There is, I think, something ethereal about i —the square root of minus one. I remember first hearing about it at school. It seemed an odd beast at that time—an intruder hovering on the edge of reality.

Usually familiarity dulls this sense of the bizarre, but in the case of i it was the reverse: over the years the sense of its surreal nature intensified. It seemed that it was impossible to write mathematics that described the real world in …

I and i

Wireless Communications

Mobile users' data rate and quality of service are limited by the fact that, within the duration of any given call, they experience severe variations in signal attenuation, thereby necessitating the use of some type of diversity. In this two-part paper, we propose a new form of spatial diversity, in which diversity gains are achieved via the cooperation of mobile users. Part I describes the user cooperation strategy, while Part II (see ibid., p.1939-48) focuses on implementation issues and performance analysis. Results show that, even though the interuser channel is noisy, cooperation leads not only to an increase in capacity for both users but also to a more robust system, where users' achievable rates are less susceptible to channel variations.

http://dns2.asia.edu.tw/~ysho/YSHO-English/2000%20Engineering/PDF/IEE%20Tra%20Com51,%201927.pdf

User cooperation diversity. Part I. System description

Multi-user MIMO offers big advantages over conventional point-to-point MIMO: it works with cheap single-antenna terminals, a rich scattering environment is not required, and resource allocation is simplified because every active terminal utilizes all of the time-frequency bins. However, multi-user MIMO, as originally envisioned, with roughly equal numbers of service antennas and terminals and frequency-division duplex operation, is not a scalable technology. Massive MIMO (also known as large-scale antenna systems, very large MIMO, hyper MIMO, full-dimension MIMO, and ARGOS) makes a clean break with current practice through the use of a large excess of service antennas over active terminals and time-division duplex operation. Extra antennas help by focusing energy into ever smaller regions of space to bring huge improvements in throughput and radiated energy efficiency. Other benefits of massive MIMO include extensive use of inexpensive low-power components, reduced latency, simplification of the MAC layer, and robustness against intentional jamming. The anticipated throughput depends on the propagation environment providing asymptotically orthogonal channels to the terminals, but so far experiments have not disclosed any limitations in this regard. While massive MIMO renders many traditional research problems irrelevant, it uncovers entirely new problems that urgently need attention: the challenge of making many low-cost low-precision components that work effectively together, acquisition and synchronization for newly joined terminals, the exploitation of extra degrees of freedom provided by the excess of service antennas, reducing internal power consumption to achieve total energy efficiency reductions, and finding new deployment scenarios. This article presents an overview of the massive MIMO concept and contemporary research on the topic.

/pdf/massive-mimo-for-next-generation-wireless-systems-1eydagg3js.pdf

Massive MIMO for next generation wireless systems

Multiuser diversity is a form of diversity inherent in a wireless network, provided by independent time-varying channels across the different users. The diversity benefit is exploited by tracking the channel fluctuations of the users and scheduling transmissions to users when their instantaneous channel quality is near the peak. The diversity gain increases with the dynamic range of the fluctuations and is thus limited in environments with little scattering and/or slow fading. In such environments, we propose the use of multiple transmit antennas to induce large and fast channel fluctuations so that multiuser diversity can still be exploited. The scheme can be interpreted as opportunistic beamforming and we show that true beamforming gains can be achieved when there are sufficient users, even though very limited channel feedback is needed. Furthermore, in a cellular system, the scheme plays an additional role of opportunistic nulling of the interference created on users of adjacent cells. We discuss the design implications of implementing. this scheme in a complete wireless system.

https://web.stanford.edu/~dntse/papers/oppbf_it.pdf

Opportunistic beamforming using dumb antennas

We consider a power control scheme for maximizing the information capacity of the uplink in single-cell multiuser communications with frequency-flat fading, under the assumption that the users attenuations are measured perfectly. Its main characteristics are that only one user transmits over the entire bandwidth at any particular time instant and that the users are allocated more power when their channels are good, and less when they are bad. Moreover, these features are independent of the statistics of the fading. Numerical results are presented for the case of single-path Rayleigh fading. We show that an increase in capacity over a perfectly-power controlled (Gaussian) channel can be achieved, especially if the number of users is large. By examining the bit error-rate with antipodal signalling, we show the inherent diversity in multiuser communications over fading channels.

Information capacity and power control in single-cell multiuser communications

This work considers the achievable performance for coded systems adapted to a multipath block-fading channel model. This is a particularly useful model for analyzing mobile-radio systems which employ techniques such as slow frequency-hopping under stringent time-delay or bandwidth constraints for slowly time-varying channels. In such systems, coded information is transmitted over a small number of fading channels in order to achieve diversity. Bounds on the achievable performance due to coding are derived using information-theoretic techniques. It is shown that high diversity can be achieved using relatively simple codes as long as very high spectral efficiency is not required. Examples of simple block codes and carefully chosen trellis codes are given which yield, in some cases, performances approaching the information-theoretic bounds.

/pdf/on-coding-for-block-fading-channels-4dor01j0av.pdf

On coding for block fading channels

Driven by the need to cope with exponentially growing mobile data traffic and to support new traffic types from massive numbers of machine-type devices, academia and industry are thinking beyond the current generation of mobile cellular networks to chalk a path towards fifth generation (5G) mobile networks. Several new approaches and technologies are being considered as potential elements making up such a future mobile network, including cloud RANs, application of SDN principles, exploiting new and unused portions of spectrum, use of massive MIMO and full-duplex communications. Research on these technologies requires realistic and flexible experimentation platforms that offer a wide range of experimentation modes from real-world experimentation to controlled and scalable evaluations while at the same time retaining backward compatibility with current generation systems. Towards this end, we present OpenAirInterface (OAI) as a suitably flexible platform. In addition, we discuss the use of OAI in the context of several widely mentioned 5G research directions.

/pdf/openairinterface-a-flexible-platform-for-5g-research-2sc2xt49j2.pdf

OpenAirInterface: A Flexible Platform for 5G Research

We present a relative calibration method for a wireless TDD link, which, after a calibration phase involving feedback, lets the transmitter acquire knowledge of the downlink channel state from the uplink channel estimates, through proper modeling and estimation of the RF circuitry impulse responses. Contrarily to previous methods, relative calibration does not require specific calibration hardware. Experimental results confirm the validity of the proposed linear reciprocity model, and of the calibration approach.

A practical method for wireless channel reciprocity exploitation through relative calibration

Channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) can greatly improve the capacity of a wireless MIMO communication system. In a time division duplex (TDD) system CSIT can be obtained by exploiting the reciprocity of the wireless channel. This however requires calibration of the radio frequency (RF) chains of the receiver and the transmitter, which are in general not reciprocal. In this paper we investigate different methods for relative calibration in the presence of frequency offsets between transmitter and receiver. We show results of theses calibration methods with real two-directional channel measurements, which were performed using the Eure-com MIMO Openair Sounder (EMOS). We demonstrate that in a single-user MIMO channel and for low signal-to-noise (SNR) ratios, the relative calibration method can increase the capacity close to the theoretical limit.

/pdf/relative-channel-reciprocity-calibration-in-mimo-tdd-systems-2legr4lknn.pdf

Raymond Knopp

Papers

Information capacity and power control in single-cell multiuser communications

On coding for block fading channels

OpenAirInterface: A Flexible Platform for 5G Research

A practical method for wireless channel reciprocity exploitation through relative calibration

Relative channel reciprocity calibration in MIMO/TDD systems