The increasing demand for high-performance wireless communication, due to emerging applications such as augmented reality, virtual reality, and Internet-of-Things (IoT), has highlighted the need for enhanced Peer-to-Peer (P2P) communication in Wi-Fi networks. P2P communication, often implemented through technologies like Wi-Fi Direct and Wi-Fi Aware, plays a crucial role in enabling seamless device-to-device interaction. This paper explores two significant enhancements for improving P2P communication: enhancing base-channel P2P through the optimization of TXOP sharing for P2P groups, and improving off-channel P2P through multi-AP coordination for channel advertisement. First, we examine the enhancement of base-channel P2P communication by introducing a refined transmission opportunity (TXOP) sharing mechanism, where an AP allocates portions of its TXOP to P2P devices within a group. This allocation ensures that devices can transmit data within a controlled, synchronized framework, thereby reducing contention and improving overall throughput. Furthermore, the proposed improvements enable devices to efficiently share resources based on group-level needs, supporting latency-sensitive applications such as real-time media streaming. Second, we address the challenges of off-channel P2P communication in OBSS (Overlapping Basic Service Set) environments, where interference from neighboring networks can severely affect performance. Through multi-AP coordination, APs can advertise recommended P2P channels that minimize overlap with infrastructure operations, thereby providing cleaner and more reliable channels for P2P communication. In addition, this coordination also facilitates faster setup and more efficient operation of P2P links.

Although Wi-Fi is an ideal technology for many ranging applications, the performance of current methods is limited by the system bandwidth, leading to low accuracy of ~1 m. For many applications, measuring differential range, viz., the change in the range between adjacent measurements, is sufficient. Correspondingly, this work proposes WiDRa - a Wi-Fi based Differential Ranging solution that provides differential range estimates by using the sum-carrier-phase information. The proposed method is not limited by system bandwidth and can track range changes even smaller than the carrier wavelength. The proposed method is first theoretically justified, while taking into consideration the various hardware impairments affecting Wi-Fi chips. In the process, methods to isolate the sum-carrier phase from the hardware impairments are proposed. Extensive simulation results show that WiDRa can achieve a differential range estimation root-mean-square-error (RMSE) of$\approx 1$mm in channels with a Rician-factor$\geq 7$(a$100 \times $improvement to existing methods). The proposed methods are also validated on off-the-shelf Wi-Fi hardware to demonstrate feasibility, where they achieve an RMSE of <1 mm in the differential range. Finally, limitations of current investigation and future directions of exploration are suggested, to further tap into the potential of WiDRa.

This paper studies the effect of the user hand grip on the design of beamforming codebooks for 5G millimeter-wave (mmWave) mobile handsets. The high-frequency structure simulator (HFSS) is used to characterize the radiation fields for fourteen possible handgrip profiles based on experiments we conducted. The loss from hand blockage on the antenna gains can be up to 20-25 dB, which implies that the possible hand grip profiles need to be taken into account while designing beam codebooks. Specifically, we consider three different codebook adaption schemes: a grip-aware scheme, where perfect knowledge of the hand grip is available; a semi-aware scheme, where just the application (voice call, messaging, etc.) and the orientation of the mobile handset is known; and a grip-agnostic scheme, where the codebook ignores hand blockage. Our results show that the ideal grip-aware scheme can provide more than 50% gain in terms of the spherical coverage over the agnostic scheme, depending on the grip and orientation. Encouragingly, the more practical semi-aware scheme we propose provides performance approaching the fully grip-aware scheme. Overall, we demonstrate that 5G mmWave handsets are different from pre-5G handsets: the user grip needs to be explicitly factored into the codebook design.

Ultra-densification is one of the main features of 5G networks. In an ultra-dense network, how to conduct interference management and spectrum allocation is a challenging issue. Spectrum sensing in cognitive radio networks is a distributed and efficient way to resolve this issue in ultra-dense networks. However, most of the studies on spectrum sensing only focus on sensing temporal spectrum opportunities where one or multiple primary users are active, which does not make full use of spectrum opportunities in the spatial location domain. To overcome the shortcomings of conventional temporal spectrum sensing, we study the problem of spatial spectrum sensing, which senses spatial spectrum opportunities in wireless networks. In this paper, the performance of spatial spectrum sensing and its application in sensing-based device-to-device (D2D) cellular networks are analyzed using stochastic geometry. Specifically, by modeling the locations of active transmitters as a Poisson point process, the spatial spectrum sensing problem is formulated using the framework of a detection theory. Closed-form expressions are obtained for the sensing threshold, probabilities of spatial detection, and false alarm. Furthermore, analytical throughput for D2D users and cellular users under both channel inversion and constant power allocation cases are derived. The optimal sensing radius that maximizes the defined network metric is obtained numerically. Finally, the simulation and numerical results are presented to verify our theoretical analysis.

