Pilot Allocation and Sum-Rate Analysis in Cell-Free Massive MIMO Systems

This paper deals with the challenging issue of the unaffordable channel training overhead in the dense cell-free massive multi-input multi-output (MIMO) system when a high number of users are being simultaneously served. By adopting the user-centric cluster method, a dynamic pilot reuse (DPR) scheme is proposed to allow a pair of users to share a single pilot sequence. Specifically, the proposed reuse scheme is achieved with the objective of maximizing the uplink achievable sum-rate subject to users' signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) requirements and pilot resources constraints. On this basis, the SINR expression is derived for any user sharing its pilot with another by utilizing both minimum mean squared error (MMSE) detection and channel estimation. A low complexity pilot reuse algorithm is then developed based on the separation distance between users. The iterative grid search (IGS) method is employed to find the threshold that can be utilized in the proposed algorithm to maximize the sum-rate. Finally, simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of the DPR scheme with the optimized threshold in terms of the uplink achievable sum-rate

Ubiquitous Cell-Free Massive MIMO Communications

Since the first cellular networks were trialled in the 1970s, we have witnessed an incredible wireless revolution. From 1G to 4G, the massive traffic growth has been managed by a combination of wider bandwidths, refined radio interfaces, and network densification, namely increasing the number of antennas per site. Due its cost-efficiency, the latter has contributed the most. Massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) is a key 5G technology that uses massive antenna arrays to provide a very high beamforming gain and spatially multiplexing of users, and hence, increases the spectral and energy efficiency. It constitutes a centralized solution to densify a network, and its performance is limited by the inter-cell interference inherent in its cell-centric design. Conversely, ubiquitous cell-free Massive MIMO refers to a distributed Massive MIMO system implementing coherent user-centric transmission to overcome the inter-cell interference limitation in cellular networks and provide additional macro-diversity. These features, combined with the system scalability inherent in the Massive MIMO design, distinguishes ubiquitous cell-free Massive MIMO from prior coordinated distributed wireless systems. In this article, we investigate the enormous potential of this promising technology while addressing practical deployment issues to deal with the increased back/front-hauling overhead deriving from the signal co-processing.Comment: Published in EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking on August 5, 201

Analysis of Wireless Networks With Massive Connectivity

Recent years have witnessed unprecedented growth in wireless networks in terms of both data traffic and number of connected devices. How to support this fast increasing demand for high data traffic and connectivity is a key consideration in the design of future wireless communication systems. With this motivation, in this thesis, we focus on the analysis of wireless networks with massive connectivity. In the first part of the thesis, we seek to improve the energy efficiency (EE) of single-cell massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) networks with joint antenna selection and user scheduling. We propose a two-step iterative procedure to maximize the EE. In each iteration, bisection search and random selection are used first to determine a subset of antennas with the users selected before, and then identify the EE-optimal subset of users with the selected antennas via cross entropy algorithm. Subsequently, we focus on the joint uplink and downlink EE maximization, under a limitation on the number of available radio frequency (RF) chains. With the Jensen\u27s inequality and the power consumption model, the original problem is converted into a combinatorial optimization problem. Utilizing the learning-based stochastic gradient descent framework and the rare event simulation method, we propose an efficient learning-based stochastic gradient descent algorithm to solve the corresponding combinatorial optimization problem. In the second part of the thesis, we focus on the joint activity detection and channel estimation in cell-free massive MIMO systems with massive connectivity. At first, we conduct an asymptotic analysis of single measurement vector (SMV) based minimum mean square error (MMSE) estimation in cell-free massive MIMO systems with massive connectivity. We establish a decoupling principle of SMV based MMSE estimation for sparse signal vectors with independent and non-identically distributed (i.n.i.d.) non-zero components. Subsequently, using the decoupling principle, likelihood ratio test and the optimal fusion rule, we obtain detection rules for the activity of users based on the received pilot signals at only one access point (AP), and also based on the cooperation of the received pilot signals from the entire set of APs for centralized and distributed detection. Moreover, we study the achievable uplink rates with zero-forcing (ZF) detector at the central processing unit (CPU) of the cell-free massive MIMO systems. In the third part, we focus on the performance analysis of intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted wireless networks. Initially, we investigate the MMSE channel estimation for IRS assisted wireless communication systems. Then, we study the sparse activity detection problem in IRS assisted wireless networks. Specifically, employing the generalized approximate message passing (GAMP) algorithm, we obtain the MMSE estimates of the equivalent effective channel coefficients from the base station (BS) to all users, and transform the received pilot signals into additive Gaussian noise corrupted versions of the equivalent effective channel coefficients. Likelihood ratio test is used to acquire decisions on the activity of each user based on the Gaussian noise corrupted equivalent effective channel coefficients, and the optimal fusion rule is used to obtain the final decisions on the activity of all users based on the previous decisions on the activity of each user and the corresponding reliabilities. Finally, we conduct an asymptotic analysis of maximizing the weighted sum rate by joint beamforming and power allocation under transmit power and quality-of-service (QoS) constraints in IRS assisted wireless networks

