This paper proposes a scheme for reducing pilot interference in cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems through scalable access point (AP) selection and efficient pilot allocation using the Grey Wolf Optimizer (GWO). Specifically, we introduce a bidirectional large-scale fading-based (B-LSFB) AP selection method that builds high-quality connections benefiting both APs and UEs. Then, we limit the number of UEs that each AP can serve and encourage competition among UEs to improve the scalability of this approach. Additionally, we propose a grey wolf optimization based pilot allocation (GWOPA) scheme to minimize pilot contamination. Specifically, we first define a fitness function to quantify the level of pilot interference between UEs, and then construct dynamic interference relationships between any UE and its serving AP sets using a weighted fitness function to minimize pilot interference. The simulation results shows that the B-LSFB strategy achieves scalability with performance similar to large-scale fading-based (LSFB) AP selection. Furthermore, the grey wolf optimization-based pilot allocation scheme significantly improves per-user net throughput with low complexity compared to four existing schemes.

In this paper, we investigate optimal design of millimeter-wave (mmWave) multiuser line-of-sight multiple-input-multiple-output (LOS MIMO) systems using hybrid arrays of subarrays based on hybrid block diagonalization (BD) precoding and combining scheme. By introducing a general 3D geometric channel model, the optimal subarray separation products of the transmitter and receiver for maximizing sum-rate is designed in terms of two regular configurations of adjacent subarrays and interleaved subarrays for different users, respectively. We analyze the sensitivity of the optimal design parameters on performance in terms of a deviation factor, and derive expressions for the eigenvalues of the multiuser equivalent LOS MIMO channel matrix, which are also valid for non-optimal design. Simulation results show that the interleaved subarrays can support longer distance communication than the adjacent subarrays given the appropriate fixed subarray deployment.

This letter provides an efficient massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) detector based on quasi-newton methods to speed up the convergence performance under realistic scenarios, such as high user load and spatially correlated channels. The proposed method leverages the information of the Hessian matrix by merging Barzilai-Borwein method and Limited Memory-BFGS method. In addition, an efficient initial solution based on constellation mapping is proposed. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method diminishes performance loss to 0.7dB at the bit-error-rate of 10-2 at 128×32 antenna configuration with low complexity, which surpasses the state-of-the-art (SOTA) algorithms.

For massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems, simple linear detectors such as zero forcing (ZF) and minimum mean square error (MMSE) can achieve near-optimal detection performance with reduced computational complexity. However, such linear detectors always involve complicated matrix inversion, which will suffer from high computational overhead in the practical implementation. Due to the massive parallel-processing and efficient hardware-implementation nature, the neural network has become a promising approach to signal processing for the future wireless communications. In this paper, we first propose an efficient neural network to calculate the pseudo-inverses for any type of matrices based on the improved Newton's method, termed as the PINN. Through detailed analysis and derivation, the linear massive MIMO detectors are mapped on PINNs, which can take full advantage of the research achievements of neural networks in both algorithms and hardwares. Furthermore, an improved limited-memory Broyden-Fletcher-Goldfarb-Shanno (L-BFGS) quasi-Newton method is studied as the learning algorithm of PINNs to achieve a better performance/complexity trade-off. Simulation results finally validate the efficiency of the proposed scheme.

In this paper, a nonlinear quantized precoding scheme for low-resolution digital-analog converters (DACs) in a massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system is proposed. The nonlinear quantized precoding determines transmit antenna outputs with a transmit symbol and channel state information. In a full-digital massive MIMO system, low-resolution DACs are used to suppress power consumption. Conventional precoding algorithms for low-resolution DACs do not optimize transmit antenna gains individually. Thus, in this paper, a precoding scheme that optimizes individual transmit antenna gains as well as the DAC outputs is proposed. In the proposed scheme, the subarray of massive MIMO antennas is treated virtually as a single antenna element. Numerical results obtained through computer simulation show that the proposed precoding scheme achieves bit error rate performance close to that of the conventional precoding scheme with much smaller antenna gains on a CDL-A channel.

