Massive Machine Type Communications

B. Tech Thesis Project: Phase I Report

by

Shruti Mittal, Nilesh Mittal

(160102062,160102046)
under the guidance of

Dr. Salil Kashyap

to the
DEPARTMENT OF ELECTRONICS AND ELECTRICAL ENGINEERING
INDIAN INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY GUWAHATI
GUWAHATI - 781039, ASSAM
2
Contents

1 Massive Machine Type Communications 1

1.1 Motivation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
1.2 Main Implementation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
1.3 Our Contributions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

2 System Model 6
2.1 Channel Model . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
2.2 Detection of Active Devices and Estimation of Channel as a Compressed
Sensing Problem . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
2.3 Vector AMP Algorithm . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
2.4 Performance of Vector AMP Based Detector . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 12

3 Conclusion And Future Works 13

References 15

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Chapter 1

Massive Machine Type

Communications

Massive Connectivity deals with a prodigious number of Internet of Things implementing

device(generally greater than 1 million) connected to a single cell. This project focuses on
such massive communication problems, where there are many devices connected to a single
base-station, consisting of a number of antennas, of which a maximum of a certain fraction
of the total devices are assumed to be active at all times owing to the sporadic nature of
traffic in any coherence interval. This is because most of the devices these days conserve
power in the sleep mode until triggered and hence are not active. This sporadic nature
of activity of devices is an integral characteristic of IoT and MTC implementing devices.
The main study is to identify the activity of the devices and jointly estimate the channels
in use, followed by qualitative and quantitative analysis of performance, by estimating the
results of activity detection of the devices and estimation of channels for active devices
by essentially measuring the probability of missed detection and false alarm. A two-phase
access scheme is used, where in the first phase is associated with activity detection and
estimation of channels for active devices and the second phase is associated with the actual
data transmission. Further, with a prodigious number of possible devices and a constrained

1
coherence interval, it is not practical to have the pilot sequences orthogonal to each other,
and thus must be non-orthogonal. However, even with the non-orthogonality of these pilot
sequences, the compressed sensing technique, considering the sporadic activity pattern,
makes the probabilities of missed detection and false alarms negligible in the asymptotic
regime.

1.1 Motivation

In this project, we assume a single Base Station(BS) to have M antennas with a possible N
number of prospective devices, of which K devices are assumed to be active in any coherence
interval of T units[1]. A coherence interval of T units is divided into two segments, the
first being of L units and the second of (T − L) units. These two segments demonstrate
the two-phase access scheme used to implement the idea of activity detection, channel
estimation and data transmission. The first L units in each coherence interval are used to
detect the activity of the prospective devices and to estimate the channels of active devices.
The remaining (T − L) units are used to transmit data bits.
As is expected for an appreciable achievable data rate, M should be of the same order
as K. However, the number of prospective devices could be extremely large, and hence
K would be extremely large, thus implying that M should also be large enough. For an
accurate channel estimation, we would expect L > K. However, K is expected to be large
whereas L is constrained by the coherence interval, that is, L < T . This implies that
the devices cannot possibly be assigned orthogonal pilot sequences. The devices are hence
assigned non-orthogonal randomly-generated pilot sequences[1].
The main objective thus becomes analyzing the performance of activity detection of the
devices and estimation of channels for active devices when these non-orthogonal randomly
generated pilot sequences are assigned to the active devices, and to scrutinize its impact
on the achievable data rate[1]. We implement compressed sensing technique in coherence
with the non-orthogonal pilot sequences using the Approximate Message Passing(AMP)

2
algorithm.
As per prior work done along these lines, the conventional cellular networks used time
and frequency slots, Time Division Multiplexing and Frequency Division Multiplexing,
respectively, that were assigned to each of the active users. The drawback with this was
the overhead that came along with it. To battle this, the contention-based allocation
of slots was put into implementation. The idea was for the active users to choose an
orthogonal signature pilot sequence and send a message to the BS, where the connection
was only established if the chosen preamble was not already in use by some other user.
The drawback associated with this random access contention-based protocol was that the
collision in the case of massive connectivity was unavoidable. This finally led to the concept
of grant-free non-orthogonal pilot sequences, where the users that are active sent non-
orthogonal pilot sequences to BS, where at the BS activity detection, data decoding as
well as channel estimation took place in a single phase[1]. The sporadic activity pattern
enabled the implementation of compressed-sensing which made activity detection of the
devices and estimation of channels for active devices using non-orthogonal pilot sequences
practically possible[1].
All the previous work on grant-free non-orthogonal pilot sequences, however, lacked any
method of quantitatively analyzing the performance and accuracy of activity detection of
the devices and estimation of channels for active devices. Here, we use the AMP algorithm
for jointly detecting the activity of the devices and estimating the channels for active
devices, which further is used to quantitatively compute the probability of missed detection
and probability of false alarm which gives the performance of the applied algorithm.
Conventionally, the study has been carried out under the assumption that the number
of users is essentially smaller than the number of antennas at the base station, however,
here we extend the algorithms to their asymptotic regime, where the users can go to infinity,
thus making the quantity of active users, K appreciably large, with the probability of error
in activity detection being finite.

