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Xiqi Gao

Xiqi Gao contributes to research discovery and scholarly infrastructure.

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Published work

27 published item(s)

preprint2026arXiv

Statistical Channel Fingerprint Construction for Massive MIMO: A Unified Tensor Learning Framework

Channel fingerprint (CF) is considered a key enabler for facilitating the acquisition of channel state information (CSI) in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems. In this work, we investigate a novel type of CF that stores statistical CSI (sCSI) at each potential location, referred to as statistical CF (sCF). Specifically, we reveal the relationship between sCSI, namely the channel spatial covariance matrix (CSCM), and the channel power angular spectrum (CPAS). Building on this foundation, we construct a unified tensor representation of the sCF and further reduce its dimension by exploiting the eigenvalue decomposition of the CSCM and its correlation with the PAS. Considering the practical constraints imposed by measurement cost, privacy, and security, we focus on three representative scenarios and uniformly formulate them as tensor restoration tasks. To this end, we propose a unified tensor-based learning architecture, termed LPWTNet. The architecture incorporates a closed-form Laplacian pyramid (LP) decomposition and reconstruction framework that replaces the traditional encoder-decoder structure, enabling efficient inference while capturing multi-scale frequency subband characteristics of the sCF. Additionally, a shared mask learning strategy is introduced to adaptively refine high-frequency sCF components through level-wise adjustments. To achieve a larger receptive field without over-parameterization, we further propose a small-kernel convolution mechanism based on the wavelet transform (WT), which decouples convolution across different frequency components of the sCF and enhances feature extraction efficiency. Extensive experiments show that the proposed approach delivers competitive reconstruction accuracy and computational efficiency across various sCF construction scenarios when compared with state-of-the-art baselines.

preprint2025arXiv

Beam Structured Turbo Receiver for HF Skywave Massive MIMO

In this paper, we investigate receiver design for high frequency (HF) skywave massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications. We first establish a modified beam based channel model (BBCM) by performing uniform sampling for directional cosine with deterministic sampling interval, where the beam matrix is constructed using a phase-shifted discrete Fourier transform (DFT) matrix. Based on the modified BBCM, we propose a beam structured turbo receiver (BSTR) involving low-dimensional beam domain signal detection for grouped user terminals (UTs), which is proved to be asymptotically optimal in terms of minimizing mean-squared error (MSE). Moreover, we extend it to windowed BSTR by introducing a windowing approach for interference suppression and complexity reduction, and propose a well-designed energy-focusing window. We also present an efficient implementation of the windowed BSTR by exploiting the structure properties of the beam matrix and the beam domain channel sparsity. Simulation results validate the superior performance of the proposed receivers but with remarkably low complexity.

preprint2025arXiv

Channel Fingerprint Construction for Massive MIMO: A Deep Conditional Generative Approach

Accurate channel state information (CSI) acquisition for massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems is essential for future mobile communication networks. Channel fingerprint (CF), also referred to as channel knowledge map, is a key enabler for intelligent environment-aware communication and can facilitate CSI acquisition. However, due to the cost limitations of practical sensing nodes and test vehicles, the resulting CF is typically coarse-grained, making it insufficient for wireless transceiver design. In this work, we introduce the concept of CF twins and design a conditional generative diffusion model (CGDM) with strong implicit prior learning capabilities as the computational core of the CF twin to establish the connection between coarse- and fine-grained CFs. Specifically, we employ a variational inference technique to derive the evidence lower bound (ELBO) for the log-marginal distribution of the observed fine-grained CF conditioned on the coarse-grained CF, enabling the CGDM to learn the complicated distribution of the target data. During the denoising neural network optimization, the coarse-grained CF is introduced as side information to accurately guide the conditioned generation of the CGDM. To make the proposed CGDM lightweight, we further leverage the additivity of network layers and introduce a one-shot pruning approach along with a multi-objective knowledge distillation technique. Experimental results show that the proposed approach exhibits significant improvement in reconstruction performance compared to the baselines. Additionally, zero-shot testing on reconstruction tasks with different magnification factors further demonstrates the scalability and generalization ability of the proposed approach.

