Search

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]

The novel concept of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) aided joint radar and multicast-unicast communication (Rad-MU-Com) is investigated. Employing the same spectrum resource, a multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) dual-functional radar-communication (DFRC) base station detects the radar-centric users (R-user), while transmitting mixed multicast-unicast messages both to the R-user and to the communication-centric user (C-user). In particular, the multicast information is intended for both the R- and C-users, whereas the unicast information is only intended for the C-user. More explicitly, NOMA is employed to facilitate this double spectrum sharing, where the multicast and unicast signals are superimposed in the power domain and the superimposed communication signals are also exploited as radar probing waveforms. First, a beamformer-based NOMA-aided joint Rad-MU-Com framework is proposed for the system having a single R-user and a single C-user. Based on this framework, the unicast rate maximization problem is formulated by optimizing the beamformers employed, while satisfying the rate requirement of multicast and the predefined accuracy of the radar beam pattern. The resultant non-convex optimization problem is solved by a penalty-based iterative algorithm to find a high-quality near-optimal solution. Next, the system is extended to the scenario of multiple pairs of R- and C-users, where a cluster-based NOMA-aided joint Rad-MU-Com framework is proposed. A joint beamformer design and power allocation optimization problem is formulated for the maximization of the sum of the unicast rate at each C-user, subject to the constraints on both the minimum multicast rate for each R&C pair and on accuracy of the radar beam pattern for detecting multiple R-users. The resultant joint optimization problem is efficiently solved by another penalty-based iterative algorithm developed. Finally, our numerical results reveal that significant performance gains can be achieved by the proposed schemes over the benchmark schemes employing conventional transmission strategies. [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.

With the rapid proliferation of the Internet of Things (IoT), small devices in various applications generate, process, and exchange security and safety-critical data as well as privacy-sensitive information. However, due to limited hardware capabilities of such small devices, the IoT networks are inherently vulnerable to security attacks. In this context, the analog cooperative beamforming (ACB)-based physical layer security (PLS) technique can be a suitable solution to guarantee security in the IoT networks by creating a virtual antenna array with multiple IoT devices. Nevertheless, such techniques suffer from poor secrecy performance, when an eavesdropper is located within the main beam toward the legitimate receiver. Motivated by this limitation, in this article, we propose a fully distributed null-steering beamformer, which is suitable for IoT networks following decentralized architecture. Through analysis and simulation, we show that the proposed PLS algorithm outperforms the existing ACB-based PLS scheme. Furthermore, we show that there exists an optimal degree of nulling that maximizes the secrecy performance, which can be estimated based on the analytical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

