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Xinjiang Qitai is constructing a 110-m fully steerable radio telescope (QiTai radio Telescope [QTT]) equipped with a phased array feeds (PAF) receiver, which will install the focal plane operating from 0.7 to 1.8 GHz. In this article, we introduce a PAF receiver model for beamforming, and the numerical model of the internal and external noise for this PAF receiver is provided using electromagnetic field simulation software. The linear constraint minimum variance (LCMV) algorithm is used to simulate the interference mitigation. The interference mitigation rate is from 0.581 to 0.921, and the signal restoration rate is from 0.998 to 1.512 within the error range of an interference arrival angle of 10°. This conclusion can be used in the signal correction of the PAF receiver for interference mitigation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addition to the filter coefficients, the location of the microphone array is a crucial factor in improving the overall performance of a beamformer. The optimal microphone array placement can considerably enhance speech quality. However, the optimization problem with microphone configuration variables is non-convex and highly non-linear. Heuristic algorithms that are frequently employed take a long time and have a chance of missing the optimal microphone array placement design. We extend the Bayesian optimization method to solve the microphone array configuration design problem. The proposed Bayesian optimization method does not depend on gradient and Hessian approximations and makes use of all the information available from prior evaluations. Furthermore, Gaussian process regression and acquisition functions make up the Bayesian optimization method. The objective function is given a prior probabilistic model through Gaussian process regression, which exploits this model while integrating out uncertainty. The acquisition function is adopted to decide the next placement point based upon the incumbent optimum with the posterior distribution. Numerical experiments have demonstrated that the Bayesian optimization method could find a similar or better microphone array placement compared with the hybrid descent method and computational time is significantly reduced. Our proposed method is at least four times faster than the hybrid descent method to find the optimal microphone array configuration from the numerical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In addition to the filter coefficients, the location of the microphone array is a crucial factor in improving the overall performance of a beamformer. The optimal microphone array placement can considerably enhance speech quality. However, the optimization problem with microphone configuration variables is non-convex and highly non-linear. Heuristic algorithms that are frequently employed take a long time and have a chance of missing the optimal microphone array placement design. We extend the Bayesian optimization method to solve the microphone array configuration design problem. The proposed Bayesian optimization method does not depend on gradient and Hessian approximations and makes use of all the information available from prior evaluations. Furthermore, Gaussian process regression and acquisition functions make up the Bayesian optimization method. The objective function is given a prior probabilistic model through Gaussian process regression, which exploits this model while integrating out uncertainty. The acquisition function is adopted to decide the next placement point based upon the incumbent optimum with the posterior distribution. Numerical experiments have demonstrated that the Bayesian optimization method could find a similar or better microphone array placement compared with the hybrid descent method and computational time is significantly reduced. Our proposed method is at least four times faster than the hybrid descent method to find the optimal microphone array configuration from the numerical results.

Abstract Microphone and speaker array designs have increasingly diverged from simple topologies due to diversity of physical host geometries and use cases. Effective beamformer design must now account for variation in the array’s acoustic radiation pattern, spatial distribution of target and noise sources, and intended beampattern directivity. Relevant tasks such as representing complex pressure fields, specifying spatial priors, and composing beampatterns can be efficiently synthesized using spherical harmonic (SH) basis functions. This paper extends the expansion of common stationary covariance functions onto the SHs and proposes models for encoding magnitude functions on a sphere. Conventional beamformer designs are reformulated in terms of magnitude density functions and beampatterns along SH bases. Applications to speaker far-field response fitting, cross-talk cancelation design, and microphone beampattern fitting are presented.

