In this work, we consider the uplink of a scalable cell-free massive MIMO system where the users are served only by a subset of access points (APs) in the network. The APs are physically grouped into predetermined "cell-centric clusters", which are connected to different cooperative central processing units (CPUs). Given the cooperative nature of the considered communications network, we assume that each user is associated with a "virtual cluster", that, in general, involves some APs belonging to different cell-centric clusters. Assuming the maximum-ratio-combining at the APs, we propose a user-association procedure aimed at the maximization of the sum-rate of the users in the system. The proposed procedure is based on the Hungarian Algorithm and exploits only the knowledge of the position of the APs in the network. Numerical results reveal that the performance of the proposed approach is not always better than the alternatives but it offers a considerably lower backhaul load with a negligible performance loss compared to full-cell free approaches.
Massive MIMO and small cell are both recognized as the key technologies for the future 5G wireless systems. In this paper, we investigate the problem of user association in a heterogeneous network (HetNet) with massive MIMO and small cells, where the macro base station (BS) is equipped with a massive MIMO and the picocell BS's are equipped with regular MIMOs. We first develop centralized user association algorithms with proven optimality, considering various objectives such as rate maximization, proportional fairness, and joint user association and resource allocation. We then model the massiv…
This paper explores the potential of wireless power transfer (WPT) in massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) aided heterogeneous networks (HetNets), where massive MIMO is applied in the macrocells, and users aim to harvest as much energy as possible and reduce the uplink path loss for enhancing their information transfer. By addressing the impact of massive MIMO on the user association, we compare and analyze two user association schemes. We adopt the linear maximal ratio transmission beam-forming for massive MIMO power transfer to recharge users. By deriving new statistical properties,…
User association determines which base stations a user connects to, hence affecting the amount of network interference and consequently the network throughput. Conventional user association schemes, however, assume that user instantaneous rates are independent of user association. In this paper, we introduce a new load-aware user association scheme for millimeter wave (mmWave) MIMO networks which takes into account the dependency of network interference on user association. This consideration is well suited for mmWave communications, where the links are highly directional and vulnerable to sma…
This paper aims to minimize the total transmit power consumption for Massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) downlink cellular systems when each user is served by the optimized subset of the base stations (BSs). We derive a lower bound on the ergodic spectral efficiency (SE) for Rayleigh fading channels and maximum ratio transmission (MRT) when the BSs cooperate using non-coherent joint transmission. We solve the joint user association and downlink transmit power minimization problem optimally under fixed SE constraints. Furthermore, we solve a max-min fairness problem with user specific…
User association is necessary in dense millimeter wave (mmWave) networks to determine which base station a user connects to in order to balance base station loads and maximize throughput. Given that mmWave connections are highly directional and vulnerable to small channel variations, user association changes these connections and hence significantly affects the user's instantaneous rate as well as network interference. In this paper, we introduce a new load balancing user association scheme for mmWave MIMO networks which considers this dependency on user association of user's transmission rate…
In this paper, we design an association scheme to maximize the sum energy efficiency for massive multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) enabled heterogeneous cellular networks (HCNs). Considering that the final formulated problem is in a sum-of-ratio form, we first need to transform it into a parametric nonfractional form, by which we can achieve its solution through a two-layer iterative algorithm. The outer layer searches the energy efficiency parameters and multipliers associated with signal-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) constraints using Newton-like method, and the inner layer op…
Two key traits of 5G cellular networks are much higher base station (BS) densities - especially in the case of low-power BSs - and the use of massive MIMO at these BSs. This paper explores how massive MIMO can be used to jointly maximize the offloading gains and minimize the interference challenges arising from adding small cells. We consider two interference management approaches: joint transmission (JT) with local precoding, where users are served simultaneously by multiple BSs without requiring channel state information exchanges among cooperating BSs, and resource blanking, where some macr…
A critical task of a radar receiver is data association, which assigns radar target detections to target filter tracks. Motivated by its importance, this paper introduces the problem of jointly designing multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar transmit beam patterns and the corresponding data association schemes. We show that the coupling of the beamforming and the association subproblems can be conveniently parameterized by what we term an ambiguity graph, which prescribes if two targets are to be disambiguated by the beamforming design or by the data association scheme. The choice of amb…
CentraleSupélec（巴黎中央理工-高等电力学院）；Université Paris-Saclay（巴黎萨克雷大学）；University of Pisa（比萨大学）；Huawei Technologies（华为技术有限公司）
