A Tutorial on Interference Exploitation via Symbol-Level Precoding: Overview, State-of-the-Art and Future Directions

IEEE Interference is traditionally viewed as a performance limiting factor in wireless communication systems, which is to be minimized or mitigated. Nevertheless, a recent line of work has shown that by manipulating the interfering signals such that they add up constructively at the receiver side, known interference can be made beneficial and further improve the system performance in a variety of wireless scenarios, achieved by symbol-level precoding (SLP). This paper aims to provide a tutorial on interference exploitation techniques from the perspective of precoding design in a multi-antenna wireless communication system, by beginning with the classification of constructive interference (CI) and destructive interference (DI). The definition for CI is presented and the corresponding mathematical characterization is formulated for popular modulation types, based on which optimization-based precoding techniques are discussed. In addition, the extension of CI precoding to other application scenarios as well as for hardware efficiency is also described. Proof-of-concept testbeds are demonstrated for the potential practical implementation of CI precoding, and finally a list of open problems and practical challenges are presented to inspire and motivate further research directions in this area

Interference Exploitation via Symbol-Level Precoding: Overview, State-of-the-Art and Future Directions

Interference is traditionally viewed as a performance limiting factor in wireless communication systems, which is to be minimized or mitigated. Nevertheless, a recent line of work has shown that by manipulating the interfering signals such that they add up constructively at the receiver side, known interference can be made beneficial and further improve the system performance in a variety of wireless scenarios, achieved by symbol-level precoding (SLP). This paper aims to provide a tutorial on interference exploitation techniques from the perspective of precoding design in a multi-antenna wireless communication system, by beginning with the classification of constructive interference (CI) and destructive interference (DI). The definition for CI is presented and the corresponding mathematical characterization is formulated for popular modulation types, based on which optimization-based precoding techniques are discussed. In addition, the extension of CI precoding to other application scenarios as well as for hardware efficiency is also described. Proof-of-concept testbeds are demonstrated for the potential practical implementation of CI precoding, and finally a list of open problems and practical challenges are presented to inspire and motivate further research directions in this area

Interference Exploitation 1-Bit Massive MIMO Precoding: A Partial Branch-and-Bound Solution With Near-Optimal Performance

In this paper, we focus on 1-bit precoding approaches for downlink massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, where we exploit the concept of constructive interference (CI). For both PSK and QAM signaling, we firstly formulate the optimization problem that maximizes the CI effect subject to the requirement of the 1-bit transmit signals. We then mathematically prove that, when employing the CI formulation and relaxing the 1-bit constraint, the majority of the transmit signals already satisfy the 1-bit formulation. Building upon this important observation, we propose a 1-bit precoding approach that further improves the performance of the conventional 1-bit CI precoding via a partial branch-and-bound (P-BB) process, where the BB procedure is performed only for the entries that do not comply with the 1-bit requirement. This operation allows a significant complexity reduction compared to the fully-BB (F-BB) process, and enables the BB framework to be applicable to the complex massive MIMO scenarios. We further develop an alternative 1-bit scheme through an ‘Ordered Partial Sequential Update’ (OPSU) process that allows an additional complexity reduction. Numerical results show that both proposed 1-bit precoding methods exhibit a significant signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) gain for the error rate performance, especially for higher-order modulations

Interference driven antenna selection for Massive Multi-User MIMO

Low-complexity linear precoders are known to be close-to-optimal for massive multi-input multi-output (M-MIMO) systems. However, the large number of antennas at the transmitter imposes high computational burdens and high hardware overloads. In line with the above, in this paper we propose a low complexity antenna selection (AS) scheme which selects the antennas that maximize constructive interference between the users. Our analyses show that the proposed AS algorithm, in combination with a simple matched filter (MF) precoder at the transmitter, is able to achieve better performances than systems equipped with a more complex channel inversion (CI) precoder and computationally expensive AS techniques. First, we give an analytical definition of constructive and destructive interference, based on the phase of the received signals from phase-shifted-keying (PSK) modulated transmissions. Then, we introduce the proposed antenna selection algorithm, which identifies the antenna subset with the highest constructive interference, maximizing the power received by the user. In our studies, we derive the computational burden of the proposed technique with a rigorous and thorough analysis and we identify a closed form expression of the upper bound received power at the user side. In addition, we evaluate in detail the power benefits of the proposed transmission scheme by defining an efficiency metric based on the achieved throughput. The results presented in this paper prove that antenna selection and green radio concepts can be jointly used for power efficient M-MIMO, as they lead to significant power savings and complexity reductions

A Reduced Complexity Ungerboeck Receiver for Quantized Wideband Massive SC-MIMO

Employing low resolution analog-to-digital converters in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) has many advantages in terms of total power consumption, cost and feasibility of such systems. However, such advantages come together with significant challenges in channel estimation and data detection due to the severe quantization noise present. In this study, we propose a novel iterative receiver for quantized uplink single carrier MIMO (SC-MIMO) utilizing an efficient message passing algorithm based on the Bussgang decomposition and Ungerboeck factorization, which avoids the use of a complex whitening filter. A reduced state sequence estimator with bidirectional decision feedback is also derived, achieving remarkable complexity reduction compared to the existing receivers for quantized SC-MIMO in the literature, without any requirement on the sparsity of the transmission channel. Moreover, the linear minimum mean-square-error (LMMSE) channel estimator for SC-MIMO under frequency-selective channel, which do not require any cyclic-prefix overhead, is also derived. We observe that the proposed receiver has significant performance gains with respect to the existing receivers in the literature under imperfect channel state information.Comment: This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publication. Copyright may be transferred without notice, after which this version may no longer be accessibl

