2,715 research outputs found
Ubiquitous Cell-Free Massive MIMO Communications
Since the first cellular networks were trialled in the 1970s, we have
witnessed an incredible wireless revolution. From 1G to 4G, the massive traffic
growth has been managed by a combination of wider bandwidths, refined radio
interfaces, and network densification, namely increasing the number of antennas
per site. Due its cost-efficiency, the latter has contributed the most. Massive
MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) is a key 5G technology that uses massive
antenna arrays to provide a very high beamforming gain and spatially
multiplexing of users, and hence, increases the spectral and energy efficiency.
It constitutes a centralized solution to densify a network, and its performance
is limited by the inter-cell interference inherent in its cell-centric design.
Conversely, ubiquitous cell-free Massive MIMO refers to a distributed Massive
MIMO system implementing coherent user-centric transmission to overcome the
inter-cell interference limitation in cellular networks and provide additional
macro-diversity. These features, combined with the system scalability inherent
in the Massive MIMO design, distinguishes ubiquitous cell-free Massive MIMO
from prior coordinated distributed wireless systems. In this article, we
investigate the enormous potential of this promising technology while
addressing practical deployment issues to deal with the increased
back/front-hauling overhead deriving from the signal co-processing.Comment: Published in EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and
Networking on August 5, 201
Downlink Training in Cell-Free Massive MIMO: A Blessing in Disguise
Cell-free Massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) refers to a
distributed Massive MIMO system where all the access points (APs) cooperate to
coherently serve all the user equipments (UEs), suppress inter-cell
interference and mitigate the multiuser interference. Recent works demonstrated
that, unlike co-located Massive MIMO, the \textit{channel hardening} is, in
general, less pronounced in cell-free Massive MIMO, thus there is much to
benefit from estimating the downlink channel. In this study, we investigate the
gain introduced by the downlink beamforming training, extending the previously
proposed analysis to non-orthogonal uplink and downlink pilots. Assuming
single-antenna APs, conjugate beamforming and independent Rayleigh fading
channel, we derive a closed-form expression for the per-user achievable
downlink rate that addresses channel estimation errors and pilot contamination
both at the AP and UE side. The performance evaluation includes max-min
fairness power control, greedy pilot assignment methods, and a comparison
between achievable rates obtained from different capacity-bounding techniques.
Numerical results show that downlink beamforming training, although increases
pilot overhead and introduces additional pilot contamination, improves
significantly the achievable downlink rate. Even for large number of APs, it is
not fully efficient for the UE relying on the statistical channel state
information for data decoding.Comment: Published in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications on August
14, 2019. {\copyright} 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted.
Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other use
On the Total Energy Efficiency of Cell-Free Massive MIMO
We consider the cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO)
downlink, where a very large number of distributed multiple-antenna access
points (APs) serve many single-antenna users in the same time-frequency
resource. A simple (distributed) conjugate beamforming scheme is applied at
each AP via the use of local channel state information (CSI). This CSI is
acquired through time-division duplex operation and the reception of uplink
training signals transmitted by the users. We derive a closed-form expression
for the spectral efficiency taking into account the effects of channel
estimation errors and power control. This closed-form result enables us to
analyze the effects of backhaul power consumption, the number of APs, and the
number of antennas per AP on the total energy efficiency, as well as, to design
an optimal power allocation algorithm. The optimal power allocation algorithm
aims at maximizing the total energy efficiency, subject to a per-user spectral
efficiency constraint and a per-AP power constraint. Compared with the equal
power control, our proposed power allocation scheme can double the total energy
efficiency. Furthermore, we propose AP selections schemes, in which each user
chooses a subset of APs, to reduce the power consumption caused by the backhaul
links. With our proposed AP selection schemes, the total energy efficiency
increases significantly, especially for large numbers of APs. Moreover, under a
requirement of good quality-of-service for all users, cell-free massive MIMO
outperforms the colocated counterpart in terms of energy efficiency
Energy-Efficient NOMA Enabled Heterogeneous Cloud Radio Access Networks
Heterogeneous cloud radio access networks (H-CRANs) are envisioned to be
promising in the fifth generation (5G) wireless networks. H-CRANs enable users
to enjoy diverse services with high energy efficiency, high spectral
efficiency, and low-cost operation, which are achieved by using cloud computing
and virtualization techniques. However, H-CRANs face many technical challenges
due to massive user connectivity, increasingly severe spectrum scarcity and
energy-constrained devices. These challenges may significantly decrease the
quality of service of users if not properly tackled. Non-orthogonal multiple
access (NOMA) schemes exploit non-orthogonal resources to provide services for
multiple users and are receiving increasing attention for their potential of
improving spectral and energy efficiency in 5G networks. In this article a
framework for energy-efficient NOMA H-CRANs is presented. The enabling
technologies for NOMA H-CRANs are surveyed. Challenges to implement these
technologies and open issues are discussed. This article also presents the
performance evaluation on energy efficiency of H-CRANs with NOMA.Comment: This work has been accepted by IEEE Network. Pages 18, Figure
- …