Abstract
In Internet-of-Things, downlink multi-device interference has long been considered as a harmful element deteriorating system performance, and thus the principle of the classic interference-mitigation based precoding is to suppress the multi-device interference by exploiting the spatial orthogonality. In recent years, a judicious interference utilization precoding has been developed, which is capable of exploiting multi-device interference as a beneficial element for improving device’s reception performance, thus reducing downlink communication latency. In this review paper, we aim to review the emerging interference utilization precoding techniques. We first briefly introduce the concept of constructive interference, and then we present two generic downlink interference-utilization optimizations, which utilizes the multi-device interference for enhancing system performance. Afterwards, the application of interference utilization precoding is discussed in multi-cluster scenario. Finally, some open challenges and future research topics are envisaged.
1 Introduction
Downlink precoding has been regarded as a key technology in multi-user multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) communications. With the channel state information (CSI) available at the base station, the multi-user interference can be calculated prior to transmission. In this way, the interference mitigation (IM)-based precoder techniques have been extensively investigated to strictly suppress the interference. The dirty-paper coding (DPC) scheme was proposed in by pre-subtracting the interference prior to transmission for achieving capacity, which however assumes infinite alphabet input and incurs high computational cost. Although the Tomlinson-Harashima precoding (THP) and vector perturbation (VP) precoders aim to reduce the computational complexity over the DPC approach, they still need a sophisticated sphere-search algorithm for algorithm implementation. Hence, low-complexity linear precoders, such as zero-forcing (ZF) and minimum mean squared error (MMSE) , , have attracted much attention in practices due to their low-complexity. On the other hand, optimization-based precoding has been a popular research topic. For example, signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) balancing aims to maximize the minimum SINR subject to a total power constraint (); transmission power minimization problem aims to reduce the transmission power at the base station, subject to user’s minimum SINR requirements ().
The above designs treat the input as infinite Gaussian signal. Hence, they only exploit the channel correlation for the precoding design. In practice, modulation size is finite, and the input is not Gaussian signal. In this case, there is scope to jointly exploit the correlation among the channels and transmitted data, so that the multi-user interference is possible to make constructive at each receiver, termed as interference utilization (IE) precoding (). The concept of constructive interference (CI) has been applied for anonymous communications (), cognitive radio (, large-scale MIMO (, ), constant envelope (; , hybrid beamforming (), multi-cell coordination (), rate-splitting (), physical layer security (; ; ), directional modulation (), and integrated sensing and communication systems (. In the following section, we briefly discuss the IE-based precoder design.
2 IE-Based Precoder Design
For comparison, let us first consider a classic power minimization problem subject to per-device’s signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) requirement. Assume that the transmitter is equipped with N antennas for serving K devices (N ≥ K). Define as the precoder vector for the i-th device’s intended signal si. Write the transmitted symbol vector , the signal received by the i-th user can be written aswhere is the multiple-input and single-output (MISO) channel spanning from the transmitter to the i-th device, while ni denotes the receiver’s noise, following a Gaussian distribution . A generic power minimization problem can be formulated aswhere Γi is the i-th device’s SINR requirement. The problem P1 represents a non-convex second-order cone programming (SOCP) exercise. By defining , P1 can be equivalently transformed intowhich can be readily solved as a standard convex semi-definite programming (SDP) problem after dropping constraint (C3).
Different from IM-based precoding that needs to strictly suppress interference, the IE-based precoder is able to exploit the multi-device interference as a constructive element. Multi-device interference can be achieved by exploiting geometrical interpretation shown in Figure 1. Explicitly, we first rotate the signal yi by the angle of ∠si, and then the rotated signal can be mapped onto real axis and imaginary axis respectively. As can be seen, the received signal falls into a constructive region (in Figure 1B) if and only if the trigonometry below is ensuredwhere M represents constellation size. denotes the conjugate of si, where si is the intended symbol for the i-th user. In particular, Γ physically represents the Euclidean distance in the signal constellation between the constructive region and the decision thresholds, which also directly relates to SINR performance of the received signal. The above discussion can be extended into any order M-PSK and multi-level modulations . Now, we are able to give the interference utilization-based power minimization precoder such asEvidently, the precoder optimization is convex in nature, which can be solved directly. Then, we further discuss the IE-based precoder for SINR balancing optimization. When formulating SINR balancing for IE precoder, its problem formulation can be written aswhere Pmax denotes the power budget. It has been proved in that, the closed-form of such an IE-based precoder is given aswhere is given as . Λ is an auxiliary matrix, whose value can be calculated by a low-complexity iterative algorithm in . It can be seen that regardless of power minimization or SINR balancing IE-based precoders, they always have linear structure and can be solved directly, without the need of calling SDP optimization.
FIGURE 1
Here, we illustrate BER performance of the IE-based precoder, compared against the ZF and MMSE designs as shown in Figure 2. It is observed that as the SNR increases, the BER performance of the IE-based precoder shows rapid improvement. Furthermore, the performance of the IE-based precoder is always superior to the conventional ZF, and outperforms the MMSE at moderate/high SNR regions, which is in line with the analysis of this section.
