368 research outputs found
Antenna Array Enabled Space/Air/Ground Communications and Networking for 6G
Antenna arrays have a long history of more than 100 years and have evolved
closely with the development of electronic and information technologies,
playing an indispensable role in wireless communications and radar. With the
rapid development of electronic and information technologies, the demand for
all-time, all-domain, and full-space network services has exploded, and new
communication requirements have been put forward on various space/air/ground
platforms. To meet the ever increasing requirements of the future sixth
generation (6G) wireless communications, such as high capacity, wide coverage,
low latency, and strong robustness, it is promising to employ different types
of antenna arrays with various beamforming technologies in space/air/ground
communication networks, bringing in advantages such as considerable antenna
gains, multiplexing gains, and diversity gains. However, enabling antenna array
for space/air/ground communication networks poses specific, distinctive and
tricky challenges, which has aroused extensive research attention. This paper
aims to overview the field of antenna array enabled space/air/ground
communications and networking. The technical potentials and challenges of
antenna array enabled space/air/ground communications and networking are
presented first. Subsequently, the antenna array structures and designs are
discussed. We then discuss various emerging technologies facilitated by antenna
arrays to meet the new communication requirements of space/air/ground
communication systems. Enabled by these emerging technologies, the distinct
characteristics, challenges, and solutions for space communications, airborne
communications, and ground communications are reviewed. Finally, we present
promising directions for future research in antenna array enabled
space/air/ground communications and networking
Rate Splitting for MIMO Wireless Networks: A Promising PHY-Layer Strategy for LTE Evolution
MIMO processing plays a central part towards the recent increase in spectral
and energy efficiencies of wireless networks. MIMO has grown beyond the
original point-to-point channel and nowadays refers to a diverse range of
centralized and distributed deployments. The fundamental bottleneck towards
enormous spectral and energy efficiency benefits in multiuser MIMO networks
lies in a huge demand for accurate channel state information at the transmitter
(CSIT). This has become increasingly difficult to satisfy due to the increasing
number of antennas and access points in next generation wireless networks
relying on dense heterogeneous networks and transmitters equipped with a large
number of antennas. CSIT inaccuracy results in a multi-user interference
problem that is the primary bottleneck of MIMO wireless networks. Looking
backward, the problem has been to strive to apply techniques designed for
perfect CSIT to scenarios with imperfect CSIT. In this paper, we depart from
this conventional approach and introduce the readers to a promising strategy
based on rate-splitting. Rate-splitting relies on the transmission of common
and private messages and is shown to provide significant benefits in terms of
spectral and energy efficiencies, reliability and CSI feedback overhead
reduction over conventional strategies used in LTE-A and exclusively relying on
private message transmissions. Open problems, impact on standard specifications
and operational challenges are also discussed.Comment: accepted to IEEE Communication Magazine, special issue on LTE
Evolutio
Evolution of NOMA Toward Next Generation Multiple Access (NGMA) for 6G
Due to the explosive growth in the number of wireless devices and diverse
wireless services, such as virtual/augmented reality and
Internet-of-Everything, next generation wireless networks face unprecedented
challenges caused by heterogeneous data traffic, massive connectivity, and
ultra-high bandwidth efficiency and ultra-low latency requirements. To address
these challenges, advanced multiple access schemes are expected to be
developed, namely next generation multiple access (NGMA), which are capable of
supporting massive numbers of users in a more resource- and
complexity-efficient manner than existing multiple access schemes. As the
research on NGMA is in a very early stage, in this paper, we explore the
evolution of NGMA with a particular focus on non-orthogonal multiple access
(NOMA), i.e., the transition from NOMA to NGMA. In particular, we first review
the fundamental capacity limits of NOMA, elaborate on the new requirements for
NGMA, and discuss several possible candidate techniques. Moreover, given the
high compatibility and flexibility of NOMA, we provide an overview of current
research efforts on multi-antenna techniques for NOMA, promising future
application scenarios of NOMA, and the interplay between NOMA and other
emerging physical layer techniques. Furthermore, we discuss advanced
mathematical tools for facilitating the design of NOMA communication systems,
including conventional optimization approaches and new machine learning
techniques. Next, we propose a unified framework for NGMA based on multiple
antennas and NOMA, where both downlink and uplink transmissions are considered,
thus setting the foundation for this emerging research area. Finally, several
practical implementation challenges for NGMA are highlighted as motivation for
future work.Comment: 34 pages, 10 figures, a survey paper accepted by the IEEE JSAC
special issue on Next Generation Multiple Acces
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