Abstract:

The throughput of a linear cellular uplink with a random number of users, different power control schemes, and cooperative base stations is considered in the large system limit where the number of cells is large for non fading Gaussian channels. The analysis is facilitated by establishing an analogy between the cellular channel per-cell throughput with joint multicell processing (MCP), and the rate of a deterministic intersymbol interference (ISI) channel with flat fading. It is shown that, under certain conditions, the dynamics of cellular systems (i.e., a random number of users coupled with a given power control scheme) can be interpreted, as far as the uplink throughput is concerned, as the flat fading process of the equivalent ISI channel. The results are used to demonstrate the benefits of MCP over the conventional single cell processing approach as a function of various system parameters in the presence of random user activity.

Abstract:

The sum-rate capacity of a single-input single-output (SISO) downlink with Rayleigh flat fading channels and K users, grows as log log K when optimal scheduling is employed. However, the optimal scheduling requires that the full channel state information (CSI) for all users be available to the transmitter. In this work it is shown that the same rate growth holds even if the feedback rate from the users to the transmitter is reduced to 1-bit per fading block. A simple analysis for this setup is presented, resulting in a closed form expression for the achievable ergodic sum-rate. The mechanism of setting a sub-optimal threshold is elucidated by simple lower and upper bounds to the sum-rate. Among the insights afforded by the sum-rate expression and the bounds, is that application of the sub-optimal threshold demonstrates the same scaling law as the optimal full CSI scheme, asymptotically with the number of users K

Abstract:

Shannon-theoretic limits on the achievable throughput for a simple infinite cellular multiple-access channel (MAC) model (Wyner 1994) in the presence of fading are presented. In this model, which is modified to account for flat fading, the received signal, at a given cell-site's antenna, is the sum of the faded signals transmitted from all users within that cell plus an attenuation factor α∈[0,1] times the sum of the faded signals received from the adjacent cells, accompanied by Gaussian additive noise. This model serves as a tractable model providing considerable insight into complex and analytically intractable real-world cellular communications. Both linear and planar cellular arrays are considered with exactly K active users in each cell. We assume a hyper-receiver, jointly decoding all of the users, incorporating the received signals from all of the active cell-sites. The hyper-receiver is assumed to be aware of the codebooks and realizations of the fading processes of all the users in the system. In this work we consider the intracell time-division multiple-access (TDMA) and the wideband (WB) protocols. We focus on the maximum reliably transmitted equal rate. Bounds to this rate are found for the intracell TDMA protocol by incorporating information-theoretic inequalities and the Chebyshev-Markov moment theory as applied to the limiting distribution of the eigenvalues of a quadratic form of tridiagonal random matrices. We demonstrate our results for the special case where the amplitudes of the fading coefficients are drawn from a Rayleigh distribution, i.e., Rayleigh fading. For this special case, we observe the rather surprising result that fading may increase the maximum equal rate, for a certain range of α as compared to the nonfaded case. In this setting, the WB strategy, which achieves the maximum reliable equal rate of the model, is proved to be superior to the TDMA scheme. An upper bound to the maximum equal rate of the WB scheme is also obtained. This bound is asymptotically tight when the number of users is large (K≫1). The asymptotic bound shows that the maximum equal rate of the WB scheme in the presence of fading is higher than the rate which corresponds to the nonfaded case for any intercell interference factor α∈[0,1] signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) values. This result is found to be independent of the statistics of the fading coefficients

Abstract:

A chip-interleaved randomly spread direct-sequence code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) scheme is considered, employed in two variants of Wyner's infinite linear cell-array model with flat fading. Focusing on the asymptotic setup in which both the number of users per cell and the processing gain go to infinity, while their ratio (the ldquocell loadrdquo) goes to some finite constant, the spectral efficiencies of the optimum and linear minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) joint multicell receivers are investigated. A dramatic performance enhancement as compared to single-cell-site processing is demonstrated. The asymptotic behavior of the two receivers in extreme signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regimes and in a high cell-load regime are analyzed as well. The impact of chip interleaving versus symbol interleaving is also investigated. Chip-level interleaving is found beneficial in several cases of interests, and is conjectured to be beneficial in general.

