Self organization of tilts in relay enhanced networks: a distributed solution

Despite years of physical-layer research, the capacity enhancement potential of relays is limited by the additional spectrum required for Base Station (BS)-Relay Station (RS) links. This paper presents a novel distributed solution by exploiting a system level perspective instead. Building on a realistic system model with impromptu RS deployments, we develop an analytical framework for tilt optimization that can dynamically maximize spectral efficiency of both the BS-RS and BS-user links in an online manner. To obtain a distributed self-organizing solution, the large scale system-wide optimization problem is decomposed into local small scale subproblems by applying the design principles of self-organization in biological systems. The local subproblems are non-convex, but having a very small scale, can be solved via standard nonlinear optimization techniques such as sequential quadratic programming. The performance of the developed solution is evaluated through extensive simulations for an LTE-A type system and compared against a number of benchmarks including a centralized solution obtained via brute force, that also gives an upper bound to assess the optimality gap. Results show that the proposed solution can enhance average spectral efficiency by up to 50% compared to fixed tilting, with negligible signaling overheads. The key advantage of the proposed solution is its potential for autonomous and distributed implementation

Nuts and Bolts of a Realistic Stochastic Geometric Analysis of mmWave HetNets: Hardware Impairments and Channel Aging

© 2019 IEEE.Motivated by heterogeneous network (HetNet) design in improving coverage and by millimeter-wave (mmWave) transmission offering an abundance of extra spectrum, we present a general analytical framework shedding light on the downlink of realistic mmWave HetNets consisting of K tiers of randomly located base stations. Specifically, we model, by virtue of stochastic geometry tools, the multi-Tier multi-user (MU) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) mmWave network degraded by the inevitable residual additive transceiver hardware impairments (RATHIs) and channel aging. Given this setting, we derive the coverage probability and the area spectral efficiency (ASE), and we subsequently evaluate the impact of residual transceiver hardware impairments and channel aging on these metrics. Different path-loss laws for line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight are accounted for the analysis, which are among the distinguishing features of mmWave systems. Among the findings, we show that the RATHIs have a meaningful impact at the high-signal-To-noise-ratio regime, while the transmit additive distortion degrades further than the receive distortion the system performance. Moreover, serving fewer users proves to be preferable, and the more directive the mmWaves are, the higher the ASE becomes.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio

Downlink and Uplink Cell Association with Traditional Macrocells and Millimeter Wave Small Cells

Millimeter wave (mmWave) links will offer high capacity but are poor at penetrating into or diffracting around solid objects. Thus, we consider a hybrid cellular network with traditional sub 6 GHz macrocells coexisting with denser mmWave small cells, where a mobile user can connect to either opportunistically. We develop a general analytical model to characterize and derive the uplink and downlink cell association in view of the SINR and rate coverage probabilities in such a mixed deployment. We offer extensive validation of these analytical results (which rely on several simplifying assumptions) with simulation results. Using the analytical results, different decoupled uplink and downlink cell association strategies are investigated and their superiority is shown compared to the traditional coupled approach. Finally, small cell biasing in mmWave is studied, and we show that unprecedented biasing values are desirable due to the wide bandwidth.Comment: 30 pages, 9 figures. Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication

Cooperative Radio Communications for Green Smart Environments

The demand for mobile connectivity is continuously increasing, and by 2020 Mobile and Wireless Communications will serve not only very dense populations of mobile phones and nomadic computers, but also the expected multiplicity of devices and sensors located in machines, vehicles, health systems and city infrastructures. Future Mobile Networks are then faced with many new scenarios and use cases, which will load the networks with different data traffic patterns, in new or shared spectrum bands, creating new specific requirements. This book addresses both the techniques to model, analyse and optimise the radio links and transmission systems in such scenarios, together with the most advanced radio access, resource management and mobile networking technologies. This text summarises the work performed by more than 500 researchers from more than 120 institutions in Europe, America and Asia, from both academia and industries, within the framework of the COST IC1004 Action on "Cooperative Radio Communications for Green and Smart Environments". The book will have appeal to graduates and researchers in the Radio Communications area, and also to engineers working in the Wireless industry. Topics discussed in this book include: • Radio waves propagation phenomena in diverse urban, indoor, vehicular and body environments• Measurements, characterization, and modelling of radio channels beyond 4G networks• Key issues in Vehicle (V2X) communication• Wireless Body Area Networks, including specific Radio Channel Models for WBANs• Energy efficiency and resource management enhancements in Radio Access Networks• Definitions and models for the virtualised and cloud RAN architectures• Advances on feasible indoor localization and tracking techniques• Recent findings and innovations in antenna systems for communications• Physical Layer Network Coding for next generation wireless systems• Methods and techniques for MIMO Over the Air (OTA) testin

