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Journal ArticleDOI

Noncooperative Cellular Wireless with Unlimited Numbers of Base Station Antennas

Thomas L. Marzetta1
01 Nov 2010-IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (IEEE)-Vol. 9, Iss: 11, pp 3590-3600
TL;DR: A cellular base station serves a multiplicity of single-antenna terminals over the same time-frequency interval and a complete multi-cellular analysis yields a number of mathematically exact conclusions and points to a desirable direction towards which cellular wireless could evolve.
Abstract: 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.
Citations
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Journal ArticleDOI
01 Jan 2014
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors present a comprehensive state-of-the-art survey on SM-MIMO research, to provide a critical appraisal of its potential advantages, and to promote the discussion of its beneficial application areas and their research challenges.
Abstract: A key challenge of future mobile communication research is to strike an attractive compromise between wireless network's area spectral efficiency and energy efficiency. This necessitates a clean-slate approach to wireless system design, embracing the rich body of existing knowledge, especially on multiple-input-multiple-ouput (MIMO) technologies. This motivates the proposal of an emerging wireless communications concept conceived for single-radio-frequency (RF) large-scale MIMO communications, which is termed as SM. The concept of SM has established itself as a beneficial transmission paradigm, subsuming numerous members of the MIMO system family. The research of SM has reached sufficient maturity to motivate its comparison to state-of-the-art MIMO communications, as well as to inspire its application to other emerging wireless systems such as relay-aided, cooperative, small-cell, optical wireless, and power-efficient communications. Furthermore, it has received sufficient research attention to be implemented in testbeds, and it holds the promise of stimulating further vigorous interdisciplinary research in the years to come. This tutorial paper is intended to offer a comprehensive state-of-the-art survey on SM-MIMO research, to provide a critical appraisal of its potential advantages, and to promote the discussion of its beneficial application areas and their research challenges leading to the analysis of the technological issues associated with the implementation of SM-MIMO. The paper is concluded with the description of the world's first experimental activities in this vibrant research field.

1,171 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: In this article, the problem of channel estimation in multi-cell interference-limited cellular networks is addressed by enabling a low-rate coordination between cells during the channel estimation phase itself.
Abstract: This paper addresses the problem of channel estimation in multi-cell interference-limited cellular networks. We consider systems employing multiple antennas and are interested in both the finite and large-scale antenna number regimes (so-called "massive MIMO"). Such systems deal with the multi-cell interference by way of per-cell beamforming applied at each base station. Channel estimation in such networks, which is known to be hampered by the pilot contamination effect, constitutes a major bottleneck for overall performance. We present a novel approach which tackles this problem by enabling a low-rate coordination between cells during the channel estimation phase itself. The coordination makes use of the additional second-order statistical information about the user channels, which are shown to offer a powerful way of discriminating across interfering users with even strongly correlated pilot sequences. Importantly, we demonstrate analytically that in the large-number-of-antennas regime, the pilot contamination effect is made to vanish completely under certain conditions on the channel covariance. Gains over the conventional channel estimation framework are confirmed by our simulations for even small antenna array sizes.

1,138 citations

Book
17 Nov 2016
TL;DR: This is the first complete guide to the physical and engineering principles of Massive MIMO and will guide readers through key topics in multi-cell systems such as propagation modeling, multiplexing and de-multiplexing, channel estimation, power control, and performance evaluation.
Abstract: "Written by the pioneers of the concept, this is the first complete guide to the physical and engineering principles of Massive MIMO. Assuming only a basic background in communications and statisti ...

