A large majority of cellular networks deployed today make use of Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD) where, in contrast with Time Division Duplexing (TDD), the channel reciprocity does not hold and explicit downlink (DL) probing and uplink (UL) feedback are needed in order to achieve spatial multiplexing gain. To support massive MIMO, the overhead incurred by conventional DL probing and UL feedback schemes scales linearly with the number of BS antennas and, therefore, may be very large. In this paper, we present a new approach to achieve a very competitive trade-off between spatial multiplexing gain and probing-feedback overhead in such systems. Our approach is based on two novel methods: (i) an efficient regularization technique based on Deep Neural Networks (DNN) that learns the Angular Spread Function (ASF) of users channels and permits to estimate the DL covariance matrix from the noisy i.i.d. channel observations obtained freely via UL pilots (UL-DL covariance transformation), (ii) a novel "sparsifying precoding" technique that uses the estimated DL covariance matrix from (i) and imposes a controlled sparsity on the DL channel such that given any assigned DL pilot dimension, it is able to find an optimal sparsity level and a corresponding sparsifying precoder for which the "effective" channel vectors after sparsification can be estimated at the BS with a low mean-square error. We compare our proposed DNN-based method in (i) with other methods in the literature via numerical simulations and show that it yields a very competitive performance. We also compare our sparsifying precoder in (ii) with the state-of-the-art statistical beamforming methods under the assumption that those methods also have access to the covariance knowledge in the DL and show that our method yields higher spectral efficiency since it uses in addition the instantaneous channel information after sparsification.
One challenge for FDD massive MIMO communication system is how to obtain the downlink channel state information (CSI) at the base station. Except for traditional codebook feedback through uplink pilot transmission, some channel reciprocity properties can be utilized through uplink channel estimation and channel parameter estimation algorithms. In this paper, the uplink and downlink channel reciprocity properties are analyzed. It is theoretically proved that not all multipath parameters for FDD downlink and uplink channels are equivalent. Therefore, the so called full reciprocity property does …
When operating massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems with uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) channels at different frequencies (frequency division duplex (FDD) operation), acquisition of channel state information (CSI) for downlink precoding is a major challenge. Since, barring transceiver impairments, both UL and DL CSI are determined by the physical environment surrounding transmitter and receiver, it stands to reason that, for a static environment, a mapping from UL CSI to DL CSI may exist. First, we propose to use various neural network (NN)-based approaches that learn this mapp…
A massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system, operating in Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD) mode of operation, suffers from prohibitively high overhead associated with downlink channel state information (CSI) acquisition and downlink precoding, due to the lack of uplink/downlink channel reciprocity. In this paper, a heuristic edge-weighted vertex-coloring based pattern division (EWVC-PD) scheme is proposed to alleviate the overhead of a two-layer precoding approach, in a practical scenario where the user clusters undergo serious angular-spreading-range (ASR) overlapping. Specifical…
We propose a method for channel training and precoding in FDD massive MIMO based on deep neural networks (DNNs), exploiting Downlink (DL) channel covariance knowledge. The DNN is optimized to maximize the DL multi-user sum-rate, by producing a pre-beamforming matrix based on user channel covariances that maps the original channel vectors to effective channels. Measurements of these effective channels are received at the users via common pilot transmission and sent back to the base station (BS) through analog feedback without further processing. The BS estimates the effective channels from rece…
Massive MIMO systems can achieve high spectrum and energy efficiency in downlink (DL) based on accurate estimate of channel state information (CSI). Existing works have developed learning-based DL CSI estimation that lowers uplink feedback overhead. One often overlooked problem is the limited number of DL pilots available for CSI estimation. One proposed solution leverages temporal CSI coherence by utilizing past CSI estimates and only sending CSI-reference symbols (CSI-RS) for partial arrays to preserve CSI recovery performance. Exploiting CSI correlations, FDD channel reciprocity is helpful …
