are deployed randomly so
cell-edge users decision based only SINR target would not be
the good metric to reduce the interference because in this case
macro user may be in the cell-center but can lie on the cell-
edge for the femto users which will give high interference.
In order to solve this challenge we adjusted the SINR target
control parameter (P0 ) based on the user specific ratio only
while keeping the cell-specific ratio constant during whole
simulation period.
Contributions in this paper, we proposed interference-
aware UL power control (IA-ULPC) scheme which take care
of the neighbors’ interference situation while allocating the
power to either FUE or MUE. Moreover, we derive the P0
based on both user specific and cell-specific P0 parameters
irrespective of only user specific value. Furthermore, the P0
value is heuristically updated according to the neighbor cell
interference situation as compared to C-FPC. The user per-
formance under IA-ULPC has been verified by system-level
simulation (SLS) under the 3GPP based HetNet environment.
The proposed IA-ULPC shows remarkable improvement in
user average throughput because of considering the interfer-
ence situation. Moreover, the interference received by the
user under this scheme is significantly reduced.
The manuscript is arranged as: system model is described
in Sect. 2. In Sect. 3, the proposed interference-aware scheme
is discussed and also the power control equation is derived
for allocating the power to the users. The simulation results
are discussed in Sect. 4. Finally, the conclusions are drawn
in the Sect. 5.
3 System model and assumptions
The HetNet environment consisting of 7 eNB sites is mod-
eled. There are three hexagonal sectors in each site, as shown
in Fig. 1. The center cell is considered as the area of inter-
est (AOI), while the other cells are providing interference to
the users. The AOI consists of eNBs, FeNBs, MUEs, and
FUEs. To create the hotspot scenarion for FeNBs, Poission
cluster process is used for users distribution [16] with each
cluster has the FeNB. The femto users are connected in a
closed-subscriber group (CSG) mode that is only specific
users have an access to connect with FeNB, and hence this
results in cross-tier interference.
Each UE is allocated physical resource blocks (PRB)
according to the 3GPP uplink frame structure. The PRB is the
smallest resource which has 180 KHz in frequency domain
and 0.5 ms in time domain [10]. In this manuscript, because
of considering 10 MHz system bandwidth we have a total of
50 PRBs.
In this manuscript, to model the channel gain between the
transmitter and the receiver, we considered the channel model
that has both the large and short scale fadings. Since, we
consider dense HetNet urban eniroment in this manuscript.
Thus, the urban area pathloss model described in [9] is used
to model the pathloss between the outdoor eNB and outdoor
UE because this can accurately model this scenario. This
model can be represented as described below, and if some
users are residing inside the building, then additional wall
loss of 20 dB will be applied to that indoor UE.
P L(d B) = 15.3 + 37.6 log10 R (2)
In order to model the dense urban deployment of FeNBs, the
simplified pathloss model [6] is considered, where R is the
distance in meters among the BS and the users.
P L(d B) = 127 + 30 log10 (R/1000) (3)
4 Proposed interference-aware users power control
scheme
The conventional fractional power control (C-FPC) [1] is
not suitable for the 5G systems because they can only
identify edge UE and interior (cell-center) UE by pathloss,
which is not effective in the dense HetNet deployment sce-
nario. The C-FPC didn’t consider the neighbor small cells
pathloss and interference conditions while allocating the
power to the users. This results in high interference sit-
uation because of not allocating the proper power to the
users. Thus, we propose IA-ULPC which is suitable for
dense HetNet situation, as it considers the neighbors inter-
ference condition and pathloss while allocating the power
123
 Z. Kaleem et al.

