709 research outputs found
A Light Signalling Approach to Node Grouping for Massive MIMO IoT Networks
Massive MIMO is a promising technology to connect very large numbers of
energy constrained nodes, as it offers both extensive spatial multiplexing and
large array gain. A challenge resides in partitioning the many nodes in groups
that can communicate simultaneously such that the mutual interference is
minimized. We here propose node partitioning strategies that do not require
full channel state information, but rather are based on nodes' respective
directional channel properties. In our considered scenarios, these typically
have a time constant that is far larger than the coherence time of the channel.
We developed both an optimal and an approximation algorithm to partition users
based on directional channel properties, and evaluated them numerically. Our
results show that both algorithms, despite using only these directional channel
properties, achieve similar performance in terms of the minimum
signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio for any user, compared with a reference
method using full channel knowledge. In particular, we demonstrate that
grouping nodes with related directional properties is to be avoided. We hence
realise a simple partitioning method requiring minimal information to be
collected from the nodes, and where this information typically remains stable
over a long term, thus promoting their autonomy and energy efficiency
The Practical Challenges of Interference Alignment
Interference alignment (IA) is a revolutionary wireless transmission strategy
that reduces the impact of interference. The idea of interference alignment is
to coordinate multiple transmitters so that their mutual interference aligns at
the receivers, facilitating simple interference cancellation techniques. Since
IA's inception, researchers have investigated its performance and proposed
improvements, verifying IA's ability to achieve the maximum degrees of freedom
(an approximation of sum capacity) in a variety of settings, developing
algorithms for determining alignment solutions, and generalizing transmission
strategies that relax the need for perfect alignment but yield better
performance. This article provides an overview of the concept of interference
alignment as well as an assessment of practical issues including performance in
realistic propagation environments, the role of channel state information at
the transmitter, and the practicality of interference alignment in large
networks.Comment: submitted to IEEE Wireless Communications Magazin
Achieving "Massive MIMO" Spectral Efficiency with a Not-so-Large Number of Antennas
The main focus and contribution of this paper is a novel network-MIMO TDD
architecture that achieves spectral efficiencies comparable with "Massive
MIMO", with one order of magnitude fewer antennas per active user per cell. The
proposed architecture is based on a family of network-MIMO schemes defined by
small clusters of cooperating base stations, zero-forcing multiuser MIMO
precoding with suitable inter-cluster interference constraints, uplink pilot
signals reuse across cells, and frequency reuse. The key idea consists of
partitioning the users population into geographically determined "bins", such
that all users in the same bin are statistically equivalent, and use the
optimal network-MIMO architecture in the family for each bin. A scheduler takes
care of serving the different bins on the time-frequency slots, in order to
maximize a desired network utility function that captures some desired notion
of fairness. This results in a mixed-mode network-MIMO architecture, where
different schemes, each of which is optimized for the served user bin, are
multiplexed in time-frequency. In order to carry out the performance analysis
and the optimization of the proposed architecture in a clean and
computationally efficient way, we consider the large-system regime where the
number of users, the number of antennas, and the channel coherence block length
go to infinity with fixed ratios. The performance predicted by the large-system
asymptotic analysis matches very well the finite-dimensional simulations.
Overall, the system spectral efficiency obtained by the proposed architecture
is similar to that achieved by "Massive MIMO", with a 10-fold reduction in the
number of antennas at the base stations (roughly, from 500 to 50 antennas).Comment: Full version with appendice (proofs of theorems). A shortened version
without appendice was submitted to IEEE Trans. on Wireless Commun. Appendix B
was revised after submissio
Interference Alignment-Aided Base Station Clustering using Coalition Formation
Base station clustering is necessary in large interference networks, where
the channel state information (CSI) acquisition overhead otherwise would be
overwhelming. In this paper, we propose a novel long-term throughput model for
the clustered users which addresses the balance between interference mitigation
capability and CSI acquisition overhead. The model only depends on statistical
CSI, thus enabling long-term clustering. Based on notions from coalitional game
theory, we propose a low-complexity distributed clustering method. The
algorithm converges in a couple of iterations, and only requires limited
communication between base stations. Numerical simulations show the viability
of the proposed approach.Comment: 2nd Prize, Student Paper Contest. Copyright 2015 SS&C. Published in
the Proceedings of the 49th Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems and
Computers, Nov 8-11, 2015, Pacific Grove, CA, US
Fundamental Limits in Correlated Fading MIMO Broadcast Channels: Benefits of Transmit Correlation Diversity
We investigate asymptotic capacity limits of the Gaussian MIMO broadcast
channel (BC) with spatially correlated fading to understand when and how much
transmit correlation helps the capacity. By imposing a structure on channel
covariances (equivalently, transmit correlations at the transmitter side) of
users, also referred to as \emph{transmit correlation diversity}, the impact of
transmit correlation on the power gain of MIMO BCs is characterized in several
regimes of system parameters, with a particular interest in the large-scale
array (or massive MIMO) regime. Taking the cost for downlink training into
account, we provide asymptotic capacity bounds of multiuser MIMO downlink
systems to see how transmit correlation diversity affects the system
multiplexing gain. We make use of the notion of joint spatial division and
multiplexing (JSDM) to derive the capacity bounds. It is advocated in this
paper that transmit correlation diversity may be of use to significantly
increase multiplexing gain as well as power gain in multiuser MIMO systems. In
particular, the new type of diversity in wireless communications is shown to
improve the system multiplexing gain up to by a factor of the number of degrees
of such diversity. Finally, performance limits of conventional large-scale MIMO
systems not exploiting transmit correlation are also characterized.Comment: 29 pages, 8 figure
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