This paper presents outdoor field experimental results to clarify the 4-by-4 multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) throughput performance when applying joint transmission (JT) and distributed MIMO to the 15-GHz frequency band in the downlink of a 5G cellular radio access system. Experimental results for JT in a 100m × 70m large-cell scenario show that throughput improvement of up to 10% is achieved in most of the area and the peak data rate is improved from 2.8Gbps to 3.7Gbps. Based on analysis of the reference signal received power (RSRP) and channel correlation, we find that the RSRP is improved in lower RSRP areas, and that the channel correlation is improved in higher RSRP areas. These improvements contribute to higher throughput performance. The advantage of distributed MIMO and JT are compared in a 20m × 20m small-cell scenario. The throughput improvement of 70% and throughput exceeding 5 Gbps were achieved when applying distributed MIMO due to the improvement in the channel correlation. When applying JT, the RSRP is improved; however the channel correlation is not. As a result, there is no improvement in the throughput performance in the area. Finally, the relationship between the transmission point (TP) allocation and the direction of user equipment (UE) antenna arrangement is investigated. Two TP positions at 90 and 180deg. from each other are shown to be advantageous in terms of the throughput performance with different direction of UE antenna arrangement. Thus, we conclude that JT and distributed MIMO are promising technologies for the 5G radio access system that can compensate for the propagation loss and channel correlation in high frequency bands.

This paper presents results of outdoor experiments conducted in the 39-GHz band. In particular, assuming mobile communications such as the fifth generation mobile communications (5G) and beyond, we focus on achieving 1Gbit/s or greater throughput at transmission distances exceeding 1km in the experiments. In order to enhance the data rate and capacity, the use of higher frequency bands above 6GHz for mobile communications is a new and important technical challenge for 5G and beyond. To extend further the benefits of higher frequency bands to various scenarios, it is important to enable higher frequency bands to basically match the coverage levels of existing low frequency bands. Moreover, mobility is important in mobile communications. Therefore, we assume the 39-GHz band as a candidate frequency for 5G and beyond and prepare experimental equipment that utilizes lens antenna and beam tracking technologies. In the experiments, we achieve the throughput values of 2.14Gbit/s at the transmission distance of 1850m and 1.58Gbit/s at 20-km/h mobility. Furthermore, we show the possibility of achieving high throughput even under non-line-of-sight conditions. These experimental results contribute to clarifying the potential for the 39-GHz band to support gigabit-per-second class data rates while still providing coverage and supporting mobility over a coverage area with distance greater than 1km.

This paper proposes frequency domain precoding vector switching (PVS) transmit diversity for synchronization signals to achieve fast physical cell identity (PCID) detection for the narrowband (NB)-Internet-of-Things (IoT) radio interface. More specifically, we propose localized and distributed frequency domain PVS transmit diversity schemes for the narrowband primary synchronization signal (NPSS) and narrowband secondary synchronization signal (NSSS), and NPSS and NSSS detection methods including a frequency offset estimation method suitable for frequency domain PVS transmit diversity at the receiver in a set of user equipment (UE). We conduct link-level simulations to compare the detection probabilities of NPSS and NSSS, i.e., PCID using the proposed frequency domain PVS transmit diversity schemes, to those using the conventional time domain PVS transmit diversity scheme. The results show that both the distributed and localized frequency domain PVS transmit diversity schemes achieve a PCID detection probability almost identical to that of the time domain PVS transmit diversity scheme when the effect of the frequency offset due to the frequency error of the UE temperature compensated crystal oscillator (TCXO) is not considered. We also show that for a maximum frequency offset of less than approximately 8 kHz, localized PVS transmit diversity achieves almost the same PCID detection probability. It also achieves a higher PCID detection probability than one-antenna transmission although it is degraded compared to the time domain PVS transmit diversity when the maximum frequency offset is greater than approximately 10 kHz.

In the Long-Term Evolution (LTE)-Advanced downlink, a user-specific demodulation reference signal (DM-RS) is used to support channel estimation and data demodulation for user-transparent multi-antenna and/or multi-point (MA/P) transmission techniques. A hybrid code division multiplexing (CDM) and frequency division multiplexing (FDM) scheme is adopted as a DM-RS multiplexing scheme for up to eight data streams per user. A time-domain orthogonal cover code (OCC) is used for CDM since time domain orthogonality among OCCs offers good robustness against channel variation. However, in a medium-to-high mobility environment, orthogonality distortion occurs among OCCs, which results in performance degradation. In this paper, we propose a two-dimensional (2D)-OCC mapping that achieves two-dimensional orthogonality in the time and frequency domains to improve the performance of CDM-based DM-RSs while reducing the peak transmission power of the OFDM symbol which includes the DM-RSs. Simulation results show that the proposed 2D-OCC mapping is effective in improving the block error rate performance especially in medium-to-high mobility environments. Furthermore, it is shown that the 2D-OCC mapping effectively reduces the peak power compared to the time-domain OCC mapping.

This paper presents the effect of transmit diversity on the initial and neighboring cell search time performance and the most appropriate transmit diversity scheme based on system-level simulations employing synchronization signals for the Long Term Evolution (LTE) downlink. The synchronization signals including the primary synchronization signal (PSS) and secondary synchronization signal (SSS) are the first physical channel that a set of user equipment (UE) acquires at the initial radio-link connection. The transmit diversity candidates assumed in the paper are Precoding Vector Switching (PVS), Cyclic Delay Diversity (CDD), Time Switched Transmit Diversity (TSTD), and Frequency Switched Transmit Diversity (FSTD), which are all suitable for simple blind detection at a UE. System-level simulation results show that transmit diversity is effective in improving the detection probabilities of the received PSS timing and PSS sequence in the first step and those of the SSS sequence and radio frame timing in the second step of the cell search process. We also show that PVS achieves fast cell search time performance of less than approximately 20ms at the location probability of 90% regardless of the inter-cell site distance up to 10km. Hence, we conclude that PVS is the best transmit diversity scheme for the synchronization signals from the viewpoint of decreasing the initial and neighboring cell search times.

This paper presents beamforming and beam tracking techniques and downlink performance results from field experiments using a Proof-of-Concept (PoC) system. The PoC implements a 5G mobile radio access system in the millimeter wave band and utilizes beamforming and beam tracking techniques. These techniques are realized with a dielectric lens antenna fed by a switched antenna feeder array. The half-power beamwidth of the antenna is 3° corresponding to massive MIMO using approximately 1000 antenna elements. The system bandwidth is 1GHz and the center frequency is 73.5GHz. Adaptive modulation and coding using four modulation and coding schemes is implemented. The field experiment is conducted in the following small cell environments: a courtyard, a shopping mall and a street canyon. The majority of the test area is Line-Of-Sight (LOS) however the shopping mall course contains 69% Non-LOS (NLOS) conditions. The results show that the maximum throughput of over 2Gbps using rate 7/8 coded 16QAM modulation is achieved in 87%, 34% and 28% of each of the respective environments. The beam tracking achieves high availability of coverage and seamless mobility not only in LOS environments but also under NLOS conditions through the reflected paths.

In a time-invariant wireless channel, the multipath that exceeds the cyclic prefix (CP) or the guard interval (GI) causes orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems to hardly achieve high data rate transmission due to the inter-symbol interference (ISI) and the inter-carrier interference (ICI). In this paper the new canceller scheme, named as Double Window Cancellation and Combining (DWCC) is proposed. It includes the entire symbol interval, delayed by multipath as a signal processing window and intends to improve the performance by combining the double windows that can be formed by the pre- and post-ISI cancellation and reconstruction to the received OFDM symbol interfered by the multipath exceeding the guard interval. The proposed scheme has two algorithm structures of the DWCC-I and -II which are distinguished by the operational sequence (Symbol-wise or Group-wise) to the OFDM symbols of the received packet and by the selection of the processing window in the iterative decision feedback processing. Since the performance of the canceller is dependant on the equalization, particularly on the initial equalization, the proposed schemes operate with the time and frequency domain equalizer in the initial and the iterative symbol detection, respectively. For the verification of the proposed schemes, each scheme is evaluated in the turbo coded OFDM for low (QPSK) and high level modulation systems (16QAM, 64QAM), and compared with the conventional canceller with respect to the performance and computational complexity. As a result, the proposed schemes do not have an error floor even for 64QAM in a severe frequency selective channel.

In sixth-generation (6G) mobile communication system, it is expected that extreme high data rate communication with a peak data rate over 100Gbps should be provided by exploiting higher frequency bands in addition to millimeter-wave bands such as 28GHz. The higher frequency bands are assumed to be millimeter wave and terahertz wave where the extreme wider bandwidth is available compared with 5G, and hence 6G needs to promote research and development to exploit so-called terahertz wave targeting the frequency from 100GHz to 300GHz. In the terahertz wave, there are fundamental issues that rectilinearity and pathloss are higher than those in the 28GHz band. In order to solve these issues, it is very important to clarify channel characteristics of the terahertz wave and establish a channel model, to advance 6G radio access technologies suitable for the terahertz wave based on the channel model, and to develop radio-frequency device technologies for such higher frequency bands. This paper introduces a direction of studies on 6G radio access technologies to explore the higher frequency bands and technical issues on the device technologies, and then basic computer simulations in 100Gbps transmission using 100GHz band clarify a potential of extreme high data rate over 100Gbps.

