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

Grant-Free Massive MTC-Enabled Massive MIMO: A Compressive Sensing Approach

A key challenge of massive MTC (mMTC), is the joint detection of device activity and decoding of data. The sparse characteristics of mMTC makes compressed sensing (CS) approaches a promising solution to the device detection problem. However, utilizing CS-based approaches for device detection along with channel estimation, and using the acquired estimates for coherent data transmission is suboptimal, especially when the goal is to convey only a few bits of data. First, we focus on the coherent transmission and demonstrate that it is possible to obtain more accurate channel state information by combining conventional estimators with CS-based techniques. Moreover, we illustrate that even simple power control techniques can enhance the device detection performance in mMTC setups. Second, we devise a new non-coherent transmission scheme for mMTC and specifically for grant-free random access. We design an algorithm that jointly detects device activity along with embedded information bits. The approach leverages elements from the approximate message passing (AMP) algorithm, and exploits the structured sparsity introduced by the non-coherent transmission scheme. Our analysis reveals that the proposed approach has superior performance compared to application of the original AMP approach.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Communication

Evolution Toward 5G Mobile Networks - A Survey on Enabling Technologies

In this paper, an extensive review has been carried out on the trends of existing as well as proposed potential enabling technologies that are expected to shape the fifth generation (5G) mobile wireless networks. Based on the classification of the trends, we develop a 5G network architectural evolution framework that comprises three evolutionary directions, namely, (1) radio access network node and performance enabler, (2) network control programming platform, and (3) backhaul network platform and synchronization. In (1), we discuss node classification including low power nodes in emerging machine-type communications, and network capacity enablers, e.g., millimeter wave communications and massive multiple-input multiple-output. In (2), both logically distributed cell/device-centric platforms, and logically centralized conventional/wireless software defined networking control programming approaches are discussed. In (3), backhaul networks and network synchronization are discussed. A comparative analysis for each direction as well as future evolutionary directions and challenges toward 5G networks are discussed. This survey will be helpful for further research exploitations and network operators for a smooth evolution of their existing networks toward 5G networks

Towards Massive Connectivity Support for Scalable mMTC Communications in 5G networks

The fifth generation of cellular communication systems is foreseen to enable a multitude of new applications and use cases with very different requirements. A new 5G multiservice air interface needs to enhance broadband performance as well as provide new levels of reliability, latency and supported number of users. In this paper we focus on the massive Machine Type Communications (mMTC) service within a multi-service air interface. Specifically, we present an overview of different physical and medium access techniques to address the problem of a massive number of access attempts in mMTC and discuss the protocol performance of these solutions in a common evaluation framework

Frame Structure Design and Analysis for Millimeter Wave Cellular Systems

The millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequencies have attracted considerable attention for fifth generation (5G) cellular communication as they offer orders of magnitude greater bandwidth than current cellular systems. However, the medium access control (MAC) layer may need to be significantly redesigned to support the highly directional transmissions, ultra-low latencies and high peak rates expected in mmWave communication. To address these challenges, we present a novel mmWave MAC layer frame structure with a number of enhancements including flexible, highly granular transmission times, dynamic control signal locations, extended messaging and ability to efficiently multiplex directional control signals. Analytic formulae are derived for the utilization and control overhead as a function of control periodicity, number of users, traffic statistics, signal-to-noise ratio and antenna gains. Importantly, the analysis can incorporate various front-end MIMO capability assumptions -- a critical feature of mmWave. Under realistic system and traffic assumptions, the analysis reveals that the proposed flexible frame structure design offers significant benefits over designs with fixed frame structures similar to current 4G long-term evolution (LTE). It is also shown that fully digital beamforming architectures offer significantly lower overhead compared to analog and hybrid beamforming under equivalent power budgets.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions for Wireless Communication

Signal Processing and Learning for Next Generation Multiple Access in 6G

Wireless communication systems to date primarily rely on the orthogonality of resources to facilitate the design and implementation, from user access to data transmission. Emerging applications and scenarios in the sixth generation (6G) wireless systems will require massive connectivity and transmission of a deluge of data, which calls for more flexibility in the design concept that goes beyond orthogonality. Furthermore, recent advances in signal processing and learning have attracted considerable attention, as they provide promising approaches to various complex and previously intractable problems of signal processing in many fields. This article provides an overview of research efforts to date in the field of signal processing and learning for next-generation multiple access, with an emphasis on massive random access and non-orthogonal multiple access. The promising interplay with new technologies and the challenges in learning-based NGMA are discussed