In this work, we propose a convolutional neural network (CNN) based low-complexity approach for downlink (DL) channel estimation (CE) in frequency division duplex (FDD) systems. In contrast to existing work, we use training data which solely stems from the uplink (UL) domain. This allows to learn the CNN centralized at the base station (BS). After training, the network parameters are offloaded to mobile terminals (MTs) within the coverage area of the BS. The MTs can then obtain channel state information (CSI) of the MIMO channels with the low-complexity CNN estimator. This circumvents the nece…
Transmitter channel state information (CSIT) is indispensable for the spectral efficiency gains offered by massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. In a frequency-division-duplexing (FDD) massive MIMO system, CSIT is typically acquired through downlink channel estimation and user feedback, but as the number of antennas increases, the overhead for CSI training and feedback per user grows, leading to a decrease in spectral efficiency. In this paper, we show that, using uplink pilots in FDD, the downlink sum spectral efficiency gain with perfect downlink CSIT is achievable when the …
In a frequency division duplexing (FDD) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system, the acquisition of downlink channel state information (CSI) at base station (BS) is a very challenging task due to the overwhelming overheads required for downlink training and uplink feedback. In this paper, we reveal a deterministic uplink-to-downlink mapping function when the position-to-channel mapping is bijective. Motivated by the universal approximation theorem, we then propose a sparse complex-valued neural network (SCNet) to approximate the uplink-to-downlink mapping function. Different from …
This paper shows that deep neural network (DNN) can be used for efficient and distributed channel estimation, quantization, feedback, and downlink multiuser precoding for a frequency-division duplex massive multiple-input multiple-output system in which a base station (BS) serves multiple mobile users, but with rate-limited feedback from the users to the BS. A key observation is that the multiuser channel estimation and feedback problem can be thought of as a distributed source coding problem. In contrast to the traditional approach where the channel state information (CSI) is estimated and qu…
In this paper, we consider user selection and downlink precoding for an over-loaded single-cell massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system in frequency division duplexing (FDD) mode, where the base station is equipped with a dual-polarized uniform planar array (DP-UPA) and serves a large number of single-antenna users. Due to the absence of uplink-downlink channel reciprocity and the high-dimensionality of channel matrices, it is extremely challenging to design downlink precoders using closed-loop channel probing and feedback with limited spectrum resource. To address these issues, a…
In order to unlock the full advantages of massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) in the downlink, channel state information (CSI) is required at the base station (BS) to optimize the beamforming matrices. In frequency division duplex (FDD) systems, full channel reciprocity does not hold, and CSI acquisition generally requires downlink pilot transmission followed by uplink feedback. Prior work proposed the end-to-end design of pilot transmission, feedback, and CSI estimation via deep learning. In this work, we introduce an enhanced end-to-end design that leverages partial uplink-downlink…
We consider high-dimensional MIMO transmissions in frequency division duplexing (FDD) systems. For precoding, the frequency selective channel has to be measured, quantized and fed back to the base station by the users. When the number of antennas is very high this typically leads to prohibitively high quantization complexity and large feedback. In 5G New Radio (NR), a modular quantization approach has been applied for this, where first a low-dimensional subspace is identified for the whole frequency selective channel, and then subband channels are linearly mapped to this subspace and quantized…
In this paper, we propose a new channel estimation scheme for TDD/FDD massive MIMO systems by reconstructing uplink/downlink channel covariance matrices (CCMs) with the aid of array signal processing techniques. Specifically, the angle information and power angular spectrum (PAS) of each multi-path channel is extracted from the instantaneous uplink channel state information (CSI). Then, the uplink CCM is reconstructed and can be used to improve the uplink channel estimation without any additional training cost. In virtue of angle reciprocity as well as PAS reciprocity between uplink and downli…
This paper addresses the problem of uplink and downlink channel estimation in FDD Massive MIMO systems. By utilizing sparse recovery and compressive sensing algorithms, we are able to improve the accuracy of the uplink/downlink channel estimation and reduce the number of uplink/downlink pilot symbols. Such successful channel estimation builds upon the assumption that the channel can be sparsely represented under some basis/dictionary. Previous works model the channel using some predefined basis/dictionary, while in this work, we present a dictionary learning based channel model such that a dic…
