On Channel Reciprocity to Activate Uplink Channel Training for Downlink Wireless Transmission in Tactile Internet Applications

We determine, for the first time, the requirement on channel reciprocity to activate uplink channel training, instead of downlink channel training, to achieve a higher data rate for the downlink transmission from a multi-antenna base station to a single-antenna user. We first derive novel closed-form expressions for the lower bounds on the data rates achieved by the two channel training strategies by considering the impact of finite blocklength. The performance comparison result of these two strategies is determined by the amount of channel reciprocity that is utilized in the uplink channel training. We then derive an approximated expression for the minimum channel reciprocity that enables the uplink channel training to outperform the downlink channel training. Through numerical results, we demonstrate that this minimum channel reciprocity decreases as the blocklength decreases or the number of transmit antennas increases, which shows the necessity and benefits of activating the uplink channel training for short-packet communications with multiple transmit antennas. This work provides pivotal and unprecedented guidelines on choosing channel training strategies and channel reciprocity calibrations, offering valuable insights into latency reduction in the Tactile Internet applications.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, Submitted to IEEE ICC 2018 Worksho

Optimal Transmission of Short-Packet Communications in Multiple-Input Single-Output Systems

We design the optimal transmission strategy, which maximizes the average achievable data rate of the multiple-input single-output system that adopts short-packet communications. In this system, the N A -antenna access point (AP) transmits to the single-antenna user with finite blocklength T after estimating the AP-user channel via downlink training and uplink feedback. For this system, we determine the optimal allocation of the finite resource (e.g., the total transmit power and a finite number of symbol periods) for downlink training, uplink feedback, and data transmission to maximize the average data rate. Specifically, we derive an approximate closed-form lower bound on the average data rate, an explicit result for the optimal number of symbol periods for downlink training, an easy-to-implement method to find the optimal number of symbol periods for uplink feedback, and a simple expression for the optimal power allocation between data transmission and downlink training. By using numerical results, we demonstrate the effectiveness of our analytical solutions and examine the impact of system parameters, e.g., N A and T, on the optimal strategy.This work was supported by the Australian Research Council under Discovery Project Grant DP180104062

Short-Packet Communications: Transmission Strategies and Power Control Policies Design

Ultra-reliable and low-latency communications (URLLC) has been envisaged as the enabling paradigm to support real-time communications with stringent requirements on latency and reliability. The realization of URLLC will bring life-changing applications, e.g., smart manufacturing for Industrial 4.0, autonomous networked vehicles, and remote surgery, to human society. Notably, these applications typically require a target decoding error probability to be less than $10^{-7}$ within a latency being lower than 1 ms. Such strictly low latency imposes an unprecedented restriction on the size of packets. As such, short-packet communications (SPC) has been proposed as the fundamental method to reduce the latency for URLLC. This thesis aims to gain a comprehensive understanding of SPC for URLLC. Specifically, this thesis investigates and addresses the following issues: 1) how to design SPC with limited channel estimation overhead in SPC (Chapters 2 and 3), 2) how to improve the design of SPC to reduce the communication latency for URLLC (Chapter 4), and 3) how to design secure SPC for URLLC under statistical quality-of-service (QoS) constraints (Chapter 5). The contributions made in this thesis are summarized as follows: First, we investigate two different channel training strategies for SPC in Chapter 2. We study the requirement on channel reciprocity to activate uplink channel training, instead of downlink channel training, to achieve a higher data rate for the downlink transmission from a multi-antenna base station to a single-antenna user. We show the necessity and benefits of activating uplink channel training for SPC with multiple transmit antennas. Then, we further study the optimal SPC strategy in a multiple-input single-output system in Chapter 3. To maximize the average achievable data rate, we determine the optimal allocation of the finite resource (e.g., the total transmit power and a finite number of symbol periods) for downlink training, uplink feedback, and data transmission. Second, to reduce communication latency, in Chapter 4, we propose to use channel inversion power control (CIPC) with channel reciprocity to eliminate the overhead of channel state information (CSI) feedback, as well as achieve one-way URLLC where only the transmission in one direction requires ultra reliability and low latency. Based on channel reciprocity, the proposed CIPC schemes guarantee that the power of the received signal used to decode the information is a constant value \emph{Q}, by varying the transmit signal and power, which relaxes the assumption of knowing CSI at the user. We derive new analytical expressions for the packet loss probability of the proposed CIPC schemes, based on which we determine a closed interval and a convex set for optimizing \emph{Q} in CIPC with imperfect and perfect channel reciprocities, respectively. Finally, we study how to realize secure SPC subject to a statistical QoS requirement and an average power constraint in Chapter 5. We compare the secure transmission rates of short packets in different scenarios (i.e., with/without eavesdropper's instantaneous CSI and with/without channel estimation errors). To find the optimal power control policy that maximizes the effective secrecy throughout under QoS and power constraints, we apply an unsupervised deep learning method with low complexity to address constrained functional optimization problems, which do not have a closed-form solution in general. To provide more insights and demonstrate the effectiveness of unsupervised deep learning, we derive the closed-form expression for the optimal policy in a special case. This thesis advances our understanding of the fundamental performance of SPC for URLLC. It also provides guidelines to assist URLLC designers to solve important problems on how to fully explore the advantages of SPC in practical wireless URLLC systems