Cooperative Radio Communications for Green Smart Environments

The demand for mobile connectivity is continuously increasing, and by 2020 Mobile and Wireless Communications will serve not only very dense populations of mobile phones and nomadic computers, but also the expected multiplicity of devices and sensors located in machines, vehicles, health systems and city infrastructures. Future Mobile Networks are then faced with many new scenarios and use cases, which will load the networks with different data traffic patterns, in new or shared spectrum bands, creating new specific requirements. This book addresses both the techniques to model, analyse and optimise the radio links and transmission systems in such scenarios, together with the most advanced radio access, resource management and mobile networking technologies. This text summarises the work performed by more than 500 researchers from more than 120 institutions in Europe, America and Asia, from both academia and industries, within the framework of the COST IC1004 Action on "Cooperative Radio Communications for Green and Smart Environments". The book will have appeal to graduates and researchers in the Radio Communications area, and also to engineers working in the Wireless industry. Topics discussed in this book include: • Radio waves propagation phenomena in diverse urban, indoor, vehicular and body environments• Measurements, characterization, and modelling of radio channels beyond 4G networks• Key issues in Vehicle (V2X) communication• Wireless Body Area Networks, including specific Radio Channel Models for WBANs• Energy efficiency and resource management enhancements in Radio Access Networks• Definitions and models for the virtualised and cloud RAN architectures• Advances on feasible indoor localization and tracking techniques• Recent findings and innovations in antenna systems for communications• Physical Layer Network Coding for next generation wireless systems• Methods and techniques for MIMO Over the Air (OTA) testin

Ondas milimétricas e MIMO massivo para otimização da capacidade e cobertura de redes heterogeneas de 5G

Today's Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A) networks cannot support the exponential growth in mobile traffic forecast for the next decade. By 2020, according to Ericsson, 6 billion mobile subscribers worldwide are projected to generate 46 exabytes of mobile data traffic monthly from 24 billion connected devices, smartphones and short-range Internet of Things (IoT) devices being the key prosumers. In response, 5G networks are foreseen to markedly outperform legacy 4G systems. Triggered by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) under the IMT-2020 network initiative, 5G will support three broad categories of use cases: enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) for multi-Gbps data rate applications; ultra-reliable and low latency communications (URLLC) for critical scenarios; and massive machine type communications (mMTC) for massive connectivity. Among the several technology enablers being explored for 5G, millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication, massive MIMO antenna arrays and ultra-dense small cell networks (UDNs) feature as the dominant technologies. These technologies in synergy are anticipated to provide the 1000_ capacity increase for 5G networks (relative to 4G) through the combined impact of large additional bandwidth, spectral efficiency (SE) enhancement and high frequency reuse, respectively. However, although these technologies can pave the way towards gigabit wireless, there are still several challenges to solve in terms of how we can fully harness the available bandwidth efficiently through appropriate beamforming and channel modeling approaches. In this thesis, we investigate the system performance enhancements realizable with mmWave massive MIMO in 5G UDN and cellular infrastructure-to-everything (C-I2X) application scenarios involving pedestrian and vehicular users. As a critical component of the system-level simulation approach adopted in this thesis, we implemented 3D channel models for the accurate characterization of the wireless channels in these scenarios and for realistic performance evaluation. To address the hardware cost, complexity and power consumption of the massive MIMO architectures, we propose a novel generalized framework for hybrid beamforming (HBF) array structures. The generalized model reveals the opportunities that can be harnessed with the overlapped subarray structures for a balanced trade-o_ between SE and energy efficiently (EE) of 5G networks. The key results in this investigation show that mmWave massive MIMO can deliver multi-Gbps rates for 5G whilst maintaining energy-efficient operation of the network.As redes LTE-A atuais não são capazes de suportar o crescimento exponencial de tráfego que está previsto para a próxima década. De acordo com a previsão da Ericsson, espera-se que em 2020, a nível global, 6 mil milhões de subscritores venham a gerar mensalmente 46 exa bytes de tráfego de dados a partir de 24 mil milhões de dispositivos ligados à rede móvel, sendo os telefones inteligentes e dispositivos IoT de curto alcance os principais responsáveis por tal nível de tráfego. Em resposta a esta exigência, espera-se que as redes de 5a geração (5G) tenham um desempenho substancialmente superior às redes de 4a geração (4G) atuais. Desencadeado pelo UIT (União Internacional das Telecomunicações) no âmbito da iniciativa IMT-2020, o 5G irá suportar três grandes tipos de utilizações: banda larga móvel capaz de suportar aplicações com débitos na ordem de vários Gbps; comunicações de baixa latência e alta fiabilidade indispensáveis em cenários de emergência; comunicações massivas máquina-a-máquina para conectividade generalizada. Entre as várias tecnologias capacitadoras que estão a ser exploradas pelo 5G, as comunicações através de ondas milimétricas, os agregados MIMO massivo e as redes celulares ultradensas (RUD) apresentam-se como sendo as tecnologias fundamentais. Antecipa-se que o conjunto destas tecnologias venha a fornecer às redes 5G um aumento de capacidade de 1000x através da utilização de maiores larguras de banda, melhoria da eficiência espectral, e elevada reutilização de frequências respetivamente. Embora estas tecnologias possam abrir caminho para as redes sem fios com débitos na ordem dos gigabits, existem ainda vários desafios que têm que ser resolvidos para que seja possível aproveitar totalmente a largura de banda disponível de maneira eficiente utilizando abordagens de formatação de feixe e de modelação de canal adequadas. Nesta tese investigamos a melhoria de desempenho do sistema conseguida através da utilização de ondas milimétricas e agregados MIMO massivo em cenários de redes celulares ultradensas de 5a geração e em cenários 'infraestrutura celular-para-qualquer coisa' (do inglês: cellular infrastructure-to-everything) envolvendo utilizadores pedestres e veiculares. Como um componente fundamental das simulações de sistema utilizadas nesta tese é o canal de propagação, implementamos modelos de canal tridimensional (3D) para caracterizar de forma precisa o canal de propagação nestes cenários e assim conseguir uma avaliação de desempenho mais condizente com a realidade. Para resolver os problemas associados ao custo do equipamento, complexidade e consumo de energia das arquiteturas MIMO massivo, propomos um modelo inovador de agregados com formatação de feixe híbrida. Este modelo genérico revela as oportunidades que podem ser aproveitadas através da sobreposição de sub-agregados no sentido de obter um compromisso equilibrado entre eficiência espectral (ES) e eficiência energética (EE) nas redes 5G. Os principais resultados desta investigação mostram que a utilização conjunta de ondas milimétricas e de agregados MIMO massivo possibilita a obtenção, em simultâneo, de taxas de transmissão na ordem de vários Gbps e a operação de rede de forma energeticamente eficiente.Programa Doutoral em Telecomunicaçõe