Cell-free massive MIMO (CF-mMIMO), which cooperatively utilizes a large number of antennas deployed over a communication area, has been attracting great attention as an important technology for realizing 5G-advanced and 6G systems. Recently, to ensure system scalability and mitigate inter-user interference in CF-mMIMO, a user-centric (UC) approach was investigated. In this UC approach, user-centric antenna-sets are formed by selecting appropriate antennas for each user, and postcoding is applied to reduce the strong interference from users whose antenna-sets overlap. However, in very high user density environments, since the number of interfering users increases due to increased overlapping of antenna-sets, the achievable link capacity may degrade. In this paper, we propose a user-cluster-centric (UCC) approach, which groups neighborhood users into a user-cluster and associates the predetermined number of antennas to this user-cluster for spatial multiplexing. We derive the uplink postcoding weights and explain the effectiveness of the proposed UCC approach in terms of the computational complexity of the weight computation. We also compare the uplink user capacities achievable with UC and UCC approaches by computer simulation and clarify situations where the UCC approach is effective. Furthermore, we discuss the impact of the number of interfering users considered in the zero-forcing and minimum mean square error postcoding weight computation on the user capacity.

This paper proposes two full-digital receive beamforming (BF) methods for low-complexity and high-accuracy uplink signal detection via Gaussian belief propagation (GaBP) at base stations (BSs) adopting massive multi-input multi-output (MIMO) for open radio access network (O-RAN). In addition, beyond fifth generation mobile communication (beyond 5G) systems will increase uplink capacity. In the scenarios such as O-RAN and beyond 5G, it is vital to reduce the cost of the BSs by limiting the bandwidth of fronthaul (FH) links, and the dimensionality reduction of the received signal based on the receive BF at a radio unit is a well-known strategy to reduce the amount of data transported via the FH links. In this paper, we clarify appropriate criteria for designing a BF weight considering the subsequent GaBP signal detection with the proposed methods: singular-value-decomposition-based BF and QR-decomposition-based BF with the aid of discrete-Fourier-transformation-based spreading. Both methods achieve the dimensionality reduction without compromising the desired signal power by taking advantage of a null space of channels. The proposed receive BF methods reduce correlations between the received signals in the BF domain, which improves the robustness of GaBP against spatial correlation among fading coefficients. Simulation results assuming realistic BS and user equipment arrangement show that the proposed methods improve detection capability while significantly reducing the computational cost.

In this paper, we investigate the Access Point (AP) selection problem in Cell-Free Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system. Firstly, we add a connecting coefficient to the uplink data transmission model. Then, the problem of AP selection is formulated as a discrete combinatorial optimization problem which can be dealt with by the particle swarm algorithm. However, when the number of optimization variables is large, the search efficiency of the traditional particle swarm algorithm will be significantly reduced. Then, we propose an ‘user-centric’ cooperative coevolution scheme which includes the proposed probability-based particle evolution strategy and random-sampling-based particle evaluation mechanism to deal with the search efficiency problem. Simulation results show that proposed algorithm has better performance than other existing algorithms.

5G service has been launched in various countries, and research for the beyond 5G is already underway actively around the world. In beyond 5G, it is expected to expand the various capabilities of communication technologies to cover further wide use cases from 5G. As a candidate elemental technology, cell free massive MIMO has been widely researched and shown its potential to enhance the capabilities from various aspects. However, for deploying this technology in reality, there are still many technical issues such as a cost of distributing antenna and installing fronthaul, and also the scalability aspects. This paper surveys research trends of cell free massive MIMO, especially focusing on the deployment challenges with an introduction to our specific related research activities including some numerical examples.

