Subcarrier Wise Scheduling Methods for Multi-antenna and Multi-carrier Systems

In this paper, multiuser scheduling algorithms are evaluated for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) networks. These scheduling schemes allocate M [number of transmit antennas at base station (BS)] number of independent data streams from BS to the M most favourable users experiencing the highest signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR). Here, SINR is used to convey the channel state information (CSI) to the BS. We have investigated the system throughput and feedback overhead attained by these scheduling schemes for different scenarios as: (a) the maximum CSI is sent to the BS by every user and (b) the maximum CSI sent to the BS corresponding to every BS antenna. The overall feedback overhead incurred by MIMO-OFDM system increases linearly with number of users, number of subcarriers and number of transmit antennas. Hence, to reduce the feedback overhead, a scheme is proposed where users with SINR values greater than or equal to a predefined threshold value are only allowed to feedback the channel state information to BS. The relation between system throughput and various thresholds is also studied. The achievable system throughput results are validated by comparing the probability density function of achieved SINR values by different scheduling schemes.

     

多用户MIMO系统在有限反馈下结合预编码与调度算法的研究

捅要：研究了多用户多输入多输出（MIMO）系统在有限反馈下的一种结合单位预编码与用户调度算法的方案。在该系统中每一用户都具有多个接收天线,该方案具有较大的多用户分集增益和较小的计算复杂度,从而能够减少系统中的用户间干扰。每个用户独立地决定自己的天线合并矢量,并将最优波束矢量以及对应的估计信干噪比通过有限反馈信道反馈给基站,此时基站获取了相应的用户信道信息和用户间干扰信息。基于接收到的反馈信息,基站从预定义的码本中选取和速率最大的最优子集进行系统预编码,然后依照预编码矩阵调度欧氏距离最小的用户且用户个数不超过发送天线的数目。仿真结果显示该方案有效地改善了系统速率,特别是在用户数目较多或者信道环境较好的情况下。     

用于MIMO广播信道的带多波束选择的正交随机波束成形算法

本文提出一种基于有限反馈的波束和用户选择方案,在这种方案中,用户端利用一个随机正交码本对其信道方向信息(CDI)进行量化,计算其最大信号与干扰加噪声功率比(SINR),并把这些信息反馈给基站;基站根据接收到的这些反馈信息,按照和容量最大的准则选择出多个正交波束以及相应的多个用户.和sharif等人最近提出的方案相比,我们提出的方案能根据系统参数,如用户数和信噪比(SNR),对选择的波束成形矢量及其对应的用户的数量和集合进行调整,当用户数量较小时,和容量性能得到了很大的提升,同时避免了选择波束成形矢量时的用户冲突,另外,基站也不需要广播波束成形矢量给各个用户.     

On transceiver design and channel quantization for downlink multiuser MIMO systems with limited feedback

We consider a MIMO broadcast channel where both the transmitter and receivers are equipped with multiple antennas. Channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT) is obtained through limited (i.e., finite-bandwidth) feedback from the receivers that index a set of precoding vectors contained in a predefined codebook. We propose a novel transceiver architecture based on zero-forcing beamforming and linear receiver combining. The receiver combining and quantization for CSIT feedback are jointly designed in order to maximize the expected SINR for each user. We provide an analytic characterization of the achievable throughput in the case of many users and show how additional receive antennas or higher multiuser diversity can reduce the required feedback rate to achieve a target throughput.We also propose a design methodology for generating codebooks tailored for arbitrary spatial correlation statistics. The resulting codebooks have a tree structure that can be utilized in time-correlated MIMO channels to significantly reduce feedback overhead. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the overall transceiver design strategy and codebook design methodology compared to prior techniques in a variety of correlation 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.     

