arXiv subjects

Alister G. Burr

Publications and source records attributed to Alister G. Burr.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Failure-Aware Access Point Selection for Resilient Cell-Free Massive MIMO Networks

This paper presents a Failure-Aware Access Point Selection (FAAS) method aimed at improving hardware resilience in cell-free massive MIMO (CF-mMIMO) networks. FAAS selects APs for each user by jointly considering channel strength and the failure probability of each AP. A tunable parameter $α\in [0,1]$ scales these failure probabilities to model different levels of network stress. We evaluate resilience using two key metrics: the minimum-user spectral efficiency, which captures worst-case user performance, and the outage probability, defined as the fraction of users left without any active APs. Simulation results show that FAAS maintains significantly better performance under failure conditions compared to failure-agnostic clustering. At high failure levels, FAAS reduces outage by over 85\% and improves worst-case user rates. These results confirm that FAAS is a practical and efficient solution for building more reliable CF-mMIMO networks.

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arXiv2025

Exploring O-RAN Compression Techniques in Decentralized Distributed MIMO Systems: Reducing Fronthaul Load

This paper explores the application of uplink fronthaul compression techniques within Open RAN (O-RAN) to mitigate fronthaul load in decentralized distributed MIMO (DD-MIMO) systems. With the ever-increasing demand for high data rates and system scalability, the fronthaul load becomes a critical bottleneck. Our method uses O-RAN compression techniques to efficiently compress the fronthaul signals. The goal is to greatly lower the fronthaul load while having little effect on the overall system performance, as shown by Block Error Rate (BLER) curves. Through rigorous link-level simulations, we compare our quantization strategies against a benchmark scenario with no quantization, providing insights into the trade-offs between fronthaul data rate reduction and link performance integrity. The results demonstrate that our proposed quantization techniques not only lower the fronthaul load but also maintain a competitive link quality, making them a viable solution for enhancing the efficiency of next-generation wireless networks. This study underscores the potential of quantization in O-RAN contexts to achieve optimal balance between system capacity and performance, paving the way for more scalable and robust DD-MIMO deployments.

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arXiv2020

Spectral-Energy Efficiency Trade-off-based Beamforming Design for MISO Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access Systems

Energy efficiency (EE) and spectral efficiency (SE) are two of the key performance metrics in future wireless networks, covering both design and operational requirements. For previous conventional resource allocation techniques, these two performance metrics have been considered in isolation, resulting in severe performance degradation in either of these metrics. Motivated by this problem, in this paper, we propose a novel beamforming design that jointly considers the trade-off between the two performance metrics in a multiple-input single-output non-orthogonal multiple access system. In particular, we formulate a joint SE-EE based design as a multi-objective optimization (MOO) problem to achieve a good tradeoff between the two performance metrics. However, this MOO problem is not mathematically tractable and, thus, it is difficult to determine a feasible solution due to the conflicting objectives, where both need to be simultaneously optimized. To overcome this issue, we exploit a priori articulation scheme combined with the weighted sum approach. Using this, we reformulate the original MOO problem as a conventional single objective optimization (SOO) problem. In doing so, we develop an iterative algorithm to solve this non-convex SOO problem using the sequential convex approximation technique. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the advantages and effectiveness of the proposed approach over the available beamforming designs.

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arXiv2020

Design and Convergence Analysis of an IIC-based BICM-ID Receiver for FBMC-QAM Systems

In this paper, an iterative interference cancellation (IIC) based BICM-ID receiver is designed to cancel the intrinsic interference in FBMC-QAM systems. The proposed receiver consist of an inner decoder, which combines iterative demodulation and interference cancellation, and an outer decoder which is a low density parity check (LDPC) channel decoder. To evaluate the convergence behaviour of the proposed receiver, extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart analysis is employed, where EXIT curves for the components of the iterative decoder are derived. Numerical results show that the intrinsic interference in FBMC-QAM systems can be removed by adopting the proposed IIC-based BICM-ID receiver.