preprint2025arXiv

Specific Absorption Rate-Aware Multiuser MIMO Assisted by Fluid Antenna System

With the development of the upcoming sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks, there is a pressing need for innovative technologies capable of satisfying heightened performance indicators. Fluid antenna system (FAS) is proposed recently as a promising technique to achieve higher data rates and more diversity gains by dynamically changing the positions of the antennas to form a more desirable channel. However, worries regarding the possibly harmful effects of electromagnetic (EM) radiation emitted by devices have arisen as a result of the rapid evolution of advanced techniques in wireless communication systems. Specific absorption rate (SAR) is a widely adopted metric to quantify EM radiation worldwide. In this paper, we investigate the SAR-aware multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications assisted by FAS. In particular, a two-layer iterative algorithm is proposed to minimize the SAR value under signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) and FAS constraints. Moreover, the minimum weighted SINR maximization problem under SAR and FAS constraints is studied by finding its relationship with the SAR minimization problem. Simulation results verify that the proposed SAR-aware FAS design outperforms the adaptive backoff and fixed-position antenna designs.

preprint2024arXiv

Signal Detection for Ultra-Massive MIMO: An Information Geometry Approach

In this paper, we propose an information geometry approach (IGA) for signal detection (SD) in ultra-massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. We formulate the signal detection as obtaining the marginals of the a posteriori probability distribution of the transmitted symbol vector. Then, a maximization of the a posteriori marginals (MPM) for signal detection can be performed. With the information geometry theory, we calculate the approximations of the a posteriori marginals. It is formulated as an iterative m-projection process between submanifolds with different constraints. We then apply the central-limit-theorem (CLT) to simplify the calculation of the m-projection since the direct calculation of the m-projection is of exponential-complexity. With the CLT, we obtain an approximate solution of the m-projection, which is asymptotically accurate. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed IGA-SD emerges as a promising and efficient method to implement the signal detector in ultra-massive MIMO systems.

preprint2023arXiv

Fluid Antenna-Assisted MIMO Transmission Exploiting Statistical CSI

In conventional multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems, the positions of antennas are fixed. To take full advantage of spatial degrees of freedom, a new technology called fluid antenna (FA) is proposed to obtain higher achievable rate and diversity gain. Most existing works on FA exploit instantaneous channel state information (CSI). However, in FA-assisted systems, it is difficult to obtain instantaneous CSI since changes in the antenna position will lead to channel variation. In this letter, we investigate a FA-assisted MIMO system using relatively slow-varying statistical CSI. Specifically, in the criterion of rate maximization, we propose an algorithmic framework for transmit precoding and transmit/receive FAs position designs with statistical CSI. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithm in FA-assisted systems significantly outperforms baselines in terms of rate performance.

preprint2022arXiv

2D Beam Domain Statistical CSI Estimation for Massive MIMO Uplink

In this paper, we investigate the beam domain statistical channel state information (CSI) estimation for the two dimensional (2D) beam based statistical channel model (BSCM) in massive MIMO systems.The problem is to estimate the beam domain channel power matrices (BDCPMs) based on multiple receive pilot signals. A receive model shows the relation between the statistical property of the receive pilot signals and the BDCPMs is derived from the 2D-BSCM. On the basis of the receive model,we formulate an optimization problem with the Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence. By solving the optimization problem, a novel method to estimate the statistical CSI without involving instantaneous CSI is proposed. The proposed method has much lower complexity than the MMV focal underdetermined system solver (M-FOCUSS) algorithm. We further reduce the complexity of the proposed method by utilizing the circulant structures of particular matrices in the algorithm. We also showed the generality of the proposed method by introducing another application. Simulations results show that the proposed method works well and bring significant performance gain when used in channel estimation.