Joint radar and communication (JRC) system is expected to significantly improve the utilization of spectrum resources, system performance, and reduce the equipment cost and size. In this letter, a JRC system containing a collocated multi-input multi-output (MIMO) radar and a multi-user communication base station is considered, which can serve several downlink users and detect multiple targets simultaneously. The radar signal covariance matrix and the communication physical precoder are jointly designed by matching the desired beampattern for radar detection while maximizing the downlink communication signal to interference and noise ratio (SINR). By relaxing the original problems, the iterative process with closed-form expressions is proposed to obtain the sub-optimal solutions of the system. Compared with solving the optimization problems directly, the proposed algorithm can significantly reduce the computational complexity with a little loss of system performance. Finally, simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) are becoming more popular and the demand for wireless links for UAVs is increasing, it is crucial to develop air-to-ground (A2G) wireless links for high-speed UAVs. Suffering from the high mobility and limitation of transmission power of UAVs, A2G wireless links become unstable to provide high quality communication services. In this paper, we design robust A2G wireless links for high speed UAVs, where conjunct power control is developed together with switched beamforming to maximize the power efficiency and minimize the fluctuation of A2G wireless links of millimeter wave (mmWave) signal transmission. We first present channel models for A2G wireless links of high-speed UAVs, which can be virtually seen as multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels. To maximize the power efficiency, a conjunct power control problem is formulated to allocate powers for wireless links between antenna arrays on UAVs and access points (APs). For switched beamforming, beamformers are designed to provide a certain time-invariant signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) to minimize the SINR fluctuation of A2G wireless links. From theoretical analysis and numerical results, it is shown that the proposed architecture is able to provide robust and high quality A2G wireless links for high-speed UAV communication systems. [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 class of semi-infinite programming problems with a parameter. As the parameter increases, we prove that the optimal values decrease monotonically. Moreover, the limit of the sequence of optimal values exists as the parameter tends to infinity. In finding the limit, we decompose the original optimization problem into a series of subproblems. By calculating the maximum optimal values to the subproblems and applying a fixed-point theorem, we prove that the obtained maximum value is exactly the limit of the sequence of optimal values under certain conditions. As a result, the limit can be obtained efficiently by solving a series of simplified subproblems. Numerical examples are provided to verify the limit obtained by the proposed method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A multi-antenna broadcast channel scenario is considered where a base station delivers contents to cache-enabled user terminals. A joint design of coded caching (CC) and multigroup multicast beamforming is proposed to benefit from spatial multiplexing gain, improved interference management and the global CC gain, simultaneously. The developed general content delivery strategies utilize the multiantenna multicasting opportunities provided by the CC technique while optimally balancing the detrimental impact of both noise and inter-stream interference from coded messages transmitted in parallel. Flexible resource allocation schemes for CC are introduced where the multicast beamformer design and the receiver complexity are controlled by varying the size of the subset of users served during a given time interval, and the overlap among the multicast messages transmitted in parallel, indicated by parameters $\alpha $ and $\beta $ , respectively. Degrees of freedom (DoF) analysis is provided showing that the DoF only depends on $\alpha $ while it is independent of $\beta $. The proposed schemes are shown to provide the same degrees-of-freedom at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) as the state-of-art methods and, in general, to perform significantly better, especially in the finite SNR regime, than several baseline schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This letter aims to maximize the achievable throughput of a multi-antenna-relay-assisted wireless powered communication network, where each transmission block starts with the wireless energy transfer (WET) from the energy-rich relay to the source in phase 1, follows the wireless information transmission from the source to the relay and the destination in phase 2, ends with the information forwarding from the relay to the destination in phase 3. Since that radio frequency signal can carry information and energy concurrently, WET also occurs from the relay to the source in phase 3. The closed-form expression of the optimal and suboptimal beamforming vectors at the relay in phase 3 with a fixed time split (TS) is obtained based on which the complexity of achieving the optimal TS is large. Hence, we further design a heuristic beamforming vector in phase 3, then the closed-form expression of the optimal TS is obtained, which yields near optimal performance. Moreover, the expected average throughput is analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A heterogeneous network (HetNet) of a macrocell base station equipped with a large-scale massive multi-in multi-out (MIMO) antenna array overlaying a number of small cell base stations (small cells) can provide high quality of service (QoS) to multiple users under low transmit power budget. However, the circuit power for operating such a network, which is proportional to the number of transmit antennas, poses a problem in terms of its energy efficiency (EE). This paper addresses the beamforming design at the base stations to optimize the network EE under the QoS constraints and a transmit power budget. Beamforming tailored for weak, strong, and medium cross-tier interference HetNets is proposed. In contrast to the conventional transmit strategy for power efficiency in meeting the users’ QoS requirements, which suggest the use of a few hundred antennas, it is found out that the overall network EE quickly drops if this number exceeds 50. It is found that, for a given number of antennas, HetNet is more energy efficient than massive MIMO when considering the overall energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

