Opportunistic Beamforming and Scheduling for OFDMA Systems

Orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) is an attractive technique for exploiting multiuser diversity in the downlink of a cellular system. This paper addresses three problems in multiuser diversity for OFDMA systems. First, we propose a way to significantly reduce the amount of channel state information (CSI) feedback without sacrificing performance too much, by selective and adaptive feedback. Second, we propose a way to increase the cell throughput and fairness by applying an opportunistic beamforming scheme to orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing. This beamforming scheme increases the frequency fading rate, which increases the multiuser diversity effect. Thirdly, we deal with the issue of fairness and quality-of-service (QoS) in opportunistic systems by proposing a modified proportional fair (PF) scheduler for OFDMA. Key features in the scheduler are that it incorporates QoS classes into the PF scheduler and that it has a tunable fairness level. Extensive simulation results are presented to evaluate the performance of the proposed schemes. The opportunistic beamforming scheme performed well in comparison with several other schemes. The modified PF scheduler was able to give users different QoS, based on their requirements, while still exploiting multiuser diversity     

Opportunistic beamforming using dumb antennas

Multiuser diversity is a form of diversity inherent in a wireless network, provided by independent time-varying channels across the different users. The diversity benefit is exploited by tracking the channel fluctuations of the users and scheduling transmissions to users when their instantaneous channel quality is near the peak. The diversity gain increases with the dynamic range of the fluctuations and is thus limited in environments with little scattering and/or slow fading. In such environments, we propose the use of multiple transmit antennas to induce large and fast channel fluctuations so that multiuser diversity can still be exploited. The scheme can be interpreted as opportunistic beamforming and we show that true beamforming gains can be achieved when there are sufficient users, even though very limited channel feedback is needed. Furthermore, in a cellular system, the scheme plays an additional role of opportunistic nulling of the interference created on users of adjacent cells. We discuss the design implications of implementing. this scheme in a complete wireless system     

A study of opportunism for multiple-antenna systems

Recently proposed opportunistic beamforming exploits the multiuser diversity to reduce the feedback by not requiring the precoding information used for closed-loop schemes to be known at the transmitter. Opportunism could also be beneficially employed for other multiple-antenna transmission techniques like cophasing and antenna selection. For opportunistic beamforming and antenna selection, we give closed-form expressions for throughput that closely approximate the performance of these schemes with a Proportionally Fair scheduler (PFS) at low signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). For large number of transmit antennas, opportunistic cophasing has similar performance as opportunistic beamforming. Asymptotic dependence of the required number of users to achieve the gains of opportunism on the number of transmit antennas is exponential for opportunistic beamforming (and cophasing for large numbers of transmit antennas), and at best linear for opportunistic antenna selection. For multiple-antenna receivers, we additionally examine an opportunistic multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) scheme that transmits multiple data streams simultaneously to the same user.     

Transmit Diversity Versus Opportunistic Beamforming in Data Packet Mobile Downlink Transmission

We compare space-time coding (transmit diversity) and random "opportunistic" beamforming in a space-division multiple access/time-division multiple access single-cell downlink system with random packet arrivals, correlated block-fading channels, and non-perfect channel state information at the transmitter due to a feedback delay. Our comparison is based on system stability. The ability of accurately predicting the channel signal-to-noise ratio dominates the performance of opportunistic beamforming, even under the optimistic assumption that the sequence of beamforming matrices is perfectly known a priori by the receivers. Our results show that the relative merit of opportunistic beamforming versus space-time coding strongly depends on the channel Doppler bandwidth. Therefore, previous naive conclusions on the fact that transmit diversity always hurts the system performance under multiuser-diversity scheduling should be taken with great care     

A random beamforming technique in MIMO systems exploiting multiuser diversity

A random beamforming technique for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems that simultaneously obtains downlink multiuser diversity gain, spatial multiplexing gain and array gain by feeding back only effective signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs) is described. In addition, power control using waterfilling is employed to improve the throughput of our method in correlated channels. In a slow fading channel, we prove that the throughput of the proposed method converges to that of eigen beamforming when many users are in a cell. The number of users required to achieve capacity bound increases with the number of antennas and SNR was determined. However, the capacity bound is achieved even with a small number of users, e.g., 16 users in a cell, when the SNR is low, e.g., 0 dB, and the number of transmit and receive antenna is small, e.g., two. We also find that the effect of waterfilling is more noticeable in correlated channels.     