preprint2022arXiv

Downlink Transmit Design for Massive MIMO LEO Satellite Communications

This paper investigates the downlink (DL) transmit design for massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) low-earth-orbit (LEO) satellite communication systems, where only the slow-varying statistical channel state information is exploited at the transmitter. The channel model for the DL massive MIMO LEO satellite system is established, in which both the satellite and the user terminals (UTs) are equipped with uniform planar arrays. Observing the rank-one property of the channel matrices, we show that the single-stream precoding for each UT is the optimal choice that maximizes the ergodic sum rate. This favorable result simplifies the complicated design of transmit covariance matrices into that of precoding vectors without any loss of optimality. Then, an efficient algorithm is devised to compute the precoding vectors. Furthermore, we formulate an approximate transmit design based on the upper bound on the ergodic sum rate, for which the optimality of single-stream precoding still holds. We show that, in this case, the design of precoding vectors can be simplified into that of scalar variables, for which an effective algorithm is developed. In addition, a low-complexity learning framework is proposed for optimizing the scalar variables. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approaches can achieve significant performance gains over the existing schemes.

preprint2022arXiv

Energy Efficiency Maximization of Massive MIMO Communications With Dynamic Metasurface Antennas

Future wireless communications are largely inclined to deploy massive numbers of antennas at the base stations (BSs) by leveraging cost- and energy-efficient as well as environmentally friendly antenna arrays. The emerging technology of dynamic metasurface antennas (DMAs) is promising to realize such massive antenna arrays with reduced physical size, hardware cost, and power consumption. The goal of this paper is the optimization of the energy efficiency (EE) performance of DMA-assisted massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless communications. Focusing on the uplink, we propose an algorithmic framework for designing the transmit precoding of each multi-antenna user and the DMA tuning strategy at the BS to maximize the EE performance, considering the availability of either instantaneous or statistical channel state information (CSI). Specifically, the proposed framework is shaped around Dinkelbach's transform, alternating optimization, and deterministic equivalent methods. In addition, we obtain a closed-form solution to the optimal transmit signal directions for the statistical CSI case, which simplifies the corresponding transmission design for the multiple-antenna case. Our numerical results verify the good convergence behavior of the proposed algorithms, and showcase the considerable EE performance gains of the DMA-assisted massive MIMO transmissions over the baseline schemes.

preprint2022arXiv

Hybrid Analog/Digital Precoding for Downlink Massive MIMO LEO Satellite Communications

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is promising for low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications due to the potential in enhancing the spectral efficiency. However, the conventional fully digital precoding architectures might lead to high implementation complexity and energy consumption. In this paper, hybrid analog/digital precoding solutions are developed for the downlink operation in LEO massive MIMO satellite communications, by exploiting the slow-varying statistical channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter. First, we formulate the hybrid precoder design as an energy efficiency (EE) maximization problem by considering both the continuous and discrete phase shift networks for implementing the analog precoder. The cases of both the fully and the partially connected architectures are considered. Since the EE optimization problem is nonconvex, it is in general difficult to solve. To make the EE maximization problem tractable, we apply a closed-form tight upper bound to approximate the ergodic rate. Then, we develop an efficient algorithm to obtain the fully digital precoders. Based on which, we further develop two different efficient algorithmic solutions to compute the hybrid precoders for the fully and the partially connected architectures, respectively. Simulation results show that the proposed approaches achieve significant EE performance gains over the existing baselines, especially when the discrete phase shift network is employed for analog precoding.

preprint2022arXiv

Hybrid RIS and DMA Assisted Multiuser MIMO Uplink Transmission With Electromagnetic Exposure Constraints

