710 research outputs found
Downlink Training in Cell-Free Massive MIMO: A Blessing in Disguise
Cell-free Massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) refers to a
distributed Massive MIMO system where all the access points (APs) cooperate to
coherently serve all the user equipments (UEs), suppress inter-cell
interference and mitigate the multiuser interference. Recent works demonstrated
that, unlike co-located Massive MIMO, the \textit{channel hardening} is, in
general, less pronounced in cell-free Massive MIMO, thus there is much to
benefit from estimating the downlink channel. In this study, we investigate the
gain introduced by the downlink beamforming training, extending the previously
proposed analysis to non-orthogonal uplink and downlink pilots. Assuming
single-antenna APs, conjugate beamforming and independent Rayleigh fading
channel, we derive a closed-form expression for the per-user achievable
downlink rate that addresses channel estimation errors and pilot contamination
both at the AP and UE side. The performance evaluation includes max-min
fairness power control, greedy pilot assignment methods, and a comparison
between achievable rates obtained from different capacity-bounding techniques.
Numerical results show that downlink beamforming training, although increases
pilot overhead and introduces additional pilot contamination, improves
significantly the achievable downlink rate. Even for large number of APs, it is
not fully efficient for the UE relying on the statistical channel state
information for data decoding.Comment: Published in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications on August
14, 2019. {\copyright} 2019 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted.
Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other use
Cell-Free Massive MIMO versus Small Cells
A Cell-Free Massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) system comprises a
very large number of distributed access points (APs)which simultaneously serve
a much smaller number of users over the same time/frequency resources based on
directly measured channel characteristics. The APs and users have only one
antenna each. The APs acquire channel state information through time-division
duplex operation and the reception of uplink pilot signals transmitted by the
users. The APs perform multiplexing/de-multiplexing through conjugate
beamforming on the downlink and matched filtering on the uplink. Closed-form
expressions for individual user uplink and downlink throughputs lead to max-min
power control algorithms. Max-min power control ensures uniformly good service
throughout the area of coverage. A pilot assignment algorithm helps to mitigate
the effects of pilot contamination, but power control is far more important in
that regard.
Cell-Free Massive MIMO has considerably improved performance with respect to
a conventional small-cell scheme, whereby each user is served by a dedicated
AP, in terms of both 95%-likely per-user throughput and immunity to shadow
fading spatial correlation. Under uncorrelated shadow fading conditions, the
cell-free scheme provides nearly 5-fold improvement in 95%-likely per-user
throughput over the small-cell scheme, and 10-fold improvement when shadow
fading is correlated.Comment: EEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, accepted for publicatio
Power Allocation Schemes for Multicell Massive MIMO Systems
This paper investigates the sum-rate gains brought by power allocation
strategies in multicell massive multipleinput multiple-output systems, assuming
time-division duplex transmission. For both uplink and downlink, we derive
tractable expressions for the achievable rate with zero-forcing receivers and
precoders respectively. To avoid high complexity joint optimization across the
network, we propose a scheduling mechanism for power allocation, where in a
single time slot, only cells that do not interfere with each other adjust their
transmit powers. Based on this, corresponding transmit power allocation
strategies are derived, aimed at maximizing the sum rate per-cell. These
schemes are shown to bring considerable gains over equal power allocation for
practical antenna configurations (e.g., up to a few hundred). However, with
fixed number of users (N), these gains diminish as M turns to infinity, and
equal power allocation becomes optimal. A different conclusion is drawn for the
case where both M and N grow large together, in which case: (i) improved rates
are achieved as M grows with fixed M/N ratio, and (ii) the relative gains over
the equal power allocation diminish as M/N grows. Moreover, we also provide
applicable values of M/N under an acceptable power allocation gain threshold,
which can be used as to determine when the proposed power allocation schemes
yield appreciable gains, and when they do not. From the network point of view,
the proposed scheduling approach can achieve almost the same performance as the
joint power allocation after one scheduling round, with much reduced
complexity
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
Joint Pilot Design and Uplink Power Allocation in Multi-Cell Massive MIMO Systems
This paper considers pilot design to mitigate pilot contamination and provide
good service for everyone in multi-cell Massive multiple input multiple output
(MIMO) systems. Instead of modeling the pilot design as a combinatorial
assignment problem, as in prior works, we express the pilot signals using a
pilot basis and treat the associated power coefficients as continuous
optimization variables. We compute a lower bound on the uplink capacity for
Rayleigh fading channels with maximum ratio detection that applies with
arbitrary pilot signals. We further formulate the max-min fairness problem
under power budget constraints, with the pilot signals and data powers as
optimization variables. Because this optimization problem is non-deterministic
polynomial-time hard due to signomial constraints, we then propose an algorithm
to obtain a local optimum with polynomial complexity. Our framework serves as a
benchmark for pilot design in scenarios with either ideal or non-ideal
hardware. Numerical results manifest that the proposed optimization algorithms
are close to the optimal solution obtained by exhaustive search for different
pilot assignments and the new pilot structure and optimization bring large
gains over the state-of-the-art suboptimal pilot design.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures. Accepted to publish at IEEE Transactions on
Wireless Communication
On the Total Energy Efficiency of Cell-Free Massive MIMO
We consider the cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO)
downlink, where a very large number of distributed multiple-antenna access
points (APs) serve many single-antenna users in the same time-frequency
resource. A simple (distributed) conjugate beamforming scheme is applied at
each AP via the use of local channel state information (CSI). This CSI is
acquired through time-division duplex operation and the reception of uplink
training signals transmitted by the users. We derive a closed-form expression
for the spectral efficiency taking into account the effects of channel
estimation errors and power control. This closed-form result enables us to
analyze the effects of backhaul power consumption, the number of APs, and the
number of antennas per AP on the total energy efficiency, as well as, to design
an optimal power allocation algorithm. The optimal power allocation algorithm
aims at maximizing the total energy efficiency, subject to a per-user spectral
efficiency constraint and a per-AP power constraint. Compared with the equal
power control, our proposed power allocation scheme can double the total energy
efficiency. Furthermore, we propose AP selections schemes, in which each user
chooses a subset of APs, to reduce the power consumption caused by the backhaul
links. With our proposed AP selection schemes, the total energy efficiency
increases significantly, especially for large numbers of APs. Moreover, under a
requirement of good quality-of-service for all users, cell-free massive MIMO
outperforms the colocated counterpart in terms of energy efficiency
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