The future wireless networks, such as Centralized Radio Access Network (C-RAN), will need to deliver data rate about 100 times to 1000 times the current 4G technology. For C-RAN based network architecture, there is a pressing need for tremendous enhancement of the effective data rate of the Common Public Radio Interface (CPRI). Compression of CPRI data is one of the potential enhancements. We introduce a vector quantization based compression algorithm for CPRI links, utilizing Lloyd algorithm. Methods to vectorize the I/Q samples and enhanced initialization of Lloyd algorithm for codebook training are investigated for improved performance. Multi-stage vector quantization is considered to reduce codebook search complexity. Simulation results show that our solution can achieve compression of 4 times for uplink and 4.5 times for downlink, within 2% Error Vector Magnitude (EVM) distortion. Remarkably, vector quantization codebook proves to be quite robust against data modulation mismatch, fading, signal-to-noise (SNR) and Doppler spread.

This paper considers an uplink massive MIMO scheme that employs a pilot reuse scheme. For the massive MIMO scheme, a non-asymptotic cell throughput lower bound that is valid for any M is derived and the bound is shown to be tight by simulations. The lower bound is dependent upon three interference terms: intra-cell interference, inter-cell interference, and interference due to pilot contamination. A set of conditions on which each interference term dominates is examined by analysis and simulations, where the conditions are defined in terms of network topology, pilot reuse number and M. For example, for a dense network with M = 100, the largest cell throughput is achieved with pilot reuse number 2, in which case the traditional inter-cell interference dominates rather than the pilot contamination.

In this paper, we consider multicell processing on the downlink of a cellular network to accomplish ldquomacrodiversityrdquo transmit beamforming. The particular downlink beamformer structure we consider allows a recasting of the downlink beamforming problem as a virtual linear mean square error (LMMSE) estimation problem. We exploit the structure of the channel and develop distributed beamforming algorithms using local message passing between neighboring base stations. For 1-D networks, we use the Kalman smoothing framework to obtain a forward-backward beamforming algorithm. We also propose a limited extent version of this algorithm that shows that the delay need not grow with the size of the network in practice. For 2-D cellular networks, we remodel the network as a factor graph and present a distributed beamforming algorithm based on the sum-product algorithm. Despite the presence of loops in the factor graph, the algorithm produces optimal results if convergence occurs.

Frequency planning is a common intercell interference (ICI) management strategy in narrowband cellular networks. In this paper, we consider an alternative approach that allows full frequency reuse in every cell and deploys a network-wide linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) receiver as the front-end processor to suppress ICI. Assuming equal transmit power for all users, we compare the achievable rate of the LMMSE receiver in the information-theoretic sense against the rates achieved by two different frequency reuse schemes, namely the conventional reuse scheme with single-cell processing and a reuse scheme that allows interference-free processing of signals from adjacent cells. We first compare the performance under a fixed path-gain model and then extend to a random fading model.

We consider a cellular network where base stations can cooperate to determine the signals to be transmitted on the downlink. Using a particular downlink beamformer structure, we recast our downlink beamforming problem as a virtual linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) estimation problem. Based on this virtual set up, we remodel the network as a factor graph with loops and present a simple distributed cooperative scheme for base stations based on the sum-product algorithm. We study the condition for convergence for the distributed algorithm and demonstrate its performance via simulations.

We consider a cellular network where base stations can cooperate to determine the signals to be transmitted on the downlink. In such a scenario, it would be possible to use "macroscopic" transmit beamforming to improve system performance. The downlink beamformer of interest is generalised from some transmit beamformers that have been shown to meet various optimality criteria in the literature. The particular downlink beamformer structure enables us to recast our downlink beamforming problem as a virtual LMMSE estimation problem. Based on this virtual set up, we exploit the structure of the channel and develop distributed beamforming algorithms using local message passing between neighbouring base stations. Two algorithms are outlined, both of which are based on the Kalman smoothing framework. The first algorithm is a forward-backward algorithm that produces optimal performance, but it has the disadvantage of a delay that grows linearly with array size. The second algorithm, which is a limited extent algorithm, solves the delay problem by using only local information

We consider the problem of multiuser detection in cellular networks. In particular, we present a distributed forward-backward algorithm with local message passing for efficient implementation of the linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) receiver, for a simple model of a 1D cellular system. The distributed algorithm is based on the well-known interpretation of Kalman smoothing as a linear combination of the forward and backward filtered estimates. We also show that near-optimal performance can be achieved by only relying on information from a local linear segment of the entire array. This results in a limited extent distributed algorithm that greatly reduces processing delay, especially for large networks, yet with little loss in performance.

We derive the Linear Minimum Mean Square Error (LMMSE) receiver for Wyner's model of a linear cellular array. By exploiting the special structure of the channel model, we obtain explicit Mean Square Error (MSE) expressions and information capacity formulae for both finite-sized as well as infinite-sized linear cellular arrays. We show that the performance of an individual user becomes insensitive to the array size for large array sizes and that the proportion of users achieving almost the same performance converges to one, as the array size tends to infinity. The effects of intercell interference and noise on the performance of each user are also investigated.