Variable-rate multiuser diversity in correlated MIMO channel via virtual channel representation

This paper studies the multiuser diversity with constellation selection based on a virtual representation of realistic Multiple Input Multiple Output （MIMO） correlated channels. To realize multiuser diversity in slow fading channels, random beamforming is adopted. Random beamforming matrix exploiting virtual channel representation is constructed, which can match the channel matrix of the desired user better. Sirnultaneously, adaptive coded modulation is applied to each sub-channel of the selected user to improve the system performance further.     

Distributed approaches for exploiting multiuser diversity in wireless networks

In wireless fading channels, multiuser diversity can be exploited by scheduling users to transmit when their channel conditions are favorable. This leads to a sum throughput that increases with the number of users and, in certain cases, achieves capacity. However, such scheduling requires global knowledge of every user's channel gain, which may be difficult to obtain in some situations. This paper addresses contention-based protocols for exploiting multiuser diversity with only local channel knowledge. A variation of the ALOHA protocol is given in which users attempt to exploit multiuser diversity gains, but suffer contention losses due to the distributed channel knowledge. The growth rate of the sum throughput for this protocol is characterized in a backlogged system under both short-term and long-term average power constraints. A simple "fixed-rate" system is shown to be asymptotically optimal and to achieve the same growth rate as in a system with an optimal centralized scheduler. Moreover, asymptotically, the fraction of throughput lost due to contention is shown to be 1/e. Also, in a system with random arrivals and an infinite user population, a variation of this ALOHA protocol is shown to be stable for any total arrival rate, given that users can estimate the backlog.     

在相关多入多出(MIMO)信道中的可变速率多用户分集技术

在本篇文章中,我们研究基于MIMO虚拟信道表述的可变速率多用户分集技术.为实现慢衰落相关信道中的多用户分集,本文在发射端采用随机波束成形技术,并提出一种新的利用MIMO虚拟信道来产生随机波束成形矩阵的方法.同时,我们对期望用户的子信道采用自适应编码调制技术,以进一步提高系统性能.     

Coordinated beamforming with reduced overhead for the downlink of multiuser MIMO systems

We consider the coordinated beamforming for the downlink of multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. Since each mobile needs to obtain effective channel parameters by using dedicated pilots each beamformed by a user-specific transmit beamformer, the pilot overhead increases linearly with the number of users. In this paper, we propose a novel technique that reduces the pilot overhead using the orthogonal property of effective channels. Simulation results show that the proposed approach achieves higher sum-rate, because unused pilot tones can be utilized to transmit additional data instead.     

Opportunistic Beamforming over Rayleigh Channels with Partial Side Information

In recent years, diversity techniques have evolved into highly attractive technology for wireless communications in different forms. For instance, the channel fluctuations of the users in a network are exploited as multiuser diversity by scheduling the user with the best signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). When fading is slow, beamforming at a multiple antenna transmitter is used to induce artificial channel fluctuations to ensure multiuser diversity in the network. Such a beamforming scheme is called opportunistic beamforming since the transmitter uses random beamforming to artificially induce opportunism in the network [1]. Opportunism requires a large number of users in the system in order to reach the performance of the true beamforming that uses perfect channel state information (CSI). In this paper we investigate the benefit of having partial CSI at an opportunistic transmitter. In the investigation, we focus on the maximum normalized SNR scheduling where user?s feedback consists of SNR relative to its channel gain. We show that opportunism can be beneficially used to increase the average throughput of the system. Simulations support the analytical average throughput results obtained as the amount of CSI and the number of users vary.     

Diversity eigenbeamforming for coded signals

Transmit antenna diversity without feedback has been widely investigated for various wireless communication systems. Especially, space-time codes are extensively studied to exploit the spatial diversity induced by multiple transmit antennas. Apart from these approaches, there can be different methods that provide a diversity gain using multiple antennas with conventional channel coding. In this paper, diversity eigenbeamforming is studied to exploit the spatial diversity when the channel covariance matrix is available at the transmitter. Diversity eigenbeamforming is based on eigenmode (of the spatial covariance matrix) switching that converts the spatial diversity into the temporal diversity which is exploited by channel coding. Optimized diversity eigenbeamforming is considered to take into account the spatial correlation. In addition, the trade-off between diversity and multiplexing gains is addressed. It is shown that the diversity eigenbeamforming can achieve optimal trade-off for the case of one receive antenna. Although, for simplicity, binary phase shift keying (BPSK) is used to derive diversity eigenbeamforming, any higher-order modulation scheme can also be used with diversity eigenbeamforming.     

