2019 16th IEEE Annual Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC)

A Unified Model for Signal Detection in Massive

MIMO System and Its Application
Fangli Jin, Fuxiang Cui, Qiufeng Liu, Hao Liu
University of Electronic Science and Technology of China
Chengdu, China
Email: {jinfangli, cfx, liuqiufeng}@std.uestc.edu.cn, liuhao@uestc.edu.cn

Abstract—Linear minimum mean-square error (MMSE) detec- where A = H H H + σ 2 I Nu is the MMSE filtering matrix
tion method bears high computational complexity due to matrix and b = H H y denotes matched-filter output of y. And the
inversion operations in massive multiple-input multiple-output computational complexity of A−1 is O(Nu3 ).
(MIMO) systems. Existing methods to address this problem can
be divided into approximation methods and iterative methods. In C. Iterative Method
this paper, we introduce the relationship between the two types of
methods. Furthermore, a simple approach is developed to deter- A general form of iterative methods is defined as a splitting
mine the appropriate relaxation parameter for the symmetrical A = M + N of A such that M is nonsingular [2]. And the
successive over relaxation (SSOR) method. Finally, simulation related iterative method can be written as
results verify the proposed relationship and demonstrate the
superiority of the proposed relaxation parameter. Mx(k) = −Nx(k−1) + b, (3)
Index Terms—massive MIMO, signal detection, unified model,
symmetric successive over relaxation, relaxation parameter or equivalently,
x(k) = M−1 ((M − A)x(k−1) + b)
I. I NTRODUCTION

k−1
i (4)
Massive MIMO systems have been considered as one of = (M−1 (M − A))k x(0) + (M−1 (M − A)) M−1 b.
the promising key technologies for 5G wireless networks i=0
[1]. However, signal detection in massive MIMO systems is
D. Neumann Series Expansion
a thorny problem. Recent algorithms are all looking for a
trade-off between complexity and performance, which can be Neumann series expansion is utilized in [3] to approximate
divided into approximation methods and iterative methods. the inverse of matrix A. Then A−1 can be expressed as
In this paper, we point out that the result of k iterations in ∞
the iterative methods is equivalent to the k-term or (k +1)-term A−1 = (M−1 (M − A))i M−1, (5)
Neumann series expansion (NSE), depending on the choice of i=1
the initial solution. Besides, we propose a suitable relaxation where M is a nonsingular matrix close to A and
parameter for the SSOR detector in massive MIMO systems, lim (I − M−1 A)i = 0 should be satisfied to hold (5). And the
i→∞
which can significantly accelerate the convergence of the k-term approximation is given by
SSOR method compared to the existing relaxation parameters.

k−1
II. BACKGROUND A−1
k = (M−1 (M − A))i M−1 . (6)
i=0
A. System model for uplink
III. T HE PROPOSED RELATIONSHIP AND SCHEME
An uplink multi-user massive MIMO system is considered
in this paper, in which Nb antennas configured at the base A. Relationship Between iterative and Approximation methods
station (BS) serve Nu single-antenna users simultaneously. The Considering (4) and (6), we will find that if x(0) = 0, after
received signal y ∈ C Nb ×1 at the BS can be modeled as k iterations, the iteration structure (4) has the same estimation
y = Hx + n, (1) result as k terms (or (k − 1) orders) expansion in Neumann
series. And if x(0) = M−1 b, then (4) is equivalent to the (k +1)-
Nu ×1
where x ∈ C is the constellation mapped transmit symbols term Neumann series expansion.
from Nu users, H ∈ C Nb ×Nu denotes the Rayleigh fading
channel matrix, and n ∼ CN(0, σ 2 I Nb ) is the noise vector. B. Optimum relaxation parameter for SSOR
Besides, we assume that the channel state is well known. Let A = D + L + U, where D is the diagonal part of
matrix A, and L, U represent the lower triangular part and the
B. MMSE Detection for Massive MIMO upper triangular part. As shown by Åke. Björck [2], supposing
Adopting the typical linear detection method, MMSE de- ρ(D−1 LD−1 U) < 1/4, a suitable value for ω in SSOR is
tection, we estimate the transmitted signal x by 2
ωopt =  , (7)
x̂ = (H H H + σ 2 I Nu )−1 H H y = A−1 b, (2) 1 + 2(1 − ρ(BJ ))

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 2019 16th IEEE Annual Consumer Communications & Networking Conference (CCNC)

where BJ = D−1 (−L − U) is the iteration matrix of the Jacobi 100 100

method. However, the time-varying characteristics of channel 10-1

H and the high complexity of spectral radius calculation make 10-1 10-2

it unrealistic to obtain optimal relaxation parameter in practice.

