Massive MIMO is a promising air interface technique for 5G wireless communications. Such antennas offers capabilities to utilize channel correlations to create beams suitable for user specific transmissions. Most of the prior research is devoted to user-specific transmission in such systems, where a narrow beam is formed towards a user to improve its reception. Meanwhile, public-channel transmission to multiple users at once by means of broad beams has been understudied. In this paper, we introduce the concept of array-size invariant (ASI) beamforming, enabling generation of broad beams from very large antenna arrays where all elements are transmitting at maximum power. The ASI technique offers the possibility to achieve a perfectly flat array factor by exploiting the additional degree of freedom coming from polarization diversity. The technique is applicable to uniform linear and rectangular arrays and is characterized by low-complexity beam synthesis. The usefulness of the ASI beamforming is illustrated by means of a numerical example showing the design of a cell-specific broad beam for publicchannel transmission in a realistic network deployment.
Hybrid Massive MIMO reduces implementation complexity but only supports beamforming coefficients that are common across all subbands. However, in macro cellular where the channel has limited degrees of freedom, the long-term component of the channel can be decomposed into a set of subband-independent beamforming basis functions referred to as eigenbeams. A Coherent Hybrid Massive MIMO system can form arbitrary linear combinations of the eigenbeams at every subband to mimic Digital Massive MIMO beamforming as observed across all locations in the cell.
Beamspace multi-input multi-output (MIMO) relying on lens antenna arrays can significantly reduce the number of radio-frequency chains in millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication systems through beam selection. However, the beamforming gain is actually frequency-dependent in wideband mmWave MIMO systems. This phenomenon is called beam squint, which will deteriorate the system's performance when traditional beam selection methods are used. To solve this problem, we propose a wideband beam selection method for mmWave MIMO systems relying on lens antenna arrays. Firstly, we select one beam with the…
Cognitive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar is capable of adjusting system parameters adaptively by sensing and learning in complex dynamic environment. Beamforming performance of MIMO radar is guided by both beamforming weight coefficients and the transceiver configuration. We propose a cognitive-driven MIMO array design where both the beamforming weights and the transceiver configuration are adaptively and concurrently optimized under different environmental conditions. The perception-action cycle involves data collection of full virtual array, covariance reconstruction and joint d…
This paper presents designs and prototypes of low cost multiple input multiple output (MIMO) antennas for 5G and millimetre-wave (mm-wave) applications. The proposed MIMOs are fabricated using 3D printing and are able deliver beams in multiple directions that provide continuous and real time coverage in the elevation of up to 30° without using phase shifters. This equips the proposed MIMO with a superior advantage of being an attractive low cost technology for 5G and mm-wave applications. The proposed MIMO antennas operate at the 28 GHz 5G band, with wide bandwidth performance exceeds 4 GHz an…
The rate loss is an important issue for multi-user beamspace multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) millimeter-wave systems. In such systems, multi-cluster channel propagation leads as a function of the quantization error and, as a result, each active user suffers a significant rate loss. Particularly, a conventional single beam selection (SBS) scheme is used in an equivalent beamspace MIMO channel to reduce the required number of radio frequency (RF) chains, but this scheme does not properly mitigate the quantization error due to the limited number of the channel propagation clusters per-user.…
This work proposes compact, flexible Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) antennas. The design principle is based on the excitation of different orthogonal radiating modes within the same antenna volume. Via phase control of the excited modes, beamforming is demonstrated in azimuth and elevation planes using single-layered structures. For flexibility, the antennas are designed using Polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) as the substrate. Numerical results demonstrate that isolation better than 23 dB is realized in all investigated antennas under different bend configurations. Moreover, the proposed tec…
This letter develops an optimum beamforming method for downlink transmissions in cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, which employ a massive number of distributed access points to provide concurrent services to multiple users. The optimum design is formulated as a max-min problem that maximizes the minimum signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio of all users. It is shown analytically that the problem is quasi-concave, and the optimum solution is obtained with the second-order cone programming. The proposed method identifies the best achievable beamforming performanc…
This paper presents a novel massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission in beam domain for optical wireless communications. The optical base station equipped with massive optical transmitters communicates with a number of user terminals (UTs) through a transmit lens. Focusing on LED transmitters, we analyze light refraction of the lens and establish a channel model for optical massive MIMO transmissions. For a large number of LEDs, channel vectors of different UTs become asymptotically orthogonal. We investigate the maximum ratio transmission and regularized zero-forcing precodi…
This paper considers a lens antenna array-assisted millimeter wave (mmWave) multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) system. The base station's beam selection matrix and user terminals' phase-only beamformers are jointly designed with the aim of maximizing the uplink sum rate. In order to deal with the formulated mixed-integer optimization problem, a penalty dual decomposition (PDD)-based iterative algorithm is developed via capitalizing on the weighted minimum mean square error (WMMSE), block coordinate descent (BCD), and minorization-maximization (MM) techniques. Moreover, a low-co…
In this paper, we propose an energy-efficient radar beampattern design framework for a Millimeter Wave (mmWave) massive multi-input multi-output (mMIMO) system, equipped with a hybrid analog-digital (HAD) beamforming structure. Aiming to reduce the power consumption and hardware cost of the mMIMO system, we employ a machine learning approach to synthesize the probing beampattern based on a small number of RF chains and antennas. By leveraging a combination of softmax neural networks, the proposed solution is able to achieve a desirable beampattern with high accuracy.
