Category Archives: 5G

Improving the Cell-Edge Performance

The cellular network that my smartphone connects to normally delivers 10-40 Mbit/s. That is sufficient for video-streaming and other applications that I might use. Unfortunately, I sometimes have poor coverage and then I can barely download emails or make a phone call. That is why I think that providing ubiquitous data coverage is the most important goal for 5G cellular networks. It might also be the most challenging 5G goal, because the area coverage has been an open problem since the first generation of cellular technology.

It is the physics that make it difficult to provide good coverage. The transmitted signals spread out and only a tiny fraction of the transmitted power reaches the receive antenna (e.g., one part of a billion parts). In cellular networks, the received signal power reduces roughly as the propagation distance to the power of four. This results in the following data rate coverage behavior:

Figure 1: Variations in the downlink data rates in an area covered by nine base stations.

This figure considers an area covered by nine base stations, which are located at the middle of the nine peaks. Users that are close to one of the base stations receive the maximum downlink data rate, which in this case is 60 Mbit/s (e.g., spectral efficiency 6 bit/s/Hz over a 10 MHz channel). As a user moves away from a base station, the data rate drops rapidly. At the cell edge, where the user is equally distant from multiple base stations, the rate is nearly zero in this simulation. This is because the received signal power is low as compared to the receiver noise.

What can be done to improve the coverage?

One possibility is to increase the transmit power. This is mathematically equivalent to densifying the network, so that the area covered by each base station is smaller. The figure below shows what happens if we use 100 times more transmit power:

Figure 2: The transmit powers have been increased 100 times as compared to Figure 1.

There are some visible differences as compared to Figure 1. First, the region around the base station that gives 60 Mbit/s is larger. Second, the data rates at the cell edge are slightly improved, but there are still large variations within the area. However, it is no longer the noise that limits the cell-edge rates—it is the interference from other base stations.

The inter-cell interference remains even if we would further increase the transmit power. The reason is that the desired signal power as well as the interfering signal power grow in the same manner at the cell edge. Similar things happen if we densify the network by adding more base stations, as nicely explained in a recent paper by Andrews et al.

Ideally, we would like to increase only the power of the desired signals, while keeping the interference power fixed. This is what transmit precoding from a multi-antenna array can achieve; the transmitted signals from the multiple antennas at the base station add constructively only at the spatial location of the desired user. More precisely, the signal power is proportional to M (the number of antennas), while the interference power caused to other users is independent of M. The following figure shows the data rates when we go from 1 to 100 antennas:

Figure 3: The number of base station antennas has been increased from 1 (as in Figure 1) to 100.

Figure 3 shows that the data rates are increased for all users, but particularly for those at the cell edge. In this simulation, everyone is now guaranteed a minimum data rate of 30 Mbit/s, while 60 Mbit/s is delivered in a large fraction of the coverage area.

In practice, the propagation losses are not only distant-dependent, but also affected by other large-scale effects, such as shadowing. The properties described above remain nevertheless. Coherent precoding from a base station with many antennas can greatly improve the data rates for the cell edge users, since only the desired signal power (and not the interference power) is increased. Higher transmit power or smaller cells will only lead to an interference-limited regime where the cell-edge performance remains to be poor. A practical challenge with coherent precoding is that the base station needs to learn the user channels, but reciprocity-based Massive MIMO provides a scalable solution to that. That is why Massive MIMO is the key technology for delivering ubiquitous connectivity in 5G.

Field Tests of FDD Massive MIMO

Frequency-division duplex (FDD) operation of Massive MIMO in LTE is the topic of two press releases from January 2017. The first press release describes a joint field test carried out by ZTE and China Telecom. It claims three-fold improvements in per-cell spectral efficiency using standard LTE devices, but no further details are given. The second press release describes a field verification carried out by Huawei and China Unicom. The average data rate was 87 Mbit/s per user over a 20 MHz channel and was achieved using commercial LTE devices. This corresponds to a spectral efficiency of 4.36 bit/s/Hz per user. A sum rate of 697 Mbit/s is also mentioned, from which one could guess that eight users were multiplexed (87•8=696).

Image source: Huawei

There are no specific details of the experimental setup or implementation in any of these press releases, so we cannot tell how well the systems perform compared to a baseline TDD Massive MIMO setup. Maybe this is just a rebranding of the FDD multiuser MIMO functionality in LTE, evolved with a few extra antenna ports. It is nonetheless exciting to see that several major telecom companies want to associate themselves with the Massive MIMO technology and hopefully it will result in something revolutionary in the years to come.