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1.2 Main Implementation

The main idea implemented so far is that users that are active send their non-orthogonal
pilot sequences to the BS[1], where at the BS, in the first phase of each coherent interval,
activity detection and channel detection takes place, whereas in the second phase of each
coherent interval, the actual data transmission takes place. The use of AMP Algorithm is
employed for activity detection of the devices and estimation of channels for active devices.
An asymptotic assumption is employed to quantitatively analyze the performance of the
AMP algorithm in activity detection by measuring the probability of missed detection
and the probability of false alarm, by assuming that the number of prospective users, the
number of active users and the number of antennas on the BS, all tend to infinity[1].
The next section discusses the system model for the main implementation.

1.3 Our Contributions

Our task this semester was to go through the three research papers [1], [2] and [5] and
understand the grant-free two-phase access regime to optimize the massive connectivity
technology used in today’s IoT and MTC implementing devices. The idea was to use the
sporadic nature of the activity of devices to develop a method for activity detection of the
devices and estimation of channels for active devices, as this would tend to provide a better
achievable data rate if only bandwidth was reserved only for those users that were active,
which is a small fraction of all the possible prospective devices. One of the challenges in
implementing the algorithm for this, is that the pilot sequences for each of the users cannot
be orthogonal. Hence non-orthogonal and randomly generated pilot sequences are assigned
to users, which are used to estimate the activity of the users by using the vector AMP
algorithm. Understanding the implementation of the papers [1],[2],[3],[4] and [5] we have
started the coding processes for the same and aim to implement the second phase of the
two-phase scheme, that is, data transmission as discussed in [2]. Our future work would

4
include considering a system wherein the antennas are not just concentrated to a single
base station, but are actually positioned as a function of space. This scenario would affect
the path loss factor, βn , as this would not only depend on the nth user, but also on the
antenna under consideration. We expect to analyze the performance in such a scenario by
quantitatively estimating the probability of missed detections and false alarms

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Chapter 2

System Model

2.1 Channel Model

Let us assume a single cell base station consisting of M antennas and a set of N prospective
devices, belonging to the set N ={1,2,3...N}, with each device having a single antenna. Of
these prospective devices, we assume that only K are active at any given instant of time.
We further take T to be the coherence interval, of which the first phase(associated with
activity detection of the devices and estimation of channels for active devices) corresponds
to the first L units and the second phase(data transmission) corresponds to the remaining
(T − L) units.
The complex channel uplink vector from the nth user, where n ∈ {1,2,3...N} is denoted
by hn , where hn ∈ C M ×1 . hn is further defined as a function of the path-loss and shadowing
component, βn and the Rayleigh fading component, gn , that is,

p
hn = βn gn , f oralln (2.1)

where,
gn ∈ CN (0, I) (2.2)

6
and thus,
hn ∈ CN (0, βn N). (2.3)

The assumption used is that βn is known at the BS for all n.

The sporadic nature of the activity pattern is implemented in the following manner: All
the prospective users are assumed to be synchronized in time such that the users decide at
the start of every coherence interval whether to be active with a probability of  ∈ (0, 1),
or to be inactive with the probability of 1 − . The activity of the nth user is defined by
an activity identifier,



1, if user n is active

αn = (2.4)

0, otherwise.


Further, the set of active users in each coherent interval is defined as :

κ = {n : αn = 1} (2.5)

where, K denotes the number of active users. The overall channel input-output rela-
tionship is denoted by:

N
X
y= hn αn xn + z (2.6)
1

where, xn ∈ C is the user transmitted signal, y ∈CM ×1 is the channel output at the BS
and z ∈ CM ×1 is the additive white Gaussian Noise (AWGN).
Assuming that all devices transmit at constant power ρ [1],

E| xn |2 = ρ (2.7)

As discussed above, random generation of pilot sequences is assumed , i.e., each prospec-
tive user n is given a unique, randomly generated, pilot sequence,

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 an = [an1 , an2 , an3 ...anL ]T (2.8)

whose entries are generated from i.i.d. complex Gaussian distribution with zero mean
and variance 1/L [1],

 
1
anl ∼ CN 0, (2.9)
L

such that,

|| an ||2 = 1 (2.10)

Note that, the BS knows the pilot sequence of all the users.

