Deep Reinforcement Learning for Reducing Latency in Mission Critical Services
Medhat Elsayed, Melike Erol‐Kantarci · 2018
Next-generation wireless networks will be supporting mission critical services such as safety related applications of connected autonomous vehicles, and real-time control of medical and industrial systems, as well as serving traditional mobile users. In mission critical services, high-reliability and low-latency requirements should be satisfied. In this paper, we aim to reduce the latency of uplink scheduling of a network of Mission Critical Devices (MCDs) while maintaining fairness among other users, served by a dense small cell network. We propose a Deep Reinforcement Learning algorithm, namely Delay Minimizing Deep Q-Learning (DMDQ), that combines Long Short-term Memory with Q-learning. The problem is cast as a resource block allocation for delay minimization. The proposed algorithm is compared to a tabular Q-learning approach and a simple Round Robin (RR) algorithm in terms of latency, throughput, fairness and convergence. Our performance results show that DMDQ outperforms both schemes in terms of latency and offers high fairness. The Q-learning approach achieves slightly higher throughput than DMDQ however DMDQ convergences faster.