Preamble design using embedded signalling for OFDM broadcast systems based on reduced-complexity distance detection

The second generation digital terrestrial television broadcasting standard (DVB-T2) adopts the so-called P1 symbol as the preamble for initial synchronization. The P1 symbol also carries a number of basic transmission parameters, including the fast Fourier transform size and the single-input/single-output as well as multiple-input/single-output mode, in order to appropriately configure the receiver for carrying out the subsequent processing. In this contribution, an improved preamble design is proposed, where a pair of training sequences is inserted in the frequency domain and their distance is used for transmission parameter signalling. At the receiver, only a low-complexity correlator is required for the detection of the signalling. Both the coarse carrier frequency offset and the signalling can be simultaneously estimated by detecting the above-mentioned correlation. Compared to the standardised P1 symbol, the proposed preamble design significantly reduces the complexity of the receiver while retaining high robustness in frequency-selective fading channels. Furthermore, we demonstrate that the proposed preamble design achieves a better signalling performance than the standardised P1 symbol, despite reducing the numbers of multiplications and additions by about 40% and 20%, respectively

Massive MIMO Performance - TDD Versus FDD: What Do Measurements Say?

Downlink beamforming in Massive MIMO either relies on uplink pilot measurements - exploiting reciprocity and TDD operation, or on the use of a predetermined grid of beams with user equipments reporting their preferred beams, mostly in FDD operation. Massive MIMO in its originally conceived form uses the first strategy, with uplink pilots, whereas there is currently significant commercial interest in the second, grid-of-beams. It has been analytically shown that in isotropic scattering (independent Rayleigh fading) the first approach outperforms the second. Nevertheless there remains controversy regarding their relative performance in practice. In this contribution, the performances of these two strategies are compared using measured channel data at 2.6 GHz.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, 31/Mar/201

Spatial modulation schemes and modem architectures for millimeter wave radio systems