to the users. The main steps of the proposed IA-ULPC
are:
Step 1 Initial power allocation: Initially, each user will trans-
mit power by using C-FPC [1] equation as defined in (1).
Thus, the transmit power can be calculated as:
PPUSCH = min{Pmax , (10 log10 (MPUSCH ) + P0_PUSCH
serv
+ α.P L serv }
where all the parameters are same as described in (1) but
the superscript serv represents the serving cell. If the initial
power allocation by using (4) results in receiving high over-
load indicator (OI) report from the neighboring FeNB/eNB,
where OI [15] is an overload measurement exchanged
between base stations for UL inter-cell PC purposes that
could for instance be used for a dynamic adjustment of SINR
target to achieve the desired interference over thermal noise
(IOT) level that the network wants to achieve. Based on the
OI report the serving FeNB/eNB will calculate the amount
of interference over thermal noise (IOT) received from the
interferers using step 2.
Step 2 IOT calculation at serving FeNB/eNB: Since, this
paper focuses on the UL transmission, thus the total IOT
received by the serving FeNB/eNB is calculated based on the
interference received from the interfering FUE/MUE. Hence,
the interference received by the serving FeNB/eNB during a
subframe duration is:
 N  by adjusting the (P0 ) of the interfering FUE/MUE, first we
interf2serv  lin_interf
IOT = 10 log10 In − Ntherm (5)
n=1
where N is the total interfering neighbor cells and Ntherm is
the thermal noise. To calculate the total interference received
in (5), where interference is measured in dB, we can write it
as:
from the interfering MUE/FUE to the serving FeNB/eNB.
Thus, after substituting (8) into (5), the total interference
interf2serv
(IOT ) received by the serving FeNB/eNB can be cal-
culated as:
 N 
interf2serv  lin_interf
(4) IOT = 10 log10 Pn_0 × δn − Ntherm (9)
n=1
Step 3 IOT threshold checking: At this point the interference
received at the FeNB/eNB is compared with the predefined
IOT threshold of 5 dB, which we set from the range [0,10] dB
[1], in order to broadcast the OI to the interference provid-
ing FUE/MUE. We selected this threshold in this simulation
because based on this simulation we can get the balanced
output in terms of cell-center and cell-edge throughput. This
can be represented as:
interf2serv
IOT ≥ IOTserv
threshold (10)
where IOTserv
threshold is the threshold IOT level in the serving
FeNB/eNB.
Step 4 Dynamic adjustment of neighbor cells SINR tar-
get (P0 ): Since, due to the interference received by the
FUE/MUE uplink signal of the serving FeNB/eNB, we need
to adjust the power of the interference providing FUE/MUE
will derive (P0 ) which has the capability to dynamically
adjust according to interference situation. After derivation the
P0 will be varied heuristically for different situation in order
to find the optimum value based on simulations as shown
in Fig. 2. To derive (P0 ), we know that the received SINR
for FUE/MUE in the serving FeNB/eNB should satisfy the
following minimum SINR condition given as:

interf interf interf2serv

In = Pn,T x − P L n
Rx ≥ SINRmin_target .
SINRserv serv
interf interf interf
(11)
where Pn,T x = Pn_0 + α P L n
⇒ In
interf interf
= Pn_0 + α P L n
interf interf2serv
− P Ln (6) Based on the SINR target calculated for interferer in (19)
with derivation given in appendix, the total transmit power
By using (6), the linear value of the interference can be cal- of the interference providing FUE/MUE can be found as by
culated as: using (4):
  

interf interf2serv
lin_interf lin_interf α P L n −P L n 10
In = Pn_0 × 10 (7) interf
PPUSCH = min Pmax , P0serv − SINRserv
min_target + (α − 1)P L
serv

    N   
interf interf2serv
α P L n −P L n 10

Let δn = 10 −10 log10 δn + Ntherm + α P L interf
(12)
Thus, we have n=1

  In case, the FUE/MUE transmitting with this power, and

lin_interf lin_interf
In = Pn_0 × δn (8)
serving UE still report high OI, then P0 will be recalculated
based on the new interference situation and power will be
interf
where P L n is the pathloss from the interfering FUE/MUE reallocated as shown in the Fig. 2. Finally, this power control
interf2serv
to their connected FeNB/eNB and P L n is the pathloss procedure will end here if no more OI is reported.

