Distributed Precoding Using Local CSIT for MU-MIMO Heterogeneous Cellular Networks

Multiple antennas can be used for increasing the packet reliability (spatial diversity) or the spectral efficiency (spatial multiplexing) in wireless communication systems with slow fading. Zheng and Tse showed that both types of gains can be simultaneously obtained for a given multiple antenna channel, but there is a fundamental tradeoff between spatial diversity and spatial multiplexing. They considered the case of no CSIT but perfect CSIR. In this paper, we focus on the role of channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) on the diversity multiplexing tradeoff. When there is perfect CSIT, there is no packet outage in slow fading channels through proper rate adaptation and hence, the diversity order can be regarded as infinity. However, perfect CSIT is not realistic. Thus, we consider the diversity and multiplexing tradeoff with imperfect CSIT for slow fading MIMO channels. The imperfect CSIT is parameterized by the CSIT estimation error sigma2 DeltaH. Hence, the results obtained are the generalizations of the Zheng-Tse results. We show that when SNRsigma2 DeltaH rarr infin as SNR rarr infin, the availability of the imperfect CSIT does not improve the diversity multiplexing tradeoff

We study a practical version of the broadcast channel (BC) where the channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) is available only for some of the users, dubbing the system as mixed CSIT. We start with the simplest instance of such a heterogeneous BC where a multi-antenna transmitter base-station (BS) is trying to communicate data to two single-antenna user equipments (UE), having the perfect CSIT about UE1 and no CSIT about UE2. We propose a very simple transmission strategy at the BS for such a system and compare its performance with the interference alignment solution proposed elsewhere which achieves full degrees-of-freedom (DOF) when channel coherence lengths and switching instants abide by certain restrictions. Then with an additional receive antenna granted to UE2 (whose CSIT is not available) and keeping the same CSIT perspective, achievable rates for two users are derived and compared with earlier schemes. Analytical and simulation results show that this additional receive antenna brings significant gains in the system with the same transmission strategy and without any extra requirement of channel training or feedback.

In this paper, we present robust joint non-linear transceiver designs for multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) downlink in the presence of imperfections in the channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT). The base station (BS) is equipped with multiple transmit antennas, and each user terminal is equipped with one or more receive antennas. The BS employs Tomlinson-Harashima precoding (THP) for inter-user interference pre-cancellation at the transmitter. We consider robust transceiver designs that jointly optimize the transmit THP filters and receive filter for two models of CSIT errors. The first model is a stochastic error (SE) model, where the CSIT error is Gaussian-distributed. This model is applicable when the CSIT error is dominated by channel estimation error. In this case, the proposed robust transceiver design seeks to minimize a stochastic function of the sum mean square error (SMSE) under a constraint on the total BS transmit power. We propose an iterative algorithm to solve this problem. The other model we consider is a norm-bounded error (NBE) model, where the CSIT error can be specified by an uncertainty set. This model is applicable when the CSIT error is dominated by quantization errors. In this case, we consider a worst-case design. For this model, we consider robust i) minimum SMSE, ii) MSE-constrained, and iii) MSE-balancing transceiver designs. We propose iterative algorithms to solve these problems, wherein each iteration involves a pair of semi-definite programs (SDP). Further, we consider an extension of the proposed algorithm to the case with per-antenna power constraints.

Rate Splitting (RS) has emerged as a flexible multiple-access scheme for Multi-User Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MU-MIMO) systems, generalizing more conventional approaches such as linear precoding or Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA), and providing additional robustness against imperfect channel state information at the transmitter. Actual achievable rates cannot be pre-calculated when facing imperfect and/or outdated channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT), so practical real-time mechanisms in the form of link adaptation (LA) are required. The available CSIT is used to design the RS precoders, which can accommodate some degree of robustness, whereas the physical layer feedback reports the outcome of the decoding of the codewords, in the form of acknowledgement (ACK) or negative ACK (NACK), providing the additional meta-robustness needed when the statistical model of CSIT errors is not accurate, and/or the precoders cannot fully track the channel dynamics. We characterize the outage rate region of RS and analyze the convergence of the complete LA-RS system under partial CSIT (non-accurate and non-permanent), providing relevant insights for addressing the adaptation of private and common rates, designing robust precoders with throughput as relevant metric, and handling the time-variant CSIT quality.

