Efficient and accurate channel feedback for multi-user MIMO-OFDMA

Massive MIMO has been proposed as a means of achieving huge spectral efficiency in cellular networks. However, its implementation is usually based on linear precoding schemes using Channel State Information (CSI). For this reason, the use of the Time Division Duplex (TDD) mode is typically assumed since it removes the dependence on the number of antennas at the transmitter to acquire CSI. Unfortunately, most of the cellular network operate in the Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) mode in which the acquisition of CSI depends proportionally to the number of transmit antennas. For this reason, the implementation of Massive MIMO is handicapped to few transmit antennas for the current cellular networks. In this paper we study the use of reconfigurable antennas that can switch among a set of preset modes, i.e., radiation patterns, through Blind Interference Alignment schemes. We show that it is a solution to exploit a very large number of antennas at the transmit side, overcoming the bottleneck that today constitutes the acquisition of CSI in Massive MIMO systems operating in FDD mode.

In the universal mobile telephony system (UMTS) the frequency division duplex (FDD) and time division duplex (TDD) modes have adjacent carriers at 1920 MHz. This creates adjacent channel interference (ACI) between the two different air interfaces. Since different duplexing modes are used, the implications for each system are different, with respect to capacity and coverage: these implications are investigated in the paper. The separation distance of the TDD and FDD base station and the load in each system are varied and a symmetrical speech service in both systems is considered, with non-ideal power control assumed. It is found that for an FDD cell radius of 1000 m, a TDD cell radius of 50 m and 10% maximal tolerable outage, the effects of ACI on capacity can be compensated by dynamically increasing the required power at each BS, without affecting the coverage.

Unlike the time-division duplexing (TDD) systems, the downlink (DL) and uplink (UL) channels are not reciprocal anymore in the case of frequency-division duplexing (FDD). However, some long-term parameters, e.g. the time delays and angles of arrival (AoAs) of the channel paths, still enjoy reciprocity. In this paper, by efficiently exploiting the aforementioned limited reciprocity, we address the DL channel state information (CSI) feedback in a practical wideband massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system operating in the FDD mode. In particular, the base station (BS) can transmit the FFT-based pilots with the carefully-selected phase shifts to align the DL paths. Then the user can rely on the so-called time-domain aggregate channel (TAC) to derive the estimate of the DL CSI. Next, with the knowledge about the second-order statistics of the DL channels, the user is also able to compute feedback of reduced dimensionality. We demonstrate that each user can just feed back one scalar number per DL channel path for the BS to recover the DL CSIs. Comprehensive numerical results corroborate our designs.

The IEEE 802.16 standard defines two main duplexing modes: Time Division Duplexing (TDD) and Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD). The FDD can be divided further into Full-FDD (F-FDD) and Half-FDD (H-FDD). F-FDD requires full duplexing support from subscriber stations and works with two frequency bands. TDD operates a single frequency band, but it does not need full-duplexing support. H-FDD is a combination of these: it works with two frequency bands and does not require full-duplexing support. The cost of this is a more complicated scheduling and added overhead. Still, H-FDD might be the only possible duplexing mode in some occasions. In this paper, these duplexing modes are compared and the H-FDD specific features, such as group balancing, are presented. The simulation results show that H-FDD does not quite match the performance of F-FDD or TDD. In the downlink direction, F-FDD and TDD have similar performance but in the uplink direction F-FDD can benefit from subchannelization gain with fewer bursts per frame.

Deploying cognitive radio femtocell network
\n(CRFN) inside a macrocell network can significantly increase
\nthe utilization of the available macrocell bandwidth and
\nincrease the capacity of the macrocell. However, the success of
\nthis deployment in terms of performance degradation of the
\nmacrocell and the acceptable throughput for the CRFN is not
\nwell defined. In this paper, we propose a time division duplex
\n(TDD) operation of a CRFN and investigate its performance
\ninside a macrocell operating in frequency division duplex
\n(FDD) mode. It is shown that with a proper sensing and
\ntransmission scheme the capacity of the CRFN can be increased
\nby simultaneous transmissions on multiple channels, water-filling
\nfurther improves the result when interference from the macrocell
\nbasestation is large. The proposed scheme is applicable to full
\nduplex networks, such as LTE and GSM.

