We consider fronthaul-limited generalized zero-forcing-based cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (CF-mMIMO) systems with multiple-antenna users and multiple-antenna access points (APs) relying on both cooperative beamforming (CB) and user-centric (UC) clustering. The proposed framework is very general and can be degenerated into different special cases, such as pure CB/pure UC clustering, or fully centralized CB/fully distributed beamforming. We comprehensively analyze the spectral efficiency (SE) performance of the system wherein the users use the minimum mean-squared error-based successive interference cancellation (MMSE-SIC) scheme to detect the desired signals. Specifically, we formulate an optimization problem for the user association and power control for maximizing the sum SE. The formulated problem is under per-AP transmit power and fronthaul constraints, and is based on only long-term channel state information (CSI). The challenging formulated problem is transformed into tractable form and a novel algorithm is proposed to solve it using minorization maximization (MM) technique. We analyze the trade-offs provided by the CF-mMIMO system with different number of CB clusters, hence highlighting the importance of the appropriate choice of CB design for different system setups. Numerical results show that for the centralized CB, the proposed power optimization provides nearly 59% improvement in the average sum SE over the heuristic approach, and 312% improvement, when the distributed beamforming is employed.

In this paper, we propose a robust algorithm for designing unstructured Grassmannian constellations for noncoherent MIMO communications that accounts for the effect of hardware impairments (HWIs) such as I/Q imbalance (IQI) and carrier frequency offset (CFO). The algorithm uses the minimum diversity product as a cost function to ensure full-diversity constellations. The constellation points in the Grassmannian are optimized to be robust against any value of the HWIs belonging to a given uncertainty set, the values of which are determined by the characteristics of the hardware used. The cost function is optimized by means of a gradient ascent algorithm on the Grassmann manifold. Simulation results suggest that the constellations designed with the robust algorithm show a significant improvement in symbol-error-rate (SER) performance over the HWI-unaware algorithm optimized for ideal devices.

In this paper, we propose a new structured Grassmannian constellation for noncoherent communications over single-input multiple-output (SIMO) Rayleigh block-fading channels. The constellation, which we call Grass-Lattice, is based on a measure preserving mapping from the unit hypercube to the Grassmannian of lines. The constellation structure allows for on-the-fly symbol generation, low-complexity decoding, and simple bit-to-symbol Gray-like coding. Simulation results show that Grass-Lattice has symbol and bit error rate performance close to that of a numerically optimized unstructured constellation, and is more power efficient than other structured constellations proposed in the literature and a coherent pilot-based scheme.

We consider the design of multiuser constellations for a multiple access channel (MAC) with K users, with M antennas each, that transmit simultaneously to a receiver equipped with N antennas through a Rayleigh block-fading channel, when no channel state information (CSI) is available to either the transmitter or the receiver. In full-diversity scenarios where the coherence time is at least T ≥ (K + 1)M, the proposed constellation design criterion is based on the asymptotic expression of the multiuser pairwise error probability (PEP) derived by Brehler and Varanasi in [1]. Although this PEP expression was previously considered intractable for optimization, in this work we derive a closed-form formula for its unconstrained gradient and perform Riemannian optimization in the Grassmannian manifold to design multiuser constellations for the MIMO MAC with state-of-the-art performance in terms of symbol error rate (SER).

In this paper, we propose an algorithm for designing unstructured Grassmannian constellations for noncoherent multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications over Rayleigh block-fading channels. Unlike the majority of existing unitary space-time or Grassmannian constellations, which are typically designed to maximize the minimum distance between codewords, in this work we employ the asymptotic pairwise error probability (PEP) union bound (UB) of the constellation as the design criterion. In addition, the proposed criterion allows the design of MIMO Grassmannian constellations specifically optimized for a given number of receiving antennas. A rigorous derivation of the gradient of the asymptotic UB on a Cartesian product of Grassmann manifolds, is the main technical ingredient of the proposed gradient descent algorithm. A simple modification of the proposed cost function, which weighs each pairwise error term in the UB according to the Hamming distance between the binary labels assigned to the respective codewords, allows us to jointly solve the constellation design and the bit labeling problem. Our simulation results show that the constellations designed with the proposed method outperform other structured and unstructured Grassmannian designs in terms of symbol error rate (SER) and bit error rate (BER), for a wide range of scenarios.

We consider the design of multiuser constellations for a multiple access channel (MAC) with$K$users, with$M$antennas each, that transmit simultaneously to a receiver equipped with$N$antennas through a Rayleigh block-fading channel when no channel state information (CSI) is available to either the transmitter or the receiver. In full-diversity scenarios where the coherence time is at least$T\geq (K+1)M$, the proposed constellation design criterion is based on the asymptotic expression of the multiuser pairwise error probability (PEP) derived by Brehler and Varanasi (2001). In non-full diversity scenarios, for which the previous PEP expression is no longer valid, the proposed design criteria are based on proxies of the PEP recently proposed by Ngo and Yang (2021). Although both the PEP expression and its bounds or proxies were previously considered intractable for optimization, in this work we derive their respective unconstrained gradients. These gradients are in turn used in the optimization of the proposed cost functions in different Riemannian manifolds representing different power constraints. In particular, in addition to the standard unitary space-time modulation (USTM) leading to optimization on the Grassmann manifold, we consider a more relaxed per-codeword power constraint leading to optimization on the so-calledoblique manifold, and an average power constraint leading to optimization on the so-calledtrace manifold. Equipped with these theoretical tools, we design multiuser constellations for the MIMO MAC in full-diversity and non-full-diversity scenarios with state-of-the-art performance in terms of symbol error rate (SER).