Compressive Sensing-Based Grant-Free Massive Access for 6G Massive Communication

The advent of the sixth-generation (6G) of wireless communications has given rise to the necessity to connect vast quantities of heterogeneous wireless devices, which requires advanced system capabilities far beyond existing network architectures. In particular, such massive communication has been recognized as a prime driver that can empower the 6G vision of future ubiquitous connectivity, supporting Internet of Human-Machine-Things for which massive access is critical. This paper surveys the most recent advances toward massive access in both academic and industry communities, focusing primarily on the promising compressive sensing-based grant-free massive access paradigm. We first specify the limitations of existing random access schemes and reveal that the practical implementation of massive communication relies on a dramatically different random access paradigm from the current ones mainly designed for human-centric communications. Then, a compressive sensing-based grant-free massive access roadmap is presented, where the evolutions from single-antenna to large-scale antenna array-based base stations, from single-station to cooperative massive multiple-input multiple-output systems, and from unsourced to sourced random access scenarios are detailed. Finally, we discuss the key challenges and open issues to shed light on the potential future research directions of grant-free massive access.Comment: Accepted by IEEE IoT Journa

Performance Analysis of a 5G Transceiver Implementation for Remote Areas Scenarios

The fifth generation of mobile communication networks will support a large set of new services and applications. One important use case is the remote area coverage for broadband Internet access. This use case ha significant social and economic impact, since a considerable percentage of the global population living in low populated area does not have Internet access and the communication infrastructure in rural areas can be used to improve agribusiness productivity. The aim of this paper is to analyze the performance of a 5G for Remote Areas transceiver, implemented on field programmable gate array based hardware for real-time processing. This transceiver employs the latest digital communication techniques, such as generalized frequency division multiplexing waveform combined with 2 by 2 multiple-input multiple-output diversity scheme and polar channel coding. The performance of the prototype is evaluated regarding its out-of-band emissions and bit error rate under AWGN channel.Comment: Presented in 2018 European Conference on Networks and Communications (EuCNC),18-21 June, 2018, Ljubljana, Sloveni