Millimeter wave (mmWave) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication system is expected to achieve enormous transmission rate, provided that the transmit and receive beams are properly aligned with the MIMO channel. However, existing beam alignment techniques rely on either channel estimation or beam sweeping, which incur prohibitively high training overhead, especially for future wireless systems with further increased antenna dimensions and more stringent requirement on cost-effective hardware architectures. In this paper, we propose a new beam alignment technique, which is e…
Beamforming gain is a key ingredient in the performance of LEO satellite communication systems to be integrated into cellular networks. However, beam codebooks previously designed in the context of MIMO communication for terrestrial networks, do not provide the appropriate performance in terms of inter-beam interference and gain stability as the satellite moves. In this paper, we propose a dynamic codebook that provides a stable gain during the period of time that the satellite covers a given cell, while avoiding link retraining and extra calculation as the satellite moves. In addition, the pr…
Hybrid analog and digital beamforming has emerged as a key enabling technology for millimeter wave (mmWave) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems since it can balance the trade-off between system performance and hardware efficiency. Owing to the strong ability of central control, cooperative networks show great potential to enhance the spectral efficiency of mmWave communications. In this paper, we consider cooperative mmWave MIMO systems and propose user association and hybrid beamforming design algorithms for three typical hybrid beamforming architectures. The c…
In this letter, we investigate the millimeter wave (mmWave) downlink multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) system, adopting the dynamic subarray architecture at the base station and considering the multi-stream communication for each user. Aiming at maximizing the system spectral efficiency, we propose a novel hybrid beamforming design. First, assuming no inter-user interference (IUI), we easily get the optimal fully-digital beamformers and combiners using the singular value decomposition of each user channel and the waterfilling algorithm. Then, based on the obtained fullydigital…
Sparse array design aided by emerging fast sensor switching technologies can lower the overall system overhead by reducing the number of expensive transceiver chains. In this paper, we examine the active sparse array design enabling the maximum signal to interference plus noise ratio (MaxSINR) beamforming at the MIMO radar receiver. The proposed approach entails an entwined design, i.e., jointly selecting the optimum transmit and receive sensor locations for accomplishing MaxSINR receive beamforming. Specifically, we consider a co-located multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar platform wi…
In this paper, we propose a beamforming design for dual-functional radar-communication (DFRC) systems at the millimeter wave (mmWave) band, where hybrid beamforming and sub-arrayed MIMO radar techniques are jointly exploited. We assume that a base station (BS) is serving a user equipment (UE) located in a Non-Line-of-Sight (NLoS) channel, which in the meantime actively detects multiple targets located in a Line-of-Sight (LoS) channel. Given the optimal communication beamformer and the desired radar beampattern, we propose to design the analog and digital beamformers under non-convex constant-m…
Designing beamforming techniques for the downlink (DL) of frequency division duplex (FDD) massive MIMO is known to be a challenging problem due to the difficulty of obtaining channel state information (CSI). Indeed, since the uplink-downlink bands are disjoint, the system cannot rely on channel reciprocity to estimate the channel from uplink (UL) pilots as in time division duplexing (TDD) system. Still, in this paper, we propose original designs for robust beamformers that do not require any feedback from the users and only rely on the transmission of UL pilots. The price to pay is that the be…
Large beam training overhead has been considered as one of main issues in the channel estimation for reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided systems. In this paper, we propose an atomic norm minimization (ANM)-based low-overhead channel estimation for RIS-aided multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems. When the number of beam training is reduced, some multipath signals may not be received during beam training, and this causes channel estimation failure. To solve this issue, the width of beams created by RIS is widened to capture all multipath signals. Pilot signals received during …
In this paper, we propose an intelligent analog beam selection strategy in a terahertz (THz) band beamspace multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system. First inspired by transfer learning, we fine-tune the pre-trained off-the-shelf GoogleNet classifier, to learn analog beam selection as a multi-class mapping problem. Simulation results show 83% accuracy for the analog beam selection, which subsequently results in 12% spectral efficiency (SE) gain, upon the existing counterparts. Towards a more accurate classifier, we replace the conventional rectified linear unit (ReLU) activation function o…
