Performance enhancement in the cell-free massive MIMO SWIPT system with active eavesdropping

This paper investigates the secure transmission for simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) in the cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system. To develop green communication, legitimate users harvest energy by the hybrid time switching (TS) and power splitting (PS) strategy in the downlink phase, and the harvested energy can provide power to send uplink pilot sequences for the next time slot. By in-built batteries, the active eavesdropper can send the same pilots with the wiretapped user, which results in undesirable correlations between the channel estimates. Under these scenarios, we derive the closed-form expressions of average harvested energy and achievable rates, and propose an iterative power control (PC) scheme based on max–min fairness algorithm with energy and secrecy constraints (MMF-ESC). This scheme can ensure the uniform good services for all users preserving the distributed architecture advantage of cell-free networks, while meeting the requirements of energy harvested by legitimate users and network security against active eavesdroppers. Besides, continuous approximation, bisection and path tracking are jointly applied to cope with the high-complexity and non-convex optimization. Numerical results demonstrate that MMF-ESC PC scheme can effectively increase the achievable rate and the average harvested energy of each user, and decrease the eavesdropping rate below the threshold. Moreover, the results also reveal that PS strategy is superior in harvesting energy in terms of more stringent network requirements for average achievable rates or security.     

Energy Efficiency of User-Centric,Cell-Free Massive MIMO-OFDM with Instantaneous CSI

In the user-centric, cell-free, massive multi-input, multi-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system, a large number of deployed access points (APs) serve user equipment (UEs) simultaneously, using the same time–frequency resources, and the system is able to ensure fairness between each user; moreover, it is robust against fading caused by multi-path propagation. Existing studies assume that cell-free, massive MIMO is channel-hardened, the same as centralized massive MIMO, and these studies address power allocation and energy efficiency optimization based on the statistics information of each channel. In cell-free, massive MIMO systems, especially APs with only one antenna, the channel statistics information is not a complete substitute for the instantaneous channel state information (CSI) obtained via channel estimation. In this paper, we propose that energy efficiency is optimized by power allocation with instantaneous CSI in the user-centric, cell-free, massive MIMO-OFDM system, and we consider the effect of CSI exchanging between APs and the central processing unit. In addition, we design different resource block allocation schemes, so that user-centric, cell-free, massive MIMO-OFDM can support enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) for high-speed communication and massive machine communication (mMTC) for massive device communication. The numerical results verify that the proposed energy efficiency optimization scheme, based on instantaneous CSI, outperforms the one with statistical information in both scenarios.     

Proportional fair scheduling using water-filling technique for SC-FDMA based D2D communication

The resource allocation in SC-FDMA is constrained by the condition that multiple subchannels should be allocated to a single user only if they are adjacent. Therefore, the scheduling scheme of a D2D-cellular system that uses SC-FDMA must also conform to the so-called adjacency constraint. This paper proposes a heuristic algorithm with low computational complexity that applies proportional fair (PF) scheduling in the D2D-cellular system. The proposed algorithm consists of two main phases: (i) subchannel allocation and (ii) adjustment of data rates, which are executed for both CUEs and DUEs. In the subchannel allocation phase for CUEs (or D2D pairs), the users’ data rates are maximized via optimal power allocation to frequency-contiguous subchannels. In the second phase, a PF scheduling problem is solved to decide the modulation and coding scheme (MCS) of both CUEs and D2D pairs. Both phases of the proposed algorithm benefit from the Water-Filling (WF) technique. The simulation results suggest that the proposed scheme performs similar to optimal PF scheduling from the perspective of users’ data rate and their logarithmic sum. An additional benefit of the proposed scheme is its low computational overhead.     