123
Neighbors’ interference situation-aware power control scheme for dense 5G mobile…

Table 1 Simulation parameters

Parameters Values

Carrier frequency 1.760 GHz

Bandwidth (eNB/FeNB) 10 MHz
No. of sites (eNBs) 7 (21 Cells)
Inter-site distance 500 m
UE speed 3 km/h
Antennas 1×1
Transmission power UE: 23 dBm, eNB: 43 dBm FeNB:
20 dBm
Channel model Pathloss (urban), shadowing (Claussen
model), PedB
Cell-specific parameters P0_macro = −80 dBm,P0_femto =
−60 dBm, α_macro = 0.7,
α_femto = 0.6
Traffic models Full buffer
Simulation time 10 drops, 500 subframes

Fig. 3 User throughput comparison

to 3GPP guidelines [6]. The simulation parameters used dur-

ing simulations to check the performance of the proposed
IA-ULPC under the dense HetNet environment is mentioned
in Table 1. We compare the performance in terms of the user’s
average throughput, interference, and transmit power of the
C-FPC scheme with the proposed IA-ULPC scheme.

5.1 User throughput enhancement by the IA-ULPC

Fig. 2 Proposed neighbor interference-aware power control procedure
5 Simulation results and discussions
The system-level simulations has been performed by using
MATLAB based system-level simulator designed according
scheme
Here, we discuss the average throughput that is typically
derived from the cumulative distribution function (CDF). The
term average throughput refer to the 50% points of the users
throughput CDF. Figure 3 clearly indicates that by compar-
ing the proposed IA-ULPC with C-FPC at 50% of cumulative

123

Fig. 4 User interference comparison
distribution function (CDF) the users average throughput for
the proposed IA-ULPC scheme reaches 3.5 Mbps for the
proposed scheme as compared to C-FPC scheme which has
1.2 Mbps throughput at the same point. The reason for this
improvement is the capability of the proposed scheme to
effectively consider the interference situation of the neigh-
bor base stations while allocating power to the user, which
in turn decreases interference, and hence doubles the users
average throughput.
5.2 User received interference for the IA-ULPC scheme
In a dense HetNet deployment scenario, users connected to
the eNB suffer high uplink interference because of identical
frequency bands. By controlling user power this interfer-
ence can be significantly reduced. The very low-interference
range region is used to compare the proposed IA-ULPC
and the conventional FPC schemes.The results in Fig. 4
clearly depicts that approximately 50% users resides in the
low interference zone of (−95 to −90 dBm) for the IA-
ULPC scheme, while for C-FPC scheme only 30% users
are in this range. Thus, approximately 20% interference is
reduced by using proposed IA-ULPC scheme. This benefit
is achieved because our proposed IA-ULPC scheme consid-
ers the neighbor’s interference situation while controlling the
users’ power.
5.3 User transmit power under the IA-ULPC scheme
In this section, we compared the user transmit power of
the proposed IA-ULPC scheme and the conventional FPC
scheme. We can clearly notice from the Fig. 5 that for the
C-FPC scheme most of the users are transmitting with high
transmit (Tx) power that is in the range of 0–20 dBm but with
123
Z. Kaleem et al.
Fig. 5 Users transmission powers under the proposed IA-ULPC
scheme
the proposed IA-ULPC scheme more than 50% of the users
are transmitting with power in the range −30 to −5 dBm.
The main reason for less amount of power transmission in
the proposed IA-ULPC scheme is its capability to consider
the neighbor’s interference situation. Hence, by transmitting
with the low Tx power in IA-ULPC there will be less inter-
ference in the proposed IA-ULPC scheme.
6 Conclusions
The 3GPP based uplink system performance depends upon
how the cross-tier interference is controlled. Most of the
existing schemes in the literature such as the conventional
fractional power control (C-FPC) schemes are not suitable for
dense HetNet environment. The main reason is that C-FPC
scheme control user power by only considering the path-loss
of the users, which is not suitable in case of HetNet situa-
tion because in this case user located at the edge of one cell
may be in the center of the other cell, which in turn dis-
turbs the balance and results in more severe interference. In
this paper, to cope with this situation we presents the IA-
ULPC scheme which considers the neighbor’s interference
situation, i.e., cross-tier interference, while controlling the
power of the users instead of only considering the path-loss.
We also numerically derived the solution for SINR target
(P0 ), and this SINR is dynamically updated based on the
interference situation to reduce the interference. The pro-
posed scheme is verified by system-level simulations, which
results in remarkable improvement in the user’s average
throughput as well as results in reduction in user interfer-
ence.
Neighbors’ interference situation-aware power control scheme for dense 5G mobile…