This paper proposes the use of inter-cell transmission power control (TPC) with overload indicator (OLI) signaling to user equipment (UE) in addition to intra-cell TPC for the Evolved UTRA uplink. In the proposed inter-cell OLI transmission method, a cell site (Node B) selects UEs offering high-level interferences to the cell site based on the measured path loss difference, and then, the cell site transmits the OLI signal to the selected UEs. The simulation results show that the inter-cell TPC improves both the average user throughput and cell-edge user throughput at 5% in the cumulative distribution function (CDF) curve, assuming the same sector throughput. For instance, when the sector throughput is 1 Mbps using 1.08 MHz bandwidth, the inter-cell TPC with the proposed UE-common OLI scheme increases the average user throughput and the 5%-cell edge user throughput by approximately 41% and 53%, respectively, compared to the case with intra-cell TPC only. Furthermore, when the inter-cell TPC with the proposed UE-individual OLI is employed, the corresponding average user throughput and the 5% user throughput are increased by approximately 87% and 94%, respectively.

The fifth generation mobile communications (5G) systems will need to support the ultra-reliable and low-latency communications (URLLC) to enable future mission-critical applications, e.g., self-driving cars and remote control. With the aim of verifying the feasibility of URLLC related 5G requirements in real environments, field trials of URLLC using a new frame structure are conducted in Yokohama, Japan. In this paper, we present the trial results and investigate the impact of the new frame structure and retransmission method on the URLLC performance. To reduce the user-plane latency and improve the packet success probability, a wider subcarrier spacing, self-contained frame structure, and acknowledgement/negative acknowledgement-less (ACK/NACK-less) retransmission are adopted. We verify the feasibility of URLLC in actual field tests using our prototype test-bed while implementing these techniques. The results show that for the packet size of 32 bytes the URLLC related requirements defined by the 3GPP are satisfied even at low signal-to-noise ratios or at non-line-of-sight transmission.

We investigate non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) with a successive interference canceller (SIC) in the cellular multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) downlink for systems beyond LTE-Advanced. Taking into account the overhead for the downlink reference signaling for channel estimation at the user terminal in the case of non-orthogonal multiuser multiplexing and the applicability of the SIC receiver in the MIMO downlink, we propose intra-beam superposition coding of a multiuser signal at the transmitter and the spatial filtering of inter-beam interference followed by the intra-beam SIC at the user terminal receiver. The intra-beam SIC cancels out the inter-user interference within a beam. Regarding the transmitter beamforming (precoding), in general, any kind of beamforming matrix determination criteria can be applied to the proposed NOMA method. In the paper, we assume open loop-type random beamforming, which is very efficient in terms of the amount of feedback information from the user terminal. Furthermore, we employ a weighted proportional fair (PF)-based resource (beam of each frequency block and power) allocation for the proposed method. Simulation results show that the proposed NOMA method using the intra-beam superposition coding and SIC simultaneously achieves better sum and cell-edge user throughput compared to orthogonal multiple access (OMA), which is widely used in 3.9 and 4G mobile communication systems.

This paper investigates the interference suppression effect from much higher rate dedicated physical channels (DPCHs) of a parallel-type coherent multistage interference canceller (COMSIC) with iterative channel estimation (ICE) by laboratory experiments in the transmit-power-controlled W-CDMA reverse link. The experimental results elucidate that when two interfering DPCHs exist with the spreading factor (SF) of 8 and with the ratio of the target signal energy per bit-to-interference power spectrum density ratio (Eb/I0) of fast transmit power control, ΔEb/I0, of -6 dB (which corresponds to 64 simultaneous DPCHs with SF = 64, i.e., the same symbol rate as the desired DPCH), the implemented COMSIC receiver with ICE exhibits a significant decrease in the required transmit signal energy per bit-to-background noise power spectrum density ratio (Eb/N0) at the average bit error rate (BER) of 10-3 (while the matched filter (MF)-based Rake receiver could not realize the average BER of 10-3 due to severe multiple access interference (MAI)). It is also found that the achieved BER performance at the average BER of 10-3 of the COMSIC receiver with the A/D converter quantization of 8 bits in the laboratory experiments is degraded by approximately 1.0 dB and 4.0 dB compared to the computer simulation results, when ΔEb/I0=-6 dB and -9 dB, respectively, due to the quantization error of the desired signal and path search error for the Rake combiner. Finally, we show that the required transmit Eb/N0 at the average BER of 10-3 of the third-stage COMSIC with ICE is decreased by approximately 0.3 and 0.5 dB compared to that of COMSIC with decision-feedback type channel estimation (DFCE) with and without antenna diversity reception, respectively.

