Cell-Free Massive Massive Multiple-input Multiple-output Systems Research Articles

Downlink Achievable Rate of D2D Underlaid Cell-Free Massive MIMO Systems With Low-Resolution DACs

Device-to-device (D2D) communication coexisted with a cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system will be one of the pieces of the B5G/6G jigsaw puzzle. In this article, a D2D underlaid cell-free massive MIMO system with low-resolution digital-to-analog converters is studied, where multiantenna D2D user equipments (DUEs) communicate pairwise with each other in the same time-frequency resources as cell-free with equipments (CFUEs). Assuming imperfect channel state information is available at access points (APs), the downlink closed-form achievable rates for both CFUEs and multiantenna DUEs are derived, which enable us to give insights into the impacts of the key design parameters (e.g., the AP number, the DUE density, and its antenna number) on achievable rate. After that, a power control scheme is developed to maximize the average sum rate of CFUEs and DUEs, and we show that the proposed power control problem can be effectively solved by using the path-following algorithm. Finally, numerical simulations are provided to highlight the system performance and verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

RIS-assisted cell-free massive MIMO systems with reflection area: AP number reduction

Cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) has been regarded as a promising technology due to high spectral efficiency. However, as large number of access points (APs) are deployed with fibers connecting to the central processing unit, the increase of energy consumption and hardware cost raise concerns. The reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) with impressing potential for low energy and cost finds a way to solve this problem. In this paper, we investigate the performance of the cell-free massive MIMO system with a RIS. As RIS can only reflect signals from the front, user equipments (UEs) and APs are divided into two categories according to their relative position with the RIS, i.e., one is on the reflection area of the RIS and the other is not. A closed-form approximation of the UE achievable downlink rate is derived. Based on it, we obtain the optimal RIS position and phase shift that can maximize the UE sum rate, through alternating optimization method. It is found that compared with the cell-free massive MIMO system without RIS, to achieve the same rate performance, the number of required AP in the RIS-assisted system can be significantly reduced. Moreover, as the RIS component increases, the number of required AP can be reduced almost linearly without rate reduction, which means the hardware and energy cost can be greatly cut down. Furthermore, from our simulation results, we can see that when users are densely distributed, the optimal location of the RIS should be closer to users. When users are uniformly distributed, the optimal position of RIS is close to the central position.

Optimization of Cell-Free Massive MIMO System

As an innovative implementation, Cell-Free Massive Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) has appeared in typical Cellular Massive MIMO Networks. This protocol doesn’t recognize cells, as shown by its name, even though a significant number of APs operate on the same frequency/time resources. Connection from multiple distributed access points through joint signal processing is called Cell-Free Massive MIMO. The Cell-Free Massive MIMO System, a contrast between Cell-Free Massive MIMO Systems and Distributed Massive MIMO, the prime focus in this thesis is on Cell-free Massive MIMO and, along with this discussion, on Cell-free Massive MIMO signal processing, Channel Estimation, Uplink Signal Detection, Cumulative Distribution, Spectral Efficiency & Ubiquitous Cell-Free Massive MIMO Model. Ubiquitous Cell-free Massive MIMO contributes to a Massive MIMO system, a distributed system that implements consistent user-centre distribution to solve that constraint of mobile phone interferences as well as to introduce macro-diversity. We investigated the Cell Radius at different locations in CDF with Spectral Efficiency [bits/s/hertz]. Cell-Free Massive MIMO is an evidence-based preventive of massive MIMOs with distributed high percentage APs that serve even lower margins. The cell-free model is not segregated into cells and any individual is concurrently represented by every Access point.

Spatially Correlated Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces-Aided Cell-Free Massive MIMO Systems

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) and cell-free (CF) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) are two promising technologies for realizing beyond-fifth generation (5G) networks. In this paper, we study the uplink spectral efficiency (SE) of a practical spatially correlated RISs-aided CF massive MIMO system over Rician fading channels. Specifically, we derive the closed-form expression for characterizing the uplink SE of the system, which shows that increasing the number of RIS elements can improve the system performance. Moreover, the results unveil that the spatial correlation of RIS has a significant impact on the system while leading to the best performance gain at a half wavelength spacing. Finally, the accuracy of our analytical results are verified by Monte-Carlo simulations.