2.2 Detection of Active Devices and Estimation of Channel as a

Compressed Sensing Problem

Let ρpilot denote the transmit power of the active users, identical to all the users, in the
√
first transmission phase. The transmit signal of the user n can be expressed as αn ζan [1],
where

ζ = Lρpilot (2.11)

denotes the total transmit energy of each active user in the first phase.
We denote the received signal at the BS by:

N
p X
Y = ζ αn an hn T + Z (2.12)
1

L×M
where, Y ∈ C is the matrix of received signals across M antennas over L symbols,
and Z = [z1 , ..., zM ] with zm ∼ CN (0, σ 2 I) [1].

8
 Let,
A = [a1 , ..., aN ] (2.13)

and xn = αn hn

X = [x1 , ..., xN ]T (2.14)

Thus, we can write (2.12) as

p
Y = ζAX + Z (2.15)

where the rows of X follow Bernoulli Gaussian Distribution.

2.3 Vector AMP Algorithm

Applying the Vector AMP Algorithm[1] to this setup : The ultimate objective of the AMP
Algorithm is to minimize the mean-squared error(MSE) :

M SE = EXY || X̂(Y ) − X ||2 (2.16)

The algorithm is based on an approximation of the message passing algorithm for solving
the above problem. Starting with X0 = 0 and R0 = Y , the general form of the vector
AMP algorithm proceeds at each iteration as :

xt+1
n = ηt,n ((Rt )H an + xtn ) (2.17)

where,
N 0
t+1 t+1 N t X ηt,n ((Rt )H an + xtn )
R = Y − AX + R (2.18)
L n=1 N
T
where t = 0, 1, ... denotes the iteration index or the number of simulation runs, X t = [xt1 , ..., xtN ]
T
is the estimate of X at iteration t, and Rt = [r1t , ..., rLt ] ∈ C L×M denotes the corresponding

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residual. The ηt,n denotes the denoiser function defined by :

ηt,n : CM ×1 → CM ×1 (2.19)

Let the asymptotic regime imply L, K, N → ∞, while their ratios converge to some
fixed positive values N/L → ω and K/N →  with ω,  ∈ (0, ∞), while keeping the total
transmit power fixed at ζ.
Now, let β ∼ pβ , define a random vector Xβ ∈ CM ×1 with a distribution (1 - )δ0 +
phβ , where phβ denotes the distribution hβ ∈ CN (0, βI). Let V ∈ CM ×1 ∼ CN (0, I) be
independent of Xβ . The state evolution can be given by:

σ2 1 1 H
Σt+1 = I + ωE[(ηt,β (Xβ + Σt2 V) − Xβ )(ηt,β (Xβ + Σt2 V) − Xβ ) ] (2.20)
ζ

where,

σ2
Σ0 = I + ωE[Xβ XH
β] (2.21)
ζ

Implementing the denoiser:

ηt,n (x̂t,n ) = E[Xn |X̂t,n = x̂t,n ] (2.22)

that is,
ηt,n (x̂t,n ) = φt,n βn (βn I + Σt )−1 x̂t,n (2.23)

where,
1
φt,n = 1− (2.24)
1+ 
exp(−M(πt,n − ψt,n ))

−1 −1
x̂H
t,n (Σt − (βn I + Σt ) )x̂t,n
πt,n = (2.25)
M

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 log(det((βn Σ−1
t + I))
ψt,n = (2.26)
M

Now, we state the device activity detector and channel estimator. From (2.23) we
observe that for large M, 

1, if πt,n > ψt,n

φt,n = (2.27)

0, if πt,n < ψt,n


Therefore, we suggest a threshold strategy for user activity detection . Using (2.25)–(2.26)
and the scalar form of the AMP state evolution, the proposed device activity detector and
channel estimator are as follows:

1, if ((Rt )H an + xtn )H )(Rt )H an + xtn )H ) > θt,n ,


$(xtn , Rt ) = (2.28)
0, if ((Rt )H an + xtn )H )(Rt )H an + xtn )H ) < θt,n



with a threshold
βn 1 1
θt,n = M log(1 + 2
)/( 2 − 2 ) (2.29)
τt τt τ t − βn

where τt2 can be iteratively obtained as follows :

σ2
τ02 = + ωEβ [β] (2.30)
ξ

σ2 βτt2
 
2 2
 
τt+1 = + ωEβ + ωEX̂t,β v t,β (τt ) (2.31)
ξ β + τt2

with the term vt,β equal to:

β2
 
1 H H
vt,β = E φt,β (1 − φt,β ) X̂ X (2.32)
M X̂t,β (β + τt2 )2 t,β ≈,β

Here, X̂t,β is the random vector that captures the distribution of the signal xt,n given
in (2.23), and φt,β captures the distribution of φt,n , which is implicitly a function of x̂t,n .

