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This paper considers near-field multiuser communications based on sparse arrays (SAs). First, for the uniform SAs (USAs), we analyze the beam gains of channel steering vectors, which shows that increasing the antenna spacings can effectively improve the spatial resolution of the antenna arrays to enhance the sum rate of multiuser communications. Then, we investigate nonuniform SAs (NSAs) to mitigate the high multiuser interference from the grating lobes of the USAs. To maximize the sum rate of near-field multiuser communications, we optimize the antenna positions of the NSAs, where a successive convex approximation-based antenna position optimization algorithm is proposed. Moreover, we find that the channels of both the USAs and the NSAs show uniform sparsity in the defined surrogate distance-angle (SD-A) domain. Based on the channel sparsity, an on-grid SD-A-domain orthogonal matching pursuit (SDA-OMP) algorithm is developed to estimate multiuser channels. To further improve the resolution of the SDA-OMP, we also design an off-grid SD-A-domain iterative super-resolution channel estimation algorithm. Simulation results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed methods.

This paper investigates beam training for extremely large-scale multiple-input multiple-output systems. By considering both the near field and far field, a triple-refined hybrid-field beam training scheme is proposed, where high-accuracy estimates of channel parameters are obtained through three steps of progressive beam refinement. First, the hybrid-field beam gain (HFBG)-based first refinement method is developed. Based on the analysis of the HFBG, the first-refinement codebook is designed and the beam training is performed accordingly to narrow down the potential region of the channel path. Then, the maximum likelihood (ML)-based and principle of stationary phase (PSP)-based second refinement methods are developed. By exploiting the measurements of the beam training, the ML is used to estimate the channel parameters. To avoid the high computational complexity of ML, closed-form estimates of the channel parameters are derived according to the PSP. Moreover, the Gaussian approximation (GA)-based third refinement method is developed. The hybrid-field neighboring search is first performed to identify the potential region of the main lobe of the channel steering vector. Afterwards, by applying the GA, a least-squares estimator is developed to obtain the high-accuracy channel parameter estimation. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

A variable-phase-shifter (VPS) architecture with hybrid precoding for mixture use of phase shifters and switches, is proposed for millimeter wave massive multiple-input multiple-output communications. For the VPS architecture, a hybrid precoding design (HPD) scheme, called VPS-HPD, is proposed to optimize the phases according to the channel state information by alternately optimizing the analog precoder and digital precoder. To reduce the computational complexity of the VPS-HPD scheme, a low-complexity HPD scheme for the VPS architecture (VPS-LC-HPD) including alternating optimization in three stages is then proposed, where each stage has a closed-form solution and can be efficiently implemented. To reduce the hardware complexity introduced by the large number of switches, we consider a group-connected VPS architecture and propose a HPD scheme, where the HPD problem is divided into multiple independent subproblems with each subproblem flexibly solved by the VPS-HPD or VPS-LC-HPD scheme. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the propose schemes and show that the proposed schemes can achieve satisfactory spectral efficiency performance with reduced computational complexity or hardware complexity.

To develop a low-complexity multicast beamforming method for millimeter wave communications, we first propose a channel gain estimation method in this article. We use the beam sweeping to find the best codeword and its two neighboring codewords to form a composite beam. We then estimate the channel gain based on the composite beam, which is computed off-line by minimizing the variance of beam gain within beam coverage. With the estimated channel gain, we propose a multicast beamforming design method under the max-min fair (MMF) criterion. To reduce the computational complexity, we divide the large antenna array into several small-size sub-arrays, where the size of each sub-array is determined by the estimated channel gain. In particular, we introduce a phase factor for each sub-array to explore additional degree of freedom for the considered problem. Simulation results show that the proposed multicast beamforming design method can substantially reduce the computational complexity with little performance sacrifice compared to the existing methods.

