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A fractional frequency reuse (FFR) system is an inter-cell interference coordination scheme used in cellular networks. In FFR systems, the available bandwidth is partitioned into orthogonal subbands such that the users near the cell center adopt subbands of a frequency reuse (FR) factor equal to one (i.e., Full FR), and the users near the cell edge adopt the subbands of an FR factor greater than one (i.e., Partial FR). The proper design of Full FR coverage, which is used to distinguish Full FR regions from Partial FR regions, plays a critical role in FFR system performance. This paper studies the optimal Full FR coverage that maximizes system throughput in the downlink in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) cellular networks. For MIMO systems, orthogonal space–time block codes are considered. We analytically compare the outage probabilities of Full FR and Partial FR for a given user’s location, where the outage probability is evaluated through small-scale multipath fading. By doing so, subject to the constraint that a given target outage probability (quality-of-service) is satisfied, the optimal Full FR coverage is analyzed as a function of base station (BS) power. We prove that the optimal Full FR coverage is a non-increasing function of BS power when the powers of all BSs in the network are scaled up or down at the same rate. This result offers insight into the design of Full FR coverage in relation to BS power; we gain insight into the complicated relationship between crucial FFR design parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recently, model-free power control approaches have been developed to achieve the near-optimal performance of cell-free (CF) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) with affordable computational complexity. In particular, deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is one of such promising techniques for realizing effective power control. In this paper, we propose a model-free method adopting the deep deterministic policy gradient algorithm (DDPG) with feedforward neural networks (NNs) to solve the downlink max-min power control problem in CF massive MIMO systems. Our result shows that compared with the conventional convex optimization algorithm, the proposed DDPG method can effectively strike a performance-complexity trade-off obtaining 1,000 times faster implementation speed and approximately the same achievable user rate as the optimal solution produced by conventional numerical convex optimization solvers, thereby offering effective power control implementations for large-scale systems. Finally, we extend the DDPG algorithm to both the max-sum and the max-product power control problems, while achieving better performance than that achieved by the conventional deep learning algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the optimal design of limited-feedback downlink multiuser spatial multiplexing systems. A multiple-antenna base-station is assumed to serve multiple single-antenna users, who quantize and feed back their channel state information (CSI) through a shared rate-limited feedback channel. The optimization problem is cast in the form of minimizing the average transmission power at the base-station subject to users' target signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratios (SINR) and outage probability constraints. The goal is to derive the feedback bit allocations among the users and the corresponding channel magnitude and direction quantization codebooks in a high-resolution quantization regime. Toward this end, this paper develops an optimization framework using approximate analytical closed-form solutions, the accuracy of which is then verified by numerical results. The results show that, for channels in the real space, the number of channel direction quantization bits should be (M-1) times the number of channel magnitude quantization bits, where M is the number of base-station antennas. Moreover, users with higher requested quality-of-service (QoS), i.e., lower target outage probabilities, and higher requested downlink rates, i.e., higher target SINR's, should use larger shares of the feedback rate. It is also shown that, for the target QoS parameters to be feasible, the total feedback bandwidth should scale logarithmically with the geometric mean of the target SINR values and the geometric mean of the inverse target outage probabilities. In particular, the minimum required feedback rate is shown to increase if the users' target parameters deviate from the corresponding geometric means. Finally, the paper shows that, as the total number of feedback bits B increases, the performance of the limited-feedback system approaches the perfect-CSI system as 2-B/M2. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper proposes a flexible pilot assignment method to jointly optimize the uplink and downlink data transmission in multi-cell Massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems with correlated Rayleigh fading channels. By utilizing a closed-form expression of the ergodic spectral efficiency (SE) achieved with maximum ratio processing, we formulate an optimization problem for maximizing the minimum weighted sum of the uplink and downlink SEs subject to the transmit powers and pilot assignment sets. This combinatiorial optimization problem is solved by two sequential algorithms: a heuristic pilot assignment is first proposed to obtain a good pilot reuse set and the data power control is then implemented. Numerical results manifest that the proposed algorithm converges fast to a better minimum sum SE per user than the algorithms in previous works. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the uplink transmission in multiuser wireless systems with multiple single-antenna transmitting users and a multiantenna receiver. We address two problems in this paper. The first problem is user admission, i.e., given a large number of users, how to admit the maximum number of users that can simultaneously satisfy quality of service (QoS) and power constraints. The second problem is how to distribute the data among the users when they are allowed to share data before transmission. The aim is to minimize the total data exchange cost. Such a problem is called user clustering. We formulate those problems into sparsity-maximization problems, which are NP-hard. Inspired by compressive sensing techniques, we propose a common framework to tackle those problems by first applying the \ell1 -norm relaxation and then solving them with convex optimization methods. Simulations show that the proposed algorithms achieve excellent performance. For user admission, the numbers of admitted users by the proposed algorithms are close to the optimum numbers of admitted users obtained by exhaustive search (ES) . For user clustering, the total data exchange cost is reduced by more than 10% after only a few iterations. When the QoS requirement is low, the user data exchange can be avoided using the proposed method, which achieves the optimum result obtained by ES. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Physical layer security has drawn significant attention in recent years because of its advancement in preventing confidential information leakage to eavesdroppers. In this paper, we focus on secure beamformer designs in multiuser multi-input multi-output (MU-MIMO) systems with a multi-antenna eavesdropper attempting to overhear the confidential information of a particular user. Unlike the existing work, we aim to exploit the inherent multi-user interference to disrupt the reception of the eavesdropper and enhance the security of wireless communications. Particularly, utilizing practical signal-to-interference-noise metrics, the objective of the secure beamformer design is to minimize the eavesdropper's SINR, while providing legitimate users with required prespecified SINRs to guarantee the qualify of service. We propose secure beamformer designs for both downlink and uplink transmissions, under the conditions of known and unknown eavesdropper's channels, respectively. With the proposed secure beamformers, the multiuser signal behaves like the artificial noise or distributed friendly jamming, which can further degrade the reception of the eavesdropper. Extensive simulation studies confirm our analytical performance predictions and illustrate the advantages of proposed beamformer designs for secure MU-MIMO transmissions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate a novel relaying technique employing scheduling, precoding, beamforming, and power allocation for a multiuser multiple-input–multiple-output (MU-MIMO) relay network. In the proposed scheme, the interference is canceled by using a combination of transmit–receive weights and Tomlinson–Harashima precoding (THP). To achieve data rate fairness among different users and further improve the performance of MU-MIMO relay networks, we propose a low-complexity power allocation (LC-PA) to allocate power to each user. In addition, an algorithm to select a subset of users that has maximum sum rate performance is proposed. The performance of the proposed scheme is investigated by examining the sum rate of the system for different user selection algorithms and different power allocation schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we analyze pilot contamination (PC) attacks on a multi-cell massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) network with correlated pilots. We obtain correlated pilots using a user capacity-achieving pilot sequence design. This design relies on an algorithm which designs correlated pilot sequences based on signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) requirements for all the legitimate users. The pilot design is capable of achieving the SINR requirements for all users even in the presence of PC. However, this design has some intrinsic limitations and vulnerabilities, such as a known pilot sequence and the non-zero cross-correlation among different pilot sequences. We reveal that such vulnerabilities may be exploited by an active attacker to increase PC in the network. Motivated by this, we analyze the correlated pilot design for vulnerabilities that can be exploited by an active attacker. Based on this analysis, we develop an effective active attack strategy in the massive MIMO network with correlated pilot sequences. Our examinations reveal that the user capacity region of the network is significantly reduced in the presence of the active attack. Importantly, the SINR requirements for the worst-affected users may not be satisfied even with an infinite number of antennas at the base station. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the energy-efficient power allocation problem for physical-layer security in multi-user (MU) distributed massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. A new metric called global average secrecy energy efficiency (GASEE) is proposed to measure the MU secrecy energy efficiency (SEE) with a single eavesdropper (Eve). We first derive closed-form expressions for the signal to interference-plus-noise ratios (SINRs) of legitimate users and the Eve with pilot contamination. Under a power consumption model that incorporates transmit power, backhaul power, remote antenna unit (RAU) circuit and signal processing power, and with transmit power constraints as well as SINR constraints for both users and the Eve, the GASEE maximization problem is formulated as a joint optimization of power allocation, RAU clustering, RAU selection and artificial noise (AN) selection. The formulated problem is a mixed integer nonlinear program (MINLP), which is solved by a double-loop procedure. In the outer loop, the denominator of objective is approximated as a linear function. In the inner loop, an efficient algorithm is proposed to find a near-optimal solution to the approximated problem by solving a sequence of sub-problems. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm converges fast and achieves a higher GASEE than some heuristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Consider a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) downlink multi-user channel. A well-studied problem in such a system is the design of linear beamformers for power minimization with the quality of service (QoS) constraints. The most representative algorithms for solving this class of problems are the so-called minimum mean square error (MMSE)–second-order cone programming (SOCP) algorithm [Visotksy and Madhow, “Optimum Beamforming Using Transmit Antenna Arrays,” Proc. IEEE Veh. Technol. Conf., May 1999, vol. 1, pp. 851–856] , [Wong, Zheng, and Ng, “Convergence Analysis of Downlink MIMO Antenna System Using Second-Order Cone Programming,” Proc. 62nd IEEE Veh. Technol. Conf., Sep. 2005, pp. 492–496] and the uplink-downlink duality (UDD) algorithm [Codreanu, Tolli, Juntti, and Latva-Aho, “Joint Design of Tx-Rx Beamformers in MIMO Downlink Channel,” IEEE Trans. Signal Process., vol. 55, no. 9, pp. 4639–4655, Sep. 2007]. The former is based on alternating optimization of the transmit and receive beamformers; while the latter is based on the well-known uplink-dowlink duality theory. Despite their wide applicability, the convergence to Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) solutions of both algorithms is still open in the literature. In this paper, we rigorously establish the convergence of these algorithms for QoS-constrained power minimization (QCPM) problem with both single stream and multiple streams per user cases. Key to our analysis is the development and analysis of a new MMSE-DUAL algorithm, which connects the MMSE-SOCP and the UDD algorithm. Our numerical experiments show that 1) all these algorithms can almost always reach points with the same objective value irrespective of initialization and 2) the MMSE-SOCP/MMSE-DUAL algorithm works well while the UDD algorithm may fail with an infeasible initialization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we investigate joint beamforming and power allocation in multicell multiple-input single-output (MISO) downlink networks. Our goal is to maximize the utility function defined as the ratio between the system weighted sum rate and the total power consumption subject to the users’ quality of service requirements and per-base-station (BS) power constraints. The considered problem is nonconvex and its objective is in a fractional form. To circumvent this problem, we first resort to an virtual uplink formulations of the the primal problem by introducing an auxiliary variable and applying the uplink-downlink duality theory. By exploiting the analytic structure of the optimal beamformers in the dual uplink problem, an efficient algorithm is then developed to solve the considered problem. Furthermore, to reduce further the exchange overhead between coordinated BSs in a large-scale antenna system, an effective coordinated power allocation solution only based on statistical channel state information is reached by deriving the asymptotic optimization problem, which is used to obtain the power allocation in a long-term timescale. Numerical results validate the effectiveness of our proposed schemes and show that both the spectral efficiency and the energy efficiency can be simultaneously improved over traditional downlink coordinated schemes, especially in the middle-high transmit power region. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider unicast/multicast multicell cooperative transmission with interference among users/user groups. In this context, we derive the optimal minimum variance distortionless response (MVDR)-based successive minimum variance beamforming (SMVB) scheme that achieves a superior sum-rate performance compared with the block diagonalization scheme. Subsequently, we derive an optimal joint power allocation and broadcast beamforming scheme for multicell cooperative broadcast transmission for a pooled power constraint at the base stations. This scheme is extended to include per base station power constraints by formulating it as a relaxed semi-definite program (SDP). We also consider the multicell cooperative uplink scenario and derive a successive multiuser (MU) uplink beamforming (SMUB) scheme that maximizes the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) of each user. Next, we consider imperfect channel state information (CSI) and derive a robust beamforming scheme for the downlink, based on minimizing the worst-case interference by formulating it as a second-order cone program. It is demonstrated that the corresponding robust beamformer for the uplink transmission can be derived by employing the multidimensional covariance fitting approach. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the superior sum-rate performance of the proposed multicell transmission schemes. The performance is also compared with several bounds for cooperative multicell scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the problem of coordinated beamforming across a group of base stations (BSs) and frequency slots in the downlink of a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency-division multiple-access (OFDMA) cellular network. Three figures of merit are considered for system design under a per-BS power constraint: 1) the weighted sum of the rates (WSR) on the frequency slots of the coordinated BSs; 2) the global energy efficiency (GEE), defined as the ratio between the network sum rate and the corresponding consumed power; and 3) the weighted sum of the energy efficiencies (WSEE) on the frequency slots of the coordinated BSs. The Karush–Kuhn–Tucker (KKT) conditions of the considered optimization problems are first derived to gain insight into the structure of the optimal beamformers. Then, we propose a suboptimal design method that can be applied to all considered figures of merit. Numerical results are provided to assess the performance of the proposed beamforming strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In multi-antenna broadcast networks, the base stations (BSs) rely on the channel state information (CSI) of the users to perform user scheduling and downlink transmission. However, in networks with large number of users, obtaining CSI from all users is arduous, if not impossible, in practice. This paper proposes channel feedback reduction techniques based on the theory of compressive sensing (CS), which permits the BS to obtain CSI with acceptable recovery guarantees under substantially reduced feedback overhead. Additionally, assuming noisy CS measurements at the BS, inexpensive ways for improving post-CS detection are explored. The proposed techniques are shown to reduce the feedback overhead, improve CS detection at the BS, and achieve a sum-rate close to that obtained by noiseless dedicated feedback channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper is concerned with the game theoretical approach in designing the multiuser downlink beamformers in multicell systems. Sharing the same physical resource, the base-station of each cell wishes to minimize its transmit power subject to a set of target signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratios (SINRs) at the multiple users in the cell. In this context, at first, the paper considers a strategic noncooperative game (SNG) where each base-station greedily determines its optimal downlink beamformer strategy in a distributed manner, without any coordination between the cells. Via the game theory framework, it is shown that this game belongs to the framework of standard functions. The conditions guaranteeing the existence and uniqueness of a Nash Equilibrium (NE) in this competitive design are subsequently examined. The paper then makes a revisit to the fully coordinated design in multicell downlink beamforming, where the optimal beamformers are jointly designed between the base-stations. A comparison between the competitive and coordinated designs shows the benefits of applying the former over the latter in terms of each design's distributed implementation. Finally, in order to improve the efficiency of the NE in the competitive design, the paper considers a more cooperative game through a pricing mechanism. The pricing consideration enables a base-station to steer its beamformers in a more cooperative manner, which ultimately limits the interference induced to other cells. The study on the existence and uniqueness of the new game's NE is then given. The paper also presents a condition on the pricing factors that allow the new NE point to approach the performance established by the coordinated design, while retaining the distributed nature of the multicell game. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we aim to solve the multiuser multi-input multi-output (MIMO) downlink beamforming problem where one multi-antenna base station broadcasts data to many users. Each user is assigned multiple data streams and has multiple antennas at its receiver. Efficient solutions to the joint transmit-receive beamforming and power allocation problem based on iterative methods are proposed. We adopt the group maximum signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) filter bank (GSINR-FB) as our beamformer which exploits receiver diversity through cooperation between the data streams of a user. The data streams for each user are subject to an average SINR constraint, which has many important applications in wireless communication systems and serves as a good metric to measure the quality of service (QoS). The GSINR-FB also optimizes the average SINR of its output. Based on the GSINR-FB beamformer, we find an SINR balancing structure for optimal power allocation which simplifies the complicated power allocation problem to a linear one. Simulation results verify the superiority of the proposed algorithms over previous works with approximately the same complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Multicell cooperative processing (MCP) has been recognized as a promising technique for increasing the spectral efficiency of future wireless systems. Unfortunately, the provided benefits of MCP come at the cost of increased radio feedback and backhaul overhead; for downlink transmission in frequency-division duplexing (FDD) systems, users need to feed back their channel-state information (CSI) to the MCP scheduler, and user data need to be exchanged between all cooperating base stations (BSs) through the backhaul network. In the context of conventional noncooperative networks, it has been suggested that radio feedback load could be reduced by preventing users with low-quality channels from feeding back their CSI (concept of selective feedback), at the cost of a small fraction of the multiuser diversity gain. In this paper, we investigate the translation of this selective feedback concept to MCP systems. According to this technique, users with weak interference links are prevented from feeding back their full CSI to the MCP scheduler. Although efficient, this technique alone cannot mitigate the backhaul overhead related to routing user data possibly to several BSs. To overcome this condition, we propose two schemes: one scheme based on Media Access Control (MAC)-layer scheduling and the other scheme based on physical-layer precoding. These schemes, combined with feedback load reduction, allow for a substantial mitigation of the MCP overheads related to feedback and backhaul load. We analyze the improvements in terms of both user-to-BS feedback reduction and backhaul load reduction, and we show that this framework results in a good tradeoff between performance and overhead for multicell cooperative networks. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we propose a practical downlink multiuser multiple-input–multiple-output (MU-MIMO) system. The proposed MU-MIMO system focuses on improving two limiting factors for practical implementations of MU-MIMO: 1) feedback rate and 2) computational complexity. First, users efficiently feed their channel-state information back with low feedback rate based on the proposed channel-quantization method. Second, the beamforming matrix at the base station is easily computed using singular value decomposition (SVD). Numerical results show that the proposed MU-MIMO system achieves a higher sum rate than conventional MU-MIMO systems, particularly at low feedback rate, while the computational complexity is kept reasonable. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we propose a distributed beamforming scheme to realize a full-duplex relay (FDR) in multiuser multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) relaying systems. In the proposed scheme, each mobile and relay station performs distributed transmit beamforming and receive combining, whereas the base station performs ordinary multiuser MIMO transmission. Using the channel reciprocity, the proposed FDR scheme can be realized in an iterative way with no cooperation among nodes. Numerical results show that the proposed scheme provides substantial performance improvement compared with the half-duplex relay. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Recent works on multiuser MIMO study have shown that the linear growth of capacity in single user MIMO system can be translated to the multiuser MIMO scenario as well. In this paper, we propose a method pursuing performance gain of vector perturbation in multiuser downlink systems. Instead of employing the maximum number of mobile users for communication, we use small part of them as virtual users for improving reliability of users participating communication. By controlling parameters of the virtual users including information and perturbation vector, we obtain considerable improvement in the effective SNR. Simulation results on the realistic multiuser MISO and MIMO downlink systems show that the proposed method brings substantial performance gain over the standard vector perturbation with marginal overhead in computations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper studies the max-min weighted signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) problem in the multiple- input-multiple-output (MIMO) downlink, where multiple users are weighted according to priority and are subject to a weighted-sum-power constraint. First, we study the multiple-input-single-output (MISO) and single-input-multiple- output (SIMO) problems using nonlinear Perron–Frobenius theory. As a by-product, we solve the open problem of convergence for a previously proposed MISO algorithm by Wiesel, Eldar, and Shamai in 2006. Furthermore, we unify our analysis with respect to the previous alternate optimization algorithm proposed by Tan, Chiang, and Srikant in 2009, by showing that our MISO result can, in fact, be derived from their algorithm. Next, we combine our MISO and SIMO results into an algorithm for the MIMO problem. We show that our proposed algorithm is optimal when the channels are rank-one, or when the network is operating in the low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) region. Finally, we prove the parametric continuity of the MIMO problem in the power constraint, and we use this insight to propose a heuristic initialization strategy for improving the performance of our (generally) suboptimal MIMO algorithm. The proposed initialization strategy exhibits improved performance over random initialization. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we investigate a max–min weighted signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) problem in a full-duplex multiuser multiple-input-multiple-output system, where a full-duplex-capable base station (BS) equipped with multiple antennas communicates with multiple half-duplex downlink and uplink users under the same system resources. Specifically, we consider a practical scenario where the downlink minimum weighted SINR is maximized under specific SINR constraints for uplink users. Moreover, the optimization is conducted by jointly considering the BS transmit power, the transmit power of uplink users, and BS transmit and receive beamforming. This optimization problem is, therefore, subject to multiple uplink SINR constraints and multiple transmit power constraints. Due to the SINR constraints, negative matrix components arise and hence the optimization problem cannot be directly solved by the standard approach, i.e., Perron–Frobenius theory. We have provided an explicit iterative scheme to solve this joint optimization problem with a strict proof. The proposed algorithm is proved to converge to Karush–Kuhn–Tucker points. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithm has a fast convergence rate and leads to a better performance compared with other optimization techniques that do not jointly consider all parameters. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We study the impact of phase noise on the downlink performance of a multiuser multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) system, where the base station (BS) employs a large number of transmit antennas M. We consider a setup where the BS employs M_{\mathrm{osc}} free-running oscillators, and M/M_{\mathrm{osc}} antennas are connected to each oscillator. For this configuration, we analyze the impact of phase noise on the performance of zero forcing (ZF), regularized ZF, and matched filter precoders when M and the number of users K are asymptotically large, whereas the ratio M/K=\beta increases, the SINR performance of all considered precoders degrades. On the other hand, the variance of the random phase variations caused by the BS oscillators reduces with increasing M\mathrm{osc}. Through Monte Carlo simulations, we verify our analytical results and compare the performance of the precoders for different phase noise and channel noise variances. For all considered precoders, we show that when \beta is small, the performance of the setup where all BS antennas are connected to a single oscillator is superior to that of the setup where each BS antenna has its own oscillator. However, the opposite is true when $\beta$ is large and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the users is low. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We derive a general and closed-form result for the success probability in downlink multiple-antenna (MIMO) heterogeneous cellular networks (HetNets), utilizing a novel Toeplitz matrix representation. This main result, which is equivalently the signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) distribution, includes multiuser MIMO, single-user MIMO and per-tier biasing for $K$ different tiers of randomly placed base stations (BSs), assuming zero-forcing precoding and perfect channel state information. The large SIR limit of this result admits a simple closed form that is accurate at moderate SIRs, e.g., above 5 dB. These results reveal that the SIR-invariance property of SISO HetNets does not hold for MIMO HetNets; instead the success probability may decrease as the network density increases. We prove that the maximum success probability is achieved by activating only one tier of BSs, while the maximum area spectral efficiency (ASE) is achieved by activating all the BSs. This reveals a unique tradeoff between the ASE and link reliability in multiuser MIMO HetNets. To achieve the maximum ASE while guaranteeing a certain link reliability, we develop efficient algorithms to find the optimal BS densities. It is shown that as the link reliability requirement increases, more BSs and more tiers should be deactivated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the problem of coordinated multicell downlink beamforming in massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems consisting of N cells, N_{t} antennas per base station (BS) and K$ user terminals (UTs) per cell. In particular, we formulate a multicell beamforming algorithm for massive MIMO systems that requires limited amount of information exchange between the BSs. The design objective is to minimize the aggregate transmit power across all the BSs subject to satisfying the user signal-to-interference-noise ratio (SINR) constraints. The algorithm requires the BSs to exchange parameters which can be computed solely based on the channel statistics rather than the instantaneous channel state information (CSI). We make use of tools from random matrix theory to formulate the decentralized algorithm. We also characterize a lower bound on the set of target SINR values for which the decentralized multicell beamforming algorithm is feasible. We further show that the performance of our algorithm asymptotically matches the performance of the centralized algorithm with full CSI sharing. While the original result focuses on minimizing the aggregate transmit power across all the BSs, we formulate a heuristic extension of this algorithm to incorporate a practical constraint in multicell systems, namely the individual BS transmit power constraints. Finally, we investigate the impact of imperfect CSI and pilot contamination effect on the performance of the decentralized algorithm, and propose a heuristic extension of the algorithm to accommodate these issues. Simulation results illustrate that our algorithm closely satisfies the target SINR constraints and achieves minimum power in the regime of massive MIMO systems. In addition, it also provides substantial power savings as compared with zero-forcing beamforming when the number of antennas per BS is of the same orders of magnitude as the number of UTs per cell. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In downlink multiuser multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) systems, block diagonalization (BD) is a practical linear precoding scheme that completely eliminates interuser interference. However, its sum rate performance is rather poor in practical signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regions due to the transmit power boost problem. In this paper, we propose a modified BD precoding scheme to improve its low-to-medium SNR performance with the so-called “effective SNR enhancement” technique. The proposed transmit covariance matrices are obtained by first solving a power minimization problem subject to the minimum rate constraint achieved by BD and then properly scaling the solution until the power constraint is active. The power minimization problem is nonconvex in general. We therefore propose an efficient algorithm that approximately solves the problem. Simulation results demonstrate significant sum rate gains over BD and existing minimum mean square error (MMSE)-based precoding schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Concurrent presence of inter-cell and intra-cell interferences constitutes a major impediment to reliable downlink transmission in multi-cell multiuser networks. Harnessing such interferences largely hinges on two levels of information exchange in the network: one from the users to the base-stations (feedback) and the other one among the base-stations (cooperation). We demonstrate that exchanging a finite number of bits across the network, in the form of feedback and cooperation, is adequate for achieving the optimal capacity scaling. We also show that the average level of information exchange is independent of the number of users in the network. This level of information exchange is considerably less than that required by the existing coordination strategies which necessitate exchanging infinite bits across the network for achieving the optimal sum-rate capacity scaling. The results provided rely on a constructive proof. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the application of transmit precoding in multiuser multi-input–multi-output (MIMO) communication systems with maximum ratio combining (MRC) receivers. In many multiuser applications, the maximum-likelihood or minimum mean-square error (MMSE) receivers can be prohibitive to implement due to their high implementation complexity. We examine the performance of the system with simple MRC receivers and carefully selected precoders, which are designed to compensate the lack of high-complexity receivers, at the transmitter side. We examine the sum MSE minimization and signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) balancing frameworks for the selection of precoders. The performance of two frameworks with MRC receivers are compared between themselves as well as with their counterparts implementing MMSE receivers. It has been observed that the SINR balancing framework with simple MRC receivers has little performance loss in comparison with the MMSE receivers with a proper selection of precoders. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO) is a technique that improves spectral efficiency by allowing concurrent communication between one access point (AP) and multiple clients. In practice, the expected gain is not always achieved and is sometimes even negative. We experimentally demonstrate that the downlink MU-MIMO performance in a practical network not only depends on the client’s channel but is also influenced by factors that are not captured by conventional models, such as client motion and device type. We propose a data-driven algorithm with a low computational complexity that determines whether a client should operate in MU mode and the MU-MIMO group for clients in MU mode. Such a mode and group selection algorithm is based on a sequence of channel state information (CSI), SNR, and client device type. The algorithm can automatically adapt to the motion and characteristics of individual clients. Experimental results using implementation on a commodity 802.11ac AP show that the proposed data-driven mode and group selection algorithm can improve network throughput by up to 35% over existing algorithms based on conventional models. We also show that the proposed data-driven algorithm has limited sensitivity to environmental changes and can be deployed into new environments without retraining. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present analytical expressions for the expected per-user signal power and interference in a multi-user multiple input multiple output system with analog maximal ratio combining (MRC) on the uplink and with matched filtering precoding on the downlink. This leads to a closed-form approximation of expected per-user signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR). The analysis is carried out for different base station layouts, including a centralized collocated array and a distributed system with arbitrarily correlated Rayleigh fading. Unlike the digital MRC system, where the performance improves for a more distributed system, we show that analog MRC performs best in a centralized configuration. Furthermore, numerical results show that both analog and digital MRC benefit from a strong line-of-sight (LoS) presence in Ricean fading channels as the Rice K factor reduces the interference power. We show that in a centralized system, the performance of analog and digital MRC converge with increasing K factor, because strong LoS reduces the diversity of incoming signal power utilized by digital MRC. On the other hand, in a distributed system, the performance gap between these two techniques will remain due to the diversity of signal powers. Our closed-form approximation of the expected per-user SINR is general and appropriate for moderate to large numbers of antennas and arbitrary correlation models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose an opportunistic two-stage feedback and scheduling algorithm that is based upon zero-forcing beamforming with semi-orthogonal user selection (ZFBF-SUS) to reduce its feedback load. In an SUS algorithm, a base station schedules semi-orthogonal users using the feedback of all users' channel information. However, such feedback overhead significantly increases with the number of users. To reduce the feedback load of ZFBF-SUS systems, the proposed two-stage feedback scheme opportunistically and separately exploits the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio and orthogonality in each stage such that only a fraction of users feed back their channel information. Based on this opportunistic feedback scheme, we decouple the entire process of the SUS into two sub-processes. The proposed two-stage feedback and scheduling scheme effectively exclude the inappropriate users for ZFBF transmission in both feedback and scheduling periods, and thus save the scarce resources consumed for the feedback process. We derive an analytical expression for the average number of feedback bits of the proposed system and optimize it in an averaged sense. Further, the sum-rate of the proposed system is theoretically investigated. Both analytical and simulation results show that the proposed algorithm achieves the performance of conventional ZFBF-SUS systems with a significantly reduced number of feedback bits. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The problem of weighted sum-rate maximization (WSRMax) in multicell downlink multiple-input single-output (MISO) systems is considered. The problem is known to be NP-hard. We propose a method, based on branch and bound technique, which solves globally the nonconvex WSRMax problem with an optimality certificate. Specifically, the algorithm computes a sequence of asymptotically tight upper and lower bounds and it terminates when the difference between them falls below a pre-specified tolerance. Novel bounding techniques via conic optimization are introduced and their efficiency is demonstrated by numerical simulations. The proposed method can be used to provide performance benchmarks by back-substituting it into many existing network design problems which relies on WSRMax problem. The method proposed here can be easily extended to maximize any system performance metric that can be expressed as a Lipschitz continuous and increasing function of signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In a quantization based multiuser multiple-input/multiple-output (MU-MIMO) broadcast channel, the effective channel gain (i.e., the norm of a channel vector obtained from the receive combiner) needs to be considered in addition to a reduction of quantization errors for maximizing the signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR). In this work, we prove that the effective channel gains in the space limited by an N_R x M_T MIMO channel form a min(M_T,N_R)-dimensional ellipsoid in the channel space. Utilizing the geometric proof, the achievable effective channel gain is derived as a function of its direction for a given MIMO channel. Based on the derivation, we finally propose a quantization vector selection criterion and an optimal receive combiner to maximize the SINR. The proposed maximum SINR based combining (MSC) is proven to be a better solution for maximizing the SINR compared to quantization based combining (QBC) and maximum gain based combining (MGC), each of which attempts to minimize quantization errors and maximize the effective channel gain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop an interference alignment (IA) technique for a downlink cellular system. In the uplink, IA schemes need channel-state-information exchange across base-stations of different cells, but our downlink IA technique requires feedback only within a cell. As a result, the proposed scheme can be implemented with a few changes to an existing cellular system where the feedback mechanism (within a cell) is already being considered for supporting multi-user MIMO. Not only is our proposed scheme implementable with little effort, it can in fact provide substantial gain especially when interference from a dominant interferer is significantly stronger than the remaining interference: it is shown that in the two-isolated cell layout, our scheme provides four-fold gain in throughput performance over a standard multi-user MIMO technique. We also show through simulations that our technique provides respectable gain under a more realistic scenario: it gives approximately 28% gain for a 19 hexagonal wrap-around-cell layout. Furthermore, we show that our scheme has the potential to provide substantial gain for macro-pico cellular networks where pico-users can be significantly interfered with by the nearby macro-BS. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, the sum-rate performance of joint opportunistic scheduling and receiver design (JOSRD) is analyzed for multiuser multiple-input-multiple output (MIMO) space-division multiple access (SDMA) downlink systems. In particular, we study linear rake receivers with selective combining, maximum ratio combining and optimal combining in which signals received from all antennas of each mobile terminal (MT) are linearly combined to improve the effective signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratios (SINRs). By exploiting limited feedback on the effective SINRs, the base station (BS) schedules simultaneous data transmission on multiple beams to the MTs with the largest effective SINRs. Using extreme value theory, the average sum-rates and their scaling laws for JOSRD are derived. In particular, it is shown that the limiting distribution of the effective signal-to-interference (SIR) is of the Frechet-type whereas that of the effective SINR converges to the Gumbel-type. Furthermore, the SIR-based sum-rate scaling laws are found to follow ε log K with 0<ε<1, which stands in contrast to the SINR-based scaling laws governed by the conventional log log K form. Both analytical and simulation results confirm that significant performance improvement can be achieved by incorporating low-complexity linear combining techniques into the design of scheduling schemes in MIMO-SDMA downlink systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]