Exploiting Multiuser Diversity With Imperfect One-Bit Channel State Feedback

It has been well recognized that significant throughput gains can be leveraged in multiuser wireless communication systems by exploiting multiuser diversity with a smart scheduler. This scheduler collects channel state information (CSI) from all users and allocates the resources to the user(s) experiencing favorable channel conditions. However, for a frequency-division-duplex system with a large number of users, how to efficiently collect the required CSI will be a challenging task, especially when the feedback links are of limited capacity. In this paper, we propose a scheduling algorithm to exploit multiuser diversity with possibly imperfect one-bit channel state feedback. The basic idea is to define a threshold lambda and let each user report one-bit information to the scheduler about the comparison between its measured channel fading level and lambda. Correspondingly, the scheduler uses these feedback bits to classify all users into two sets and assigns the channel to one user belonging to the set experiencing favorable channel conditions. Several implementation schemes are developed by attacking the optimization of lambda under different system configurations, covering both the case when the one-bit feedback is perfect and those when the one-bit feedback is imperfect. Computer simulations show that when the user number is large, say, more than ten users, the proposed scheduling supports significantly larger data rate over the round-robin scheduling, while in comparison with the optimum scheduling with complete CSI, the performance loss is limited if the one-bit feedback is of high reliability. In addition, our studies show that we can effectively enhance the robustness against feedback imperfectness by incorporating the feedback reliability into optimization of lambda     

Novel SINR‐Based User Selection for an MU‐MIMO System with Limited Feedback

This paper presents a novel user selection method based on the signal‐to‐interference‐plus‐noise ratio (SINR), which is approximated using limited feedback data at the base stations (BSs) of multiple user multiple‐input multiple‐output (MU‐MIMO) systems. In the proposed system, the codebook vector index, the quantization error obtained from the correlation between the measured channel and the codebook vector, and the measured value of the largest singular value are fed back from each user to the BS. The proposed method not only generates precoding vectors that are orthogonal to the precoding vectors of the previously selected users and are highly correlated with the codebook vector of each user but also adopts the quantization error in approximating the SINR, which eventually provides a significantly more accurate SINR than the conventional SINR‐based user selection techniques. Computer simulations show that the proposed method enhances the sum rate of the conventional SINR‐based methods by at least 2.4 (2.62) bps/Hz when the number of transmit antennas and number of receive antennas per user terminal is 4 and 1(2), respectively, with 100 candidate users and an SNR of 30 dB.     

一种选择最大多用户分集MIMO信道调度方法及性能分析

提出了一种选择最大多用户分集MIMO信道调度方法,能在不降低性能的基础上减少反馈负载：每个用户将最大的信干噪比值与设定的门限比较,只有大于门限的值及对应的发射天线序号返回给基站,基站分配独立的信道给最大信干噪比用户。给出了所提方案的系统平均容量和反馈负载量的分析,仿真结果与分析一致。     

Feedback Quantization Strategies for Multiuser Diversity Systems

In a system utilizing multiuser diversity, regular feedback of channel-quality predictions to the base station is required for each user. Typically, the measure of channel quality must be quantized at each mobile station before it can be sent back. In this paper, we present two distributed scalar quantization schemes that optimize two different performance criteria: a) the minimization of the probability P _e of incorrectly identifying the user with the best channel quality and b) maximization of the resulting throughput R. For a typical Rayleigh-fading system with 30 users per sector, numerical optimization results show that the P_e and R realized by the uniform quantization strategy with 16 quantization levels for each user can be achieved by only three quantization levels using the two proposed strategies. A practical approximation of the proposed schemes is studied and is shown to provide near-optimal performance for both performance criteria as the number of quantization levels becomes large     

基于位置-信道状态信息数据库的多用户MIMO下行调度算法

对于多用户多输入多输出系统,下行调度需要移动终端反馈大量的信道状态信息,随着用户数的增多,所需的反馈信息也剧增。由于信道状态信息与移动终端所处的位置相关,提出了基于“位置一信道状态信息数据库”的多用户调度算法,同时分析了该调度方法所需的反馈开销。理论和仿真结果表明：提出的调度方法无需反馈开销,且可以取得与基于无误差反馈的多用户调度方法相近的吞吐量性能。     

New Diversity Combining Receivers for Cooperative Multiplexing in Wireless Multiuser Relay Networks

