993 research outputs found
AirSync: Enabling Distributed Multiuser MIMO with Full Spatial Multiplexing
The enormous success of advanced wireless devices is pushing the demand for
higher wireless data rates. Denser spectrum reuse through the deployment of
more access points per square mile has the potential to successfully meet the
increasing demand for more bandwidth. In theory, the best approach to density
increase is via distributed multiuser MIMO, where several access points are
connected to a central server and operate as a large distributed multi-antenna
access point, ensuring that all transmitted signal power serves the purpose of
data transmission, rather than creating "interference." In practice, while
enterprise networks offer a natural setup in which distributed MIMO might be
possible, there are serious implementation difficulties, the primary one being
the need to eliminate phase and timing offsets between the jointly coordinated
access points.
In this paper we propose AirSync, a novel scheme which provides not only time
but also phase synchronization, thus enabling distributed MIMO with full
spatial multiplexing gains. AirSync locks the phase of all access points using
a common reference broadcasted over the air in conjunction with a Kalman filter
which closely tracks the phase drift. We have implemented AirSync as a digital
circuit in the FPGA of the WARP radio platform. Our experimental testbed,
comprised of two access points and two clients, shows that AirSync is able to
achieve phase synchronization within a few degrees, and allows the system to
nearly achieve the theoretical optimal multiplexing gain. We also discuss MAC
and higher layer aspects of a practical deployment. To the best of our
knowledge, AirSync offers the first ever realization of the full multiuser MIMO
gain, namely the ability to increase the number of wireless clients linearly
with the number of jointly coordinated access points, without reducing the per
client rate.Comment: Submitted to Transactions on Networkin
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
Employing Antenna Selection to Improve Energy-Efficiency in Massive MIMO Systems
Massive MIMO systems promise high data rates by employing large number of
antennas, which also increases the power usage of the system as a consequence.
This creates an optimization problem which specifies how many antennas the
system should employ in order to operate with maximal energy efficiency. Our
main goal is to consider a base station with a fixed number of antennas, such
that the system can operate with a smaller subset of antennas according to the
number of active user terminals, which may vary over time. Thus, in this paper
we propose an antenna selection algorithm which selects the best antennas
according to the better channel conditions with respect to the users, aiming at
improving the overall energy efficiency. Then, due to the complexity of the
mathematical formulation, a tight approximation for the consumed power is
presented, using the Wishart theorem, and it is used to find a deterministic
formulation for the energy efficiency. Simulation results show that the
approximation is quite tight and that there is significant improvement in terms
of energy efficiency when antenna selection is employed.Comment: To appear in Transactions on Emerging Telecommunications
Technologies, 12 pages, 8 figures, 2 table
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