From Linear Equalization to Lattice-Reduction-Aided Sphere-Detector as an Answer to the MIMO Detection Problematic in Spatial Multiplexing Systems

ISBN 978-953-307-223-4International audienc

MIMO-aided near-capacity turbo transceivers: taxonomy and performance versus complexity

In this treatise, we firstly review the associated Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) system theory and review the family of hard-decision and soft-decision based detection algorithms in the context of Spatial Division Multiplexing (SDM) systems. Our discussions culminate in the introduction of a range of powerful novel MIMO detectors, such as for example Markov Chain assisted Minimum Bit-Error Rate (MC-MBER) detectors, which are capable of reliably operating in the challenging high-importance rank-deficient scenarios, where there are more transmitters than receivers and hence the resultant channel-matrix becomes non-invertible. As a result, conventional detectors would exhibit a high residual error floor. We then invoke the Soft-Input Soft-Output (SISO) MIMO detectors for creating turbo-detected two- or three-stage concatenated SDM schemes and investigate their attainable performance in the light of their computational complexity. Finally, we introduce the powerful design tools of EXtrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT)-charts and characterize the achievable performance of the diverse near- capacity SISO detectors with the aid of EXIT charts

A Robust Low-Complexity MIMO Detector for Rank 4 LTE/LTE-A Systems

This paper deals with MIMO detection for rank 4 LTE systems. The paper revolves around a previously known detector [1, by Inkyu Lee, TCOM'2010] which we shall refer to as RCSMLD (Reduced-Constellation-Size-Maximum-Likelihood-Detector). However, a direct application of the scheme in [1, by Inkyu Lee, TCOM'2010] to LTE/LTE-A rank 4 test cases results in unsatisfactory performance. The first contribution of the paper is to introduce several modifications that can jointly be applied to the basic RCSMLD scheme which, taken together, result in excellent performance. Our second contribution is the development of a highly efficient hardware structure for RCSMLD that allows for an implementation with very few multiplications.Comment: Accepted for publication in PIMRC-2014, Washington DC, US

Unified bit-based probabilistic data association aided MIMO detection for high-order QAM

A unified Bit-based Probabilistic Data Association (B-PDA) detection approach is proposed for Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems employing high-order Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM). The new approach transforms the symbol detection process of QAM to a bit-based process by introducing a Unified Matrix Representation (UMR) of QAM. Both linear natural and nonlinear Gray bit-to-symbol mapping schemes are considered. Our analytical and simulation results demonstrate that the linear natural mapping based B-PDA approach attains an improved detection performance, despite dramatically reducing the computational complexity in contrast to the conventional symbol-based PDA aided MIMO detector. Furthermore, it is shown that the linear natural mapping based B-PDA method is capable of approaching the lower bound performance provided by the nonlinear Gray mapping based B-PDA MIMO detector. Since the linear natural mapping based scheme is simpler and more applicable in practice than its nonlinear Gray mapping based counterpart, we conclude that in the context of the uncoded B-PDA MIMO detector it is preferable to use the linear natural bit-to-symbol mapping, rather than the nonlinear Gray mapping

