Optimizing communication performance of low-resolution ADC systems with hybrid beamforming

Low-resolution analog-to-digital converter (ADC) systems and hybrid analog-and-digital beamforming systems have drawn extensive attention as a promising receiver architecture for millimeter wave (mmWave) communications by reducing hardware cost and power consumption. In this dissertation, hybrid beamforming systems that employ low-resolution ADCs are considered to achieve a better trade-off between communication performance and power consumption. Due to non-negligible quantization errors, however, existing state-of-the-art hybrid beamforming techniques cannot be directly applied to such systems as they ignore the impact of the quantization error. In this regard, I propose new receiver architectures and algorithms for hybrid beamforming with low-resolution ADC systems to enhance spectral efficiency under coarse quantization in different layers of the network stack, and provide subsequent analyses. First, problems of optimizing the number of ADC bits and designing analog combiners with fixed-resolution ADCs are tackled to design an energy-efficient receiver architecture with phase shifter-based hybrid beamforming. A hybrid receiver architecture with resolution-adaptive ADCs for mmWave communications is proposed to optimize the power distribution over ADCs. For the proposed architecture, a near-optimal bit-allocation solution is derived in closed form. In addition, the performance lower bound of the proposed receiver architecture is derived in ergodic rate. For a fixed-resolution ADC system, a new analog combining architecture is proposed for mmWave communications. The proposed analog combiner consists of two consecutive analog combiners that maximize channel gain and minimize effective quantization error. An approximated ergodic rate of the proposed receiver is also derived in closed form. Next, considering switch-based analog beamforming, antenna selection at a base station is investigated for low-resolution ADC systems. Unlike downlink transmit antenna selection problems, a quantization-aware antenna selection criterion is necessary and derived to incorporate quantization error for uplink receive antenna selection problems. Leveraging the criterion, a quantization-aware antenna selection algorithm is proposed and analyzed for uplink. Last, in a higher layer of the network stack, a user scheduling problem is investigated for hybrid beamforming systems with low-resolution ADCs. New user scheduling criteria are derived to maximize scheduling gain under coarse quantization and efficient scheduling algorithms are proposed accordingly. Subsequent analysis for the proposed algorithm provides closed-form ergodic ratesElectrical and Computer Engineerin

Reduced Switching Connectivity for Large Scale Antenna Selection

In this paper, we explore reduced-connectivity radio frequency (RF) switching networks for reducing the analog hardware complexity and switching power losses in antenna selection (AS) systems. In particular, we analyze different hardware architectures for implementing the RF switching matrices required in AS designs with a reduced number of RF chains. We explicitly show that fully-flexible switching matrices, which facilitate the selection of any possible subset of antennas and attain the maximum theoretical sum rates of AS, present numerous drawbacks such as the introduction of significant insertion losses, particularly pronounced in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. Since these disadvantages make fully-flexible switching suboptimal in the energy efficiency sense, we further consider partially-connected switching networks as an alternative switching architecture with reduced hardware complexity, which we characterize in this work. In this context, we also analyze the impact of reduced switching connectivity on the analog hardware and digital signal processing of AS schemes that rely on channel power information. Overall, the analytical and simulation results shown in this paper demonstrate that partially-connected switching maximizes the energy efficiency of massive MIMO systems for a reduced number of RF chains, while fully-flexible switching offers sub-optimal energy efficiency benefits due to its significant switching power losses.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figure

Multipair Massive MIMO Relaying Systems with One-Bit ADCs and DACs

This paper considers a multipair amplify-and-forward massive MIMO relaying system with one-bit ADCs and one-bit DACs at the relay. The channel state information is estimated via pilot training, and then utilized by the relay to perform simple maximum-ratio combining/maximum-ratio transmission processing. Leveraging on the Bussgang decomposition, an exact achievable rate is derived for the system with correlated quantization noise. Based on this, a closed-form asymptotic approximation for the achievable rate is presented, thereby enabling efficient evaluation of the impact of key parameters on the system performance. Furthermore, power scaling laws are characterized to study the potential energy efficiency associated with deploying massive one-bit antenna arrays at the relay. In addition, a power allocation strategy is designed to compensate for the rate degradation caused by the coarse quantization. Our results suggest that the quality of the channel estimates depends on the specific orthogonal pilot sequences that are used, contrary to unquantized systems where any set of orthogonal pilot sequences gives the same result. Moreover, the sum rate gap between the double-quantized relay system and an ideal non-quantized system is a moderate factor of $4/\pi^2$ in the low power regime.Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures, submitted to IEEE Trans. Signal Processin

Performance Analysis of Quantized Uplink Massive MIMO-OFDM With Oversampling Under Adjacent Channel Interference

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems have attracted much attention lately due to the many advantages they provide over single-antenna systems. Owing to the many antennas, low-cost implementation and low power consumption per antenna are desired. To that end, massive MIMO structures with low-resolution analog-to-digital converters (ADC) have been investigated in many studies. However, the effect of a strong interferer in the adjacent band on quantized massive MIMO systems have not been examined yet. In this study, we analyze the performance of uplink massive MIMO with low-resolution ADCs under frequency selective fading with orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) in the perfect and imperfect receiver channel state information cases. We derive analytical expressions for the bit error rate and ergodic capacity. We show that the interfering band can be suppressed by increasing the number of antennas or the oversampling rate when a zero-forcing receiver is employed

A Mixed-ADC Receiver Architecture for Massive MIMO Systems

Motivated by the demand for energy-efficient communication solutions in the next generation cellular network, a mixed-ADC receiver architecture for massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems is proposed, which differs from previous works in that herein one-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) partially replace the conventionally assumed high-resolution ADCs. The information-theoretic tool of generalized mutual information (GMI) is exploited to analyze the achievable data rates of the proposed system architecture and an array of analytical results of engineering interest are obtained. For deterministic single input multiple output (SIMO) channels, a closed-form expression of the GMI is derived, based on which the linear combiner is optimized. Then, the asymptotic behaviors of the GMI in both low and high SNR regimes are explored, and the analytical results suggest a plausible ADC assignment scheme. Finally, the analytical framework is applied to the multi-user access scenario, and the corresponding numerical results demonstrate that the mixed system architecture with a relatively small number of high-resolution ADCs is able to achieve a large fraction of the channel capacity without output quantization.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figures, to appear in IEEE Information Theory Workshop (ITW2015