In wireless communications, massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems in which the base station (BS) is equipped with a large number of antennas can provide significant spectral and energy efficiency by means of simple signal processing. Therefore, massive MIMO is an attractive technology for next generation wireless communication systems and for green communications. There are two operation modes: time-division duplex (TDD) and frequency-division duplex (FDD) for massive MIMO systems, and the debate on the two modes is still discussed in the literature. The originator of massive MIMO systems, Marzetta, has presented the basic frame structures for both the TDD and the FDD modes. However, the basic frame structures do not carefully take the hardware impairments such as phase noise (PN) into account. In this paper, by taking the PN as the key hardware impairment into account, we recommend new and efficient frame structures for both the TDD and the FDD modes. The corresponding performance comparison between the two modes is also provided by using the data transmission efficiency (DTE) as the performance measurement. The comparison may help determine which mode should be used for massive MIMO systems.

In this paper, a comparison study of various UMTS data transmission techniques is performed. An analysis of the system in the presence of geographically non-uniform multi-service traffic profiles is done for three transmission techniques: Frequency Division Duplex (FDD), Time Division Duplex (TDD), and High Speed Downlink Packet Access (HSDPA). Several combinations were selected: FDD, TDD, FDD combined with HSDPA, FDD combined with TDD, and FDD combined with TDD and HSDPA. The TDD mode is the technique with better results, but the introduction of HSDPA is clearly beneficial for data services, as expected. The distribution of the services by the three techniques is the best scenario, namely for some traffic profiles. For example, for a threshold of 128 kbps (for HSDPA services) and 50 % of the power reserved to HSDPA, it is possible to get 1.4 GB of carried traffic.

The acquisition problem in the wideband-CDMA (WCDMA) system proposed by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) to the ITU consists of determining both the timing and the identity of the particular scrambling code being received. A fast search mechanism to tackle this problem, based on cyclically permutable (CP) codes is proposed by Sriram and Hosur (see IEEE Inter. Conf. on Communications (ICC), June 1999) for the frequency-division-duplex (FDD) component of WCDMA. The CP codes for the FDD mode of WCDMA are not optimum for the time-division duplex (TDD) mode and have to be redesigned. In this paper we design optimum CP codes for the TDD mode. The new CP codes can also identify both frame timing and long code group information using only one synchronization slot. Thus, they can be used for GSM to WCDMA TDD mode handover. The new CP codes have been incorporated into the 3GPP WCDMA TDD standard.

The continuous growth in mobile data traffic and limited license wireless spectrum have led to dramatically increase the demand of the radio spectrum. It is widespread the concern about the coexistence of long term evolution (LTE) and Wi-Fi in the unlicensed band. There are several techniques have been proposed to enable the coexistence of LTE and Wi-Fi in the unlicensed band, but these works are targeted on the impact of the LTE to the Wi-Fi network performance. An experiment is carried out in this work to evaluate the impact of Wi-Fi signal on the video streaming in the LTE network. The experimental test comprised of the national instrument (NI) universal software radio peripheral (USRP) 2953R that is controlled by the LabVIEW Communication LTE application framework. Extensiveexperiments are carried out under two scenarios, i.e. (1) Coexistence of LTE and Wi-Fi signal, (2) LTE signal only. Performance evaluations are carried out with different Modulation and coding schemes (MCS) values and different mode of operations, i.e. frequency division duplex (FDD) and time division duplex (TDD) mode. The results illustrated that the interference from Wi-Fi signal caused the performance degradation of the LTE network in throughput and the power received by user equipment (UE).

In this paper, we present an analytical approach to design the inner region size for the fractional frequency reused (FFR) time division duplex (TDD) orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems when supporting asymmetrical traffic services. In TDD system, supporting asymmetrical traffic can be achieved by adjusting the ratio of downlink and uplink transmission period. Nevertheless, the intercell interference may be deteriorated by the cross-slot interference resulting from the different downlink and uplink ratios among neighboring cells. Although the FFR technique can overcome the inter-cell interference, the impact of the cross-slot interference of TDD systems due to various downlink to uplink traffic ratios in different cells on the inner region size of a FFR-based OFDMA system is an open issue to our best knowledge. Intuitively, the larger the inner region of a FFR system, the higher the system capacity. Thus, this paper can provide a systematic method to determine the size of the inner region of FFR-based OFDMA system for different ratios of the downlink to uplink traffic among two neighbor cells.