희소인지를 이용한 전송기술 연구

학위논문 (박사)-- 서울대학교 대학원 : 공과대학 전기·정보공학부, 2019. 2. 심병효.The new wave of the technology revolution, named the fifth wireless systems, is changing our daily life dramatically. These days, unprecedented services and applications such as driverless vehicles and drone-based deliveries, smart cities and factories, remote medical diagnosis and surgery, and artificial intelligence-based personalized assistants are emerging. Communication mechanisms associated with these new applications and services are way different from traditional communications in terms of latency, energy efficiency, reliability, flexibility, and connection density. Since the current radio access mechanism cannot support these diverse services and applications, a new approach to deal with these relentless changes should be introduced. This compressed sensing (CS) paradigm is very attractive alternative to the conventional information processing operations including sampling, sensing, compression, estimation, and detection. To apply the CS techniques to wireless communication systems, there are a number of things to know and also several issues to be considered. In the last decade, CS techniques have spread rapidly in many applications such as medical imaging, machine learning, radar detection, seismology, computer science, statistics, and many others. Also, various wireless communication applications exploiting the sparsity of a target signal have been studied. Notable examples include channel estimation, interference cancellation, angle estimation, spectrum sensing, and symbol detection. The distinct feature of this work, in contrast to the conventional approaches exploiting naturally acquired sparsity, is to exploit intentionally designed sparsity to improve the quality of the communication systems. In the first part of the dissertation, we study the mapping data information into the sparse signal in downlink systems. We propose an approach, called sparse vector coding (SVC), suited for the short packet transmission. In SVC, since the data information is mapped to the position of sparse vector, whole data packet can be decoded by idenitifying nonzero positions of the sparse vector. From our simulations, we show that the packet error rate of SVC outperforms the conventional channel coding schemes at the URLLC regime. Moreover, we discuss the SVC transmission for the massive MTC access by overlapping multiple SVC-based packets into the same resources. Using the spare vector overlapping and multiuser CS decoding scheme, SVC-based transmission provides robustness against the co-channel interference and also provide comparable performance than other non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) schemes. By using the fact that SVC only identifies the support of sparse vector, we extend the SVC transmission without pilot transmission, called pilot-less SVC. Instead of using the support, we further exploit the magnitude of sparse vector for delivering additional information. This scheme is referred to as enhanced SVC. The key idea behind the proposed E-SVC transmission scheme is to transform the small information into a sparse vector and map the side-information into a magnitude of the sparse vector. Metaphorically, E-SVC can be thought as a standing a few poles to the empty table. As long as the number of poles is small enough and the measurements contains enough information to find out the marked cell positions, accurate recovery of E-SVC packet can be guaranteed. In the second part of this dissertation, we turn our attention to make sparsification of the non-sparse signal, especially for the pilot transmission and channel estimation. Unlike the conventional scheme where the pilot signal is transmitted without modification, the pilot signals are sent after the beamforming in the proposed technique. This work is motivated by the observation that the pilot overhead must scale linearly with the number of taps in CIR vector and the number of transmit antennas so that the conventional pilot transmission is not an appropriate option for the IoT devices. Primary goal of the proposed scheme is to minimize the nonzero entries of a time-domain channel vector by the help of multiple antennas at the basestation. To do so, we apply the time-domain sparse precoding, where each precoded channel propagates via fewer tap than the original channel vector. The received channel vector of beamformed pilots can be jointly estimated by the sparse recovery algorithm.5세대 무선통신 시스템의 새로운 기술 혁신은 무인 차량 및 항공기, 스마트 도시 및 공장, 원격 의료 진단 및 수술, 인공 지능 기반 맟춤형 지원과 같은 전례 없는 서비스 및 응용프로그램으로 부상하고 있다. 이러한 새로운 애플리케이션 및 서비스와 관련된 통신 방식은 대기 시간, 에너지 효율성, 신뢰성, 유연성 및 연결 밀도 측면에서 기존 통신과 매우 다르다. 현재의 무선 액세스 방식을 비롯한 종래의 접근법은 이러한 요구 사항을 만족할 수 없기 때문에 최근에 sparse processing과 같은 새로운 접근 방법이 연구되고 있다. 이 새로운 접근 방법은 표본 추출, 감지, 압축, 평가 및 탐지를 포함한 기존의 정보 처리에 대한 효율적인 대체기술로 활용되고 있다. 지난 10년 동안 compressed sensing (CS)기법은 의료영상, 기계학습, 탐지, 컴퓨터 과학, 통계 및 기타 여러 분야에서 빠르게 확산되었다. 또한, 신호의 희소성(sparsity)를 이용하는 CS 기법은 다양한 무선 통신이 연구되었다. 주목할만한 예로는 채널 추정, 간섭 제거, 각도 추정, 및 스펙트럼 감지가 있으며 현재까지 연구는 주어진 신호가 가지고 있는 본래의 희소성에 주목하였으나 본 논문에서는 기존의 접근 방법과 달리 인위적으로 설계된 희소성을 이용하여 통신 시스템의 성능을 향상시키는 방법을 제안한다. 우선 본 논문은 다운링크 전송에서 희소 신호 매핑을 통한 데이터 전송 방법을 제안하며 짧은 패킷 (short packet) 전송에 적합한 CS 접근법을 활용하는 기술을 제안한다. 제안하는 기술인 희소벡터코딩 (sparse vector coding, SVC)은 데이터 정보가 인공적인 희소벡터의 nonzero element의 위치에 매핑하여 전송된 데이터 패킷은 희소벡터의 0이 아닌 위치를 식별함으로 원신호 복원이 가능하다. 분석과 시뮬레이션을 통해 제안하는 SVC 기법의 패킷 오류률은 ultra-reliable and low latency communications (URLLC) 서비스를 지원을 위해 사용되는 채널코딩방식보다 우수한 성능을 보여준다. 또한, 본 논문은 SVC기술을 다음의 세가지 영역으로 확장하였다. 첫째로, 여러 개의 SVC 기반 패킷을 동일한 자원에 겹치게 전송함으로 상향링크에서 대규모 전송을 지원하는 방법을 제안한다. 중첩된 희소벡터를 다중사용자 CS 디코딩 방식을 사용하여 채널 간섭에 강인한 성능을 제공하고 비직교 다중 접속 (NOMA) 방식과 유사한 성능을 제공한다. 둘째로, SVC 기술이 희소 벡터의 support만을 식별한다는 사실을 이용하여 파일럿 전송이 필요없는 pilotless-SVC 전송 방법을 제안한다. 채널 정보가 없는 경우에도 희소 벡터의 support의 크기는 채널의 크기에 비례하기 때문에 pilot없이 복원이 가능하다. 셋째로, 희소벡터의 support의 크기에 추가 정보를 전송함으로 복원 성능을 향상 시키는 enhanced SVC (E-SVC)를 제안한다. 제안된 E-SVC 전송 방식의 핵심 아디디어는 짧은 패킷을 전송되는 정보를 희소 벡터로 변환하고 정보 복원을 보조하는 추가 정보를 희소 벡터의 크기 (magnitude)로 매핑하는 것이다. 마지막으로, SVC 기술을 파일럿 전송에 활용하는 방법을 제안한다. 특히, 채널 추정을 위해 채널 임펄스 응답의 신호를 희소화하는 프리코딩 기법을 제안한다. 파일럿 신호을 프로코딩 없이 전송되는 기존의 방식과 달리, 제안된 기술에서는 파일럿 신호를 빔포밍하여 전송한다. 제안된 기법은 기지국에서 다중 안테나를 활용하여 채널 응답의 0이 아닌 요소를 최소화하는 시간 영역 희소 프리코딩을 적용하였다. 이를 통해 더 적확한 채널 추정을 가능하며 더 적은 파일럿 오버헤드로 채널 추정이 가능하다.Abstract i Contents iv List of Tables viii List of Figures ix 1 INTRODUCTION 1 1.1 Background . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1 1.1.1 Three Key Services in 5G systems . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2 1.1.2 Sparse Processing in Wireless Communications . . . . . . . . 4 1.2 Contributions and Organization . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7 1.3 Notation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 10 2 Sparse Vector Coding for Downlink Ultra-reliable and Low Latency Communications 12 2.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13 2.2 URLLC Service Requirements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 2.2.1 Latency . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15 2.2.2 Ultra-High Reliability . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 2.2.3 Coexistence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 2.3 URLLC Physical Layer in 5G NR . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18 2.3.1 Packet Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19 2.3.2 Frame Structure and Latency-sensitive Scheduling Schemes . 20 2.3.3 Solutions to the Coexistence Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22 2.4 Short-sized Packet in LTE-Advanced Downlink . . . . . . . . . . . . 24 2.5 Sparse Vector Coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 2.5.1 SVC Encoding and Transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 25 2.5.2 SVC Decoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30 2.5.3 Identification of False Alarm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 33 2.6 SVC Performance Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 36 2.7 Implementation Issues . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 2.7.1 Codebook Design . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 48 2.7.2 High-order Modulation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 49 2.7.3 Diversity Transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 2.7.4 SVC without Pilot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50 2.7.5 Threshold to Prevent False Alarm Event . . . . . . . . . . . . 51 2.8 Simulations and Discussions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 2.8.1 Simulation Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52 2.8.2 Simulation Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 53 2.9 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 56 3 Sparse Vector Coding for Uplink Massive Machine-type Communications 59 3.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60 3.2 Uplink NOMA transmission for mMTC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 61 3.3 Sparse Vector Coding based NOMA for mMTC . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 3.3.1 System Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63 3.3.2 Joint Multiuser Decoding . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 66 3.4 Simulations and Discussions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 3.4.1 Simulation Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 68 3.4.2 Simulation Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 3.5 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 71 4 Pilot-less Sparse Vector Coding for Short Packet Transmission 72 4.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73 4.2 Pilot-less Sparse Vector Coding Processing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 4.2.1 SVC Processing with Pilot Symbols . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 75 4.2.2 Pilot-less SVC . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 4.2.3 PL-SVC Decoding in Multiple Basestation Antennas . . . . . 78 4.3 Simulations and Discussions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 4.3.1 Simulation Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 80 4.3.2 Simulation Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81 4.4 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82 5 Joint Analog and Quantized Feedback via Sparse Vector Coding 84 5.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84 5.2 System Model for Joint Spase Vector Coding . . . . . . . . . . . . . 86 5.3 Sparse Recovery Algorithm and Performance Analysis . . . . . . . . 90 5.4 Applications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 95 5.4.1 Linear Interpolation of Sensing Information . . . . . . . . . . 96 5.4.2 Linear Combined Feedback . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 5.4.3 One-shot Packet Transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 96 5.5 Simulations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 5.5.1 Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 5.5.2 Results and Discussions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 5.6 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98 6 Sparse Beamforming for Enhanced Mobile Broadband Communications 101 6.1 Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 102 6.1.1 Increase the number of transmit antennas . . . . . . . . . . . 102 6.1.2 2D active antenna system (AAS) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103 6.1.3 3D channel environment . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 6.1.4 RS transmission for CSI acquisition . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 106 6.2 System Design and Standardization of FD-MIMO Systems . . . . . . 107 6.2.1 Deployment scenarios . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 6.2.2 Antenna configurations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 6.2.3 TXRU architectures . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 109 6.2.4 New CSI-RS transmission strategy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112 6.2.5 CSI feedback mechanisms for FD-MIMO systems . . . . . . 114 6.3 System Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 6.3.1 Basic System Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116 6.3.2 Beamformed Pilot Transmission . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 117 6.4 Sparsification of Pilot Beamforming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118 6.4.1 Time-domain System Model without Pilot Beamforming . . . 119 6.4.2 Pilot Beamforming . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120 6.5 Channel Estimation of Beamformed Pilots . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 124 6.5.1 Recovery using Multiple Measurement Vector . . . . . . . . . 124 6.5.2 MSE Analysis . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128 6.6 Simulations and Discussion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 6.6.1 Simulation Setup . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129 6.6.2 Simulation Results . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 130 6.7 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 133 7 Conclusion 136 7.1 Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 136 7.2 Future Research Directions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139 Abstract (In Korean) 152Docto