This work investigates the use of deep learning to perform user cell association for sum-rate maximization in Massive MIMO networks. It is shown how a deep neural network can be trained to approach the optimal association rule with a much more limited computational complexity, thus enabling to update the association rule in real-time, on the basis of the mobility patterns of users. In particular, the proposed neural network design requires as input only the users' geographical positions. Numerical results show that it guarantees the same performance of traditional optimization-oriented methods…
This paper investigates the joint power allocation and user association problem in multi-cell Massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) downlink (DL) systems. The target is to minimize the total transmit power consumption when each user is served by an optimized subset of the base stations (BSs), using non-coherent joint transmission. We first derive a lower bound on the ergodic spectral efficiency (SE), which is applicable for any channel distribution and precoding scheme. Closed-form expressions are obtained for Rayleigh fading channels with either maximum ratio transmission (MRT) or zer…
We propose a scalable video broadcasting scheme over MIMO-OFDM systems. The scalable video source layers are channel encoded and modulated into independent signal streams, which are then transmitted from the allocated antennas in certain time-frequency blocks. Each receiver employs the successive group decoder to decode the signal streams of interest by treating other signal streams as interference. The transmitter performs adaptive coding and modulation, and transmission antenna and subcarrier allocation, based on the rate feedback from the receivers. We also propose a hybrid receiver that sw…
Hybrid analog-digital architectures are considered as promising candidates for implementing millimeter wave (mmWave) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems since they enable a considerable reduction of the required number of costly radio frequency (RF) chains by moving some of the signal processing operations into the analog domain. However, the analog feed network, comprising RF dividers, combiners, phase shifters, and line connections, of hybrid MIMO architectures is not scalable due to its prohibitively high power consumption for large numbers of transmit antennas. Motivated …
Ultra network densification and Massive MIMO are considered major 5G enablers since they promise huge capacity gains by exploiting proximity, spectral and spatial reuse benefits. Both approaches rely on increasing the number of access elements per user, either through deploying more access nodes over an area or increasing the number of antenna elements per access node. At the network-level, optimal user-association for a densely and randomly deployed network of Massive MIMO empowered access nodes must account for both channel and load conditions. In this paper we formulate this complex problem…
While scalable cell-free massive MIMO (CF-mMIMO) shows advantages in static conditions, the impact of its changing serving access point (AP) set in a mobile network is not yet addressed. In this paper we first derive the CPU cluster and AP handover rates of scalable CF-mMIMO as exact numerical results and tight closed form approximations. We then use our closed form handover rate result to analyse the mobility-aware throughput. We compare the mobility-aware spectral efficiency (SE) of scalable CF-mMIMO against distributed MIMO with pure network- and UE-centric AP selection, for different AP de…
Imagine a coverage area with many wireless access points that cooperate to jointly serve the users, instead of creating autonomous cells. Such a cell-free network operation can potentially resolve many of the interference issues that appear in current cellular networks. This ambition was previously called Network MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) and has recently reappeared under the name Cell-Free Massive MIMO. The main challenge is to achieve the benefits of cell-free operation in a practically feasible way, with computational complexity and fronthaul requirements that are scalable to la…
In a heterogeneous network consisting of macro base stations (MBSs) and small base stations (SBSs), the traditional cell association policy, i.e., coupled access (CA), is far from optimal, due to the significant difference between the coverage and transmit powers of MBSs and SBSs. Hence, users may choose to associate with different types of BSs in downlink (DL) and uplink (UL), i.e., decoupled access (DA), to enhance spectral efficiency. In this paper, DA in multiuser MIMO communications is investigated in terms of UL spectral efficiency. Firstly, we obtain the UL association probabilities. In…
The coupling between cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems operating at millimeter-wave (mmWave) carrier frequencies and user mobility is considered in this paper. First of all, a mmWave channel is introduced taking into account the user mobility and the impact of the channel aging. Then, three beamforming techniques are proposed in the considered scenario, along with a dynamic user association technique (handover): starting from a user-centric association between each mobile device and a cluster of access points (APs), a rule for updating the APs cluster is formulate…
Small-cell densification is a strategy enabling the offloading of users from macro base stations (MBSs), in order to alleviate their load and increase the coverage, especially, for cell-edge users. In parallel, as the network increases in density, the BS cooperation emerges as an efficient design method towards the demands for drastic improvement of the system performance against the detrimental overall interference. In addition, the tiers are enhanced with cell association policies by introducing the concept of the association probability. Above this and motivated by the advantages of coopera…
In this paper, the issue of designing an iterative-detection-and-decoding (IDD)-aided receiver, relying on the low-complexity probabilistic data association (PDA) method, is addressed for turbo-coded multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems using general M-ary modulations. We demonstrate that the classic candidate-search-aided bit-based extrinsic log-likelihood ratio (LLR) calculation method is not applicable to the family of PDA-based detectors. Additionally, we reveal that, in contrast to the interpretation in the existing literature, the output symbol probabilities of existing PDA algo…