In this paper, multiuser beam training based on hierarchical codebook for millimeter wave massive multi-input multi-output is investigated, where the base station (BS) simultaneously performs beam training with multiple user equipments (UEs). For the UEs, an alternative minimization method with a closed-form expression (AMCF) is proposed to design the hierarchical codebook under the constant modulus constraint. To speed up the convergence of the AMCF, an initialization method based on Zadoff-Chu sequence is proposed. For the BS, a simultaneous multiuser beam training scheme based on an adaptively designed hierarchical codebook is proposed, where the codewords in the current layer of the codebook are designed according to the beam training results of the previous layer. The codewords at the BS are designed with multiple mainlobes, each covering a spatial region for one or more UEs. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed hierarchical codebook design schemes and show that the proposed multiuser beam training scheme can approach the performance of the beam sweeping but with significantly reduced beam training overhead.

Energy efficiency (EE) is an important aspect of satellite communications. Different with the existing algorithms that typically use the first-order Taylor lower bound approximation to convert non-convex EE maximization (EEM) problems into convex ones, in this letter a two-step quadratic transformation method is presented. In the first step, the fractional form of the achievable rate over the total power consumption is converted into a non-fractional form based on quadratic transformation. In the second step, the fractional form of the signal power over the interference-and-noise power is further converted into a non-fractional form, still based on quadratic transformation. After the two-step quadratic transformation, the original EEM problem is converted into an equivalent convex one. Then an alternating optimization algorithm is presented to solve it by iteratively performing two stages until a stop condition is satisfied. Simulation results show that the presented algorithm can fast converge and its performance is better than that of the sequential convex approximation algorithm and the multibeam interference mitigation algorithm.

In this letter, we investigate time-domain channel estimation for wideband millimeter wave (mmWave) MIMO OFDM system. By transmitting frequency-domain pilot symbols as well as different beamforming vectors, we observe that the time-domain mmWave MIMO channels exhibit channel delay sparsity and especially block sparsity among different spatial directions. Then we propose a time-domain channel estimation exploiting block sparsity (TDCEBS) scheme, which always aims at finding the best nonzero block achieving the largest projection of the residue at each iterations. In particular, we evaluate the system performance using the QuaDRiGa which is recommended by 5G New Radio to generate wideband mmWave MIMO channels. The effectiveness of the proposed TDCEBS scheme is verified by the simulation results, as the proposed scheme outperforms the existing schemes.

In this letter, we consider hybrid beamforming for millimeter wave (mmWave) MIMO integrated sensing and communications (ISAC). We design the transmit beam of a dual-functional radar-communication (DFRC) base station (BS), aiming at approaching the objective radar beam pattern, subject to the constraints of the signal to interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) of communication users and total transmission power of the DFRC BS. To provide additional degree of freedom for the beam design problem, we introduce a phase vector to the objective beam pattern and propose an alternating minimization method to iteratively optimize the transmit beam and the phase vector, which involves second-order cone programming and constrained least squared estimation, respectively. Then based on the designed transmit beam, we determine the analog beamformer and digital beamformer subject to the constant envelop constraint of phase shifter network in mmWave MIMO, still using the alternating minimization method. Simulation results show that under the same SINR constraint of communication users, larger antenna array can achieve better radar beam quality.

The accuracy of channel state information (CSI) acquisition directly affects the performance of millimeter wave (mmWave) communications. In this article, we provide an overview on CSI acquisition, including beam training and channel estimation for mmWave massive multiple-input multiple-output systems. The beam training can avoid the estimation of a high-dimension channel matrix while the channel estimation can flexibly exploit advanced signal processing techniques. In addition to introducing the traditional and machine learning-based approaches in this article, we also compare different approaches in terms of spectral efficiency, computational complexity, and overhead.

