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Ultra-low Latency, Low Energy and Massiveness in


the 6G Era via Efficient CSIT-limited Schemes
Onel L. A. López, Nurul H. Mahmood, Hirley Alves, Carlos M. Lima, Matti Latva-aho

Abstract—Channel state information (CSI) has been costs are usually negligible in traditional broadband-
a key component in traditional wireless communication orientated services, this may no longer hold under
arXiv:2009.06446v1 [cs.IT] 14 Sep 2020

systems. This might no longer hold in future networks strict constraints on latency, energy expenditure,
supporting services with stringent quality of service con-
and/or when serving a huge number of devices.
straints such as extremely low-latency, low-energy and/or
large number of simultaneously connected devices, where CSI at the receiver side (CSIR) allows using
acquiring CSI would become extremely costly or even coherent receiving schemes, which optimize the data
impractical. We overview the main limitations of CSI at decoding procedures. The associated costs are i)
transmitter side (CSIT)-based designs toward the 6G era, extra communication delay since data decoding does
assess how to design and use efficient CSIT-limited schemes not start until CSIR acquisition has been completed,
that allow meeting the new and stringent requirements,
and ii) extra energy consumption to carry out not
and highlight some key research directions. We delve into
the ideas of efficiently allocating pilot sequences, relying only the estimation phase but also the coherent
on statistical CSIT and/or using location-based strategies, decoding. The situation becomes more challenging
and demonstrate viability via a selected use case. under grant-free access schemes, in which there is
no reservation phase, hence there might be collisions
among users’ transmissions especially in dense de-
I. I NTRODUCTION ployments. Compressed sensing techniques emerge
Both industry and academia have their sights such that users prepend sequences to the transmitted
set on a data-driven sustainable society, enabled data, which then are used for both activity detection
by near-instant unlimited green connectivity toward and CSIR acquisition. CSIR acquisition problem is
the 6G era. The main challenges ahead are due to even more critical in time-varying channels, e.g.,
the need to support a wide range of heterogeneous under high mobility conditions, for which non-
characteristics as surveyed in [1], and conflicting coherent schemes may offer better performance.
requirements, e.g., ultra-low latency, ultra-reliability, The challenges and associated costs are more
low-energy, massive connectivity support, ultra-high stringent when CSI is required at the transmitter side
data speed. These challenging requirements demand (CSIT), e.g., for optimal multi-user spatial precod-
a complete rethinking of the usual system optimiza- ing and/or intelligent resource allocation schemes.
tion approaches and design criteria [1], [2]. For In fact, CSIT acquisition is severely limited toward
instance, accurate channel state information (CSI), realizing ultra-reliable low-latency communication
which is acquired via proper pilot training trans- (URLLC) [2], and serving low-power massive de-
missions, is a key component for modern commu- ployments [3], thus, fostering efficient CSIT-limited
nication systems. However, while CSI acquisition schemes [3]–[6]. It is worth mentioning that decades
ago, before introducing adaptive modulation and
Authors are all with the Centre for Wireless Communications coding schemes and multi-antenna beamforming,
(CWC), University of Oulu, Finland. {onel.alcarazlopez, carlos.lima,
nurulhuda.mahmood, hirley.alves, matti.latva-aho}@oulu.fi. wireless communication systems operated without
This work is partially supported by Academy of Finland 6Genesis CSIT. However, the stringent performance require-
Flagship (Grants n.318927, n.319008, n.307492). ments of current and future systems make the de-
2020
c IEEE. This paper has been accepted for publication in
IEEE Communications Magazine. Personal use of this material is sign and adoption of efficient CSIT-limited schemes
permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other more challenging than ever. In this paper, we focus
uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing on this, while our four-fold contributions are as
this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new
collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or follows: i) we discuss the costs and challenges of
reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works. the CSIT acquisition procedures toward meeting the
2

