Zhaocheng Wang

Non-orthogonal multiple access for 5G: solutions, challenges, opportunities, and future research trends

The increasing demand of mobile Internet and the Internet of Things poses challenging requirements for 5G wireless communications, such as high spectral efficiency and massive connectivity. In this article, a promising technology, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), is discussed, which can address some of these challenges for 5G. Different from conventional orthogonal multiple access technologies, NOMA can accommodate much more users via nonorthogonal resource allocation. We divide existing dominant NOMA schemes into two categories: power-domain multiplexing and code-domain multiplexing, and the corresponding schemes include power-domain NOMA, multiple access with low-density spreading, sparse code multiple access, multi-user shared access, pattern division multiple access, and so on. We discuss their principles, key features, and pros/cons, and then provide a comprehensive comparison of these solutions from the perspective of spectral efficiency, system performance, receiver complexity, and so on. In addition, challenges, opportunities, and future research trends for NOMA design are highlighted to provide some insight on the potential future work for researchers in this field. Finally, to leverage different multiple access schemes including both conventional OMA and new NOMA, we propose the concept of software defined multiple access (SoDeMA), which enables adaptive configuration of available multiple access schemes to support diverse services and applications in future 5G networks.

Spectrally Efficient Time-Frequency Training OFDM for Mobile Large-Scale MIMO Systems

Large-scale orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is a promising candidate to achieve the spectral efficiency up to several tens of bps/Hz for future wireless communications. One key challenge to realize practical large-scale OFDM MIMO systems is high-dimensional channel estimation in mobile multipath channels. In this paper, we propose the time-frequency training OFDM (TFT-OFDM) transmission scheme for large-scale MIMO systems, where each TFT-OFDM symbol without cyclic prefix adopts the time-domain training sequence (TS) and the frequency-domain orthogonal grouped pilots as the time-frequency training information. At the receiver, the corresponding time-frequency joint channel estimation method is proposed to accurately track the channel variation, whereby the received time-domain TS is used for path delays estimation without interference cancellation, while the path gains are acquired by the frequency-domain pilots. The channel property that path delays vary much slower than path gains is further exploited to improve the estimation performance, and the sparse nature of wireless channel is utilized to acquire the path gains by very few pilots. We also derive the theoretical Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) of the proposed channel estimator. Compared with conventional large-scale OFDM MIMO systems, the proposed TFT-OFDM MIMO scheme achieves higher spectral efficiency as well as the coded bit error rate performance close to the ergodic channel capacity in mobile environments.

Next-generation digital television terrestrial broadcasting systems: Key technologies and research trends

In the last two decades, digital television terrestrial broadcasting (DTTB) systems have been deployed worldwide. With the approval of the fourth DTTB standard called Digital Television/ Terrestrial Multimedia Broadcasting (DTMB) by International Telecommunications Union (ITU) in December 2011, the research on first-generation DTTB standards is coming to an end. Recently, with the rapid progress of advanced signal processing technologies, nextgeneration DTTB systems like Digital Video Broadcasting-Terrestrial-Second Generation (DVB-T2) have been extensively studied and developed to provide more types of services with higher spectral efficiency and better performance. This article starts from the brief review of the first-generation DTTB standards and the current status of emerging second-generation DTTB systems, then focuses on the common key technologies behind them instead of describing the specific techniques adopted by various standards. The state-of-the-art, technical challenges, and the most recent achievements in the field are addressed. The future research trends are discussed as well. In addition, the scheme of integrating DTTB and Internet is proposed to solve the crucial problem of information expansion.

MmWave massive-MIMO-based wireless backhaul for the 5G ultra-dense network

The ultra-dense network (UDN) has been considered as a promising candidate for future 5G networks to meet the explosive data demand. To realize UDN, a reliable, gigahertz bandwidth, and cost-effective backhaul connecting ultradense small-cell BSs and macrocell BS are prerequisite. Millimeter-wave can provide the potential gigabit-per-second traffic for wireless backhaul. Moreover, mmWave can easily be integrated with massive MIMO for improved link reliability. In this article, we discuss the feasibility of mmWave massive-MIMO-based wireless backhaul for 5G UDN, and the benefits and challenges are also addressed. In particular, we propose a digitally controlled phase shifter network (DPSN)-based hybrid precoding/combining scheme for mmWave massive MIMO, whereby the low-rank property of the mmWave massive MIMO channel matrix is leveraged to reduce the required cost and complexity of a transceiver with a negligible performance loss. One key feature of the proposed scheme is that the macrocell BS can simultaneously support multiple small-cell BSs with multiple streams for each small-cell BS, which is essentially different from conventional hybrid precoding/combining schemes, typically limited to single-user MIMO with multiple streams or multi-user MIMO with single stream for each user. Based on the proposed scheme, we further explore the fundamental issues of developing mmWave massive MIMO for wireless backhaul, and the associated challenges, insight, and prospects to enable mmWave massive-MIMO-based wireless backhaul for 5G UDN are discussed.

Spatially Common Sparsity Based Adaptive Channel Estimation and Feedback for FDD Massive MIMO

Presents a list of articles published by the IEEE Signal Processing Society (SPS) that ranked among the top 100 most downloaded IEEE Xplore articles.