In this paper, we investigate a cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output system with both access points and user equipments equipped with multiple antennas over the Weichselberger Rayleigh fading channel. We study the uplink spectral efficiency (SE) for the fully centralized processing scheme and large-scale fading decoding (LSFD) scheme. To further improve the SE performance, we design the uplink precoding schemes based on the weighted sum SE maximization. Since the weighted sum SE maximization problem is not jointly over all optimization variables, two efficient uplink precoding sche…
We investigate the joint uplink-downlink configuration of an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) for multi-user frequency-division-duplexing (FDD) and time-division-duplexing (TDD) systems. This is motivated in FDD since uplink and downlink transmissions occur simultaneously and hence an IRS must be jointly configured for both transmissions. In TDD, while a joint design is not strictly necessary, it can significantly reduce feedback overhead, power consumption, and configuration periods associated with updating the IRS. To compute the trade-off between uplink and downlink rates achieved by a …
In this paper, we investigate a cell-free massive MIMO system with both access points and user equipments equipped with multiple antennas over the Weichselberger Rayleigh fading channel. We study the uplink spectral efficiency (SE) based on a two-layer decoding structure with maximum ratio (MR) or local minimum mean-square error (MMSE) combining applied in the first layer and optimal large-scale fading decoding method implemented in the second layer, respectively. To maximize the weighted sum SE, an uplink precoding structure based on an Iteratively Weighted sum-MMSE (I-WMMSE) algorithm using …
When base stations (BSs) are deployed with multiple antennas, they need to have downlink (DL) channel state information (CSI) to optimize downlink transmissions by beamforming. The DL CSI is usually measured at mobile stations (MSs) through DL training and fed back to the BS in frequency division duplexing (FDD). The DL training and uplink (UL) feedback might become infeasible due to insufficient coherence time interval when the channel rapidly changes due to high speed of MSs. Without the feedback from MSs, it may be possible for the BS to directly obtain the DL CSI using the inherent relatio…
In this work we extend the concept of uplink-downlink rate balancing to frequency division duplex (FDD) massive MIMO systems. We consider a base station with large number antennas serving many single antenna users. We first show that any unused capacity in the uplink can be traded off for higher throughput in the downlink in a system that uses either dirty paper (DP) coding or linear zero-forcing (ZF) precoding. We then also study the scaling of the system throughput with the number of antennas in cases of linear Beamforming (BF) Precoding, ZF Precoding, and DP coding. We show that the downlin…
Classical antenna selection schemes require instantaneous channel state information (CSI). This leads to high signaling overhead in the system. This work proposes a novel joint receive antenna selection and precoding scheme for multiuser multiple-input multiple-output uplink transmission that relies only on the long-term statistics of the CSI. The proposed scheme designs the switching network and the uplink precoders, such that the expected throughput of the system in the long term is maximized. Invoking results from the random matrix theory, we derive a closed-form expression for the expected…
Massive MIMO is a promising technology in future wireless communication networks. However, it raises a lot of implementation challenges, for example, the huge pilot symbols and feedback overhead, requirement of real-time global CSI, large number of RF chains needed and high computational complexity. We consider a two-tier precoding strategy for multi-cell massive MIMO interference networks, with an outer precoder for inter-cell/inter-cluster interference cancellation, and an inner precoder for intra-cell multiplexing. In particular, to combat with the computational complexity issue of the oute…
We consider a scalable user-centric wireless network with dynamic cluster formation as defined by Björnsson and Sanguinetti. After having shown the importance of dominant channel subspace information for uplink (UL) pilot decontamination and having examined different UL combining schemes in our previous work, here we investigate precoding strategies for the downlink (DL). Distributed scalable DL precoding and power allocation methods are evaluated for different antenna distributions, user densities and UL pilot dimensions. We compare distributed power allocation methods to a scheme based on a …