1,115 citations

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: This overview article identifies 10 myths of Massive MIMO and explains why they are not true, and asks a question that is critical for the practical adoption of the technology and which will require intense future research activities to answer properly.
Abstract: Wireless communications is one of the most successful technologies in modern years, given that an exponential growth rate in wireless traffic has been sustained for over a century (known as Cooper’s law). This trend will certainly continue, driven by new innovative applications; for example, augmented reality and the Internet of Things. Massive MIMO has been identified as a key technology to handle orders of magnitude more data traffic. Despite the attention it is receiving from the communication community, we have personally witnessed that Massive MIMO is subject to several widespread misunderstandings, as epitomized by following (fictional) abstract: “The Massive MIMO technology uses a nearly infinite number of high-quality antennas at the base stations. By having at least an order of magnitude more antennas than active terminals, one can exploit asymptotic behaviors that some special kinds of wireless channels have. This technology looks great at first sight, but unfortunately the signal processing complexity is off the charts and the antenna arrays would be so huge that it can only be implemented in millimeter-wave bands.” These statements are, in fact, completely false. In this overview article, we identify 10 myths and explain why they are not true. We also ask a question that is critical for the practical adoption of the technology and which will require intense future research activities to answer properly. We provide references to key technical papers that support our claims, while a further list of related overview and technical papers can be found at the Massive MIMO Info Point: http://massivemimo. eu

1,040 citations


Cites background from "Noncooperative Cellular Wireless wi..."

  • ...…receiving from the communication community, we have personally witnessed that Massive MIMO is subject to several widespread misunderstandings, as epitomized by following (fictional) abstract: “The Massive MIMO technology uses a nearly infinite number of high-quality antennas at the base stations....

    [...]

Posted Content
TL;DR: In this paper, a multi-cell multiple antenna system with precoding used at the base stations for downlink transmission is considered, where the precoding matrix used by the base station in one cell becomes corrupted by the channel between that base station and the users in other cells in an undesirable manner.
Abstract: This paper considers a multi-cell multiple antenna system with precoding used at the base stations for downlink transmission. For precoding at the base stations, channel state information (CSI) is essential at the base stations. A popular technique for obtaining this CSI in time division duplex (TDD) systems is uplink training by utilizing the reciprocity of the wireless medium. This paper mathematically characterizes the impact that uplink training has on the performance of such multi-cell multiple antenna systems. When non-orthogonal training sequences are used for uplink training, the paper shows that the precoding matrix used by the base station in one cell becomes corrupted by the channel between that base station and the users in other cells in an undesirable manner. This paper analyzes this fundamental problem of pilot contamination in multi-cell systems. Furthermore, it develops a new multi-cell MMSE-based precoding method that mitigate this problem. In addition to being a linear precoding method, this precoding method has a simple closed-form expression that results from an intuitive optimization problem formulation. Numerical results show significant performance gains compared to certain popular single-cell precoding methods.

1,040 citations

References
More filters
Journal ArticleDOI
Gerard J. Foschini1
TL;DR: This paper addresses digital communication in a Rayleigh fading environment when the channel characteristic is unknown at the transmitter but is known (tracked) at the receiver with the aim of leveraging the already highly developed 1-D codec technology.
Abstract: This paper addresses digital communication in a Rayleigh fading environment when the channel characteristic is unknown at the transmitter but is known (tracked) at the receiver. Inventing a codec architecture that can realize a significant portion of the great capacity promised by information theory is essential to a standout long-term position in highly competitive arenas like fixed and indoor wireless. Use (n T , n R ) to express the number of antenna elements at the transmitter and receiver. An (n, n) analysis shows that despite the n received waves interfering randomly, capacity grows linearly with n and is enormous. With n = 8 at 1% outage and 21-dB average SNR at each receiving element, 42 b/s/Hz is achieved. The capacity is more than 40 times that of a (1, 1) system at the same total radiated transmitter power and bandwidth. Moreover, in some applications, n could be much larger than 8. In striving for significant fractions of such huge capacities, the question arises: Can one construct an (n, n) system whose capacity scales linearly with n, using as building blocks n separately coded one-dimensional (1-D) subsystems of equal capacity? With the aim of leveraging the already highly developed 1-D codec technology, this paper reports just such an invention. In this new architecture, signals are layered in space and time as suggested by a tight capacity bound.

