Single-Carrier Modulation versus OFDM for Millimeter-Wave Wireless MIMO

This paper presents results on the achievable spectral efficiency and on the energy efficiency for a wireless multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) link operating at millimeter wave frequencies (mmWave) in a typical 5G scenario. Two different single-carrier modem schemes are considered, i.e., a traditional modulation scheme with linear equalization at the receiver, and a single-carrier modulation with cyclic prefix, frequency-domain equalization and FFT-based processing at the receiver; these two schemes are compared with a conventional MIMO-OFDM transceiver structure. Our analysis jointly takes into account the peculiar characteristics of MIMO channels at mmWave frequencies, the use of hybrid (analog-digital) pre-coding and post-coding beamformers, the finite cardinality of the modulation structure, and the non-linear behavior of the transmitter power amplifiers. Our results show that the best performance is achieved by single-carrier modulation with time-domain equalization, which exhibits the smallest loss due to the non-linear distortion, and whose performance can be further improved by using advanced equalization schemes. Results also confirm that performance gets severely degraded when the link length exceeds 90-100 meters and the transmit power falls below 0 dBW.Comment: accepted for publication on IEEE Transactions on Communication

Frame Structure Design and Analysis for Millimeter Wave Cellular Systems

The millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequencies have attracted considerable attention for fifth generation (5G) cellular communication as they offer orders of magnitude greater bandwidth than current cellular systems. However, the medium access control (MAC) layer may need to be significantly redesigned to support the highly directional transmissions, ultra-low latencies and high peak rates expected in mmWave communication. To address these challenges, we present a novel mmWave MAC layer frame structure with a number of enhancements including flexible, highly granular transmission times, dynamic control signal locations, extended messaging and ability to efficiently multiplex directional control signals. Analytic formulae are derived for the utilization and control overhead as a function of control periodicity, number of users, traffic statistics, signal-to-noise ratio and antenna gains. Importantly, the analysis can incorporate various front-end MIMO capability assumptions -- a critical feature of mmWave. Under realistic system and traffic assumptions, the analysis reveals that the proposed flexible frame structure design offers significant benefits over designs with fixed frame structures similar to current 4G long-term evolution (LTE). It is also shown that fully digital beamforming architectures offer significantly lower overhead compared to analog and hybrid beamforming under equivalent power budgets.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions for Wireless Communication

AirSync: Enabling Distributed Multiuser MIMO with Full Spatial Multiplexing

The enormous success of advanced wireless devices is pushing the demand for higher wireless data rates. Denser spectrum reuse through the deployment of more access points per square mile has the potential to successfully meet the increasing demand for more bandwidth. In theory, the best approach to density increase is via distributed multiuser MIMO, where several access points are connected to a central server and operate as a large distributed multi-antenna access point, ensuring that all transmitted signal power serves the purpose of data transmission, rather than creating "interference." In practice, while enterprise networks offer a natural setup in which distributed MIMO might be possible, there are serious implementation difficulties, the primary one being the need to eliminate phase and timing offsets between the jointly coordinated access points. In this paper we propose AirSync, a novel scheme which provides not only time but also phase synchronization, thus enabling distributed MIMO with full spatial multiplexing gains. AirSync locks the phase of all access points using a common reference broadcasted over the air in conjunction with a Kalman filter which closely tracks the phase drift. We have implemented AirSync as a digital circuit in the FPGA of the WARP radio platform. Our experimental testbed, comprised of two access points and two clients, shows that AirSync is able to achieve phase synchronization within a few degrees, and allows the system to nearly achieve the theoretical optimal multiplexing gain. We also discuss MAC and higher layer aspects of a practical deployment. To the best of our knowledge, AirSync offers the first ever realization of the full multiuser MIMO gain, namely the ability to increase the number of wireless clients linearly with the number of jointly coordinated access points, without reducing the per client rate.Comment: Submitted to Transactions on Networkin

Multipath Multiplexing for Capacity Enhancement in SIMO Wireless Systems

This paper proposes a novel and simple orthogonal faster than Nyquist (OFTN) data transmission and detection approach for a single input multiple output (SIMO) system. It is assumed that the signal having a bandwidth $B$ is transmitted through a wireless channel with $L$ multipath components. Under this assumption, the current paper provides a novel and simple OFTN transmission and symbol-by-symbol detection approach that exploits the multiplexing gain obtained by the multipath characteristic of wideband wireless channels. It is shown that the proposed design can achieve a higher transmission rate than the existing one (i.e., orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)). Furthermore, the achievable rate gap between the proposed approach and that of the OFDM increases as the number of receiver antennas increases for a fixed value of $L$. This implies that the performance gain of the proposed approach can be very significant for a large-scale multi-antenna wireless system. The superiority of the proposed approach is shown theoretically and confirmed via numerical simulations. {Specifically, we have found {upper-bound average} rates of 15 bps/Hz and 28 bps/Hz with the OFDM and proposed approaches, respectively, in a Rayleigh fading channel with 32 receive antennas and signal to noise ratio (SNR) of 15.3 dB. The extension of the proposed approach for different system setups and associated research problems is also discussed.Comment: IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication

Multiuser MIMO-OFDM for Next-Generation Wireless Systems

This overview portrays the 40-year evolution of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) research. The amelioration of powerful multicarrier OFDM arrangements with multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems has numerous benefits, which are detailed in this treatise. We continue by highlighting the limitations of conventional detection and channel estimation techniques designed for multiuser MIMO OFDM systems in the so-called rank-deficient scenarios, where the number of users supported or the number of transmit antennas employed exceeds the number of receiver antennas. This is often encountered in practice, unless we limit the number of users granted access in the base station’s or radio port’s coverage area. Following a historical perspective on the associated design problems and their state-of-the-art solutions, the second half of this treatise details a range of classic multiuser detectors (MUDs) designed for MIMO-OFDM systems and characterizes their achievable performance. A further section aims for identifying novel cutting-edge genetic algorithm (GA)-aided detector solutions, which have found numerous applications in wireless communications in recent years. In an effort to stimulate the cross pollination of ideas across the machine learning, optimization, signal processing, and wireless communications research communities, we will review the broadly applicable principles of various GA-assisted optimization techniques, which were recently proposed also for employment inmultiuser MIMO OFDM. In order to stimulate new research, we demonstrate that the family of GA-aided MUDs is capable of achieving a near-optimum performance at the cost of a significantly lower computational complexity than that imposed by their optimum maximum-likelihood (ML) MUD aided counterparts. The paper is concluded by outlining a range of future research options that may find their way into next-generation wireless systems