Planning for Small Cells in a Cellular Network

In this thesis, we analyze the effect of deploying small cells on the performance of a network comprising several macro cells. We identify potential locations for low-power base-stations based on the coverage patterns of the macro cells and propose three schemes for placing the small cells. We show that by judiciously installing just two small cells for every macro base-station at these locations and allocating separate resources to all the small cells on a global level, we can increase the performance of the network significantly (~ 45%). An added benefit of our schemes is that we can switch o the macro base-stations at night (when the number of active users is low) and significantly reduce their operation cost.4 month

Towards a Realistic Assessment of Multiple Antenna HCNs: Residual Additive Transceiver Hardware Impairments and Channel Aging

Given the critical dependence of broadcast channels by the accuracy of channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT), we develop a general downlink model with zero-forcing (ZF) precoding, applied in realistic heterogeneous cellular systems with multiple antenna base stations (BSs). Specifically, we take into consideration imperfect CSIT due to pilot contamination, channel aging due to users relative movement, and unavoidable residual additive transceiver hardware impairments (RATHIs). Assuming that the BSs are Poisson distributed, the main contributions focus on the derivations of the upper bound of the coverage probability and the achievable user rate for this general model. We show that both the coverage probability and the user rate are dependent on the imperfect CSIT and RATHIs. More concretely, we quantify the resultant performance loss of the network due to these effects. We depict that the uplink RATHIs have equal impact, but the downlink transmit BS distortion has a greater impact than the receive hardware impairment of the user. Thus, the transmit BS hardware should be of better quality than user's receive hardware. Furthermore, we characterise both the coverage probability and user rate in terms of the time variation of the channel. It is shown that both of them decrease with increasing user mobility, but after a specific value of the normalised Doppler shift, they increase again. Actually, the time variation, following the Jakes autocorrelation function, mirrors this effect on coverage probability and user rate. Finally, we consider space division multiple access (SDMA), single user beamforming (SU-BF), and baseline single-input single-output (SISO) transmission. A comparison among these schemes reveals that the coverage by means of SU-BF outperforms SDMA in terms of coverage.Comment: accepted in IEEE TV

Channel Simulators for MmWave and 5G Applications

Along with the tremendous growth of extremely high traffic demand, 5G radio access technology, is becoming the core component to support massive and multifarious connected devices and real-time, and to offer high reliability wireless communications with high data rate. And millimeter-wave (mmWave) range with a huge frequency spectrum from 3 GHz to 300GHz will perfectly meet the multi-gigabit communicative demand. However, mmWave usage also generally brings new challenges, such as coping with high attenuation or path losses. As an effective method to evaluate the performance of the new concept in communication networks, nowadays, several channel models and simulators have been proposed and developped, such as, WINNER, COST-2100, IMT-Advanced, METIS, NYU Wire-less and QuaDRiGa etc. The thesis goals have been to offer an overview of the advantages and disadvantages of various mmWave channel models existing in the literature, based on the published literature, and to compare based on simulations some of the main features of two selected open-source models, namely the WINNER 2 and QuaDRiGa channel models. In the future, more mmWave channel models are planned to be tested and simulated for a better understanding of their suitability for various mmWave applications