Aiming at maximizing the energy efficiency (EE) of multicast multibeam satellite communications, we consider the precoding design under the total power and quality of service (QoS) constraints. Since the original EE maximization problem is nonconvex, it is sequentially converted into a concave-convex fractional programming problem by introducing some variables and using the first-order Taylor low bound approximation. Based on the Charnes-Cooper transformation, it is further converted into a convex problem. Then an iterative algorithm is presented to design the energy efficient precoding. To find feasible initialization points for the algorithm and ensure its convergence, another convex optimization problem with some nonnegative slack variables and a positive penalty parameter is iteratively solved. In particular, the algorithm is verified by the measured channel data of multibeam satellite communications.

In this paper, we develop two high-resolution channel estimation schemes based on the estimating signal parameters via the rotational invariance techniques (ESPRIT) method for frequency-selective millimeter wave (mmWave) massive MIMO systems. The first scheme is based on two-dimensional ESPRIT (TDE), which includes three stages of pilot transmission. This scheme first estimates the angles of arrival (AoA) and angles of departure (AoD) and then pairs the AoA and AoD. The other scheme reduces the pilot transmission from three stages to two stages and therefore reduces the pilot overhead. It is based on one-dimensional ESPRIT and minimum searching (EMS). It first estimates the AoD of each channel path and then searches the minimum from the identified mainlobe. To guarantee the robust channel estimation performance, we also develop a hybrid precoding and combining matrices design method so that the received signal power keeps almost the same for any AoA and AoD. Finally, we demonstrate that the proposed two schemes outperform the existing channel estimation schemes in terms of computational complexity and performance.

This article investigates beam alignment for multi-user millimeter wave (mmWave) massive multi-input multi-output system. Unlike the existing works using machine learning (ML), an alignment method with partial beams using ML (AMPBML) is proposed without any prior knowledge such as user location information. The neural network (NN) for the AMPBML is trained offline using simulated environments according to the mmWave channel model and is then deployed online to predict the beam distribution vector using partial beams. Afterwards, the beams for all users are all aligned simultaneously based on the indices of the dominant entries of the obtained beam distribution vector. Simulation results demonstrate that the AMPBML outperforms the existing methods, including the adaptive compressed sensing, hierarchical search, and multi-path decomposition and recovery, in terms of the total training time slots and the spectral efficiency.

Channel estimation and hybrid precoding are considered for multi-user millimeter wave massive multi-input multi-output system. A deep learning compressed sensing (DLCS) channel estimation scheme is proposed. The channel estimation neural network for the DLCS scheme is trained offline using simulated environments to predict the beamspace channel amplitude. Then the channel is reconstructed based on the obtained indices of dominant beamspace channel entries. A deep learning quantized phase (DLQP) hybrid precoder design method is developed after channel estimation. The training hybrid precoding neural network for the DLQP method is obtained offline considering the approximate phase quantization. Then the deployment hybrid precoding neural network (DHPNN) is obtained by replacing the approximate phase quantization with ideal phase quantization and the output of the DHPNN is the analog precoding vector. Finally, the analog precoding matrix is obtained by stacking the analog precoding vectors and the digital precoding matrix is calculated by zero-forcing. Simulation results demonstrate that the DLCS channel estimation scheme outperforms the existing schemes in terms of the normalized mean-squared error and the spectral efficiency, while the DLQP hybrid precoder design method has better spectral efficiency performance than other methods with low phase shifter resolution.

In this paper, a two-step codeword design approach for millimeter wave (mmWave) massive MIMO systems is presented. Ideal codewords are first designed, which ignores the hardware constraints in terms of phase shifter resolution and the number of RF chains. Based on the ideal codewords, practical codewords are then obtained taking the hardware constraints into consideration. For the ideal codeword design in the first step, additional phase is introduced to the beam gain to provide extra degree of freedom. We develop a phase-shifted ideal codeword design (PS-ICD) method, which is based on alternative minimization with each iteration having a closed-form solution and can be extended to design more general beamforming vectors with different beam patterns. Once the ideal codewords are obtained in the first step, the practical codeword design problem in the second step is to approach the ideal codewords by considering the hardware constraints of the hybrid precoding structure in terms of phase shifter resolution and the number of RF chains. We propose a fast search based alternative minimization (FS-AltMin) algorithm that alternatively designs the analog precoder and digital precoder. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed methods and show that the codewords designed based on the two-step approach outperform those designed by the existing approaches.