6G era requirements (Section II); ii) we overview Although they may run over a large time-scale, e.g.,
some solutions under consideration, and propose each 10 mins in centralized multi-user multiple-
novel ideas to avoid the need of instantaneous input multiple-output (MIMO) systems sharing a
CSIT, hence enabling ultra-low latency, low-energy common clock, they could be required on a frame-
and massive communications (Section III); iii) we basis in distributed architectures [8]. Receiver mo-
provide a study case on how to power efficiently a bility, which leads to time-varying channels, espe-
large number of energy harvesting (EH) devices via cially between downlink and uplink, makes channel
CSIT-free schemes (Section IV); and iv) we discuss tracking rather difficult and costly, and constitutes
open problems and future research directions toward another important challenge.
efficient CSIT-limited schemes in Table I. Time requirements for CSIT acquisition are not
trivial, not even in TDD, and they grow propor-
II. O N THE CSIT ACQUISITION COSTS tionally with the pilot sequences’ length, which is
Typically, CSIT-based solutions come with the usually set to avoid non-orthogonality in multi-user
strong assumption that channel information is read- uncoordinated setups (see Section II-C).
ily and widely accessible in the network. However,
acquiring such CSIT is costly and even infeasible in B. Energy cost
most practical deployment scenarios. In this section, In general, CSIT estimation accuracy depends on
we overview the associated costs and challenges. the energy expended in associated procedures. The
For simplicity, let us denote by S the node with a energy expended by an IoT device D is proportional
data message ready for transmission, while D is the to the pilots energy in TDD, which is explicitly
intended receiver. determined by the training time and power, i.e.,
energy = time × power; while the energy con-
A. Latency cost sumed by D in FDD comprises that used during
the channel estimation (proportional to the training
In frequency-division duplex (FDD) systems,
time) and feedback transmission (equivalent to the
where downlink and uplink channels operate on
training power in TDD). Hence, energy expenditure
different frequencies, S transmits pilot signals while
and CSIT accuracy, which affect the subsequent
D uses them to estimate the channel. Then, D sends
data transmission phase, can be traded off. The
the information back to S, thus, introducing an
problem of optimizing the system energy efficiency
additional delay and error source [2], [6]. If CSIT
measured as the ratio (or some other function)
acquisition time window is limited, the accuracy
between useful data throughput (or rate) and power
(directly related to energy and orthogonality level of
(or energy) subject to imperfect CSIT has been
the pilot signal, along with the allowed quantization
frequently considered in the literature. However, in
error) and/or reliability (determined by the error
low-power IoT, low energy operation is frequently
performance of the feedback link) can be seriously
much more important than data rate or throughput
compromised. When D is a very simple device,
metrics. The main reasons are that i) transmissions
e.g., an Internet of Things (IoT) sensor, channel
are mostly sporadic, e.g., due to event-driven traffic;
estimation may be unaffordable due to its limited (if
ii) transmission rate is often intrinsically small and
any) baseband signal processing capabilities. Train-
fixed; and iii) such simple devices are battery-
ing overhead grows with the number of transmit
driven and or rely on weak energy sources, e.g., as
antennas, thus, it becomes troublesome when S is
in wireless-powered communication networks. The
equipped with large antenna arrays [6], [7].
main issue lies on optimizing the network life-time
On the other hand, in time-division duplex
avoiding frequent channel training procedures that
(TDD), where uplink and downlink channels share
drain significant energy resources.
the same frequency resources, the above issues
can be addressed by exploiting channel reciprocity.
However, channel reciprocity is sensitive to hard- C. Scalability
ware impairments especially when S and D are very Training overhead may remain fixed in coordi-
different devices. In general, calibration methods nated systems but at expense of costly scheduling
are required to mitigate the channel mismatches. (unless the traffic is periodic or semi-periodic) and