Systematic Codebook Designs for Quantized Beamforming in Correlated MIMO Channels

The full diversity gain provided by a multi-antenna channel can be achieved by transmit beamforming and receive combining. This requires the knowledge of channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter which is difficult to obtain in practice. Quantized beamforming where fixed codebooks known at both the transmitter and the receiver are used to quantize the CSI has been proposed to solve this problem. Most recent works focus attention on limited feedback codebook design for the uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channel. Such designs are sub-optimal when used in correlated channels. In this paper, we propose systematic codebook design for correlated channels when channel statistical information is known at the transmitter. This design is motivated by studying the performance of pure statistical beamforming in correlated channels and is implemented by maps that can rotate and scale spherical caps on the Grassmannian manifold. Based on this study, we show that even statistical beamforming is near-optimal if the transmitter covariance matrix is ill-conditioned and receiver covariance matrix is well-conditioned. This leads to a partitioning of the transmit and receive covariance spaces based on their conditioning with variable feedback requirements to achieve an operational performance level in the different partitions. When channel statistics are difficult to obtain at the transmitter, we propose a universal codebook design (also implemented by the rotation-scaling maps) that is robust to channel statistics. Numerical studies show that even few bits of feedback, when applied with our designs, lead to near perfect CSI performance in a variety of correlated channel conditions.     

Adaptive opportunistic fair scheduling over multiuser spatial channels

We consider the problem of opportunistic fair scheduling (OFS) of multiple users in downlink time-division multiple-access (TDMA) systems employing multiple transmit antennas and beamforming. OFS is an important technique in wireless networks to achieve fair bandwidth usage among users, which is performed on a per-frame basis at the media access control layer. Multiple-transmit-antenna beamforming provides TDMA systems with the capability of supporting multiple concurrent transmissions, i.e., multiple spatial channels at the physical layer. Given a particular subset of users and their channel conditions, the optimal beamforming scheme can be calculated. The multiuser opportunistic scheduling problem then refers to the selection of the optimal subset of users for transmission at each time instant to maximize the total throughput of the system subject to a certain fairness constraint on each individual user's throughput. We propose discrete stochastic approximation algorithms to adaptively select a better subset of users. We also consider scenarios of time-varying channels for which the scheduling algorithm can track the time-varying optimal user subset. We present simulation results to demonstrate the performance of the proposed scheduling algorithms in terms of both throughput and fairness, their fast convergence, and the excellent tracking capability in time-varying environments.     

On Scheduling for Multiple-Antenna Wireless Networks Using Contention-Based Feedback

Multiuser diversity gain is an effective technique for improving the performance of wireless networks. This gain can be exploited by scheduling the users with the best current channel conditions. However, this kind of scheduling requires that the base station (or access point) knows some kind of channel quality indicator (CQI) information for every user in the system. When the wireless link lacks channel reciprocity, each user must feed back this CQI information to the base station. The required feedback load makes exploiting multiuser diversity extremely difficult when the number of users becomes large. To alleviate this problem, this paper considers a contention-based CQI feedback where only users whose channel gains are larger than a threshold are allowed to transmit their CQI information through a spread-spectrum based contention channel. Considering the capture effect in this contention channel, it is shown that i) the multiuser diversity gain can be exploited regardless of the number of transmit antennas at the base station and ii) the total system throughput exponentially approaches that of the full feedback scheme as the spreading code length of the contention channel linearly increases. In addition, it is also shown that multiuser diversity can be maintained with the feedback delay of time-variant channels. We also consider the issue of differentiated rate scheduling, in which the base station gives different rates to different subsets of mobiles. In this scenario, mobiles feed back their CQI with some access probability, and we show this technique causes only a negligible throughput loss compared to the case without supporting differentiated rate.     