We propose a cross-layer switching method of orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) and multiuser multiple input multiple output (MU-MIMO) for the future wireless local area network systems. The proposed method, employed on the medium access control layer, switches between OFDMA and MU-MIMO as the transmission method after processing by using physical layer information such as an overhead of channel state information feedback, station number, and data length in order to improve the transmission efficiency. Simulation results show that the proposed method achieves higher total throughput than conventional OFDMA or MU-MIMO where switching is not performed.

In the Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) mode of the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standard, implementation of the turbo decoder, especially for the mobile equipments, faces design decisions related to computational complexity, power efficiency, and memory requirements. In this paper we compare different approaches of low complexity implementation of the turbo decoder, with emphasis on the issues of signal scaling and quantization, the sliding window operation for memory size reduction and the iteration stopping algorithms. The demodulated signal at the output of the RAKE receiver may have a wide dynamic range and it may require many bits of precision. In order to overcome the numerical precision problem and to prevent Log Likelihood ratio (LLR) metric overflow, a scaling algorithm must be used. Our simulation results indicate that the Average Absolute (AA) algorithm using dynamic scaling outperforms other scaling schemes and it is less sensitive to the channel conditions. One of the major challenges in the implementation of a practical turbo decoder is optimization of memory requirements. In this paper we evaluate the performance of the sliding window algorithm using different main and guard window sizes. We show that the bit and block error rate performance of the sliding window scheme mainly depend on the guard window size rather than the main window size. The simulation results indicate that small guard window sizes can significantly decrease the iteration gain for large frames in fast fading channels. Iteration stopping algorithms reduce the power consumption and the latency of the decoder and help to dedicate more resources to other functions of the receiver. The block error distribution in the fading channels makes it even more essential to use an iteration stopping rule. Our simulations conclude that a rule called the minimum absolute value appears to be a very effective, low complexity and robust algorithm.

This chapter presents a brief overview of the OFDMA technique used in 4G WiMAX (Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access) and 4G LTE (Long-Term Evolution) cellular system. It is shown that OFDMA is an extension of FDMA, where each frequency band is placed at the null of the adjacent frequency band. This is governed by the well-known “Fourier transform,” so that adjacent frequency bands are orthogonal to each other. OFDMA is a full-duplex communication system. The communication link is maintained in both directions in the time domain known as time division duplex (TDD). Numerous illustrations are used to bring students up to date in key concepts, underlying principles, and practical applications of “Fourier transform,” spectrum, and orthogonal properties of spectrum, leading to OFDMA. Construction of OFDMA channels from the FCC-allocated band is presented to illustrate the concept.

The 3GPP proposal for 3rd generation mobile phone systems comprises not only frequency division duplex (FDD) but also time division duplex (TDD) as duplex method for the JD-CDMA system. The TDD mode is an addition to the FDD mode to facilitate flexible, asymmetric data transfer of up- and downlink. Special structured pilot sequences are included into the data bursts and can be exploited to perform an efficient joint channel estimation of all active users as basis for multiuser detection. In this paper linear receiver concepts for the TDD mode are examined in terms of performance with focus on the influence of real, non-ideal channel estimation. RAKE receiver, zero forcing and minimum mean-square-error multiuser detectors are introduced and investigated by means of simulation for different environments using appropriate ITU channel models. Furthermore, an improved channel estimation procedure is presented, yielding significant performance enhancements for the multiuser detection algorithms.

Heterogeneous network (HetNet) is considered to be a promising approach to improve spectrum efficiency per area in a Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) system and beyond, which allows multiple cells to provide service in an overlaid area. To guarantee stability of the HetNet, one challenge is how to handle inter-cell interference between different cells especially for a control channel that does not support link adaptation or retransmission. In this paper, a novel method is proposed that improves performance of downlink Hybrid Automatic Repeat-request (HARQ) feedback channel in HetNet. In the proposed method, legacy control channel transmission is shifted to another subframe with a lower interference level. Simulation results demonstrate that the downlink HARQ feedback channel performance can be significantly improved in both Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) and Time Division Duplex (TDD) systems.