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-15
synchronization. Meanwhile, in non-coordinated
single-cell/centralized networks, the overhead grows -16
• (at least) logarithmically with the network size
in TDD to guarantee pilot signals’ orthogonal- -17 optimal operation point
ity, hence, avoiding collisions; or
-18
• linearly with the number of antennas in S in
FDD to estimate the channel from each of the -19
transmit antennas.
-20
Meanwhile, the situation is more critical in multi-
cell networks and distributed antenna systems -21
0 2 4 6 8 10 12 14 16
(DAS) since the training overhead grows also with
the system size/density. In addition, advanced es-
Fig. 1. Max-min average RF energy available at end-devices. We
timators and intelligent pilot scheduling may be consider a set of 16 EH devices and one PB equipped with 4
needed to acquire accurate channel estimates and antennas. Channel experiences quasi-static Rician fading with line-
enable, e.g., efficient massive MIMO [9]. of-sight (LoS) factor of 3 dB. each device Di , i = 1, · · · , 16
experiences a path-loss of 50 + i/2 dB (Scenario A) or 44 + i dB
(Scenario B). Transmit power is normalized.
III. CSIT- LIMITED SOLUTIONS FOR 6G SYSTEMS
5G systems have already introduced services withup. The use of non-orthogonal pilot sequences may
ultra-low latency, energy efficiency and/or massivebe viable, by resorting to, e.g., grant-free access
support requirements for which the aforementioned schemes [10], which in turn increase the collision
CSIT acquisition costs (see Section II) constitute a
probability and consequently cause a longer effec-
difficult obstacle to overcome. However, the chal- tive delay. Thus, the probability of such collision
lenges are undoubtedly strenuous toward the 6G events must be minimized. For instance, the authors
era since performance requirements will be more in [4], [7] propose to cluster the destinations {D}
heterogeneous, conflicting and stringent than ever,based on their channel covariance matrices such
e.g., 3D wide coverage of zero-energy (ZE) devices,that the pilots are reused among the users having
extreme low-latency ultra-reliable broadband ser- sufficiently orthogonal channel subspaces, thus, mit-
vices [1]. This will be motivated by new use cases,igating the pilot contamination effect in the massive
such as Internet of Senses and ZE IoT, and the wideMIMO regime. Clustering approaches can also be
adoption of challenging technologies, for example, effectively employed in the non-massive antenna
intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRS), EH, backscatter
regime, e.g., devices with similar traffic profiles can
communications, distributed ledger [1]. Next, we be clustered together and share a specific pool of
discuss promising strategies to enable ultra-low la-
pilots (which may be accessed randomly as shown
tency, low-energy and/or massive extreme support in [10]). In one implementation, devices with small
in 6G systems. It is worth mentioning that expectedactivation probabilities can be grouped in clusters
advances on ultra-low power circuit designs, ma- with smaller pilot pools, when compared to clusters
chine learning (ML)/artificial intelligence (AI) algo-
enclosing more frequently active devices which
rithms and positioning techniques with centimeter/ conversely need bigger pilot pools. In this way, the
millimeter-level accuracy will facilitate the adoption
chances of collision decrease. Such strategy, enabled
of such enabling strategies toward the 6G era. by novel risk-sensitive ML/AI algorithms, could be
further enhanced by considering the features and
A. Efficient pilot sequences allocation requirements of the different services to be sup-
The more network pilots used for CSIT ac- ported. For instance, more pilots should be assigned
quisition, the more stringent the time/energy de- to clusters with greater chances of requiring URLLC
mands, thus, assigning orthogonal pilots becomes services, which are more sensitive to collisions,
inefficient/unaffordable as the network grows. By while ZE devices should be favored to some extent
tightly constraining the pilot pools, not only the as well since their transmissions may be intrinsically
required time/energy expenditure may be minimized limited in number/energy.
but alternatively the network is allowed to scale In some cases, it could be even preferable to not
4

