202 research outputs found
Group Sparse Precoding for Cloud-RAN with Multiple User Antennas
Cloud radio access network (C-RAN) has become a promising network
architecture to support the massive data traffic in the next generation
cellular networks. In a C-RAN, a massive number of low-cost remote antenna
ports (RAPs) are connected to a single baseband unit (BBU) pool via high-speed
low-latency fronthaul links, which enables efficient resource allocation and
interference management. As the RAPs are geographically distributed, the group
sparse beamforming schemes attracts extensive studies, where a subset of RAPs
is assigned to be active and a high spectral efficiency can be achieved.
However, most studies assumes that each user is equipped with a single antenna.
How to design the group sparse precoder for the multiple antenna users remains
little understood, as it requires the joint optimization of the mutual coupling
transmit and receive beamformers. This paper formulates an optimal joint RAP
selection and precoding design problem in a C-RAN with multiple antennas at
each user. Specifically, we assume a fixed transmit power constraint for each
RAP, and investigate the optimal tradeoff between the sum rate and the number
of active RAPs. Motivated by the compressive sensing theory, this paper
formulates the group sparse precoding problem by inducing the -norm as
a penalty and then uses the reweighted heuristic to find a solution.
By adopting the idea of block diagonalization precoding, the problem can be
formulated as a convex optimization, and an efficient algorithm is proposed
based on its Lagrangian dual. Simulation results verify that our proposed
algorithm can achieve almost the same sum rate as that obtained from exhaustive
search
Boosting Fronthaul Capacity: Global Optimization of Power Sharing for Centralized Radio Access Network
The limited fronthaul capacity imposes a challenge on the uplink of
centralized radio access network (C-RAN). We propose to boost the fronthaul
capacity of massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) aided C-RAN by
globally optimizing the power sharing between channel estimation and data
transmission both for the user devices (UDs) and the remote radio units (RRUs).
Intuitively, allocating more power to the channel estimation will result in
more accurate channel estimates, which increases the achievable throughput.
However, increasing the power allocated to the pilot training will reduce the
power assigned to data transmission, which reduces the achievable throughput.
In order to optimize the powers allocated to the pilot training and to the data
transmission of both the UDs and the RRUs, we assign an individual power
sharing factor to each of them and derive an asymptotic closed-form expression
of the signal-to-interference-plus-noise for the massive MIMO aided C-RAN
consisting of both the UD-to-RRU links and the RRU-to-baseband unit (BBU)
links. We then exploit the C-RAN architecture's central computing and control
capability for jointly optimizing the UDs' power sharing factors and the RRUs'
power sharing factors aiming for maximizing the fronthaul capacity. Our
simulation results show that the fronthaul capacity is significantly boosted by
the proposed global optimization of the power allocation between channel
estimation and data transmission both for the UDs and for their host RRUs. As a
specific example of 32 receive antennas (RAs) deployed by RRU and 128 RAs
deployed by BBU, the sum-rate of 10 UDs achieved with the optimal power sharing
factors improves 33\% compared with the one attained without optimizing power
sharing factors
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