Millimeter Wave Beam-Selection Using Out-of-Band Spatial Information

Millimeter wave (mmWave) communication is one feasible solution for high data-rate applications like vehicular-to-everything communication and next generation cellular communication. Configuring mmWave links, which can be done through channel estimation or beam-selection, however, is a source of significant overhead. In this paper, we propose to use spatial information extracted at sub-6 GHz to help establish the mmWave link. First, we review the prior work on frequency dependent channel behavior and outline a simulation strategy to generate multi-band frequency dependent channels. Second, assuming: (i) narrowband channels and a fully digital architecture at sub-6 GHz; and (ii) wideband frequency selective channels, OFDM signaling, and an analog architecture at mmWave, we outline strategies to incorporate sub-6 GHz spatial information in mmWave compressed beam selection. We formulate compressed beam-selection as a weighted sparse signal recovery problem, and obtain the weighting information from sub-6 GHz channels. In addition, we outline a structured precoder/combiner design to tailor the training to out-of-band information. We also extend the proposed out-of-band aided compressed beam-selection approach to leverage information from all active OFDM subcarriers. The simulation results for achievable rate show that out-of-band aided beam-selection can reduce the training overhead of in-band only beam-selection by 4x.Comment: 30 pages, 11 figure

Millimeter Wave communication with out-of-band information

Configuring the antenna arrays is the main source of overhead in millimeter wave (mmWave) communication systems. In high mobility scenarios, the problem is exacerbated, as achieving the highest rates requires frequent link reconfiguration. One solution is to exploit spatial congruence between signals at different frequency bands and extract mmWave channel parameters from side information obtained in another band. In this paper we propose the concept of out-of-band information aided mmWave communication. We analyze different strategies to leverage information derived from sensors or from other communication systems operating at sub-6 GHz bands to help configure the mmWave communication link. The overhead reductions that can be obtained when exploiting out-of-band information are characterized in a preliminary study. Finally, the challenges associated with using out-of-band signals as a source of side information at mmWave are analyzed in detail.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figure

A Block Sparsity Based Estimator for mmWave Massive MIMO Channels with Beam Squint

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) millimeter wave (mmWave) communication is a key technology for next generation wireless networks. One of the consequences of utilizing a large number of antennas with an increased bandwidth is that array steering vectors vary among different subcarriers. Due to this effect, known as beam squint, the conventional channel model is no longer applicable for mmWave massive MIMO systems. In this paper, we study channel estimation under the resulting non-standard model. To that aim, we first analyze the beam squint effect from an array signal processing perspective, resulting in a model which sheds light on the angle-delay sparsity of mmWave transmission. We next design a compressive sensing based channel estimation algorithm which utilizes the shift-invariant block-sparsity of this channel model. The proposed algorithm jointly computes the off-grid angles, the off-grid delays, and the complex gains of the multi-path channel. We show that the newly proposed scheme reflects the mmWave channel more accurately and results in improved performance compared to traditional approaches. We then demonstrate how this approach can be applied to recover both the uplink as well as the downlink channel in frequency division duplex (FDD) systems, by exploiting the angle-delay reciprocity of mmWave channels

Directional Modulation: A Secure Solution to 5G and Beyond Mobile Networks

Directional modulation (DM), as an efficient secure transmission way, offers security through its directive property and is suitable for line-of-propagation (LoP) channels such as millimeter wave (mmWave) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), satellite communication, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), and smart transportation. If the direction angle of the desired received is known, the desired channel gain vector is obtainable. Thus, in advance, the DM transmitter knows the values of directional angles of desired user and eavesdropper, or their direction of arrival (DOAs) because the beamforming vector of confidential messages and artificial noise (AN) projection matrix is mainly determined by directional angles of desired user and eavesdropper. For a DM transceiver, working as a receiver, the first step is to measure the DOAs of desired user and eavesdropper. Then, in the second step, using the measured DOAs, the beamforming vector of confidential messages and AN projection matrix is designed. In this paper, we describe the DOA measurement methods, power allocation, and beamforming in DM networks. A machine learning-based DOA measurement method is proposed to make a substantial SR performance gain compared to single-snapshot measurement without machine learning for a given null-space projection beamforming scheme. However, for a conventional DM network, there still exists a serious secure issue: the eavesdropper moves inside the main beam of the desired user and may intercept the confidential messages intended to the desired users because the beamforming vector of confidential messages and AN projection matrix are only angle-dependence. To address this problem, we present a new concept of secure and precise transmission, where the transmit waveform has two-dimensional even three-dimensional dependence by using DM, random frequency selection, and phase alignment at DM transmitter

Machine-Learning-based High-resolution DOA Measurement and Robust DM for Hybrid Analog-Digital Massive MIMO Transceiver

At hybrid analog-digital (HAD) transceiver, an improved HAD rotational invariance techniques (ESPRIT), called I-HAD-ESPRIT, is proposed to measure the direction of arrival (DOA) of desired user, where the phase ambiguity due to HAD structure is addressed successfully. Subsequently, a machine-learning (ML) framework is proposed to improve the precision of measuring DOA. In the training stage, the HAD transceiver works as a receiver and repeatedly measures the values of DOA via I-HAD-ESPRIT to form a slightly large training data set (TDS) of DOA. From TDS, we find that the probability density function (PDF) of DOA measurement error (DOAME) is approximated as a Gaussian distribution by the histogram method in ML. This TDS is used to learn the mean of DOA and the variance of DOAME, which are utilized to infer their values and improve their precisions in the real-time stage. The HAD transceiver rapidly measures the real-time value of DOA some times to form a relatively small real-time set (RTS), which is used to learn the real-time mean and variance of DOA/ DOAME. Then, three weight combiners are proposed to combine the-maximum-likelihood-learning outputs of TDS and RTS. Their weight factors depend intimately on the numbers of elements in TDS and RTS, and signal-to-noise ratios during the two stages. Using the mean and variance of DOA/DOAME, their PDFs can be given directly, and we propose a robust beamformer for directional modulation (DM) transmitter with HAD by fully exploiting the PDF of DOA/DOAME, especially a robust analog beamformer on RF chain. Simulation results show that: 1) The proposed I-HAD-ESPRIT can achieve the HAD CRLB; 2) The proposed ML framework performs much better than the corresponding real-time one without training stage, 3) The proposed robust DM transmitter can perform better than the corresponding non-robust ones in terms of bit error rate and secrecy rate.Comment: 14 pages, 11 figure