Random Access Protocols for Massive MIMO

5G wireless networks are expected to support new services with stringent requirements on data rates, latency and reliability. One novel feature is the ability to serve a dense crowd of devices, calling for radically new ways of accessing the network. This is the case in machine-type communications, but also in urban environments and hotspots. In those use cases, the high number of devices and the relatively short channel coherence interval do not allow per-device allocation of orthogonal pilot sequences. This article motivates the need for random access by the devices to pilot sequences used for channel estimation, and shows that Massive MIMO is a main enabler to achieve fast access with high data rates, and delay-tolerant access with different data rate levels. Three pilot access protocols along with data transmission protocols are described, fulfilling different requirements of 5G services

Downlink Power Control in User-Centric and Cell-Free Massive MIMO Wireless Networks

Recently, the so-called cell-free Massive MIMO architecture has been introduced, wherein a very large number of distributed access points (APs) simultaneously and jointly serve a much smaller number of mobile stations (MSs). A variant of the cell-free technique is the user-centric approach, wherein each AP just decodes the MSs that it receives with the largest power. This paper considers both the cell-free and user-centric approaches, and, using an interplay of sequential optimization and alternating optimization, derives downlink power-control algorithms aimed at maximizing either the minimum users' SINR (to ensure fairness), or the system sum-rate. Numerical results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms, as well as that the user-centric approach generally outperforms the CF one.Comment: presented at the 28th Annual IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor and Mobile Radio Communications (IEEE PIMRC 2017), Montreal (CA), October 201

On the Total Energy Efficiency of Cell-Free Massive MIMO

We consider the cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) downlink, where a very large number of distributed multiple-antenna access points (APs) serve many single-antenna users in the same time-frequency resource. A simple (distributed) conjugate beamforming scheme is applied at each AP via the use of local channel state information (CSI). This CSI is acquired through time-division duplex operation and the reception of uplink training signals transmitted by the users. We derive a closed-form expression for the spectral efficiency taking into account the effects of channel estimation errors and power control. This closed-form result enables us to analyze the effects of backhaul power consumption, the number of APs, and the number of antennas per AP on the total energy efficiency, as well as, to design an optimal power allocation algorithm. The optimal power allocation algorithm aims at maximizing the total energy efficiency, subject to a per-user spectral efficiency constraint and a per-AP power constraint. Compared with the equal power control, our proposed power allocation scheme can double the total energy efficiency. Furthermore, we propose AP selections schemes, in which each user chooses a subset of APs, to reduce the power consumption caused by the backhaul links. With our proposed AP selection schemes, the total energy efficiency increases significantly, especially for large numbers of APs. Moreover, under a requirement of good quality-of-service for all users, cell-free massive MIMO outperforms the colocated counterpart in terms of energy efficiency