Hybrid Beamforming for Subarray-Level Movable Antenna Enhanced MU-MIMO Communications
Zhejiang Gongshang University（浙江工商大学）；University of Electronic Science and Technology of China（电子科技大学）；National Key Laboratory of Wireless Communications（无线通信全国重点实验室）；University of California, San Diego（加州大学圣地亚哥分校）；Sichuan Normal University（四川师范大学）
Massive MIMO is currently a leading physical layer technology candidate that can dramatically enhance throughput in 5G systems, for both unicast and multicast transmission modalities. As antenna elements are becoming smaller and cheaper in the mmW range compared to radio frequency (RF) chains, it is crucial to perform antenna selection at the transmitter, such that the available RF chains are switched to an appropriate subset of antennas. This paper considers the joint problem of multicast beamforming and antenna selection for a single multicast group in massive MIMO systems. The prior state-o…
In millimeter-wave (mmWave) systems, beamforming is needed to overcome harsh channel environments. As a promising beamforming solution, lens antenna array (LAA) implementation can provide a cost-effective solution without notable performance degradation compared to its counterpart. However, an appropriate beam selection is a challenge since it requires efficient channel estimation via an extensive beam training process for perfect beam alignment. In this paper, we propose a high mobility beam and channel tracking algorithm based on the unscented Kalman filter (UKF) to address this challenge, w…
In broadband millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) systems, it is desirable to design hybrid beamformers with common analog beamformer for the entire band while employing different baseband beamformers in different frequency sub-bands. Furthermore, the performance mostly relies on the perfectness of the channel information. In this paper, we propose a deep learning (DL) framework for hybrid beamformer design in broadband mm-Wave massive MIMO systems. We design a convolutional neural network (CNN) that accepts the channel matrix of all subcarriers as input and the output of CNN is the hybrid beamformers. T…
In this paper, we present a fixed mmWave Multi-User Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) system for fixed wireless access with a unique architecture. A digital MIMO system is combined with an analog multi-beam antenna array which uses a high-dimension 16x16 Butler matrix to obtain 16 orthogonal beams. A system model of this architecture is presented and used to simulate its performance comparing to the performance of common-used patch antennas. Several MIMO precoding techniques are considered and compared with basic analog beamforming. To verify these results, a prototype is built and a dedic…
When using ultra-wideband (UWB) signaling on massive multiple-input multiple-output (mMIMO) systems, the electromagnetic wave at each array element incurs an extra propagation delay comparable to (or larger than) the symbol duration, producing a shift in beam direction known as beam squint. The beam squinting problem degrades the array gain and reduces the system capacity. This letter proposes a novel transceiver design based on lens antenna subarray (LAS) and analog subband filters to compensate for the beam squinting effect. In particular, the proposed design aims to divide the UWB signal in…
This article investigates beam alignment for multi-user millimeter wave (mmWave) massive multi-input multi-output system. Unlike the existing works using machine learning (ML), an alignment method with partial beams using ML (AMPBML) is proposed without any prior knowledge such as user location information. The neural network (NN) for the AMPBML is trained offline using simulated environments according to the mmWave channel model and is then deployed online to predict the beam distribution vector using partial beams. Afterwards, the beams for all users are all aligned simultaneously based on t…
Wideband Precoding for U6G XL-MIMO Systems: Beam Squint Boundaries and Channel Slicing
School of Information Science and Engineering, Southeast University（东南大学信息科学与工程学院）；Centre for Wireless Innovation (CWI), Queen’s University Belfast（贝尔法斯特女王大学无线创新中心）
Analog Beamsteering (ABS) has emerged as a low complexity, power efficient solution for MillimeterWave (mmWave) massive Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) systems. Moreover, driven by the low spatial correlation between the User Terminals (UTs) with high number of transmit antennas (massive MIMO) at the Base Station (BS), ABS can be used to support Multi User (MU) MIMO scenarios instead of digital or Hybrid Beamforming (HBF). However, we show in this paper, that even with high number of transmit antennas, the HBF can achieve better Spectral Efficiency (SE) compared to the MU ABS even in pur…