Massive MIMO is known as a promising technology for multiuser multiplexing in the fifth generation mobile communication system to accommodate the rapidly-increasing traffic. It has a large number of antenna elements and thus provides very sharp beams. As seen in hybrid beamforming, there have already been many papers on the concatenation of two precoders (beamformers). The inner precoder, i.e., a multi-beam former, performs a linear transformation between the element space and the beam space. The outer precoder forms nulls in the limited beam space spanned by selected beams to suppress the inter-user interference. In this two-step precoder, the beam shape is expected to determine the system performance. In this paper, we evaluate the achievable throughput performance for different beam-shaping schemes: a discrete Fourier transform (DFT) beam, Chebyshev weighted beams, and Taylor weighted beam. Simulations show that the DFT beam provides the best performance except the case of imperfect precoding and cell edge SNR of 30dB.

5G has achieved large-scale commercialization across the world and the global 6G research and development is accelerating. To support more new use cases, 6G mobile communication systems should satisfy extreme performance requirements far beyond 5G. The physical layer key technologies are the basis of the evolution of mobile communication systems of each generation, among which three key technologies, i.e., duplex, waveform and multiple access, are the iconic characteristics of mobile communication systems of each generation. In this paper, we systematically review the development history and trend of the three key technologies and define the Non-Orthogonal Physical Layer (NOPHY) concept for 6G, including Non-Orthogonal Duplex (NOD), Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) and Non-Orthogonal Waveform (NOW). Firstly, we analyze the necessity and feasibility of NOPHY from the perspective of capacity gain and implementation complexity. Then we discuss the recent progress of NOD, NOMA and NOW, and highlight several candidate technologies and their potential performance gain. Finally, combined with the new trend of 6G, we put forward a unified physical layer design based on NOPHY that well balances performance against flexibility, and point out the possible direction for the research and development of 6G physical layer key technologies.

In this paper, we propose a decentralized probabilistic frequency-block activation control method for the cellular downlink. The aim of the proposed method is to increase the downlink system throughput within the system coverage by adaptively controlling the individual activation of each frequency block at all base stations (BSs) to achieve inter-cell interference coordination (ICIC) and traffic load balancing. The proposed method does not rely on complicated inter-BS cooperation. It uses only the inter-BS information exchange regarding the observed system throughput levels with the neighboring BSs. Based on the shared temporal system throughput information, each BS independently controls online the activation of their respective frequency blocks in a probabilistic manner, which autonomously achieves ICIC and load balancing among BSs. Simulation results show that the proposed method achieves greater system throughput and a faster convergence rate than the conventional online probabilistic activation/deactivation control method. We also show that the proposed method successfully tracks dynamic changes in the user distribution generated due to mobility.

This paper evaluates a variety of key 5G technologies such as base station (BS) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antennas, beamforming and tracking, intra-baseband unit (BBU) hand over (HO), and coverage. This is done in different interesting 5G areas with a variety of radio conditions such as an indoor office building lobby, an outdoor parking area, and a realistic urban deployment of a 5G radio access system with BSs installed in buildings to deploy a 5G trial area in the Tokyo Odaiba waterfront area. Experimental results show that throughput exceeding 10Gbps is achieved in a 730MHz bandwidth using 8 component carriers, and distributed MIMO throughput gain is achieved in various transmission point deployments in the indoor office building lobby and outdoor parking area using two radio units (RUs). In particular, in the outdoor parking area, a distinct advantage from distributed MIMO is expected and the distributed MIMO gain in throughput of 60% is achieved. The experimental results also clarify the downlink performance in an urban deployment. The experimental results show that throughput exceeding 1.5Gbps is achieved in the area and approximately 200 Mbps is achieved at 500m away from the BS. We also confirm that the beam tracking and intra-BBU HO work well compensating for high path loss at 28-GHz, and achieve coverage 500m from the BS. On the other hand, line of sight (LoS) and non-line-of sight (N-LoS) conditions are critical to 5G performance in the 28-GHz band, and we observe that 5G connections are sometimes dropped behind trees, buildings, and under footbridges.