空间相关对发射分集系统的多用户分集性能的影响

研究空间相关对发射分集结合调度策略的多用户系统下行链路性能的影响.推导出发射天线之间存在空间相关的条件下,TxAA(Transmit Adaptive Array)、STBC(Space-Time Block Coding)结合调度策略的多用户系统平均容量的表达式,在此基础上研究其平均容量.通过仿真验证理论分析的有效性.结果表明,发射天线之间的空间相关性会提高多用户系统的平均容量,另外TxAA在各种相关条件下的系统平均容量都优于STBC.     

空间相关信道下的交替多用户调度算法

针对多用户多输入多输出（MIMO）系统,研究了空间相关信道下的多用户调度问题。通过推导用户信道向量夹角的统计特征,分析了多用户调度算法对所调度用户间正交性的影响。分析结果表明在空间相关信道下现有基于串行搜索的调度方法在统计意义上降低了被调度用户之间的正交性,从而导致基于串行搜索的调度算法与最优的穷举搜索之间存在较大的性能差距。为了提高相关信道下多用户MIMO系统的性能,提出了一种基于交替搜索的多用户调度算法及其低复杂度实现方法。仿真结果表明,所提出的用户调度算法能够有效地弥补基于串行搜索的调度方法的性能损失,在空间独立信道和空间相关信道下以较低的计算复杂度获得接近穷举搜索的最优性能。      

Capacity of Multiuser Diversity with Cooperative Relaying in Wireless Networks

This letter provides an analysis of the interaction between cooperative diversity and multiuser diversity in downlink channels. Through an approximation of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) distribution of each cooperative link using gamma distribution, we can derive an analytic expression for the average throughput of a single-cell wireless system with multiple cooperative diversity links combined with a fair-access scheduler. The proposed analytic approach is verified through comparisons with simulated results and shows that cooperative diversity has a detrimental impact on multiuser diversity.     

时变信道中非理想反馈条件下波束成形的误码率分析

在基于信道信息有限反馈的无线多入单出系统中,发射机可采用简单的波束成形技术实现发射分集增益和阵列增益。已有的相关研究大多包含块衰落信道、准确信道估计或无反馈延迟等理想假设。该文建立了更为实际的Jakes时变信道中存在信道估计误差和反馈延迟的系统模型,分析了方形和矩形正交幅度调制星座图的平均误码率。研究表明:误码率的理论分析和仿真结果完全相符;增加反馈比特数可提高阵列增益,但不能增加分集增益;在慢变信道中,波束成形要显著优于正交空时分组码;误码率受信道估计误差和反馈延迟影响,且对后者尤为敏感。     

Application of quasi-orthogonal space-time block codes in beamforming

It is well known that when channel information is available at the transmitter, transmit beamforming scheme can be employed to enhance the performance of a multiple-antenna system. Recently, Jongren et al. and Zhou-Giannakis proposed a new performance criterion based on partial channel side information at the transmitter. With this criterion, an optimal beamforming matrix was constructed for the orthogonal space-time block codes. However, the same method has not been applied to the recently proposed quasi-orthogonal space-time block codes (QSTBCs) due to the nonorthogonal nature of the quasi-orthogonal designs. In this paper, the issue of combining beamforming with QSTBCs is addressed. Based on our asymptotic analysis, we extend the beamforming scheme from Jongren et al. and construct the beamforming matrices for the quasi-orthogonal designs. The proposed beamforming scheme accomplishes high transmission rate as well as high-order spatial diversity. The new QSTBC beamformer can be presented as a novel four-directional or eight-directional eigen-beamformer that works for systems with four or more transmit antennas. Simulations for systems with multiple transmit antennas demonstrate significant performance improvement over several other widely used beamforming methods at various SNRs and for channels with different quality of feedback.     

多用户MIMO系统下行链路的随机多波束复用技术

该文提出了一种随机多波束多用户复用技术,充分利用多用户分集以及基站多天线的空间自由度来提高系统吞吐量。不同于传统的随机波束形成技术,该技术首先在给定预编码码本内随机选取一个码字,然后调度多个空分复用用户以及其余预编码矩阵。该文采用了一种逐次调度的方式,第一次训练调度一个主发送用户并确定一个次发送预编码矩阵,通过第二次训练选择次发送用户,这种方式能以很小的反馈开销有效控制复用用户之间的相互干扰。同时,该文所提技术能进一步推广到用户具有不同天线配置的异构情形。仿真结果表明,该文技术在具有不同相关性的信道环境下都能获得较优的系统吞吐量。