A Survey on MIMO Transmission with Discrete Input Signals: Technical Challenges, Advances, and Future Trends

Multiple antennas have been exploited for spatial multiplexing and diversity transmission in a wide range of communication applications. However, most of the advances in the design of high speed wireless multiple-input multiple output (MIMO) systems are based on information-theoretic principles that demonstrate how to efficiently transmit signals conforming to Gaussian distribution. Although the Gaussian signal is capacity-achieving, signals conforming to discrete constellations are transmitted in practical communication systems. As a result, this paper is motivated to provide a comprehensive overview on MIMO transmission design with discrete input signals. We first summarize the existing fundamental results for MIMO systems with discrete input signals. Then, focusing on the basic point-to-point MIMO systems, we examine transmission schemes based on three most important criteria for communication systems: the mutual information driven designs, the mean square error driven designs, and the diversity driven designs. Particularly, a unified framework which designs low complexity transmission schemes applicable to massive MIMO systems in upcoming 5G wireless networks is provided in the first time. Moreover, adaptive transmission designs which switch among these criteria based on the channel conditions to formulate the best transmission strategy are discussed. Then, we provide a survey of the transmission designs with discrete input signals for multiuser MIMO scenarios, including MIMO uplink transmission, MIMO downlink transmission, MIMO interference channel, and MIMO wiretap channel. Additionally, we discuss the transmission designs with discrete input signals for other systems using MIMO technology. Finally, technical challenges which remain unresolved at the time of writing are summarized and the future trends of transmission designs with discrete input signals are addressed.Comment: 110 pages, 512 references, submit to Proceedings of the IEE

Application of integer quadratic programming in detection of high-dimensional wireless systems

High-dimensional wireless systems have recently generated a great deal of interest due to their ability to accommodate increasing demands for high transmission data rates with high communication reliability. Examples of such large-scale systems include single-input, single-output symbol spread OFDM system, large-scale single-user multi-input multi-output (MIMO) OFDM systems, and large-scale multiuser MIMO systems. In these systems, the number of symbols required to be jointly detected at the receiver is relatively large. The challenge with the practical realization of these systems is to design a detection scheme that provides high communication reliability with reasonable computational complexity, even as the number of simultaneously transmitted independent communication signals becomes very large.^ Most of the optimal or near-optimal detection techniques that have been proposed in the literature of relatively low-dimensional wireless systems, such as MIMO systems in which number of antennas is less than 10, become problematic for high-dimensional detection problems. That is, their performance degrades or the computational complexity becomes prohibitive, especially when higher-order QAM constellations are employed.^ In the first part of this thesis, we propose a near-optimal detection technique which offers a flexible trade-off between complexity and performance. The proposed technique formulates the detection problem in terms of Integer Quadratic Programming (IQP), which is then solved through a controlled Branch and Bound (BB) search tree algorithm. In addition to providing good performance, an important feature of this approach is that its computational complexity remains roughly the same even as we increase the constellation order from 4-QAM to 256-QAM. The performance of the proposed algorithm is investigated for both symbol spread OFDM systems and large-scale MIMO systems with both frequency selective and at fading channels.^ The second part of this work focuses on a reduced complexity version of IQP referred to as relaxed quadratic programming (QP). In particular, QP is used to reformulate two widely used detection schemes for MIMO OFDM: (1) Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC) and (2) Iterative Detecting and Decoding (IDD). First, SIC-based algorithms are derived via a QP formulation in contrast to using a linear MMSE detector at each stage. The resulting QP-SIC algorithms offer lower computational complexity than the SIC schemes that employ linear MMSE at each stage, especially when the dimension of the received signal vector is high. Three versions of QP-SIC are proposed based on various trade-offs between complexity and receiver performance; each of the three QP-SIC algorithms outperforms existing SIC techniques. Second, IDD-based algorithms are developed using a QP detector. We show how the soft information, in terms of the Log Likelihood Ratio (LLR), can be extracted from the QP detector. Further, the procedure for incorporating the a-priori information that is passed from the channel decoder to the QP detector is developed. Simulation results are presented demonstrating that the use of QP in IDD offers improved performance at the cost of a reasonable increase in complexity compared to linear detectors

Adaptive Baseband Pro cessing and Configurable Hardware for Wireless Communication

The world of information is literally at one’s fingertips, allowing access to previously unimaginable amounts of data, thanks to advances in wireless communication. The growing demand for high speed data has necessitated theuse of wider bandwidths, and wireless technologies such as Multiple-InputMultiple-Output (MIMO) have been adopted to increase spectral efficiency.These advanced communication technologies require sophisticated signal processing, often leading to higher power consumption and reduced battery life.Therefore, increasing energy efficiency of baseband hardware for MIMO signal processing has become extremely vital. High Quality of Service (QoS)requirements invariably lead to a larger number of computations and a higherpower dissipation. However, recognizing the dynamic nature of the wirelesscommunication medium in which only some channel scenarios require complexsignal processing, and that not all situations call for high data rates, allowsthe use of an adaptive channel aware signal processing strategy to provide adesired QoS. Information such as interference conditions, coherence bandwidthand Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) can be used to reduce algorithmic computations in favorable channels. Hardware circuits which run these algorithmsneed flexibility and easy reconfigurability to switch between multiple designsfor different parameters. These parameters can be used to tune the operations of different components in a receiver based on feedback from the digitalbaseband. This dissertation focuses on the optimization of digital basebandcircuitry of receivers which use feedback to trade power and performance. Aco-optimization approach, where designs are optimized starting from the algorithmic stage through the hardware architectural stage to the final circuitimplementation is adopted to realize energy efficient digital baseband hardwarefor mobile 4G devices. These concepts are also extended to the next generation5G systems where the energy efficiency of the base station is improved.This work includes six papers that examine digital circuits in MIMO wireless receivers. Several key blocks in these receiver include analog circuits thathave residual non-linearities, leading to signal intermodulation and distortion.Paper-I introduces a digital technique to detect such non-linearities and calibrate analog circuits to improve signal quality. The concept of a digital nonlinearity tuning system developed in Paper-I is implemented and demonstratedin hardware. The performance of this implementation is tested with an analogchannel select filter, and results are presented in Paper-II. MIMO systems suchas the ones used in 4G, may employ QR Decomposition (QRD) processors tosimplify the implementation of tree search based signal detectors. However,the small form factor of the mobile device increases spatial correlation, whichis detrimental to signal multiplexing. Consequently, a QRD processor capableof handling high spatial correlation is presented in Paper-III. The algorithm and hardware implementation are optimized for carrier aggregation, which increases requirements on signal processing throughput, leading to higher powerdissipation. Paper-IV presents a method to perform channel-aware processingwith a simple interpolation strategy to adaptively reduce QRD computationcount. Channel properties such as coherence bandwidth and SNR are used toreduce multiplications by 40% to 80%. These concepts are extended to usetime domain correlation properties, and a full QRD processor for 4G systemsfabricated in 28 nm FD-SOI technology is presented in Paper-V. The designis implemented with a configurable architecture and measurements show thatcircuit tuning results in a highly energy efficient processor, requiring 0.2 nJ to1.3 nJ for each QRD. Finally, these adaptive channel-aware signal processingconcepts are examined in the scope of the next generation of communicationsystems. Massive MIMO systems increase spectral efficiency by using a largenumber of antennas at the base station. Consequently, the signal processingat the base station has a high computational count. Paper-VI presents a configurable detection scheme which reduces this complexity by using techniquessuch as selective user detection and interpolation based signal processing. Hardware is optimized for resource sharing, resulting in a highly reconfigurable andenergy efficient uplink signal detector