Millimeter-wave (mmWave) communications rely on directional transmissions to overcome severe path loss. Nevertheless, the use of narrow beams complicates the initial access procedure and increase t ...
The need for the design of new initial cell-search phase in mmWave communication has brought great research interest in this field recently. In IEEE 802.11ad standard, a coarse-grained sector matching is followed by a second beam training stage that provides a further refinement of the beamforming vectors @cite_20 @cite_32 . The authors in @cite_34 proposed a similar hierarchical design with multi-resolution codebook based on ideas from compressive sensing. Reference @cite_6 provided a framework to evaluate the performance of mmWave IA using 3GPP new radio (NR) scenario configurations. In @cite_19 , the authors analyzed various design options for IA given different scanning and signaling procedures. Specifically, the synchronization and cell-search consists of a sending a series of directional pilots to enable a joint time-frequency-spatial synchronization to occur jointly. @cite_16 and @cite_11 investigated initial cell-search based on context information which uses external localization service to get positioning information. In @cite_0 , the performance of these schemes are summarized in terms of cell detection failure probability and latency. In contrast to the aforementioned link-level studies, @cite_14 and @cite_2 provide a system-level analysis of IA protocols in terms of cell-search latency under different user equipment (UE) status.
@cite_14 @cite_32 @cite_6 @cite_16 @cite_0 @cite_19 @cite_2 @cite_34 @cite_20 @cite_11
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The acute disparity between increasing bandwidth demand and available spectrum has brought millimeter wave (mmWave) bands to the forefront of candidate solutions for the next-generation cellular networks. Highly directional transmissions are essential for cellular communication in these frequencies to compensate for higher isotropic path loss. This reliance on directional beamforming, however, complicates initial cell search since mobiles and base stations must jointly search over a potentially large angular directional space to locate a suitable path to initiate communication. To address this problem, this paper proposes a directional cell discovery procedure where base stations periodically transmit synchronization signals, potentially in time-varying random directions, to scan the angular space. Detectors for these signals are derived based on a Generalized Likelihood Ratio Test (GLRT) under various signal and receiver assumptions. The detectors are then simulated under realistic design parameters and channels based on actual experimental measurements at 28 GHz in New York City. The study reveals two key findings: 1) digital beamforming can significantly outperform analog beamforming even when digital beamforming uses very low quantization to compensate for the additional power requirements and 2) omnidirectional transmissions of the synchronization signals from the base station generally outperform random directional scanning. The enormous success of advanced wireless devices is pushing the demand for higher wireless data rates. Denser spectrum reuse through the deployment of more access points (APs) per square mile has the potential to successfully meet such demand. In principle, distributed multiuser multiple-input-multiple-output (MU-MIMO) provides the best approach to infrastructure density increase since several access points are connected to a central server and operate as a large distributed multiantenna access point. This ensures that all transmitted signal power serves the purpose of data transmission, rather than creating interference. In practice, however, a number of implementation difficulties must be addressed, the most significant of which is aligning the phases of all jointly coordinated APs. In this paper, we propose AirSync, a novel scheme that provides timing and phase synchronization accurate enough to enable distributed MU-MIMO. AirSync detects the slot boundary such that all APs are time-synchronous within a cyclic prefix (CP) of the orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation and predicts the instantaneous carrier phase correction along the transmit slot such that all transmitters maintain their coherence, which is necessary for multiuser beamforming. We have implemented AirSync as a digital circuit in the field programmable gate array (FPGA) of the WARP radio platform. Our experimental testbed, comprising four APs and four clients, shows that AirSync is able to achieve timing synchronization within the OFDM CP and carrier phase coherence within a few degrees. For the purpose of demonstration, we have implemented two MU-MIMO precoding schemes, Zero-Forcing Beamforming (ZFBF) and Tomlinson-Harashima Precoding (THP). In both cases, our system approaches the theoretical optimal multiplexing gains. We also discuss aspects related to the MAC and multiuser scheduling design, in relation to the distributed MU-MIMO architecture. To the best of our knowledge, AirSync offers the first realization of the full distributed MU-MIMO multiplexing gain, namely the ability to increase the number of active wireless clients per time-frequency slot linearly with the number of jointly coordinated APs, without reducing the per