In this paper, we consider robust joint linear precoder/receive filter designs for multiuser multi-input multi-output (MIMO) downlink that minimize the sum mean square error (SMSE) in the presence of imperfect channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT). The base station (BS) is equipped with multiple transmit antennas, and each user terminal is equipped with one or more receive antennas. We consider a stochastic error (SE) model and a norm-bounded error (NBE) model for the CSIT error. In the case of CSIT error following SE model, we compute the desired downlink precoder/receive filter matrices by solving the simpler uplink problem by exploiting the uplink-downlink duality for the MSE region. In the case of the CSIT error following the NBE model, we consider the worst-case SMSE as the objective function, and propose an iterative algorithm for the robust transceiver design. The robustness of the proposed algorithms to imperfections in CSIT is illustrated through simulations.

Stochastic geometry provides a powerful analytical framework for evaluating interference-limited cellular networks with randomly deployed base stations (BSs). While prior studies have examined limited channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) and low-resolution analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) separately, their joint impact in multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems remains largely unexplored. This paper investigates a downlink cellular network in which BSs are distributed according to a homogeneous Poisson point process (PPP), employing zero-forcing beamforming (ZFBF) with limited feedback, and receivers are equipped with one-bit ADCs. We derive a tractable approximation for the achievable spectral efficiency that explicitly accounts for both the quantization error from limited feedback and the receiver distortion caused by coarse ADCs. Based on this approximation, we determine the optimal feedback rate that maximizes the net spectral efficiency. Our analysis reveals that the optimal number of feedback bits scales logarithmically with the channel coherence time but its absolute value decreases due to coarse quantization. Simulation results validate the accuracy of the proposed approximation and confirm the predicted scaling behavior, demonstrating its effectiveness for interference-limited multi-user MIMO networks.

The explosive demand for high data rates and the need ubiquitous wireless connectivity has led to the phenomenon of network densification, the deployment of large number of base station within a geographic area. Since the radio spectrum is limited, wireless transmissions need to share a common resource which results in interference. Interference in turn creates a bottleneck on the communication rate. Recently three breakthroughs have been made to increase the capacity of wireless networks while mitigating interference : multiple input multiple output (MIMO) beamforming, interference alignment (IA) and pattern reconfigurable antennas (PRA). While a great deal of progress has been made on understanding each individually, relatively little is known about how to use these techniques in combination to increase system performance. In this dissertation, we analyze and experimentally evaluate how these new technologies can be leveraged to enhance the rate performance of communication networks. Specifically, we address three problems: i) enhancing multi-user MIMO performance with PRA, ii) improving IA performance with PRA-based antenna selection, and iii) enabling practical blind IA with PRA. To understand the impact PRAs on MU-MIMO and IA, it is necessary to evaluate their performance through measurements. Simulation-based studies often reiterate over set of simplistic channel models and unrealistic assumptions. This dissertation focuses on a measurement-based evaluation approach. For each of these problems, a hardware testbed implementation and measurement methodology is developed for evaluating the performance of the aforementioned technologies through efficient and repeatable experiments. The first two major contributions of this dissertation focus on multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO) and IA. While the theoretical rate gains of MU-MIMO and IA are substantial, the performance gains in practical systems and measured channels have been limited. One of the key limiting factors are spatially correlated user channels. In this work, we propose MU-MIMO and IA transmission schemes that leverage the pattern diversity provided by PRAs to mitigate the effects of spatial correlation in wireless channels. PRAs are capable of dynamically adjusting their radiation pattern, providing an additional degree of freedom that can be exploited to improve MU-MIMO and IA performance by treating the array configuration and radiation characteristics as additional components in the joint optimization of adaptive system parameters. We quantify the benefits of pattern diversity on the rate performance of MU-MIMO and IA systems through extensive measurements. Furthermore, we develop efficient antenna mode selection algorithms to realize those benefits without increasing the system complexity or overhead, making these techniques suitable for practical implementation. The third contribution of this dissertation focuses on a transmission technique known as blind IA. In contrast to MU-MIMO and conventional IA, blind IA is signaling scheme that suppresses interference in multi-user systems, without the knowledge of channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT). The key to performing IA without CSIT is the use of PRAs that are capable of dynamically switching among a fixed number of radiation patterns to introduce artificial fluctuations in the channel. In this dissertation, we develop a novel implementation of a blind IA system on a software defined radio platform where each of the receivers is equipped with a PRA. Our work provides the first experimental evaluation of PRA-based blind IA schemes and demonstrates significant gains in rate and reliability over traditional orthogonal transmission schemes such as TDMA.

