Wireless Communications

A cellular base station serves a multiplicity of single-antenna terminals over the same time-frequency interval. Time-division duplex operation combined with reverse-link pilots enables the base station to estimate the reciprocal forward- and reverse-link channels. The conjugate-transpose of the channel estimates are used as a linear precoder and combiner respectively on the forward and reverse links. Propagation, unknown to both terminals and base station, comprises fast fading, log-normal shadow fading, and geometric attenuation. In the limit of an infinite number of antennas a complete multi-cellular analysis, which accounts for inter-cellular interference and the overhead and errors associated with channel-state information, yields a number of mathematically exact conclusions and points to a desirable direction towards which cellular wireless could evolve. In particular the effects of uncorrelated noise and fast fading vanish, throughput and the number of terminals are independent of the size of the cells, spectral efficiency is independent of bandwidth, and the required transmitted energy per bit vanishes. The only remaining impairment is inter-cellular interference caused by re-use of the pilot sequences in other cells (pilot contamination) which does not vanish with unlimited number of antennas.

Noncooperative Cellular Wireless with Unlimited Numbers of Base Station Antennas

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology is maturing and is being incorporated into emerging wireless broadband standards like long-term evolution (LTE) [1]. For example, the LTE standard allows for up to eight antenna ports at the base station. Basically, the more antennas the transmitter/receiver is equipped with, and the more degrees of freedom that the propagation channel can provide, the better the performance in terms of data rate or link reliability. More precisely, on a quasi static channel where a code word spans across only one time and frequency coherence interval, the reliability of a point-to-point MIMO link scales according to Prob(link outage) ` SNR-ntnr where nt and nr are the numbers of transmit and receive antennas, respectively, and signal-to-noise ratio is denoted by SNR. On a channel that varies rapidly as a function of time and frequency, and where circumstances permit coding across many channel coherence intervals, the achievable rate scales as min(nt, nr) log(1 + SNR). The gains in multiuser systems are even more impressive, because such systems offer the possibility to transmit simultaneously to several users and the flexibility to select what users to schedule for reception at any given point in time [2].

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Scaling Up MIMO: Opportunities and Challenges with Very Large Arrays

The quintessential goal of sensor array signal processing is the estimation of parameters by fusing temporal and spatial information, captured via sampling a wavefield with a set of judiciously placed antenna sensors. The wavefield is assumed to be generated by a finite number of emitters, and contains information about signal parameters characterizing the emitters. A review of the area of array processing is given. The focus is on parameter estimation methods, and many relevant problems are only briefly mentioned. We emphasize the relatively more recent subspace-based methods in relation to beamforming. The article consists of background material and of the basic problem formulation. Then we introduce spectral-based algorithmic solutions to the signal parameter estimation problem. We contrast these suboptimal solutions to parametric methods. Techniques derived from maximum likelihood principles as well as geometric arguments are covered. Later, a number of more specialized research topics are briefly reviewed. Then, we look at a number of real-world problems for which sensor array processing methods have been applied. We also include an example with real experimental data involving closely spaced emitters and highly correlated signals, as well as a manufacturing application example.

Two decades of array signal processing research: the parametric approach

It is shown that, particularly for terrestrial cellular telephony, the interference-suppression feature of CDMA (code division multiple access) can result in a many-fold increase in capacity over analog and even over competing digital techniques. A single-cell system, such as a hubbed satellite network, is addressed, and the basic expression for capacity is developed. The corresponding expressions for a multiple-cell system are derived. and the distribution on the number of users supportable per cell is determined. It is concluded that properly augmented and power-controlled multiple-cell CDMA promises a quantum increase in current cellular capacity. >