interf
Acknowledgements This work was supported under Start Up Research Pn_0 = P0serv − SINRserv
min_target
Grant (SRGP) Project No. 1137 from Higher Education Commission  N 
(HEC) of Pakistan. 
+ (α − 1)P L serv
− 10 log10 δn + Ntherm .
Compliance with ethical standards n=1
(19)
Conflict of interest On behalf of all authors, the corresponding author
states that there is no conflict of interest.

References
Appendix
1. Access, E.U.T.R. (2014). 3gpp ts 36.213 v12.1.0.
The transmit power of the FUE/MUE in the serving FeNB/eNB 2. Ahmad, A., Hassan, N. U., Assaad, M., & Tembine, H. (2016). Joint
is derived as follows: power control and rate adaptation for video streaming in wireless
networks with time-varying interference. IEEE Transactions on
interf2serv
serv
PPUSCH = SINRserv min_target + P L serv
+ IOT (13) Vehicular Technology, 65(8), 6315–6329.
3. Ahmad, A., Khan, M. T. R., & Kaleem, Z. (2016). Uplink optimal
power allocation for heterogeneous multiuser SIMO SC-FDMA
By utilizing (4) in (13), we can describe it as: networks. Electronics Letters, 52(24), 1990–1992.
4. Ahmad, I., Kaleem, Z., & Chang, K. (2013). Uplink power con-
P0 + α P L
serv serv
= SINRmin_target
serv
trol for interference mitigation based on users priority in two-tier
interf2serv femtocell network. In 2013 international conference on ICT con-
+ PL serv
+ IOT
vergence (ICTC) (pp. 474–476). IEEE.
P0serv = SINRserv min_target + (1 − α)P L
serv
5. Andrews, J. G., Buzzi, S., Choi, W., Hanly, S. V., Lozano, A.,
interf2serv Soong, A. C., et al. (2014). What will 5G be? IEEE Journal on
+ IOT (14) Selected Areas in Communications, 32(6), 1065–1082.
6. Assumptions, S. (2009). Parameters for FDD HeNB RF require-
By substituting (9) in to (14), we can write as: ments. 3GPP TSG-RAN WG4 R4-092042.
7. Castellanos, C. U., Villa, D. L., Rosa, C., Pedersen, K. I., Cal-
abrese, F. D., Michaelsen, P. H., & Michel, J. (2008). Performance
P0serv = SINRserv
min_target + (1 − α)P L
serv
of uplink fractional power control in utran lte. In Vehicular tech-

N lin_interf nology conference, 2008 (pp. 2517–2521). IEEE.
+ 10 log10 P × δn − Ntherm (15) 8. Deb, S., & Monogioudis, P. (2015). Learning-based uplink inter-
n=1 n_0
ference management in 4G LTE cellular systems. IEEE/ACM
lin_interf
Transactions on Networking (TON), 23(2), 398–411.
Suppose Pn_0 is same for all the neighbor cells, then we 9. Equipment, U. (2010). Evolved universal terrestrial radio access
have (e-utra); radio frequency (rf) system scenarios, 3rd generation part-
nership project (3GPP). Technical report, TR 36.942 (2010).
P0serv = SINRserv + (1 − α)P L serv 10. Kaleem, Z., Hui, B., & Chang, K. (2014). QoS priority-based
min_target
⎛ ⎞ dynamic frequency band allocation algorithm for load balancing
and interference avoidance in 3GPP LTE HetNet. EURASIP Jour-
⎜ lin_interf  N ⎟ nal on Wireless Communications and Networking, 2014(1), 1–18.
⎜
+ 10 log10 ⎝ Pn_0 × ⎟
δn ⎠ − Ntherm (16)
    n=1 11. Kim, W., Kaleem, Z., & Chang, K. (2015). Power headroom report-
 