In the fifth-generation and beyond era, reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) and dynamic metasurface antennas (DMAs) are emerging metamaterials keeping up with the demand for high-quality wireless communication services, which promote the diversification of portable wireless terminals. However, along with the rapid expansion of wireless devices, the electromagnetic (EM) radiation increases unceasingly and inevitably affects public health, which requires a limited exposure level in the transmission design. To reduce the EM radiation and preserve the quality of communication service, we investigate the spectral efficiency (SE) maximization with EM constraints for uplink transmission in hybrid RIS and DMA assisted multiuser multiple-input multiple-output systems. Specifically, alternating optimization is adopted to optimize the transmit covariance, RIS phase shift, and DMA weight matrices. We first figure out the water-filling solutions of transmit covariance matrices with given RIS and DMA parameters. Then, the RIS phase shift matrix is optimized via the weighted minimum mean square error, block coordinate descent and minorization-maximization methods. Furthermore, we solve the unconstrainted DMA weight matrix optimization problem in closed form and then design the DMA weight matrix to approach this performance under DMA constraints. Numerical results confirm the effectiveness of the EM aware SE maximization transmission scheme over the conventional baselines.

preprint2022arXiv

Massive MIMO Hybrid Precoding for LEO Satellite Communications With Twin-Resolution Phase Shifters and Nonlinear Power Amplifiers

The massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission technology has recently attracted much attention in the non-geostationary, e.g., low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communication (SATCOM) systems since it can significantly improve the energy efficiency (EE) and spectral efficiency. In this work, we develop a hybrid analog/digital precoding technique in the massive MIMO LEO SATCOM downlink, which reduces the onboard hardware complexity and power consumption. In the proposed scheme, the analog precoder is implemented via a more practical twin-resolution phase shifting (TRPS) network to make a meticulous tradeoff between the power consumption and array gain. In addition, we consider and study the impact of the distortion effect of the nonlinear power amplifiers (NPAs) in the system design. By jointly considering all the above factors, we propose an efficient algorithmic approach for the TRPS-based hybrid precoding problem with NPAs. Numerical results show the EE gains considering the nonlinear distortion and the performance superiority of the proposed TRPS-based hybrid precoding scheme over the baselines.

preprint2022arXiv

Pervasive wireless channel modeling theory and applications to 6G GBSMs for all frequency bands and all scenarios

In this paper, a pervasive wireless channel modeling theory is first proposed, which uses a unified channel modeling method and a unified equation of channel impulse response (CIR), and can integrate important channel characteristics at different frequency bands and scenarios. Then, we apply the proposed theory to a three dimensional (3D) space-time-frequency (STF) non-stationary geometry-based stochastic model (GBSM) for the sixth generation (6G) wireless communication systems. The proposed 6G pervasive channel model (6GPCM) can characterize statistical properties of channels at all frequency bands from sub-6 GHz to visible light communication (VLC) bands and all scenarios such as unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), maritime, (ultra-)massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), and industry Internet of things (IIoT) scenarios. By adjusting channel model parameters, the 6GPCM can be reduced to various simplified channel models for specific frequency bands and scenarios. Also, it includes standard fifth generation (5G) channel models as special cases. In addition, key statistical properties of the proposed 6GPCM are derived, simulated, and verified by various channel measurement results, which clearly demonstrates its accuracy, pervasiveness, and applicability.

preprint2022arXiv

Robust Linear Precoder Design for 3D Massive MIMO Downlink with A Posteriori Channel Model

In this paper, we investigate the robust linear precoder design for three dimensional (3D) massive multi-input multi-output (MIMO) downlink with uniform planar array (UPA) and imperfect channel state information (CSI). In practical massive MIMO with UPAs, the number of antennas in each column or row is usually limited. The straightforward extension of the conventional DFT based beam domain channel model widely used in massive MIMO with uniform linear arrays (ULAs) can not apply. To overcome this issue, we establish a new beam domain channel model by using sampled steering vectors. Then, a novel method to obtain the beam domain channel power matrices and the instantaneous beam domain channel coefficients is proposed, and an a posteriori beam domain channel model which includes the channel aging and the spatial correlation is established. On the basis of the a posteriori channel model, we consider the robust precoder design with the expected weighted sum-rate maximization under a total power constraint. By viewing the power constraint as a Riemannian manifold, we transform the constrained optimization problem into an unconstrained optimization problem on the Riemannian manifold. Then, we derive an iterative algorithm to obtain the optimal precoders by setting the Riemannian gradient of the objective function to zero. Furthermore, we propose a low complexity robust precoder design by replacing the expected rates in the objective function with their upper bounds. Simulation results show that the proposed precoders can achieve significant performance gain than the widely used regularized zero forcing (RZF) precoder and signal to leakage noise ratio (SLNR) precoder.

