Atílio Gameiro

Power allocation strategies for distributed precoded multicell based systems

Multicell cooperation is a promising solution for cellular wireless systems to mitigate intercell interference, improve system fairness, and increase capacity. In this article, we propose power allocation techniques for the downlink of distributed, precoded, multicell cellular-based systems. The precoder is designed in two phases: first the intercell interference is removed by applying a set of distributed precoding vectors; then the system is further optimized through power allocation. Three centralized power allocation algorithms with per-BS power constraint and different complexity trade-offs are proposed: one optimal in terms of minimization of the instantaneous average bit error rate (BER), and two suboptimal. In this latter approach, the powers are computed in two phases. First, the powers are derived under total power constraint (TPC) and two criterions are considered, namely, minimization of the instantaneous average BER and minimization of the sum of inverse of signal-to-noise ratio. Then, the final powers are computed to satisfy the individual per-BS power constraint. The performance of the proposed schemes is evaluated, considering typical pedestrian scenarios based on LTE specifications. The numerical results show that the proposed suboptimal schemes achieve a performance very close to the optimal but with lower computational complexity. Moreover, the performance of the proposed per-BS precoding schemes is close to the one obtained considering TPC over a supercell.

Distributed antenna system capacity scaling [Coordinated and Distributed MIMO]

The distributed antenna system concept promises to enhance the capacity and diversity of next-generation wireless communication networks, due to the inherently added micro and macro diversity. In this article we first give an overview of the main benefits of a DAS in relation to a collocated antenna system. Next we study the sum-capacity scaling of a multi-user DAS with the number of jointly processed transmit antennas in the downlink. In a practical system this scaling will have implications on the number of antennas worth jointly processing, since the costs of processing an additional antenna can be higher than the additional benefits obtained. Results show that the most important system property to attain the highest capacity gains is symmetry, and the users that attain the maximum gain are those at cell borders. They also confirm that the main DAS feature that makes possible its gains over the CAS architecture are the additional degrees of freedom/diversity provided by such an architecture, which increase the probability of finding a system state with high symmetry and of each user being near one of the transmit antennas.

Pre-filtering antenna array for downlink TDD MC-CDMA systems

This communication deals with downlink time division duplex MC-CDMA system, and presents a frequency domain pre-filtering technique, where the base station is equipped with an antenna array. We show that the space filtering approach proposed allows to format the transmitted signals so that the multiple access interference at the mobile terminals is reduced allowing to transfer a significant part of the computational burden to the base station, and therefore enabling the use of a very low complex receiver at mobile. This approach uses the time division duplex channel reciprocity between uplink and downlink to obtain the channel state information. Simulation results are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed pre-filtering algorithm.

Virtual MIMO schemes for downlink space-frequency coding OFDM systems

In this paper we investigate the performance of single-relay cooperative scheme, where the source is equipped with a 2-antenna array and both the relay and destination with a single antenna. We consider Amplify-and-Forward, Decode-and-Forward and Selective Decode-and-Forward relaying protocols and a space-frequency block coding designed for DL OFDM based systems is employed. Signals expressions are derived for each relay protocol under various scenarios, considering power constraint imposed on cooperating nodes. The aim of this work is to evaluate this Virtual MIMO scheme in realistic scenarios (e.g. correlated antennas, precise channel models, Doppler effects) for implementation purposes in a system with LTE based parameters and considering channel turbo coding. The coded performance of the proposed Virtual MIMO scheme is evaluated, and compared against non-cooperative OFDM based systems, for typical pedestrian scenarios based on LTE specifications. The proposed cooperative scheme outperforms the co-located MISO and MIMO for some scenarios.

Opportunistic use of 3G uplink Licensed Bands

Radio frequency spectrum is a highly expensive commodity. However, UMTS UL bands capacity has been mainly underutilized due typical Internet traffic asymmetry. In this paper we consider a secondary wireless system that operates over the UMTS UL bands in an opportunistic way. The opportunistic radios (OR) sense the path loss between its location and the UMTS base station. With this sensing information the ORs adapts its power to avoid harmful interference with the UMTS system. Sensing is performed exploiting cyclostationary features of the UMTS signal and no cooperation between the two networks is assumed. Spectrum opportunities are computed and coexistence between the two wireless networks is analyzed.

Set Optimization for Efficient Interference Alignment in Heterogeneous Networks

To increase capacity and offload traffic from the current macro-cell cellular system, operators are considering the deployment of small cells. It is expected that both the small and macro-cells will coexist in the same spectrum, resulting in unsustainable levels of interference. Interference alignment is considered as an effective method to deal with such interference. By using interference alignment, the small cells align their transmission along a common direction to allow the macro-cell receiver to completely remove it. It is clear that, if the two systems have no limitations on the information that may be exchanged between them to perform the signal design, then the performance may be improved in comparison to the case of no or partial cooperation. However, this full-cooperation strategy requires a high-rate connection between the macro and small cells, which may not be available. To overcome this problem, we consider that the alignment direction is selected from a finite set, known to both macro- and small-cell terminals. We provide sufficient conditions for this set that guarantee full diversity, at the macro-cell, and propose an efficient method to optimize the set elements. Results show that an alignment set with a description length of 1 bit is enough to achieve the same diversity as in the case where an infinite amount of information is exchanged between both systems. The proposed set optimization method achieves better performance than random vector quantization and similar performance to Grassmannian quantization.

