Opportunistic Bits in Short-Packet Communications: A Finite Blocklength Perspective

In this paper, the concept of opportunistic bits (OBs) is developed in short-packet communications and investigated from a finite blocklength perspective. In the OB-based transmission, the data unit of a packet is divided into two parts: OBs and conventional bits (CBs). The OBs are not physically transmitted but used to indicate the index of the time slot (TS) when the packet containing CBs is transmitted. The loading of a bulk of OB-based packets into multiple TSs can be modelled as a Repeated Balls-into-Bins process with a multi-queue storage. If the bulk is not large enough, certain combination(s) of OBs will not appear, which leaves certain TS(s) empty and hence reduces the TS load efficiency. To evaluate the OB-based transmission performance, we formulate its maximal payload rate and TS load efficiency. With the aid of these two formulations, the energy gain, the goodput, and the latency of OB-based short-packet communications are derived and obtained in analytical forms. For achieving further insights, illustrative numerical results on the resource utilisation efficiency and the performance not only substantiate the advantages of the OB-based transmission over the conventional but also provide useful tools and specifications for its design in massive short-packet communications.