Lizhong Zheng

Diversity and multiplexing: a fundamental tradeoff in multiple-antenna channels

Multiple antennas can be used for increasing the amount of diversity or the number of degrees of freedom in wireless communication systems. We propose the point of view that both types of gains can be simultaneously obtained for a given multiple-antenna channel, but there is a fundamental tradeoff between how much of each any coding scheme can get. For the richly scattered Rayleigh-fading channel, we give a simple characterization of the optimal tradeoff curve and use it to evaluate the performance of existing multiple antenna schemes.

Communication on the Grassmann manifold: a geometric approach to the noncoherent multiple-antenna channel

We study the capacity of multiple-antenna fading channels. We focus on the scenario where the fading coefficients vary quickly; thus an accurate estimation of the coefficients is generally not available to either the transmitter or the receiver. We use a noncoherent block fading model proposed by Marzetta and Hochwald (see ibid. vol.45, p.139-57, 1999). The model does not assume any channel side information at the receiver or at the transmitter, but assumes that the coefficients remain constant for a coherence interval of length T symbol periods. We compute the asymptotic capacity of this channel at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in terms of the coherence time T, the number of transmit antennas M, and the number of receive antennas N. While the capacity gain of the coherent multiple antenna channel is min{M, N} bits per second per Hertz for every 3-dB increase in SNR, the corresponding gain for the noncoherent channel turns out to be M* (1 - M*/T) bits per second per Hertz, where M*=min{M, N, [T/2]}. The capacity expression has a geometric interpretation as sphere packing in the Grassmann manifold.

Diversity-multiplexing tradeoff in multiple-access channels

In a point-to-point wireless fading channel, multiple transmit and receive antennas can be used to improve the reliability of reception (diversity gain) or increase the rate of communication for a fixed reliability level (multiplexing gain). In a multiple-access situation, multiple receive antennas can also be used to spatially separate signals from different users (multiple-access gain). Recent work has characterized the fundamental tradeoff between diversity and multiplexing gains in the point-to-point scenario. In this paper, we extend the results to a multiple-access fading channel. Our results characterize the fundamental tradeoff between the three types of gain and provide insights on the capabilities of multiple antennas in a network context.

Cooperative Routing in Static Wireless Networks

We study the problem of transmission-side diversity and routing in a static wireless network. It is assumed that each node in the network is equipped with a single omnidirectional antenna and that multiple nodes are allowed to coordinate their transmissions in order to obtain energy savings. We derive analytical results for achievable energy savings for both line and grid network topologies. It is shown that the energy savings of and are achievable in line and grid networks with a large number of nodes, respectively. We then develop a dynamic-programming-based algorithm for finding the optimal route in an arbitrary network, as well as suboptimal algorithms with polynomial complexity. We show through simulations that these algorithms can achieve average energy savings of about in random networks, as compared to the noncooperative schemes.

Amplify-and-Forward in Wireless Relay Networks: Rate, Diversity, and Network Size

A wireless network with fading and a single source-destination pair is considered. The information reaches the destination via multiple hops through a sequence of layers of single-antenna relays. At high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), the simple amplify-and-forward strategy is shown to be optimal in terms of degrees of freedom, because it achieves the degrees of freedom equal to a point-to-point multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system. Hence, the lack of coordination in relay nodes does not reduce the achievable degrees of freedom. The performance of this amplify-and-forward strategy degrades with increasing network size. This phenomenon is analyzed by finding the tradeoffs between network size, rate, and diversity. A lower bound on the diversity-multiplexing tradeoff for concatenation of multiple random Gaussian matrices is obtained. Also, it is shown that achievable network size in the outage formulation (short codes) is a lot smaller than the ergodic formulation (long codes).

Wireless channel allocation using an auction algorithm

We develop a novel auction-based algorithm to allow users to fairly compete for a wireless fading channel. We use the second-price auction mechanism whereby user bids for the channel, during each time slot, based on the fade state of the channel, and the user that makes the highest bid wins use of the channel by paying the second highest bid. Under the assumption that each user has a limited budget for bidding, we show the existence of a Nash equilibrium strategy, and the Nash equilibrium leads to a unique allocation for certain channel state distribution, such as the exponential distribution and the uniform distribution over [0, 1]. For uniformly distributed channel state, we establish that the aggregate throughput received by the users using the Nash equilibrium strategy is at least 3/4 of what can be obtained using an optimal centralized allocation that does not take fairness into account. We also show that the Nash equilibrium strategy leads to an allocation that is Pareto optimal (i.e., it is impossible to make some users better off without making some other users worse off). Based on the Nash equilibrium strategies of the second-price auction with money constraint, we further propose a centralized opportunistic scheduler that does not suffer the shortcomings associated with the proportional fair scheduler.

Channel Coherence in the Low-SNR Regime

Channel capacity in the limit of vanishing signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) per degree of freedom is known to be linear in SNR for fading and nonfading channels, regardless of channel state information at the receiver (CSIR). It has recently been shown that the significant engineering difference between the coherent and the noncoherent fading channels, including the requirement of peaky signaling and the resulting spectral efficiency, is determined by how the capacity limit is approached as SNR tends to zero, or in other words, the sublinear term in the capacity expression. In this paper, we show that this sublinear term is determined by the channel coherence level, which we define to quantify the relation between the SNR and the channel coherence time. This allows us to trace a continuum between the case with perfect CSIR and the case with no CSIR at all. Using this approach, we also evaluate the performance of suboptimal training schemes

Beyond Shannon: the quest for fundamental performance limits of wireless ad hoc networks

We describe a new theoretical framework for determining fundamental performance limits of wireless ad hoc networks. The framework expands the traditional definition of Shannon capacity to incorporate notions of delay and outage. Novel tools are described for upper and lower bounding the network performance regions associated with these metrics under a broad range of assumptions about channel and network dynamics, state information, and network topologies. We also develop a flexible and dynamic interface between network applications and the network performance regions to obtain the best end-to-end performance. Our proposed framework for determining performance limits of wireless networks embraces an interdisciplinary approach to this challenging problem that incorporates Shannon Theory along with network theory, combinatorics, optimization, stochastic control, and game theory. Preliminary results of this approach are described and promising future directions of research are outlined.

Channel coherence in the low SNR regime

The effect of channel coherence on the capacity and energy efficiency of noncoherent fading channels at low SNR is studied. A simple characterization is given, and a new approach is developed, which can be used to study a wide variety of problems for communications over a wideband channel. The flat block fading channel is studied, which transmits one scalar symbol per symbol time distorted by a multiplicative fading coefficient and the additive Gaussian noise.

Reliability and route diversity in wireless networks

We study the problem of communication reliability of wireless networks in a fading environment based on the outage probability formulation. The exact expression for the disconnect probability, the probability that a transmission by a node is not received correctly by any other node in the network, is obtained for one and two dimensional random networks. We obtain the end-to-end reliability of multi-hop transmission using the outage probability metric and develop algorithms for finding the most reliable route subject to power constraints as well as the minimum energy route subject to a reliability constraint. Finally, we study the tradeoff between outage probability and transmission power, with and without route diversity.