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arXiv2019

Energy Efficiency Optimization for Secure Transmission in MISO Cognitive Radio Network with Energy Harvesting

In this paper, we investigate different secrecy energy efficiency (SEE) optimization problems in a multiple-input single-output underlay cognitive radio (CR) network in the presence of an energy harvesting receiver. In particular, these energy efficient designs are developed with different assumptions of channels state information (CSI) at the transmitter, namely perfect CSI, statistical CSI and imperfect CSI with bounded channel uncertainties. In particular, the overarching objective here is to design a beamforming technique maximizing the SEE while satisfying all relevant constraints linked to interference and harvested energy between transmitters and receivers. We show that the original problems are non-convex and their solutions are intractable. By using a number of techniques, such as non-linear fractional programming and difference of concave (DC) functions, we reformulate the original problems so as to render them tractable. We then combine these techniques with the Dinkelbach's algorithm to derive iterative algorithms to determine relevant beamforming vectors which lead to the SEE maximization. In doing this, we investigate the robust design with ellipsoidal bounded channel uncertainties, by mapping the original problem into a sequence of semidefinite programs by employing the semidefinite relaxation, non-linear fractional programming and S-procedure. Furthermore, we show that the maximum SEE can be achieved through a search algorithm in the single dimensional space. Numerical results, when compared with those obtained with existing techniques in the literature, show the effectiveness of the proposed designs for SEE maximization.

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arXiv2019

On Energy Harvesting of Hybrid TDMA-NOMA Systems

In this paper, we investigate energy harvesting capabilities of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme integrated with the conventional time division multiple access (TDMA) scheme, which is referred to as hybrid TDMA-NOMA system. In a such hybrid scheme, users are divided into a number of groups, with the total time allocated for transmission is shared between these groups through multiple time slots. In particular, a time slot is assigned to serve each group, whereas the users in the corresponding group are served based on power-domain NOMA technique. Furthermore, simultaneous wireless power and information transfer technique is utilized to simultaneously harvest energy and decode information at each user. Therefore, each user splits the received signal into two parts, namely, energy harvesting part and information decoding part. In particular, we jointly determine the power allocation and power splitting ratios for all users to minimize the transmit power under minimum rate and minimum energy harvesting requirements at each user. Furthermore, this joint design is a non-convex problem in nature. Hence, we employ successive interference cancellation to overcome these non-convexity issues and determine the design parameters (i.e., the power allocations and the power splitting ratios). In simulation results, we demonstrate the performance of the proposed hybrid TDMA-NOMA design and show that it outperforms the conventional TDMA scheme in terms of transmit power consumption.

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arXiv2019

On the Energy Efficiency of Limited-Backhaul Cell-Free Massive MIMO

We investigate the energy efficiency performance of cell-free Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), where the access points (APs) are connected to a central processing unit (CPU) via limited-capacity links. Thanks to the distributed maximum ratio combining (MRC) weighting at the APs, we propose that only the quantized version of the weighted signals are sent back to the CPU. Considering the effects of channel estimation errors and using the Bussgang theorem to model the quantization errors, an energy efficiency maximization problem is formulated with per-user power and backhaul capacity constraints as well as with throughput requirement constraints. To handle this non-convex optimization problem, we decompose the original problem into two sub-problems and exploit a successive convex approximation (SCA) to solve original energy efficiency maximization problem. Numerical results confirm the superiority of the proposed optimization scheme.

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arXiv2019

Max-Min Rate of Cell-Free Massive MIMO Uplink with Optimal Uniform Quantization

Cell-free Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is considered, where distributed access points (APs) multiply the received signal by the conjugate of the estimated channel, and send back a quantized version of this weighted signal to a central processing unit (CPU). For the first time, we present a performance comparison between the case of perfect fronthaul links, the case when the quantized version of the estimated channel and the quantized signal are available at the CPU, and the case when only the quantized weighted signal is available at the CPU. The Bussgang decomposition is used to model the effect of quantization. The max-min problem is studied, where the minimum rate is maximized with the power and fronthaul capacity constraints. To deal with the non-convex problem, the original problem is decomposed into two sub-problems (referred to as receiver filter design and power allocation). Geometric programming (GP) is exploited to solve the power allocation problem whereas a generalized eigenvalue problem is solved to design the receiver filter. An iterative scheme is developed and the optimality of the proposed algorithm is proved through uplink-downlink duality. A user assignment algorithm is proposed which significantly improves the performance. Numerical results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed schemes.

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arXiv2019

Evaluation of Low Complexity Massive MIMO Techniques Under Realistic Channel Conditions

A low complexity massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technique is studied with a geometry-based stochastic channel model, called COST 2100 model. We propose to exploit the discrete-time Fourier transform of the antenna correlation function to perform user scheduling. The proposed algorithm relies on a trade off between the number of occupied bins of the eigenvalue spectrum of the channel covariance matrix for each user and spectral overlap among the selected users. We next show that linear precoding design can be performed based only on the channel correlation matrix. The proposed scheme exploits the angular bins of the eigenvalue spectrum of the channel covariance matrix to build up an "approximate eigenchannels" for the users. We investigate the reduction of average system throughput with no channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT). Analysis and numerical results show that while the throughput slightly decreases due to the absence of CSIT, the complexity of the system is reduced significantly.