assign pilots to certain users at all. One example 10 5

scenario is the fair wireless powering of EH devices.


Consider a multi-antenna power beacon (PB) S,
which is sending radio frequency (RF) signals for 10 4
powering a set {D} of low-power EH nodes, i.e., dominated by
the covariance

gap
a wireless energy transfer (WET) setup. S uses
beamforming based on instantaneous CSIT to im- 10 3
prove the statistics of the devices’ harvested energy.
dominated by
Specifically, for maximum fairness the beamforming the LoS
problem can be cast to maximize the minimum
10 2
energy that can be harvested by any device. The -20 -15 -10 -5 0 5 10 15 20

traditional approach would rely on the channel in-


formation of the entire set of devices, which could Fig. 2. Latency vs LoS factor for a target error probability of 10 .
−4

We consider a quasi-static Rician fading with per-link average signal-


be large, hence hindering an energy-efficient pilot to-noise ratio of 6 dB. S is equipped with an uniform linear array
scheduling. However, the wireless powering effi- (ULA) whose antenna elements are separated by half-wavelength,
ciency decays quickly with the distance, following while the azimuth angle relative to the boresight of the transmitting
antenna array with respect to end-devices {Di } is 0◦ , 30◦ , 60◦ and
a power-law. Therefore, farthest users’ channels are 90◦ . We assume real covariance matrices with exponential correlation
expected to dominate the beamforming design and with parameter i/5 for Di .
channel training can be reduced accordingly, which
is illustrated in Fig. 1. Also, as the LoS increases, Let us consider a simple setup in which S is
a smaller number of pilot sequences are necessary equipped with four antennas and serves four single-
since the channels become more deterministic. antenna users in the downlink. S uses a precoding
vector such that the minimal average signal-to-
B. Exploiting the statistics/structure of the channel interference-plus-noise ratios (SINR) is maximized.
Not only the multipath structure or statistical In case the nodes are under outage-latency con-
knowledge of the transmit channels may be used straints as in URLLC, one can map the constraints
to efficiently assign the pilots [4], [7], but the to the corresponding average SINR requirements
spatial beamforming can entirely rely on these fea- since channel statistics are known. In Fig. 2, we
tures [6]. Statistical CSIT remains accurate over can observe that the performance of the statistical
a large time scale in static setups and can be precoder improves as the LoS (direct) component
even predicted based on ML/AI and other statistical becomes stronger in comparison to the other (scat-
methods. This allows performing CSIT acquisition tered) multi paths. This is extremely relevant in
procedures when delay and/or energy constraints dense deployments and DAS wherein communicat-
are favorable, while relying on the learned channel ing pairs experience less path-loss attenuation (due
statistics when constraints become stricter and CSIT to shorter separation distances) which, as a result,
auxiliary procedures are unaffordable. In this way, increases the corresponding received power through
the number of pilots may decrease, thus additionally the LoS component (direct link). Thus, an appro-
achieving the benefits discussed in Section III-A. priate statistical precoder may reach near-optimum
Statistical beamformers have attracted much at- performance in such propagation conditions. Mean-
tention from the early GSM systems up to date while, future wireless systems will greatly benefit
in massive MIMO [6], although they have not from massive deployments of IRS. These metasur-
succeeded completely. Probably because their per- faces, which consist of numerous passive reflecting
formance is strictly sub-optimal for broadband- elements, are deployed to assist blocked S → D
orientated services, where the impact of instanta- communication channels by providing an alternative
neous CSIT acquisition overhead is usually negligi- software-controlled LoS path. Since IRS are mostly
ble, and/or when channels tend to fade significantly. passive by nature, the design of their interaction
However, the former does not hold already for matrices cannot rely on frequent channel training
many services and much less toward the 6G era as (e.g., see [11] for a problem overview and a novel
discussed in previous sections, while the latter may solution). Actually, as suggested by Fig. 2 results,
not be an issue as the network densifies. training can be considerably reduced by just relying
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on LoS information, which is mainly influenced by


the channel average and the network geometry.
Finally, statistical CSIT and readily available
side-information, e.g., battery charge information,
can be intelligently exploited for efficient resource
allocation, even in single antenna setups, under
probabilistic quality-of-service (QoS) constraints.

