A Practical Cooperative Multicell MIMO-OFDMA Network Based on Rank Coordination

An important challenge of wireless networks is to boost the cell edge performance and enable multi-stream transmissions to cell edge users. Interference mitigation techniques relying on multiple antennas and coordination among cells are nowadays heavily studied in the literature. Typical strategies in OFDMA networks include coordinated scheduling, beamforming and power control. In this paper, we propose a novel and practical type of coordination for OFDMA downlink networks relying on multiple antennas at the transmitter and the receiver. The transmission ranks, i.e.\ the number of transmitted streams, and the user scheduling in all cells are jointly optimized in order to maximize a network utility function accounting for fairness among users. A distributed coordinated scheduler motivated by an interference pricing mechanism and relying on a master-slave architecture is introduced. The proposed scheme is operated based on the user report of a recommended rank for the interfering cells accounting for the receiver interference suppression capability. It incurs a very low feedback and backhaul overhead and enables efficient link adaptation. It is moreover robust to channel measurement errors and applicable to both open-loop and closed-loop MIMO operations. A 20% cell edge performance gain over uncoordinated LTE-A system is shown through system level simulations.Comment: IEEE Transactions or Wireless Communications, Accepted for Publicatio

A Survey of Physical Layer Security Techniques for 5G Wireless Networks and Challenges Ahead

Physical layer security which safeguards data confidentiality based on the information-theoretic approaches has received significant research interest recently. The key idea behind physical layer security is to utilize the intrinsic randomness of the transmission channel to guarantee the security in physical layer. The evolution towards 5G wireless communications poses new challenges for physical layer security research. This paper provides a latest survey of the physical layer security research on various promising 5G technologies, including physical layer security coding, massive multiple-input multiple-output, millimeter wave communications, heterogeneous networks, non-orthogonal multiple access, full duplex technology, etc. Technical challenges which remain unresolved at the time of writing are summarized and the future trends of physical layer security in 5G and beyond are discussed.Comment: To appear in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communication

Adaptive Power Allocation and Control in Time-Varying Multi-Carrier MIMO Networks

In this paper, we examine the fundamental trade-off between radiated power and achieved throughput in wireless multi-carrier, multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) systems that vary with time in an unpredictable fashion (e.g. due to changes in the wireless medium or the users' QoS requirements). Contrary to the static/stationary channel regime, there is no optimal power allocation profile to target (either static or in the mean), so the system's users must adapt to changes in the environment "on the fly", without being able to predict the system's evolution ahead of time. In this dynamic context, we formulate the users' power/throughput trade-off as an online optimization problem and we provide a matrix exponential learning algorithm that leads to no regret - i.e. the proposed transmit policy is asymptotically optimal in hindsight, irrespective of how the system evolves over time. Furthermore, we also examine the robustness of the proposed algorithm under imperfect channel state information (CSI) and we show that it retains its regret minimization properties under very mild conditions on the measurement noise statistics. As a result, users are able to track the evolution of their individually optimum transmit profiles remarkably well, even under rapidly changing network conditions and high uncertainty. Our theoretical analysis is validated by extensive numerical simulations corresponding to a realistic network deployment and providing further insights in the practical implementation aspects of the proposed algorithm.Comment: 25 pages, 4 figure

Principles of Physical Layer Security in Multiuser Wireless Networks: A Survey

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the domain of physical layer security in multiuser wireless networks. The essential premise of physical-layer security is to enable the exchange of confidential messages over a wireless medium in the presence of unauthorized eavesdroppers without relying on higher-layer encryption. This can be achieved primarily in two ways: without the need for a secret key by intelligently designing transmit coding strategies, or by exploiting the wireless communication medium to develop secret keys over public channels. The survey begins with an overview of the foundations dating back to the pioneering work of Shannon and Wyner on information-theoretic security. We then describe the evolution of secure transmission strategies from point-to-point channels to multiple-antenna systems, followed by generalizations to multiuser broadcast, multiple-access, interference, and relay networks. Secret-key generation and establishment protocols based on physical layer mechanisms are subsequently covered. Approaches for secrecy based on channel coding design are then examined, along with a description of inter-disciplinary approaches based on game theory and stochastic geometry. The associated problem of physical-layer message authentication is also introduced briefly. The survey concludes with observations on potential research directions in this area.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, 303 refs. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1303.1609 by other authors. IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials, 201

Resource Allocation for Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output Interference Networks