Transmission techniques for downlink multi-antenna MC-CDMA systems in a beyond-3G context

The combination of multiple antennas and multi-carrier code division multiple-access (MC-CDMA) is a strong candidate for the downlink of the next generation mobile communications. The study of such systems in scenarios that model real-life transmissions is an additional step towards an optimized achievement. We consider a realistic MIMO channel with two or four transmit antennas and up to two receive antennas, and channel state information (CSI) mismatches. Depending on the mobile terminal (MT) class, its number of antennas or complexity allowed, different data-rates are proposed with turbo-coding and asymptotic spectral efficiencies from 1 to 4.5 bit/s/Hz, using three algorithms developed within the European IST-MATRICE project. These algorithms can be classified according to the degree of CSI at base-station (BS): i) Transmit space-frequency prefiltering based on constrained zero-forcing algorithm with complete CSI at BS; ii) transmit beamforming based on spatial correlation matrix estimation from partial CSI at BS; iii) orthogonal space-time block coding based on Alamouti scheme without CSI at BS. All presented schemes require a reasonable complexity at MT, and are compatible with a single-antenna receiver. A choice between these algorithms is proposed in order to significantly improve the performance of MC-CDMA and to cover the different environments considered for the next generation cellular systems. For beyond-3G, we propose prefiltering for indoor and pedestrian microcell environments, beamforming for suburban macrocells including highspeed train, and space-time coding for urban conditions with moderate to high speeds.

Fiber Optic Networks for Distributed Radio Architectures: FUTON Concept and Operation

The growing importance of wireless communications has been driving the research and development of advanced network architectures to enable the cost-effective support of large numbers of users at very high data rates. In this context, the FUTON project aims to fulfil the objectives of the so-called 4th Generation (4G) wireless communications through an innovative Distributed Antenna System (DAS) with centralized signal processing. An overview of the FUTON concept is presented in this paper, with emphasis on the optical link design for radio-over-fiber communication providing the virtual-MIMO functionalities between multiple remote antenna units with a centralized processing site. Also, the units being fabricated for the final demonstration are described, and some preliminary measurements are presented.

Iterative Frequency-Domain Detection for IA-Precoded MC-CDMA Systems

Interference alignment (IA) is a promising technique that allows high capacity gains in interfering channels. On the other hand, iterative frequency-domain detection receivers based on the IB-DFE concept (Iterative Block Decision Feedback Equalization) can efficiently exploit the inherent space-frequency diversity of the MIMO MC-CDMA systems. In this paper we combine iterative IA precoding at the transmitter with IB-DFE based processing at the receiver for MC-CDMA systems. The receiver is designed in two steps: first a linear filter is used to mitigate the inter-user aligned interference, and then an iterative frequency-domain receiver is designed to efficiently separate the spatial streams in the presence of residual inter-user aligned interference at the output of the filter. The matrices for this non-linear space-frequency equalizer are obtained by minimizing the overall mean square error (MSE) of all data streams at each subcarrier. Our receiver structure is explicitly designed taking into account the residual inter-user interference, allowing both an efficient separation of the spatial streams and a reduction in the number of iterations of the IA procedure. We also propose a simple, yet accurate analytical approach for obtaining the performance of the proposed receiver structure. Our scheme achieves the maximum degrees of freedom provided by the IA precoding, while allowing an almost optimum space-diversity gain, with performance close to the matched filter bound (MFB).

An OFDM Symbol Design for Reduced Complexity MMSE Channel Estimation

In this paper we revisit the minimum mean square error (MMSE) pilot-aided channel estimation for broadband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. The careful design of OFDM symbol leads to the proposal of a simplified time-domain (TD) MMSE estimator. By exploring the Fourier properties of the symbol, the investigated method eliminates the need to use direct or inverse discrete Fourier transforms (DFT/IDFT) before the channel estimation, by using the TD received symbol samples as the input to the MMSE filter. Moreover, performing the estimation in TD (where the channel impulse response (CIR) energy is mainly limit to a small set of samples), makes way to a simple, nonetheless efficient estimation of the filter parameters. The performance of the channel estimation scheme, using the estimated parameters, presents a tolerable degradation when compared with the ideal situation (a-priori knowledge of the channel correlation and noise variance), while exhibiting a reduced computational load. The feasibility of the investigated method is substantiated by system simulation using indoor and outdoor wireless channel models.