A based uplink power control in 3GPP LTE-A HetNet. EURASIP
B
Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking, 2015(1),
1–13.
By applying log product rule, that is, log(A × B) = log(A)+
12. Kim, W., Kaleem, Z., & Chang, K. (2015). UE-specific
log(B). Thus we have: interference-aware open-loop power control in 3GPP LTE-A uplink
HetNet. In 2015 seventh international conference on ubiquitous
P0serv = SINRserv
min_target + (1 − α)P L
serv
and future networks (pp. 682–684). IEEE.
   13. Morita, M., Nobukiyo, T., & Hamabe, K. (2012). Uplink power
lin_interf N
+ 10 log10 Pn_0 + 10 log10 δn − Ntherm control method for lte femtocells based on resource usage aggre-
n=1
gation. In IEEE 23rd international symposium on personal indoor
(17) and mobile radio communications (PIMRC) (pp. 442–447). IEEE.
14. Muhammad, B., & Mohammed, A. (2010) Uplink closed loop
interf lin_interf
Since, Pn_0 = 10 log10 (Pn_0 ). Thus, we can write (17) power control for LTE system. In 2010 6th international confer-
ence on emerging technologies (ICET) (pp. 88–93). IEEE.
as: 15. Network, E.U.T.R.A. (2015) X2 application protocol (x2ap)(3gpp
ts 36.423 version 13.3.0 release 13).
P0serv = SINRserv
min_target + (1 − α)P L
serv
16. Taranetz, M., & Rupp, M. (2012). Performance of femtocell access
 point deployments in user hot-spot scenarios. In Telecommunica-
interf N
+ Pn_0 + 10 log10 δn − Ntherm . (18) tion networks and applications conference (ATNAC), Australasian
n=1
(pp. 1–5). IEEE.
Thus, by rearranging (18) the total interference can be cal-
culated as:

123

Zeeshan Kaleem received his
B.S. and M.S. Electronics Engi-
neering from the University
of Engineering and Technology
(UET), Peshawar and Hanyang
University, Korea in 2007 and
2010, respectively. He received
his Ph.D. in Electronics Engi-
neering Department from Inha
University in 2016. From 2010 to
2012, he was a lecturer at Namal
College, Pakistan (an associate
college of the University of Brad-
ford, UK). Since March 2016, He
is working as an assistant profes-
sor in the Electrical Engineering Department, COMSATS Institute of
Information Technology, Wah Campus, Pakistan. He served as TPC
member for IEEE FIT 2016 conference and is serving as TPC member
of IEEE VTC 2017 conference. He is currently an Associate Editor
of the IEEE ACCESS, Human-centric Computing and Information
Sciences, Springer, Journal of information processing systems. He is
also serving as a Guest Editor in IEEE Communications Magazine
and IEEE ACCESS. He is the author of IEEE articles and conference
papers, and also holds 18 US/PCT and Korean patents. His research
interests include public safety networks, 5G system, device-to-device
(D2D) discovery and communications, full duplex communications,
unmanned air vehicle (UAV) detection and tracking. He was a recipi-
ent of the Higher Education Commission (HEC) Scholarship Pakistan
and Jungseok Scholarship to pursue his M.S. and Ph.D. degree from
Hanyang University and Inha University, Korea, respectively, due to
his excellent academic career.
Ayaz Ahmad is currently serv-
ing as Assistant Professor in the
Department of Electrical Engi-
neering, COMSATS Institute of
Information Technology, Wah
Cantt., Pakistan. He obtained his
M.S. and Ph.D. degrees both in
Telecommunication from Ecole
Superieure d’Electricite (Sup-
elec), Gif-sur-Yvette, France, in
2008 and 2011, respectively. He
obtained his B.Sc. in Electri-
cal Engineering from Univer-
sity of Engineering and Technol-
ogy, Peshawar, Pakistan in 2006.
From 2006 to 2007, he was a faculty member at the Department of
Electrical Engineering, FAST-NUCES, Peshawar, Pakistan. He has sev-
eral years of research experience and has authored/coauthored several
scientific publications in various refereed international journals and con-
ferences. He has also published several book chapters and is the leading
co-editor of the book entitled, “Smart Grid as a Solution for Renewable
and Efficient Energy” published by IGI Global, USA in 2016. He is
currently an Associate Editor with IEEE Access, and Springer Human-
centric Computing and Information Sciences. He has also served as the
123
Z. Kaleem et al.
lead guest editor of a special issue on optimization for emerging wire-
less networks and co-guest editor of a special issue on energy harvesting
both for IEEE Access. He is regularly serving as TPC member for
several international conferences including IEEE GLOBECOM, IEEE
ICC, and IEEE PIMRC, and as reviewer for several renowned interna-
tional journals. He is Senior Member of IEEE. His research interests
include resource allocation in wireless communication systems, energy
management in smart grid, and application of optimization methods to
engineering problems.
Mubashir Husain Rehmani
(M’14–SM’15) received the
B.E. degree in computer sys-
tems engineering from Mehran
University of Engineering and
Technology, Jamshoro, Pakistan,
in 2004, the M.S. degree from
the University of Paris XI, Paris,
France, in 2008, and the Ph.D.
degree from the University Pierre
and Marie Curie, Paris, in 2011.
He is currently an Assistant Pro-
fessor at COMSATS Institute
of Information Technology, Wah
Cantt., Pakistan. He was a Post-
doctoral Fellow at the University of Paris Est, France, in 2012. His
current research interests include cognitive radio ad hoc networks, smart
grid, wireless sensor networks, and mobile ad hoc networks. He served
in the TPC for IEEE ICC 2016, IEEE GlobeCom 2016, CROWNCOM
2016, IEEE VTC Spring 2016, IEEE ICC 2015, IEEE WoWMoM 2014,
IEEE ICC 2014, ACM CoNEXT Student Workshop 2013, IEEE ICC
2013, and IEEE IWCMC 2013 conferences. He is currently an Editor
of the IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials and an Associate
Editor of the IEEE Communications Magazine, IEEE Access journal,
Elsevier Computers and Electrical Engineering (CAEE) journal, Else-
vier Journal of Network and Computer Applications (JNCA), Ad Hoc
Sensor Wireless Networks (AHSWN) journal, Springer Wireless Net-
works Journal, KSII Transactions on Internet and Information Systems,
and the Journal of Communications and Networks (JCN). He is also
serving as a Guest Editor of Elsevier Ad Hoc Networks journal, Elsevier
Future Generation Computer Systems journal, IEEE Access journal,
the IEEE Transactions on Industrial Informatics, Elsevier Pervasive
and Mobile Computing journal and Elsevier Computers and Electri-
cal Engineering journal. He has authored/edited two books published
by IGI Global, USA, one book published by CRC Press, USA, and
one book is in progress with Wiley, UK. He is the founding member
of IEEE Special Interest Group (SIG) on Green and Sustainable Net-
working and Computing with Cognition and Cooperation. He received
“Best Researcher of the Year 2015 of COMSATS Wah” award in 2015.
He received the certificate of appreciation, “Exemplary Editor of the
IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials for the year 2015” from
the IEEE Communications Society. He received Best Paper Award from
IEEE ComSoc Technical Committee on Communications Systems Inte-
gration and Modeling (CSIM), 2017.