We propose a deep learning-based channel estimation, quantization, feedback, and precoding method for downlink multiuser multiple-input and multiple-output systems. In the proposed system, channel estimation and quantization for limited feedback are handled by a receiver deep neural network (DNN). Precoder selection is handled by a transmitter DNN. To emulate the traditional channel quantization, a binarization layer is adopted at each receiver DNN, and the binarization layer is also used to enable end-to-end learning. However, this can lead to inaccurate gradients, which can trap the receiver DNNs at a poor local minimum during training. To address this, we consider knowledge distillation, in which the existing DNNs are jointly trained with an auxiliary transmitter DNN. The use of an auxiliary DNN as a teacher network allows the receiver DNNs to additionally exploit lossless gradients, which is useful in avoiding a poor local minimum. For the same number of feedback bits, our DNN-based precoding scheme can achieve a higher downlink rate compared to conventional linear precoding with codebook-based limited feedback.
In this letter, we study the performance of a downlink multiuser massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system with sub-connected structure over limited feedback channels. Tight rate approximations are theoretically analyzed for the system with pure analog precoding and hybrid precoding. The effect of quantized analog and digital precoding is characterized in the derived expressions. Furthermore, it is revealed that the pure analog precoding outperforms the hybrid precoding using maximal-ratio transmission (MRT) or zero forcing (ZF) under certain conditions, and we theoretically charact…
Aiming at maximizing the achievable sum-rate of wideband multiuser mmWave massive MIMO systems, the hybrid precoding is studied. Since each computation of the achievable sum-rate can be performed only after the analog precoder and digital precoder are both determined, the maximization of the achievable sum-rate has intractable computational complexity. By introducing the interference free (IF) achievable sum-rate, the design of the analog and digital precoders can be decoupled. To avoid the beam conflict and maximize the IF achievable sum-rate, a Hungarian-based codeword selection algorithm is…
Precoding design exploiting deep learning methods has been widely studied for multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) systems. However, conventional neural precoding design applies black-box-based neural networks which are less interpretable. In this paper, we propose a deep learning-based precoding method based on an interpretable design of a neural precoding network, namely iPNet. In particular, the iPNet mimics the classic minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) precoding and approximates the matrix inversion in the design of the neural network architecture. Specifically, the proposed …
This study proposes a symbol-level precoding algorithm based on the minimum mean squared error design objective under a strict per antenna power constraint for PSK modulation. The proposed design is then formulated in the standard form of a second-order cone program, allowing for an optimal solution via the interior point method. Numerical results indicate that the proposed design is superior to the existing approaches in terms of bit-error-rate for the low and intermediate SNR regime.
Consider the following problem: A multi-antenna base station (BS) sends multiple symbol streams to multiple single-antenna users via precoding. However, unlike conventional multiuser precoding, the transmitted signals are subjected to binary, unit-modulus, or even discrete unit-modulus constraints. Such constraints arise in the one-bit and constant-envelope (CE) massive MIMO scenarios, wherein high-resolution digital-to-analog converters (DACs) are replaced by one-bit DACs and phase shifters, respectively, for cutting down hardware cost and energy consumption. Multiuser precoding under one-bit…
The high energy consumption of massive multi-input multi-out (MIMO) system has become a prominent problem in the millimeter wave(mm-Wave) communication scenario. The hybrid precoding technology greatly reduces the number of radio frequency(RF) chains by handing over part of the coding work to the phase shifting network, which can effectively improve energy efficiency. However, conventional hybrid precoding algorithms based on mathematical means often suffer from performance loss and high computational complexity. In this paper, a novel BP-neural-network-enabled hybrid precoding algorithm is pr…
Aiming at maximizing the energy efficiency (EE) of multicast multibeam satellite communications, we consider the precoding design under the total power and quality of service (QoS) constraints. Since the original EE maximization problem is nonconvex, it is sequentially converted into a concave-convex fractional programming problem by introducing some variables and using the first-order Taylor low bound approximation. Based on the Charnes-Cooper transformation, it is further converted into a convex problem. Then an iterative algorithm is presented to design the energy efficient precoding. To fi…
To enable user diversity and multiplexing gains, a fully digital precoding multiple input multiple output (MIMO) architecture is typically applied. However, a large number of radio frequency (RF) chains make the system unrealistic to low-cost communications. Therefore, a practical three-stage hybrid analogue-digital precoding architecture, occupying fewer RF chains, is proposed aiming for a non-orthogonal IoT signal in low-cost multiuser MIMO systems. The non-orthogonal waveform can flexibly save spectral resources for massive devices connections or improve data rate without consuming extra sp…