Multibeam massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) configuration has been proposed that selects high-power beams in an analog part and uses a blind algorithm, such as the constant-modulus algorithm (CMA), in the digital part. The CMA does not require channel state information. However, when least-squares CMA (LS-CMA) is applied to a quadrature amplitude modulation signal whose amplitude changes, the interference cancellation effect decreases as the modulation order increases. In this paper, a variable-step-size-based CMA (VS-CMA), which modifies the step size of the steepest-descent CMA, is proposed as a blind adaptive algorithm to replace LS-CMA. The basic performance of VS-CMA, its success in cancelling interference, and its effectiveness in multibeam massive MIMO transmission are verified via simulation and compared with other blind algorithms such as independent component analysis, particularly when the data smoothing size is small.

In this paper, a non-linear precoding algorithm with low out-of-band (OOB) radiation is proposed for massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. Massive MIMO sets more than one hundred antennas at each base station to achieve higher spectral efficiency and throughput. Full digital massive MIMO may constrain the resolution of digital-to-analog converters (DACs) since each DAC consumes a large amount of power. In massive MIMO systems with low resolution DACs, designing methods of DAC output signals by nonlinear processing are being investigated. The conventional scheme focuses only on a sum rate or errors in the received signals and so triggers large OOB radiation. This paper proposes an optimization criterion that takes OOB radiation power into account. Gibbs sampling is used as an algorithm to find sub-optimal solutions given this criterion. Numerical results obtained through computer simulation show that the proposed criterion reduces mean OOB radiation power by a factor of 10 as compared with the conventional criterion. The proposed criterion also reduces OOB radiation while increasing the average sum rate by optimizing the weight factor for the OOB radiation. As a result, the proposed criterion achieves approximately 1.3 times higher average sum rates than an error-based criterion. On the other hand, as compared with a sum rate based criterion, the throughput on each subcarrier shows less variation which reduces the number of link adaptation options needed although the average sum rate of the proposed criterion is smaller.

This paper studies the performance of quantized massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems with superimposed pilots (SP), using linear minimum mean-square-error (LMMSE) channel estimation and maximum ratio combining (MRC) detection. In contrast to previous works, arbitrary-bit analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are considered. We derive an accurate approximation of the uplink achievable rate considering the removal of estimated pilots. Based on the analytical expression, the optimal pilot power factor that maximizes the achievable rate is deduced and an expression for energy efficiency (EE) is given. In addition, the achievable rate and the optimal power allocation policy under some asymptotic limits are analyzed. Analysis shows that the systems with higher-resolution ADCs or larger number of base station (BS) antennas need to allocate more power to pilots. In contrast, more power needs to be allocated to data when the channel is slowly varying. Numerical results show that in the low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) region, for 1-bit quantizers, SP outperforms time-multiplexed pilots (TP) in most cases, while for systems with higher-resolution ADCs, the SP scheme is suitable for the scenarios with comparatively small number of BS antennas and relatively long channel coherence time.

Fifth-generation (5G) mobile communication systems employ beamforming technology using massive multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) to improve the reception quality and spectrum efficiency within a cell. Meanwhile, coordinated beamforming among multiple base stations is an effective approach to improving the spectrum efficiency at the cell edges, in which massive MIMO is deployed at geographically distant base stations and beamforming control is conducted in a cooperative manner. Codebook-based beamforming is a method for realizing multi-cell coordinated beamforming, in which each base station selects one of multiple beams that are predefined in a codebook. In codebook-based beamforming, it is important to design an efficient codebook that takes into account the beam allocation and the number of beams. In general, the larger the number of beams defined in a codebook, the more finely tuned the beam control can be and a greater improvement in spectrum efficiency can be expected. However, it requires a huge signal processing to optimize the beam combinations with a large number of beams by coordinated beamforming. This paper proposes a novel codebook design that efficiently assigns beam directions and widths in a vertical plane. Computer simulations showed that the proposed codebook performs as well as the conventional method while requiring fewer beam combinations.