In this paper, a framework of beamspace channel estimation in millimeter wave (mmWave) massive MIMO system is proposed. The framework includes the design of hybrid precoding and combining matrix as well as the search method for the largest entry of over-sampled beamspace receiving matrix. Then based on the framework, three channel estimation schemes including identity matrix approximation (IA)-based scheme, scattered zero off-diagonal (SZO)-based scheme and concentrated zero off-diagonal (CZO)-based scheme are proposed. These schemes together with the existing channel estimation schemes are compared in terms of computational complexity, estimation error and total time slots for channel training. Simulation results show that the proposed schemes outperform the existing schemes and can approach the performance of the ideal case. In particular, total time slots for channel training can be substantially reduced.

Instead of merely improving the spectral efficiency (SE), improving the energy efficiency (EE) is another important concern for multibeam satellite systems, due to the power constraint of satellites. However, so far there has been no detailed work on the precoding design concerning the EE for multibeam satellite. In this work, the EE maximization problem is investigated for multibeam satellite systems under the total power constraint as well as the quality of service (QoS) constraints. Precoding design algorithms based on zero forcing (ZF) and sequential convex approximation (SCA) are presented respectively. In particular, these algorithms are verified by the real measured channel data of multibeam satellite systems. Numerical results show that the precoding algorithm based on SCA outperforms that based on ZF. It is also implied that the EE cannot be always improved by solely increasing the power of the satellite, while reducing the satellite operation power is an effective way for the EE improvement.

We investigate beam training and allocation for multiuser millimeter wave massive MIMO systems. An orthogonal pilot based beam training scheme is first developed to reduce the number of training times, where all users can simultaneously perform the beam training with the base station (BS). As the number of users increases, the same beam from the BS may point to different users, leading to beam conflict and multiuser interference. Therefore, a quality-of-service (QoS) constrained (QC) beam allocation scheme is proposed to maximize the equivalent channel gain of the QoS-satisfied users, under the premise that the number of the QoS-satisfied users without beam conflict is maximized. To reduce the overhead of beam training, two partial beam training schemes, an interlaced scanning (IS) and a selection probability (SP) based schemes, are proposed. The overhead of beam training for the IS-based scheme can be reduced by nearly half while the overhead for the SP-based scheme is flexible. Simulation results show that the QC-based beam allocation scheme can effectively mitigate the interference caused by the beam conflict and significantly improve the spectral efficiency while the IS-based and SP-based schemes significantly reduce the overhead of beam training at the cost of sacrificing spectral efficiency a little.

Beam training based on hierarchical codebook for millimeter wave (mmWave) massive MIMO is investigated. Unlike the existing work using the same hierarchical codebook to estimate different multi-path components (MPCs), dynamic hierarchical codebooks which are updated according to the estimated MPCs are adopted. Firstly, a generalized hierarchical codebook design method is proposed. Then based on this method, a beam training method which dynamically updates the hierarchical codebook by removing the contribution of the estimated MPCs from the codebook is proposed. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of our method and show that the proposed method outperforms the existing ones in terms of the success detection rate of beam training.

Aiming at maximizing the achievable sum-rate of wideband multiuser mmWave massive MIMO systems, the hybrid precoding is studied. Since each computation of the achievable sum-rate can be performed only after the analog precoder and digital precoder are both determined, the maximization of the achievable sum-rate has intractable computational complexity. By introducing the interference free (IF) achievable sum-rate, the design of the analog and digital precoders can be decoupled. To avoid the beam conflict and maximize the IF achievable sum-rate, a Hungarian-based codeword selection algorithm is proposed for the analog precoding design. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme and show that better performance can be achieved compared with existing schemes.