In this thesis, we mainly investigate the lattice coding problem of the downlink communication between a base station and multiple users. The base station broadcasts a message containing each user's intended message. The capacity limit of such a system setting is already well-known while the design of practical coding and modulation schemes to approach the theoretical limit has not been fully studied and investigated in the literature. This thesis attempts to address this problem by providing a systematic design on lattice coding and modulation schemes for downlink multiuser communication syst…
In this paper, we address the symbol level precoding (SLP) design problem under max-min SINR criterion in the downlink of multiuser multiple-input single-output (MISO) channels. First, we show that the distance preserving constructive interference regions (DPCIR) are always polyhedral angles (shifted pointed cones) for any given constellation point with unbounded decision region. Then we prove that any signal in a given unbounded DPCIR has a norm larger than the norm of the corresponding vertex if and only if the convex hull of the constellation contains the origin. Using these properties, we …
Most recently, there has been a flurry of research activities on studying how massive MIMO precoding should be designed when the digital-to-analog conversion at the transmitter side is operated by cheap one-bit digital-to-analog converters (DACs). Such research is motivated by the desire to substantially cut down the hardware cost and power consumption of the radio-frequency chain, which is unaffordable in massive MIMO if high-resolution DACs are still used. One-bit MIMO precoding design problems are much harder to solve than their high-resolution DAC counterparts. In our previous work, we dev…
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…
This paper tackles the problem of the simultaneous interference among the multiple users in the downlink of a wireless multiantenna system. In order to exploit the multiuser interference and transform it into useful power at the receiver side, symbol-level precoding is utilized through joint exploitation of the data from each individual user and the channel state information. This paper introduces a complexity reduction scheme that exploits the constellations symmetry to reduce the number of possible calculations and the number of constraints in the symbol-level optimization problem. This pape…
In this letter, we consider linear precoding for downlink massive multi-user (MU) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. We propose the novel successively-regularized zero forcing (SRZF) precoding, which exploits successive null spaces of the MIMO channels of the users, along with regularization, to control the inter-user interference (IUI) and to enhance performance and robustness to imperfect channel state information (CSI) at the base station (BS). We study the IUI characteristics of the proposed SRZF precoding for perfect and imperfect CSI at the BS. Furthermore, via computer simul…
In this paper, we consider a reconfigurable intelligence surface (RIS) aided uplink multiuser multi-input multi-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system, where the receiver is assumed to conduct low-complexity iterative detection. We aim to minimize the total transmit power by jointly designing the precoder of the transmitter and the passive beamforming of the RIS. This problem can be tackled from the perspective of information theory. But this information-theoretic approach may involve prohibitively high complexity since the number of rate constraints that specif…
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…
We propose an optimal MMSE precoding technique using quantized signals with constant envelope. Unlike the existing MMSE design that relies on 1-bit resolution, the proposed approach employs uniform phase quantization and the bounding step in the branch-and-bound method is different in terms of considering the most restrictive relaxation of the nonconvex problem, which is then utilized for a suboptimal design also. Moreover, unlike prior studies, we propose three different soft detection methods and an iterative detection and decoding scheme that allow the utilization of channel coding in conju…
Millimeter wave (mmWave) is a practical solution to provide high data rate for the vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications. This enables the future autonomous vehicles to exchange big data with the base stations (BSs) such as the velocity and the location to improve the awareness of the advanced driving assistance system (ADAS). In this context, we consider a single-cell multiuser doubly-selective system wherein the BS simultaneously serves multiple vehicles. To accomplish this requirement, the BS is implemented in hybrid architecture to support multiple spatial streams while the vehicles h…
This paper proposes a novel nature-inspired $α$-fair hybrid precoding (NI-$α$HP) technique for millimeter-wave multi-user massive multiple-input multiple-output systems. Unlike the existing HP literature, we propose to apply $α$-fairness for maintaining various fairness expectations (e.g., sum-rate maximization, proportional fairness, max-min fairness, etc.). After developing the analog RF beamformer via slow time-varying angular information, the digital baseband (BB) precoder is designed via the reduced-dimensional effective channel matrix seen from the BB-stage. For the $α$-fairness, we deri…
