Hybrid precoding for beamspace MIMO systems with sub-connected switches: a machine learning approach

By employing lens antenna arrays, the number of radio frequency (RF) chains in millimeter-wave (mmWave) communications can be significantly reduced. However, most existing studies consider the phase shifters (PSs) as the main components of the analog beamformer, which may result in a significant loss of energy efficiency (EE). In this paper, we propose a switch selecting network to solve this issue, where the analog part of the beamspace MIMO system is realized by a sub-connected switch selecting network rather than the PS network. Based on the proposed architecture and inspired by the cross-entropy (CE) optimization developed in machine learning, an optimal hybrid cross-entropy (HCE)-based hybrid precoding scheme is designed to maximize the achievable sum rate, where the probability distribution of the hybrid precoder is updated by minimizing CE with unadjusted probabilities and smoothing constant. Simulation results show that the proposed HCE-based hybrid precoding can not only effectively achieve the satisfied sum-rate, but also outperform the PSs schemes concerning energy efficiency

Joint altitude and hybrid beamspace precoding optimization for UAV-enabled multiuser mmWave MIMO System

The combination of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and millimeter wave (mmWave) multiple-input multiple-out (MIMO) system is regarded as a key enabling technology for beyond 5G networks, as it provides high data rate aerial links. However, establishing UAV-enabled mmWave MIMO communication is quite challenging due to the high hardware cost in terms of radio frequency (RF) chains. As a cost-effective alternative, a beamspace precoding with discrete lens arrays (DLA) architecture has received considerable attention. However, the underlying optimal design in beamspace precoding has not been fully exploited in UAV-enabled communication scenario. In this paper, the joint design of the UAV's altitude and hybrid beamspace precoding is proposed for the UAV-enabled multiuser MIMO system, in which the DLA is exploited to reduce the number of the RF chain. In the proposed scheme, the optimization problem is formulated as a minimum weighted mean squared error (MWMSE) method. Then an efficient algorithm with the penalty dual decomposition (PDD) is proposed that aims to jointly optimize the altitude of UAV, beam selection and digital precoding matrices. Simulation results confirm the comparable performance of the proposed scheme and perform close to full-digital beamforming in terms of achievable spectral efficiency

Energy and spectral-efficient lens antenna subarray design in MmWave MIMO Systems

Lens antenna subarray (LAS) is one of the recently introduced technologies for future wireless networks that significantly improves the energy efficiency of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems while achieving higher spectral efficiency compared to single-lens MIMO systems. However, a control mechanism for the LAS-MIMO design is considered a challenging task to efficiently manage the network resources and serve multiple users in the system. Therefore, in this paper, a sub-grouped LAS-MIMO architecture along with a hybrid precoding algorithm are proposed to reduce the cost and hardware overhead of traditional hybrid MIMO systems. Specifically, the LAS structure is divided into sub-groups to serve multiple users with different requirements, and an optimization problem based on the achievable sum-rate is formulated to maximize the spectral efficiency of the system. By splitting the sum-rate problem into sub-rate optimization problems, we develop a low-complexity hybrid precoding algorithm to effectively control the proposed architecture and maximize the achievable sum-rate of each subgroup. The proposed precoding algorithm selects the beam of each lens from a predefined set within a subgroup that maximizes the subgroup sum-rate, while the phase shifters and digital precoders in each subgroup are computed independently. The link between subgroups is updated based on successive interference cancelation to minimize interference between users of different subgroups. Our analysis and simulation results show that the proposed precoding algorithm of the sub-grouped LAS-MIMO architecture performs almost as well as traditional fully-connected hybrid MIMO systems in terms of spectral efficiency at low and high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). It also outperforms traditional fully-connected and sub-connected hybrid MIMO systems in terms of energy efficiency, even when a large number of lenses are employed.National Science Foundation (NSF

Sparsifying Dictionary Learning for Beamspace Channel Representation and Estimation in Millimeter-Wave Massive MIMO

Millimeter-wave massive multiple-input-multiple-output (mmWave mMIMO) is reported as a key enabler in the fifth-generation communication and beyond. It is customary to use a lens antenna array to transform a mmWave mMIMO channel into a beamspace where the channel exhibits sparsity. Exploiting this sparsity enables the applicability of hybrid precoding and achieves pilot reduction. This beamspace transformation is equivalent to performing a Fourier transformation of the channel. A motivation for the Fourier character of this transformation is the fact that the steering response vectors in antenna arrays are Fourier basis vectors. Still, a Fourier transformation is not necessarily the optimal one, due to many reasons. Accordingly, this paper proposes using a learned sparsifying dictionary as the transformation operator leading to another beamspace. Since the dictionary is obtained by training over actual channel measurements, this transformation is shown to yield two immediate advantages. First, is enhancing channel sparsity, thereby leading to more efficient pilot reduction. Second, is improving the channel representation quality, and thus reducing the underlying power leakage phenomenon. Consequently, this allows for both improved channel estimation and facilitated beam selection in mmWave mMIMO. This is especially the case when the antenna array is not perfectly uniform. Besides, a learned dictionary is also used as the precoding operator for the same reasons. Extensive simulations under various operating scenarios and environments validate the added benefits of using learned dictionaries in improving the channel estimation quality and the beam selectivity, thereby improving the spectral efficiency.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