Multiuser Multiuser Multiple-input Multiple-output Research Articles

Joint Rate Maximization of Downlink and Uplink in Multiuser MIMO SWIPT Systems

Beamforming has the potential to improve the efficiency of simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) systems. Existing beamforming techniques have been focused on the downlink of SWIPT systems. In this paper, we optimize the beamformers and transmit duration to maximize the weighted sum rate of both the downlink and uplink in a multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) SWIPT system. Specifically, we formulate and transform the problem into a weighted sum mean square error minimization, conduct difference of convex programming to decouple the downlink and uplink, and convert the problem to quadratic programming (QP), which can be solved iteratively in a centralized fashion. We also decentralize the QP problem using dual decompositions, and reduce the time-complexity without compromising the data rate. Moreover, our algorithms are extended to the case under imperfect channel state information. Confirmed by simulations, the proposed decentralization can dramatically reduce the time-complexity by orders of magnitude. The scalability of the proposed approach can be substantially enhanced to support medium to large networks.

Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) for Downlink Multiuser MIMO Systems: User Clustering, Beamforming, and Power Allocation

We investigate the application of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) with successive interference cancellation (SIC) in downlink multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) cellular systems, where the total number of receive antennas at user equipment (UE) ends in a cell is more than the number of transmit antennas at the base station (BS). We first dynamically group the UE receive antennas into a number of clusters equal to or more than the number of BS transmit antennas. A single beamforming vector is then shared by all the receive antennas in a cluster. We propose a linear beamforming technique in which all the receive antennas can significantly cancel the inter-cluster interference. On the other hand, the receive antennas in each cluster are scheduled on the power domain NOMA basis with SIC at the receiver ends. For inter-cluster and intra-cluster power allocation, we provide dynamic power allocation solutions with an objective to maximizing the overall cell capacity. An extensive performance evaluation is carried out for the proposed MIMO-NOMA system and the results are compared with those for conventional orthogonal multiple access (OMA)-based MIMO systems and other existing MIMO-NOMA solutions. The numerical results quantify the capacity gain of the proposed MIMO-NOMA model over MIMO-OMA and other existing MIMO-NOMA solutions.

Sum-Rate Enhancement in Multiuser MIMO Decode-and-Forward Relay Broadcasting Channel With Energy Harvesting Relays

In this paper, we consider a multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) decode-and-forward (DF) relay broadcasting channel (BC) with single source, multiple energy harvesting (EH) relays, and multiple destinations. All the nodes are equipped with multiple antennas. The EH and information decoding tasks at the relays and destinations are separated over the time, which is termed as the time switching scheme. As optimal solutions for the sum-rate maximization problems of BC channels and the MIMO interference channels are hard to obtain, the end-to-end sum rate maximization problem of a multiuser MIMO DF relay BC channel is even harder. In this paper, we propose to tackle a simplified problem, where we employ the block diagonalization (BD) procedure at the source, and we mitigate the interference between the relay-destination channels using an algorithm similar to the BD method. In order to show the relevance of our low complex proposed solution, we compare it with the minimum mean-square error (mmse) solution that was shown in the literature to be equivalent to the solution of the sum-rate maximization in the MIMO broadcasting interfering channels. We also investigate the time division multiple access (TDMA) solution, which separates all the information transmissions from the source to the relays and from the relays to the destinations over time. We provide the numerical results to show the relevance of our proposed solution, in comparison with the no co-channel interference case, the TDMA-based solution, and the mmse-based solution.

Partly random multiple weighting matrices selection for orthogonal random beamforming

In the multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system, orthogonal random beamforming (ORBF) scheme is proposed to serve multiple users simultaneously in order to achieve the multi-user diversity gain. The opportunistic space-division multiple access system (OSDMA-S) scheme performs multiple weighting matrices during the training phase and chooses the best weighting matrix to be used to broadcast data during the transmitting phase. The OSDMA-S scheme works better than the original ORBF by decreasing the inter-user interference during the transmitting phase. To save more time in the training phase, a partly random multiple weighting matrices selection scheme is proposed in this paper. In our proposed scheme, the Base Station does not need to use several unitary matrices to broadcast pilot symbol. Actually, only one broadcasting operation is needed. Each subscriber generates several virtual equivalent channels with a set of pre-saved unitary matrices and the channel status information gained from the broadcasting operation. The signal-to-interference and noise ratio (SINR) of each beam in each virtual equivalent channel is calculated and fed back to the base station for the weighting matrix selection and multi-user scheduling. According to the theoretical analysis, the proposed scheme relatively expands the transmitting phase and reduces the interactive complexity between the Base Station and subscribers. The asymptotic analysis and the simulation results show that the proposed scheme improves the throughput performance of the multi-user MIMO system.