Abstract:

The sum-rate capacity of a cellular system model is analyzed, considering the uplink and downlink channels, while addressing both nonfading and flat-fading channels. The focus is on a simple Wyner-like multicell model, where the system cells are arranged on a circle, and the cell sites are located at the boundaries of the cells. For the uplink channel, analytical expressions of the sum-rate capacities are derived for intra-cell time-division multiple-access (TDMA) scheduling, and a "wideband" (WB) scheme (where all users are active simultaneously utilizing all bandwidths for coding). Assuming individual equal per-cell power constraints, and using the Lagrangian uplink-downlink duality principle, an analytical expression for the sum-rate capacity of the downlink channel is derived for nonfading channels, and shown to coincide with the corresponding uplink result. Introducing flat-fading, lower and upper bounds on the average per-cell ergodic sum-rate capacity are derived. The bounds exhibit an O(loge K) multiuser diversity factor for a number of users per cell K Gt 1, in addition to the array diversity gain. Joint multicell processing is shown to eliminate out-of-cell interference, which is traditionally considered to be a limiting factor in high-rate reliable communications.

Abstract:

In this correspondence, joint (cooperative) decoding at the base stations combined with collaborative transmission (relaying) is investigated as a means to improve the uplink throughput of current cellular systems over fading channels. Intracell orthogonal medium access control (e.g., TDMA, FDMA, or orthogonal CDMA) and Decode-and-Forward relaying by either a mobile terminal or a fixed relay are assumed. Moreover, the cellular system is modeled according to a simplified framework introduced by Wyner. The per-cell achievable ergodic throughput is calculated for different system configurations and then characterized in the low-power (wideband) regime in terms of minimum energy per bit required for reliable communication and slope of the spectral efficiency. The analysis allows to clearly assess the relative merits of both cooperation among base stations and at the terminal level within the considered model.

Abstract:

In this paper we study the spectrum of certain large random Hermitian Jacobi matrices. These matrices are known to describe certain communication setups. In particular, we are interested in an uplink cellular channel which models mobile users experiencing a soft-handoff situation under joint multicell decoding. Considering rather general fading statistics we provide a closed-form expression for the per-cell sum-rate of this channel in high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), when an intra-cell time-division multiple-access (TDMA) protocol is employed. Since the matrices of interest are tridiagonal, their eigenvectors can be considered as sequences with second-order linear recurrence. Therefore, the problem is reduced to the study of the exponential growth of products of two-by-two matrices. For the case where K users are simultaneously active in each cell, we obtain a series of lower and upper bound on the high-SNR power offset of the per-cell sum-rate, which are considerably tighter than previously known bounds.

Abstract:

Cooperative decoding at the base stations (or access points) of an infrastructure wireless network is currently well recognized as a promising approach for intercell interference mitigation, thus enabling high frequency reuse. Deployment of cooperative multicell decoding depends critically on the tolopology and quality of the available backhaul links connecting the base stations. This work studies a scenario where base stations are connected only if in adjacent cells, and via finite-capacity links. Relying on a linear Wyner-type cellular model with no fading, achievable rates are derived for the two scenarios where base stations are endowed only with the codebooks of local (in-cell) mobile stations, or also with the codebooks used in adjacent cells. Moreover, both uni- and bidirectional backhaul links are considered. The analysis sheds light on the impact of codebook information, decoding delay, and network planning (frequency reuse) on the performance of multicell decoding as enabled by local and finite-capacity backhaul links. Analysis in the high-signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime and numerical results validate the main conclusions.

Abstract:

In this work, a multicell cooperative zero-forcing beamforming (ZFBF) scheme combined with a simple user selection procedure is considered for the Wyner cellular downlink channel. The approach is to transmit to the user with the ldquobestrdquo local channel in each cell. The performance of this suboptimal scheme is investigated in terms of the conventional sum-rate scaling law and the sum-rate offset for an increasing number of users per cell. We term this characterization of the sum-rate for large number of users as high-load regime characterization, and point out the similarity of this approach to the standard affine approximation used in the high-signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime. It is shown that, under an overall power constraint, the suboptimal cooperative multicell ZFBF scheme achieves the same sum-rate growth rate and slightly degraded offset law, when compared to an optimal scheme deploying joint multicell dirty-paper coding (DPC), asymptotically with the number of users per cell. Moreover, the overall power constraint is shown to ensure in probability, equal per-cell power constraints when the number of users per-cell increases.