615 research outputs found
Downlink Training in Cell-Free Massive MIMO: A Blessing in Disguise
Cell-free Massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) refers to a
distributed Massive MIMO system where all the access points (APs) cooperate to
coherently serve all the user equipments (UEs), suppress inter-cell
interference and mitigate the multiuser interference. Recent works demonstrated
that, unlike co-located Massive MIMO, the \textit{channel hardening} is, in
general, less pronounced in cell-free Massive MIMO, thus there is much to
benefit from estimating the downlink channel. In this study, we investigate the
gain introduced by the downlink beamforming training, extending the previously
proposed analysis to non-orthogonal uplink and downlink pilots. Assuming
single-antenna APs, conjugate beamforming and independent Rayleigh fading
channel, we derive a closed-form expression for the per-user achievable
downlink rate that addresses channel estimation errors and pilot contamination
both at the AP and UE side. The performance evaluation includes max-min
fairness power control, greedy pilot assignment methods, and a comparison
between achievable rates obtained from different capacity-bounding techniques.
Numerical results show that downlink beamforming training, although increases
pilot overhead and introduces additional pilot contamination, improves
significantly the achievable downlink rate. Even for large number of APs, it is
not fully efficient for the UE relying on the statistical channel state
information for data decoding.Comment: Published in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications on August
14, 2019. {\copyright} 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted.
Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other use
Ubiquitous Cell-Free Massive MIMO Communications
Since the first cellular networks were trialled in the 1970s, we have
witnessed an incredible wireless revolution. From 1G to 4G, the massive traffic
growth has been managed by a combination of wider bandwidths, refined radio
interfaces, and network densification, namely increasing the number of antennas
per site. Due its cost-efficiency, the latter has contributed the most. Massive
MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) is a key 5G technology that uses massive
antenna arrays to provide a very high beamforming gain and spatially
multiplexing of users, and hence, increases the spectral and energy efficiency.
It constitutes a centralized solution to densify a network, and its performance
is limited by the inter-cell interference inherent in its cell-centric design.
Conversely, ubiquitous cell-free Massive MIMO refers to a distributed Massive
MIMO system implementing coherent user-centric transmission to overcome the
inter-cell interference limitation in cellular networks and provide additional
macro-diversity. These features, combined with the system scalability inherent
in the Massive MIMO design, distinguishes ubiquitous cell-free Massive MIMO
from prior coordinated distributed wireless systems. In this article, we
investigate the enormous potential of this promising technology while
addressing practical deployment issues to deal with the increased
back/front-hauling overhead deriving from the signal co-processing.Comment: Published in EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and
Networking on August 5, 201
Robust Pilot Decontamination Based on Joint Angle and Power Domain Discrimination
We address the problem of noise and interference corrupted channel estimation
in massive MIMO systems. Interference, which originates from pilot reuse (or
contamination), can in principle be discriminated on the basis of the
distributions of path angles and amplitudes. In this paper we propose novel
robust channel estimation algorithms exploiting path diversity in both angle
and power domains, relying on a suitable combination of the spatial filtering
and amplitude based projection. The proposed approaches are able to cope with a
wide range of system and topology scenarios, including those where, unlike in
previous works, interference channel may overlap with desired channels in terms
of multipath angles of arrival or exceed them in terms of received power. In
particular we establish analytically the conditions under which the proposed
channel estimator is fully decontaminated. Simulation results confirm the
overall system gains when using the new methods.Comment: 14 pages, 5 figures, accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on
Signal Processin
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
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