Time Varying Channel Tracking with Spatial and Temporal BEM for Massive MIMO Systems

In this paper, we propose a channel tracking method for massive multi-input and multi-output systems under both time-varying and spatial-varying circumstance. Exploiting the characteristics of massive antenna array, a spatial-temporal basis expansion model is designed to reduce the effective dimensions of up-link and down-link channel, which decomposes channel state information into the time-varying spatial information and gain information. We firstly model the users movements as a one-order unknown Markov process, which is blindly learned by the expectation and maximization (EM) approach. Then, the up-link time varying spatial information can be blindly tracked by Taylor series expansion of the steering vector, while the rest up-link channel gain information can be trained by only a few pilot symbols. Due to angle reciprocity (spatial reciprocity), the spatial information of the down-link channel can be immediately obtained from the up-link counterpart, which greatly reduces the complexity of down-link channel tracking. Various numerical results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method

Beam Tracking for UAV Mounted SatCom on-the-Move with Massive Antenna Array

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-satellite communication has drawn dramatic attention for its potential to build the integrated space-air-ground network and the seamless wide-area coverage. The key challenge to UAV-satellite communication is its unstable beam pointing due to the UAV navigation, which is a typical SatCom on-the-move scenario. In this paper, we propose a blind beam tracking approach for Ka-band UAVsatellite communication system, where UAV is equipped with a large-scale antenna array. The effects of UAV navigation are firstly released through the mechanical adjustment, which could approximately point the beam towards the target satellite through beam stabilization and dynamic isolation. Specially, the attitude information can be realtimely derived from data fusion of lowcost sensors. Then, the precision of the beam pointing is blindly refined through electrically adjusting the weight of the massive antennas, where an array structure based simultaneous perturbation algorithm is designed. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method over the existing ones

Deep Learning for Physical-Layer 5G Wireless Techniques: Opportunities, Challenges and Solutions

The new demands for high-reliability and ultra-high capacity wireless communication have led to extensive research into 5G communications. However, the current communication systems, which were designed on the basis of conventional communication theories, signficantly restrict further performance improvements and lead to severe limitations. Recently, the emerging deep learning techniques have been recognized as a promising tool for handling the complicated communication systems, and their potential for optimizing wireless communications has been demonstrated. In this article, we first review the development of deep learning solutions for 5G communication, and then propose efficient schemes for deep learning-based 5G scenarios. Specifically, the key ideas for several important deep learningbased communication methods are presented along with the research opportunities and challenges. In particular, novel communication frameworks of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), and millimeter wave (mmWave) are investigated, and their superior performances are demonstrated. We vision that the appealing deep learning-based wireless physical layer frameworks will bring a new direction in communication theories and that this work will move us forward along this road.Comment: Submitted a possible publication to IEEE Wireless Communications Magazin

Spatial- and Frequency-Wideband Effects in Millimeter-Wave Massive MIMO Systems

When there are a large number of antennas in massive MIMO systems, the transmitted wideband signal will be sensitive to the physical propagation delay of electromagnetic waves across the large array aperture, which is called the spatial-wideband effect. In this scenario, transceiver design is different from most of the existing works, which presume that the bandwidth of the transmitted signals is not that wide, ignore the spatial-wideband effect, and only address the frequency selectivity. In this paper, we investigate spatial- and frequency-wideband effects, called dual-wideband effects, in massive MIMO systems from array signal processing point of view. Taking mmWave-band communications as an example, we describe the transmission process to address the dual-wideband effects. By exploiting the channel sparsity in the angle domain and the delay domain, we develop the efficient uplink and downlink channel estimation strategies that require much less amount of training overhead and cause no pilot contamination. Thanks to the array signal processing techniques, the proposed channel estimation is suitable for both TDD and FDD massive MIMO systems. Numerical examples demonstrate that the proposed transmission design for massive MIMO systems can effectively deal with the dual-wideband effects.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures. Index terms: Massive MIMO, mmWave, array signal processing, wideband, spatial-wideband, beam squint, angle reciprocity, delay reciprocity. Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Signal Processin

Timing and Carrier Synchronization in Wireless Communication Systems: A Survey and Classification of Research in the Last Five Years

Timing and carrier synchronization is a fundamental requirement for any wireless communication system to work properly. Timing synchronization is the process by which a receiver node determines the correct instants of time at which to sample the incoming signal. Carrier synchronization is the process by which a receiver adapts the frequency and phase of its local carrier oscillator with those of the received signal. In this paper, we survey the literature over the last five years (2010-2014) and present a comprehensive literature review and classification of the recent research progress in achieving timing and carrier synchronization in single-input-single-output (SISO), multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO), cooperative relaying, and multiuser/multicell interference networks. Considering both single-carrier and multi-carrier communication systems, we survey and categorise the timing and carrier synchronization techniques proposed for the different communication systems focusing on the system model assumptions for synchronization, the synchronization challenges, and the state-of-the-art synchronization solutions and their limitations. Finally, we envision some future research directions.Comment: submitted for journal publicatio