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems can be leveraged to increase capacity in fading channels. Especially in multiuser downlink communication systems, it has been shown that knowledge of channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) is critical to leverage the capacity gain available from multiple antennas. When duplexing is performed using time division, CSIT can often be successfully obtained when channel reciprocity is available. CSIT acquisition, however, is much more difficult in frequency division duplexing. Sending feedback on the uplink has been shown to be a powerful technique to improve downlink performance in single user MIMO systems. The basic idea is to restrict the CSIT to a B bit codebook so that the mobiles can easily transmit these bits on the uplink. In this paper, we consider the multiuser downlink model with unitary precoding when there is a codebook consisting of 2 <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">B</sup> unitary matrices that the precoder is restricted to lie in. This codebook is designed offline and known to both the base-station and all users. Each user sends back signal-to-interference plus noise ratio (SINR) information along with binary feedback about the unitary precoder. Based on the CSIT received on the uplink, the base-station selects one of the unitary matrices in the codebook to maximize the sum-rate. For this set-up, we first analyze the sum-rate performance of the unitary precoding scheme. We then show that the codebook of unitary pre-coders represents a collection of points in a special kind of manifold and show how the achievable sum-rate performance relates to the minimum distance of the codebook points in this space. Finally, we present a framework for constructing the codebook to maximize this minimum distance. Monte Carlo simulation results are presented to show the sum-rate performance of the proposed codebook design.

Application of multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) technology in wireless systems not only provides high spectral efficiency by the deployment of many number of antennas at both sides of a communication system for a given total transmit power, but it also enhances physical- layer security. Given the need for evaluation of realistic systems, this works studies the total information flow during multicast transmission in a region $\mathcal{R}$, accounting for the unavoidable statistical spatial randomness of users locations, both in absence or presence of eavesdroppers under conditions of imperfect channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) due to users' mobility. In particular, we first introduce a lower-bound of the space-time mutual information without any eavesdropping, and then we proceed with the derivation for both finite and infinitely large number of antennas. Moreover, in case that eavesdropping is present, we determine a metric, called space-time secrecy rate with imperfect CSIT, which characterizes the total amount of common confidential information flow per receive antenna, and we obtain it with asymptotic arguments in terms of the numbers of antennas at each side. Numerical results, validated by simulations, shed light on how the imperfect conditions affect the performance. Remarkably, imperfect CSIT may present benefits, since it engenders degradation in eavesdropper's performance.

We propose joint spatial division and multiplexing (JSDM), an approach to multiuser MIMO downlink that exploits the structure of the correlation of the channel vectors in order to allow for a large number of antennas at the base station while requiring reduced-dimensional channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT). JSDM achieves significant savings both in the downlink training and in the CSIT uplink feedback, thus making the use of large antenna arrays at the base station potentially suitable also for frequency division duplexing (FDD) systems, for which uplink/downlink channel reciprocity cannot be exploited. In the proposed scheme, the multiuser MIMO downlink precoder is obtained by concatenating a prebeamforming matrix, which depends only on the channel second-order statistics, with a classical multiuser precoder, based on the instantaneous knowledge of the resulting reduced dimensional “effective” channel matrix. We prove a simple condition under which JSDM incurs no loss of optimality with respect to the full CSIT case. For linear uniformly spaced arrays, we show that such condition is approached in the large number of antennas limit. For this case, we use Szego's asymptotic theory of Toeplitz matrices to show that a DFT-based prebeamforming matrix is near-optimal, requiring only coarse information about the users angles of arrival and angular spread. Finally, we extend these ideas to the case of a 2-D base station antenna array, with 3-D beamforming, including multiple beams in the elevation angle direction. We provide guidelines for the prebeamforming optimization and calculate the system spectral efficiency under proportional fairness and max-min fairness criteria, showing extremely attractive performance. Our numerical results are obtained via asymptotic random matrix theory, avoiding lengthy Monte Carlo simulations and providing accurate results for realistic (finite) number of antennas and users.

Power allocation results for equal-rate systems developed in Part I are extended to multiple-rate systems. For both systems with and without channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT), conditions for the optimality of successive interference cancellation combined with minimum mean square error multiuser detection (SIC+MMSE) are obtained. When CSIT is available, the optimal decoding order is discussed for optimal SIC+MMSE and two sub-optimal decoding schemes. Explicit expressions for the spectral efficiency parameters in the low or high energy regions are also obtained.