Efficient FDD implementation of multiuser MIMO is a longstanding challenge. The reason is the difficulty in estimating channels and feeding back accurate channel state information (CSI) in a resource-efficient manner. Many researchers have proposed methods to exploit channel parameterizations, such as angles and spatial correlation, to simplify the CSI acquisition. This might be sufficient to achieve an array gain, but the ability to also mitigate interuser interference is less certain and remains to be demonstrated experimentally. Since 85% of the LTE networks use FDD, we have previously claimed that making Massive MIMO work well in FDD is critical for the practical success and adoption of the technology.

We hope to see more field trials of Massive MIMO in FDD, along with details of the measurement setups and evaluations of which channel acquisition schemes that are suitable in practice. Will FDD Massive MIMO be exclusive for static users, whose channels are easily estimated, or can anyone benefit from it in 5G?

Update: Blue Danube Systems has released a press release that is also describing trials of FDD Massive MIMO as well. Many companies apparently want to be “first” with this technology for LTE.

More Bandwidth Requires More Power or Antennas

The main selling point of millimeter-wave communications is the abundant bandwidth available in such frequency bands; for example, 2 GHz of bandwidth instead of 20 MHz as in conventional cellular networks. The underlying argument is that the use of much wider bandwidths immediately leads to much higher capacities, in terms of bit/s, but the reality is not that simple.

To look into this,  consider a communication system operating over a bandwidth of $B$ Hz. By assuming an additive white Gaussian noise channel, the capacity becomes

     $$ C = B \log_2 \left(1+\frac{P \beta}{N_0 B} \right)$$

where $P$ W is the transmit power, $\beta$ is the channel gain, and $N_0$ W/Hz is the power spectral density of the noise. The term $(P \beta)/(N_0 B)$ inside the logarithm is referred to as the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).

Since the bandwidth $B$ appears in front of the logarithm, it might seem that the capacity grows linearly with the bandwidth. This is not the case since also the noise term $N_0 B$ in the SNR also grows linearly with the bandwidth. This fact is illustrated by Figure 1 below, where we consider a system that achieves an SNR of 0 dB at a reference bandwidth of 20 MHz. As we increase the bandwidth towards 2 GHz, the capacity grows only modestly. Despite the 100 times more bandwidth, the capacity only improves by $1.44\times$, which is far from the $100\times$ that a linear increase would give.

Figure 1: Capacity as a function of the bandwidth, for a system with an SNR of 0 dB over a reference bandwidth of 20 MHz. The transmit power is fixed.

The reason for this modest capacity growth is the fact that the SNR reduces inversely proportional to the bandwidth. One can show that

     $$ C \to \frac{P \beta}{N_0}\log_2(e) \quad \textrm{as} \,\, B \to \infty.$$

The convergence to this limit is seen in Figure 1 and is relatively fast since $\log_2(1+x) \approx x \log_2(e)$ for $0 \leq x \leq 1$.

To achieve a linear capacity growth, we need to keep the SNR $(P \beta)/(N_0 B)$ fixed as the bandwidth increases. This can be achieved by increasing the transmit power $P$ proportionally to the bandwidth, which entails using $100\times$ more power when operating over a $100\times$ wider bandwidth. This might not be desirable in practice, at least not for battery-powered devices.

An alternative is to use beamforming to improve the channel gain. In a Massive MIMO system, the effective channel gain is $\beta = \beta_1 M$, where $M$ is the number of antennas and $\beta_1$ is the gain of a single-antenna channel. Hence, we can increase the number of antennas proportionally to the bandwidth to keep the SNR fixed.

Figure 2: Capacity as a function of the bandwidth, for a system with an SNR of 0 dB over a reference bandwidth of 20 MHz with one antenna. The transmit power (or the number of antennas) is either fixed or grows proportionally to the bandwidth.

Figure 2 considers the same setup as in Figure 1, but now we also let either the transmit power or the number of antennas grow proportionally to the bandwidth. In both cases, we achieve a capacity that grows proportionally to the bandwidth, as we initially hoped for.

In conclusion, to make efficient use of more bandwidth we require more transmit power or more antennas at the transmitter and/or receiver. It is worth noting that these requirements are purely due to the increase in bandwidth. In addition, for any given bandwidth, the operation at millimeter-wave frequencies requires much more transmit power and/or more antennas (e.g., additional constant-gain antennas or one constant-aperture antenna) just to achieve the same SNR as in a system operating at conventional frequencies below 5 GHz.

Massive MIMO Trials in LTE Networks

Massive MIMO is often mentioned as a key 5G technology, but could it also be exploited in currently standardized LTE networks? The ZTE-Telefónica trials that were initiated in October 2016 shows that this is indeed possible. The press release from late last year describes the first results. For example, the trial showed improvements in network capacity and cell-edge data rates of up to six times, compared to traditional LTE.