client rate. We propose and investigate a compressive architecture for estimation and tracking of sparse spatial channels in millimeter (mm) wave picocellular networks. The base stations are equipped with antenna arrays with a large number of elements (which can fit within compact form factors because of the small carrier wavelength) and employ radio frequency (RF) beamforming, so that standard least squares adaptation techniques (which require access to individual antenna elements) are not applicable. We focus on the downlink, and show that “compressive beacons,” transmitted using pseudorandom phase settings at the base station array, and compressively processed using pseudorandom phase settings at the mobile array, provide information sufficient for accurate estimation of the two-dimensional (2D) spatial frequencies associated with the directions of departure of the dominant rays from the base station, and the associated complex gains. This compressive approach is compatible with coarse phase-only control, and is based on a near-optimal sequential algorithm for frequency estimation which approaches the Cramer Rao Lower Bound. The algorithm exploits the geometric continuity of the channel across successive beaconing intervals to reduce the overhead to less than 1 even for very large ( @math ) arrays. Compressive beaconing is essentially omnidirectional, and hence does not enjoy the SNR and spatial reuse benefits of beamforming obtained during data transmission. We therefore discuss system level design considerations for ensuring that the beacon SNR is sufficient for accurate channel estimation, and that inter-cell beacon interference is controlled by an appropriate reuse scheme. Recently, millimeter-wave (mmWave) bands have been postulated as a means to accommodate the foreseen extreme bandwidth demands in vehicular communications, which result from the dissemination of sensory data to nearby vehicles for enhanced environmental awareness and improved safety level. However, the literature is particularly scarce in regards to principled resource allocation schemes that deal with the challenging radio conditions posed by the high mobility of vehicular scenarios. In this paper, we propose a novel framework that blends together matching theory and swarm intelligence to dynamically and efficiently pair vehicles and optimize both transmission and reception beamwidths. This is done by jointly considering channel state information and queue state information when establishing vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) links. To validate the proposed framework, simulation results are presented and discussed, where the throughput performance as well as the latency reliability tradeoffs of the proposed approach are assessed and compared with several baseline approaches recently proposed in the literature. The results obtained in this paper show performance gains of 25 in reliability and delay for ultra-dense vehicular scenarios with 50 more active V2V links than the baselines. These results shed light on the operational limits and practical feasibility of mmWave bands, as a viable radio access solution for future high-rate V2V communications. Millimeter-wave (mm-wave) frequency bands provide an opportunity for much wider channel bandwidth compared with the traditional sub-6-GHz band. Communication at mm-waves is, however, quite challenging due to the severe propagation pathloss incurred by conventional isotropic antennas. To cope with this problem, directional beamforming both at the base station (BS) side and at the user equipment (UE) side is necessary in order to establish a strong path conveying enough signal power. Finding such beamforming directions is referred to as beam alignment (BA). This paper presents a new scheme for efficient BA. Our scheme finds a strong propagation path identified by an angle-of-arrival (AoA) and angle-of-departure (AoD) pair, by exploring the AoA–AoD domain through pseudo-random multi-finger beam patterns and constructing an estimate of the resulting second-order statistics (namely, the average received power for each pseudo-random beam configuration). The resulting under-determined system of equations is efficiently solved using non-negative constrained least-squares, yielding naturally a sparse non-negative vector solution whose maximum component identifies the optimal path. As a result, our scheme is highly robust to variations of the channel time dynamics compared with alternative concurrent approaches based on the estimation of the instantaneous channel coefficients, rather than of their second-order statistics. In the proposed scheme, the BS probes the channel in the downlink and trains simultaneously an arbitrarily large number of UEs. Thus, “beam refinement,” with multiple interactive rounds of downlink uplink transmissions, is not needed. This results in a scalable BA protocol, where the protocol overhead is virtually independent of the number of UEs, since all the UEs run the BA procedure at the same time. Extensive simulation results illustrate that our approach is superior to the state-of-the-art BA schemes proposed in the literature in terms of training overhead in multi-user scenarios and robustness to variations in the channel dynamics. The abundant spectrum at millimeter-wave (mmWave) has the potential to greatly increase the capacity of 5G cellular systems. However, to