This article deals with the analysis of the multi-cell association setup, and it exploits the possibility of enhancing coverage in the envisioned sixth generation (6G) large-scale cellular networks. Specifically, we propose a simple, effective approach for finding a closed-form solution to the coverage probability of a given user in a multi-cell association regime of downlink multiple-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) systems. In particular, a Rayleigh fading channel is considered, wherein the transmitter has only the knowledge of the second-order statistics of the channel. The proposed work uses an indefinite quadratic formulation method and thereby investigates the effect of cell association in a correlated downlink broadcast channel with co-channel interference, additive white noise, and multiple transceiver antenna elements. In the results, we show that a predefined signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) threshold dictates an effective multi-cell association setup, and we identify the region in which a multi-cell association performs better that a single association-based network. The derived theoretical expressions in this paper are validated by the same means of simulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Microphone and speaker array designs have increasingly diverged from simple topologies due to diversity of physical host geometries and use cases. Effective beamformer design must now account for variation in the array's acoustic radiation pattern, spatial distribution of target and noise sources, and intended beampattern directivity. Relevant tasks such as representing complex pressure fields, specifying spatial priors, and composing beampatterns can be efficiently synthesized using spherical harmonic (SH) basis functions. This paper extends the expansion of common stationary covariance functions onto the SHs and proposes models for encoding magnitude functions on a sphere. Conventional beamformer designs are reformulated in terms of magnitude density functions and beampatterns along SH bases. Applications to speaker far-field response fitting, cross-talk cancelation design, and microphone beampattern fitting are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article deals with the analysis of the multi-cell association setup, and it exploits the possibility of enhancing coverage in the envisioned sixth generation (6G) large-scale cellular networks. Specifically, we propose a simple, effective approach for finding a closed-form solution to the coverage probability of a given user in a multi-cell association regime of downlink multiple-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) systems. In particular, a Rayleigh fading channel is considered, wherein the transmitter has only the knowledge of the second-order statistics of the channel. The proposed work uses an indefinite quadratic formulation method and thereby investigates the effect of cell association in a correlated downlink broadcast channel with co-channel interference, additive white noise, and multiple transceiver antenna elements. In the results, we show that a predefined signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) threshold dictates an effective multi-cell association setup, and we identify the region in which a multi-cell association performs better that a single association-based network. The derived theoretical expressions in this paper are validated by the same means of simulation.

The capability of massive multiple-input multiple-output (mMIMO) systems supporting the throughput requirement of as many users as possible is investigated. The bottleneck of serving small numbers of users by a large number of transmit antennas in conventional mMIMO is unblocked by a new time-fraction-wise beamforming technique, which focuses signal transmission in fractions of a time slot. Based on this time-fraction-wise signal transmission, a new user service scheduling scheme for multi-cell mMIMO, whose cell-edge users suffer not only poor channel conditions but also multi-cell interference, is proposed to support a large user-population. We demonstrate that the numbers of users served by our multi-cell mMIMO within a time-slot may be as high as twice the number of its transmit antennas. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider beamforming schemes for the multi-antenna decode-and-forward (DF) relays that maximize the secrecy rate (SR) in the relay wiretap channel. Both full-duplex (FD) and half-duplex (HD) relays are considered, where the FD relay fights the loop-back self-interference while maximizing the SR. The HD relay beamforming is derived from the FD case as a byproduct. The facts that, the weaker link among the two hops in the DF relay network dominates, the throughput and the first hop is shared among the destination and the eavesdroppers make us divide the beamformer solution space into three separate regions. Since only two of the three regions effectively produce non-negative SR, separate beamformer designs for these two effective regions are provided. Numerical results reveal performance trade off of FD and HD modes in various channel configurations, where the two challenges of self-interference suppression and the protection from eavesdropping ask different requirements for the beamforming.

In this paper, we consider a system where full-duplex (FD) base-stations (BSs) communicate with half-duplex (HD) downlink (DL) and uplink (UL) users in a multi-user multi-cell network, where all nodes are equipped with multiple antennas. The introduction of FD BSs offers potential to increase spectral efficiency, however, it also causes a surge in the number of interference links compared with the HD network counterpart. Here, we apply linear interference alignment (IA) to manage interference in this network under imperfect channel state information (CSI). First, we characterize the performance losses incurred with respect to the achievable sum rate and degrees of freedom (DoFs). Results show that the general trend in performance loss is mainly determined by how the error scales with the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). In particular, full UL and DL DoF can be achieved even under imperfect CSI when the channel error is at least inversely proportional to SNR. Moreover, in such cases the sum rate loss is always finite, and either goes to zero or is upper bounded by a derived value. Second, we design two linear IA algorithms applicable to the system under consideration. These are based on minimizing the mean square error (MMSE) and maximizing the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio, and consider statistical knowledge of the CSI error for added robustness. The proposed algorithms follow specific design principles that distribute the different interference components amongst the various beamformers and result in unitary receivers and precoders. In addition, we show that under certain conditions both designs result in identical beamforming solutions, even though the MMSE algorithm has lower computational complexity. Finally, we also derive the proper condition for IA feasibility in the multi-cell system under consideration. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In designing acoustic broadband beamformers, the complexity can grow significantly when the number of microphones and the filter length increase. It is advantageous if many of the filter coefficients are zeroes so that the implementation can be executed with less computation. Moreover, the size of the array can also be pruned to reduce complexity. These problems are addressed in this paper. A suitable optimization model is proposed. Both array pruning and filter thinning can be solved together as a two-stage optimization problem to yield the final sparse designs. Numerical results show that the complexity of the designed beamformers can be reduced significantly with minimal effect on performance.