The Massive MIMO blog has talked with Javier Lorca Hernando at Telefónica to get further details. The trials were carried out at the Telefónica headquarters in Madrid. A base station with 128 antenna ports was deployed at the rooftop of one of their buildings and the users were located in one floor of the central building, approximately 100 m from the base station. The users basically had cell-edge conditions, due to the metallized glass and multiple metallic constructions surrounding them.

The uplink and downlink data transmissions were carried out in the 2.6 GHz band. Typical Massive MIMO time-division duplex (TDD) operation was considered, where the uplink detection and downlink precoding is based on uplink pilots and channel reciprocity. The existing LTE sounding reference signals (SRSs) were used as uplink pilots. The reciprocity-based precoding was implemented by using LTE’s transmission mode 8 (TM8),  which supports any type of precoding.  Downlink pilots were used for link adaptation and demodulation purposes.

It is great to see that Massive MIMO can be also implemented in LTE systems. In this trial, the users were static and relatively few, but it will be exciting to see if the existing LTE reference signals will also enable Massive MIMO communications for a multitude of mobile users!

Update: ZTE has carried out similar experiments in cooperation with Smartfren in Indonesia. Additional field trials are mentioned in the comments to this post.

Which Technology Can Give Greater Value?

The IEEE GLOBECOM conference, held in Washington D.C. this week, featured many good presentations and exhibitions. One well-attended event was the industry panel “Millimeter Wave vs. Below 5 GHz Massive MIMO: Which Technology Can Give Greater Value?“, organized by Thomas Marzetta and Robert Heath. They invited one team of Millimeter Wave proponents (Theodore Rappaport, Kei Sakaguchi, Charlie Zhang) and one team of Massive MIMO proponents (Chih-Lin I, Erik G. Larsson, Liesbet Van der Perre) to debate the pros and cons of the two 5G technologies.

img_7332

For millimeter wave, the huge bandwidth was identified as the key benefit. Rappaport predicted that 30 GHz of bandwidth would be available in 5 years time, while other panelists made a more conservative prediction of 15-20 GHz in 10 years time. With such a huge bandwidth, a spectral efficiency of 1 bit/s/Hz is sufficient for an access point to deliver tens of Gbit/s to a single user. The panelists agreed that much work remains on millimeter wave channel modeling and the design of circuits for that can deliver the theoretical performance without huge losses. The lack of robustness towards blockage and similar propagation phenomena is also a major challenge.

For Massive MIMO, the straightforward support of user mobility, multiplexing of many users, and wide-area coverage were mentioned as key benefits. A 10x-20x gain in per-cell spectral efficiency, with performance guarantees for every user, was another major factor. Since these gains come from spatial multiplexing of users, rather than increasing the spectral efficiency per user, a large number of users are required to achieve these gains in practice. With a small number of users, the Massive MIMO gains are modest, so it might not be a technology to deploy everywhere. Another drawback is the limited amount of spectrum in the range below 5 GHz, which limits the peak data rates that can be achieved per user. The technology can deliver tens of Mbit/s, but maybe not any Gbit/s per user.

Although the purpose of the panel was to debate the two 5G candidate technologies, I believe that the panelists agree that these technologies have complementary benefits. Today, you connect to WiFi when it is available and switch to cellular when the WiFi network cannot support you. Similarly, I imagine a future where you will enjoy the great data rates offered by millimeter wave, when you are covered by such an access point. Your device will then switch seamlessly to a Massive MIMO network, operating below 5 GHz, to guarantee ubiquitous connectivity when you are in motion or not covered by any millimeter wave access points.

The Dense Urban Information Society

5G cellular networks are supposed to deal with many challenging communication scenarios where today’s cellular networks fall short.  In this post, we have a look at one such scenario, where Massive MIMO is key to overcome the challenges.

The METIS research project has identified twelve test cases for 5G connectivity. One of these is the “Dense urban information society”, which is

“…concerned with the connectivity required at any place and at any time by humans in dense urban environments. We here consider both the traffic between humans and the cloud, and also direct information exchange between humans or with their environment. The particular challenge lies in the fact that users expect the same quality of experience no matter whether they are at their workplace, enjoying leisure activities such as shopping, or being on the move on foot or in a vehicle.”

Source: METIS, deliverable D1.1 “Scenarios, requirements and KPIs for 5G mobile and wireless system

Hence, the challenge is to provide ubiquitous connectivity in urban areas, where there will be massive user loads in the future: up to  200,000 devices per km2 is predicted by METIS. In their test case, each device requests one data packet per minute, which should be transferred within one second. Hence, there is on average up to 200,000/60 = 3,333 users active per km2 at any given time.

Hexagonal cellular network, with adjacent cells having different colors for clarity.