Constant envelope (CE) precoding design is of great interest for massive multiuser multi-input multi-output systems because it can significantly reduce hardware cost and power consumption. However, existing CE precoding algorithms are hindered by excessive computational overhead. In this letter, a novel model-driven deep learning (DL)-based network that combines DL with conjugate gradient algorithm is proposed for CE precoding. Specifically, the original iterative algorithm is unfolded and parameterized by trainable variables. With the proposed architecture, the variables can be learned effici…
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 …
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…
We address the problem of analyzing and classifying in groups the downlink channel environment in a millimeter-wavelength cell, accounting for path loss, multipath fading, and User Equipment (UE) blocking, by employing a hybrid propagation and multipath fading model, thus using accurate inter-group interference modeling. The base station (BS) employs a large Uniform Planar Array (UPA) to facilitate massive Multiple-Input, Multiple-Output (MIMO) communications with high efficiency. UEs are equipped with a single antenna and are distributed uniformly within the cell. The key problem is analyzing…
In this paper, we consider the precoder design for an underloaded or critically loaded downlink multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication system. We propose novel precoding and decoding schemes which enhance system performance based on rate splitting at the transmitter and single-stage successive interference cancellation at the receivers. The proposed successive null-space (SNS) precoding utilizes linear combinations of the null-space basis vectors of the successively augmented MIMO channel matrices of the users as precoding vectors to adjust the inter-user-interference e…
In this work, we propose an iterative scheme for computing a linear precoder that takes into account the impact of hardware impairments in the multiuser multiple-input single-output downlink. We particularly focus on the case when the transmitter is equipped with nonlinear power amplifiers. Using Bussgang's theorem, we formulate a lower bound on the achievable sum rate in the presence of hardware impairments, and maximize it using projected gradient ascent. We provide numerical examples that demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed distortion-aware scheme for precoding over a millimeter-wave~c…
We introduce a framework for linear precoder design over a massive multiple-input multiple-output downlink system in the presence of nonlinear power amplifiers (PAs). By studying the spatial characteristics of the distortion, we demonstrate that conventional linear precoding techniques steer nonlinear distortions towards the users. We show that, by taking into account PA nonlinearity, one can design linear precoders that reduce, and in single-user scenarios, even completely remove the distortion transmitted in the direction of the users. This, however, is achieved at the price of a reduced arr…
The intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is a planar array with massive reconfigurable passive elements, which can align the reflecting signals at the receivers via controlling the phase shifts at each element independently. Since IRS can be implemented without RF chain, it is seen as a cost-effective solution for boosting the spectral efficiency for the future communication system. This work considers the IRS-aided multiuser multi-input single-output downlink transmission, and our goal is to maximize the sum rate by jointly optimizing the transmit beamformer at the base station and the phase …
Quantized constant envelope (QCE) precoding, a new transmission scheme that only discrete QCE transmit signals are allowed at each antenna, has gained growing research interests due to its ability of reducing the hardware cost and the energy consumption of massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. However, the discrete nature of QCE transmit signals greatly complicates the precoding design. In this paper, we consider the QCE precoding problem for a massive MIMO system with phase shift keying (PSK) modulation and develop an efficient approach for solving the constructive interferen…
Zhejiang University（浙江大学）；University of California, Davis（加州大学戴维斯分校）
The millimeter wave (mmWave) multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) systems with discrete lens arrays (DLA) have received great attention due to their simple hardware implementation and excellent performance. In this work, we investigate the joint design of beam selection and digital precoding matrices for mmWave MU-MIMO systems with DLA to maximize the sum-rate subject to the transmit power constraint and the constraints of the selection matrix structure. The investigated non-convex problem with discrete variables and coupled constraints is challenging to solve and an efficient fr…
Hybrid analog-digital (A/D) transceivers designed for millimeter wave (mmWave) systems have received substantial research attention, as a benefit of their lower cost and modest energy consumption compared to their fully-digital counterparts. We further improve their performance by conceiving a Tomlinson-Harashima precoding (THP) based nonlinear joint design for the downlink of multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) mmWave systems. Our optimization criterion is that of minimizing the mean square error (MSE) of the system under channel uncertainties subject both to realistic transmit po…