overcome the high pathloss in the mmWave frequencies, beamforming with large antenna arrays is required at both the base station and user equipments for sufficient link budget. This feature is a challenge for beamforming training during initial access due to low SNR and poor synchronization. A recently developed compressive sensing (CS) based training algorithm exploits channel sparsity but it is vulnerable to phase error from poor synchronization. We propose a novel CS-based algorithm that tracks and compensates frequency offset and phase noise. Simulation results show that the proposed method improves achievable rate by 10 times compared with existing CS-based method during initial beamforming training. The use of the millimeter (mm) wave spectrum for next generation (5G) mobile communication has gained significant attention recently. The small carrier wavelengths at mmwave frequencies enable synthesis of compact antenna arrays, providing beamforming gains that compensate the increased propagation losses. In this work, we investigate the feasibility of employing multiple antenna arrays (at the transmitter and or receiver) to obtain diversity multiplexing gains in mmwave systems, where each of the arrays is capable of beamforming independently. Considering a codebook-based beamforming system (the set of possible beamforming directions is fixed a priori, e.g., to facilitate limited feedback), we observe that the complexity of jointly optimizing the beamforming directions across the multiple arrays is highly prohibitive, even for very reasonable system parameters. To overcome this bottleneck, we develop reduced complexity algorithms for optimizing the choice of beamforming directions, premised on the sparse multipath structure of the mmwave channel. Specifically, we reduce the cardinality of the joint beamforming search space, by restricting attention to a small set of dominant candidate directions. To obtain the set of dominant directions, we develop two complementary approaches: 1) based on computation of a novel spatial power metric; a detailed analysis of this metric shows that, in the limit of large antenna arrays, the selected candidate directions approach the channel's dominant angles of arrival and departure, and 2) precise estimation of the channel's (long-term) dominant angles of arrival, exploiting the correlations of the signals received across the different receiver subarrays. Our methods enable a drastic reduction of the optimization search space (a factor of 100 reduction), while delivering close to optimal performance, thereby indicating the potential feasibility of achieving diversity and multiplexing gains in mmwave systems. We investigate spatial interference statistics for multigigabit outdoor mesh networks operating in the unlicensed 60-GHz "millimeter (mm) wave" band. The links in such networks are highly directional: Because of the small carrier wavelength (an order of magnitude smaller than those for existing cellular and wireless local area networks), narrow beams are essential for overcoming higher path loss and can be implemented using compact electronically steerable antenna arrays. Directionality drastically reduces interference, but it also leads to "deafness," making implicit coordination using carrier sense infeasible. In this paper, we make a quantitative case for rethinking medium access control (MAC) design in such settings. Unlike existing MAC protocols for omnidirectional networks, where the focus is on interference management, we contend that MAC design for 60-GHz mesh networks can essentially ignore interference and must focus instead on the challenge of scheduling half-duplex transmissions with deaf neighbors. Our main contribution is an analytical framework for estimating the collision probability in such networks as a function of the antenna patterns and the density of simultaneously transmitting nodes. The numerical results from our interference analysis show that highly directional links can indeed be modeled as pseudowired, in that the collision probability is small even with a significant density of transmitters. Furthermore, simulation of a rudimentary directional slotted Aloha protocol shows that packet losses due to failed coordination are an order of magnitude higher than those due to collisions, confirming our analytical results and highlighting the need for more sophisticated coordination mechanisms. We propose joint spatial division and multiplexing (JSDM), an approach to multiuser MIMO downlink that exploits the structure of the correlation of the channel vectors in order to allow for a large number of antennas at the base station while requiring reduced-dimensional channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT). JSDM achieves significant savings both in the downlink training and in the CSIT uplink feedback, thus making the use of large antenna arrays at the base station potentially suitable also for frequency division duplexing (FDD) systems, for which uplink downlink channel reciprocity cannot be exploited. In the proposed scheme, the multiuser MIMO downlink precoder is obtained by concatenating a prebeamforming matrix, which depends only on the channel second-order statistics, with a classical multiuser precoder, based on the instantaneous knowledge of the resulting reduced dimensional “effective” channel matrix. We prove a simple condition under