An important concept in wireless systems has been quality of experience (QoE)-aware video transmission. Such communications are considered not only connection-based communications but also content-aware communications, since the video quality is closely related to the content itself. It becomes necessary therefore for video communications to utilize a cross-layer design (also known as joint source and channel coding). To provide efficient methods of allocating network resources, the wireless network uses its cross-layer knowledge to perform unequal error protection (UEP) solutions. In this art…
Unlike the time-division duplexing (TDD) systems, the downlink (DL) and uplink (UL) channels are not reciprocal anymore in the case of frequency-division duplexing (FDD). However, some long-term parameters, e.g. the time delays and angles of arrival (AoAs) of the channel paths, still enjoy reciprocity. In this paper, by efficiently exploiting the aforementioned limited reciprocity, we address the DL channel state information (CSI) feedback in a practical wideband massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system operating in the FDD mode. With orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFD…
How to meet the demand for increasing number of users, higher data rates, and stringent quality-of-service (QoS) in the beyond fifth-generation (B5G) networks? Cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is considered as a promising solution, in which many wireless access points cooperate to jointly serve the users by exploiting coherent signal processing. However, there are still many unsolved practical issues in cell-free massive MIMO systems, whereof scalable massive access implementation is one of the most vital. In this paper, we propose a new framework for structured massive …
This paper presents an optimized low-complexity and high-throughput multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) signal detector core for detecting spatially-multiplexed data streams. The core architecture supports various layer configurations up to 4, while achieving near-optimal performance, as well as configurable modulation constellations up to 256-QAM on each layer. The core is capable of operating as a soft-input soft-output log-likelihood ratio (LLR) MIMO detector which can be used in the context of iterative detection and decoding. High area-efficiency is achieved via algorithmic and architec…
This paper exploits the potential of physical layer security in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) aided two-tier heterogeneous networks (HetNets). We focus on the downlink secure transmission in the presence of multiple eavesdroppers. We first address the impact of massive MIMO on the maximum receive power based user association. We then derive the tractable upper bound expressions for the secrecy outage probability of a HetNets user.We show that the implementation of massive MIMO significantly improves the secrecy performance, which indicates that physical layer security could be …
In network MIMO systems, channel state information is required at the transmitter side to multiplex users in the spatial domain. Since perfect channel knowledge is difficult to obtain in practice, \emph{limited feedback} is a widely accepted solution. The {\em dynamic number of cooperating BSs} and {\em heterogeneous path loss effects} of network MIMO systems pose new challenges on limited feedback design. In this paper, we propose a scalable limited feedback design for network MIMO systems with multiple base stations, multiple users and multiple data streams for each user. We propose a {\em l…
In this paper we consider a heterogeneous network which consists of a macro base station and some pico base stations utilizing massive MIMO and MIMO techniques, respectively. A central software-defined mobile network (SDMN) controller is adopted in order to provide user association and energy scheduling. The users are considered battery limited and are capable of simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) in order to harvest energy and address the energy shortage issue. These users harvest energy from the received signals in the downlink and consume it via their uplink commun…
In this paper, an analytical framework for evaluating the performance of scalable cell-free massive MIMO (SCF-mMIMO) systems in which all user equipments (UEs) and access points (APs) employ finite resolution digital-to-analog converters (DACs) and analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and operates under correlated Rician fading, is presented. By using maximal-ratio combining (MRC) detection, generic expressions for the uplink (UL) spectral efficiency (SE) for both distributed and centralized schemes are derived. In order to further reduce the computational complexity (CC) of the original local …
This paper studies the transmit power optimization in a multi-cell massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system. To overcome the scalability issue of network-wide max-min fairness (NW-MMF), we propose a novel power control (PC) scheme. This scheme maximizes the geometric mean (GM) of the per-cell max-min spectral efficiency (SE). To solve this new optimization problem, we prove that it can be rewritten in a convex form and then solved using standard tools. To provide a fair comparison with the available utility functions in the literature, we solve the network-wide proportional fairnes…
This paper considers a cell-free massive MIMO (CF-mMIMO) system using conjugate beamforming (CB) with fractional-exponent normalization. Assuming independent Rayleigh fading channels, a generalized closed-form expression for the achievable downlink spectral efficiency is derived, which subsumes, as special cases, the spectral efficiency expressions previously reported for plain CB and its variants, i.e. normalized CB and enhanced CB. Downlink power control is also tackled, and a reduced-complexity power allocation strategy is proposed, wherein only one coefficient for access point (AP) is opti…