Performance Analysis of Cell-Free Massive MIMO System with Network-Assisted Full-Duplex under Time-Shifting Pilot Scheme

A network-assisted full-duplex (NAFD) system based on a cell-free (CF) massive multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) framework has been proposed to satisfy the demands of higher data transmission rates and efficient communication. However, pilot contamination may occur due to the reuse of pilot sequences in a massive MIMO. With this consideration, we raise an asynchronous channel estimation method based on an uplink and downlink time-shifting pilot-sending scheme, which is able to avoid pilot sequence reuse when obtaining channel state information (CSI), while the data signals could be transmitted simultaneously at the same frequency. The transmission processes of the proposed method above are divided into three phases, including pilot phase, estimation phase, and data phase, in chronological order. When the uplink is in pilot phase, the corresponding downlink is in data phase and vice versa. After the channel state information estimation, both uplinks and downlinks are in data phase. The maximum ratio combination (MRC) receiver and the maximum ratio transmission (MRT) precoding are adopted in the uplink and downlink. The closed-form expressions are derived based on large-scale random matrix theory. We compared our asymptotic results with practical results in simulation, and find that they are well matched. Moreover, the proposed method is superior to the normal time-division duplex (TDD) system.

Antenna Selection Based on Matching Theory for Uplink Cell-Free Millimetre Wave Massive Multiple Input Multiple Output Systems

In this paper, we propose a hybrid beamforming architecture with constant phase shifters (CPSs) for uplink cell-free millimetre-wave (mm-Wave) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems based on exploiting antenna selection to reduce power consumption. However, current antenna selection techniques are applied for conventional massive MIMO, not cell-free massive MIMO systems. Therefore, the enormous computational complexity of these techniques to optimally select antennas for cell-free massive MIMO networks is caused by numerous randomly distributed access points (APs) in the service area and their large antennas. The architecture proposed in this work solves this issue by employing a low-complexity matching technique to obtain the optimal number of antennas, chosen based on channel magnitude and by switching off antennas that contribute more to interference power than to desired signal power for each radio frequency (RF) chain at each AP, instead of assuming all RF chains at each AP have the same number of selected antennas. Therefore, an assignment optimization problem based on a bipartite graph is formulated for cell-free mm-Wave massive MIMO system uplinks. Then, the Hungarian method is proposed to solve this problem due to its ability to solve this assignment problem in a polynomial time. Simulated results show that, despite several APs and antennas, the proposed matching approach is more energy-efficient and has lower computational complexity than state-of-the-art schemes.

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface-Assisted Cell-Free Massive MIMO Systems Over Spatially-Correlated Channels

Cell-Free Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) are two promising technologies for application to beyond-5G networks. This paper considers Cell-Free Massive MIMO systems with the assistance of an RIS for enhancing the system performance under the presence of spatial correlation among the engineered scattering elements of the RIS. Distributed maximum-ratio processing is considered at the access points (APs). We introduce an <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">aggregated channel</i> estimation approach that provides sufficient information for data processing with the main benefit of reducing the overhead required for channel estimation. The considered system is studied by using asymptotic analysis which lets the number of APs and/or the number of RIS elements grow large. A lower bound for the channel capacity is obtained for a finite number of APs and engineered scattering elements of the RIS, and closed-form expressions for the uplink and downlink ergodic net throughput are formulated in terms of only the channel statistics. Based on the obtained analytical frameworks, we unveil the impact of channel correlation, the number of RIS elements, and the pilot contamination on the net throughput of each user. In addition, a simple control scheme for optimizing the configuration of the engineered scattering elements of the RIS is proposed, which is shown to increase the channel estimation quality, and, hence, the system performance. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system design and performance analysis. In particular, the performance benefits of using RISs in Cell-Free Massive MIMO systems are confirmed, especially if the direct links between the APs and the users are of insufficient quality with high probability.

Downlink Power Control for Cell-Free Massive MIMO With Deep Reinforcement Learning

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.

Efficient User-Serving Scheme in the User-Centric Cell-Free Massive MIMO System.