Cell-free system where a group of base stations (BSs) cooperatively serves users has received much attention as a promising technology for the future wireless systems. In order to maximize the cooperation gain in the cell-free systems, acquisition of downlink channel state information (CSI) at the BSs is crucial. While this task is relatively easy for the time division duplexing (TDD) systems due to the channel reciprocity, it is not easy for the frequency division duplexing (FDD) systems due to the CSI feedback overhead. This issue is even more pronounced in the cell-free systems since the us…
Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are able to provide passive beamforming gain via low-cost reflecting elements and hence improve wireless link quality. This work considers two-way passive beamforming design in RIS-aided frequency division duplexing (FDD) systems where the RIS reflection coefficients are the same for downlink and uplink and should be optimized for both directions simultaneously. We formulate a joint optimization of the transmit/receive beamformers at the base station (BS) and the RIS reflection coefficients. The objective is to maximize the weighted sum of the downlin…
Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (massive MIMO) is a variant of multi-user MIMO in which the number of antennas at each Base Station (BS) is very large and typically much larger than the number of users simultaneously served. Massive MIMO can be implemented with Time Division Duplexing (TDD) or Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD) operation. FDD massive MIMO systems are particularly desirable due to their implementation in current wireless networks and their efficiency in situations with symmetric traffic and delay-sensitive applications. However, implementing FDD massive MIMO systems is k…
Millimeter wave (mmWave) communication is expected to play an important role in next generation cellular networks, aiming to cope with the bandwidth shortage affecting conventional wireless carriers. Using side-information has been proposed as a potential approach to accelerate beam selection in mmWave massive MIMO (m-MIMO) communications. However, in practice, such information is not error-free, leading to performance degradation. In the multi-user case, a wrong beam choice might result in irreducible inter-user interference at the base station (BS) side. In this paper, we consider location-a…
This paper proposes a new transmission strategy for the multiuser massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, including uplink/downlink channel estimation and user scheduling for data transmission. A discrete Fourier transform (DFT) aided spatial basis expansion model (SBEM) is first introduced to represent the uplink/downlink channels with much few parameter dimensions by exploiting angle reciprocity and the physical characteristics of the uniform linear array (ULA). With SBEM, both uplink and downlink channel estimation of multiuser can be carried out with very few amount of train…
Downlink beamforming in Massive MIMO either relies on uplink pilot measurements - exploiting reciprocity and TDD operation, or on the use of a predetermined grid of beams with user equipments reporting their preferred beams, mostly in FDD operation. Massive MIMO in its originally conceived form uses the first strategy, with uplink pilots, whereas there is currently significant commercial interest in the second, grid-of-beams. It has been analytically shown that in isotropic scattering (independent Rayleigh fading) the first approach outperforms the second. Nevertheless there remains controvers…
The uplink from a very small aperture terminal (VSAT) towards multiple satellites is considered, in this paper. VSATs can be equipped with multiple antennas, allowing parallel transmission to multiple satellites. A low-complexity precoder based on imperfect positional information of the satellites is presented. The probability distribution of the position uncertainty and the statistics of the channel elements are related by the characteristic function of the position uncertainty. This knowledge is included in the precoder design to maximize the mean signal-to-leakage-and-noise ratio (SLNR) at …
This paper investigates downlink channel estimation in frequency-division duplex (FDD)-based massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. To reduce the overhead of downlink channel estimation and uplink feedback in FDD systems, cascaded precoding has been used in massive MIMO such that only a low-dimensional effective channel needs to be estimated and fed back. On the other hand, traditional channel estimations can hardly achieve the minimum mean-square-error (MMSE) performance due to lack of the a priori knowledge of the channels. In this paper, we design and analyze a strategy for …
