Xuemin Hong

Cooperative MIMO channel models: A survey

Cooperative multiple-input multiple-output technology allows a wireless network to coordinate among distributed antennas and achieve considerable performance gains similar to those provided by conventional MIMO systems. It promises significant improvements in spectral efficiency and network coverage and is a major candidate technology in various standard proposals for the fourth-generation wireless communication systems. For the design and accurate performance assessment of cooperative MIMO systems, realistic cooperative MIMO channel models are indispensable. This article provides an overview of the state of the art in cooperative MIMO channel modeling. We show that although the existing standardized point-to-point MIMO channel models can be applied to a certain extent to model cooperative MIMO channels, many new challenges remain in cooperative MIMO channel modeling, such as how to model mobile-to-mobile channels, and how to characterize the heterogeneity and correlation of multiple links at the system level appropriately.

Cognitive radio in 5G: A perspective on energy-spectral efficiency trade-off

A cognitive cellular network, which integrates conventional licensed cellular radio and cognitive radio into a holistic system, is a promising paradigm for the fifth generation mobile communication systems. Understanding the trade-off between energy efficiency, EE, and spectral efficiency, SE, in cognitive cellular networks is of fundamental importance for system design and optimization. This article presents recent research progress on the EE-SE trade-off of cognitive cellular networks. We show how EE-SE trade-off studies can be performed systematically with respect to different architectures, levels of analysis, and capacity metrics. Three representative examples are given to illustrate how EE-SE trade-off analysis can lead to important insights and useful design guidelines for future cognitive cellular networks.

Interference Modeling of Cognitive Radio Networks

Cognitive radio (secondary) networks have been proposed as means to improve the spectrum utilization. A secondary network can reuse the spectrum of a primary network under the condition that the primary services are not harmfully interrupted. In this paper, we study the distribution of the interference power at a primary receiver when the interfering secondary terminals are distributed in a Poisson field. We assume that a secondary terminal is able to cease its transmission if it is within a distance of R to the primary receiver. We derive a general formula for the characteristic function of the random interference generated by such a secondary network. With this general formula we investigate the impacts of R, shadowing, and small scale fading on the probability density function (PDF) of the interference power. We find that when there is no interference region (R = 0), the interference PDFs follow heavy-tailed alpha-stable distributions. In case that a proper interference region is defined by a positive value of R, the tails of the interference power PDFs can be significantly shortened. Moreover, the impacts of shadowing and small scale fading on the interference PDFs are studied and the small scale fading is found to be beneficial in terms of reducing the mean value and outage probability of the interference power.

Capacity Analysis of a Multi-Cell Multi-Antenna Cooperative Cellular Network with Co-Channel Interference

Characterization and modeling of co-channel interference is critical for the design and performance evaluation of realistic multi-cell cellular networks. In this paper, based on alpha stable processes, an analytical co-channel interference model is proposed for multi-cell multiple-input multi-output (MIMO) cellular networks. The impact of different channel parameters on the new interference model is analyzed numerically. Furthermore, the exact normalized downlink average capacity is derived for a multi-cell MIMO cellular network with co-channel interference. Moreover, the closed-form normalized downlink average capacity is derived for cell-edge users in multi-cell multiple-input single-output (MISO) cooperative cellular networks with co-channel interference. From the new co-channel interference model and capacity formulas, the impact of cooperative antennas and base stations on cell-edge user performance in the multi-cell multi-antenna cellular network is investigated by numerical methods. Numerical results show that cooperative transmission can improve the capacity performance of multi-cell multi-antenna cooperative cellular networks, especially in a scenario with a high density of interfering base stations. The capacity performance gain is degraded with the increased number of cooperative antennas or base stations.

Aggregate Interference Modeling in Cognitive Radio Networks with Power and Contention Control

In this paper, we present interference models for cognitive radio (CR) networks employing various interference management mechanisms including power control, contention control or hybrid power/contention control schemes. For the first case, a power control scheme is proposed to govern the transmission power of a CR node. For the second one, a contention control scheme at the media access control (MAC) layer, based on carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA), is proposed to coordinate the operation of CR nodes with transmission requests. The probability density functions (PDFs) of the interference received at a primary receiver from a CR network are first derived numerically for these two cases. For the hybrid case, where power and contention controls are jointly adopted by a CR node to govern its transmission, the interference is analyzed and compared with that of the first two schemes by simulations. Then, the interference PDFs under the first two control schemes are fitted by log-normal PDFs to reduce computation complexity. Moreover, the effect of a hidden primary receiver on the interference experienced at the receiver is investigated. It is demonstrated that both power and contention controls are effective approaches to alleviate the interference caused by CR networks. Some in-depth analysis of the impact of key parameters on the interference of CR networks is given as well.