preprint2021arXiv

A General 3D Non-Stationary Wireless Channel Model for 5G and Beyond

In this paper, a novel three-dimensional (3D) non-stationary geometry-based stochastic model (GBSM) for the fifth generation (5G) and beyond 5G (B5G) systems is proposed. The proposed B5G channel model (B5GCM) is designed to capture various channel characteristics in (B)5G systems such as space-time-frequency (STF) non-stationarity, spherical wavefront (SWF), high delay resolution, time-variant velocities and directions of motion of the transmitter, receiver, and scatterers, spatial consistency, etc. By combining different channel properties into a general channel model framework, the proposed B5GCM is able to be applied to multiple frequency bands and multiple scenarios, including massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), high-speed train (HST), and millimeter wave-terahertz (mmWave-THz) communication scenarios. Key statistics of the proposed B5GCM are obtained and compared with those of standard 5G channel models and corresponding measurement data, showing the generalization and usefulness of the proposed model.

preprint2021arXiv

Unifying Message Passing Algorithms Under the Framework of Constrained Bethe Free Energy Minimization

Variational message passing (VMP), belief propagation (BP) and expectation propagation (EP) have found their wide applications in complex statistical signal processing problems. In addition to viewing them as a class of algorithms operating on graphical models, this paper unifies them under an optimization framework, namely, Bethe free energy minimization with differently and appropriately imposed constraints. This new perspective in terms of constraint manipulation can offer additional insights on the connection between different message passing algorithms and is valid for a generic statistical model. It also founds a theoretical framework to systematically derive message passing variants. Taking the sparse signal recovery (SSR) problem as an example, a low-complexity EP variant can be obtained by simple constraint reformulation, delivering better estimation performance with lower complexity than the standard EP algorithm. Furthermore, we can resort to the framework for the systematic derivation of hybrid message passing for complex inference tasks. Notably, a hybrid message passing algorithm is exemplarily derived for joint SSR and statistical model learning with near-optimal inference performance and scalable complexity.

preprint2020arXiv

6G Oriented Wireless Communication Channel Characteristics Analysis and Modeling

Based on the vision on the 6G wireless communication network, i.e., global coverage, all spectrums and all applications, we comprehensively survey 6G related wireless channel measurements, channel characteristics, and channel models for all frequency bands and all scenarios. Millimeter wave (mmWave), terahertz (THz), optical band, satellite, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), maritime, underwater acoustic, high-speed train (HST), vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), massive/ ultra-massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), orbital angular momentum (OAM), and industry Internet of things (IoT) communication channels were particularly investigated. The related 6G channel measurement and modeling results were also given. Finally, future research challenges on 6G channel measurements and modeling were pointed out.

preprint2020arXiv

A Novel Massive MIMO Beam Domain Channel Model

A novel beam domain channel model (BDCM) for massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems has been proposed in this paper. The near-field effect and spherical wavefront are firstly assumed in the proposed model, which is different from the conventional BDCM for MIMO based on the far-field effect and plane wavefront assumption. The proposed novel BDCM is the transformation of an existing geometry-based stochastic model (GBSM) from the antenna domain into beam domain. The space-time non-stationarity is also modeled in the novel BDCM. Moreover, the comparison of computational complexity for both models is studied. Based on the numerical analysis, comparison of cluster-level statistical properties between the proposed BDCM and existing GBSM has shown that there exists little difference in the space, time, and frequency correlation properties for two models. Also, based on the simulation, coherence bandwidths of the two models in different scenarios are almost the same. The computational complexity of the novel BDCM is much lower than the existing GBSM. It can be observed that the proposed novel BDCM has similar statistical properties to the existing GBSM at the clusterlevel. The proposed BDCM has less complexity and is therefore more convenient for information theory and signal processing research than the conventional GBSMs.