A cell-free massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) system is an attractive network model that is in the spotlight in 5G and future communication systems. Despite numerous advantages, the cell-free massive MIMO system has a problem in that it is difficult to operate in reality due to its vast amount of calculation. The user-centric cell-free massive MIMO model has a more feasible and scalable benefit than the cell-free massive MIMO model. However, this model has the disadvantage that as the number of users in the area increases, there are users who do not receive the service. In this paper, the proposed scheme creates connections for unserved users under a user-centric scheme without additional access point (AP) installation and disconnection for existing users. A downlink user-centric cell-free massive MIMO system model in which the APs are connected to the central processing unit (CPU) and the APs and users are geographically distributed is considered. First, the downlink spectral efficiency formula is derived and applied to the user-centric cell-free massive MIMO system. Then, the proposed scheme and power control algorithm are applied to the derived formula. The simulation results show that the unserved users within the area disappear by using the proposed scheme, while the bit error rate (BER) performance and sum rate improve compared to the existing scheme. In addition, it is shown that the proposed scheme works well even with a very large number of users in the area, and a significant service performance improvement for the worst 10% of users and the overall improvement of per-user throughput for the bottom 70% of users are ensured.

Wireless Energy Transfer in RIS-Aided Cell-Free Massive MIMO Systems: Opportunities and Challenges

In future 6G mobile networks, the Internet-of-Everything (IoE) is expected to provide extremely massive connectivity for small battery-powered devices. Indeed, massive devices with limited energy storage capacity impose persistent energy demand hindering the lifetime of communication networks. As a remedy, wireless energy transfer (WET) is a key technology to address these critical energy supply issues. On the other hand, cell-free (CF) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems offer an efficient network architecture to realize the rollout of IoE. In this article, we first propose the paradigm of reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided CF massive MIMO systems for WET, including its potential application scenarios and system architecture. The four-stage transmission procedure is discussed and analyzed to illustrate the practicality of the architecture. Then we put forward and analyze the hardware design of RIS. In particular, we discuss the three corresponding operating modes and the amalgamation of WET technology and RIS-aided CF massive MIMO. Representative simulation results are given to confirm the superior performance achieved by our proposed schemes. Also, we investigate the optimal location of deploying multiple RISs to achieve the best system performance. Finally, several important research directions of RIS-aided CF massive MIMO systems with WET are presented to inspire further potential investigation.

Downlink channel estimation in FDD cell-free massive MIMO

In frequency-division duplexing (FDD) cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, an excessive channel estimation overhead is a critical issue that limits the system performance. In this paper, by exploiting the sparse channel characteristics of such a cell-free system, we apply compressive sensing to estimate the channel state information and solve the excessive pilot overhead problem. The proposed algorithm estimates several channel coefficients with significant gains in the power domain and ignores the approximately zero coefficients. Compared to minimum mean square error (MMSE) estimation with orthogonal pilots, the proposed method significantly reduces the pilot overhead in an FDD cell-free massive MIMO system. The access points (APs) that contribute low gains feature reduced energy consumption because the power coefficients corresponding to zero gains in the sparse channel are assigned zeros in the power control process. Therefore, to improve the energy efficiency, the ignored channel coefficients reduce the power overhead.

Joint Power and User Grouping Optimization in Cell-Free Massive MIMO Systems

To relieve the stress on channel estimation and decoding complexity in cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, user grouping problem is investigated in this paper, where access points (APs) based on time-division duplex (TDD) are considered to serve users on different time resources and the same frequency resource. In addition, when quality of service (QoS) requirements are considered, widely-used max-min power control is no longer applicable. We derive the minimum power constraints under diverse QoS requirements considering user grouping. Based on the analysis, we formulate the joint power and user grouping problem under QoS constraints, aiming at minimizing the total transmit power. A generalized benders decomposition (GBD) based algorithm is proposed, where the primal problem and master problem are solved iteratively to approach the optimal solution. Simulation results demonstrate that by user grouping, the number of users served in cell-free MIMO systems can be as much as the number of APs without increasing the complexity of channel estimation and decoding. Furthermore, with the proposed user grouping strategy, the power consumption can be reduced by 2–3 dB compared with the reference user grouping strategy, and by 7 dB compared with the total transmit power without grouping.