Sum-Rate Maximization for Multiuser MIMO Wireless Powered Communication Networks

This paper investigates multiuser multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) wireless powered communication networks where a multiantenna hybrid access point (H-AP) transfers wireless energy to multiantenna users in a downlink phase, and the users utilize the harvested energy for their information transmission to the H-AP in an uplink phase. By employing space-division multiple-access techniques, we propose an optimal algorithm that jointly computes the downlink energy precoding matrices, the uplink information precoding matrices, and time allocation between the downlink and the uplink phases for maximizing the uplink sum-rate performance. To this end, we first obtain the optimal energy and information transmit covariance matrices with given time allocation. Then, the optimal time allocation can be efficiently identified by a simple line search method. Simulation results verify that the proposed joint optimal algorithm significantly improves the average sum-rate performance, compared with a conventional scheme that determines time allocation and precoding matrices separately.

Low-Complexity Precoding Design for Massive Multiuser MIMO Systems Using Approximate Message Passing

A practical challenge in the precoding design of massive multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems is to facilitate hardware-friendly implementation. To achieve this, we propose a low peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) precoding based on an approximate message passing (AMP) algorithm to minimize multiuser interference (MUI) in massive multiuser MIMO systems. The proposed approach exhibits fast convergence and low complexity characteristics. Compared with a conventional constant-envelope precoding and an annulus-constrained precoding, simulation results demonstrate that the proposed AMP precoding is superior both in terms of computational complexity and average running time. In addition, the proposed AMP precoding exhibits a much desirable tradeoff between MUI suppression and PAPR reduction. These findings indicate that the proposed AMP precoding is a suitable candidate for hardware implementation, which is very appealing for massive MIMO systems.

Secrecy capacity and outage probability of multiuser MIMO systems with zero forcing receivers

In this paper, we evaluate the secrecy performance of the zero forcing receiver operating in the multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system with user scheduling. We first derive the exact closed form expressions for the probability of non-zero secrecy capacity (PNZSC). We consider Rayleigh fading with non-identical fading parameters of the eavesdropper’s channel. We further derive the secrecy outage probability (SOP) which accurately reveals the secrecy diversity order and the secrecy array gain. Numerical results shows that our system is valid and accurate for any number of transmitter, receiver and eavesdropper antennas.

On Superimposed Pilot for Channel Estimation in Multicell Multiuser MIMO Uplink: Large System Analysis

This paper concerns the uplink of multicell multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. To tackle the effect of pilot contamination that is generally viewed as a bottleneck in previous work, this paper presents a superimposed pilot (SP)-aided uplink channel estimation scheme and mathematically characterizes the impact that an SP has on the performance of such a very large MIMO system. It is shown that there are two types of interference components that do not vanish, even when the number of antennas $M$ grows to infinity. The first type, which is referred to as cross-contamination, is due to the correlation between the SP and data among different cells. The second type, which is referred to as self-contamination, is due to the dependence between channel estimation and estimation error. Cross-contamination is, in principle, similar to pilot contamination in a conventional pilot-based multicell MIMO system, whereas self-contamination is unique for the SP-aided scheme. Both theoretical and simulation results demonstrate that the SP-aided scheme can effectively reduce the estimation contamination by increasing the data frame size and, in turn, achieve a significant improvement over the spectral efficiency, in comparison with conventional pilot-based methods.

Optimal Source and Relay Design for Multiuser MIMO AF Relay Communication Systems With Direct Links and Imperfect Channel Information

In this paper, we propose statistically robust design for multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) relay systems with direct source-destination links and imperfect channel state information (CSI). The minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) of the signal waveform estimation at the destination node is adopted as the design criterion. We develop two iterative methods to solve the nonconvex joint source, relay, and receiver optimization problem. Simulation results demonstrate the improved robustness of the proposed algorithms against CSI errors.

Joint Optimization of Power and Data Transfer in Multiuser MIMO Systems

We present an approach to solve the nonconvex optimization problem that arises when designing the transmit covariance matrices in multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) broadcast networks implementing simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT). The MIMO SWIPT problem is formulated as a general multiobjective optimization problem, in which data rates and harvested powers are optimized simultaneously. Two different approaches are applied to reformulate the (nonconvex) multiobjective problem. In the first approach, the transmitter can control the specific amount of power to be harvested by power transfer whereas in the second approach the transmitter can only control the proportion of power to be harvested among the different harvesting users. We solve the resulting formulations using the majorization–minimization (MM) approach. The solution obtained from the MM approach is compared to the classical block-diagonalization (BD) strategy, typically used to solve the nonconvex multiuser MIMO network by forcing no interference among users. Simulation results show that the proposed approach improves over the BD approach both the system sum rate and the power harvested by users. Additionally, the computational times needed for convergence of the proposed methods are much lower than the ones required for classical gradient-based approaches.