We propose two new diversity combining receivers that support cooperative multiplexing in two-hop wireless multiuser relay networks. Cooperative multiplexing has the potential to double the achievable throughput by allowing the base station (BS) and the relay station (RS) to transmit to different users at the same time in the second time slot of the half time division duplexed (TDD) relay transmission. This throughput improvement comes at a cost of performance degradation due to inter-user interference between the BS and the RS. To overcome this degradation, we propose two new receivers for the relay-link users: (1) cooperative multiplexing optimum combining (CMOC) and (2) cooperative multiplexing selection combining (CMSC). The proposed CMOC receiver combines the signals in the first and second time slot of the half TDD transmission such that the output signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) is maximized. The proposed CMSC receiver allows the relay-link user terminal to be active in only one of the two half TDD time slots. As such, CMSC offers power savings relative to CMOC. New insights are drawn from our exact closed-form expressions that we derive for the moment generation function, probability density function, and the cumulative distribution function of the output SINR. Based on these, we present new analytical expressions for the outage probability, symbol error rate, and achievable throughput. Our results show a 3.5 times improvement in the achievable throughput relative to the standard single-channel receiver in the high interference regime.     

Quantized feedback MIMO scheduling for heterogeneous broadcast networks

One-bit quantization of signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio is discussed in literature for user scheduling in homogeneous network where users are assumed to have equal signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). It is mentioned in literature that 1-bit quantization with fixed quantization threshold does not achieve multiuser diversity. Moreover, the system sum-rate achieved by this lags significantly behind that of full feedback scheme. Two multi-bit quantized feedback scheduling schemes are proposed for broadcast network with heterogeneous users experiencing different channel statistics. It is presented that these two schemes with fixed optimum quantization thresholds profit from the diversity provided by independent and identically distributed channels. Moreover, proposed optimistic multi-bit quantized scheduling scheme achieves higher system sum-rate than the proposed multi-bit quantized scheme by addressing the limitations of the later one. The optimum quantization thresholds depend on the number of transmit antennas and system SNR. Moreover, these multi-bit quantized feedback scheduling schemes also ensure user fairness. Simulation results are presented to support the numerical analysis.     

A Novel Method of Feedback Reducing and Cross-layer Scheduling Based on Traffic Rates for Relay System

This paper studies the scheduling schemes in multiuser downlink relay systems with orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) where base station (BS) supports different traffic rates for different users. We formulate the problem as a cross-layer design of joint feedback reducing and OFDMA scheduling to support traffic rates and minimize packet loss rate. In most previous scheduling mechanisms with feedback, the parameters of traffic arrival process were not taken into account, consequently, the requirement of user traffic can not be guaranteed. In this paper, a dynamic threshold feedback mechanism (DTFM) based on traffic rates is proposed, of which the user with channel gain being larger than the dynamic threshold is only allowed to send its channel state information, thereby reducing the number of required feedback users and the computational burden of exhaustive search for best users at the BS. A cross-layer scheduling algorithm of traffic and queue proportional fairness (TQPF) taking into consideration the traffic fairness, the user queue length and the user transmission rate (related to its channel quality) is then proposed. Finally, a method of feedback reducing and cross-layer scheduling, i.e., TQPF based on DTFM (TQPF-DTFM), is proposed. Theoretical and simulation results show that DTFM reduces feedback by more than 90%, and TQPF-DTFM successfully meets user traffic rates that is, the user with high traffic rate can obtain more transmission rate than the user with low traffic rate and deceases packet loss rate of the system by almost 50% than the conventional methods.     

基于有限反馈的机会波束系统

针对目前机会波束系统中存在反馈量过多的问题,提出一种基于有限反馈的机会波束系统.设置反馈门限,当用户的接收信干噪比大于反馈门限时,对信干噪比进行量化,再将量化电平反馈给基站,否则无需进行量化和反馈.以吞吐量最大化为原则设定最佳反馈门限和量化电平,在瑞利块衰落信道中对系统进行仿真,并与传统机会波束系统比较,结果表明,该系统大大降低了反馈量.     

Multi-Antenna Downlink Channels with Limited Feedback and User Selection

We analyze the sum-rate performance of a multi- antenna downlink system carrying more users than transmit antennas, with partial channel knowledge at the transmitter due to finite rate feedback. In order to exploit multiuser diversity, we show that the transmitter must have, in addition to directional information, information regarding the quality of each channel. Such information should reflect both the channel magnitude and the quantization error. Expressions for the SINR distribution and the sum-rate are derived, and tradeoffs between the number of feedback bits, the number of users, and the SNR are observed. In particular, for a target performance, having more users reduces feedback load.     