In this paper, we propose a new structured Grassmannian constellation for noncoherent communications over single-input multiple-output (SIMO) Rayleigh block-fading channels. The constellation, which we call Grass-Lattice, is based on a measure preserving mapping from the unit hypercube to the Grassmannian of lines. The constellation structure allows for on-the-fly symbol generation, low-complexity decoding, and simple bit-to-symbol Gray coding. Simulation results show that Grass-Lattice has symbol error rate performance close to that of a numerically optimized unstructured constellation, and is more power efficient than other structured constellations proposed in the literature.

Traffic prediction plays a vital role in efficient planning and usage of network resources in wireless networks. While traffic prediction in wired networks is an established field, there is a lack of research on the analysis of traffic in cellular networks, especially in a content-blind manner at the user level. Here, we shed light into this problem by designing traffic prediction tools that employ either statistical, rule-based, or deep machine learning methods. First, we present an extensive experimental evaluation of the designed tools over a real traffic dataset. Within this analysis, the impact of different parameters, such as length of prediction, feature set used in analyses, and granularity of data, on accuracy of prediction are investigated. Second, regarding the coupling observed between behavior of traffic and its generating application, we extend our analysis to the blind classification of applications generating the traffic based on the statistics of traffic arrival/departure. The results demonstrate presence of a threshold number of previous observations, beyond which, deep machine learning can outperform linear statistical learning, and before which, statistical learning outperforms deep learning approaches. Further analysis of this threshold value represents a strong coupling between this threshold, the length of future prediction, and the feature set in use. Finally, through a case study, we present how the experienced delay could be decreased by traffic arrival prediction.

Optimizing radio transmission power and user data rates in wireless systems requires full system observability. While the problem has been extensively studied in the literature, practical solutions approaching optimality exploiting only the partial observability available in real systems are still lacking. This paper proposes a reinforcement learning approach to downlink power control and rate adaptation in cellular networks that closes this gap. We present a comprehensive design of the learning framework that includes the characterization of the system state, a general reward function, and an efficient learning algorithm. System level simulations show that our design quickly learns a power control policy that brings significant energy savings and fairness across users in the system.

This paper investigates the capacity limit of an uplink waveform channel assuming imperfect channel state information at the receiver (CSIR). Various realistic assumptions are incorporated into the problem, which make the study valuable for performance assessment of real cellular networks to identify potentials for performance improvements in practical receiver designs. We assume that the continuous-time received signal is first discretized by mismatched filtering based on the imperfect CSIR. The resulting discrete-time signals are then decoded considering two different decoding strategies, i.e., an optimal decoding strategy based on specific statistics of channel estimation errors and a sub-optimal decoding strategy treating the estimation error signal as additive Gaussian noise. Motivated by the proposed decoding strategies, we study the performance of the decision feedback equalizer for finite constellation inputs, in which inter-stream interferences are treated either using their true statistics or as Gaussian noise. Numerical results are provided to exemplify the benefit of exploiting the knowledge on the statistics of the channel estimation errors and inter-stream interferences. Simulations also assess the effect of the CSI imperfectness on the achievable rate, which reveal that finite constellation inputs are less sensitive to the estimation accuracy than Gaussian input, especially in the high SNR regime.

In LTE networks, with many active users per cell, frequency utilization is high and significant QoS performance gains are possible through frequency selective scheduling. In order to realize this, the scheduler requires rich and frequent reporting of the channel quality or state such that the channel response in the frequency domain can be accurately tracked. CQI (Channel Quality Indicator) measurements support this for the downlink. However, with many active users it is not practical to configure such reporting for all users simultaneously. In this paper, we investigate how best to configure CQI reporting in these circumstances. We demonstrate the advantages from requesting CQI on all regular PUSCH (physical uplink shared channel) transmissions (piggybacking), whilst at the same time issuing grants for PUSCH transmissions carrying CQI but no MAC PDU for targeted users only (boosting). Targeting of cell edge users during their FTP file transfers demonstrates a transfer delay reduction of 10% at 75% RB utilization, with one boost per TTI per cell, in system simulation.

This paper considers the capacity limit of an uplink wideband CDMA (WCDMA) system assuming imperfect channel state information at the receiver (CSIR). In order to make the studied results useful for the performance assessment of real cellular networks, various realistic assumptions are included in the problem. A discrete-time channel model is derived based on the mismatched filtering at the receiver. Capacity inner bounds are then characterized based on the discrete-time channel model considering different assumptions on decoding strategy. Numerical results are also provided to show the effect of imperfect CSIR on the capacity.

This paper considers the capacity limit of an uplink wideband CDMA system. In order to make the studied results useful for the performance assessment of real cellular networks, various realistic assumptions are included in the problem. An equivalent discrete-time channel model is derived based on sufficient statistic for optimal decoding of transmit messages. The capacity regions are then characterized considering finite constellation and Gaussian input assumptions. For further insight, an analysis on the asymptotic capacity is considered, in which the conditions to simultaneously achieve the individual capacities are derived.