On the Performance of Physically Constrained Multi-Pair Two-Way Massive MIMO Relaying with Zero Forcing

In this paper, we consider a physically constrained multi-pair two-way massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) decode-and-forward (DF) half-duplex relay system, where multiple single-antenna user pairs exchange information through a massive MIMO relay, and we employ zero-forcing reception/zero-forcing transmission (ZFR/ZFT) at the relay. When the number of relay antennas M becomes very large and tends to be infinite, we study the large-scale approximation of the sum spectral efficiency (SE) with the effect of spatial correlation generated by the constrained space. Furthermore, we investigate the energy efficiency (EE) with a practical power consumption model, and demonstrate the impact of the relay antenna number and the size of constrained space on the EE performance

Energy Efficient Massive MIMO and Beamforming for 5G Communications

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) has been a key technique in the next generation of wireless communications for its potential to achieve higher capacity and data rates. However, the exponential growth of data traffic has led to a significant increase in the power consumption and system complexity. Therefore, we propose and study wireless technologies to improve the trade-off between system performance and power consumption of wireless communications. This Thesis firstly proposes a strategy with partial channel state information (CSI) acquisition to reduce the power consumption and hardware complexity of massive MIMO base stations. In this context, the employment of partial CSI is proposed in correlated communication channels with user mobility. By exploiting both the spatial correlation and temporal correlation of the channel, our analytical results demonstrate significant gains in the energy efficiency of the massive MIMO base station. Moreover, relay-aided communications have experienced raising interest; especially, two-way relaying systems can improve spectral efficiency with short required operating time. Therefore, this Thesis focuses on an uncorrelated massive MIMO two-way relaying system and studies power scaling laws to investigate how the transmit powers can be scaled to improve the energy efficiency up to several times the energy efficiency without power scaling while approximately maintaining the system performance. In a similar line, large antenna arrays deployed at the space-constrained relay would give rise to the spatial correlation. For this reason, this Thesis presents an incomplete CSI scheme to evaluate the trade-off between the spatial correlation and system performance. In addition, the advantages of linear processing methods and the effects of channel aging are investigated to further improve the relay-aided system performance. Similarly, large antenna arrays are required in millimeter-wave communications to achieve narrow beams with higher power gain. This poses the problem that locating the best beam direction requires high power and complexity consumption. Therefore, this Thesis presents several low-complexity beam alignment methods with respect to the state-of-the-art to evaluate the trade-off between complexity and system performance. Overall, extensive analytical and numerical results show an improved performance and validate the effectiveness of the proposed techniques

Multipair Relaying With Space-Constrained Large-Scale MIMO Arrays: Spectral and Energy Efficiency Analysis With Incomplete CSI

In this paper, we study a multi-pair two-way large-scale multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) decode-and-forward relay system. Multiple single-antenna user pairs exchange information via a shared relay working at half-duplex. The proposed scenario considers a practical case where an increasing number of antennas is deployed in a fixed physical space, giving rise to a trade-off between antenna gain and spatial correlation. The channel is assumed imperfectly known, and the relay employs linear processing methods. We study the large-scale approximations of the sum spectral efficiency (SE) and investigate the energy efficiency (EE) with a practical power consumption model when the number of relay antennas becomes large. We demonstrate the impact of the relay antenna number and spatial correlation with reducing inter-antenna distance on the EE performance. We exploit the increasing spatial correlation to allow an incomplete channel state information (CSI) acquisition where explicit CSI is acquired only for a subset of antennas. Our analytical derivations and numerical results show that applying the incomplete CSI strategy in the proposed system can improve the EE against complete CSI systems while maintaining the average SE performance

Massive MIMO is a Reality -- What is Next? Five Promising Research Directions for Antenna Arrays

Massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) is no longer a "wild" or "promising" concept for future cellular networks - in 2018 it became a reality. Base stations (BSs) with 64 fully digital transceiver chains were commercially deployed in several countries, the key ingredients of Massive MIMO have made it into the 5G standard, the signal processing methods required to achieve unprecedented spectral efficiency have been developed, and the limitation due to pilot contamination has been resolved. Even the development of fully digital Massive MIMO arrays for mmWave frequencies - once viewed prohibitively complicated and costly - is well underway. In a few years, Massive MIMO with fully digital transceivers will be a mainstream feature at both sub-6 GHz and mmWave frequencies. In this paper, we explain how the first chapter of the Massive MIMO research saga has come to an end, while the story has just begun. The coming wide-scale deployment of BSs with massive antenna arrays opens the door to a brand new world where spatial processing capabilities are omnipresent. In addition to mobile broadband services, the antennas can be used for other communication applications, such as low-power machine-type or ultra-reliable communications, as well as non-communication applications such as radar, sensing and positioning. We outline five new Massive MIMO related research directions: Extremely large aperture arrays, Holographic Massive MIMO, Six-dimensional positioning, Large-scale MIMO radar, and Intelligent Massive MIMO.Comment: 20 pages, 9 figures, submitted to Digital Signal Processin