Coordinated multipoint (CoMP) transmission provides high theoretic gains in spectral efficiency with coherent joint transmission (JT) to multiple users. However, this requires accurate channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) and also user groups with spatially compatible users. The aim of this paper is to use measured channels to investigate if significant CoMP gains can still be obtained with channel estimation errors. This turns out to be the case, but requires the combination of several techniques. We here focus on coherent downlink JT CoMP to multiple users within a cluster of cooperating base stations. The use of Kalman predictors is investigated to estimate the complex channel gains at the moment of transmission. It is shown that this can provide sufficient CSIT quality for JT CoMP even for long (>20 ms) system delays at 2.66 GHz at pedestrian velocities or, for lower delays, at 500 MHz, at vehicular velocities. A user grouping and resource allocation scheme that provides appropriate groups for CoMP is also suggested. It provides performance close to that obtained by exhaustive search at very low complexity, low feedback cost and very low backhaul cost. Finally, a robust linear precoder that takes channel uncertainties into account when designing the precoding matrix is considered. We show that, in challenging scenarios, this provides large gains compared with zero-forcing precoding. Evaluations of these design elements are based on measured channels with realistic noise and intercluster interference assumptions. These show that high JT CoMP gains can be expected, on average over large sets of user positions, when the above techniques are combined - especially in severely intracluster interference limited scenarios.

As a key technology for future wireless networks, massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) can significantly improve the energy efficiency (EE) and spectral efficiency (SE), and the performance is highly dependant on the degree of the available channel state information (CSI). While most existing works on massive MIMO focused on the case where the instantaneous CSI at the transmitter (CSIT) is available, it is usually not an easy task to obtain precise instantaneous CSIT. In this paper, we investigate EE-SE tradeoff in single-cell massive MIMO downlink transmission with statistical CSIT. To this end, we aim to optimize the system resource efficiency (RE), which is capable of striking an EE-SE balance. We first figure out a closed-form solution for the eigenvectors of the optimal transmit covariance matrices of different user terminals, which indicates that beam domain is in favor of performing RE optimal transmission in massive MIMO downlink. Based on this insight, the RE optimization precoding design is reduced to a real-valued power allocation problem. Exploiting the techniques of sequential optimization and random matrix theory, we further propose a low-complexity suboptimal two-layer water-filling-structured power allocation algorithm. Numerical results illustrate the effectiveness and near-optimal performance of the proposed statistical CSI aided RE optimization approach.

This paper investigates a precoding method in downlink multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission with multiple base station (BS) cooperation, where each user device basically feeds back the instantaneous channel state information (CSI) to only the nearest BS, but the users near the cell edge additionally feedback the instantaneous CSI to the second nearest BS among the cooperating BSs. Our precoding method is categorized as a form of multi-cell processing (MCP) [5], in which the transmission information to a user is shared by the cooperating BSs in order to utilize fully the degrees of freedom of the spatial channel, and is based on block diagonalization of the channel matrix. However, since some elements of the channel matrix are unknown, we allow partially non-orthogonal transmission. More specifically, we allow inter-user interference to users with limited instantaneous CSI feedback from the channel where the instantaneous CSIs of those users are not obtained at the BSs. The other sources of inter-user interference are set to zero based on the block diagonalization of the channel matrix. The proposed method more efficiently utilizes the degrees of freedom of the spatial channel compared to the case with full orthogonal transmission at the cost of increased inter-user interference. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed method compared to the conventional approaches, which can accommodate the partial CSI feedback scenario, from the viewpoints of the required transmission power and achievable throughput.

We consider a precoding method in downlink multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission with multiple base station (BS) cooperation where some of the instantaneous channel state information (CSI) is not available at the BSs. The proposed precoding method is based on block diagonalization of the channel matrix. However, since some elements of the channel matrix are unknown, we allow a partially non-orthogonal transmission. More specifically, we allow inter-user interference to users with limited instantaneous CSI feedback from the channel where the instantaneous CSI of that user is not obtained at the BSs. The other inter-user interferences are set to zero based on the block diagonalization of the channel matrix. The proposed method efficiently uses the degree of freedom of the spatial channel compared to the case with full orthogonal transmission at the cost of increased inter-user interference to the users with limited instantaneous CSI feedback. Simulation results show that the proposed method increases the capacity for a given transmission power or decreases the transmission power for a given capacity requirement compared to the case with full orthogonal transmission.