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2.4 Performance of Vector AMP Based Detector

Probabilities of Missed Detection and False Alarm In order to analyze the performance
of the Vector AMP based detector, the error in activity detection is divided into two
separate parts, the first being the probability of missed detection. The probability of
missed detection is a measurement of the probability of the number of users that were
actually active but where missed during activity detection, that is, were detected as active.
This probability of missed detection can be represented in terms of the proposed device
activity detector and channel estimator and is given by :

MD
Pt,n (M ) = P r($(xtn , Rt ) = 0|αn = 1), (2.33)

The other kind of error that is possible is the case of false alarms. False alarm is a situation
when a particular device is not active but is detected as active. The probability of false
alarm is given by :

FA
Pt,n (M ) = P r($(xtn , Rt ) = 1|αn = 0) (2.34)

These two probabilities cover the two kinds of possible errors in activity detection and
hence provide a quantitative way of analyzing the performance of the vector AMP based
activity detector.

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Chapter 3

Conclusion And Future Works

The need of activity detection of the devices and estimation of channels for active devices in
the era of massive communications becomes important, where the number of possible user
devices are in the order of 1 million. The paper utilized the sporadic nature of the activity of
these devices to implement the activity detection of the devices and estimation of channels
for active devices and prove its practicality. Further, it is shown how the vector AMP
algorithm is used for state evolution analysis, which when run iteratively gives the activity
vector of each of the N users, that is, αn where, n = 1, 2, 3...N . The algorithm discussed as
given in [1] enables a quantitative analysis of performance by measuring the probability of
false alarms and the probability of missed detections in the asymptotic regime. The second
part of this research deals with the phase -2 of the grant-free two-phase access regime, that
is the data transmission part, which works to analyze and optimize the achievable data
transmission rates. Our work in the next semester would be to implement the part-2 and
achieve a complete system for the grant-free two-phase access regime. In addition to this,
the research for the next semester would be the following : in this paper, the channel vector
hn depends on the path loss and shadowing component βn which is a reflection of location
and relative distance between the nth user and each of the antennas. The reason βn doesn’t
involve any factor representing the specific antenna, is because all the antennas are located

13
at the same base station and hence have the same location. So any one of the users are
at an equal distance from all the antennas and hence βn becomes only a function of the
location of the nth user, assuming base station to be at a pre-decided location, say (0, 0).
Our concern would be to consider a situation where each of these M antennas are freely
located in space and not just concentrated on one single base station. This would mean
that each of the M antennas can be associated to M different coordinates and each of the
N prospective users can have relative distances from each of the antennas denoted by dn,m ,
where dn,m denotes the distance of nth user from mth antenna. Since this gives an N × M
matrix for d, we get an N × M matrix for the path loss and shadowing component βn , as
βn is dependent on these distances. This implies that β would now be represented as βn,m .
Our task would be to extend the existing grant-free two-phase access regime implemented
using vector AMP algorithm to this scenario, and qualitatively and quantitatively estimate
the probability of false alarm and probability of missed detection, followed by computing
the achievable data rates of transmission.

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References

[1] Liang Liu , Member, IEEE, and Wei Yu , Fellow, IEEE, ”Massive Connectivity With
Massive MIMO—Part I: Device Activity Detection and Channel Estimation”, IEEE
Transactions on Signal Processing ( Volume: 66 , Issue: 11 , June1, 1 2018 )

[2] Liang Liu , Member, IEEE, and Wei Yu , Fellow, IEEE, ”Massive Connectivity With
Massive MIMO—Part II: Achievable Rate Characterization”, IEEE Transactions on
Signal Processing ( Volume: 66 , Issue: 11 , June1, 1 2018 )

[3] Ruichen Deng, Zhiyuan Jiang, Sheng Zhou, and Zhisheng Niu, ”How often should CSI
be updated for massive MIMO systems with massive connectivity?”, GLOBECOM 2017
- 2017 IEEE Global Communications Conference

[4] Zaher Dawy, Walid Saad, Arunabha Ghosh, Jeffrey G. Andrews, and Elias Yaacoub,
”Toward Massive Machine Type Cellular Communications”, IEEE Wireless Commu-
nications ( Volume: 24 , Issue: 1 , February 2017 )

[5] Kamil Senel , Member, IEEE, and Erik G. Larsson , Fellow, IEEE, ”Grant-Free Massive
MTC-Enabled Massive MIMO: A Compressive Sensing Approach”, IEEE TRANSAC-
TIONS ON COMMUNICATIONS, VOL. 66, NO. 12, DECEMBER 2018

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