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arXiv2019

Energy Efficiency Fairness Beamforming Designs for MISO NOMA Systems

In this paper, we propose two beamforming designs for a multiple-input single-output non-orthogonal multiple access system considering the energy efficiency (EE) fairness between users. In particular, two quantitative fairness-based designs are developed to maintain fairness between the users in terms of achieved EE: max-min energy efficiency (MMEE) and proportional fairness (PF) designs. While the MMEE-based design aims to maximize the minimum EE of the users in the system, the PF-based design aims to seek a good balance between the global energy efficiency of the system and the EE fairness between the users. Detailed simulation results indicate that our proposed designs offer many-fold EE improvements over the existing energy-efficient beamforming designs.

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arXiv2019

Sum Rate Fairness Trade-off-based Resource Allocation Technique for MISO NOMA Systems

In this paper, we propose a beamforming design that jointly considers two conflicting performance metrics, namely the sum rate and fairness, for a multiple-input single-output non-orthogonal multiple access system. Unlike the conventional rate-aware beamforming designs, the proposed approach has the flexibility to assign different weights to the objectives (i.e., sum rate and fairness) according to the network requirements and the channel conditions. In particular, the proposed design is first formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem, and subsequently mapped to a single objective optimization (SOO) problem by exploiting the weighted sum approach combined with a prior articulation method. As the resulting SOO problem is non-convex, we use the sequential convex approximation technique, which introduces multiple slack variables, to solve the overall problem. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the performance and the effectiveness of the proposed approach along with detailed comparisons with conventional rate-aware-based beamforming designs.

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arXiv2019

Energy Efficient Beamforming Design for MISO Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access Systems

When considering the future generation wireless networks, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) represents a viable multiple access technique for improving the spectral efficiency. The basic performance of NOMA is often enhanced using downlink beamforming and power allocation techniques. Although downlink beamforming has been previously studied with different performance criteria, such as sum-rate and max-min rate, it has not been studied in the multiuser, multiple-input single-output (MISO) case, particularly with the energy efficiency criteria. In this paper, we investigate the design of an energy efficient beamforming technique for downlink transmission in the context of a multiuser MISO-NOMA system. In particular, this beamforming design is formulated as a global energy efficiency (GEE) maximization problem with minimum user rate requirements and transmit power constraints. By using the sequential convex approximation (SCA) technique and the Dinkelbach's algorithm to handle the non-convex nature of the GEE-Max problem, we propose two novel algorithms for solving the downlink beamforming problem for the MISO-NOMA system. Our evaluation of the proposed algorithms shows that they offer similar optimal designs and are effective in offering substantial energy efficiencies compared to the designs based on conventional methods.

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arXiv2018

On the Performance of Backhaul Constrained Cell-Free Massive MIMO with Linear Receivers

Limited-backhaul cell-free Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), in which the fog radio access network (F-RAN) is implemented to exchange the information between access points (APs) and the central processing unit (CPU), is investigated. We introduce a novel approach where the APs estimate the channel and send back the quantized version of the estimated channel and the quantized version of the received signal to the central processing unit. The Max algorithm and the Bussgang theorem are exploited to model the optimum uniform quantization. The ergodic achievable rates are derived. We show that exploiting microwave wireless backhaul links and using a small number of bits to quantize the estimated channel and the received signal, the performance of limited-backhaul cell-free Massive MIMO closely approaches the performance of cell-free Massive MIMO with perfect backhaul links.

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arXiv2018

A Study of Dynamic Multipath Clusters at 60 GHz in a Large Indoor Environment

The available geometry-based stochastic channel models (GSCMs) at millimetre-wave (mmWave) frequencies do not necessarily retain spatial consistency for simulated channels, which is essential for small cells with ultra-dense users. In this paper, we work on cluster parameterization for the COST 2100 channel model using mobile channel simulations at 61 GHz in Helsinki Airport. The paper considers a ray-tracer which has been optimized to match measurements, to obtain double-directional channels at mmWave frequencies. A joint clustering-tracking framework is used to determine cluster parameters for the COST 2100 channel model. The KPowerMeans algorithm and the Kalman filter are exploited to identify the cluster positions and to predict and track cluster positions respectively. The results confirm that the joint clustering-and-tracking is a suitable tool for cluster identification and tracking for our ray-tracer results. The movement of cluster centroids, cluster lifetime and number of clusters per snapshot are investigated for this set of ray-tracer results. Simulation results show that the multipath components (MPCs) are grouped into clusters at mmWave frequencies.

