16,537 research outputs found
Optical Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access for Visible Light Communication
The proliferation of mobile Internet and connected devices, offering a
variety of services at different levels of performance, represents a major
challenge for the fifth generation wireless networks and beyond. This requires
a paradigm shift towards the development of key enabling techniques for the
next generation wireless networks. In this respect, visible light communication
(VLC) has recently emerged as a new communication paradigm that is capable of
providing ubiquitous connectivity by complementing radio frequency
communications. One of the main challenges of VLC systems, however, is the low
modulation bandwidth of the light-emitting-diodes, which is in the megahertz
range. This article presents a promising technology, referred to as "optical-
non-orthogonal multiple access (O-NOMA)", which is envisioned to address the
key challenges in the next generation of wireless networks. We provide a
detailed overview and analysis of the state-of-the-art integration of O-NOMA in
VLC networks. Furthermore, we provide insights on the potential opportunities
and challenges as well as some open research problems that are envisioned to
pave the way for the future design and implementation of O-NOMA in VLC systems
Uplink Sounding Reference Signal Coordination to Combat Pilot Contamination in 5G Massive MIMO
To guarantee the success of massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO),
one of the main challenges to solve is the efficient management of pilot
contamination. Allocation of fully orthogonal pilot sequences across the
network would provide a solution to the problem, but the associated overhead
would make this approach infeasible in practical systems. Ongoing
fifth-generation (5G) standardisation activities are debating the amount of
resources to be dedicated to the transmission of pilot sequences, focussing on
uplink sounding reference signals (UL SRSs) design. In this paper, we
extensively evaluate the performance of various UL SRS allocation strategies in
practical deployments, shedding light on their strengths and weaknesses.
Furthermore, we introduce a novel UL SRS fractional reuse (FR) scheme, denoted
neighbour-aware FR (FR-NA). The proposed FR-NA generalizes the fixed reuse
paradigm, and entails a tradeoff between i) aggressively sharing some UL SRS
resources, and ii) protecting other UL SRS resources with the aim of relieving
neighbouring BSs from pilot contamination. Said features result in a cell
throughput improvement over both fixed reuse and state-of-the-art FR based on a
cell-centric perspective
Random Access Protocols for Massive MIMO
5G wireless networks are expected to support new services with stringent
requirements on data rates, latency and reliability. One novel feature is the
ability to serve a dense crowd of devices, calling for radically new ways of
accessing the network. This is the case in machine-type communications, but
also in urban environments and hotspots. In those use cases, the high number of
devices and the relatively short channel coherence interval do not allow
per-device allocation of orthogonal pilot sequences. This article motivates the
need for random access by the devices to pilot sequences used for channel
estimation, and shows that Massive MIMO is a main enabler to achieve fast
access with high data rates, and delay-tolerant access with different data rate
levels. Three pilot access protocols along with data transmission protocols are
described, fulfilling different requirements of 5G services
Soft Pilot Reuse and Multi-Cell Block Diagonalization Precoding for Massive MIMO Systems
The users at cell edge of a massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO)
system suffer from severe pilot contamination, which leads to poor quality of
service (QoS). In order to enhance the QoS for these edge users, soft pilot
reuse (SPR) combined with multi-cell block diagonalization (MBD) precoding are
proposed. Specifically, the users are divided into two groups according to
their large-scale fading coefficients, referred to as the center users, who
only suffer from modest pilot contamination and the edge users, who suffer from
severe pilot contamination. Based on this distinction, the SPR scheme is
proposed for improving the QoS for the edge users, whereby a cell-center pilot
group is reused for all cell-center users in all cells, while a cell-edge pilot
group is applied for the edge users in the adjacent cells. By extending the
classical block diagonalization precoding to a multi-cell scenario, the MBD
precoding scheme projects the downlink transmit signal onto the null space of
the subspace spanned by the inter-cell channels of the edge users in adjacent
cells. Thus, the inter-cell interference contaminating the edge users' signals
in the adjacent cells can be efficiently mitigated and hence the QoS of these
edge users can be further enhanced. Our theoretical analysis and simulation
results demonstrate that both the uplink and downlink rates of the edge users
are significantly improved, albeit at the cost of the slightly decreased rate
of center users.Comment: 13 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions
on Vehicular Technology, 201
Advanced Coordinated Beamforming for the Downlink of Future LTE Cellular Networks
Modern cellular networks in traditional frequency bands are notoriously
interference-limited especially in urban areas, where base stations are
deployed in close proximity to one another. The latest releases of Long Term
Evolution (LTE) incorporate features for coordinating downlink transmissions as
an efficient means of managing interference. Recent field trial results and
theoretical studies of the performance of joint transmission (JT) coordinated
multi-point (CoMP) schemes revealed, however, that their gains are not as high
as initially expected, despite the large coordination overhead. These schemes
are known to be very sensitive to defects in synchronization or information
exchange between coordinating bases stations as well as uncoordinated
interference. In this article, we review recent advanced coordinated
beamforming (CB) schemes as alternatives, requiring less overhead than JT CoMP
while achieving good performance in realistic conditions. By stipulating that,
in certain LTE scenarios of increasing interest, uncoordinated interference
constitutes a major factor in the performance of CoMP techniques at large, we
hereby assess the resilience of the state-of-the-art CB to uncoordinated
interference. We also describe how these techniques can leverage the latest
specifications of current cellular networks, and how they may perform when we
consider standardized feedback and coordination. This allows us to identify
some key roadblocks and research directions to address as LTE evolves towards
the future of mobile communications.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figures, accepted to IEEE Communications Magazin
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