6,812 citations


"Noncooperative Cellular Wireless wi..." refers background in this paper

  • ...A point-to-point MIMO system [2] requires expensive multiple-antenna terminals....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: Under certain mild conditions, this scheme is found to be throughput-wise asymptotically optimal for both high and low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and some numerical results are provided for the ergodic throughput of the simplified zero-forcing scheme in independent Rayleigh fading.
Abstract: A Gaussian broadcast channel (GBC) with r single-antenna receivers and t antennas at the transmitter is considered. Both transmitter and receivers have perfect knowledge of the channel. Despite its apparent simplicity, this model is, in general, a nondegraded broadcast channel (BC), for which the capacity region is not fully known. For the two-user case, we find a special case of Marton's (1979) region that achieves optimal sum-rate (throughput). In brief, the transmitter decomposes the channel into two interference channels, where interference is caused by the other user signal. Users are successively encoded, such that encoding of the second user is based on the noncausal knowledge of the interference caused by the first user. The crosstalk parameters are optimized such that the overall throughput is maximum and, surprisingly, this is shown to be optimal over all possible strategies (not only with respect to Marton's achievable region). For the case of r>2 users, we find a somewhat simpler choice of Marton's region based on ordering and successively encoding the users. For each user i in the given ordering, the interference caused by users j>i is eliminated by zero forcing at the transmitter, while interference caused by users j

2,616 citations


"Noncooperative Cellular Wireless wi..." refers background in this paper

  • ...An alternative to a point-to-point MIMO system is a multiuser MIMO system [3], [4], [5], [6] in which an antenna array simultaneously serves a multiplicity of autonomous terminals....

    [...]

Book
28 Jun 2004
TL;DR: A tutorial on random matrices is provided which provides an overview of the theory and brings together in one source the most significant results recently obtained.
Abstract: Random matrix theory has found many applications in physics, statistics and engineering since its inception. Although early developments were motivated by practical experimental problems, random matrices are now used in fields as diverse as Riemann hypothesis, stochastic differential equations, condensed matter physics, statistical physics, chaotic systems, numerical linear algebra, neural networks, multivariate statistics, information theory, signal processing and small-world networks. This article provides a tutorial on random matrices which provides an overview of the theory and brings together in one source the most significant results recently obtained. Furthermore, the application of random matrix theory to the fundamental limits of wireless communication channels is described in depth.

2,308 citations


"Noncooperative Cellular Wireless wi..." refers background in this paper

  • ...It can be shown that the vector φkjΦ ∗ l has exactly the same probability distribution as does any row vector of Φl [15], [16]....

    [...]

Journal ArticleDOI
TL;DR: It is shown that the dirty paper achievable region achieves the sum-rate capacity of the MIMO BC by establishing that the maximum sum rate of this region equals an upper bound on the sum rate.
Abstract: We consider a multiuser multiple-input multiple- output (MIMO) Gaussian broadcast channel (BC), where the transmitter and receivers have multiple antennas. Since the MIMO BC is in general a nondegraded BC, its capacity region remains an unsolved problem. We establish a duality between what is termed the "dirty paper" achievable region (the Caire-Shamai (see Proc. IEEE Int. Symp. Information Theory, Washington, DC, June 2001, p.322) achievable region) for the MIMO BC and the capacity region of the MIMO multiple-access channel (MAC), which is easy to compute. Using this duality, we greatly reduce the computational complexity required for obtaining the dirty paper achievable region for the MIMO BC. We also show that the dirty paper achievable region achieves the sum-rate capacity of the MIMO BC by establishing that the maximum sum rate of this region equals an upper bound on the sum rate of the MIMO BC.

1,802 citations


"Noncooperative Cellular Wireless wi..." refers background in this paper

  • ...An alternative to a point-to-point MIMO system is a multiuser MIMO system [3], [4], [5], [6] in which an antenna array simultaneously serves a multiplicity of autonomous terminals....

    [...]