Layered Multi-Group Steered Space-Time Shift-Keying for Millimeter-Wave Communications

We propose a novel multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technique termed the layered multi-group steered space-time shift keying (LMG-SSTSK) for the downlink of millimeter wave (mmWave) communications, which combines the concepts of multi-user MIMO, space-time shift keying, beamforming and orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing to simultaneously convey information to multiple users. The LMG-SSTSK tackles the propagation challenges of the high-attenuation mmWave frequencies by sub-dividing the users into multiple groups. The proposed system allows more users to be served simultaneously in the downlink over the same time- and frequency-resources than a system dispensing with the proposed grouping technique.

On the Impacts of Composite Fading on Large-Scale Multi-User MIMO Systems

This letter considers the uplink of a large-scale multi-user multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) system where multiple single antenna terminals transmit simultaneously to an array of hundreds of antennas. The base station (BS) is assumed to have perfect channel state information (CSI). Under Rayleigh fading and lognormal shadowing, the probability density function (PDF) of the received signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) is approximated by a lognormal distribution for different receiver types and closed-form expressions for the outage probability are presented. The effects of shadowing on the performance of the system are quantified.

Generalized Signal Alignment: On the Achievable DoF for Multi-User MIMO Two-Way Relay Channels

This paper studies the achievable degrees of freedom (DoF) for multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) two-way relay channels, where there are K source nodes, each equipped with M antennas, one relay node, equipped with N antennas, and each source node exchanges independent messages with an arbitrary set of other source nodes via the relay. By allowing an arbitrary information exchange pattern, the considered channel model is a unified one. It includes several existing channel models as special cases: 1) K-user MIMO Y channel; 2) multi-pair MIMO two-way relay channel; 3) generalized MIMO two-way X relay channel; and 4) L-cluster MIMO multiway relay channel. Previous studies mainly considered the achievability of the DoF cut-set bound 2N at the antenna configuration N <; 2M by applying signal alignment for network coding. This paper aims to investigate the achievability of the DoF cut-set bound K M for the case N 2M. To this end, we first derive tighter DoF upper bounds for three special cases of the considered channel model. Then, we propose a new transmission framework, generalized signal alignment (GSA), to approach these bounds. The notion of GSA is to form network-coded symbols by aligning every pair of signals to be exchanged in a compressed subspace at the relay. A necessary and sufficient condition to construct the relay compression matrix is given. We show that using GSA, the new DoF upper bound is achievable when: 1) N/m ∈ (0, 2+ 4/{K(K-1)}]∪[K-2, +∞) for the K-user MIMO Y channel; 2) N/M ∈ (0,2 +4/K]∪[K - 2, +∞) for the multi-pair MIMO two-way relay channel; and 3) N/M ∈ (0, 2+ 8/K <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">2</sup> ]∪[K-2, +∞) for the generalized MIMO two-way X relay channel. We also provide the antenna configuration regions for the general multi-user MIMO two-way relay channel to achieve the total DoF KM.

Energy-Efficient Adaptation of Pilot Power, Data Power, and Transmission Rate for Downlink Multiuser MIMO Systems

This paper addresses energy-efficient link adaptation for downlink multiuser multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems. Different from the previous works on energy efficient MIMO techniques, we take into account finite pilot power and the corresponding effect of imperfect channel state information (CSI) at the users. We analyze the average throughput and define the energy efficiency (EE) of downlink multiuser MIMO systems. We show that the EE of the system is not jointly quasi-concave with respect to pilot power, data power, and transmission rate. For this reason, we propose an efficient algorithm that alternately updates pilot power, data power, and transmission rate to improve the EE of the system. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme significantly enhances the EE, and the resulting EE is comparable to the maximal EE obtained by the exhaustive search.

Uplink Multiuser MIMO Detection Scheme with Reduced Computational Complexity

The wireless communication systems with multi- ple antennas have recently received significant attention due to their higher capacity and better immunity to fading channels as compared to single antenna systems. A fast antenna selection scheme has been introduced for the uplink multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) detection to achieve diversity gains, but the computational complexity of the fast antenna selection scheme in multi- user systems is very high due to repetitive pseudo-inversion computations. In this paper, a new uplink multiuser detec- tion scheme is proposed adopting a switch-and-examine combining (SEC) scheme and the Cholesky decomposition to solve the computational complexity problem. K users are considered that each user is equipped with two transmit antennas for Alamouti space-time block code (STBC) over wireless Rayleigh fading channels. Simulation results show that the computational complexity of the proposed scheme is much lower than the systems with exhaustive and fast antenna selection, while the proposed scheme does not experience the degradations of bit error rate (BER) performances.