preprint2020arXiv

Compressive Sensing Based Adaptive Active User Detection and Channel Estimation: Massive Access Meets Massive MIMO

This paper considers massive access in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems and proposes an adaptive active user detection and channel estimation scheme based on compressive sensing. By exploiting the sporadic traffic of massive connected user equipments and the virtual angular domain sparsity of massive MIMO channels, the proposed scheme can support massive access with dramatically reduced access latency. Specifically, we design non-orthogonal pseudo-random pilots for uplink broadband massive access, and formulate the active user detection and channel estimation problems as a generalized multiple measurement vector compressive sensing problem. Furthermore, by leveraging the structured sparsity of the uplink channel matrix, we propose an efficient generalized multiple measurement vector approximate message passing (GMMV-AMP) algorithm to realize simultaneous active user detection and channel estimation based on a spatial domain or an angular domain channel model. To jointly exploit the channel sparsity presented in both the spatial and the angular domains for enhanced performance, a Turbo-GMMV-AMP algorithm is developed for detecting the active users and estimating their channels in an alternating manner. Finally, an adaptive access scheme is proposed, which adapts the access latency to guarantee reliable massive access for practical systems with unknown channel sparsity level. Additionally, the state evolution of the proposed GMMV-AMP algorithm is derived to predict its performance. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed active user detection and channel estimation schemes compared to several baseline schemes.

preprint2020arXiv

Energy Efficiency and Spectral Efficiency Tradeoff in RIS-Aided Multiuser MIMO Uplink Transmission

The emergence of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) enables us to establish programmable radio wave propagation that caters for wireless communications, via employing low-cost passive reflecting units. This work studies the non-trivial tradeoff between energy efficiency (EE) and spectral efficiency (SE) in multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) uplink communications aided by a RIS equipped with discrete phase shifters. For reducing the required signaling overhead and energy consumption, our transmission strategy design is based on the partial channel state information (CSI), including the statistical CSI between the RIS and user terminals (UTs) and the instantaneous CSI between the RIS and the base station. To investigate the EE-SE tradeoff, we develop a framework for the joint optimization of UTs' transmit precoding and RIS reflective beamforming to maximize a performance metric called resource efficiency (RE). For the design of UT's precoding, it is simplified into the design of UTs' transmit powers with the aid of the closed-form solutions of UTs' optimal transmit directions. To avoid the high complexity in computing the nested integrals involved in the expectations, we derive an asymptotic deterministic objective expression. For the design of the RIS phases, an iterative mean-square error minimization approach is proposed via capitalizing on the homotopy, accelerated projected gradient, and majorization-minimization methods. Numerical results illustrate the effectiveness and rapid convergence rate of our proposed optimization framework.

preprint2020arXiv

Energy Efficiency Optimization for Downlink Massive MIMO With Statistical CSIT

We investigate energy efficiency (EE) optimization for single-cell massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) downlink transmission with only statistical channel state information (CSI) available at the base station. We first show that beam domain transmission is favorable for energy efficiency in the massive MIMO downlink, by deriving a closed-form solution for the eigenvectors of the optimal transmit covariance matrix. With this conclusion, the EE optimization problem is reduced to a real-valued power allocation problem, which is much easier to tackle than the original large-dimensional complex matrix-valued precoding design problem. We further propose an iterative water-filling-structured beam domain power allocation algorithm with low complexity and guaranteed convergence, exploiting the techniques from sequential optimization, fractional optimization, and random matrix theory. Numerical results demonstrate the near-optimal performance of our proposed statistical CSI aided EE optimization approach.