In this letter, we consider optimal hybrid beamforming design to minimize the transmission power under individual signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) constraints in a multiuser massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) system. This results in a challenging non-convex optimization problem. We consider two cases. In the case where the number of users is smaller than or equal to that of radio frequency (RF) chains, we propose a low-complexity method to obtain a globally optimal solution and show that it achieves the same transmission power as an optimal fully-digital beamformer. In…
Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is an important technology in fifth generation (5G) cellular networks and beyond. To help design the beamforming at the base station, 5G has introduced new support in the form of flexible feedback and configurable antenna array geometries. In this article, we present an overview of MIMO throughout the mobile standards, highlight the new beam-based feedback system in 5G NR, and describe how this feedback system enables massive MIMO through beam management. Finally, we conclude with challenges related to massive MIMO in 5G.
Terahertz (THz) communications with a frequency band $0.1-10$ THz are envisioned as a promising solution to future high-speed wireless communication. Although with tens of gigahertz available bandwidth, THz signals suffer from severe free-spreading loss and molecular-absorption loss, which limit the wireless transmission distance. To compensate for the propagation loss, the ultra-massive multiple-input-multiple-output (UM-MIMO) can be applied to generate a high-gain directional beam by beamforming technologies. In this paper, a review of beamforming technologies for THz UM-MIMO systems is prov…
In this letter, we consider hybrid beamforming for millimeter wave (mmWave) MIMO integrated sensing and communications (ISAC). We design the transmit beam of a dual-functional radar-communication (DFRC) base station (BS), aiming at approaching the objective radar beam pattern, subject to the constraints of the signal to interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) of communication users and total transmission power of the DFRC BS. To provide additional degree of freedom for the beam design problem, we introduce a phase vector to the objective beam pattern and propose an alternating minimization method…
To realize mmWave massive MIMO systems in practice, Beamspace MIMO with beam selection provides an attractive solution at a considerably reduced number of radio frequency (RF) chains. We propose low-complexity beam selection algorithms based on singular value decomposition (SVD). We first diagonalize the channel matrix by SVD, and the appropriate beams are selected one-by-one in a decremental or incremental order based on the criterion of sum-rate maximization. To reduce the complexity of the proposed algorithms significantly, we make use of SVD in the last iteration to aviod SVD from scratch …
Hybrid beamforming (HBF) design is a crucial stage in millimeter wave (mmWave) multi-user multi-input multi-output (MU-MIMO) systems. However, conventional HBF methods are still with high complexity and strongly rely on the quality of channel state information. We propose an extreme learning machine (ELM) framework to jointly optimize transmitting and receiving beamformers. Specifically, to provide accurate labels for training, we first propose an factional-programming and majorization-minimization based HBF method (FP-MM-HBF). Then, an ELM based HBF (ELM-HBF) framework is proposed to increase…
Massive multiple-input multiple-out (MIMO) technology is vital in millimeter-wave (mmWave) bands to obtain large array gains. However, there are practical challenges, such as high hardware cost and power consumption in such systems. A promising solution to these problems is to adopt a hybrid beamforming architecture. This architecture has a much lower number of transceiver (TRx) chains than the total antenna number, resulting in cost- and energy-efficient systems. In this paper, we present a real-time mmWave (28 GHz) massive MIMO testbed with hybrid beamforming. This testbed has a 64-antenna/1…
We propose sparsity-adaptive beamspace channel estimation algorithms that improve accuracy for 1-bit data converters in all-digital millimeter-wave (mmWave) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) basestations. Our algorithms include a tuning stage based on Stein's unbiased risk estimate (SURE) that automatically selects optimal denoising parameters depending on the instantaneous channel conditions. Simulation results with line-of-sight (LoS) and non-LoS mmWave massive MIMO channel models show that our algorithms improve channel estimation accuracy with 1-bit measurements in a computatio…
Extremely large-scale massive multiple-input-multiple-output (XL-MIMO) is regarded as a promising technology for next-generation communication systems. In order to enhance the beamforming gains, codebook-based beam training is widely adopted in XL-MIMO systems. However, in XL-MIMO systems, the near-field domain expands, and near-field codebook should be adopted for beam training, which significantly increases the pilot overhead. To tackle this problem, we propose a deep learning-based beam training scheme where the near-field channel model and the near-field codebook are considered. To be spec…