Secure Transmission Scheme Based on Fingerprint Positioning in Cell-Free Massive MIMO Systems

In this paper, we mainly study how to improve the secure transmission performance of cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems by using location technology. In cell-free massive MIMO systems, active pilot attacks will contaminate the uplink channel estimation and affect the downlink precoding of access points (APs). In order to effectively reduce the impact of active pilot attacks on user transmission, this paper respectively proposes an user location estimation method based on fingerprint positioning and a channel estimation algorithm based on location information. Firstly, under the imperfect channel state information, the location information of users and eavesdropper is obtained by using fingerprint positioning method and K-means clustering algorithm. Then, combined with location information, AP selection strategy and channel estimation method based on non-overlapping angle of arrival (AOA) criterion are proposed respectively. Based on the location information of users and eavesdropper, we use discrete Fourier transform (DFT) to distinguish the uplink channels of legitimate user and eavesdropper from the angle domain, thus eliminating the pilot contamination caused by active pilot attacks. The results show that compared with the traditional transmission method, the proposed secure transmission strategy can increase the secrecy rate of up to 2 b/s/Hz, which effectively enhances the secure transmission performance of cell-free massive MIMO in strong interference environment.

Cell-Free Massive MIMO-OFDM Over Spatially Correlated Doubly Selective Channels

This paper investigates the impact of doubly selective fading channels on the design and performance analysis of cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO)-orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) networks. Time and frequency selectivity, as well as the intercarrier interference (ICI) effects, are fully characterized, and the spatial channel cross-covariance matrices associated to each mobile station (MS)/access point (AP) pair and for every OFDM symbol/subcarrier conforming a particular resource block (RB) are derived. Assuming that these cross-covariance matrices are known at the APs, <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">optimal</i> minimum mean square error (MMSE)-based and suboptimal projected MMSE (PMMSE)-based double selectivity-aware channel estimators/predictors are designed. Spatial cross-covariance matrices and channel estimates/predictions are then used to design scalable double selectivity-aware partial-MMSE (P-MMSE), averaged P-MMSE (AP-MMSE) and statistically averaged P-MMSE (SAP-MMSE) combiners and precoders to be used during the uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) payload data transmission phases. Extensive numerical simulations are conducted to assess the performance of the proposed double selectivity-aware scalable cell-free massive MIMO systems under scenarios showing different degrees of time and frequency selectivity. Simulation results clearly show the performance advantages of double selectivity-aware channel estimation/prediction schemes and combining/precoding strategies when working in high-mobility multipath scenarios of practical interest. Moreover, it is shown that, even though suboptimal PMMSE/AP-MMSE and PMMSE/SAP-MMSE strategies perform relatively well under poor frequency and time selectivity conditions, they suffer from very significant performance losses with respect to the MMSE/P-MMSE scheme as frequency and/or time selectivity levels increase.

Local Partial Zero-Forcing Combining for Cell-Free Massive MIMO Systems

Cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) provides more uniform spectral efficiency (SE) for users (UEs) than cellular technology. The main challenge to achieve the benefits of cell-free massive MIMO is to realize signal processing in a scalable way. In this paper, we consider scalable fullpilot zero-forcing (FZF), partial FZF (PFZF), protective weak PFZF (PWPFZF), and local regularized ZF (LRZF) combining by exploiting channel statistics. We derive closed-form expressions of the uplink SE for FZF, PFZF, and PWPFZF combining with large-scale fading decoding over independent Rayleigh fading channels, taking channel estimation errors and pilot contamination into account. Moreover, we investigate the impact of the number of pilot sequences, antennas per AP, and APs on the performance. Numerical results show that LRZF provides the highest SE. However, PWPFZF is preferable when the number of pilot sequences is large and the number of antennas per AP is small. The reason is that PWPFZF has lower computational complexity and the SE expression can be computed in closed-form. Furthermore, we investigate the performance of PWPFZF combining with fractional power control and the numerical results show that it improves the performance of weak UEs and realizes uniformly good service for all UEs in a scalable fashion.

The Downlink Performance for Cell-Free Massive MIMO with Instantaneous CSI in Slowly Time-Varying Channels.

In centralized massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, the channel hardening phenomenon can occur, in which the channel behaves as almost fully deterministic as the number of antennas increases. Nevertheless, in a cell-free massive MIMO system, the channel is less deterministic. In this paper, we propose using instantaneous channel state information (CSI) instead of statistical CSI to obtain the power control coefficient in cell-free massive MIMO. Access points (APs) and user equipment (UE) have sufficient time to obtain instantaneous CSI in a slowly time-varying channel environment. We derive the achievable downlink rate under instantaneous CSI for frequency division duplex (FDD) cell-free massive MIMO systems and apply the results to the power control coefficients. For FDD systems, quantized channel coefficients are proposed to reduce feedback overhead. The simulation results show that the spectral efficiency performance when using instantaneous CSI is approximately three times higher than that achieved using statistical CSI.