preprint2020arXiv

Massive Access for Future Wireless Communication Systems

Multiple access technology played an important role in wireless communication in the last decades: it increases the capacity of the channel and allows different users to access the system simultaneously. However, the conventional multiple access technology, as originally designed for current human-centric wireless networks, is not scalable for future machine-centric wireless networks. Massive access (studied in the literature under such names as massive-device multiple access, unsourced massive random access, massive connectivity, massive machine-type communication, and many-access channels) exhibits a clean break with current networks by potentially supporting millions of devices in each cellular network. The tremendous growth in the number of connected devices requires a fundamental rethinking of the conventional multiple access technologies in favor of new schemes suited for massive random access. Among the many new challenges arising in this setting, the most relevant are: the fundamental limits of communication from a massive number of bursty devices transmitting simultaneously with short packets, the design of low complexity and energy-efficient massive access coding and communication schemes, efficient methods for the detection of a relatively small number of active users among a large number of potential user devices with sporadic transmission pattern, and the integration of massive access with massive MIMO and other important wireless communication technologies. This paper presents an overview of the concept of massive access wireless communication and of the contemporary research on this important topic.

preprint2020arXiv

Massive Access in Cell-Free Massive MIMO-Based Internet of Things: Cloud Computing and Edge Computing Paradigms

This paper studies massive access in cell-free massive multi-input multi-output (MIMO) based Internet of Things and solves the challenging active user detection (AUD) and channel estimation (CE) problems. For the uplink transmission, we propose an advanced frame structure design to reduce the access latency. Moreover, by considering the cooperation of all access points (APs), we investigate two processing paradigms at the receiver for massive access: cloud computing and edge computing. For cloud computing, all APs are connected to a centralized processing unit (CPU), and the signals received at all APs are centrally processed at the CPU. While for edge computing, the central processing is offloaded to part of APs equipped with distributed processing units, so that the AUD and CE can be performed in a distributed processing strategy. Furthermore, by leveraging the structured sparsity of the channel matrix, we develop a structured sparsity-based generalized approximated message passing (SS-GAMP) algorithm for reliable joint AUD and CE, where the quantization accuracy of the processed signals is taken into account. Based on the SS-GAMP algorithm, a successive interference cancellation-based AUD and CE scheme is further developed under two paradigms for reduced access latency. Simulation results validate the superiority of the proposed approach over the state-of-the-art baseline schemes. Besides, the results reveal that the edge computing can achieve the similar massive access performance as the cloud computing, and the edge computing is capable of alleviating the burden on CPU, having a faster access response, and supporting more flexible AP cooperation.

preprint2020arXiv

Massive MIMO Transmission for LEO Satellite Communications

Low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communications are expected to be incorporated in future wireless networks, in particular 5G and beyond networks, to provide global wireless access with enhanced data rates. Massive MIMO techniques, though widely used in terrestrial communication systems, have not been applied to LEO satellite communication systems. In this paper, we propose a massive MIMO transmission scheme with full frequency reuse (FFR) for LEO satellite communication systems and exploit statistical channel state information (sCSI) to address the difficulty of obtaining instantaneous CSI (iCSI) at the transmitter. We first establish the massive MIMO channel model for LEO satellite communications and simplify the transmission designs via performing Doppler and delay compensations at user terminals (UTs). Then, we develop the low-complexity sCSI based downlink (DL) precoder and uplink (UL) receiver in closed-form, aiming to maximize the average signal-to-leakage-plus-noise ratio (ASLNR) and the average signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (ASINR), respectively. It is shown that the DL ASLNRs and UL ASINRs of all UTs reach their upper bounds under some channel condition. Motivated by this, we propose a space angle based user grouping (SAUG) algorithm to schedule the served UTs into different groups, where each group of UTs use the same time and frequency resource. The proposed algorithm is asymptotically optimal in the sense that the lower and upper bounds of the achievable rate coincide when the number of satellite antennas or UT groups is sufficiently large. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed massive MIMO transmission scheme with FFR significantly enhances the data rate of LEO satellite communication systems. Notably, the proposed sCSI based precoder and receiver achieve the similar performance with the iCSI based ones that are often infeasible in practice.

