Massive Multiple-input Multiple-output Relay Networks Research Articles

Effects of Pilot Contamination Attacks in Multi-Cell Multi-User Massive MIMO Relay Networks

The detrimental effects of pilot contamination attacks by active eavesdroppers are investigated for multi-cell multi-user massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) relay networks. To this end, secure transmission strategies are designed for both users-to-relay and relay-to-destination channels in the presence of active pilot attacks with imperfect legitimate user channel state information (CSI) and with no eavesdropper CSI knowledge at the relay. The excess degrees-of-freedom offered by the massive MIMO relay are exploited to mitigate detrimental effects of cooperative jamming (CJ) signals and to generate artificial noise (AN) during the first and second time-slots, respectively. Thereby, the achievable secrecy rate lower bounds for active attacks are derived in the finite/infinite relay antenna regimes. The secrecy rates for passive eavesdropping are deduced and compared to that of active attacks. A joint optimal power allocation scheme for the pilot, payload data, and AN and CJ signals is formulated and solved by using geometric programming techniques. Rigorous numerical and simulation results are provided to obtain valuable insights, which are useful in designing secure physical layer transmission strategies for multi-cell multi-user massive MIMO relay networks.

Multi-User Massive MIMO Relay Networks With Space-Constrained 2-D Antenna Arrays

The detrimental effects of spatially correlated fading are investigated for multi-user massive multiple-input multiple-output relay networks with maximal-ratio combining detectors. To this end, the achievable sum rates are derived in closed form for quantifying the cumulative effects of: 1) imperfect channel state information and 2) spatially correlated fading at the co-located space-constrained 2-D antenna arrays with increasingly many antenna elements for 3-D fading channels. The achievable sum rate for the uncorrelated fading and the corresponding asymptotic sum rate limit are derived. Our results reveal that the correlated fading in 2-D antenna arrays significantly degrades the achievable sum rate even in the finite antenna regime. The sum rate loss gradually increases, and hence, the achievable sum rate becomes infinitesimal in the asymptotic regime of 2-D antenna arrays with finite dimensions over 3-D correlated fading channels.

Multicell Multiway Massive MIMO Relay Networks

A generic performance analysis framework is developed for multicell amplify-and-forward (AF) multiway massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) relay networks. The detrimental effects of imperfect channel state information (CSI), including channel estimation errors and outdated/delayed CSI for multicell massive MIMO AF multiway relay networks, are investigated. Thereby, for the first time in the open literature in the context of massive MIMO relay networks, the cumulative detrimental effects of pilot contamination and channel aging caused by the reuse of nonorthogonal pilot sequences and relative movements of user nodes, respectively, are quantified. The asymptotic signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio and the achievable spectral efficiency expressions corresponding to three transmit power scaling laws at the user nodes and relay are derived whenever the number of antennas at the relay is substantially higher than the number of user nodes. The asymptotic performance analysis is generic in the sense that the individual effects of the practical transmission impairments, such as cochannel interference, pilot contamination, and channel aging, can be decomposed. The average symbol error rate (SER) and asymptotic SER are derived in closed form. The optimal pilot sequence length, which maximizes the achievable spectral efficiency, is derived in closed form. Our asymptotic analysis for the perfect CSI case reveals that the detrimental effects of cochannel interference can be asymptotically mitigated. Nevertheless, the performance degradation caused due to the cumulative effects of pilot contamination and channel aging cannot be mitigated, even in the limit of infinitely many relay antennas.

Multi‐pair massive MIMO relay networks: power scaling laws and user scheduling strategy

This study studies a multi-pair massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) relaying network, where multiple pairs of users are served by a single relay station with a large number of antennas, and the amplify-and-forward protocol and zero-forcing (ZF) beamforming are used at the relay. The authors investigate the ergodic achievable rates for the users and obtain tight approximations in closed form for finite number of antennas. The rate performance and power efficiency are studied based on the analytical results for asymptotic scenarios, and the effect of scaling factors of transmit powers for users and relay are discussed. The closed-form expressions enable us to determine the optimal user scheduling which maximizes the ergodic sum-rate for the selected pairs. A simplified user scheduling algorithm is proposed which greatly reduces the average complexity of the optimal use pair search without any rate loss. Moreover, the complexity reduction for the proposed algorithm increases nonlinearly with the increase of the number of user pairs, which indicates that the simplified scheduling algorithm has notable advantages when the number of users is increased. The tightness for the analytical approximations and the superiority of the proposed algorithm are verified by Monte-Carlo simulation results.

A novel forwarding method for full-duplex two-way relay networks

An estimate-and-forward (EF) scheme for single-input single-output (SISO) and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) full-duplex two-way relay networks is proposed and analyzed. The relay estimates the received signal from two terminal nodes by a minimum mean squared error (MMSE) estimation and forwards a scaled version of the MMSE estimate to the destination. The proposed EF outperforms conventional amplify- and-forward (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF) across all signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) region. Because its computational complexity is high for relays with a large number of antennas (large MIMO) and/or high order constellations, an approximate EF scheme, called list EF, are thus proposed to reduce the computational complexity. The proposed list EF computes a candidate list for the MMSE estimate by using a sphere decoder, and it approaches the performance of the exact EF relay at a negligible performance loss. The proposed forwarding approach also could be used to other relay networks, such as half-duplex, one-way or massive MIMO relay networks.

Wireless Information and Power Transfer in Multiway Massive MIMO Relay Networks

Simultaneous wireless information and power transfer techniques for multiway massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) relay networks are investigated. By using two practically viable relay receiver designs, namely 1) the power splitting receiver and 2) the time switching receiver, asymptotic signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) expressions are derived for an unlimited number of antennas at the relay. These asymptotic SINRs are then used to derive asymptotic symmetric sum rate expressions in closed form. Notably, these asymptotic SINRs and sum rates become independent of radio frequency-to-direct current (RF-to-DC) conversion efficiency in the limit of infinitely many relay antennas. Moreover, tight average sum rate approximations are derived in closed form for finitely many relay antennas. The fundamental tradeoff between the harvested energy and the sum rate is quantified for both relay receiver structures. Notably, the detrimental impact of imperfect channel state information (CSI) on the MIMO detector/precoder is investigated, and thereby, the performance degradation caused by pilot contamination, which is the residual interference due to nonorthogonal pilot sequence usage in adjacent/cochannel systems, is quantified. The presence of cochannel interference (CCI) can be exploited to be beneficial for energy harvesting at the relay, and consequently, the asymptotic harvested energy is an increasing function of the number of cochannel interferers. Notably, in the genie-aided perfect CSI case, the detrimental impact of CCI for signal decoding can be cancelled completely whenever the number of relay antennas grows without bound. Nevertheless, the pilot contamination severely degrades the sum rate performance even for infinitely many relay antennas.