Wireless receiver designs: from information theory to VLSI implementation

Receiver design, especially equalizer design, in communications is a major concern in both academia and industry. It is a problem with both theoretical challenges and severe implementation hurdles. While much research has been focused on reducing complexity for optimal or near-optimal schemes, it is still common practice in industry to use simple techniques (such as linear equalization) that are generally significantly inferior. Although digital signal processing (DSP) technologies have been applied to wireless communications to enhance the throughput, the users' demands for more data and higher rate have revealed new challenges. For example, to collect the diversity and combat fading channels, in addition to the transmitter designs that enable the diversity, we also require the receiver to be able to collect the prepared diversity. Most wireless transmissions can be modeled as a linear block transmission system. Given a linear block transmission model assumption, maximum likelihood equalizers (MLEs) or near-ML decoders have been adopted at the receiver to collect diversity which is an important metric for performance, but these decoders exhibit high complexity. To reduce the decoding complexity, low-complexity equalizers, such as linear equalizers (LEs) and decision feedback equalizers (DFEs) are often adopted. These methods, however, may not utilize the diversity enabled by the transmitter and as a result have degraded performance compared to MLEs. In this dissertation, we will present efficient receiver designs that achieve low bit-error-rate (BER), high mutual information, and low decoding complexity. Our approach is to first investigate the error performance and mutual information of existing low-complexity equalizers to reveal the fundamental condition to achieve full diversity with LEs. We show that the fundamental condition for LEs to collect the same (outage) diversity as MLE is that the channels need to be constrained within a certain distance from orthogonality. The orthogonality deficiency (od) is adopted to quantify the distance of channels to orthogonality while other existing metrics are also introduced and compared. To meet the fundamental condition and achieve full diversity, a hybrid equalizer framework is proposed. The performance-complexity trade-off of hybrid equalizers is quantified by deriving the distribution of od. Another approach is to apply lattice reduction (LR) techniques to improve the ``quality' of channel matrices. We present two widely adopted LR methods in wireless communications, the Lenstra-Lenstra-Lovasz (LLL) algorithm [51] and Seysen's algorithm (SA), by providing detailed descriptions and pseudo codes. The properties of output matrices of the LLL algorithm and SA are also quantified. Furthermore, other LR algorithms are also briefly introduced. After introducing LR algorithms, we show how to adopt them into the wireless communication decoding process by presenting LR-aided hard-output detectors and LR-aided soft-output detectors for coded systems, respectively. We also analyze the performance of proposed efficient receivers from the perspective of diversity, mutual information, and complexity. We prove that LR techniques help to restore the diversity of low-complexity equalizers without increasing the complexity significantly. When it comes to practical systems and simulation tool, e.g., MATLAB, only finite bits are adopted to represent numbers. Therefore, we revisit the diversity analysis for finite-bit represented systems. We illustrate that the diversity of MLE for systems with finite-bit representation is determined by the number of non-vanishing eigenvalues. It is also shown that although theoretically LR-aided detectors collect the same diversity as MLE in the real/complex field, it may show different diversity orders when finite-bit representation exists. Finally, the VLSI implementation of the complex LLL algorithms is provided to verify the practicality of our proposed designs.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Ma, Xiaoli; Committee Member: Anderson, David; Committee Member: Barry, John; Committee Member: Chen, Xu-Yan; Committee Member: Kornegay, Kevi

Unified bit-based probabilistic data association aided MIMO detection for high-order QAM constellations

A unified Bit-based Probabilistic Data Association (B-PDA) detection approach is proposed for Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems employing high-order rectangular Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM). The new approach transforms the symbol detection process of QAM to a bit-based process by introducing a Unified Matrix Representation (UMR) of QAM. Both linear natural and nonlinear binary reflected Gray bit-to-symbol mappings are considered. With the aid of simulation results, we demonstrate that the linear natural mapping based B-PDA approach typically attained an improved detection performance (measured in terms of both Bit Error Ratio (BER) and Symbol Error Ratio (SER)) in comparison to the conventional symbol-based PDA aided MIMO detector, despite its dramatically reduced computational complexity. The only exception is that at low SNRs, the linear natural mapping based B-PDA is slightly inferior in terms of its BER to the conventional symbol-based PDA using binary reflected Gray mapping. Furthermore, the simulation results show that the linear natural mapping based B-PDA MIMO detector may approach the best-case performance provided by the nonlinear binary reflected Gray mapping based B-PDA MIMO detector under ideal conditions. Additionally, the implementation of the B-PDA MIMO detector is shown to be much simpler in the case of the linear natural mapping. Based on these two points, we conclude that in the context of the uncoded B-PDA MIMO detector it is preferable to use the linear natural bit-to-symbol mapping, rather than the nonlinear Gray mapping

Channel Hardening-Exploiting Message Passing (CHEMP) Receiver in Large-Scale MIMO Systems