which JSDM incurs no loss of optimality with respect to the full CSIT case. For linear uniformly spaced arrays, we show that such condition is approached in the large number of antennas limit. For this case, we use Szego's asymptotic theory of Toeplitz matrices to show that a DFT-based prebeamforming matrix is near-optimal, requiring only coarse information about the users angles of arrival and angular spread. Finally, we extend these ideas to the case of a 2-D base station antenna array, with 3-D beamforming, including multiple beams in the elevation angle direction. We provide guidelines for the prebeamforming optimization and calculate the system spectral efficiency under proportional fairness and max-min fairness criteria, showing extremely attractive performance. Our numerical results are obtained via asymptotic random matrix theory, avoiding lengthy Monte Carlo simulations and providing accurate results for realistic (finite) number of antennas and users. Next-generation cellular standards may leverage the large bandwidth available at millimeter wave (mmWave) frequencies to provide gigabit-per-second data rates in outdoor wireless systems. A main challenge in realizing mmWave cellular is achieving sufficient operating link margin, which is enabled via directional beamforming with large antenna arrays. Due to the high cost and power consumption of high-bandwidth mixed-signal devices, mmWave beamforming will likely include a combination of analog and digital processing. In this paper, we develop an iterative hybrid beamforming algorithm for the single user mmWave channel. The proposed algorithm accounts for the limitations of analog beamforming circuitry and assumes only partial channel knowledge at both the base and mobile stations. The precoding strategy exploits the sparse nature of the mmWave channel and uses a variant of matching pursuit to provide simple solutions to the hybrid beamforming problem. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can approach the rates achieved by unconstrained digital beamforming solutions. The exploitation of the mm-wave bands is one of the most promising solutions for 5G mobile radio networks. However, the use of mm-wave technologies in cellular networks is not straightforward due to mm-wave severe propagation conditions that limit access availability. In order to overcome this obstacle, hybrid network architectures are being considered where mm-wave small cells can exploit an overlay coverage layer based on legacy technology. The additional mm-wave layer can also take advantage of a functional split between control and user plane, that allows to delegate most of the signaling functions to legacy base stations and to gather context information from users for resource optimization. However, mm-wave technology requires multiple antennas and highly directional transmissions to compensate for high path loss and limited power. Directional transmissions must be also used for the cell discovery and synchronization process, and this can lead to a non negligible delay due to need to scan the cell area with multiple transmissions in different angles. In this paper, we propose to exploit the context information related to user position, provided by the separated control plane, to improve the cell discovery procedure and minimize delay. We investigate the fundamental trade-offs of the cell discovery process with directional antennas and the effects of the context information accuracy on its performance. Numerical results are provided to validate our observations. Millimeter wave (mmWave) cellular systems will enable gigabit-per-second data rates thanks to the large bandwidth available at mmWave frequencies. To realize sufficient link margin, mmWave systems will employ directional beamforming with large antenna arrays at both the transmitter and receiver. Due to the high cost and power consumption of gigasample mixed-signal devices, mmWave precoding will likely be divided among the analog and digital domains. The large number of antennas and the presence of analog beamforming requires the development of mmWave-specific channel estimation and precoding algorithms. This paper develops an adaptive algorithm to estimate the mmWave channel parameters that exploits the poor scattering nature of the channel. To enable the efficient operation of this algorithm, a novel hierarchical multi-resolution codebook is designed to construct training beamforming vectors with different beamwidths. For single-path channels, an upper bound on the estimation error probability using the proposed algorithm is derived, and some insights into the efficient allocation of the training power among the adaptive stages of the algorithm are obtained. The adaptive channel estimation algorithm is then extended to the multi-path case relying on the sparse nature of the channel. Using the estimated channel, this paper proposes a new hybrid analog digital precoding algorithm that overcomes the hardware constraints on the analog-only beamforming, and approaches the performance of digital solutions. Simulation results show that the proposed low-complexity channel estimation algorithm achieves comparable precoding gains compared to exhaustive channel training algorithms. The results illustrate that the proposed channel estimation and precoding algorithms can approach the coverage probability achieved by perfect channel knowledge