Spatial-temporal correlation properties of the 3GPP spatial channel model and the kronecker MIMO channel model

The performance of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems is greatly influenced by the spatial-temporal correlation properties of the underlying MIMO channels. This paper investigates the spatial-temporal correlation characteristics of the spatial channel model (SCM) in the Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) and the Kronecker-based stochastic model (KBSM) at three levels, namely, the cluster level, link level, and system level. The KBSM has both the spatial separability and spatial-temporal separability at all the three levels. The spatial-temporal separability is observed for the SCM only at the system level, but not at the cluster and link levels. The SCM shows the spatial separability at the link and system levels, but not at the cluster level since its spatial correlation is related to the joint distribution of the angle of arrival (AoA) and angle of departure (AoD). The KBSM with the Gaussian-shaped power azimuth spectrum (PAS) is found to fit best the 3GPP SCM in terms of the spatial correlations. Despite its simplicity and analytical tractability, the KBSM is restricted to model only the average spatial-temporal behavior of MIMO channels. The SCM provides more insights of the variations of different MIMO channel realizations, but the implementation complexity is relatively high.

Multi-Hop Connectivity Probability in Infrastructure-Based Vehicular Networks

Infrastructure-based vehicular networks (consisting of a group of Base Stations (BSs) along the road) will be widely deployed to support Wireless Access in Vehicular Environment (WAVE) and a series of safety and non-safety related applications and services for vehicles on the road. As an important measure of user satisfaction level, uplink connectivity probability is defined as the probability that messages from vehicles can be received by the infrastructure (i.e., BSs) through multi-hop paths. While on the system side, downlink connectivity probability is defined as the probability that messages can be broadcasted from BSs to all vehicles through multi-hop paths, which indicates service coverage performance of a vehicular network. This paper proposes an analytical model to predict both uplink and downlink connectivity probabilities. Our analytical results, validated by simulations and experiments, reveal the trade-off between these two key performance metrics and the important system parameters, such as BS and vehicle densities, radio coverage (or transmission power), and maximum number of hops. This insightful knowledge enables vehicular network engineers and operators to effectively achieve high user satisfaction and good service coverage, with necessary deployment of BSs along the road according to traffic density, user requirements and service types.

Cognitive radio network management

The regulatory agencies have been pushed by the increasing demand for wireless ubiquitous connectivity to be ever more aggressive in providing innovative ways to use spectra efficiently. Driven by these new opportunities, the future radio systems should look for the optimized architecture, circuit, and algorithm as a whole. In this article, it has been investigated both the unique merits and the challenging tasks of combining policy-based management philosophy with cognitive radio technologies. Some example analysis have also been discussed. It is highly expected that the appropriate combination of policy-based management and CR will lead future wireless communications.

Secondary spectrum access networks

The radio spectrum is a precious resource that underpins various wireless services. It is traditionally regulated by a fixed frequency assignment policy, which allocates frequency bands to license holders for exclusive use. Dynamic spectrum access has been proposed as a promising approach to improve spectrum utilization by allowing new wireless systems to dynamically access or share the licensed band on a negotiated or an opportunistic basis.

Energy-Spectral Efficiency Trade-Off in Virtual MIMO Cellular Systems

Virtual multiple-input multiple-output (V-MIMO) technology promises significant performance enhancements to cellular systems in terms of spectral efficiency (SE) and energy efficiency (EE). How these two conflicting metrics scale up in large cellular V-MIMO networks is unclear. This paper studies the EE-SE trade-off of the uplink of a multi-user cellular V-MIMO system with decode-and-forward type protocols. We first express the trade-off in an implicit function and further derive closed-form formulas of the trade-off in low and high SE regimes. Unlike conventional MIMO systems, the EE-SE trade-off of the V-MIMO system is shown to be susceptible to many factors including protocol design (e.g., resource allocation) and scenario characteristics (e.g., user density). Focusing on the medium and high SE regimes, we propose a heuristic resource allocation algorithm to optimize the EE-SE trade-off. The fundamental performance limits of the optimized V-MIMO system are subsequently investigated and compared with conventional MIMO systems in different scenarios. Numerical results reveal a surprisingly chaotic behavior of V-MIMO systems when the user density scales up. Our analysis indicates that low frequency reuse factor, adaptive resource allocation, and user density control are critical to harness the full benefits of cellular V-MIMO systems.