Dynamic and efficient device collaborations in 5G-advanced and 6G networks

Collaborative transmission, comprising multiple devices owned by a single user, is progressively evolving into an essential strategy to meet the stringent demands of burgeoning collaborative scenarios in 5G-advanced and 6G networks. This paper proposes three novel use cases for device collaboration, namely data duplication, data splitting and wireless backup, to address these requirements. To provide dynamic and efficient collaboration, both non-transparent mode via the medium access control layer collaboration and transparent mode via the physical layer collaboration are proposed. The paper further introduces a comprehensive design framework including protocol stack design, user equipment capability reporting, user equipment pairing, scheduling mechanism and transmission mechanism for different collaborative use cases with different collaborative modes. Evaluation outcomes reveal that the recommended methods could decrease the resources consumed for data duplication while increasing the user perceived throughput for data duplication and data splitting. The proposed methods also augment transmission reliability for both data duplication and wireless backup.