preprint2020arXiv

Multi-Frequency Multi-Scenario Millimeter Wave MIMO Channel Measurements and Modeling for B5G Wireless Communication Systems

Millimeter wave (mmWave) bands have been utilized for the fifth generation (5G) communication systems and will no doubt continue to be deployed for beyond 5G (B5G). However, the underlying channels are not fully investigated at multifrequency bands and in multi-scenarios by using the same channel sounder, especially for the outdoor, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), and vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) conditions. In this paper, we conduct multi-frequency multi-scenario mmWave MIMO channel measurements with 4*4 antennas at 28, 32, and 39 GHz bands for three cases, i.e., the human body and vehicle blockage measurements, outdoor path loss measurements, and V2V measurements. The channel characteristics, including blockage effect, path loss and coverage range, and non-stationarity and spatial consistency, are thoroughly studied. The blockage model, path loss model, and time-varying channel model are proposed for mmWave MIMO channels. The channel measurement and modeling results will be of great importance for further mmWave communication system deployments in indoor hotspot, outdoor, and vehicular network scenarios for B5G.

preprint2020arXiv

Robust Precoding in Massive MIMO: A Deep Learning Approach

In this paper, we consider massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems with a uniform planar array (UPA) at the base station (BS) and investigate the downlink precoding with imperfect channel state information (CSI). By exploiting both instantaneous and statistical CSI, we aim to design precoding vectors to maximize the ergodic rate (e.g., sum rate, minimum rate and etc.) subject to a total transmit power constraint. To maximize an upper bound of the ergodic rate, we leverage the corresponding Lagrangian formulation and identify the structural characteristics of the optimal precoder as the solution to a generalized eigenvalue problem. As such, the high-dimensional precoder design problem turns into a low-dimensional power control problem. The Lagrange multipliers play a crucial role in determining both precoder directions and power parameters, yet are challenging to be solved directly. To figure out the Lagrange multipliers, we develop a general framework underpinned by a properly designed neural network that learns directly from CSI. To further relieve the computational burden, we obtain a low-complexity framework by decomposing the original problem into computationally efficient subproblems with instantaneous and statistical CSI handled separately. With the off-line pretrained neural network, the online computational complexity of precoding is substantially reduced compared with the existing iterative algorithm while maintaining nearly the same performance.

preprint2020arXiv

Spectral Efficiency and Energy Efficiency Tradeoff in Massive MIMO Downlink Transmission with Statistical CSIT

As a key technology for future wireless networks, massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) can significantly improve the energy efficiency (EE) and spectral efficiency (SE), and the performance is highly dependant on the degree of the available channel state information (CSI). While most existing works on massive MIMO focused on the case where the instantaneous CSI at the transmitter (CSIT) is available, it is usually not an easy task to obtain precise instantaneous CSIT. In this paper, we investigate EE-SE tradeoff in single-cell massive MIMO downlink transmission with statistical CSIT. To this end, we aim to optimize the system resource efficiency (RE), which is capable of striking an EE-SE balance. We first figure out a closed-form solution for the eigenvectors of the optimal transmit covariance matrices of different user terminals, which indicates that beam domain is in favor of performing RE optimal transmission in massive MIMO downlink. Based on this insight, the RE optimization precoding design is reduced to a real-valued power allocation problem. Exploiting the techniques of sequential optimization and random matrix theory, we further propose a low-complexity suboptimal two-layer water-filling-structured power allocation algorithm. Numerical results illustrate the effectiveness and near-optimal performance of the proposed statistical CSI aided RE optimization approach.