This large number of users is a challenge that Massive MIMO is particularly well-suited for. One of the key benefits of the Massive MIMO technology is the high spectral efficiency that it achieves by spatial multiplexing of tens of user per cell. Suppose, for example, that the cells are deployed in a hexagonal pattern with a base station in each cell center, as illustrated in the figure. How many simultaneously active users will there be per cell in the dense urban information society? That depends on the area of a cell. An inter-site distance (ISD) of 0.25 km is common in contemporary urban deployments. In this case, one can show that the area covered by each cell is √3×ISD2/2 = 0.05 km2.

intersite-distance

The number of active users per cell is then obtained by multiplying the cell area with the user density. Three examples are provided in the table below:

103 users/km2 104 users/km2 105 users/km2
Total number of users per cell 54 540 5400
Average active users per cell 0.9 9 90

Recall that 1/60 of the total number of users are active simultaneously, in the urban information society test case. This gives the numbers in the second row of the table.

From this table, notice that there will be tens of simultaneously active users per cell, when the user density is above 10,000 per km2. This is a number substantially smaller than the 200,000 per km2 predicted by the METIS project. Hence, there will likely be many future urban deployment scenarios with sufficiently many users to benefit from Massive MIMO.

A fraction of these users can (and probably will) be offloaded to WiFi-like networks, maybe operating at mmWave frequencies. But since local-area networks provide only patchy coverage, it is inevitable that many users and devices will rely on the cellular networks to achieve ubiquitous connectivity, with the uniform quality-of-service everywhere.

In summary, Massive MIMO is what we need to realize the dream of ubiquitous connectivity in the dense urban information society.

Cellular Multi-User MIMO: A Technology Whose Time has Come

Both the number of devices with wireless connection and the traffic that they generate have steadily grown since the early days of cellular communications. This continuously calls for improvements in the area capacity [bit/s/km2] of the networks. The use of adaptive antenna arrays was identified as a potential capacity-improving technology in the mid-eighties. An early uplink paper was “Optimum combining for indoor radio systems with multiple users” from 1987 by J. Winters at Bell Labs. An early downlink paper was “The performance enhancement of multibeam adaptive base-station antennas for cellular land mobile radio systems” by S. C. Swales et al. from 1990.

The multi-user MIMO concept, then called space-division multiple access (SDMA), was picked up by the industry in the nineties. For example, Ericsson made field-trials with antenna arrays in GSM systems, which were reported in “Adaptive antennas for GSM and TDMA systems” from 1999. ArrayComm filed an SDMA patent in 1991 and made trials in the nineties. In cooperation with the manufacturer Kyocera, this resulted in commercial deployment of SDMA as an overlay to the TDD-based Personal Handy-phone System (PHS).

Trial with a 12-element circular array by ArrayComm, in the late nineties.

 

Given this history, why isn’t multi-user MIMO a key ingredient in current cellular networks? I think there are several answers to this question:

  1. Most cellular networks use FDD spectrum. To acquire the downlink channels, the SDMA research first focused on angle-of-arrival estimation and later on beamforming codebooks. The cellular propagation environments turned out to be far more complicated than such system concepts easily can handle.
  2. The breakthroughs in information theory for multi-user MIMO happened in the early 2000s, thus there was no theoretical framework that the industry could use in the nineties to evaluate and optimize their multiple antenna concepts.
  3. In practice, it has been far easier to increase the area capacity by deploying more base stations and using more spectrum, rather than developing more advanced base station hardware. In current networks, there is typically zero, one or two users per cell active at a time, and then there is little need for multi-user MIMO.

Why is multi-user MIMO considered a key 5G technology? Basically because the three issues described above have now changed substantially. There is a renewed interest in TDD, with successful cellular deployments in Asia and WiFi being used everywhere. Massive MIMO is the refined form of multi-user MIMO, where the TDD operation enables channel estimation in any propagation environment, the many antennas allow for low-complexity signal processing, and the scalable protocols are suitable for large-scale deployments. The technology can nowadays be implemented using power-efficient off-the-shelf radio-frequency transceivers, as demonstrated by testbeds. Massive MIMO builds upon a solid ground of information theory, which shows how to communicate efficiently under practical impairments such as interference and imperfect channel knowledge.

Maybe most importantly, spatial multiplexing is needed to manage the future data traffic growth. This is because deploying many more base stations or obtaining much more spectrum are not viable options if we want to maintain network coverage—small cells at the street-level are easily shadowed by buildings and mm-wave frequency signals do not propagate well though walls. In 5G networks, a typical cellular base station might have tens of active users at a time, which is a sufficient number to benefit from the great spectral efficiency offered by Massive MIMO.