This paper extends our previously proposed non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme to the base station (BS) cooperative multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) cellular downlink for future radio access. The proposed NOMA scheme employs intra-beam superposition coding of a multiuser signal at the transmitter and the spatial filtering of inter-beam interference followed by the intra-beam successive interference canceller (SIC) at the user terminal receiver. The intra-beam SIC cancels out the inter-user interference within a beam. This configuration achieves reduced overhead for the downlink reference signaling for channel estimation at the user terminal in the case of non-orthogonal user multiplexing and enables the use of the SIC receiver in the MIMO downlink. The transmitter beamforming (precoding) matrix is controlled based on open loop-type random beamforming using a block-diagonalized beamforming matrix, which is very efficient in terms of the amount of feedback information from the user terminal. Simulation results show that the proposed NOMA scheme with block-diagonalized random beamforming in BS cooperative multiuser MIMO and the intra-beam SIC achieves better system-level throughput than orthogonal multiple access (OMA), which is assumed in LTE-Advanced. We also show that BS cooperative operation along with the proposed NOMA further enhances the cell-edge user throughput gain which implies better user fairness and universal connectivity.

This paper presents a comparison of hierarchical and non-hierarchical synchronization channel (SCH) structures in terms of the initial cell search time and neighboring cell search time in order to establish the optimum SCH structure in the Evolved UTRA downlink. Computer simulation results show that in a 19-cell configuration, the cell search time at 90% in the cumulative distribution function (CDF) using the hierarchical SCH structure is less than half that using the non-hierarchical SCH structure in a neighboring cell search under low signal-to-interference plus noise power ratio (SINR) conditions, although both structures achieve almost the same cell search time in the initial cell search. This is due to the cross-correlation based SCH symbol timing detection in the hierarchical SCH structure, which is affected less by noise than the auto-correlation based detection in the non-hierarchical SCH structure. Thus, we conclude that the hierarchical SCH structure is superior to the non-hierarchical SCH structure based on the cell search time performance especially in the neighboring cell search.

This paper compares the turbo code and rate-compatible low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes based on the block error rate (BLER) performance and decoding complexity in order to clarify which channel coding scheme is most appropriate for the channel coding scheme in the OFDM based Evolved UTRA (E-UTRA) downlink. Simulation results and the decoding complexity analysis show that although the Rate-Compatible/Quasi-Cyclic (RC/QC)-LDPC code employing an offset layered belief propagation (BP) method can reduce the computational complexity by approximately 30% for the channel coding rate of R ≥ 1/2, the required average received signal energy per bit-to-noise power spectrum density ratio (Eb/N0) is degraded by approximately 0.2-0.3 dB for R = 1/3, 1/2 and 3/4 compared to that for the turbo code. Moreover, the decoding complexity level of the RC/QC-LDPC code with the δ-min algorithm is almost the same or higher than that for the turbo code with a slight degradation in the required received Eb/N0. Although the decoding complexity level of the ZigZag code is lower than that of the turbo code, the code brings about a distinct loss in the required average received Eb/N0 of approximately 0.4 dB. Finally, the turbo Single Parity Check (SPC) code improves the BLER performance compared to the ZigZag code, i.e., achieves almost the same BLER performance as that for the turbo code, at the cost of a two-fold increase in the decoding complexity. As a result, we conclude that the turbo code with a contention free interleaver is more promising than the LDPC codes for prioritizing the achievable performance over complexity and as the channel coding scheme for the shared data channel in the E-UTRA.

In the Evolved UTRA (UMTS Terrestrial Radio Access) downlink, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) based radio access was adopted because of its inherent immunity to multipath interference and flexible accommodation of different spectrum arrangements. This paper presents the optimum adaptive modulation and channel coding (AMC) scheme when resource blocks (RBs) is simultaneously assigned to the same user when frequency and time domain channel-dependent scheduling is assumed in the downlink OFDMA radio access with single-antenna transmission. We start by presenting selection methods for the modulation and coding scheme (MCS) employing mutual information both for RB-common and RB-dependent modulation schemes. Simulation results show that, irrespective of the application of power adaptation to RB-dependent modulation, the improvement in the achievable throughput of the RB-dependent modulation scheme compared to that for the RB-common modulation scheme is slight, i.e., 4 to 5%. In addition, the number of required control signaling bits in the RB-dependent modulation scheme becomes greater than that for the RB-common modulation scheme. Therefore, we conclude that the RB-common modulation and channel coding rate scheme is preferred, when multiple RBs of the same coded stream are assigned to one user in the case of single-antenna transmission.