Receive Combining vs. Multi-Stream Multiplexing in Downlink Systems with Multi-Antenna Users

In downlink multi-antenna systems with many users, the multiplexing gain is strictly limited by the number of transmit antennas $N$ and the use of these antennas. Assuming that the total number of receive antennas at the multi-antenna users is much larger than $N$, the maximal multiplexing gain can be achieved with many different transmission/reception strategies. For example, the excess number of receive antennas can be utilized to schedule users with effective channels that are near-orthogonal, for multi-stream multiplexing to users with well-conditioned channels, and/or to enable interference-aware receive combining. In this paper, we try to answer the question if the $N$ data streams should be divided among few users (many streams per user) or many users (few streams per user, enabling receive combining). Analytic results are derived to show how user selection, spatial correlation, heterogeneous user conditions, and imperfect channel acquisition (quantization or estimation errors) affect the performance when sending the maximal number of streams or one stream per scheduled user---the two extremes in data stream allocation. While contradicting observations on this topic have been reported in prior works, we show that selecting many users and allocating one stream per user (i.e., exploiting receive combining) is the best candidate under realistic conditions. This is explained by the provably stronger resilience towards spatial correlation and the larger benefit from multi-user diversity. This fundamental result has positive implications for the design of downlink systems as it reduces the hardware requirements at the user devices and simplifies the throughput optimization.Comment: Published in IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 16 pages, 11 figures. The results can be reproduced using the following Matlab code: https://github.com/emilbjornson/one-or-multiple-stream

On the Area Energy Efficiency of Multiple Transmit Antenna Small Base Stations

We analyze the area energy efficiency (AEE) of spatial multiplexing (SM) and transmit antenna selection (TAS), considering a realistic power consumption model for small base stations (BSs), which includes the power consumed by the backhaul as well as different interference attenuation levels. Our results show an optimum number of BSs for each technique that maximizes the AEE. Moreover, we also show that TAS has a larger AEE than SM when the demand for system capacity is low, while SM becomes more energy efficient when the demanded capacity is larger. Additionally, when the capacity demand and the area to be covered are fixed, the number of BSs needed to be deployed is smaller for SM than for the other techniques. Finally, the system performance in terms of AEE is shown to be strongly dependent on the amount of interference, which in turn depends on the employed interference-mitigation scheme, and on the employed power consumption model

5G green cellular networks considering power allocation schemes

It is important to assess the effect of transmit power allocation schemes on the energy consumption on random cellular networks. The energy efficiency of 5G green cellular networks with average and water-filling power allocation schemes is studied in this paper. Based on the proposed interference and achievable rate model, an energy efficiency model is proposed for MIMO random cellular networks. Furthermore, the energy efficiency with average and water-filling power allocation schemes are presented, respectively. Numerical results indicate that the maximum limits of energy efficiency are always there for MIMO random cellular networks with different intensity ratios of mobile stations (MSs) to base stations (BSs) and channel conditions. Compared with the average power allocation scheme, the water-filling scheme is shown to improve the energy efficiency of MIMO random cellular networks when channel state information (CSI) is attainable for both transmitters and receivers.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure

Downlink Energy Efficiency Analysis of Some Multiple Antenna Systems

In this paper we compare the energy efficiency of different multiple antenna transmission schemes for long-range wireless networks, assuming a realistic power consumption model. We consider the downlink, between a base station and a mobile station, in which the Alamouti scheme, transmit beamforming, receive diversity, spatial multiplexing, and transmit antenna selection are compared. Our analysis shows that, for different types of base stations, outage probability requirements and spectral efficiencies, the transmit antenna selection scheme is in general the most energy efficient option. Although antenna selection is not the best in terms of outage probability, it becomes the most efficient in terms of overall power consumption as it requires a single radio-frequency chain to obtain spatial diversity

Massive MIMO for Internet of Things (IoT) Connectivity

Massive MIMO is considered to be one of the key technologies in the emerging 5G systems, but also a concept applicable to other wireless systems. Exploiting the large number of degrees of freedom (DoFs) of massive MIMO essential for achieving high spectral efficiency, high data rates and extreme spatial multiplexing of densely distributed users. On the one hand, the benefits of applying massive MIMO for broadband communication are well known and there has been a large body of research on designing communication schemes to support high rates. On the other hand, using massive MIMO for Internet-of-Things (IoT) is still a developing topic, as IoT connectivity has requirements and constraints that are significantly different from the broadband connections. In this paper we investigate the applicability of massive MIMO to IoT connectivity. Specifically, we treat the two generic types of IoT connections envisioned in 5G: massive machine-type communication (mMTC) and ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC). This paper fills this important gap by identifying the opportunities and challenges in exploiting massive MIMO for IoT connectivity. We provide insights into the trade-offs that emerge when massive MIMO is applied to mMTC or URLLC and present a number of suitable communication schemes. The discussion continues to the questions of network slicing of the wireless resources and the use of massive MIMO to simultaneously support IoT connections with very heterogeneous requirements. The main conclusion is that massive MIMO can bring benefits to the scenarios with IoT connectivity, but it requires tight integration of the physical-layer techniques with the protocol design.Comment: Submitted for publicatio