In this paper, we investigate the downlink transmission for cache-enabled fog radio access networks aiming at maximizing the delivery rate under the constraints of fronthaul capacity, maximum transmit power, and size of files. To reduce the delivery latency and the burden on fronthaul links and make full use of the local cache and baseband signal processing capabilities of enhanced remote radio heads (eRRHs), a two-level transmission scheme including cache-level and network-level transmission is proposed. In cache-level transmission, only requested files cached at the local cache are transmitted to the corresponding users. The duration of cache-level transmission is the delay caused by the transfer between the baseband unit (BBU) and eRRHs as well as the signal processing at the BBU. The remaining requested files are jointly transmitted to the corresponding users at network-level transmission. For cache-level transmission, a centralized optimization algorithm is firstly presented and then a decentralized optimization algorithm is provided to avoid the exchange of signaling among eRRHs. Meanwhile, another centralized optimization algorithm is presented to tackle the optimization problem for network-level transmission. All presented algorithms are proved to converge to the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) solutions of the problems. Numerical results are provided to validate the effectiveness of the proposed transmission scheme as well as evaluating the system performance., Comment: 28 pages, 8 figures, to appear in IEEE Transactions on Communications, 2018

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication operated in frequency bands between 30 and 300 GHz has attracted extensive attention due to the potential ability of offering orders of magnitude greater bandwidths combined with further gains via beamforming and spatial multiplexing from multi-element antenna arrays. MmWave system may exploit the hybrid analog and digital precoding to achieve simultaneously the diversity, array and multiplexing gain with a lower cost of implementation. Motivated by this, in this paper, we investigate the design of hybrid precoder and combiner with sub-connected architecture, where each radio frequency chain is connected to only a subset of base station (BS) antennas from the perspective of energy efficient transmission. The problem of interest is a non-convex and NP-hard problem that is difficult to solve directly. In order to address it, we resort to design a two-layer optimization method to solve the problem of interest by exploiting jointly the interference alignment and fractional programming. First, the analog precoder and combiner are optimized via the alternating-direction optimization method (ADOM) where the phase shifter can be easily adjusted with an analytical structure. Then, we optimize the digital precoder and combiner based on an effective multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel coefficient. The convergence of the proposed algorithms is proved using the monotonic boundary theorem and fractional programming theory. Extensive simulation results are given to validate the effectiveness of the presented method and to evaluate the energy efficiency performance under various system configurations., Comment: 22 pages, 8 figures, accepted by IEEE ACCESS 2017

Massive spatial modulation (SM)-MIMO, which employs massive low-cost antennas but few power-hungry transmit radio frequency (RF) chains at the transmitter, is recently proposed to provide both high spectrum efficiency and energy efficiency for future green communications. However, in massive SM-MIMO, the optimal maximum likelihood (ML) detector has the prohibitively high complexity, while state-of-the-art low-complexity detectors for conventional small-scale SM-MIMO suffer from an obvious performance loss. In this paper, by exploiting the structured sparsity of multiple SM signals, we propose a low-complexity signal detector based on structured compressive sensing (SCS) to improve the signal detection performance. Specifically, we first propose the grouped transmission scheme at the transmitter, where multiple SM signals in several continuous time slots are grouped to carry the common spatial constellation symbol to introduce the desired structured sparsity. Accordingly, a structured subspace pursuit (SSP) algorithm is proposed at the receiver to jointly detect multiple SM signals by leveraging the structured sparsity. In addition, we also propose the SM signal interleaving to permute SM signals in the same transmission group, whereby the channel diversity can be exploited to further improve the signal detection performance. Theoretical analysis quantifies the performance gain from SM signal interleaving, and simulation results demonstrate the near-optimal performance of the proposed scheme., Comment: 8 pages 7 figures, accepted by IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology. Keywords: Spatial modulation (SM), massive MIMO, signal detection, compressive sensing (CS), signal interleaving