To meet the exponentially increasing traffic data driven by the rapidly growing mobile subscriptions, both industry and academia are exploring the potential of a new genera- tion (5G) of wireless technologies. An important 5G goal is to achieve high data rate. Small cells with spectrum sharing and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques are one of the most promising 5G technologies, since it enables to increase the aggregate data rate by improving the spectral efficiency, nodes density and transmission bandwidth, respectively. However, the increased interference in the densified networks will in return limit the achievable rate performance if not properly managed. The considered setup can be modeled as MIMO interference networks, which can be classified into the K-user MIMO interference channel (IC) and the K-cell MIMO interfering broadcast channel/multiple access channel (MIMO-IBC/IMAC) according to the number of mobile stations (MSs) simultaneously served by each base station (BS). The thesis considers two physical layer (PHY) resource allocation problems that deal with the interference for both models: 1) Pareto boundary computation for the achiev- able rate region in a K-user single-stream MIMO IC and 2) grouping-based interference alignment (GIA) with optimized IA-Cell assignment in a MIMO-IMAC under limited feedback. In each problem, the thesis seeks to provide a deeper understanding of the system and novel mathematical results, along with supporting numerical examples. Some of the main contributions can be summarized as follows. It is an open problem to compute the Pareto boundary of the achievable rate region for a K-user single-stream MIMO IC. The K-user single-stream MIMO IC models multiple transmitter-receiver pairs which operate over the same spectrum simultaneously. Each transmitter and each receiver is equipped with multiple antennas, and a single desired data stream is communicated in each transmitter-receiver link. The individual achievable rates of the K users form a K-dimensional achievable rate region. To find efficient operating points in the achievable rate region, the Pareto boundary computation problem, which can be formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem, needs to be solved. The thesis transforms the multi-objective optimization problem to two single-objective optimization problems–single constraint rate maximization problem and alternating rate profile optimization problem, based on the formulations of the ε-constraint optimization and the weighted Chebyshev optimization, respectively. The thesis proposes two alternating optimization algorithms to solve both single-objective optimization problems. The convergence of both algorithms is guaranteed. Also, a heuristic initialization scheme is provided for each algorithm to achieve a high-quality solution. By varying the weights in each single-objective optimization problem, numerical results show that both algorithms provide an inner bound very close to the Pareto boundary. Furthermore, the thesis also computes some key points exactly on the Pareto boundary in closed-form. A framework for interference alignment (IA) under limited feedback is proposed for a MIMO-IMAC. The MIMO-IMAC well matches the uplink scenario in cellular system, where multiple cells share their spectrum and operate simultaneously. In each cell, a BS receives the desired signals from multiple MSs within its own cell and each BS and each MS is equipped with multi-antenna. By allowing the inter-cell coordination, the thesis develops a distributed IA framework under limited feedback from three aspects: the GIA, the IA-Cell assignment and dynamic feedback bit allocation (DBA), respec- tively. Firstly, the thesis provides a complete study along with some new improvements of the GIA, which enables to compute the exact IA precoders in closed-form, based on local channel state information at the receiver (CSIR). Secondly, the concept of IA-Cell assignment is introduced and its effect on the achievable rate and degrees of freedom (DoF) performance is analyzed. Two distributed matching approaches and one centralized assignment approach are proposed to find a good IA-Cell assignment in three scenrios with different backhaul overhead. Thirdly, under limited feedback, the thesis derives an upper bound of the residual interference to noise ratio (RINR), formulates and solves a corresponding DBA problem. Finally, numerical results show that the proposed GIA with optimized IA-Cell assignment and the DBA greatly outperforms the traditional GIA algorithm

Power-Efficient Radio Resource Allocation for Low-Medium -Altitude Aerial Platform Based TD-LTE Networks

In order to provide an increased capacity, throughput and QoS guarantee for terrestrial users in emergency scenarios, a low-medium-altitude aerial platform based time-division-duplex long term evolution (TD-LTE) system referred to as Aerial LTE, is presented in this paper. Additionally a power-efficient radio resource allocation mechanism is proposed for both the Aerial LTE downlink and uplink, which is modeled as a cooperative game. Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm imposes an attractive tradeoff between the achievable throughput and the power consumption while ensuring fairness among users

Separation Framework: An Enabler for Cooperative and D2D Communication for Future 5G Networks

Soaring capacity and coverage demands dictate that future cellular networks need to soon migrate towards ultra-dense networks. However, network densification comes with a host of challenges that include compromised energy efficiency, complex interference management, cumbersome mobility management, burdensome signaling overheads and higher backhaul costs. Interestingly, most of the problems, that beleaguer network densification, stem from legacy networks' one common feature i.e., tight coupling between the control and data planes regardless of their degree of heterogeneity and cell density. Consequently, in wake of 5G, control and data planes separation architecture (SARC) has recently been conceived as a promising paradigm that has potential to address most of aforementioned challenges. In this article, we review various proposals that have been presented in literature so far to enable SARC. More specifically, we analyze how and to what degree various SARC proposals address the four main challenges in network densification namely: energy efficiency, system level capacity maximization, interference management and mobility management. We then focus on two salient features of future cellular networks that have not yet been adapted in legacy networks at wide scale and thus remain a hallmark of 5G, i.e., coordinated multipoint (CoMP), and device-to-device (D2D) communications. After providing necessary background on CoMP and D2D, we analyze how SARC can particularly act as a major enabler for CoMP and D2D in context of 5G. This article thus serves as both a tutorial as well as an up to date survey on SARC, CoMP and D2D. Most importantly, the article provides an extensive outlook of challenges and opportunities that lie at the crossroads of these three mutually entangled emerging technologies.Comment: 28 pages, 11 figures, IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorials 201