C. Location-based strategies
When CSIT acquisition via pilot transmissions
becomes costly or even impractical, location infor-
mation may be used to effectively reduce signaling
overhead and feedback delays. Location informa-
tion is valuable, e.g., as an indication of the re-
ceived power and experienced interference levels,
Fig. 3. Representative scenario for ML/AI-enabled CSIT-acquisition.
as a node association criterion, and to enable ef- Location information is crucial input data. The ML/AI block may be
ficient relay selection and routing strategies, and at the controller or in a cloud server according to the application.
specially in future IoT use cases wherein heteroge-
neous sources of information dynamically interact and statistical by nature since small-scale fading
in a distributed manner [12]. In DAS and multi- is extremely difficult (if even possible) to predict.
connectivity scenarios, location information can be However, ML/AI-enabled methods can take advan-
used to estimate the signals’ propagation delays tage of much more diverse data to accurately predict
coming from different transmit nodes S, and adapt higher order CSIT statistics toward 6G systems,
the transmit signals’ timing accordingly. Location- thus; reducing prediction uncertainty and allowing
based solutions achieve lower spectral efficiency in more efficient decision-making/resource allocation.
highly dynamic scenarios, though at a lesser cost We envision application scenarios as the one illus-
in terms of measurements and signaling exchange trated in Fig. 3, where the base station S needs
(thus, more time/energy-friendly), when compared to efficiently serve two devices D1 , D2 whereas
to typical CSIT-based approaches [13]. pilot-assisted CSIT acquisition procedures are not
There also exist solutions that directly connect accessible. ML/AI methods can be fed with data
the location information to the radio channel, e.g., known to influence the RF propagation conditions
cell-center/edge users share resources in low-power such as:
wide-area network deployments based on their • geometry and construction materials of the en-
position. Location-based multicasting is possible vironment (which influence mostly the reflec-
therein, which increases packet delivery reliability tions, diffraction, penetration, scattering phe-
by reducing contention. Location-domain channel nomena, and can be obtained via imaging,
representation based on the geometric constraints available locally or from the cloud);
from the local scattering [14] is used to effectively • weather conditions (humidity and temperature
estimate the channel with a reduced number of vary the materials’ features, and can be ob-
pilots in distributed MIMO systems. tained from cloud or locally based on sensing);
Location information has been recently used in • in addition to actual (updated) data mapping,
ML/AI frameworks to infer the channel quality even the channel information at certain locations
in locations where no measurement information was (which can be obtained by S from other non-
previously available. In that regard, a Gaussian pro- constrained devices). Note that this data is
cess approach is used together with received power used as input to the ML/AI block only when
measurements and temporal correlation database so updated, otherwise it is used for training.
as to predict location-dependent channel quality If channels are predicted blocked, S can take ad-
and support resource allocation strategies [12]. In vantage of alternative paths enabled by IRS deploy-
general, location-based CSIT estimation is coarse ments. These alternative channels may be estimated,
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thus enabling efficient resource allocation at S. 80


-20

-40
40

IV. C ASE S TUDY: CSIT- FREE MASSIVE WET ULA orientation


-60

-80
0

For the most stringent scenarios, such as massive 80 0


-1

WET for ZE devices, CSIT-free schemes may be 40


-2
-3

extremely beneficial. Note that relying on instanta- 0


-4
-5
-6

neous CSIT with reduced number of pilots as illus- 0 40 80 0 40 80 0 40 80 0 40 80 0 40 80

trated in Fig. 1, is not completely convenient here Fig. 4. Heatmap of (a) average harvested energy in dBm (first row)
since the farthest (more energy-limited) users would and (b) log10 of the energy outage probability (second row) in a
still required to spend valuable energy resources for 80 × 80 m2 area. Five PBs equipped with 4 ULA antennas transmit
independent signals. We consider a log-distance path-loss model with
channel training. Under strict latency constraints, exponent 3, while the non-distance dependent losses are 26 dB.
statistical beamforming is viable, similarly to our Channels are under quasi-static Rician fading with LoS factor 10
previous discussions around Fig. 2, however, the dB. EH circuitry operates with sensitivity, saturation and conversion
efficiency of −22 dBm, −8 dBm and 35%, respectively.
energy expenditure in the auxiliary procedures is not
completely avoided. Finally, the denser the network, be increased to 23%, if SA is used, or even to 30%,
the more efficient the CSIT-free schemes. if the two more advanced AA schemes are utilized.
Two promising CSIT-free schemes for massive
WET are [3], [5]: i) all antennas at once (AA), V. C ONCLUSIONS & O UTLOOK
under which the PB transmits the same signal si-
We discussed the enormous costs of acquiring
multaneously with all antennas; and ii) switching
instantaneous CSIT toward future communication
antennas (SA), under which the PB transmits by one
systems, where stringent QoS constraints become
antenna at a time such that all antennas are used
extremely challenging. The costs were analyzed in
during a coherence block, thus just one RF chain
terms of latency and energy expenditure, while the
is required, reducing circuit power consumption,
scalability with the number of devices was also
hardware complexity and the operational cost. Their
considered. We discussed some feasible approaches
origins date back to the 90s but in a wireless com-
that range from efficient allocations of the pilot
munication context with limited multi-user support
sequences up to schemes relying on statistical CSIT
[15]. However, more recent advances on MIMO
or location-based ML/AI-enabled predicted CSIT.
and its geometric modeling, signal processing and
We showed that i) in low-power massive setups,
software-controlled rotors, may fully realize their
not all the EH devices may need to be served with
potential in a massive WET context.
CSIT, hence saving valuable energy resource; while
AA has been proven to benefit greatly from spa-
ii) in a downlink communication setup, statistical
tial correlation and LoS; while SA does not improve
CSIT schemes approach the optimum performance
the average statistics of the available RF power
as the LoS factor increases, making them favorable
but it does provides full diversity gain, making it
as the network densifies. We highlighted the benefits
especially desirable under non-LoS conditions. For
from efficiently-designed CSIT-free WET schemes
the first time, herein we evaluate previous CSIT-free
in multi-PB setups. Results revealed performance
schemes in a multi-PB scenario. Results in the form
improvements are reachable via properly shifting
of heatmap for the average harvested energy and
the signals’ phases transmitted by each antenna
energy outage probability are shown in Fig. 4. SA
and/or rotating the antenna array. Key challenges
provides a uniform performance along the area in
and research directions are identified in Table I.
terms of both average harvested energy and energy
outage probability, while the performance of AA R EFERENCES
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7