A novel blind spatial-based random access to pilots (BSB-RAP) in overloaded massive MIMO systems

In this study, to increase the success rate of active user admission in overloaded massive multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems, a new spatially based random access to pilots (RAP) is proposed to assign orthogonal pilots to the users requesting network access. Therefore, by increasing the acceptance rate of users in a cell, this approach reduces the training overhead and waste of resources. In the massive MIMO for crowd scenarios, the main issue is the limited number of available orthogonal pilots employed by the users in the channel estimation process. This novel approach as spatially based random access enables us to have more connected users during every coherence interval (CI) despite the mentioned limitation. Intrinsic angular domain sparsity of massive MIMO channels and the sporadic traffic of users can help us obtain the spatial features of active UEs in a blind continuous compressed sensing (CCS) approach. Proposed approach is to use a continuous compressed sensing technique based on a prior optimization that provides users’ angle of arrival (AoA) and an innovative space-based RAP protocol to assign orthogonal pilots to active users in coherent transmission. Unlike the previous works, this strategy does not need to limit the number of users to the number of available orthogonal pilots due to the employed spatial degrees of freedom.     

Quality of Service based resource allocation in D2D enabled 5G-CNs with network slicing

With the rapid new advancements in technology, there is an enormous increase in devices and their versatile need for services. Fifth-generation (5G) cellular networks (5G-CNs) with network slicing (NS) have emerged as a necessity for future mobile communication. The available network is partitioned logically into multiple virtual networks to provide an enormous range of users’ specific services. Efficient resource allocation methods are critical to delivering the customers with their required Quality of Service (QoS) priorities. In this work, we have investigated a QoS based resource allocation (RA) scheme considering two types of 5G slices with different service requirements; (1) enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB) slice that requires a very high data rate and (2) massive Machine Type Communication (mMTC) slice that requires extremely low latency. We investigated the device-to-device (D2D) enabled 5G-CN model with NS to assign resources to users based on their QoS needs while considering the cellular and D2D user’s data rate requirements. We have proposed a Distributed Algorithm (DA) with edge computation to solve the optimization problem, which is novel as edge routers will solve the problem locally using the augmented Lagrange method. They then send this information to the central server to find the global optimum solution utilizing a consensus algorithm. Simulation analysis proves that this scheme is efficient as it assigns resources based on their QoS requirements. This scheme is excellent in reducing the central load and computational time.     

Social-aware relay selection and energy-efficient resource allocation for relay-aided D2D communication

How to improve the flexibility of limited communication resources to meet the increasing requirements of data services has become one of the research hotspots of the modern wireless communication network. In this paper, a novel social-aware motivated relay selection method is put forward to allocate the energy efficiency (EE) resources for the device-to-device (D2D) communication. To improve system flexibility, a D2D user is selected to act as a relay named D2D-relay instead of the traditional cellular relay. The optimal relay selection strategy is formulated by searching the maximum trust value that is obtained by assessing the link stability and social connections between two users. Then, the resource allocation problem, which turns out to be a mixed-integer nonlinear fractional programming (MINLFP) problem, is solved by maximizing the total EE under physical constraint and social constraint synthetically. To improve the solution efficiency, a novel iterative algorithm is proposed by integrating the Dinkelbach theory and Lagrange dual decomposition method. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme. Compared with the existing social-blind and social-aware schemes, it significantly improves the probability of successful relay selection and total EE of the D2D pairs.     

RIS-assisted cell-free massive MIMO systems with reflection area: AP number reduction

Cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) has been regarded as a promising technology due to high spectral efficiency. However, as large number of access points (APs) are deployed with fibers connecting to the central processing unit, the increase of energy consumption and hardware cost raise concerns. The reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) with impressing potential for low energy and cost finds a way to solve this problem. In this paper, we investigate the performance of the cell-free massive MIMO system with a RIS. As RIS can only reflect signals from the front, user equipments (UEs) and APs are divided into two categories according to their relative position with the RIS, i.e., one is on the reflection area of the RIS and the other is not. A closed-form approximation of the UE achievable downlink rate is derived. Based on it, we obtain the optimal RIS position and phase shift that can maximize the UE sum rate, through alternating optimization method. It is found that compared with the cell-free massive MIMO system without RIS, to achieve the same rate performance, the number of required AP in the RIS-assisted system can be significantly reduced. Moreover, as the RIS component increases, the number of required AP can be reduced almost linearly without rate reduction, which means the hardware and energy cost can be greatly cut down. Furthermore, from our simulation results, we can see that when users are densely distributed, the optimal location of the RIS should be closer to users. When users are uniformly distributed, the optimal position of RIS is close to the central position.     