High-altitude platform stations (HAPSs) are recognized as a promising technology for coverage extension in the sixth generation (6G) mobile communications and beyond. The purpose of this study is to develop a HAPS system with a coverage radius of 100km and high capacity by focusing on the following two aspects: array antenna structure and user selection. HAPS systems must jointly use massive multiple-input multiple-output (mMIMO) and multiuser MIMO techniques to increase their capacity. However, the coverage achieved by a conventional planar array antenna is limited to a circular area with a radius of only tens of kilometers. A conventional semi-orthogonal user selection (SUS) scheme based on the orthogonality of channel vectors achieves high capacity, but it has high complexity. First, this paper proposes a cylindrical mMIMO system to achieve an ultra-wide coverage radius of 100km and high capacity. Second, this paper presents a novel angle-based user selection (AUS) scheme, where a user selection problem is formulated as a maximization of the minimum angular difference between users over all user groups. Finally, a low-complexity suboptimal algorithm (SA) for AUS is also proposed. Assuming an area with a 100km radius, simulation results demonstrate that the proposed cylindrical mMIMO system improves the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio by approx. 12dB at the boundary of the area, and it achieves approx. 1.5 times higher capacity than the conventional mMIMO which uses a planar array antenna. In addition, the results show that the proposed AUS scheme improves the lower percentiles in the system capacity distribution compared with SUS and basic random user selection. Furthermore, the computational complexity of the proposed SA is in the order of only 1/4000 that of SUS.

This letter proposes an adaptive beamforming switch algorithm for realistic massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems through prototypes. It is analyzed and identified that a rigid single-mode beamforming regime is hard to maintain superior performance all the time due to no adaption to the inevitable channel variation in practice. In order to cope with this practical issue, the proposed systematic beamforming mechanism is investigated to enable dynamic selection between minimum mean-squared error and grid-of-beams beamforming algorithms, which improves system downlink performance, including throughput and block error rate. The significant performance benefits and realistic feasibility have been validated through the field tests in live networks and theoretical analyses. Meanwhile, the adaptive beamforming switch algorithm is applicable to both fourth and fifth generation time-division duplexing cellular communication system using massive-MIMO technology.

In this paper, we propose a novel user selection scheme based on jointly combining channel gain (CG) and signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) to improve the sum-rate as well as to reduce the computation complexity of multi-user massive multi-input multi-output (MU-massive MIMO) downlink transmission through a block diagonalization (BD) precoding technique. By jointly considering CG and SINR based user sets, sum-rate performance improvement can be achieved by selecting higher gain users with better SINR conditions as well as by eliminating the users who cause low sum-rate in the system. Through this approach, the number of possible outcomes for the user selection scheme can be reduced by counting the common users for every pair of user combinations in the selection process since the common users of CG-based and SINR-based sets possess both higher channel gains and better SINR conditions. The common users set offers not only sum-rate performance improvements but also computation complexity reduction in the proposed scheme. It is shown by means of computer simulation experiments that the proposed scheme can increase the sum-rate with lower computation complexity for various numbers of users as compared to conventional schemes requiring the same or less computational complexity.

