New MIMO Techniques for Future Generation of Wireless Communications

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The demands in wireless communications for higher capacity and better quality are constantly increasing. It is predicted by extrapolations of current growth trends that we will experience a 1000-fold increase in data-rate requirement by 2020. In meeting such significant demand increase, MIMO (multi-input-multi-output) techniques are widely believed to be key elements. They have the capability of offering significant boost in data-rate, efficiency, and reliability without additional cost in bandwidth or transmit power. MIMO techniques have been well-developed and employed in current wireless systems, such as the 4th Generation (4G) wireless systems. However, today's MIMO techniques fall short of the dramatic demand increase for the next generation. I propose to develop new MIMO techniques and concepts for wireless communications of future generation. More specifically, I propose to research on the following three aspects.**1. Multi-User Massive MIMO Designs. Massive MIMO refers to systems whose antenna array size is an order of magnitude more than current multiple-antenna systems, such as a station with hundreds of antennas. It is an emerging technology and preliminary research shows that it has great potential in data-rate, energy-efficiency, reduction of latency, robustness, and multi-user communications. To fully understand and utilize the benefits of massive MIMO, customized designs and new frameworks for performance analysis are needed. In this research program, I plan to work on effective transceiver designs, hardware-economical antenna selection methods, and precise analysis of the fundamental performance of multi-user massive MIMO systems.**2. Energy Efficiency Designs. As the popularity of wireless users and the volume of wireless traffic rapidly multiply, the energy consumption in wireless infrastructure drastically increases. As a result, green communications have attracted significant attention in recent years and will continuously become more important for the next decade. In this research program, I will seek novel energy efficiency measures for multi-user MIMO communications, derive energy efficient MIMO designs that can at the same time maintain the quality-of-service, and analyze the performance of the proposed designs.**3. Channel Information Acquisition for MIMO Systems. Research show that the quality of MIMO communications depends heavily on the availability and accuracy of the channel information. New MIMO techniques bring fresh questions and challenges in the acquirement of channel information. Current MIMO channel estimation schemes are based on linear model and Gaussian estimation. I will develop new non-linear estimation models and rules which potentially achieve better performance in estimating MIMO channels with reduced-rank and with correlation. I will also study the channel estimation for multi-user interference MIMO channel for both traditional MIMO systems and massive MIMO systems.**In this research program, I target at proposing novel MIMO concepts and technologies that can fulfill the demands of next generation wireless communications, with high date-rate and high energy-efficiency being the two major objectives. At the same time, I focus on low complexity designs that are scalable and can be applied to systems with a large volume of users and high dimension. The outcomes will help uncover the features of next generation wireless communications. The proposed techniques can provide guidance in the design, analysis, and implementation of next generation wireless systems. I also expect new research directions and ideas to be opened up through the research program.