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

A limited feedback scheme based on spatially correlated channels for coordinated multipoint systems

High spectral efficiency can be achieved in the downlink of multi-antenna coordinated multi-point systems provided that the multiuser interference is appropriately managed at the transmitter side. For this sake, downlink channel information needs to be sent back by the users, thus reducing the rate available at the uplink channel. The amount and type of feedback information required has been extensively studied and many limited feedback schemes have been proposed lately. A common pattern to all of them is that achieving low rates of feedback information is possible at the cost of increasing complexity at the user side and, sometimes, assuming that some statistics of the channel are known. In this article, we propose a simple and versatile limited feedback scheme that exploits the spatial correlation at each multi-antenna base station (BS) without requiring any previous statistical information of the channel and without adding significant computational complexity. It is based on the separate quantization of the channel impulse response modulus and phase and it shows better mean square error performance than the standard scheme based on quantization of real and imaginary parts. In order to evaluate the performance of the downlink regarding multiuser interference management, different precoding techniques at the BSs, such as zero-forcing (ZF), Tomlinson-Harashima precoding (THP) and lattice reduction Tomlinson- Harashima precoding (LRTHP), have been evaluated. Simulations results show that LRTHP and THP present a higher robustness than ZF precoding against channel quantization errors but at the cost of a higher complexity at the BS. Regarding sum-capacity and bit error rate performances, our versatile scheme achieves better results than the standard one in the medium and high SNR regime, that is, in the region where quantization errors are dominant against noise, for the same feedback cost measured in bits per user

Técnicas de pré-codificação para sistemas multicelulares coordenados

Doutoramento em TelecomunicaçõesCoordenação Multicélula é um tópico de investigação em rápido crescimento e uma solução promissora para controlar a interferência entre células em sistemas celulares, melhorando a equidade do sistema e aumentando a sua capacidade. Esta tecnologia já está em estudo no LTEAdvanced sob o conceito de coordenação multiponto (COMP). Existem várias abordagens sobre coordenação multicélula, dependendo da quantidade e do tipo de informação partilhada pelas estações base, através da rede de suporte (backhaul network), e do local onde essa informação é processada, i.e., numa unidade de processamento central ou de uma forma distribuída em cada estação base. Nesta tese, são propostas técnicas de pré-codificação e alocação de potência considerando várias estratégias: centralizada, todo o processamento é feito na unidade de processamento central; semidistribuída, neste caso apenas parte do processamento é executado na unidade de processamento central, nomeadamente a potência alocada a cada utilizador servido por cada estação base; e distribuída em que o processamento é feito localmente em cada estação base. Os esquemas propostos são projectados em duas fases: primeiro são propostas soluções de pré-codificação para mitigar ou eliminar a interferência entre células, de seguida o sistema é melhorado através do desenvolvimento de vários esquemas de alocação de potência. São propostas três esquemas de alocação de potência centralizada condicionada a cada estação base e com diferentes relações entre desempenho e complexidade. São também derivados esquemas de alocação distribuídos, assumindo que um sistema multicelular pode ser visto como a sobreposição de vários sistemas com uma única célula. Com base neste conceito foi definido uma taxa de erro média virtual para cada um desses sistemas de célula única que compõem o sistema multicelular, permitindo assim projectar esquemas de alocação de potência completamente distribuídos. Todos os esquemas propostos foram avaliados em cenários realistas, bastante próximos dos considerados no LTE. Os resultados mostram que os esquemas propostos são eficientes a remover a interferência entre células e que o desempenho das técnicas de alocação de potência propostas é claramente superior ao caso de não alocação de potência. O desempenho dos sistemas completamente distribuídos é inferior aos baseados num processamento centralizado, mas em contrapartida podem ser usados em sistemas em que a rede de suporte não permita a troca de grandes quantidades de informação.Multicell coordination is a promising solution for cellular wireless systems to mitigate inter-cell interference, improving system fairness and increasing capacity and thus is already under study in LTE-A under the coordinated multipoint (CoMP) concept. There are several coordinated transmission approaches depending on the amount of information shared by the transmitters through the backhaul network and where the processing takes place i.e. in a central processing unit or in a distributed way on each base station. In this thesis, we propose joint precoding and power allocation techniques considering different strategies: Full-centralized, where all the processing takes place at the central unit; Semi-distributed, in this case only some process related with power allocation is done at the central unit; and Fulldistributed, where all the processing is done locally at each base station. The methods are designed in two phases: first the inter-cell interference is removed by applying a set of centralized or distributed precoding vectors; then the system is further optimized by centralized or distributed power allocation schemes. Three centralized power allocation algorithms with per-BS power constraint and different complexity tradeoffs are proposed. Also distributed power allocation schemes are proposed by considering the multicell system as superposition of single cell systems, where we define the average virtual bit error rate (BER) of interference-free single cell system, allowing us to compute the power allocation coefficients in a distributed manner at each BS. All proposed schemes are evaluated in realistic scenarios considering LTE specifications. The numerical evaluations show that the proposed schemes are efficient in removing inter-cell interference and improve system performance comparing to equal power allocation. Furthermore, fulldistributed schemes can be used when the amounts of information to be exchanged over the backhaul is restricted, although system performance is slightly degraded from semi-distributed and full-centralized schemes, but the complexity is considerably lower. Besides that for high degrees of freedom distributed schemes show similar behaviour to centralized ones

