Edge Caching in Dense Heterogeneous Cellular Networks with Massive MIMO Aided Self-backhaul

This paper focuses on edge caching in dense heterogeneous cellular networks (HetNets), in which small base stations (SBSs) with limited cache size store the popular contents, and massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) aided macro base stations provide wireless self-backhaul when SBSs require the non-cached contents. Our aim is to address the effects of cell load and hit probability on the successful content delivery (SCD), and present the minimum required base station density for avoiding the access overload in an arbitrary small cell and backhaul overload in an arbitrary macrocell. The massive MIMO backhaul achievable rate without downlink channel estimation is derived to calculate the backhaul time, and the latency is also evaluated in such networks. The analytical results confirm that hit probability needs to be appropriately selected, in order to achieve SCD. The interplay between cache size and SCD is explicitly quantified. It is theoretically demonstrated that when non-cached contents are requested, the average delay of the non-cached content delivery could be comparable to the cached content delivery with the help of massive MIMO aided self-backhaul, if the average access rate of cached content delivery is lower than that of self-backhauled content delivery. Simulation results are presented to validate our analysis.Comment: Accepted to appear in IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication

Sectoring in Multi-cell Massive MIMO Systems

In this paper, the downlink of a typical massive MIMO system is studied when each base station is composed of three antenna arrays with directional antenna elements serving 120 degrees of the two-dimensional space. A lower bound for the achievable rate is provided. Furthermore, a power optimization problem is formulated and as a result, centralized and decentralized power allocation schemes are proposed. The simulation results reveal that using directional antennas at base stations along with sectoring can lead to a notable increase in the achievable rates by increasing the received signal power and decreasing 'pilot contamination' interference in multicell massive MIMO systems. Moreover, it is shown that using optimized power allocation can increase 0.95-likely rate in the system significantly

Reciprocity Calibration for Massive MIMO: Proposal, Modeling and Validation

This paper presents a mutual coupling based calibration method for time-division-duplex massive MIMO systems, which enables downlink precoding based on uplink channel estimates. The entire calibration procedure is carried out solely at the base station (BS) side by sounding all BS antenna pairs. An Expectation-Maximization (EM) algorithm is derived, which processes the measured channels in order to estimate calibration coefficients. The EM algorithm outperforms current state-of-the-art narrow-band calibration schemes in a mean squared error (MSE) and sum-rate capacity sense. Like its predecessors, the EM algorithm is general in the sense that it is not only suitable to calibrate a co-located massive MIMO BS, but also very suitable for calibrating multiple BSs in distributed MIMO systems. The proposed method is validated with experimental evidence obtained from a massive MIMO testbed. In addition, we address the estimated narrow-band calibration coefficients as a stochastic process across frequency, and study the subspace of this process based on measurement data. With the insights of this study, we propose an estimator which exploits the structure of the process in order to reduce the calibration error across frequency. A model for the calibration error is also proposed based on the asymptotic properties of the estimator, and is validated with measurement results.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 21/Feb/201

Soft Pilot Reuse and Multi-Cell Block Diagonalization Precoding for Massive MIMO Systems

The users at cell edge of a massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system suffer from severe pilot contamination, which leads to poor quality of service (QoS). In order to enhance the QoS for these edge users, soft pilot reuse (SPR) combined with multi-cell block diagonalization (MBD) precoding are proposed. Specifically, the users are divided into two groups according to their large-scale fading coefficients, referred to as the center users, who only suffer from modest pilot contamination and the edge users, who suffer from severe pilot contamination. Based on this distinction, the SPR scheme is proposed for improving the QoS for the edge users, whereby a cell-center pilot group is reused for all cell-center users in all cells, while a cell-edge pilot group is applied for the edge users in the adjacent cells. By extending the classical block diagonalization precoding to a multi-cell scenario, the MBD precoding scheme projects the downlink transmit signal onto the null space of the subspace spanned by the inter-cell channels of the edge users in adjacent cells. Thus, the inter-cell interference contaminating the edge users' signals in the adjacent cells can be efficiently mitigated and hence the QoS of these edge users can be further enhanced. Our theoretical analysis and simulation results demonstrate that both the uplink and downlink rates of the edge users are significantly improved, albeit at the cost of the slightly decreased rate of center users.Comment: 13 pages, 12 figures, accepted for publication in IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, 201