This paper investigates multiuser multi-input single-output (MISO) downlink communications assisted by a self-sustainable intelligent reflection surface (IRS), which can harvest power from the received signals. We study the joint design of the beamformer at an access point (AP) and the phase shifts and the power harvesting schedule at an IRS for maximizing the system sum-rate. The design is formulated as a non-convex optimization problem taking into account the capability of IRS elements to harvest wireless power for realizing self-sustainability. Subsequently, we propose a computationally-eff…
Zhejiang University（浙江大学）；Tongji University（同济大学）；University of California, Davis（加州大学戴维斯分校）
Optimization theory assisted algorithms have received great attention for precoding design in multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) systems. Although the resultant optimization algorithms are able to provide excellent performance, they generally require considerable computational complexity, which gets in the way of their practical application in real-time systems. In this work, in order to address this issue, we first propose a framework for deep-unfolding, where a general form of iterative algorithm induced deep-unfolding neural network (IAIDNN) is developed in matrix form to be…
In multiuser communication systems, user scheduling and beamforming (US-BF) design are two fundamental problems that are usually studied separately in the existing literature. In this work, we focus on the joint US-BF design with the goal of maximizing the set cardinality of scheduled users, which is computationally challenging due to the non-convex objective function and the coupled constraints with discrete-continuous variables. To tackle these difficulties, a successive convex approximation based US-BF (SCA-USBF) optimization algorithm is firstly proposed. Then, inspired by wireless intelli…
This study proposes the construction of a transmit signal for large-scale antenna systems with cost-effective 1-bit digital-to-analog converters in the downlink. Under quadrature-amplitude-modulation constellations, it is still an open problem to overcome a severe error floor problem caused by its nature property. To this end, we first present a feasibility condition which guarantees that each user's noiseless signal is placed in the desired decision region. For robustness to additive noise, we formulate an optimization problem, we then transform the feasibility conditions to cascaded matrix f…
Considering the expensive radio frequency (RF) chain, huge training overhead and feedback burden issues in massive MIMO, in this letter, we propose a mixed-timescale per-group hybrid precoding (MPHP) scheme under an adaptive partially-connected RF precoding structure (PRPS), where the RF precoder is implemented using an adaptive connection network (ACN) and M analog phase shifters (APSs), where M is the number of antennas at the base station (BS). Exploiting the mixed-time stage channel state information (CSI) structure, the joint-design of ACN and APSs is formulated as a statistical signal-to…
The long-term average performance of the MISO downlink channel, with a large number of users compared to transmit antennas of the BS, depends on the interference management which necessitates the joint design problem of scheduling and precoding. Unlike the previous works which do not offer a truly joint design, this paper focuses on formulating a problem amenable for the joint update of scheduling and precoding. Novel optimization formulations are investigated to reveal the hidden difference of convex/ concave structure for three classical criteria (weighted sum rate, max-min SINR, and power m…
We study the multi-user massive multiple-input-single-output (MISO) and focus on the downlink systems where the base station (BS) employs hybrid analog-digital precoding with low-cost 1-bit digital-to-analog converters (DACs). In this paper, we propose a hybrid downlink transmission scheme where the analog precoder is formed based on the SVD decomposition. In the digital domain, instead of designing a linear transmit precoding matrix, we directly design the transmit signals by exploiting the concept of constructive interference. The optimization problem is then formulated based on the geometry…
The cell-free MIMO concept relying on hybrid precoding constitutes an innovative technique capable of dramatically increasing the network capacity of millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication systems. It dispenses with the cell boundary of conventional multi-cell MIMO systems, while drastically reducing the power consumption by limiting the number of radio frequency (RF) chains at the access points (APs). In this paper, we aim for maximizing the weighted sum rate (WSR) of mmWave cell-free MIMO systems by conceiving a low-complexity hybrid precoding algorithm. We formulate the WSR optimization pro…
Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is promising for low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications due to the potential in enhancing the spectral efficiency. However, the conventional fully digital precoding architectures might lead to high implementation complexity and energy consumption. In this paper, hybrid analog/digital precoding solutions are developed for the downlink operation in LEO massive MIMO satellite communications, by exploiting the slow-varying statistical channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter. First, we formulate the hybrid precoder design as an energy…
