Distributed and Co-located Large Scale Antenna Systems in Dense Self-Organized Wireless Networks

据估计，现在世界上有三分之一的人口上网，这个数字还在上升。此外，在“智能手机和平板电脑”时代的刺激下，每个个人用户消耗的互联网带宽越来越多，其中无线消耗的带宽比例也在上升。事实上，到2016年，全球IP流量将增长近四倍。此外，到那时，连接到IP网络的设备数量将是全球人口的3倍。要在无线领域保持如此巨大的增长，同时提供比当今网络更好的可靠性和用户体验，并以合理的成本和最小的碳足迹做到这一点，目前面临着惊人的技术挑战。解决这一挑战最有希望的途径之一是大规模天线阵列（LSAS），例如，蜂窝基站将配备数百甚至数千个小型天线。理论研究表明，由于多用户干扰和噪声的影响将消失，这将允许巨大的容量增长。此外，所需的传输功率也将大幅缩小，可能缩小1000倍。结合其他两个关键思想，分布式天线系统和自组织，本研究方案解决了LSAS的实际发展。具体来说，它解决了算法和架构的发展，通过使用非常大的天线阵列来支持密集和高比特率无线网络（例如蜂窝，WiFi或其他）的发展，重点是1-在不久的将来以合理的成本提供大规模天线系统（LSAS）的优势；2-在LSAS的背景下，通过(a)天线或波束选择和(b)阵列划分技术，开发有效的低复杂度阵列处理技术，用于检测、传输和信道估计；3-探索具有自组织的分布式阵列的概念；4-在适当的时候，用特定的硬件原型评估复杂性和实际问题。

It is estimated that one third of the world population is now online, a figure that is on the rise. Also, spurred by the "smart phone and tablet" era, each individual user consumes an increasing amount of Internet bandwidth, and the proportion of that bandwidth that is consumed wirelessly is also rising. In fact, global IP traffic will nearly quadruple by 2016. Furthermore, at that time, the number of devices connected to IP networks will be 3 times larger than the global population. To sustain such tremendous growth in the wireless sphere while providing better reliability and user experience than today's networks, and to do so at a reasonable cost with minimal carbon footprint present staggering technical challenges. One of the most promising avenues to solve this challenge resides in large-scale antenna arrays (LSAS), whereby cellular base stations for example would be equipped with hundreds or even thousands of small antennas. Theoretical work has shown that this would allow huge capacity gains, as the effect of multiuser interference and noise would vanish. Also, the required transmission power would shrink considerably, possibly by a factor of 1000. In conjunction two other key ideas, distributed antenna systems and self-organization, the present research proposal tackles the practical development of LSAS. Specifically, it addresses the development of algorithms and architectures supporting the evolution of dense and high bit-rate wireless networks (e.g. cellular, WiFi or other) through the use of very large antenna arrays, with a focus on 1- making available the advantages of large-scale antenna systems (LSAS) at a reasonable cost in the near future; 2- in the context of LSAS, developing effective low-complexity array processing techniques for detection, transmission, and channel estimation through (a) antenna or beam selection, and (b) array partitioning techniques; 3- exploring the concept of distributed arrays with self-organization; and 4- whenever appropriate, assess complexity and practical issues with specific hardware prototypes in mind.