Analysis and Design of Channel Estimation in Multicell Multiuser MIMO OFDM Systems

This paper investigates the uplink transmission in multicell multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. The system model considers imperfect channel estimation, pilot contamination (PC), and multicarrier and multipath channels. Analytical expressions are first presented on the mean square error (MSE) of two classical channel estimation algorithms [i.e., least squares (LS) and minimum mean square error (MMSE)] in the presence of PC. Then, a simple H-infinity (H-inf) channel estimation approach is proposed to have good suppression to PC. This approach exploits the space-alternating generalized expectation-maximization (SAGE) iterative process to decompose the multicell multiuser MIMO (MU-MIMO) problem into a series of single-cell single-user single-input single-output (SISO) problems, which reduces the complexity significantly. According to the analytic results given herein, increasing the number of pilot subcarriers cannot mitigate PC, and a clue for suppressing PC is obtained. It is shown from the results that the H-inf has better suppression capability to PC than classical estimation algorithms. Its performance is close to that of the optimal MMSE as the length of channel impulse response (CIR) is increased. By using the SAGE process, the performance of the H-inf does not degrade when the number of antennas is large at the base station (BS).

Joint Transceiver Design for Amplify-and-Forward Multiuser MIMO Relay Communication Systems with Source-Destination Links

In this paper, we generalize the iterative algorithms proposed by Khandaker to amplify-and-forward multiuser Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) relay communication systems with the source-destination links. Compared with the conventional algorithms, where the source-destination links are ignored, the evolved Tri-Step method and Bi-Step method are derived for the new system model with the source-destination links for more spatial diversity gain. From the theoretical derivation of the Minimum Mean-Squared Error (MMSE) of the signal waveform estimation at the destination node, we show that the existence of the source-destination links bring benefits no matter how weak they are. Numerical examples demonstrate that the evolved algorithms perform much better than the original algorithms and other existing ones in terms of both MSE and Bit-Error-Rate (BER). Index Terms—MIMO relay, MMSE, multiuser, direct links

Base Station Cooperative Multiuser MIMO Using Block-Diagonalized Random Beamforming with Online Update

This paper proposes applying random (opportunistic) beamforming to base station (BS) cooperative multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission. This proposal comprises two parts. First, we propose a block-diagonalized random unitary beamforming matrix. The proposed beamforming matrix achieves better throughput distribution compared to the purely random unitary beamforming matrix when the average path loss based on distance-dependent loss and shadowing loss is largely different among transmitter antennas, which is true in BS cooperative MIMO. Second, we propose an online update algorithm for a random beamforming matrix to improve the throughput compared to the purely random and channel-independent beamforming matrix generation, especially when the number of users is low. Different from conventional approaches, the proposed online update algorithm does not increase the overhead of the reference signal transmission and control delay. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed method using a block-diagonalized random unitary beamforming matrix with online updates in a BS cooperative multiuser MIMO scenario.

Feed back load analysis for broadcast channels with zero‐forcing beamforming

Multiuser multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) has great potential to substantially improve throughput of wireless networks. Unfortunately, it requires a significant amount of feed back for user selection, which prevents practical implementation. The authors propose a feed back reduced downlink multiuser MIMO system, where a signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) threshold is carefully designed. Only the users whose SINRs are above the threshold feed back their SINRs and channel direction information (CDI) to the base station. They establish a monotonic relation between the threshold and the average feed back overhead. Based on the established relation, they design the threshold that balances the tradeoff between the feed back load and the sum rate. Simulation results show that the proposed approach can achieve the same performance as the conventional full-feed back scheme (where every user feeds back its SINR and CDI), while the proposed approach is able to reduce the system overhead by more than 40%.

Multiuser MIMO Scheduling for Mobile Video Applications

Bandwidth-demanding mobile video applications are becoming increasingly popular in wireless networks, leading to a relentless growth in the demand for wireless throughput and quality of service (QoS). Multiuser Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) has great potential to meet the growth of wireless throughput. However, this advancement in physical-layer technologies does not necessarily translate into better QoS for the applications, unless the design principles and operating protocols at the higher layers of the networking stack are adapted accordingly to fully capture this potential. We propose a new scheduling algorithm, which selects mobile users to form multiuser MIMO based on the priorities we carefully design to leverage the demands of wireless throughput and video quality. We also develop a new computationally efficient parallel technique to calculate the priorities precisely, which allows the users to be selected in a computationally effective way. Analyses and simulations show that the proposed scheme allows video applications to achieve close to the throughput upper bound of multiuser MIMO. Our scheme also improves the video quality by reducing the loss of video enhancement packets by an order of magnitude and by reducing the delay by 35%, compared to the state of the art.