Hardware-Conscious Wireless Communication System Design

The work at hand is a selection of topics in efficient wireless communication system design, with topics logically divided into two groups.One group can be described as hardware designs conscious of their possibilities and limitations. In other words, it is about hardware that chooses its configuration and properties depending on the performance that needs to be delivered and the influence of external factors, with the goal of keeping the energy consumption as low as possible. Design parameters that trade off power with complexity are identified for analog, mixed signal and digital circuits, and implications of these tradeoffs are analyzed in detail. An analog front end and an LDPC channel decoder that adapt their parameters to the environment (e.g. fluctuating power level due to fading) are proposed, and it is analyzed how much power/energy these environment-adaptive structures save compared to non-adaptive designs made for the worst-case scenario. Additionally, the impact of ADC bit resolution on the energy efficiency of a massive MIMO system is examined in detail, with the goal of finding bit resolutions that maximize the energy efficiency under various system setups.In another group of themes, one can recognize systems where the system architect was conscious of fundamental limitations stemming from hardware.Put in another way, in these designs there is no attempt of tweaking or tuning the hardware. On the contrary, system design is performed so as to work around an existing and unchangeable hardware limitation. As a workaround for the problematic centralized topology, a massive MIMO base station based on the daisy chain topology is proposed and a method for signal processing tailored to the daisy chain setup is designed. In another example, a large group of cooperating relays is split into several smaller groups, each cooperatively performing relaying independently of the others. As cooperation consumes resources (such as bandwidth), splitting the system into smaller, independent cooperative parts helps save resources and is again an example of a workaround for an inherent limitation.From the analyses performed in this thesis, promising observations about hardware consciousness can be made. Adapting the structure of a hardware block to the environment can bring massive savings in energy, and simple workarounds prove to perform almost as good as the inherently limited designs, but with the limitation being successfully bypassed. As a general observation, it can be concluded that hardware consciousness pays off

Massive MIMO and Full-duplex Relaying Systems

In this thesis, we study how massive multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) can be employed to mitigate loop-interference (LI), multi-user interference and noise in a full-duplex (FD) relaying system. For a FD relaying system with massive MIMO deployed at both source and destination, we investigate three FD relaying schemes: co-located, distributed cooperative, and distributed non-cooperative relaying. Asymptotic analysis shows that the three schemes can completely cancel multi-user interference and LI when the number of antennas at the source and destination grows without bound, in the case where the relay has a finite number of antennas. For the system with massive MIMO deployed at the FD relay, we propose a pilot protocol for LI channel minimum-mean-square-error estimation by exploiting the channel coherence time difference between static and moving transceivers. To maximize the end-to-end achievable rate, we design a novel power allocation scheme to adjust the transmit power of each link at the relay in order to equalize the achievable rate of the source-to-relay and relay-to-destination links. The analytical and numerical results show that the proposed pilot protocol and power allocation scheme jointly improve both spectral and energy efficiency significantly. To enable the use of low resolution analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) at relays for energy saving, we propose a novel iterative power allocation scheme to mitigate the resulting quantization noise via reducing the received LI power and numerically identify the optimum resolutions of ADCs for maximizing throughput and energy efficiency. For massive MIMO receivers employing one-bit ADCs, we propose three carrier frequency (CFO) offset estimation schemes for dual-pilot and multiple-pilot cases. The three schemes are developed under different scenarios: large but finite number of antennas at the receiver, infinite number of antennas at the receiver, and very small CFO, respectively

Physical Layer Service Integration in 5G: Potentials and Challenges

High transmission rate and secure communication have been identified as the key targets that need to be effectively addressed by fifth generation (5G) wireless systems. In this context, the concept of physical-layer security becomes attractive, as it can establish perfect security using only the characteristics of wireless medium. Nonetheless, to further increase the spectral efficiency, an emerging concept, termed physical-layer service integration (PHY-SI), has been recognized as an effective means. Its basic idea is to combine multiple coexisting services, i.e., multicast/broadcast service and confidential service, into one integral service for one-time transmission at the transmitter side. This article first provides a tutorial on typical PHY-SI models. Furthermore, we propose some state-of-the-art solutions to improve the overall performance of PHY-SI in certain important communication scenarios. In particular, we highlight the extension of several concepts borrowed from conventional single-service communications, such as artificial noise (AN), eigenmode transmission etc., to the scenario of PHY-SI. These techniques are shown to be effective in the design of reliable and robust PHY-SI schemes. Finally, several potential research directions are identified for future work.Comment: 12 pages, 7 figure