The Downlink Performance for Cell-Free Massive MIMO with Instantaneous CSI in Slowly Time-Varying Channels

In centralized massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, the channel hardening phenomenon can occur, in which the channel behaves as almost fully deterministic as the number of antennas increases. Nevertheless, in a cell-free massive MIMO system, the channel is less deterministic. In this paper, we propose using instantaneous channel state information (CSI) instead of statistical CSI to obtain the power control coefficient in cell-free massive MIMO. Access points (APs) and user equipment (UE) have sufficient time to obtain instantaneous CSI in a slowly time-varying channel environment. We derive the achievable downlink rate under instantaneous CSI for frequency division duplex (FDD) cell-free massive MIMO systems and apply the results to the power control coefficients. For FDD systems, quantized channel coefficients are proposed to reduce feedback overhead. The simulation results show that the spectral efficiency performance when using instantaneous CSI is approximately three times higher than that achieved using statistical CSI.     

A matching-theoretic approach to resource allocation in D2D-enabled downlink NOMA cellular networks

This paper investigates the resource allocation problem in non-orthogonal multiple-access (NOMA) cellular networks underlaid with OMA-based device-to-device (D2D) communication. This network architecture enjoys the intrinsic features of NOMA and D2D communications; namely, spectral efficiency, massive connectivity, and low-latency. Despite these indispensable features, the combination of NOMA and D2D communications exacerbates the resource allocation problem in cellular networks due to the tight coupling among their constraints and conflict over access to shared resources. The aim of our work is to maximize the downlink network sum-rate, while meeting the minimum rate requirements of the cellular tier and underlay D2D communication, and incorporating interference management as well as other practical constraints. To this end, many-to-many matching and difference-of-convex programming are employed to develop a holistic sub-channels and power allocation algorithmic solution. In addition to analyzing the properties of the proposed solution, its performance is benchmarked against an existing solution and the traditional OMA-based algorithm. The proposed solution demonstrates superiority in terms of network sum-rate, users’ connectivity, minimum rate satisfaction, fairness, and interference management, while maintaining acceptable computational complexity.     

Mobility-aware coded caching in D2D communication networks

In this paper, we consider a cache-enable device-to-device (D2D) communication network with user mobility and design a mobility-aware coded caching scheme to exploit multicasting opportunities for reducing network traffic. In addition to the static cache memory that can be used to reap coded caching gains, we assign a dynamic cache memory to mobile users such that users who never meet can still exchange contents via relaying. We consider content exchange as an information flow among dynamic cache memories of mobile users and leverage network coding to reduce network traffic. Specifically, we transfer our storage and broadcast problem into a network coding problem. By solving the formulated network coding problem, we obtain a dynamic content replacement and broadcast strategy. Numerical results verify that our algorithm significantly outperforms the random and greedy algorithms in terms of the amount of broadcasting data, and the standard Ford–Fulkerson algorithm in terms of the successful decoding ratio.     

On superimposed pilot for channel estimation in massive MIMO uplink

In this paper, we consider the uplink (UL) of multiuser multi-cell massive MIMO systems, and present a transmission-efficient channel estimation technique by using time-superimposed (TS) pilots, where pilots are superimposed onto data symbols in time domain. In large-antenna regime, we mathematically characterize the UL achievable rate of massive MIMO as a closed-form expression. Concerning the asymptotic case, we show that the UL achievable rate is a monotonically increasing function of pilot power, and also depends on the time allocation between pilot and data. Theoretical analysis and simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed design in comparison with both the conventional TS and time-multiplexed pilots.     

