2020/09/04 by Guangxu Zhu, Jie Xu, Zhu, Guangxu +5 · 2 citations
Computer Science · Engineering · #Advanced Wireless Communication Technologies #FOS: Computer and information sciences #FOS: Electrical engineering #Indoor and Outdoor Localization Technologies #Information Theory (cs.IT) #Networking and Internet Architecture (cs.NI) #Privacy-Preserving Technologies in Data #Signal Processing (eess.SP) #electronic engineering #information engineering
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2009.02181
openalex publication_date 2020/09/04 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Wireless data aggregation (WDA), referring to aggregating data distributed at devices (e.g., sensors and smartphone), is a common operation in 5G-and-beyond machine-type communications to support Internet-of-Things (IoT), which lays the foundation for diversified applications such as distributed sensing, learning, and control. Conventional WDA techniques that are designed based on a separated-communication-and-computation principle encounter difficulty in accommodating the massive access under the limited radio resource and stringent latency constraints imposed by emerging applications (e.g, auto-driving). To address this issue, over-the-air computation (AirComp) is being developed as a new WDA solution by seamlessly integrating computation and communication. By exploiting the waveform superposition property of a multiple-access channel, AirComp turns the air into a computer for computing and communicating functions of distributed data at many devices, thereby allowing low-latency WDA over massive devices. In view of growing interests on AirComp, this article provides a timely overview of the technology by introducing basic principles, discussing advanced techniques and applications, and identifying promising research opportunities.