User electromagnetic (EM) exposure is continuously being exacerbated by the evolution of multi-antenna portable devices. To mitigate the effects of EM radiation, portable devices must satisfy tight regulations on user exposure level, generally measured by specific absorption rate (SAR). To this end, we investigate the SAR-aware uplink precoder design for the energy efficiency (EE) maximization in multiuser multiple-input multiple-output transmission exploiting statistical channel state information (CSI). As the objective function of the design problem is computationally demanding in the absenc…
The acquisition of channel state information (CSI) in Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) massive MIMO has been a formidable challenge. In this paper, we address this problem with a novel CSI feedback framework enabled by the partial reciprocity of uplink and downlink channels in the wideband regime. We first derive the closed-form expression of the rank of the wideband massive MIMO channel covariance matrix for a given angle-delay distribution. A low-rankness property is identified, which generalizes the well-known result of the narrow-band uniform linear array setting. Then we propose a partial …
In this work, we propose a joint adaptive codebook construction and feedback generation scheme in frequency division duplex (FDD) systems. Both unsupervised and supervised deep learning techniques are used for this purpose. Based on a recently discovered equivalence of uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) channel state information (CSI) in terms of neural network learning, the codebook and associated deep encoder for feedback signaling is based on UL data only. Subsequently, the feedback encoder can be offloaded to the mobile terminals (MTs) to generate channel feedback there as efficiently as possib…
Cell-free massive MIMO communications is an emerging network technology for 5G wireless communications wherein distributed multi-antenna access points (APs) serve many users simultaneously. Most prior work on cell-free massive MIMO systems assume time-division duplexing mode, although frequency-division duplexing (FDD) systems dominate current wireless standards. The key challenges in FDD massive MIMO systems are channel-state information (CSI) acquisition and feedback overhead. To address these challenges, we exploit the so-called angle reciprocity of multipath components in the uplink and do…
In this paper, we propose a novel method for efficient implementation of a massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (massive MIMO) system with Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD) operation. Our main objective is to reduce the large overhead incurred by Downlink (DL) common training and Uplink (UL) feedback needed to obtain channel state information (CSI) at the base station. Our proposed scheme relies on the fact that the underlying angular distribution of a channel vector, also known as the angular scattering function, is a frequency-invariant entity yielding a UL-DL reciprocity and has a limite…
Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is widely recognized as a promising technology for future 5G wireless communication systems. To achieve the theoretical performance gains in massive MIMO systems, accurate channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) is crucial. Due to the overwhelming pilot signaling and channel feedback overhead, however, conventional downlink channel estimation and uplink channel feedback schemes might not be suitable for frequency-division duplexing (FDD) massive MIMO systems. In addition, these two topics are usually separately considered in the literat…
This paper considers a multi-cell multiple antenna system with precoding used at the base stations for downlink transmission. For precoding at the base stations, channel state information (CSI) is essential at the base stations. A popular technique for obtaining this CSI in time division duplex (TDD) systems is uplink training by utilizing the reciprocity of the wireless medium. This paper mathematically characterizes the impact that uplink training has on the performance of such multi-cell multiple antenna systems. When non-orthogonal training sequences are used for uplink training, the paper…
We investigate Gaussian widely linear precoding known as improper Gaussian signaling for the cellular uplink with inter-cell interference, known as interference multiple access channel (IMAC). This transmission scheme provides extra degrees of freedom by treating the real and imaginary components of the complex Gaussian signal differently. Since current standards mainly utilize linear beamforming for waveform generation, we highlight the benefits of widely linear beamforming over multiple temporal dimensions (symbol extension in time) in the IMAC. This scheme achieves significantly higher info…
University of Toronto（多伦多大学）；Ontario Tech University（安大略理工大学）
It is well accepted that acquiring downlink channel state information in frequency division duplexing (FDD) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems is challenging because of the large overhead in training and feedback. In this paper, we propose a deep generative model (DGM)-based technique to address this challenge. Exploiting the partial reciprocity of uplink and downlink channels, we first estimate the frequency-independent underlying channel parameters, i.e., the magnitudes of path gains, delays, angles-of-arrivals (AoAs) and angles-of-departures (AoDs), via uplink training, s…