even in the presence of interference. Millimeter wave (mmWave) communication is one feasible solution for high data-rate applications like vehicular-to-everything communication and next generation cellular communication. Configuring mmWave links, which can be done through channel estimation or beam-selection, however, is a source of significant overhead. In this paper, we propose to use spatial information extracted at sub-6 GHz to help establish the mmWave link. First, we review the prior work on frequency dependent channel behavior and outline a simulation strategy to generate multi-band frequency dependent channels. Second, assuming: (i) narrowband channels and a fully digital architecture at sub-6 GHz; and (ii) wideband frequency selective channels, OFDM signaling, and an analog architecture at mmWave, we outline strategies to incorporate sub-6 GHz spatial information in mmWave compressed beam selection. We formulate compressed beam-selection as a weighted sparse signal recovery problem, and obtain the weighting information from sub-6 GHz channels. In addition, we outline a structured precoder combiner design to tailor the training to out-of-band information. We also extend the proposed out-of-band aided compressed beam-selection approach to leverage information from all active OFDM subcarriers. The simulation results for achievable rate show that out-of-band aided beam-selection can reduce the training overhead of in-band only beam-selection by 4x. The potential of doubling the spectrum efficiency of FD transmission motivates us to investigate FD-mmWave communication. To realize FD transmission in the mmWave band, we first introduce possible antenna configurations for FD-mmWave transmission. It is shown that, different from the cases in microwave band FD communications, the configuration with separate Tx Rx antenna arrays appears more flexible in SI suppression while it may increase some cost and area versus that with the same array. We then model the mmWave SI channel with separate Tx Rx arrays, where a near-field propagation model is adopted for the LOS path, and it is found that the established LOS-SI channel with separate Tx Rx arrays also shows spatial sparsity. Based on the SI channel, we further explore approaches to mitigate SI by signal processing, and we focus on a new cancellation approach in FD-mmWave communication, that is, beamforming cancellation. Centered on the CA constraint of the beamforming vectors, we propose several candidate solutions. Lastly, we consider an FD-mmWave multi-user scenario, and show that even if there are no FD users in an FD-mmWave cellular system, the FD benefit can still be exploited in the FD base station. Candidate solutions are also discussed to mitigate both SI and MUI simultaneously. In millimeter wave (mm-wave) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, acquiring accurate channel state information is essential for efficient beamforming (BF) and multiuser interference cancellation, which is a challenging task since a low signal-to-noise ratio is encountered before BF in large antenna arrays. The mm-wave channel exhibits a 3-D clustered structure in the virtual angle of arrival (AOA), angle of departure (AOD), and delay domain that is imposed by the effect of power leakage, angular spread, and cluster duration. We extend the approximate message passing (AMP) with a nearest neighbor pattern learning algorithm for improving the attainable channel estimation performance, which adaptively learns and exploits the clustered structure in the 3-D virtual AOA-AOD-delay domain. The proposed method is capable of approaching the performance bound described by the state evolution based on vector AMP framework, and our simulation results verify its superiority in mm-wave systems associated with a broad bandwidth. Recently, there has been considerable interest in new tiered network cellular architectures, which would likely use many more cell sites than found today. Two major challenges will be i) providing backhaul to all of these cells and ii) finding efficient techniques to leverage higher frequency bands for mobile access and backhaul. This paper proposes the use of outdoor millimeter wave communications for backhaul networking between cells and mobile access within a cell. To overcome the outdoor impairments found in millimeter wave propagation, this paper studies beamforming using large arrays. However, such systems will require narrow beams, increasing sensitivity to movement caused by pole sway and other environmental concerns. To overcome this, we propose an efficient beam alignment technique using adaptive subspace sampling and hierarchical beam codebooks. A wind sway analysis is presented to establish a notion of beam coherence time. This highlights a previously unexplored tradeoff between array size and wind-induced movement. Generally, it is not possible to use larger arrays without risking a corresponding performance loss from wind-induced beam misalignment. The performance of the proposed alignment technique is analyzed and compared with other search and alignment methods. The results show significant performance improvement with reduced search time. We consider synchronization techniques required to enhance the cellular network capacity using base station cooperation. In the physical layer, local oscillators are disciplined by the global positioning system (GPS) and over the backbone network for outdoor and indoor base stations, respectively. In the medium access control (MAC) layer, the data flow can be synchronized by two approaches. The first approach uses so-called time stamps. The data flow through the user plane and through copies of it in each cooperative base station is synchronized using a timing protocol on the interconnects between the base stations. The second approach adds mapping information to the data after the user plane processing is almost finalized. Each forward-error encoded transport block, its modulation and coding scheme and the resources where it will be transmitted are multicast over the interconnect network. Interconnect latency is reduced below 1 ms to enable coherent interference reduction for mobile radio channels. In this paper, we provide an analytical framework to analyze heterogeneous downlink millimeter-wave (mm-wave) cellular networks consisting of @math tiers of randomly located base stations (BSs), where each tier operates in an mm-wave frequency band. Signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) coverage probability is derived for the entire network using tools from stochastic geometry. The distinguishing features of mm-wave communications, such as directional beamforming, and having different path loss laws for line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight links are incorporated into the coverage analysis by assuming averaged biased-received power association and Nakagami fading. By using the noise-limited assumption for mm-wave networks, a simpler expression requiring the computation of only one numerical integral for coverage probability is obtained. Also, the effect of beamforming alignment errors on the coverage probability analysis is investigated to get insight on the performance in practical scenarios. Downlink rate coverage probability is derived as well to get more insights on the performance of the network. Moreover, the effect of deploying low-power smaller cells and the impact of biasing factor on energy efficiency is analyzed. Finally, a hybrid cellular network operating in both mm-wave and @math -wave frequency bands is addressed. With the advent of next-generation mobile devices, wireless networks must be upgraded to fill the gap between huge user data demands and scarce channel capacity. Mm-waves technologies appear as the key-enabler for the future 5G networks design, exhibiting large bandwidth availability and high data rate. As counterpart, the small wave-length incurs in a harsh signal propagation that limits the transmission range. To overcome this limitation, array of antennas with a relatively high number of small elements are used to exploit beamforming techniques that greatly increase antenna directionality both at base station and user terminal. These very narrow beams are used during data transfer and tracking techniques dynamically adapt the direction according to terminal mobility. During cell discovery when initial synchronization must be acquired, however, directionality can delay the process since the best direction to point the beam is unknown. All space must be scanned using the tradeoff between beam width and transmission range. Some support to speed up the cell search process can come from the new architectures for 5G currently being investigated, where conventional wireless network and mm-waves technologies coexist. In these architecture a functional split between C-plane and U-plane allows to guarantee the continuous availability of a signaling channel through conventional wireless technologies with the opportunity to convey context information from users to network. In this paper, we investigate the use of position information provided by user terminals in order to improve the performance of the cell search process. We analyze mm-wave propagation environment and show how it is possible to take into account of position inaccuracy and reflected rays in presence of obstacles. We consider the use of spatial diversity to improve the performance of analog joint source-channel coding in wireless fading channels. The communication system analyzed in this paper consists of discrete-time all-analog-processing joint source-channel coding where Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) detection are employed. By assuming a fast-fading Rayleigh channel, we show that MMSE performs much better than ML at high Channel Signal-to-Noise Ratios (CSNR) in single-antenna wireless systems. However, such performance gap can be significantly reduced by using multiple receive antennas, thus making low complexity ML decoding very attractive in the case of receive diversity. Moreover, we show that the analog scheme can be considerably robust to imperfect channel estimation. In addition, as an alternative to multiple antennas, we also consider spatial diversity through cooperative communications, and show that the application of the Amplify-and-Forward (AF) protocol with single antenna nodes leads to similar results than when two antennas are available at the receiver and Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC) is applied. Finally, we show that the MMSE implementation of the analog scheme performs very close to the unconstrained capacity of digital schemes using scalar quantization, while its complexity is much lower than that of capacity-approaching digital systems.