5 research outputs found
Achieving Fair Random Access Performance in Massive MIMO Crowded Machine-Type Networks
The use of massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) to serve a crowd of
user equipments (UEs) is challenged by the deficit of pilots. Assuming that the
UEs are intermittently active, this problem can be addressed by a shared access
to the pilots and a suitable random access (RA) protocol. The strongest-user
collision resolution (SUCRe) is a previously proposed RA protocol that often
privileges the UEs closer to the base station (BS). In contrast, we propose a
novel RA protocol using a decentralized pilot power allocation method that aims
at a fairer performance. The proposed access class barring with power control
(ACBPC) protocol allows each UE to estimate, without additional overhead, how
many UEs collided for the chosen pilot and calculate an ACB factor, which is
then used to determine the pilot retransmission probability in the next
protocol step. The results show that the proposed ACBPC protocol is superior to
SUCRe in terms of providing a fair connectivity for very crowded networks,
although still being distributed and uncoordinated as the original SUCRe
protocol.Comment: 12 pages, 4 figure
Random Access in Massive MIMO by Exploiting Timing Offsets and Excess Antennas
Massive MIMO systems, where base stations are equipped with hundreds of
antennas, are an attractive way to handle the rapid growth of data traffic. As
the number of user equipments (UEs) increases, the initial access and handover
in contemporary networks will be flooded by user collisions. In this paper, a
random access protocol is proposed that resolves collisions and performs timing
estimation by simply utilizing the large number of antennas envisioned in
Massive MIMO networks. UEs entering the network perform spreading in both time
and frequency domains, and their timing offsets are estimated at the base
station in closed-form using a subspace decomposition approach. This
information is used to compute channel estimates that are subsequently employed
by the base station to communicate with the detected UEs. The favorable
propagation conditions of Massive MIMO suppress interference among UEs whereas
the inherent timing misalignments improve the detection capabilities of the
protocol. Numerical results are used to validate the performance of the
proposed procedure in cellular networks under uncorrelated and correlated
fading channels. With UEs that may simultaneously become active
with probability 1\% and a total of frequency-time codes (in a given
random access block), it turns out that, with antennas, the proposed
procedure successfully detects a given UE with probability 75\% while providing
reliable timing estimates.Comment: 30 pages, 6 figures, 1 table, submitted to Transactions on
Communication
Massive MIMO for Internet of Things (IoT) Connectivity
Massive MIMO is considered to be one of the key technologies in the emerging
5G systems, but also a concept applicable to other wireless systems. Exploiting
the large number of degrees of freedom (DoFs) of massive MIMO essential for
achieving high spectral efficiency, high data rates and extreme spatial
multiplexing of densely distributed users. On the one hand, the benefits of
applying massive MIMO for broadband communication are well known and there has
been a large body of research on designing communication schemes to support
high rates. On the other hand, using massive MIMO for Internet-of-Things (IoT)
is still a developing topic, as IoT connectivity has requirements and
constraints that are significantly different from the broadband connections. In
this paper we investigate the applicability of massive MIMO to IoT
connectivity. Specifically, we treat the two generic types of IoT connections
envisioned in 5G: massive machine-type communication (mMTC) and ultra-reliable
low-latency communication (URLLC). This paper fills this important gap by
identifying the opportunities and challenges in exploiting massive MIMO for IoT
connectivity. We provide insights into the trade-offs that emerge when massive
MIMO is applied to mMTC or URLLC and present a number of suitable communication
schemes. The discussion continues to the questions of network slicing of the
wireless resources and the use of massive MIMO to simultaneously support IoT
connections with very heterogeneous requirements. The main conclusion is that
massive MIMO can bring benefits to the scenarios with IoT connectivity, but it
requires tight integration of the physical-layer techniques with the protocol
design.Comment: Submitted for publicatio