In a recent work, we studied a novel precoding design for cell-free networks called team minimum mean-square error (TMMSE) precoding, which rigorously generalizes centralized MMSE precoding to distributed operations based on transmitter-specific channel state information (CSI). Despite its flexibility in handling different cooperation regimes at the CSI sharing level, TMMSE precoding assumes network-wide sharing of the data bearing signals, and hence it is inherently not scalable. In this work, inspired by recent advances on scalable cell-free architectures based on user-centric network cluste…
Large-scale distributed Multiuser MIMO (MU-MIMO) is a promising wireless network architecture that combines the advantages of "massive MIMO" and "small cells." It consists of several Access Points (APs) connected to a central server via a wired backhaul network and acting as a large distributed antenna system. We focus on the downlink, which is both more demanding in terms of traffic and more challenging in terms of implementation than the uplink. In order to enable multiuser joint precoding of the downlink signals, channel state information at the transmitter side is required. We consider Tim…
Standard cell-free (CF) multiple-input-multiple-output (mMIMO) systems is a promising technology to cover the demands for higher data rates in fifth-generation (5G) networks and beyond. These systems assume a large number of distributed access points (APs) using joint coherent transmission to communicate with the users. However, CF mMIMO systems present an increasing computational complexity as the number of users increases. Scalable cell-free CF (SCF) systems have been proposed to face this challenge. Given that the cost-efficient deployment of such large networks requires low-cost transceive…
Multi-tier networks with large-array base stations (BSs) that are able to operate in the "massive MIMO" regime are envisioned to play a key role in meeting the exploding wireless traffic demands. Operated over small cells with reciprocity-based training, massive MIMO promises large spectral efficiencies per unit area with low overheads. Also, near-optimal user-BS association and resource allocation are possible in cellular massive MIMO HetNets using simple admission control mechanisms and rudimentary BS schedulers, since scheduled user rates can be predicted a priori with massive MIMO. Recipro…
In this paper, we investigate the problem of optimal base station (BS) ON-OFF switching and user association in a heterogeneous network (HetNet) with massive MIMO, with the objective to maximize the system energy efficiency (EE). The joint BS ON-OFF switching and user association problem is formulated as an integer programming problem. We first develop a centralized scheme, in which we relax the integer constraints and employ a series of Lagrangian dual methods that transform the original problem into a standard linear programming (LP) problem. Due to the special structure of the LP, we prove …
The decoupling of data and control planes, as proposed for 5G networks, will enable the efficient implementation of multitier networks where user equipment (UE) nodes obtain coverage and connectivity through the top-tier macro-cells, and, at the same time, achieve high-throughput low-latency communication through lower tiers in the hierarchy. This paper considers a new architecture for such lower tiers, dubbed fog massive MIMO, where the UEs are able to establish high-throughput low-latency data links in a seamless and opportunistic manner, as they travel through a dense fog of high-capacity w…
The problem of cell association is considered for cellular users present in the field. This has become a challenging problem with the deployment of 5G networks which will share the sub-6 GHz bands with the legacy 4G networks. Instead of taking a network-controlled approach, which may not be scalable with the number of users and may introduce extra delays into the system, we propose a scalable solution in the physical layer by utilizing data that can be collected by a large number of spectrum sensors deployed in the field. More specifically, we model the cell association problem as a nonlinear …
Cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (CF mMIMO) provides good interference management by coordinating many more access points (APs) than user equipments (UEs). It becomes challenging to determine which APs should serve which UEs with which pilots when the number of UEs approximates the number of APs and far exceeds the number of pilots. Compared to the previous work, a better compromise between spectral efficiency (SE) and implementation simplicity is needed in such massive access scenarios. This paper proposes an interference-aware massive access (IAMA) scheme realizing joint AP-U…
In this paper, we propose a fixed-complexity sphere encoder (FSE) for multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO) systems. The proposed FSE accomplishes a scalable tradeoff between performance and complexity. Also, because it has a parallel tree-search structure, the proposed encoder can be easily pipelined, leading to a tremendous reduction in the precoding latency. The complexity of the proposed encoder is also analyzed, and we propose two techniques that reduce it. Simulation and analytical results demonstrate that in a 4 by 4 MU-MIMO system, the proposed FSE requires only 11.5% of the computational complexi…
Cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) provides more uniform spectral efficiency (SE) for users (UEs) than cellular technology. The main challenge to achieve the benefits of cell-free massive MIMO is to realize signal processing in a scalable way. In this paper, we consider scalable fullpilot zero-forcing (FZF), partial FZF (PFZF), protective weak PFZF (PWPFZF), and local regularized ZF (LRZF) combining by exploiting channel statistics. We derive closed-form expressions of the uplink SE for FZF, PFZF, and PWPFZF combining with large-scale fading decoding over independent Rayle…