This paper investigates a joint beamforming design in a multiuser multiple-input single-output (MISO) communication network aided with an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) panel. The symbol-level precoding (SLP) is adopted to enhance the system performance by exploiting the multiuser interference (MUI) with consideration of bounded channel uncertainty. The joint beamforming design is formulated into a nonconvex worst-case robust programming to minimize the transmit power subject to single-to-noise ratio (SNR) requirements. To address the challenges due to the constant modulus and the coupli…
This paper investigates robust and secure multiuser multiple-input single-output (MISO) downlink communications assisted by a self-sustainable intelligent reflection surface (IRS), which can simultaneously reflect and harvest energy from the received signals. We study the joint design of beamformers at an access point (AP) and the phase shifts as well as the energy harvesting schedule at the IRS for maximizing the system sum-rate. The design is formulated as a non-convex optimization problem taking into account the wireless energy harvesting capability of IRS elements, secure communications, a…
In this paper, we consider the precoder design for downlink multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) systems. The proposed scheme with simultaneous diagonalization (SD) decomposes the MIMO channel matrices of the users into scalar channels via higher-order generalized singular value decomposition for the common message (CM) and block diagonalization (BD) for the private messages, thereby enabling low-complexity element-by-element successive interference cancellation (SIC) and decoding at the receivers. Furthermore, the proposed SD MIMO-RSMA overcomes a critic…
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is capable of intelligently manipulating the phases of the incident electromagnetic wave to improve the wireless propagation environment between the base-station (BS) and the users. This paper addresses the joint user scheduling, RIS configuration, and BS beamforming problem in an RIS-assisted downlink network with limited pilot overhead. We show that graph neural networks (GNN) with permutation invariant and equivariant properties can be used to appropriately schedule users and to design RIS configurations to achieve high overall throughput while accou…
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…
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 this correspondence, we propose a space domain index modulation (IM) scheme for the downlink of multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) systems. Instead of the most common approach where spatial bits select active receiver antennas, in the presented scheme the spatial information is mapped onto the transmitter side. This allows IM to better exploit large dimensional antenna settings which are typically easier to deploy at the base station. In order to mitigate inter-user interference and allow single user detection, a precoder is adopted at the BS. Furthermore two alternative enh…
Deep Reinforcement Learning-Based Precoding for Multi-RIS-Aided Multiuser Downlink Systems with Practical Phase Shift
Research Center for Information Technology Innovation (CITI), Academia Sinica（信息科技创新研究中心（CITI），学术院）；Institute of Communications Engineering, National Sun Yat-sen University（通讯工程研究所，国立中山大学）；Bradley Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Virginia Tech（电气与计算机工程系，弗吉尼亚理工大学）
This paper considers the one-bit precoding problem for the multiuser downlink massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system with phase shift keying (PSK) modulation and focuses on the celebrated constructive interference (CI)-based problem formulation. The existence of the discrete one-bit constraint makes the problem generally hard to solve. In this paper, we propose an efficient negative $\ell_1$ penalty approach for finding a high-quality solution of the considered problem. Specifically, we first propose a novel negative $\ell_1$ penalty model, which penalizes the one-bit constraint …
In this paper, we propose a low-complexity method to approximately solve the SINR-constrained optimization problem of symbol-level precoding (SLP). First, assuming a generic modulation scheme, the precoding optimization problem is recast as a standard non-negative least squares (NNLS). Then, we improve an existing closed-form SLP (CF-SLP) scheme using the conditions for nearly perfect recovery of the optimal solution support, followed by solving a reduced system of linear equations. We show through simulation results that in comparison with the CF-SLP method, the improved approximate solution …
In this letter, we propose a sphere bounding scheme for probabilistic robust constructive interference (CI) power minimizing precoding, to address the imperfect channel state information (CSI) caused by the channel error (CE), which satisfies the known distribution in single-cell multiuser multipleinput single-output (MISO) downlink transmission. In the proposed scheme, we transform the probabilistic quality of service (QoS) constraints into tractable sphere bounding second-order cone (SOC) constraints through taking two-step tightening, and then we model tightened CI max-min signal-to-noise r…
In this paper, we study the interference exploitation precoding for the scenario where the number of streams simultaneously transmitted by the base station (BS) is larger than that of transmit antennas at the BS, and derive the optimal precoding structure by employing the pseudo inverse. We show that the optimal pre-scaling vector is equal to a linear combination of the right singular vectors that correspond to zero singular values of the coefficient matrix. By formulating the dual problem, the optimal precoding matrix can be expressed as a function of the dual variables in a closed form, and …