Data detection based on matrix decomposition for massive MIMO systems in realistic channel scenarios

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is a key technology for modern wireless communication systems. In massive MIMO receivers, data detection is a computationally expensive task. In this paper, we explore the performance and the computational complexity of matrix decomposition based detectors in realistic channel scenarios for different massive MIMO configurations. In addition, data detectors based on decomposition algorithms are compared to the approximate-inversion detection (AID) methods. It is shown that the alternating-direction-method-of-multipliers-based-Infinity-Norm (ADMIN) detection is promising in realistic channel environment and the performance is stable even when the ratio of the base-station (BS) antenna elements to the number of users is small. In addition, this paper studies the performance of several detectors in imperfect channel state information (CSI) and correlated channels. Our work provides valuable insights for massive MIMO systems and very large-scale integration (VLSI) designers to select the appropriate massive MIMO detector based on their specifications.     

Joint uplink–downlink resource allocation for energy efficient D2D underlaying cellular networks with many-to-one matching

Energy efficiency (EE) is an important parameter for the next generation cellular communications which is not limited to voice and text messages only. Device-to-Device (D2D) communication is being viewed as a promising technology to support heterogeneous applications involved in future cellular networks. Due to its short range communication, less amount of power is sufficient to make a successful transmission. By exploiting this feature of D2D, this paper proposes an energy-efficient resource allocation scheme for joint uplink/downlink (UL/DL) D2D considering many-to-one matching criterion for channel reuse among users. In this paper, total EE of D2D pairs (DPs) is taken as a performance metric to be optimized subject to quality of service (QoS) satisfaction for cellular users (CUs) within the power budgets of all the users. An iterative scheme is designed for joint channel and power optimization problem. Simulation results show the convergence of joint iterative algorithm and verify significant performance improvement over other schemes.     

An energy efficient scheme by exploiting multi-hop D2D communications for 5G networks

The multi-hop Device-to-Device (M-D2D) communication has a potential to serve as a promising technology for upcoming 5G networks. The prominent reason is that the M-D2D communication has the potential to improve coverage, enhanced spectrum efficiency, better link quality, and energy-efficient communication. One of the major challenges for M-D2D communication is the mitigation of interference between the cellular user (CUs) and M-D2D users. Considering this mutual interference constraint, this work investigates the problem of optimal matching of M-D2D links and CUs to form spectrum-sharing partners to maximize overall sum rates of the cell under QoS and energy efficiency (EE) constraints. In this paper, we investigate the interference management for multi-hop (more than one-hop) D2D communication scenarios where we propose a channel assignment scheme along with a power allocation scheme. The proposed channel assignment scheme is based on the Hungarian method in which the channel assignment for M-D2D pairs is done by minimum interference value. The power allocation scheme is based on Binary Particle swarm optimization (BPSO). This scheme calculates the specific power values for all the individual M-D2D links. We have done a comprehensive simulation and the result portrays that our proposed scheme performs better compared to the previous work mentioned in the literature. The results clearly indicate that the proposed scheme enhances the EE of up to 13% by producing the optimal assignment of channels and power for the CUs and M-D2D users.     

Performance analysis of massive MIMO systems with low-resolution ADCs and IQI

In massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, the substantial increase in the number of antennas leads to a surge in hardware cost and power consumption. Meanwhile, the impact of IQ imbalance (IQI) on system performance also tends to be serious. In this paper, closed-form expressions for the achievable rates of maximum-ratio combining (MRC) receivers are derived for uplink massive MIMO systems with both low-resolution analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) and IQI. Based on the derived closed-form expression, the influence of system parameters on the achievable rate is analyzed. The simulation results verify the accuracy of the theoretical results. It is found that low-resolution ADC and IQI will degrade the achievable rate compared with employing high resolution ADCs, but this loss can be compensated for by increasing the number of base station (BS) antennas, so as to significantly increase the energy efficiency.     