We consider multi-group multicast precoding designs for cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. To optimize the transmit and receive beamforming strategies, we focus on minimizing the sum of the maximum mean squared errors (MSEs) over the multicast groups, which is then approximated with the sum MSE to simplify the computation and signaling. We adopt an iterative bi-directional training scheme with uplink and downlink precoded pilots to cooperatively design the multi-group multicast precoders at each base station and the combiners at each user equipment in a distribute…
Massive MIMO is considered as one of the key enablers of the next generation 5G networks.With a high number of antennas at the BS, both spectral and energy efficiencies can be improved. Unfortunately, the downlink channel estimation overhead scales linearly with the number of antenna. This does not create complications in Time Division Duplex (TDD) systems since the channel estimate of the uplink direction can be directly utilized for link adaptation in the downlink direction. However, this channel reciprocity is unfeasible for the Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) systems where different physic…
In this paper, we propose an efficient downlink channel reconstruction scheme for a frequency-division-duplex multi-antenna system by utilizing uplink channel state information combined with limited feedback. Based on the spatial reciprocity in a wireless channel, the downlink channel is reconstructed by using frequency-independent parameters. We first estimate the gains, delays, and angles during uplink sounding. The gains are then refined through downlink training and sent back to the base station (BS). With limited overhead, the refinement can substantially improve the accuracy of the downl…
Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is one of the key technologies in future generation networks. Owing to their considerable spectral and energy efficiency gains, massive MIMO systems provide the needed performance to cope with the ever increasing wireless capacity demand. Nevertheless, the number of scheduled users stays limited in massive MIMO both in time division duplexing (TDD) and frequency division duplexing (FDD) systems. This is due to the limited coherence time, in TDD systems, and to limited feedback capacity, in FDD mode. In current systems, the time slot duration in TDD…
We derive novel bounds for the performance of algorithms that estimate the downlink covariance matrix from the uplink covariance matrix in frequency division duplex (FDD) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. The focus is on algorithms that use estimates of the angular power spectrum as an intermediate step. Unlike previous results, the proposed bounds follow from simple arguments in possibly infinite dimensional Hilbert spaces, and they do not require strong assumptions on the array geometry or on the propagation model. Furthermore, they are suitable for the analysis of set-t…
The gains afforded by cloud radio access network (C-RAN) in terms of savings in capital and operating expenses, flexibility, interference management and network densification rely on the presence of high-capacity low-latency fronthaul connectivity between remote radio heads (RRHs) and baseband unit (BBU). In light of the non-uniform and limited availability of fiber optics cables, the bandwidth constraints on the fronthaul network call, on the one hand, for the development of advanced baseband compression strategies and, on the other hand, for a closer investigation of the optimal functional s…
Massive multiple-input multiple-output (mMIMO) communications are one of the enabling technologies of 5G and beyond networks. While prior work indicates that mMIMO networks employing time division duplexing have a significant capacity growth potential, deploying mMIMO in frequency division duplexing (FDD) networks remains problematic. The two main difficulties in FDD networks are the scalability of the downlink reference signals and the overhead associated with the required uplink feedback for channel state information (CSI) acquisition. To address these difficulties, most existing methods uti…
This paper considers joint uplink/downlink of an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA)-based heterogeneous network (HetNet) consisting of a single macro base station (MBS), multiple femto base stations (FBSs) and access points (APs) where base stations (BSs) can offload data to APs and each mobile user (MU) is able to harvest the received energy using the simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) technique. We also suppose that the harvested energy of MUs are used for their uplink information transmission. We devise a radio resource allocation (RRA) algorithm…
