Codebook Based Hybrid Precoding for Millimeter Wave Multiuser Systems

In millimeter wave (mmWave) systems, antenna architecture limitations make it difficult to apply conventional fully digital precoding techniques but call for low cost analog radio-frequency (RF) and digital baseband hybrid precoding methods. This paper investigates joint RF-baseband hybrid precoding for the downlink of multiuser multi-antenna mmWave systems with a limited number of RF chains. Two performance measures, maximizing the spectral efficiency and the energy efficiency of the system, are considered. We propose a codebook based RF precoding design and obtain the channel state information via a beam sweep procedure. Via the codebook based design, the original system is transformed into a virtual multiuser downlink system with the RF chain constraint. Consequently, we are able to simplify the complicated hybrid precoding optimization problems to joint codeword selection and precoder design (JWSPD) problems. Then, we propose efficient methods to address the JWSPD problems and jointly optimize the RF and baseband precoders under the two performance measures. Finally, extensive numerical results are provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed hybrid precoders.Comment: 35 pages, 9 figures, to appear in Trans. on Signal Process, 201

Hybrid analog-digital transmit beamforming for spectrum sharing backhaul networks

© 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes,creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.This paper deals with the problem of analog-digital transmit beamforming under spectrum sharing constraints for backhaul systems. In contrast to fully digital designs, where the spatial processing is done at baseband unit with all the flexible computational resources of digital processors, analog-digital beamforming schemes require that certain processing is done through analog components, such as phase-shifters or switches. These analog components do not have the same processing flexibility as the digital processor, but on the other hand, they can substantially reduce the cost and complexity of the beamforming solution. This paper presents the joint optimization of the analog and digital parts, which results in a nonconvex, NP-hard, and coupled problem. In order to solve it, an alternating optimization with a penalized convex-concave method is proposed. According to the simulation results, this novel iterative procedure is able to find a solution that behaves close to the fully digital beamforming upper bound scheme.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Hybrid Beamforming via the Kronecker Decomposition for the Millimeter-Wave Massive MIMO Systems

Despite its promising performance gain, the realization of mmWave massive MIMO still faces several practical challenges. In particular, implementing massive MIMO in the digital domain requires hundreds of RF chains matching the number of antennas. Furthermore, designing these components to operate at the mmWave frequencies is challenging and costly. These motivated the recent development of hybrid-beamforming where MIMO processing is divided for separate implementation in the analog and digital domains, called the analog and digital beamforming, respectively. Analog beamforming using a phase array introduces uni-modulus constraints on the beamforming coefficients, rendering the conventional MIMO techniques unsuitable and call for new designs. In this paper, we present a systematic design framework for hybrid beamforming for multi-cell multiuser massive MIMO systems over mmWave channels characterized by sparse propagation paths. The framework relies on the decomposition of analog beamforming vectors and path observation vectors into Kronecker products of factors being uni-modulus vectors. Exploiting properties of Kronecker mixed products, different factors of the analog beamformer are designed for either nulling interference paths or coherently combining data paths. Furthermore, a channel estimation scheme is designed for enabling the proposed hybrid beamforming. The scheme estimates the AoA of data and interference paths by analog beam scanning and data-path gains by analog beam steering. The performance of the channel estimation scheme is analyzed. In particular, the AoA spectrum resulting from beam scanning, which displays the magnitude distribution of paths over the AoA range, is derived in closed-form. It is shown that the inter-cell interference level diminishes inversely with the array size, the square root of pilot sequence length and the spatial separation between paths.Comment: Submitted to IEEE JSAC Special Issue on Millimeter Wave Communications for Future Mobile Networks, minor revisio

Massive MIMO Performance - TDD Versus FDD: What Do Measurements Say?

Downlink beamforming in Massive MIMO either relies on uplink pilot measurements - exploiting reciprocity and TDD operation, or on the use of a predetermined grid of beams with user equipments reporting their preferred beams, mostly in FDD operation. Massive MIMO in its originally conceived form uses the first strategy, with uplink pilots, whereas there is currently significant commercial interest in the second, grid-of-beams. It has been analytically shown that in isotropic scattering (independent Rayleigh fading) the first approach outperforms the second. Nevertheless there remains controversy regarding their relative performance in practice. In this contribution, the performances of these two strategies are compared using measured channel data at 2.6 GHz.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 31/Mar/201