Uplink CoMP under a Constrained Backhaul and Imperfect Channel Knowledge

Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) is known to be a key technology for next generation mobile communications systems, as it allows to overcome the burden of inter-cell interference. Especially in the uplink, it is likely that interference exploitation schemes will be used in the near future, as they can be used with legacy terminals and require no or little changes in standardization. Major drawbacks, however, are the extent of additional backhaul infrastructure needed, and the sensitivity to imperfect channel knowledge. This paper jointly addresses both issues in a new framework incorporating a multitude of proposed theoretical uplink CoMP concepts, which are then put into perspective with practical CoMP algorithms. This comprehensive analysis provides new insight into the potential usage of uplink CoMP in next generation wireless communications systems.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications in February 201

Optimal Pilot Symbols Ratio in terms of Spectrum and Energy Efficiency in Uplink CoMP Networks

In wireless networks, Spectrum Efficiency (SE) and Energy Efficiency (EE) can be affected by the channel estimation that needs to be well designed in practice. In this paper, considering channel estimation error and non-ideal backhaul links, we optimize the pilot symbols ratio in terms of SE and EE in uplink Coordinated Multi-point (CoMP) networks. Modeling the channel estimation error, we formulate the SE and EE maximization problems by analyzing the system capacity with imperfect channel estimation. The maximal system capacity in SE optimization and the minimal transmit power in EE optimization, which both have the closed-form expressions, are derived by some reasonable approximations to reduce the complexity of solving complicated equations. Simulations are carried out to validate the superiority of our scheme, verify the accuracy of our approximation, and show the effect of pilot symbols ratio.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, 2017 IEEE 85th Vehicular Technology Conference (VTC Spring

A System-level Assessment of Uplink CoMP in LTE-A Heterogeneous Networks

In LTE-Advanced networks, the steady demand for higher data rates by users is met through several techniques. One of the most promising solutions is CoMP (Coordinated MultiPoint), which allows the involvement of multiple eNB in the transmission and reception process with a marked increase in throughput for users at the edge of cells. While downlink CoMP has been the focus of many works in the literature, in this paper we examine Uplink CoMP with Coordinated Scheduling in Heterogeneous Networks running LTE-A. We investigate its system-level performance through simulation in various realistic scenarios with frequency-selective Rayleigh fading. Specifically, we are interested in comparing the performance of Uplink CoMP with different cell types as well as different user participation to CoMP transmissions. Our simulation results confirm that edge users benefit from Uplink CoMP, although the overall throughput decreases. In order to mitigate the latter effect, we introduce two new parameters, called CoMP margin and CoMP Pool Percentage (CPP), and provide guidelines for their effective use

Uplink multi-cell processing: Approximate sum capacity under a sum backhaul constraint

Abstract—This paper investigates an uplink multi-cell processing (MCP) model where the cell sites are linked to a central processor (CP) via noiseless backhaul links with limited capacity. A simple compress-and-forward scheme is employed, where the base-stations (BSs) quantize the received signals and send the quantized signals to the CP using distributed Wyner-Ziv compression. The CP decodes the quantization codewords first, then decodes the user messages as if the users and the CP form a virtual multiple-access channel. This paper formulates the problem of maximizing the overall sum rate under a sum backhaul constraint for such a setting. It is shown that setting the quantization noise levels to be uniform across the BSs maximizes the achievable sum rate under high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Further, for general SNR a low-complexity fixed-point iteration algorithm is proposed to optimize the quantization noise levels. This paper further shows that with uniform quantization noise levels, the compress-and-forward scheme with Wyner-Ziv compression already achieves a sum rate that is within a constant gap to the sum capacity of the uplink MCP model. The gap depends linearly on the number of BSs in the network but is independent of the SNR and the channel matrix. I

Optimal Channel Training in Uplink Network MIMO Systems

We consider a multi-cell frequency-selective fading uplink channel (network MIMO) from K single-antenna user terminals (UTs) to B cooperative base stations (BSs) with M antennas each. The BSs, assumed to be oblivious of the applied codebooks, forward compressed versions of their observations to a central station (CS) via capacity limited backhaul links. The CS jointly decodes the messages from all UTs. Since the BSs and the CS are assumed to have no prior channel state information (CSI), the channel needs to be estimated during its coherence time. Based on a lower bound of the ergodic mutual information, we determine the optimal fraction of the coherence time used for channel training, taking different path losses between the UTs and the BSs into account. We then study how the optimal training length is impacted by the backhaul capacity. Although our analytical results are based on a large system limit, we show by simulations that they provide very accurate approximations for even small system dimensions.Comment: 15 pages, 7 figures. To appear in the IEEE Transactions on Signal Processin

Link adaptation for energy-efficient uplink coordinated multi-point receptions

We investigate link adaptation methods for energy-efficient uplink coordinated multi-point receptions. A system model for practical cellular networks is introduced, in which only a subset of base stations participates in cooperative link adaptation and cooperative decoding for uplink transmissions. To cope with channel-state-information (CSI) mismatch incurred from the system model, link adaptation controllers implementing rate back-off from the maximum achievable rate calculated with the mismatched CSI is introduced. From analytical and simulation results, it is concluded that under a certain condition, the rate back-off does not help to improve energy efficiency, where, for example, the condition holds when the CSI errors are modeled as additive Gaussian random variables. Furthermore, energy efficiency of multi-user spatial-division-multiple-access uplink transmissions is studied in isolated cooperative cellular networks. In this scenario, an analytical expression for the optimal link adaptation achieving maximum energy efficiency is obtained

Downlink Noncoherent Cooperation without Transmitter Phase Alignment

Multicell joint processing can mitigate inter-cell interference and thereby increase the spectral efficiency of cellular systems. Most previous work has assumed phase-aligned (coherent) transmissions from different base transceiver stations (BTSs), which is difficult to achieve in practice. In this work, a noncoherent cooperative transmission scheme for the downlink is studied, which does not require phase alignment. The focus is on jointly serving two users in adjacent cells sharing the same resource block. The two BTSs partially share their messages through a backhaul link, and each BTS transmits a superposition of two codewords, one for each receiver. Each receiver decodes its own message, and treats the signals for the other receiver as background noise. With narrowband transmissions the achievable rate region and maximum achievable weighted sum rate are characterized by optimizing the power allocation (and the beamforming vectors in the case of multiple transmit antennas) at each BTS between its two codewords. For a wideband (multicarrier) system, a dual formulation of the optimal power allocation problem across sub-carriers is presented, which can be efficiently solved by numerical methods. Results show that the proposed cooperation scheme can improve the sum rate substantially in the low to moderate signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) range.Comment: 30 pages, 6 figures, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication