Exact ZF Analysis and Computer-Algebra-Aided Evaluation in Rank-1 LoS Rician Fading

We study zero-forcing detection (ZF) for multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) spatial multiplexing under transmit-correlated Rician fading for an N_R X N_T channel matrix with rank-1 line-of-sight (LoS) component. By using matrix transformations and multivariate statistics, our exact analysis yields the signal-to-noise ratio moment generating function (m.g.f.) as an infinite series of gamma distribution m.g.f.'s and analogous series for ZF performance measures, e.g., outage probability and ergodic capacity. However, their numerical convergence is inherently problematic with increasing Rician K-factor, N_R , and N_T. We circumvent this limitation as follows. First, we derive differential equations satisfied by the performance measures with a novel automated approach employing a computer-algebra tool which implements Groebner basis computation and creative telescoping. These differential equations are then solved with the holonomic gradient method (HGM) from initial conditions computed with the infinite series. We demonstrate that HGM yields more reliable performance evaluation than by infinite series alone and more expeditious than by simulation, for realistic values of K , and even for N_R and N_T relevant to large MIMO systems. We envision extending the proposed approaches for exact analysis and reliable evaluation to more general Rician fading and other transceiver methods.Comment: Accepted for publication by the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, on April 7th, 2016; this is the final revision before publicatio

LOS-based Conjugate Beamforming and Power-Scaling Law in Massive-MIMO Systems

This paper is concerned with massive-MIMO systems over Rician flat fading channels. In order to reduce the overhead to obtain full channel state information and to avoid the pilot contamination problem, by treating the scattered component as interference, we investigate a transmit and receive conjugate beamforming (BF) transmission scheme only based on the line-of-sight (LOS) component. Under Rank-1 model, we first consider a single-user system with N transmit and M receive antennas, and focus on the problem of power-scaling law when the transmit power is scaled down proportionally to 1/MN. It can be shown that as MN grows large, the scattered interference vanishes, and the ergodic achievable rate is higher than that of the corresponding BF scheme based fast fading and minimum mean-square error (MMSE) channel estimation. Then we further consider uplink and downlink single-cell scenarios where the base station (BS) has M antennas and each of K users has N antennas. When the transmit power for each user is scaled down proportionally to 1/MN, it can be shown for finite users that as M grows without bound, each user obtains finally the same rate performance as in the single-user case. Even when N grows without bound, however, there still remains inter-user LOS interference that can not be cancelled. Regarding infinite users, there exists such a power scaling law that when K and the b-th power of M go to infinity with a fixed and finite ratio for a given b in (0, 1), not only inter-user LOS interference but also fast fading effect can be cancelled, while fast fading effect can not be cancelled if b=1. Extension to multi-cells and frequency-selective channels are also discussed shortly. Moreover, numerical results indicate that spacial antenna correlation does not have serious influence on the rate performance, and the BS antennas may be allowed to be placed compactly when M is very large.Comment: 32 pages, 11 figure

Theoretical Performance Limits of Massive MIMO with Uncorrelated Rician Fading Channels

This work considers a multicell Massive MIMO network with $L$ cells, each comprising a BS with $M$ antennas and $K$ single-antenna user equipments. Within this setting, we are interested in deriving approximations of the achievable rates in the uplink and downlink under the assumption that single-cell linear processing is used at each BS and that each intracell link forms an uncorrelated MIMO Rician fading channel matrix; that is, with a deterministic line-of-sight (LoS) path and a stochastic non-line-of-sight component describing a spatial uncorrelated multipath environment. The analysis is conducted assuming that $N$ and $K$ grow large with a given ratio $N/K$ under the assumption that the data transmission in each cell is affected by channel estimation errors, pilot contamination, an arbitrary large scale attenuation and LoS components. Numerical results are used to prove that the approximations are asymptotically tight, but accurate for systems with finite dimensions under different operating conditions. The asymptotic results are also used to evaluate the impact of LoS components. In particular, we exemplify how the number of antennas for achieving a target rate can be substantially reduced with LoS links of only a few dBs of strength.Comment: 17 pages, 5 figures. To appear in IEEE Transactions on Communications. This is a longer version containing all the mathematical steps for some of the proofs in the Appendice

A Survey on MIMO Transmission with Discrete Input Signals: Technical Challenges, Advances, and Future Trends