This paper reports the evaluation and simulated results of the nonlinear characteristics of the 4.65GHz Active Antenna System (AAS) for 5G mobile communication systems. The antenna element is composed of ±45° dual polarization shared patch antenna, and is equipped with total 64 elements with horizontal 8 × vertical 4 × 2 polarization configuration. A 32-element transceiver circuit was mounted on the back side of the antenna printed circuit board. With the above circuit configuration, a full digital beamforming method has been adopted that can realize high frequency utilization efficiency by using the Sub6GHz-band massive element AAS, and excellent spatial multiplexing performance by Massive MIMO has been pursued. However, it was found that the Downlink (DL) SINR (Signal to Interference and Noise Ratio) to each terminal deteriorated because of the nonlinear distorted radiation as the transmission output power was increased in the maximum rated direction. Therefore, it has been confirmed that the spatial multiplexing performance in the high output power region is significantly improved by installing DPD. In order to clarify the affection of nonlinear distorted radiation on spatial multiplexing performance, the radiation patterns were measured using OFDM signal (subcarrier spacing 60kHz × 1500 subcarriers in 90MHz bandwidth) in an anechoic chamber. And by the simulated analysis for the affection of nonlinear distortion on null characteristic, the accuracy of nulls generated in each user terminal direction does not depend on the degree of nonlinearity, but is affected by the residual amplitude and phase variation among all transmitters and receivers after calibration (CAL). Therefore, it was clarified that the double compensation configuration of DPD and high-precision CAL is effective for achieving excellent Massive MIMO performance. This paper is based on the IEICE Japanese Transactions on Communications (Vol.J102-B, No.11, pp.816-824, Nov. 2019).

In order to enhance the fifth generation (5G) mobile communication system further toward 5G Evolution, high bit-rate transmission using high SHF bands (28GHz or EHF bands) should be more stable even in high-mobility environments such as high speed trains. Of particular importance, dynamic changes in the beam direction and the larger Doppler frequency shift can degrade transmission performances in such high frequency bands. Thus, we conduct the world's first 28 GHz-band 5G experimental trial on an actual Shinkansen running at a speed of 283km/h in Japan. This paper introduces the 28GHz-band experimental system used in the 5G experimental trial using the Shinkansen, and then it presents the experimental configuration in which three base stations (BSs) are deployed along the Tokaido Shinkansen railway and a mobile station is located in the train. In addition, transmission performances measured in this ultra high-mobility environment, show that a peak throughput of exceeding 1.0Gbps and successful consecutive BS connection among the three BSs.

In a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system, maximum likelihood detection (MLD) is the best demodulation scheme if no a priori information is available. However, the complexity of MLD increases exponentially with the number of signal streams. Therefore, various demodulation schemes with less complexity have been proposed and some of those schemes show performance close to that of MLD. One kind of those schemes uses a Gibbs sampling (GS) algorithm. GS MIMO detection that combines feedback from turbo decoding has been proposed. In this scheme, the accuracy of GS MIMO detection is improved by feeding back loglikelihood ratios (LLRs) from a turbo decoder. In this paper, GS MIMO detection using only feedback LLRs from a turbo decoder is proposed. Through extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart analysis, it is shown that the EXIT curves with and without metrics calculated from received signals overlap as the feedback LLR values increase. Therefore, the proposed scheme calculates the metrics from received signals only for the first GS MIMO detection and the selection probabilities of GS MIMO detection in the following iterations are calculated based only on the LLRs from turbo decoders. Numerical results obtained through computer simulation show that the performance of proposed GS turbo MIMO detection is worse than that of conventional GS turbo MIMO detection when the number of GS iterations is small. However the performance improves as the number of GS iterations increases. When the number of GS iterations is 30 or more, the bit error rate (BER) performance of the proposed scheme is equivalent to that of the conventional scheme. Therefore, the proposed scheme can reduce the computational complexity of selection probability calculation in GS turbo MIMO detection.

The hybrid precoding (HP) technique has been widely considered as a promising approach for millimeter wave communication systems. In general, the existing HP structure with a complicated high-resolution phase shifter network can achieve near-optimal spectral efficiency, however, it involves high energy consumption. The HP architecture with an energy-efficient switch network can significantly reduce the energy consumption. To achieve maximum energy efficiency, this paper focuses on the HP architecture with switch network and considers a novel adaptive analog network HP structure for such mmWave MIMO systems, which can provide potential array gains. Moreover, a multiuser adaptive coordinate update algorithm is proposed for the HP design problem of this new structure. Simulation results verify that our proposed design can achieve better energy efficiency than other recently proposed HP schemes when the number of users is small.