On achievable rate of massive MIMO multiple access channels via virtual representation

This paper investigates the uplink achievable rates of massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems in correlated fading channels via virtual representation. The fast fading MIMO channel matrix is assumed to have a Rayleigh-distributed random component with variance profile. Under the minimum mean-squared error receiver employed, we first derive the first and second asymptotic moments of signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR). Then, we propose that the probability distribution function of SINR, which can be well approximated by a Gamma distribution. Finally, we derive a lower bound on the SINR and approximation of achievable rate. Numerical results demonstrate that both the lower bound on the SINR and the approximated rate apply for a finite number of antennas and remain tight.     

A Generalized Spatial Modulation System Using Massive MIMO Space Time Coding Antenna Grouping

Massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO), also known as a very large-scale MIMO, is an emerging technology in wireless communications that increases capacity compared to MIMO systems. The massive MIMO communication technique is currently forming a major part of ongoing research. The main issue for massive MIMO improvements depends on the number of transmitting antennas to increase the data rate and minimize bit error rate (BER). To enhance the data rate and BER, new coding and modulation techniques are required. In this paper, a generalized spatial modulation (GSM) with antenna grouping space time coding technique (STC) is proposed. The proposed GSM-STC technique is based on space time coding of two successive GSM-modulated data symbols on two subgroups of antennas to improve data rate and to minimize BER. Moreover, the proposed GSM-STC system can offer spatial diversity gains and can also increase the reliability of the wireless channel by providing replicas of the received signal. The simulation results show that GSM-STC achieves better performance compared to conventional GSM techniques in terms of data rate and BER, leading to good potential for massive MIMO by using subgroups of antennas.     

Secrecy performance analysis of IRS-assisted D2D communication underlaying cellular network

In this paper, we evaluate the secrecy performance of an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted device-to-device (D2D) communication in spectrum-shared cellular networks. To this end, we derive novel closed-form expressions for the secrecy outage probability (SOP) and the asymptotic SOP in the presence of multiple eavesdroppers. In the continue, in order to dynamically access the spectrum band of the licensed users, we define the optimization problem of secrecy spectrum resource allocation to minimize the SOP as a mixed-integer linear programming (MILP) problem. Then, the globally optimal solutions to this problem are obtained by using the Hungarian algorithm. Numerical analyses show that increasing the reflective elements of IRS can improve the secrecy performance.     

Downlink channel estimation in FDD cell-free massive MIMO

In frequency-division duplexing (FDD) cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, an excessive channel estimation overhead is a critical issue that limits the system performance. In this paper, by exploiting the sparse channel characteristics of such a cell-free system, we apply compressive sensing to estimate the channel state information and solve the excessive pilot overhead problem. The proposed algorithm estimates several channel coefficients with significant gains in the power domain and ignores the approximately zero coefficients. Compared to minimum mean square error (MMSE) estimation with orthogonal pilots, the proposed method significantly reduces the pilot overhead in an FDD cell-free massive MIMO system. The access points (APs) that contribute low gains feature reduced energy consumption because the power coefficients corresponding to zero gains in the sparse channel are assigned zeros in the power control process. Therefore, to improve the energy efficiency, the ignored channel coefficients reduce the power overhead.     

Single-carrier frequency domain adaptive antenna array for uplink multi-user MIMO transmission in a cellular system

In this paper, single-carrier frequency domain adaptive antenna array (SC-FDAAA) for the uplink multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission in a cellular system is studied. By employing AAA weight control in frequency domain, the base station (BS) can suppress the multi-user interference (MUI) and therefore realize multi-user SC transmission. In addition, channel frequency selectivity can be exploited to obtain the frequency diversity (or the multi-path diversity). The frequency domain signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) after weight control is investigated and the computational complexity of the proposed receiver is analyzed. In numerical simulations, cellular structure using the frequency reuse is assumed, and the effect of co-channel interference (CCI) is considered. The performance of the SC uplink multi-user MIMO transmission using SC-FDAAA is testified and compared with other multi-user detection schemes. The link capacity (maximum number of users/cell) and cellular link capacity (link capacity/frequency reuse factor) are also be evaluated.