The rapid growth of wireless industry opens the door to several use cases such as internet of things and device-to-device communications, which require boosting the reliability and the spectral efficiency of the wireless access network, while reducing the energy consumption at the terminals. The vast spectrum available in millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequency band is one of the most promising candidates to achieve high-speed communications. However, the propagation of the radio signals at high carrier frequencies suffers from severe path-loss which reduces the coverage area. Fortunately, the small wavelengths of the mmWave signals allow packing a large number of antennas not only at the base station (BS) but also at the user terminal (UT). These massive antenna arrays can be exploited to attain high beamforming and combining gains and overcome the path-loss associated with the mmWave propagation. In conventional (fully digital) multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) transceivers, each antenna is connected to a specific radio-frequency (RF) chain and high resolution analog-to-digital-converter. Unfortunately, these devices are expensive and power hungry especially at mmWave frequency band and when operating in large bandwidths. Having this in mind, several MIMO transceiver architectures have been proposed with the purpose of reducing the hardware cost and the energy consumption. Fully connected hybrid analog and digital precoding schemes were proposed in with the aim of replacing some of the conventional RF chains by energy efficient analog devices. These fully connected mapping requires many analog devices that leads to non-negligible energy consumption. Partially connected hybrid architectures have been proposed to improve the energy efficiency of the fully connected transceivers by reducing the number of analog devices. Simplifying the transceiver’s architecture to reduce the power consumption results in a degradation of the attained spectral efficiency. In this PhD dissertation, we propose novel modulation schemes and massive MIMO transceiver design to combat the challenges at the mmWave cellular systems. The structure of the doctoral manuscript can be expressed as In Chapter 1, we introduce the transceiver design challenges at mmWave cellular communications. Then, we illustrate several state of the art architectures and highlight their limitations. After that, we propose scheme that attains high-energy efficiency and spectrum efficiency. In chapter 2, first, we mathematically describe the state of the art of the SM and highlight the main challenges with these schemes when applied at mmWave frequency band. In order to combat these challenges (for example, high cost and high power consumption), we propose novel SM schemes specifically designed for mmWave massive MIMO systems. After that, we explain how these schemes can be exploited in attaining energy efficient UT architecture. Finally, we present the channel model, systems assumptions and the transceiver devices power consumption models. In chapter 3, we consider single user SM system. First, we propose downlink (DL) receive SM (RSM) scheme where the UT can be implemented with single or multiple radio-frequency chains and the BS can be fully digital or hybrid architecture. Moreover, we consider different precoders at the BS and propose low complexity and efficient antenna selection schemes for narrowband and wideband transmissions. After that, we propose joint uplink-downlink SM scheme where we consider RSM in the DL and transmit SM (TSM) in the UL based on energy efficient hybrid UT architecture. In chapter 4, we extend the SM system to the multi-user case. Specifically, we develop joint multi-user power allocation, user selection and antenna selection algorithms for the broadcast and the multiple access channels. Chapter 5 is presented for concluding the thesis and proposing future research directions.Considerando los altos requerimientos de los servicios de nueva generación, las infraestructuras de red actual se han visto obligadas a evolucionar en la forma de manejar los diferentes recursos de red y computación. Con este fin, nuevas tecnologías han surgido para soportar las funcionalidades necesarias para esta evolución, significando también un gran cambio de paradigma en el diseño de arquitecturas para la futura implementación de redes.En este sentido, este documento de tesis doctoral presenta un análisis sobre estas tecnologías, enfocado en el caso de redes inter/intra Data Centre. Por consiguiente, la introducción de tecnologías basadas en redes ópticas ha sido estudiada, con el fin de identificar problemas actuales que puedan llegar a ser solucionados mediante el diseño y aplicación de nuevas técnicas, asimismo como a través del desarrollo o la extensión de los componentes de arquitectura de red.Con este propósito, se han definido una serie de propuestas relacionadas con aspectos cruciales, así como el control de dispositivos ópticos por SDN para habilitar el manejo de redes híbridas, la necesidad de definir un mecanismo de descubrimiento de topologías ópticas capaz de exponer información precisa, y el analizar las brechas existentes para la definición de una arquitectura común en fin de soportar las comunicaciones 5G.Para validar estas propuestas, se han presentado una serie de validaciones experimentales por medio de escenarios de prueba específicos, demostrando los avances en control, orquestación, virtualización y manejo de recursos con el fin de optimizar su utilización. Los resultados expuestos, además de corroborar la correcta operación de los métodos y componentes propuestos, abre el camino hacia nuevas formas de adaptar los actuales despliegues de red respecto a los desafíos definidos en el inicio de una nueva era de las telecomunicaciones.Postprint (published version

Joint Power Allocation and Access Point Selection for Cell-free Massive MIMO

Cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (CF-MIMO) is a promising technological enabler for fifth generation (5G) networks in which a large number of access points (APs) jointly serve the users. Each AP applies conjugate beamforming to precode data, which is based only on the AP's local channel state information. However, by having the nature of a (very) large number of APs, the operation of CF-MIMO can be energy-inefficient. In this paper, we investigate the energy efficiency performance of CF-MIMO by considering a practical energy consumption model which includes both the signal transmit energy as well as the static energy consumed by hardware components. In particular, a joint power allocation and AP selection design is proposed to minimize the total energy consumption subject to given quality of service (QoS) constraints. In order to deal with the combinatorial complexity of the formulated problem, we employ norm $l_{2,1}$-based block-sparsity and successive convex optimization to leverage the AP selection process. Numerical results show significant energy savings obtained by the proposed design, compared to all-active APs scheme and the large-scale based AP selection