Optimization of Duplex Mode Selection for Network-Assisted Full-Duplex Cell-Free Massive MIMO Systems

Network-assisted full-duplex enable simultaneous uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) communications by allocating remote antenna units (RAUs) to perform either UL reception of DL transmission at each time slot, which improve the spectral efficiency (SE) of cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. However, previous studies mainly focus on analyzing the system performance under given duplex mode of RAUs. In this letter, we propose to dynamically optimize the duplex mode of RAUs to further improve the SE. An algorithm based on parallel successive convex approximation is proposed to solve the non-convex duplex mode optimization problem. To reduce algorithm complexity and achieve higher SE, a reinforcement learning algorithm based on enhanced Q-learning is also proposed. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithms improve the SE of cell-free massive MIMO systems greatly with lower complexity.

2D Fingerprinting-Based Localization for mmWave Cell-Free Massive MIMO Systems

In this letter, fingerprinting-based cooperative localization for millimeter-wave (mmWave) cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems is investigated. For the purpose of robust localization in line-of-sight (LOS) or non-LOS (NLOS) environments, a dynamic two-dimensional (2D) fingerprint training scheme employing maximum likelihood (ML) estimation and information entropy theory is proposed. This scheme regularly extracts link state matrix and confidence factor-aided AOA vectors from uplink channels. Then, a dynamic AP select scheme along with an anchor node (AN) filtering scheme is used to rapidly lock the range of the user location. Based on this, a weighted mean square error (WMSE)-based AOA fingerprinting scheme is developed to estimate the user location. Numerical results are provided to validate the localization accuracy of the proposed scheme.

Cell-Free Massive MIMO Systems With Oscillator Phase Noise: Performance Analysis and Power Control

Cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is considered as a promising technology for satisfying higher rate requirement of users in beyond-5G networks. This paper investigates the impact of phase noise on the performance of cell-free MIMO systems which employ a large number of multi-antenna access points (APs). For both downlink and uplink transmissions, we derive the tractable closed-form achievable rate expressions when signal detection with channel state information (CSI) and channel distribution information (CDI), respectively, by utilizing the extended deterministic equivalence method in random matrix theory. The closed-form achievable rate expressions provide efficient evaluation for the impact of phase noise on system performance. The analytical results indicate that the phase noise influences the power of the desired signal, the beamforming uncertainty gain, and the inter-user interference increment caused by the pilot contamination. In addition, the special cases that only APs have phase noise and only users have phase noise are discussed. It is found that the impact of phase noise at users is more severe than that at APs. Besides, we discuss the system performance at low and high SNR regimes. It demonstrates that the phase noise is the major limitation of the system performance in high SNR regime while it can be neglected in low SNR regime. Furthermore, we formulate the max-min power control problem for both downlink and uplink transmissions to guarantee the users’ fairness and prove that the downlink max-min problem is a quasi-concave problem while the uplink max-min problem is a geometric programming (GP) problem. Then, the phase noise-aware max-min power control schemes for both downlink and uplink transmissions are proposed to ensure the users’ fairness. Finally, numerical results are provided to validate the analytical results and the proposed phase noise-aware power control scheme.

UAV Communications With WPT-Aided Cell-Free Massive MIMO Systems

Cell-free (CF) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is a promising solution to provide uniform good performance for unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communications. In this paper, we propose the UAV communication with wireless power transfer (WPT) aided CF massive MIMO systems, where the harvested energy (HE) from the downlink WPT is used to support both uplink data and pilot transmission. We derive novel closed-form downlink HE and uplink spectral efficiency (SE) expressions that take hardware impairments of UAV into account. UAV communications with current small cell (SC) and cellular massive MIMO enabled WPT systems are also considered for comparison. It is significant to show that CF massive MIMO achieves two and five times higher 95%-likely uplink SE than the ones of SC and cellular massive MIMO, respectively. Besides, the large-scale fading decoding receiver cooperation can reduce the interference of the terrestrial user. Moreover, the maximum SE can be achieved by changing the time-splitting fraction. We prove that the optimal time-splitting fraction for maximum SE is determined by the number of antennas, altitude and hardware quality factor of UAVs. Furthermore, we propose three UAV trajectory design schemes to improve the SE. It is interesting that the angle search scheme performs best than both AP search and line path schemes. Finally, simulation results are presented to validate the accuracy of our expressions.