Near-optimal transmit beamformers are designed for multiuser multiple-input single-output interference channels with slowly time-varying block fading. The main contribution of this article is to provide a method for deriving closed-form solutions to effective beamforming in both low and high signal-to-noise ratio regimes. The proposed method basically leverages side information obtained from the channel correlation between adjacent coding blocks. More specifically, our methodology is based on a linear algebraic approach, which is more efficient than the optimal scheme based on the Gaussian input in the sense of reducing the average number of search space dimensions for designing the near-optimal transmit beamformers. The proposed method is shown to exhibit near-optimal performance via computer simulations in terms of the average sum-rate.

In this paper, an iterative design method for beamformers is proposed for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) two-way relay networks with multiple pairs of source nodes. It is known that the joint beamformer design problem based on the minimum mean-square-error (MMSE) is known to be nonconvex, and it cannot be analytically solved. To manage this difficulty, a novel iterative algorithm is proposed, which uses duality relationships. First, the MSE duality for MIMO two-way relay networks with multiple pairs of nodes is presented. Moreover, the optimization problem is divided into three subproblems, which can be separately solved; then, the duality is applied to the proposed iterative algorithm, which provides closed-form solutions for all subproblems. The numerical results demonstrate that the proposed method improves network performance and can be applied to various communication systems that use the two-way relay network. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Outage probability performance of multiple‐input multiple‐output (MIMO) ad‐hoc network with quantised beamforming and finite rate feedback is analysed with the assumption that the nodes are uniformly distributed with random topology. In quantised beamforming, each receiver sends the label of the best beamforming vector obtained from the codebook to the transmitter through a finite rate limited feedback. The code book is shared between the desired users to prevent decoding of other user's information in a MIMO ad‐hoc network. In such a practical environment, feedback links can only convey finite number of bits, from which transmit beamformer designs are investigated using either the outage probability or average signal to interference ratio as the figure of merit. In this study, a mathematical analysis for the estimation of the interference power statistics and the corresponding outage probability in MIMO wireless ad‐hoc networks with random position of interference nodes is carried out. In lieu of validating the obtained simulation results, theoretical results have also been compared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In beamformer design, the microphone locations are often fixed and only the filter coefficients are varied in order to improve on the noise reduction performance. However, the positions of the microphone elements play an important role in the overall performance and should be optimized at the same time. However, this nonlinear optimization problem is non-convex and local search techniques might not yield the best result. This problem is addressed in this paper. A hybrid descent method is proposed which consists of a genetic algorithm together with a gradient-based method. The gradient-based method can help to locate the optimal solution rapidly around the start point, while the genetic algorithm is used to jump out from local minima. This hybrid method has the descent property and can help us to find the optimal placement for better beamformer design. Numerical examples are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the method. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Consider a multiple input-multiple output (MIMO) interference channel where each transmitter and receiver are equipped with multiple antennas. An effective approach to practically achieving high system throughput is to deploy linear transceivers (or beamformers) that can optimally exploit the spatial characteristics of the channel. The recent work of Cadambe and Jafar (IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, vol. 54, no. 8) suggests that optimal beamformers should maximize the total degrees of freedom and achieve interference alignment in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime. In this paper we first consider the interference alignment problem without channel extension and prove that the problem of maximizing the total achieved degrees of freedom for a given MIMO interference channel is NP-hard. Furthermore, we show that even checking the achievability of a given tuple of degrees of freedom for all receivers is NP-hard when each receiver is equipped with at least three antennas. Interestingly, the same problem becomes polynomial time solvable when each transmit/receive node is equipped with no more than two antennas. We also propose a distributed algorithm for transmit covariance matrix design that does not require the DoF tuple preassignment, under the assumption that each receiver uses a linear minimum mean square error (MMSE) beamformer. The simulation results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the existing interference alignment algorithms in terms of system throughput. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In designing acoustic broadband beamformers, the complexity can grow significantly when the number of microphones and the filter length increase. It is advantageous if many of the filter coefficients are zeroes so that the implementation can be executed with less computation. Moreover, the size of the array can also be pruned to reduce complexity. These problems are addressed in this paper. A suitable optimization model is proposed. Both array pruning and filter thinning can be solved together as a two-stage optimization problem to yield the final sparse designs. Numerical results show that the complexity of the designed beamformers can be reduced significantly with minimal effect on performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Near-optimal transmit beamformers are designed for multiuser multiple-input single-output interference channels with slowly time-varying block fading. The main contribution of this article is to provide a method for deriving closed-form solutions to effective beamforming in both low and high signal-to-noise ratio regimes. The proposed method basically leverages side information obtained from the channel correlation between adjacent coding blocks. More specifically, our methodology is based on a linear algebraic approach, which is more efficient than the optimal scheme based on the Gaussian input in the sense of reducing the average number of search space dimensions for designing the near-optimal transmit beamformers. The proposed method is shown to exhibit near-optimal performance via computer simulations in terms of the average sum-rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]