390 research outputs found
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 and the use of these
antennas. Assuming that the total number of receive antennas at the
multi-antenna users is much larger than , 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 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
Multiuser Switched Diversity Scheduling Schemes
Multiuser switched-diversity scheduling schemes were recently proposed in
order to overcome the heavy feedback requirements of conventional opportunistic
scheduling schemes by applying a threshold-based, distributed, and ordered
scheduling mechanism. The main idea behind these schemes is that slight
reduction in the prospected multiuser diversity gains is an acceptable
trade-off for great savings in terms of required channel-state-information
feedback messages. In this work, we characterize the achievable rate region of
multiuser switched diversity systems and compare it with the rate region of
full feedback multiuser diversity systems. We propose also a novel proportional
fair multiuser switched-based scheduling scheme and we demonstrate that it can
be optimized using a practical and distributed method to obtain the feedback
thresholds. We finally demonstrate by numerical examples that
switched-diversity scheduling schemes operate within 0.3 bits/sec/Hz from the
ultimate network capacity of full feedback systems in Rayleigh fading
conditions.Comment: Accepted at IEEE Transactions on Communications, to appear 2012,
funded by NPRP grant 08-577-2-241 from QNR
Robust Monotonic Optimization Framework for Multicell MISO Systems
The performance of multiuser systems is both difficult to measure fairly and
to optimize. Most resource allocation problems are non-convex and NP-hard, even
under simplifying assumptions such as perfect channel knowledge, homogeneous
channel properties among users, and simple power constraints. We establish a
general optimization framework that systematically solves these problems to
global optimality. The proposed branch-reduce-and-bound (BRB) algorithm handles
general multicell downlink systems with single-antenna users, multiantenna
transmitters, arbitrary quadratic power constraints, and robustness to channel
uncertainty. A robust fairness-profile optimization (RFO) problem is solved at
each iteration, which is a quasi-convex problem and a novel generalization of
max-min fairness. The BRB algorithm is computationally costly, but it shows
better convergence than the previously proposed outer polyblock approximation
algorithm. Our framework is suitable for computing benchmarks in general
multicell systems with or without channel uncertainty. We illustrate this by
deriving and evaluating a zero-forcing solution to the general problem.Comment: Published in IEEE Transactions on Signal Processing, 16 pages, 9
figures, 2 table
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