Multiple antennas have been exploited for spatial multiplexing and diversity transmission in a wide range of communication applications. However, most of the advances in the design of high speed wireless multiple-input multiple output (MIMO) systems are based on information-theoretic principles that demonstrate how to efficiently transmit signals conforming to Gaussian distribution. Although the Gaussian signal is capacity-achieving, signals conforming to discrete constellations are transmitted in practical communication systems. As a result, this paper is motivated to provide a comprehensive overview on MIMO transmission design with discrete input signals. We first summarize the existing fundamental results for MIMO systems with discrete input signals. Then, focusing on the basic point-to-point MIMO systems, we examine transmission schemes based on three most important criteria for communication systems: the mutual information driven designs, the mean square error driven designs, and the diversity driven designs. Particularly, a unified framework which designs low complexity transmission schemes applicable to massive MIMO systems in upcoming 5G wireless networks is provided in the first time. Moreover, adaptive transmission designs which switch among these criteria based on the channel conditions to formulate the best transmission strategy are discussed. Then, we provide a survey of the transmission designs with discrete input signals for multiuser MIMO scenarios, including MIMO uplink transmission, MIMO downlink transmission, MIMO interference channel, and MIMO wiretap channel. Additionally, we discuss the transmission designs with discrete input signals for other systems using MIMO technology. Finally, technical challenges which remain unresolved at the time of writing are summarized and the future trends of transmission designs with discrete input signals are addressed.Comment: 110 pages, 512 references, submit to Proceedings of the IEE

Media-Based Modulation for Future Wireless Systems: A Tutorial

The wireless revolution has already started with the specified vision, overall objectives, and the first official 3GPP release of 5th generation (5G) wireless networks. Despite the development of several modern communication technologies, since the beginning of the modern era of digital communications, we have been mostly conveying information by altering the amplitude, the phase, or the frequency of sinusoidal carrier signals, which has inherent drawbacks. On the other hand, index modulation (IM) provides an alternative dimension to transmit digital information: the indices of the corresponding communication systems' building blocks. Media-based modulation (MBM), which is one of the newest and the most prominent members of the IM family, performs the transmission of information by altering the far-field radiation pattern of reconfigurable antennas (RAs) and provides a completely new dimension to convey information: wireless channel fade realizations themselves through the unique signature of received signals. The aim of this article is to shed light on this promising frontier from a broad communication engineering perspective by discussing the most recent advances as well as possible interesting research directions in MBM technologies.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, 1 table, submitted for possible publicatio

Performance Analysis of Active Large Intelligent Surfaces (LISs): Uplink Spectral Efficiency and Pilot Training

Large intelligent surfaces (LISs) constitute a new and promising wireless communication paradigm that relies on the integration of a massive number of antenna elements over the entire surfaces of man-made structures. The LIS concept provides many advantages, such as the capability to provide reliable and space-intensive communications by effectively establishing line-of-sight (LOS) channels. In this paper, the system spectral efficiency (SSE) of an uplink LIS system is asymptotically analyzed under a practical LIS environment with a well-defined uplink frame structure. In order to verify the impact on the SSE of pilot contamination, the SSE of a multi-LIS system is asymptotically studied and a theoretical bound on its performance is derived. Given this performance bound, an optimal pilot training length for multi-LIS systems subjected to pilot contamination is characterized and, subsequently, the performance-maximizing number of devices that the LIS system must service is derived. Simulation results show that the derived analyses are in close agreement with the exact mutual information in presence of a large number of antennas, and the achievable SSE is limited by the effect of pilot contamination and intra/inter-LIS interference through the LOS path, even if the LIS is equipped with an infinite number of antennas. Additionally, the SSE obtained with the proposed pilot training length and number of scheduled devices is shown to reach the one obtained via a brute-force search for the optimal solution

Low-Complexity Channel Estimation in Large-Scale MIMO using Polynomial Expansion

This paper considers pilot-based channel estimation in large-scale multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems, also known as "massive MIMO". Unlike previous works on this topic, which mainly considered the impact of inter-cell disturbance due to pilot reuse (so-called pilot contamination), we are concerned with the computational complexity. The conventional minimum mean square error (MMSE) and minimum variance unbiased (MVU) channel estimators rely on inverting covariance matrices, which has cubic complexity in the multiplication of number of antennas at each side. Since this is extremely expensive when there are hundreds of antennas, we propose to approximate the inversion by an L-order matrix polynomial. A set of low-complexity Bayesian channel estimators, coined Polynomial ExpAnsion CHannel (PEACH) estimators, are introduced. The coefficients of the polynomials are optimized to yield small mean square error (MSE). We show numerically that near-optimal performance is achieved with low polynomial orders. In practice, the order L can be selected to balance between complexity and MSE. Interestingly, pilot contamination is beneficial to the PEACH estimators in the sense that smaller L can be used to achieve near-optimal MSEs.Comment: Published at IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (PIMRC 2013), 8-11 September 2013, 6 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl

Schur Complement Based Analysis of MIMO Zero-Forcing for Rician Fading

For multiple-input/multiple-output (MIMO) spatial multiplexing with zero-forcing detection (ZF), signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) analysis for Rician fading involves the cumbersome noncentral-Wishart distribution (NCWD) of the transmit sample-correlation (Gramian) matrix. An \textsl{approximation} with a \textsl{virtual} CWD previously yielded for the ZF SNR an approximate (virtual) Gamma distribution. However, analytical conditions qualifying the accuracy of the SNR-distribution approximation were unknown. Therefore, we have been attempting to exactly characterize ZF SNR for Rician fading. Our previous attempts succeeded only for the sole Rician-fading stream under Rician--Rayleigh fading, by writing it as scalar Schur complement (SC) in the Gramian. Herein, we pursue a more general, matrix-SC-based analysis to characterize SNRs when several streams may undergo Rician fading. On one hand, for full-Rician fading, the SC distribution is found to be exactly a CWD if and only if a channel-mean--correlation \textsl{condition} holds. Interestingly, this CWD then coincides with the \textsl{virtual} CWD ensuing from the \textsl{approximation}. Thus, under the \textsl{condition}, the actual and virtual SNR-distributions coincide. On the other hand, for Rician--Rayleigh fading, the matrix-SC distribution is characterized in terms of determinant of matrix with elementary-function entries, which also yields a new characterization of the ZF SNR. Average error probability results validate our analysis vs.~simulation.Comment: 32 pages, 4 figures, 1 tabl

LMMSE Receivers in Uplink Massive MIMO Systems with Correlated Rician Fading

We carry out a theoretical analysis of the uplink (UL) of a massive MIMO system with per-user channel correlation and Rician fading, using two processing approaches. Firstly, we examine the linear minimum-mean-square-error receiver under training-based imperfect channel estimates. Secondly, we propose a statistical combining technique that is more suitable in environments with strong Line-of-Sight (LoS) components. We derive closed-form asymptotic approximations of the UL spectral efficiency (SE) attained by each combining scheme in single and multi-cell settings, as a function of the system parameters. These expressions are insightful in how different factors such as LoS propagation conditions and pilot contamination impact the overall system performance. Furthermore, they are exploited to determine the optimal number of training symbols which is shown to be of significant interest at low Rician factors. The study and numerical results substantiate that stronger LoS signals lead to better performances, and under such conditions, the statistical combining entails higher SE gains than the conventional receiver.Comment: 32 pages, 8 figures, accepted to be published in IEEE Transactions on Communication

Ergodic Spectral Efficiency of Massive MIMO with Correlated Rician Channel and MRC Detection based on LS and MMSE Channel Estimation

In this paper, we study the spectral efficiency (SE) of a multi-cell massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system with a spatially correlated Rician channel. The correlation between least squares (LS) estimator and its error complicates SE analysis, since signal and interference components become cross-correlated, too. Minimum mean square error (MMSE) estimators do not suffer from this burden. In some previous works, a proper part of the signal is referred to interference, which makes them cross-uncorrelated, and leads to an SE lower bound. In our modified approach, we extract and refer the cross-correlated part of interference to the signal to attain this objective. Here, we use this approach for calculating the instantaneous SE of maximum ratio combining (MRC) detector under LS and MMSE estimation methods. We also derive closed-form approximations of their ergodic SE. This approach is also applicable to other linear channel estimators or data detectors. Numerical results show that achievable SE surpasses that of the previous approach. They also show that our approximation is close enough to Monte Carlo simulation results, especially at the high number of the base station (BS) antennas.Comment: This paper is submitted to IET Communications. If finally accepted, the copy of the record will be available at the IET Digital Library. Here is the submission History: Submitted on 2019 Septemaber 5 Majorly Revised on 2019 December 24 Minorly Revised on 2020 May 1