FIGURE 2
3 Interference Mitigation Based Preocoder in Multi-Cluster IoT Networks
In multi-cluster IoT systems shown in Figure 3, the APs are connected with high-speed optical fiber for joint signal processing. Generally, there are two different coordination mechanisms, i.e., partially-coordinated IE and fully-coordinated IE -based precoder designs. By the former design, the APs only share CSI with others for inter-cluster interference suppression. Since transmission data is not shared among the APs, each AP only serves its associated users, and at the same time suppresses inter-cluster interference. Assume there are M APs for corporation. Define yim and nim as the received signal and noise at the i-th device belonging to the m-th cluster. is the MISO channel spanning from the m-th AP to the i-th device. Wm and sm denote the precoder matrix and transmitted symbol vector at the m-th AP, respectively. The received signal can be calculated asWhen formulating the optimization for the partially-coordinated IE precoder, the CI constraint is rewritten asIn particular, the term Δim represents the inter-cluster interference at the i-th user, which needs to be carefully suppressed. The IE-based power minimization problem is re-formulated asIn a similar vein, the IE-based SINR balancing precoder in multi-cluster scenario can be formulated asBy contrast, the fully-coordinated IE design shares both the CSI and the data to be transmitted among the APs, where the APs jointly serve the downlink users in a similar vein of distributed antenna systems. In fact, the fully-coordinated IE makes no much difference compared to the classic IE-based precoder, as the distributed APs can be seen as a virtual multiple transmission antennas.
FIGURE 3
4 Open Challenges and Future Research
The topic of the IE-based precoder is still broadly open for research and could be extended in many interesting directions:
4.1 IE-Based Precoder in High Reliability and Low Latency Applications
Some emerging ultra-reliability and low-latency (URLLC) applications require short packet transmission, which indeed has been considered as a key technique in the 5G URLLC scenario . For example, one notable observation in these applications is that the transmitting signal is control (command) type information (e.g., start/stop, move left/right, speed up/down, and rotate/shift) or sensing information (e.g., temperature, pressure, moisture, and gas density) (. Hence, the amount of information is delivered in short packets. Evidently, the joint design of IE-based precoder, reliability, and latency may be difficult. How to utilize the concept of IE for achieving high reliability and low latency at an acceptable degree of overhead, remains an open challenge.
4.2 IE-Based Precoder for Millimeter-Wave MIMO Systems
The millimeter-wave (mmWave) MIMO system is a promising technology to achieve gigabit-per-second data rates for future communications, where the number of radio-frequency (RF) chains in mmWave MIMO systems can be tens-to-hundreds of antennas (, . In this context, the large number of RF chains has two major issues in practice, i.e., high complexity for acquiring an optimal full-digital precoder and the hybrid precoder design (. Hence, the tradeoff of IE-based Precoder design between low complexity and high reliability should be considered to suit the next-generation mmWave MIMO system.
4.3 IE-Based Precoder for Secure Communications
The essential feature of future communications is that of supporting massive access in IoT, and therefore, the privacy and security requirements are intended to be more complicated and diversified due to the limited number of physical resources (. For example, the public broadcast may have a low privacy requirement, while some personal information requires high confidentiality (. A possible solution is to classify security rank and employ appropriate techniques of physical layer security (PHY) to meet the customized demand of different users. Hence, it is demanding to fundamental analysis and new metrics for designing and evaluating the overall system PHY security performance, especially under the perspective of the IE-based secure Communications (.
5 Conclusion
In this review paper, we have briefly introduced the concept of IE-based precoding, two generic optimizations, i.e., power minimization and SINR balancing optimizations, are formulated. Then, we have examined the IE-based precoder design in multi-cluster IoT scenario. Furthermore, open challenges related to emerging applications are present, where the gap between theory and implementations should be bridged. In a nutshell, there are still essential works for the research of the IE-based precoder, which holds the promise of exciting research in the years to come.
Statements
Author contributions
All authors listed have made a substantial, direct, and intellectual contribution to the work and approved it for publication.
Funding
This work is supported by the AI University Research Centre (AI-URC) through XJTLU Key Programme Special Fund (KSF-P-02) and Jiangsu Data Science and Cognitive Computational Engineering Research Centre.
Conflict of interest
The authors declare that the research was conducted in the absence of any commercial or financial relationships that could be construed as a potential conflict of interest.
Publisher’s note
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article, or claim that may be made by its manufacturer, is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.
Supplementary material
The Supplementary Material for this article can be found online at: https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/frsip.2021.761559/full#supplementary-material
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Summary
Keywords
interference utilization, multi-device interference, multi-cluster, precoding design, Internet-of-Things
Citation
Wang Y, Lim EG, Xue X, Zhu G, Pei R and Wei Z (2021) Interference Utilization Precoding in Multi-Cluster IoT Networks. Front. Sig. Proc. 1:761559. doi: 10.3389/frsip.2021.761559
Received
20 August 2021
Accepted
19 October 2021
Published
22 November 2021
Volume
1 - 2021
Edited by
M. L. Dennis Wong, Heriot-Watt University, Malaysia
Updates
Copyright
© 2021 Wang, Lim, Xue, Zhu, Pei and Wei.
This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (CC BY). The use, distribution or reproduction in other forums is permitted, provided the original author(s) and the copyright owner(s) are credited and that the original publication in this journal is cited, in accordance with accepted academic practice. No use, distribution or reproduction is permitted which does not comply with these terms.
*Correspondence: Eng Gee Lim, enggee.lim@xjtlu.edu.cn
This article was submitted to Signal Processing Theory, a section of the journal Frontiers in Signal Processing
Disclaimer
All claims expressed in this article are solely those of the authors and do not necessarily represent those of their affiliated organizations, or those of the publisher, the editors and the reviewers. Any product that may be evaluated in this article or claim that may be made by its manufacturer is not guaranteed or endorsed by the publisher.