Cell-free massive MIMO (CF-mMIMO) systems represent a promising approach to increase the spectral efficiency of wireless communication systems. However, near-optimal beamforming solutions require a large amount of signaling exchange between access points (APs) and the network controller (NC). In this letter, we propose two unsupervised deep neural networks (DNN) architectures, fully and partially distributed, that can perform decentralized coordinated beamforming with zero or limited communication overhead between APs and NC, for both fully digital and hybrid precoding. The proposed DNNs achie…
This paper investigates Cell-Free massive MIMO networks, where each access point (AP) is equipped with a hybrid transceiver, reducing the complexity and cost compared to a fully digital transceiver. Asymptotic approximations for the spectral efficiency are derived for uplink and downlink. Capitalizing on these expressions, a max-min problem is formulated to optimize the (i) analog beamformer at the APs and (ii) pilot assignment. Simulations show that the optimization of these variables substantially increases the network performance.
This paper presents a novel radio frequency (RF) beam training algorithm for sparse multiple input multiple output (MIMO) channels using unitary RF beamforming codebooks at transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx). The algorithm leverages statistical knowledge from past beam data for expedited beam search with statistically-minimal training overheads. Beams are tested in the order of their ranks based on their probabilities for providing a communication link. For low beam entropy scenarios, statistically-ranked beam search performs excellent in reducing the average number of beam tests per Tx-Rx bea…
City University of Hong Kong（香港城市大学）；The University of Kansas（堪萨斯大学）；Telecom-ParisTech（巴黎高等电信学院）
We present an enhancement to the problem of beam alignment in millimeter wave (mmWave) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, based on a modification of the machine learning-based criterion, called Kolmogorov model (KM), previously applied to the beam alignment problem. Unlike the previous KM, whose computational complexity is not scalable with the size of the problem, a new approach, centered on discrete monotonic optimization (DMO), is proposed, leading to significantly reduced complexity. We also present a Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS) criterion for the advanced hypothesis testing, which …
Beam training based on hierarchical codebook for millimeter wave (mmWave) massive MIMO is investigated. Unlike the existing work using the same hierarchical codebook to estimate different multi-path components (MPCs), dynamic hierarchical codebooks which are updated according to the estimated MPCs are adopted. Firstly, a generalized hierarchical codebook design method is proposed. Then based on this method, a beam training method which dynamically updates the hierarchical codebook by removing the contribution of the estimated MPCs from the codebook is proposed. Simulation results verify the ef…
We propose equalization-based data detection algorithms for all-digital millimeter-wave (mmWave) massive multiuser multiple-input multiple-out (MU-MIMO) systems that exploit sparsity in the beamspace domain to reduce complexity. We provide a condition on the number of users, basestation antennas, and channel sparsity for which beamspace equalization can be less complex than conventional antenna-domain processing. We evaluate the performance-complexity trade-offs of existing and new beamspace equalization algorithms using simulations with realistic mmWave channel models. Our results reveal that…
We derive a fast and optimal algorithm for solving practical weighted max-min SINR problems in cell-free massive MIMO networks. For the first time, the optimization problem jointly covers long-term power control and distributed beamforming design under imperfect cooperation. In particular, we consider user-centric clusters of access points cooperating on the basis of possibly limited channel state information sharing. Our optimal algorithm merges powerful power control tools based on interference calculus with the recently developed team theoretic framework for distributed beamforming design. …
Full Duplex (FD) communication can revolutionize wireless communications as it avoids using independent channels for bi-directional communications. This work generalizes the point-to-point FD communication in millimeter wave (mmWave) band consisting of K-pairs of massive MIMO FD nodes operating simultaneously. We present a novel joint hybrid beamforming (HYBF) and combining scheme for weighted sum-rate (WSR) maximization to enable the coexistence of massive MIMO FD links cost-efficiently. The proposed algorithm relies on alternative optimization based on the minorization-maximization method. M…