BER
BER
10-3

Depending on the asymptotic orthogonality of the channel 10-4

10-2 Ö澳澳 
澳 澳 Z[],N
SSOR 澳with Ö澳澳 
澳 澳 Z>@N
SSOR 澳with

matrix and the channel hardening phenomenon, √ the eigenval-

√
澳 澳 ZRSW[], N=2
澳 澳 澳with
SSOR
SSOR with Z
澳᳿ 澳 N=2
,
SSOR with澳 ZRSW >@,N=
澳 澳 澳with
SSOR 澳 澳 ,
Z᳿澳 N=
澳 澳 ZÖ 澳[],
ues of BJ can be found in the range [−(2 α + 1)/α, (2 α −
SSOR 澳with 澳 N=2
澳澳 Z
SSOR 澳with Ö澳澳 
[],N 10-5
澳 澳 ZRSW[], N=4
澳 澳 澳with SSOR with ZRSW >@,N=2
SSOR
SSOR with Z ᳿
澳 N=4
,
澳 澳 澳with
SSOR 澳 澳 Z᳿
, N=2

√ where α = Nb /Nu . Thus, ρ(BJ ) = max |λ(BJ )| =

1)/α], 006( MMSE
10-3 10-6
5 10 15 20 6 8 10 12 14 16 18

(2 α + 1)/α, and then an approximate optimal relaxation

SNR(dB) SNR(dB)

parameter for SSOR can be expressed as [4]
2 parameters for (a) Nb × Nu = 64 × 16 (b) Nb × Nu = 256 × 16
ω̂ =  ,
1 + 2(1 − μ)
√ We can observe that the performance is in accordance with
where μ = (2 α + 1)/α is employed to quantify the upper
bound of ρ(BJ ), that is to say, ρ(BJ ) < μ. However, it is worth
pointing out that μ > 1, i.e. 1 − μ < 0 when α < 5.83, which
results in a slower convergence rate. To ensure ρ(BJ ) < 1 for
an arbitrary value of α, we propose exploiting the mean of
the extreme eigenvalues of BJ to revise the upper bound μ of
ρ(BJ ). Then we have
μ̂ = (λmax (BJ ) + λmin (BJ ))/2 = Nu /Nb .
Utilizing the corrected upper bound to rewrite (7), we obtain
a new relaxation parameter
2 while with the use of the other relaxation parameters, a leveled
ω̄ =  .
1 + 2(1 − Nu /Nb )
We note that the proposed relaxation parameter is a determin-
istic parameter that is only related to the dimension of massive
MIMO systems, with negligible computational complexity.
IV. S IMULATION RESULTS
In simulations, 64QAM modulation scheme is employed
and MMSE detection algorithm with the exact matrix inversion
is presented for comparison. And k denotes the number of
iterations or the order of Neumann series expansion.
1) For simplicity, we only observe the relationship between
the iterative method and the Neumann series expansion ap-
proach when M = D and M = ω1 I, corresponding to Jacobi
and Richardson methods in the iterative method, respectively,
1 the SSOR detector in massive MIMO systems, which is both
where ω = Nu +N is the quasi-optimum relaxation parameter
b performance reliable and low cost, meeting the requirements
of Richardson method. And the performance comparison for
Nb × Nu = 128 × 16 is presented in Fig.1.
100
10-1
10-2
NSE with X=D, k=3
BER
(a) (b)
Fig. 2. BER performance comparison with various relaxation
(8)
the relationship derived previously. Note that the iterative
methods only contain the matrix-vector product while the
approximation methods involve matrix-matrix product. There-
fore, the iterative methods have lower complexity compared
to the approximation methods with the same performance.
2) The performance of the proposed relaxation parameter for
SSOR is compared to that of the optimal [2] and approximate
(9) optimal [4] relaxation parameters in Fig.2(a) and Fig.2(b). We
utilize x(0) = D−1 b for the initial iteration.
From Fig.2(a), we can see that the performance improve-
ment with the proposed relaxation parameter is prominent
(10) off performance appears in this system configuration. It is
obvious from Fig.2(b) that for Nb × Nu = 256 × 16, the
performance gap of the SSOR method using diverse relaxation
parameters is minor. We conclude that when the ratios between
BS antennas and users are not large enough, it is better to
take advantage of the proposed relaxation parameter instead
of using the existing relaxation parameters, and systems with
large antenna ratios can also make use of the proposed
parameters because of its simple calculation.
V. CONCLUSION
In this paper, the relationship between iterative methods
and approximation methods in massive MIMO data detection
is introduced and then verified in simulations. Moreover, we
propose a simple and appropriate relaxation parameter for
of massive MIMO systems.
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MMSE
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Fig. 1. The BER performance comparison of various methods