Time-Frequency Training OFDM with High Spectral Efficiency and Reliable Performance in High Speed Environments

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is widely recognized as the key technology for the next generation broadband wireless communication (BWC) systems. Besides high spectral efficiency, reliable performance over fast fading channels is becoming more and more important for OFDM-based BWC systems, especially when high speed cars, trains and subways are playing an increasingly indispensable role in our daily life. The time domain synchronous OFDM (TDS-OFDM) has higher spectral efficiency than the standard cyclic prefix OFDM (CP-OFDM), but suffers from severe performance loss over high speed mobile channels since the required iterative interference cancellation between the training sequence (TS) and the OFDM data block. In this paper, a fundamentally distinct OFDM-based transmission scheme called time-frequency training OFDM (TFT-OFDM) is proposed, whereby every TFT-OFDM symbol has training information both in the time and frequency domains. Unlike TDS-OFDM or CP-OFDM where the channel estimation is solely dependent on either time-domain TS or frequency-domain pilots, the joint time-frequency channel estimation for TFT-OFDM utilizes the time-domain TS without interference cancellation to merely acquire the path delay information of the channel, while the path coefficients are estimated by using the frequency-domain grouped pilots. The redundant grouped pilots only occupy about 3% of the total subcarriers, thus TFT-OFDM still has much higher spectral efficiency than CP-OFDM by about 8.5% in typical applications. Simulation results also demonstrate that TFT-OFDM outperforms CP-OFDM and TDS-OFDM in high speed mobile environments.

Multiple Mobile Data Offloading Through Disruption Tolerant Networks

To cope with explosive traffic demands on current cellular networks of limited capacity, Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN) is used to offload traffic from cellular networks to high capacity and free device-to-device networks. Current DTN-based mobile data offloading models are based on simple and unrealistic network assumptions which do not take into account the heterogeneity of mobile data and mobile users. We establish a mathematical framework to study the problem of multiple-type mobile data offloading under realistic assumptions, where (i) mobile data are heterogeneous in terms of size and lifetime; (ii) mobile users have different data subscribing interests; and (iii) the storages of offloading helpers are limited. We formulate the objective of achieving maximum mobile data offloading as a submodular function maximization problem with multiple linear constraints of limited storage, and propose three algorithms, suitable for the generic and more specific offloading scenarios, respectively, to solve this challenging optimization problem. We show that the designed algorithms effectively offload data to the DTN by using both the theoretical analysis and simulation investigations which employ both real human and vehicular mobility traces.

Compressive Sensing Based Time Domain Synchronous OFDM Transmission for Vehicular Communications

Time domain synchronous OFDM (TDS-OFDM) has higher spectral efficiency and faster synchronization than standard cyclic prefix OFDM (CP-OFDM), but suffers from the difficulty of supporting 256QAM in low-speed vehicular channels with long delay spread and the performance loss over fast time-varying vehicular channels. This paper addresses how to efficiently use the compressive sensing (CS) theory to solve those problems. First, we break through the conventional concept of cancelling the interferences if present, and propose the idea of using the inter-block-interference (IBI)-free region of small size to reconstruct the high-dimensional sparse multipath channel, whereby no interference cancellation is required any more. In this way, without changing the current signal structure of TDS-OFDM at the transmitter, the mutually conditional time-domain channel estimation and frequency-domain data detection in conventional TDS-OFDM receivers can be decoupled. Second, we propose the parameterized channel estimation method based on priori aided compressive sampling matching pursuit (PA-CoSaMP) algorithm to achieve reliable performance over vehicular channels, whereby partial channel priori available in TDS-OFDM is used to improve the performance and reduce the complexity of the classical CoSaMP signal recovery algorithm. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can support the 256QAM and gain improved performance over fast fading channels.

Spectrum- and Energy-Efficient OFDM Based on Simultaneous Multi-Channel Reconstruction

Time domain synchronous OFDM (TDS-OFDM) has a higher spectrum and energy efficiency than standard cyclic prefix OFDM (CP-OFDM) by replacing the unknown CP with a known pseudorandom noise (PN) sequence. However, due to mutual interference between the PN sequence and the OFDM data block, TDS-OFDM cannot support high-order modulation schemes such as 256QAM in realistic static channels with large delay spread or high-definition television (HDTV) delivery in fast fading channels. To solve these problems, we propose the idea of using multiple inter-block-interference (IBI)-free regions of small size to realize simultaneous multi-channel reconstruction under the framework of structured compressive sensing (SCS). This is enabled by jointly exploiting the sparsity of wireless channels as well as the characteristic that path delays vary much slower than path gains. In this way, the mutually conditional time-domain channel estimation and frequency-domain data demodulation in TDS-OFDM can be decoupled without the use of iterative interference removal. The Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRLB) of the proposed estimation scheme is also derived. Moreover, the guard interval amplitude in TDS-OFDM can be reduced to improve the energy efficiency, which is infeasible for CP-OFDM. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed SCS-aided TDS-OFDM scheme has a higher spectrum and energy efficiency than CP-OFDM by more than 10% and 20% respectively in typical applications.

Visible light communications in heterogeneous networks: Paving the way for user-centric design

At the time of this writing, there is substantial research interest in the subject of visible light communications (VLC) owing to its ability to offer significant traffic offloading potential in highly crowded radio frequency (RF) scenarios. We introduce the user-centric design of VLC for heterogeneous networks (HetNet), where three key aspects are identified and elaborated on: signal coverage quality, system control, and service provision aspects. More explicitly, the concepts of amorphous cell formation as well as separated up-link (UL) and down-link (DL), decoupled data and control, dynamic load balancing (LB), etc., all demand radically new thinking. The advocated user-centric VLC design is of key significance in the small-cell scenarios of the emerging 5G design philosophy.