On the capacity of a cellular CDMA system

This paper provides a high-level overview of some technology components currently considered for the evolution of LTE, referred to as LTE-Advanced. First, a brief overview of LTE and some of its technologies are given and then the IMT-Advanced requirements are discussed. One of the targets with the evolution of LTE is to reach or seven surpass these requirements. The technology components considered for LTE-Advanced include extended spectrum flexibility to support up to 100MHz bandwidth, enhanced multi-antenna solutions with up to eight layer transmission in the downlink and up to four layer transmission in the uplink, coordinated multi-point transmission/reception, and the use of advanced repeaters/relaying.

http://www.jocm.us/uploadfile/2013/0423/20130423033707532.pdf

The Evolution of LTE towards IMT-Advanced

3GPP is in the process of defining the long-term evolution (LTE) for 3G radio access, sometimes referred to as Super-3G, in order to maintain the future competitiveness of 3G technology. The main targets for this evolution concern increased data rates, improved spectrum efficiency, improved coverage, and reduced latency. Taken together these result in significantly improved service provisioning and reduced operator costs in a variety of traffic scenarios. This paper gives an overview of the basic radio interface principles for the 3G long-term evolution concept, including OFDM and advanced antenna solution, and presents performance results indicating to what extent the requirements/targets can be met. It is seen that the targets on three-fold user throughput and spectrum efficiency compared to basic WCDMA can be fulfilled with the current working assumptions. More advanced WCDMA systems, employing e.g. advanced antenna solutions may however achieve similar performance gains. Enhancements for reduced latency and IP optimized architectures and protocols are further applicable to both LTE and WCDMA.

https://www.3g4g.co.uk/Lte/LTE_WP_0602_Ericsson.pdf

The 3G Long-Term Evolution - Radio Interface Concepts and Performance Evaluation

Data traffic is selectively transmitted in one direction when the quality or condition of the channel in the opposite direction is sufficient to ensure a reasonable or high likelihood that the transmitter will accurately receive and decode feedback messages. In one preferred, non-limiting, example embodiment, a base station schedules transmission of data packets to a user equipment unit (UE) over a downlink traffic channel when the uplink channel over which the UE sends ARQ type signals to the base station has a signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) greater than a predetermined threshold. The downlink channel condition is also preferably taken into account.

Scheduling transmission of data over a transmission channel based on signal quality of a receiver channel

Device-to-device (D2D) communications have been proposed as an underlay to long-term evolution (LTE) networks as a means of harvesting the proximity, reuse, and hop gains. However, D2D communications can also serve as a technology component for providing public protection and disaster relief (PPDR) and national security and public safety (NSPS) services. In the United States, for example, spectrum has been reserved in the 700-MHz band for an LTE-based public safety network. The key requirement for the evolving broadband PPDR and NSPS services capable systems is to provide access to cellular services when the infrastructure is available and to efficiently support local services even if a subset or all of the network nodes become dysfunctional due to public disaster or emergency situations. This paper reviews some of the key requirements, technology challenges, and solution approaches that must be in place in order to enable LTE networks and, in particular, D2D communications, to meet PPDR and NSPS-related requirements. In particular, we propose a clustering-procedure-based approach to the design of a system that integrates cellular and ad hoc operation modes depending on the availability of infrastructure nodes. System simulations demonstrate the viability of the proposed design. The proposed scheme is currently considered as a technology component of the evolving 5G concept developed by the European 5G research project METIS.

Device-to-Device Communications for National Security and Public Safety

The first step of evolving WCDMA towards higher data rates is discussed. It is shown how techniques such as fast link adaptation, fast hybrid ARQ and fast scheduling, among others, can be applied to WCDMA, leading to increased throughput, lower delays, and downlink peak rates in the order of 10 Mbit/s. Through system simulations, the packet-data performance of such an evolved WCDMA system is illustrated.

Stefan Parkvall

Papers

The Evolution of LTE towards IMT-Advanced

The 3G Long-Term Evolution - Radio Interface Concepts and Performance Evaluation

Scheduling transmission of data over a transmission channel based on signal quality of a receiver channel

Device-to-Device Communications for National Security and Public Safety

The evolution of WCDMA towards higher speed downlink packet data access