We investigate the energy efficiency (EE) problem in a downlink multi-user millimeter wave (mmWave) rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) system and propose an energy-efficient one-layer RSMA hybrid precoder design for K users with quality of service constraints. This scheme is applicable to the design of sustainable sixth generation (6G) cellular networks. To make the problem tractable, the analog and the digital precoder designs are decoupled. First, the analog precoder is designed to maximize the desired signal power of each user while ignoring multi-user interference. Second, the digital precoder is designed to manage multi-user interference according to the EE optimization design criterion. We adopt a successive convex approximation-based algorithm for joint optimization of the digital precoders, power, and common rate allocation. Simulation results show that the proposed RSMA scheme always performs at least as well as a baseline spatial division multiple access (SDMA) hybrid precoding scheme and outperforms it under certain channel conditions. These results suggest that RSMA is suitable as a flexible physical layer design for future 6G mmWave networks.
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Decoupling Beam Steering and User Selection for Scaling Multi-User 60 GHz WLANs
ABSTRACT Multi-user transmission at 60 GHz promises to increase the throughput of next generation WLANs via both analog and digital beamforming. To maximize capacity, analog beams need to be jointly configured with user selection and digital weights; however, joint maximization requires prohibitively large training and feedback overhead. In this paper, we scale multi-user 60 GHz WLAN throughput via design of a low-complexity structure for decoupling beam steering and user selection such that analog beam training precedes user selection. We introduce a two-class framework comprising (i) single shot selection of users by minimizing overlap of their idealized beam patterns obtained from analog training and (ii) interference-aware incremental addition of users via sequential training to better predict inter-user interference. We implement a programmable testbed using software defined radios and commercial 60 GHz transceivers and conduct over-the-air measurements to collect channel traces for different indoor WLAN deployments. Using trace based emulations and high resolution 60 GHz channel models, we show that our decoupling structure experiences less than 5% performance loss compared to maximum achievable rates via joint user-beam selection.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1642929
- PAR ID:
- 10026067
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Proceedings of the ... ACM International Symposium on Mobile Ad Hoc Networking & Computing
- ISSN:
- 1548-1832
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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