Performance analysis of switch‐based multiuser scheduling schemes with adaptive modulation in spectrum sharing systems

This paper focuses on the development of multiuser access schemes for spectrum sharing systems whereby secondary users are allowed to share the spectrum with primary users under the condition that the interference observed at the primary receiver is below a predetermined threshold. In particular, two scheduling schemes are proposed for selecting a user among those that satisfy the interference constraint and achieve an acceptable signal‐to‐noise ratio level. The first scheme focuses on optimizing the average spectral efficiency by selecting the user that reports the best channel quality. In order to alleviate the relatively high feedback required by the first scheme, a second scheme based on the concept of switched diversity is proposed, where the base station (BS) scans the secondary users in a sequential manner until a user whose channel quality is above an acceptable predetermined threshold is found. We develop expressions for the statistics of the signal‐to‐interference and noise ratio as well as the average spectral efficiency, average feedback load, and the delay at the secondary BS. We then present numerical results for the effect of the number of users and the interference constraint on the optimal switching threshold and the system performance and show that our analysis results are in perfect agreement with the numerical results. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Enhanced Multi-mode Transmission by User Scheduling in MISO Broadcast Channels with Finite-Rate Feedback

This paper investigates the user selection strategy in multiuser downlinks using zero-forcing beamforming (ZFBF) and finite-rate feedback (FRF). In order to mitigate the interference-limited effect in ZFBF-FRF systems, we propose an efficient user scheduling scheme combined with adaptive transmission mode selection strategy. In this scheme, each user first evaluates its preferred transmission mode and the corresponding achievable rate according to a derived tight lower bound of the rate. Given such information on the users through feedback, the BS then determines the global transmission mode of the system and selects users for simultaneous transmission. Asymptotic analysis shows that limited feedback beamforming to a single user is the best choice at both low and high SNR regimes. Simulation results demonstrate individual effects of different system parameters on the sum rate performance by the proposed scheme.     

An Opportunistic Channel Quality Feedback Scheme for Proportional Fair Scheduling

In this paper, we propose a channel quality information (CQI) feedback load reduction scheme for proportional fair scheduling (PFS) in wireless systems. The proposed scheme induces select users to feed back CQI only when the probability of selection is high. It is shown that the proposed scheme achieves system throughput comparable to the conventional scheme, where each and every user feeds back its CQIs, with significant feedback load reduction for each of the users.     

Opportunistic Feedback for Multiuser MIMO Systems With Linear Receivers

A novel multiuser scheduling and feedback strategy for the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) downlink is proposed in this paper. It achieves multiuser diversity gain without substantial feedback requirements. The proposed strategy uses per-antenna scheduling at the base station, which maps each transmit antenna at the base station (equivalently, a spatial channel) to a user. Each user has a number of receive antennas that is greater than or equal to the number of transmit antennas at the base station. Zero-forcing receivers are deployed by each user to decode the transmitted data streams. In this system, the base station requires users' channel quality on each spatial channel for scheduling. An opportunistic feedback protocol is proposed to reduce the feedback requirements. The proposed protocol uses a contention channel that consists of a fixed number of feedback minislots to convey channel state information. Feedback control parameters including the channel quality threshold and the random access feedback probability are jointly adjusted to maximize the average throughput performance of this system. Multiple receive antennas at the base station are used on the feedback channel to allow decoding multiple feedback messages sent simultaneously by different users. This further reduces the bandwidth of the feedback channel. Iterative search algorithms are proposed to solve the optimization for selection of these parameters under both scenarios that the cumulative distribution functions of users are known or unknown to the base station     

Design of a fair scheduler exploiting multiuser diversity with feedback information reduction

In this letter, we propose a new downlink fair scheduling scheme exploiting the multiuser diversity to enhance the transmission capacity. In the proposed scheme, only the MSs (mobile stations) whose normalized SNR (signal-to-noise ratio) values are larger than a given threshold feedback one-bit information to the BS (base station). As a result, while achieving the strict fairness, the proposed scheme can efficiently utilize the spectrum by reducing the considerable amount of the feedback information, compared to the proportional fair scheduling scheme where all the MSs feed back the normalized SNR values to the BS. Numerical studies show that the transmission capacity in the proposed scheme with a suitable value of the threshold is very close to that in the proportional fair scheduling scheme.