Multiple-Antenna Systems: From Generic to Hardware-Informed Precoding Designs

5G-and-beyond communication systems are expected to be in a heterogeneous form of multiple-antenna cellular base stations (BSs) overlaid with small cells. The fully-digital BS structures can incur significant power consumption and hardware complexity. Moreover, the wireless BSs for small cells usually have strict size constraints, which incur additional hardware effects such as mutual coupling (MC). Consequently, the transmission techniques designed for future wireless communication systems should respect the hardware structures at the BSs. For this reason, in this thesis we extend generic downlink precoding to more advanced hardware-informed transmission techniques for a variety of BS structures. This thesis firstly extends the vector perturbation (VP) precoding to multiple-modulation scenarios, where existing VP-based techniques are sub-optimal. Subsequently, this thesis focuses on the downlink transmission designs for hardware effects in the form of MC, limited number of radio frequency (RF) chains, and low-precision digital-to-analog converters (DACs). For these scenarios, existing precoding techniques are either sub-optimal or not directly applicable due to the specific hardware constraints. In this context, this thesis first proposes analog-digital (AD) precoding methods for MC exploitation in compact single-user multiple-antenna systems with the concept of constructive interference, and further extends the idea of MC exploitation to multi-user scenarios with a joint optimisation on the precoding matrix and the mutual coupling effect. We further consider precoding for wireless BSs with a limited number of RF chains, in the form of compact parasitic antenna array as well as hybrid analog-digital structures designed for large-scale multiple-antenna systems. In addition, with a reformulation of the constructive interference, this thesis also considers the low-complexity precoding design for the use of low-resolution DACs for a massive-antenna array at the BSs. Analytical and numerical results reveal an improved performance of the proposed techniques compared to the state-of-the-art approaches, which validates the effectiveness of the introduced methods

Energy Efficient Large Scale Antenna Systems for 5G Communications and Beyond

The increasing popularity of mobile devices has fueled an exponential growth in data traffic. This phenomenon has led to the development of systems that achieve higher spectral efficiencies, at the cost of higher power consumptions. Consequently, the investigation on solutions that allow to increase the maximum throughput together with the energy efficiency becomes crucial for modern wireless systems. This thesis aims to improve the trade-off between performances and power consumption with special focus toward multiuser multiple-antenna communications, due to their promising benefits in terms of spectral efficiency. Research envisaged massive Multi-Input-Multi-Output (MIMO) systems as the main technology to meet these data traffic demands, as very large arrays lead to unprecedented data throughputs and beamforming gains. However, larger arrays lead to increased power consumption and hardware complexity, as each radiating element requires a radio frequency chain, which is accountable for the highest percentage of the total power consumption. Nonetheless, the availability of a large number of antennas unveils the possibility to wisely select a subset of radiating elements. This thesis shows that multiuser interference can be exploited to increase the received power, with significant circuit power savings at the base station. Similarly, millimeter-wave communications experienced raising interest among the scientific community because of their multi-GHz bandwidth and their ability to place large arrays in limited physical spaces. Millimeter-wave systems inherit same benefits and weaknesses of massive MIMO communications. However, antenna selection is not viable in millimeter-wave communications because they rely on high beamforming gains. Therefore, this thesis proposes a scheme that is able to reduce the number of radio frequency chains required, while achieving close-to-optimal performances. Analytical and numerical results show that the proposed techniques are able to improve the overall energy efficiency with respect to the state-of-the-art, hence proving to be valid candidates for practical implementations of modern communication systems

Massive MIMO 1-Bit DAC Transmission: A Low-Complexity Symbol Scaling Approach

CCBY We study multi-user massive multiple-input singleoutput (MISO) systems and focus on downlink transmission for PSK modulation, where the base station (BS) employs a large antenna array with low-cost 1-bit digital-to-analog converters (DACs). The direct combination of existing beamforming schemes with 1-bit DACs is shown to lead to an error floor at mediumto- high SNR regime, due to the coarse quantization of the DACs with limited precision. In this paper, based on the constructive interference we consider both a quantized linear beamforming scheme where we analytically obtain the optimal beamforming matrix, and a non-linear mapping scheme where we directly design the transmit signal vector. Due to the 1-bit quantization, the formulated optimization for the non-linear mapping scheme is shown to be non-convex. The non-convex constraints of the 1-bit DACs are firstly relaxed into convex, followed by an element-wise normalization to satisfy the 1-bit DAC transmission. We further propose a low-complexity symbol scaling scheme that consists of three stages, in which the quantized transmit signal on each antenna element is selected sequentially. Numerical results show that the proposed symbol scaling scheme achieves a comparable performance to the optimization-based non-linear mapping approach, while the corresponding performance-complexity tradeoff is more favorable for the proposed symbol scaling method