Adaptive Multicell 3D Beamforming in Multi-Antenna Cellular Networks

We consider a cellular network with multi-antenna base stations (BSs) and single-antenna users, multicell cooperation, imperfect channel state information, and directional antennas each with a vertically adjustable beam. We investigate the impact of the elevation angle of the BS antenna pattern, denoted as tilt, on the performance of the considered network when employing either a conventional single-cell transmission or a fully cooperative multicell transmission. Using the results of this investigation, we propose a novel hybrid multicell cooperation technique in which the intercell interference is controlled via either cooperative beamforming in the horizontal plane or coordinated beamfroming in the vertical plane of the wireless channel, denoted as adaptive multicell 3D beamforming. The main idea is to divide the coverage area into two disjoint vertical regions and adapt the multicell cooperation strategy at the BSs when serving each region. A fair scheduler is used to share the time-slots between the vertical regions. It is shown that the proposed technique can achieve performance comparable to that of a fully cooperative transmission but with a significantly lower complexity and signaling requirements. To make the performance analysis computationally efficient, analytical expressions for the user ergodic rates under different beamforming strategies are also derived.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Transaction on Vehicular Technolog

Non-cooperative Feedback Rate Control Game for Channel State Information in Wireless Networks

It has been well recognized that channel state information (CSI) feedback is of great importance for dowlink transmissions of closed-loop wireless networks. However, the existing work typically researched the CSI feedback problem for each individual mobile station (MS), and thus, cannot efficiently model the interactions among self-interested mobile users in the network level. To this end, in this paper, we propose an alternative approach to investigate the CSI feedback rate control problem in the analytical setting of a game theoretic framework, in which a multiple-antenna base station (BS) communicates with a number of co-channel MSs through linear precoder. Specifically, we first present a non-cooperative feedback-rate control game (NFC), in which each MS selects the feedback rate to maximize its performance in a distributed way. To improve efficiency from a social optimum point of view, we then introduce pricing, called the non-cooperative feedback-rate control game with price (NFCP). The game utility is defined as the performance gain by CSI feedback minus the price as a linear function of the CSI feedback rate. The existence of the Nash equilibrium of such games is investigated, and two types of feedback protocols (FDMA and CSMA) are studied. Simulation results show that by adjusting the pricing factor, the distributed NFCP game results in close optimal performance compared with that of the centralized scheme.Comment: 26 pages, 10 figures; IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications, special issue on Game Theory in Wireless Communications, 201