TABLE I
S OME R ESEARCH D IRECTIONS
Challenge Candidate Approaches Requirements Tools
Intelligent and dynamic network clustering to assign traffic, QoS,
Mitigate the pilot shortage
different pilot pools according to the identified traffic location ML/AI clustering
phenomena: In massive IoT
features and QoS requirements. Soft-clustering, where information, methods, hidden
deployments, appropriate allocation
there is only a probabilistic certainty of belonging to and/or Markov models,
strategies are required to deal with
certain cluster, may be needed. Also, intelligent statistical risk analysis
the finitude of the pilot pools.
decision-making based on risk mitigation. CSIT
DAS can be implemented in several ways, such as
Statistical beamforming in DAS: (statistical
multi-connectivity transmissions and the novel
Geographically-distributed antennas /probabilistic)
cost-efficient radio stripe systems. The candidate local and/or
improve the network spectral optimization,
beamforming solutions must consider the global
efficiency by mitigating the game theory,
characteristics/challenges of the specific DAS statistical
large-scale fading. Novel meta distribution,
deployment. In many cases, standalone statistical CSIT, QoS
beamforming designs exploiting network calculus,
beamforming designs could be adapted to DAS as requirements
statistical channel information are distributed
centralized algorithms, but the use of distributed solutions
required for DAS. algorithms
is usually preferable.
Beamforming under heterogeneous
CSIT availability: Due to network local/global (statistical
Under heterogeneous CSIT availability, hybrid
heterogeneity, S may need to full/limited /probabilistic)
beamformers are necessary, while they need to account
simultaneously serve devices for CSIT, QoS optimization,
also for the different (possibly of different nature also)
which i) CSIT acquisition procedures requirements, distributed ledger
QoS requirements. Probabilistic optimization approaches
are affordable, ii) there is statistical location, technology, risk
are necessary, as well as novel networking mechanisms to
knowledge of their channels but traffic analysis,
incentive information sharing among network devices.
training is not currently possible, information cooperation
and iii) CSIT is unavailable.
Location-based beamforming allows directing the energy
to the desired LoS direction by exploiting proper
Beamforming for highly mobile
phase-shifting between the transmit antenna array ML/AI-based
networks: In highly mobile environment
elements. However, an accurate prediction of the location estima-
networks, acquiring any kind of geometry,
receiver’s LoS direction is required. An efficient design tion/prediction,
CSIT may be completely unfeasible location, QoS
must deal with mobility-tracking prediction error, account ray tracing,
since the the channel coherence time requirements
for the impairments introduced by the Doppler effect, and cooperation
shrinks considerably.
address the circumstances in which the LoS link is
blocked and strong non-LoS links can be exploited.
More efficient CSIT-free schemes for
massive WET: EH deployments are
Novel location-based designs relying on proper signals environment
usually static, and positioning optimization, ray
shifting over consecutive antennas, PB orientation and geometry,
information may be available. As tracing, energy
antenna array topology are required for optimizing the location, QoS
such, novel and more efficient trading
EH processes. requirements
CSIT-free schemes can be designed
to exploit such information.

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