To improve national security, government agencies have long been committed to enforcing powerful surveillance measures on suspicious individuals or communications. In this paper, we consider a wireless legitimate surveillance system, where a full-duplex multi-antenna legitimate monitor aims to eavesdrop on a dubious communication link between a suspicious pair via proactive jamming. Assuming that the legitimate monitor can successfully overhear the suspicious information only when its achievable data rate is no smaller than that of the suspicious receiver, the key objective is to maximize the eavesdropping non-outage probability by joint design of the jamming power, receive and transmit beamformers at the legitimate monitor. Depending on the number of receive/transmit antennas implemented, i.e., single-input single-output, single-input multiple-output, multiple-input single-output, and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), four different scenarios are investigated. For each scenario, the optimal jamming power is derived in a closed form and efficient algorithms are obtained for the optimal transmit/receive beamforming vectors. Moreover, low-complexity suboptimal beamforming schemes are proposed for the MIMO case. Our analytical findings demonstrate that by exploiting multiple antennas at the legitimate monitor, the eavesdropping non-outage probability can be significantly improved compared with the single-antenna case. In addition, the proposed suboptimal transmit zero-forcing scheme yields similar performance as the optimal scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This letter investigates the performance of a legitimate surveillance system, where a legitimate monitor aims to eavesdrop on a dubious decode-and-forward relaying communication link. In order to maximize the effective eavesdropping rate, two strategies are proposed, where the legitimate monitor adaptively acts as an eavesdropper, a jammer, or a helper. In addition, the corresponding optimal jamming beamformer and jamming power are presented. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed strategies attain better performance compared with intuitive benchmark schemes. Moreover, it is revealed that the position of the legitimate monitor plays an important role on the eavesdropping performance for the two strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This letter considers an energy harvesting heterogeneous network (EHHN) in which a power beacon (PB) for radio-frequency-energy transfer coexists with a base station for information transfer. In this network, a tradeoff exists between harvested energy and information rate, because the energy transfer of the PB causes the interference to the information transfer. To determine the optimal energy-transfer strategy under this tradeoff, we propose an energy beamforming scheme that maximizes the weighted sum of the harvested energy and the information rate in multiple-input single-output EHHN. Because the weighted-sum-maximization problem is nonconvex, we partition it into a difference of convex functions problem and a convex-maximization problem, and then solve them using efficient convex-based algorithms. In simulation, the proposed beamforming scheme is shown to achieve a near-optimal rate-energy region for the considered problem. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In beamformer design, the microphone configurations which represent microphone number and positions are necessary to be optimized in order to improve the effectiveness of speech enhancement. Determination of microphone configuration, number of elements and positions is a nonlinear and non-convex NP-hard optimization problem which was not specified before. However, this is a nonlinear and non-convex NP-hard optimization problem. Gradient-based optimization methods can only converge to suboptimal solutions. Although the recently developed heuristic methods may find better configurations, they require long convergence time. In this paper, we study the effectiveness of using Taguchi method to determine microphone configuration. The Taguchi method is a robust and systematic optimization approach for designing reliable and high-quality models. The method conducts systematic trials based on an orthogonal array which represents a subset of representative configurations. It determines the configurations based on the experimental trials, while the heuristic methods determine the configurations by searching through the configuration domain until no better configuration can be found. A case study based on a common office environment is used as an example to illustrate the effectiveness of the Taguchi method and the commonly used heuristic methods. The numerical results demonstrate that the method is capable to develop the microphone configurations with similar performance compared with the heuristic methods when short computational time is only available. Hence, the method is a strong candidate to design microphone configurations when short development time is only available. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]

In this letter, we study beamformer design to minimize the sum mean square error (SMSE) in a multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) joint transmission system. By assuming that the backhaul capacity is non-ideal, the original problem is mixed with a l0 norm, which is non-convex and NP hard. Therefore, we introduce a weighted l1 norm to relax it and propose a suboptimal iterative scheme to derive the transmit and receive beamformers. This algorithm is proved to be convergent and can be implemented in a distributed way. Simulation shows that our method can achieve an SMSE performance that is similar to the ideal backhaul-based SMSE minimization, whereas the former can decrease 20% backhaul consumption at the same time. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

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]

Temporal filters and spatial filters are widely used in many areas of signal processing. A number of optimal design criteria to these problems are available in the literature. Various computational techniques are also presented to optimize these criteria chosen. There are many drawbacks in these methods. In this paper, we introduce a unified framework for optimal design of temporal and spatial filters. Most of the optimal design problems of FIR filters and beamformers are included in the framework. It is shown that all the design problems can be reformulated as convex optimization form as the second-order cone programming (SOCP) and solved efficiently via the well-established interior point methods. The main advantage of our SOCP approach as compared with earlier approaches is that it can include most of the existing methods as its special cases, which leads to more flexible designs. Furthermore, the SOCP approach can optimize multiple required performance measures, which is the drawback of earlier approaches. The SOCP approach is also developed to optimally design temporal and spatial two-dimensional filter and spatial matrix filter. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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]