Optimize Power Allocation Scheme to Maximize Sum Rate in CoMP with Limited Channel State Information

Extensive use of mobile applications throws many challenges in cellular systems like cell edge throughput, inter cell interference and spectral e�ciency. Many of these challenges have been resolved using Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP), developed in the Third Generation Partnership Project for LTE-Advanced) to a great extent. CoMP cooperatively process signals from base sta- tions that are connected to various multiple terminals (user equipment (UEs)) at transmission and reception. This CoMP improves throughput, reduces or even removes inter-cell interference and increases spectral e�ciency in the downlink of multi-antenna coordinated multipoint systems. Many researchers addressed these issues assuming that BSs have the knowledge of the common control channels dedicated to all UEs and also about the full or partial channel state information (CSI) of all the links. From the CSI available at the BSs, multiuser interference can be managed at the BSs. To make this feasible, UEs are responsible for collecting downlink CSI. But, CSI measurement (instantaneous and/or statistical) is imperfect in nature because of the randomly varying nature of the channels at random times. These incorrect CSI values available at the BSs may, in turn, create multi-user interference. There are many techniques to suppress the multi-user interference, among which the feedback scheme is the one which is gaining a lot of attention. In feedback schemes, CSI information needs to be fed back to the base station from UEs in the uplink. It is obvious, the question arises on the type and amount of feedback need to be used. Research has been progressing in this front and some feedback techniques have been proposed. Three basic CoMP Feedback schemes are available. Explicit or statistical channel information feedback scheme in which channel information like channels's covariance matrix of the channel are shared between the transmitter and receiver. Next, implicit or statistical channel information feedback which contains information such as Channel quality indication or Precoding matrix indicator or Rank indicator. 1st applied to TDD LTE type structure and 2nd of feedback scheme can be applied in the FDD system. Finally, we have UE which tranmit the sounding reference signal (CSI). This type of feedback scheme is applied to exploit channel reciprocity and to reduce channel intercell interference and this can be applied in the TDD system. We have analyzed the scenario of LTE TDD based system. After this, optimization of power is also required because users at the cell edge required more attention than the user locating at the center of the cell. In my work, it shows estimated power gives exponential divercity for high SNR as low SNR too. In this method, a compression feedback method is analyzed to provide multi-cell spatial channel information. It improves the feedback e�ciency and throughput. The rows and columns of the channel matrix are compressed using Eigenmode of the user and codebook based scheme speci�ed in LTE speci�cation. The main drawback of this scheme is that spectral e�ciency is achieved with the cost of increased overheads for feedback and evolved NodeB (eNB). Other factor is complexity of eNodeB which is to be addressed in future work