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arXiv2018

Beamforming Techniques for Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access in 5G Cellular Networks

In this paper, we develop various beamforming techniques for downlink transmission for multiple-input single-output (MISO) non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) systems. First, a beamforming approach with perfect channel state information (CSI) is investigated to provide the required quality of service (QoS) for all users. Taylor series approximation and semidefinite relaxation (SDR) techniques are employed to reformulate the original non-convex power minimization problem to a tractable one. Further, a fairness-based beamforming approach is proposed through a max-min formulation to maintain fairness between users. Next, we consider a robust scheme by incorporating channel uncertainties, where the transmit power is minimized while satisfying the outage probability requirement at each user. Through exploiting the SDR approach, the original non-convex problem is reformulated in a linear matrix inequality (LMI) form to obtain the optimal solution. Numerical results demonstrate that the robust scheme can achieve better performance compared to the non-robust scheme in terms of the rate satisfaction ratio. Further, simulation results confirm that NOMA consumes a little over half transmit power needed by OMA for the same data rate requirements. Hence, NOMA has the potential to significantly improve the system performance in terms of transmit power consumption in future 5G networks and beyond.

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arXiv2018

Mixed Quality of Service in Cell-Free Massive MIMO

Cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is a potential key technology for fifth generation wireless communication networks. A mixed quality-of-service (QoS) problem is investigated in the uplink of a cell-free massive MIMO system where the minimum rate of non-real time users is maximized with per user power constraints whilst the rate of the real-time users (RTUs) meet their target rates. First an approximated uplink user rate is derived based on available channel statistics. Next, the original mixed QoS problem is formulated in terms of receiver filter coefficients and user power allocations which can iteratively be solved through two sub-problems, namely, receiver filter coefficient design and power allocation, which are dealt with using a generalized eigenvalue problem and geometric programming, respectively. Numerical results show that with the proposed scheme, while the rates of RTUs meet the QoS constraints, the $90\%$-likely throughput improves significantly, compared to a simple benchmark scheme.

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arXiv2018

Wireless Network Coding in Network MIMO: A New Design for 5G and Beyond

Physical layer network coding (PNC) has been studied to serve wireless network MIMO systems with much lower backhaul load than approaches such as Cloud Radio Access Network (Cloud-RAN) and coordinated multipoint (CoMP). In this paper, we present a design guideline of engineering applicable PNC to fulfil the request of high user densities in 5G wireless RAN infrastructure. Unlike compute-and-forward and PNC design criteria for two-way relay channels, the proposed guideline is designed for uplink of network MIMO (N-MIMO) systems. We show that the proposed design criteria guarantee that 1) the whole system operates over binary system; 2) the PNC functions utilised at each access point overcome all singular fade states; 3) the destination can unambiguously recover all source messages while the overall backhaul load remains at the lowest level. We then develop a two-stage search algorithm to identify the optimum PNC mapping functions which greatly reduces the real-time computational complexity. The impact of estimated channel information and reduced number of singular fade states in different QAM modulation schemes is studied in this paper. In addition, a sub-optimal search method based on lookup table mechanism to achieve further reduced computational complexity with limited performance loss is presented. Numerical results show that the proposed schemes achieve low outage probability with reduced backhaul load.

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arXiv2018

An Adaptive Optimal Mapping Selection Algorithm for PNC using Variable QAM Modulation

Fifth generation (5G) wireless networks will need to serve much higher user densities than existing 4G networks, and will therefore require an enhanced radio access network (RAN) infrastructure. Physical layer network coding (PNC) has been shown to enable such high densities with much lower backhaul load than approaches such as Cloud-RAN and coordinated multipoint (CoMP). In this letter, we present an engineering applicable PNC scheme which allows different cooperating users to use different modulation schemes, according to the relative strength of their channels to a given access point. This is in contrast with compute-and-forward and previous PNC schemes which are designed for two-way relay channel. A two-stage search algorithm to identify the optimum PNC mappings for given channel state information and modulation is proposed in this letter. Numerical results show that the proposed scheme achieves low bit error rate with reduced backhaul load.

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