No Arabic abstract
Spatial interference avoidance is a simple and effective way of mitigating interference in multi-antenna wireless networks. The deployment of this technique requires channel-state information (CSI) feedback from each receiver to all interferers, resulting in substantial network overhead. To address this issue, this paper proposes the method of distributive control that intelligently allocates CSI bits over multiple feedback links and adapts feedback to channel dynamics. For symmetric channel distributions, it is optimal for each receiver to equally allocate the average sum-feedback rate for different feedback links, thereby decoupling their control. Using the criterion of minimum sum-interference power, the optimal feedback-control policy is shown using stochastic-optimization theory to exhibit opportunism. Specifically, a specific feedback link is turned on only when the corresponding transmit-CSI error is significant or interference-channel gain large, and the optimal number of feedback bits increases with this gain. For high mobility and considering the sphere-cap-quantized-CSI model, the optimal feedback-control policy is shown to perform water-filling in time, where the number of feedback bits increases logarithmically with the corresponding interference-channel gain. Furthermore, we consider asymmetric channel distributions with heterogeneous path losses and high mobility, and prove the existence of a unique optimal policy for jointly controlling multiple feedback links. Given the sphere-cap-quantized-CSI model, this policy is shown to perform water-filling over feedback links. Finally, simulation demonstrates that feedback-control yields significant throughput gains compared with the conventional differential-feedback method.
Transmit beamforming is a simple multi-antenna technique for increasing throughput and the transmission range of a wireless communication system. The required feedback of channel state information (CSI) can potentially result in excessive overhead especially for high mobility or many antennas. This work concerns efficient feedback for transmit beamforming and establishes a new approach of controlling feedback for maximizing net throughput, defined as throughput minus average feedback cost. The feedback controller using a stationary policy turns CSI feedback on/off according to the system state that comprises the channel state and transmit beamformer. Assuming channel isotropy and Markovity, the controllers state reduces to two scalars. This allows the optimal control policy to be efficiently computed using dynamic programming. Consider the perfect feedback channel free of error, where each feedback instant pays a fixed price. The corresponding optimal feedback control policy is proved to be of the threshold type. This result holds regardless of whether the controllers state space is discretized or continuous. Under the threshold-type policy, feedback is performed whenever a state variable indicating the accuracy of transmit CSI is below a threshold, which varies with channel power. The practical finite-rate feedback channel is also considered. The optimal policy for quantized feedback is proved to be also of the threshold type. The effect of CSI quantization is shown to be equivalent to an increment on the feedback price. Moreover, the increment is upper bounded by the expected logarithm of one minus the quantization error. Finally, simulation shows that feedback control increases net throughput of the conventional periodic feedback by up to 0.5 bit/s/Hz without requiring additional bandwidth or antennas.
We consider a downlink cellular network where multi-antenna base stations (BSs) transmit data to single-antenna users by using one of two linear precoding methods with limited feedback: (i) maximum ratio transmission (MRT) for serving a single user or (ii) zero forcing (ZF) for serving multiple users. The BS and user locations are drawn from a Poisson point process, allowing expressions for the signal- to-interference coverage probability and the ergodic spectral efficiency to be derived as a function of system parameters such as the number of BS antennas and feedback bits, and the pathloss exponent. We find a tight lower bound on the optimum number of feedback bits to maximize the net spectral efficiency, which captures the overall system gain by considering both of downlink and uplink spectral efficiency using limited feedback. Our main finding is that, when using MRT, the optimum number of feedback bits scales linearly with the number of antennas, and logarithmically with the channel coherence time. When using ZF, the feedback scales in the same ways as MRT, but also linearly with the pathloss exponent. The derived results provide system-level insights into the preferred channel codebook size by averaging the effects of short-term fading and long-term pathloss.
Interference alignment (IA) is a joint-transmission technique that achieves the capacity of the interference channel for high signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). Most prior work on IA is based on the impractical assumption that perfect and global channel-state information(CSI) is available at all transmitters. To implement IA, each receiver has to feed back CSI to all interferers, resulting in overwhelming feedback overhead. In particular, the sum feedback rate of each receiver scales quadratically with the number of users even if the quantized CSI is fed back. To substantially suppress feedback overhead, this paper focuses on designing efficient arrangements of feedback links, called feedback topologies, under the IA constraint. For the multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) K-user interference channel, we propose the feedback topology that supports sequential CSI exchange (feedback and feedforward) between transmitters and receivers so as to achieve IA progressively. This feedback topology is shown to reduce the network feedback overhead from a cubic function of K to a linear one. To reduce the delay in the sequential CSI exchange, an alternative feedback topology is designed for supporting two-hop feedback via a control station, which also achieves the linear feedback scaling with K. Next, given the proposed feedback topologies, the feedback-bit allocation algorithm is designed for allocating feedback bits by each receiver to different feedback links so as to regulate the residual interference caused by the finite-rate feedback. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed bit allocation leads to significant throughput gains especially in strong interference environments.
In this paper, we establish the connections of the fundamental limitations in feedback communication, estimation, and feedback control over Gaussian channels, from a unifying perspective for information, estimation, and control. The optimal feedback communication system over a Gaussian necessarily employs the Kalman filter (KF) algorithm, and hence can be transformed into an estimation system and a feedback control system over the same channel. This follows that the information rate of the communication system is alternatively given by the decay rate of the Cramer-Rao bound (CRB) of the estimation system and by the Bode integral (BI) of the control system. Furthermore, the optimal tradeoff between the channel input power and information rate in feedback communication is alternatively characterized by the optimal tradeoff between the (causal) one-step prediction mean-square error (MSE) and (anti-causal) smoothing MSE (of an appropriate form) in estimation, and by the optimal tradeoff between the regulated output variance with causal feedback and the disturbance rejection measure (BI or degree of anti-causality) in feedback control. All these optimal tradeoffs have an interpretation as the tradeoff between causality and anti-causality. Utilizing and motivated by these relations, we provide several new results regarding the feedback codes and information theoretic characterization of KF. Finally, the extension of the finite-horizon results to infinite horizon is briefly discussed under specific dimension assumptions (the asymptotic feedback capacity problem is left open in this paper).
Interference between nodes is a critical impairment in mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs). This paper studies the role of multiple antennas in mitigating such interference. Specifically, a network is studied in which receivers apply zero-forcing beamforming to cancel the strongest interferers. Assuming a network with Poisson distributed transmitters and independent Rayleigh fading channels, the transmission capacity is derived, which gives the maximum number of successful transmissions per unit area. Mathematical tools from stochastic geometry are applied to obtain the asymptotic transmission capacity scaling and characterize the impact of inaccurate channel state information (CSI). It is shown that, if each node cancels L interferers, the transmission capacity decreases as the outage probability to the power of 1/(L+1) as the outage probability vanishes. For fixed outage probability, as L grows, the transmission capacity increases as L to the power of (1-2/alpha) where alpha is the path-loss exponent. Moreover, CSI inaccuracy is shown to have no effect on the transmission capacity scaling as the outage probability vanishes, provided that the CSI training sequence has an appropriate length, which we derived. Numerical results suggest that canceling merely one interferer by each node increases the transmission capacity by an order of magnitude or more, even when the CSI is imperfect.