In this paper, we propose a MIMO receiver algorithm that exploits {\em channel hardening} that occurs in large MIMO channels. Channel hardening refers to the phenomenon where the off-diagonal terms of the ${\bf H}^H{\bf H}$ matrix become increasingly weaker compared to the diagonal terms as the size of the channel gain matrix ${\bf H}$ increases. Specifically, we propose a message passing detection (MPD) algorithm which works with the real-valued matched filtered received vector (whose signal term becomes ${\bf H}^T{\bf H}{\bf x}$, where ${\bf x}$ is the transmitted vector), and uses a Gaussian approximation on the off-diagonal terms of the ${\bf H}^T{\bf H}$ matrix. We also propose a simple estimation scheme which directly obtains an estimate of ${\bf H}^T{\bf H}$ (instead of an estimate of ${\bf H}$), which is used as an effective channel estimate in the MPD algorithm. We refer to this receiver as the {\em channel hardening-exploiting message passing (CHEMP)} receiver. The proposed CHEMP receiver achieves very good performance in large-scale MIMO systems (e.g., in systems with 16 to 128 uplink users and 128 base station antennas). For the considered large MIMO settings, the complexity of the proposed MPD algorithm is almost the same as or less than that of the minimum mean square error (MMSE) detection. This is because the MPD algorithm does not need a matrix inversion. It also achieves a significantly better performance compared to MMSE and other message passing detection algorithms using MMSE estimate of ${\bf H}$. We also present a convergence analysis of the proposed MPD algorithm. Further, we design optimized irregular low density parity check (LDPC) codes specific to the considered large MIMO channel and the CHEMP receiver through EXIT chart matching. The LDPC codes thus obtained achieve improved coded bit error rate performance compared to off-the-shelf irregular LDPC codes

Design and Implementation of Efficient Algorithms for Wireless MIMO Communication Systems

En la última década, uno de los avances tecnológicos más importantes que han hecho culminar la nueva generación de banda ancha inalámbrica es la comunicación mediante sistemas de múltiples entradas y múltiples salidas (MIMO). Las tecnologías MIMO han sido adoptadas por muchos estándares inalámbricos tales como LTE, WiMAS y WLAN. Esto se debe principalmente a su capacidad de aumentar la máxima velocidad de transmisión , junto con la fiabilidad alcanzada y la cobertura de las comunicaciones inalámbricas actuales sin la necesidad de ancho de banda extra ni de potencia de transmisión adicional. Sin embargo, las ventajas proporcionadas por los sistemas MIMO se producen a expensas de un aumento sustancial del coste de implementación de múltiples antenas y de la complejidad del receptor, la cual tiene un gran impacto sobre el consumo de energía. Por esta razón, el diseño de receptores de baja complejidad es un tema importante que se abordará a lo largo de esta tesis. En primer lugar, se investiga el uso de técnicas de preprocesado de la matriz de canal MIMO bien para disminuir el coste computacional de decodificadores óptimos o bien para mejorar las prestaciones de detectores subóptimos lineales, SIC o de búsqueda en árbol. Se presenta una descripción detallada de dos técnicas de preprocesado ampliamente utilizadas: el método de Lenstra, Lenstra, Lovasz (LLL) para lattice reduction (LR) y el algorimo VBLAST ZF-DFE. Tanto la complejidad como las prestaciones de ambos métodos se han evaluado y comparado entre sí. Además, se propone una implementación de bajo coste del algoritmo VBLAST ZF-DFE, la cual se incluye en la evaluación. En segundo lugar, se ha desarrollado un detector MIMO basado en búsqueda en árbol de baja complejidad, denominado detector K-Best de amplitud variable (VB K-Best). La idea principal de este método es aprovechar el impacto del número de condición de la matriz de canal sobre la detección de datos con el fin de disminuir la complejidad de los sistemasRoger Varea, S. (2012). Design and Implementation of Efficient Algorithms for Wireless MIMO Communication Systems [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/16562Palanci