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A Simple Channel Simulator for Multiuser MIMO Broadcast Channel Systems

Chong Pei Ho, Hieu Duy Nguyen, Xuan Wang, and Hon Tat Hui Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore, Singapore

Abstract This paper presents an eort to construct a multiuser (MU) multiple-input multipleoutput (MIMO) broadcast channel (BC) model. Our method is able to adequately build in the correlation and mutual coupling, which are important factors aecting the multi-antenna arrays. This helps to decrease the need for complex mathematical analysis and allows an easy simulation of the MU MIMO BC performance. The charac-terizations of MU MIMO systems are done and the impact of varying the number of transmitting and receiving antennas is explored. These insights are useful in physical realization of the systems. 1. INTRODUCTION

In recent years, as demands for increasing capacity networks rises, researches in antenna array communication are of much greater interest. Multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems are hence a natural extension of developments [1] since MIMO systems are able to turn multipath propagation, which is usually a pitfall in wireless transmission, into a benet. By doing so, the performance and capacity of the MIMO systems are increased tremendously. The capacity of single-user MIMO Gaussian channels was rst studied by Foschini and Gans [2], and Telatar [3]. The researches on MIMO systems are also extended to the multiuser cases which can be classied as MIMO multiple access channel (MAC) and MIMO broadcast channels (BC). The sum rate of MIMO MAC system is easy to be obtained due to its convex property [47]. The sum rate of the MU MIMO BC achieved with Dirty Paper Coding (DPC) [8], however, is not of the convex form. Based on the duality between MIMO MAC and BC systems, sum rate of MU MIMO BC can be obtained [6, 7]. Also, in [9], Weingarten showed that the capacity region achieved by using the DPC is exactly the same as that of the MU MIMO BC, given that the transmit powers are equal. Here, the method to calculate the (DPC) sum-rate capacity of the BC is the sum power iterative water lling method proposed in [7]. In this paper, our eort will be focused on modelling the MU MIMO BC system. Ecient and accurate channel modeling is important to help predict the performance of MIMO communication systems. However, due to the large number of parameters that are involved in channel modeling, an analytical approach is usually too dicult. This leads to the use of computer simulations. The challenge is to employ a method that is able to take all the parameters into account, and is also able to apply to most applications. Various methods are available for the simulation of the capacity of single user MIMO systems [10]. Such simulation is lacking in MU MIMO system where extensive researches on its performance are still very much ongoing. In this paper, an ecient simulation algorithm to simulate the MU MIMO system is presented. The method of modelling a single user MIMO system was proposed by Hui and Wang [11] which involves having scatterers around both the transmitting and receiving antennas to introduce random scattering events. This work is extended in this paper to include the MU MIMO system, where instead of only one single user in the receiving end, two users were implemented. Various MU MIMO systems will be built and characterizations can be done. From there, the impact of varying the number of transmitting antennas and receiving antennas will be examined. In this paper, we consider a two user BC system, where each user j and k has Rj = Rk > 1 receiving antennas and the broadcast transmitter has T 1transmitting antennas. The transmitting antennas are surrounded by P scatterers where P is xed at 50 in the far eld, and this provides the scattering events. On the receiving side, both users are surrounded by Q scatterers which is varied when appreciate to investigate the eects of scattering on the capacity. Between the two antennas, the paths of the signals are assumed to be completely random and that each propagation paths are associated with a loss factor which follows a Gaussian distributed random number which has a mean of 0 and a variance of 1. The model of the MU BC MIMO system is summarised in Fig. 1. As shown in Fig. 1, the signals follow a propagation path when travelling from the transmitter to the receivers. The loss factor associate with the path will cause the E -eld that is received in the scatterers at the receiving end, which in turns aects the current

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induced in the receiving antennas. Each antenna is designed with the intrinsic impedance of 50 and by multiplying that with the induced currents, the induced voltages across each antenna can be found. This allows us to obtain the channel matrices, H1 for user 1 and H2 for user 2. With the channel matrices, the sum-rate capacity of the system can be calculated.
2. SYSTEM MODEL

We consider a narrowband MU BC MIMO system with T transmitting antennas and Rj = Rk > 1 receiving antennas. For simplicity, the receiving antennas are named as r-th antenna, r = 1, 2, . . . , R, as shown in Fig. 1. We denote the signal voltages at the input ports of the t-th transmit antennas as Vin,1 , Vin,2 , . . . , Vin,T , and the signal voltages received at the output ports of the r-th receive antennas as Vout,1 , Vout,2 , . . . , Vout,R . The antenna terminal loads for the transmitting and receiving antennas are denoted by ZL . The MIMO channel response can then be dened as hij = Vout,i , Vin,j i = 1 , 2, . . . , R . j = 1, 2, . . . , T (1)

From (1), the channel matrix can then be dened as h11 . . . h1T . .. . . H= . . . . . hR1 . . . hRT

(2)

The channel matrix of each user can be found, and in the case of two users, two channel matrices H1 and H2 are obtained. With the channel matrices, the sum power iterative water lling method can then be used to calculate the sum-rate capacity [7]. Before moving on to discuss the steps that that are taken for the simulations, several assumptions have to be made as follows: 1) 2) 3) 4) 5) The transmitter and receiver are assumed to be separated by a large distance D [11]. The systems are narrow-band and stationed in at-fading environments [11]. The transmit power that the transmitter used is assumed to be 10 dB. The two users do not communicate with each other, i.e., non-cooperative. There are no scatterers present in the region that is between the users.

A clearer denition of the antenna spacing and user distance is shown in Fig. 2. Assume a 2 2 2 systems which has two transmitting antennas and two receiving users with two antennas each, the exact steps taken for the simulation are listed below 1) Using a unit voltage source Vin,j excite the j -th transmitting antenna.

Figure 1: The system model used in this paper. It has the transmitters on the left and two users of two antennas each on the right. The users are separated by a parameter known as user distance. The scatterers exist in the far eld and provide the scattering events. In between the transmitter and receivers, the signals go through propagation paths that are associated with a loss factor.

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Figure 2: This picture showing the denitions of antenna spacing and user spacing that are used in this paper.

2) The electric far eld of this antenna Ej,p is numerically determined in all the directions of the scatterers around the transmitter. 3) Each value of the far eld is multiply by an independent complex Gaussian random variable which has a zero mean and a unit variance. The resultant far elds from all the scatterers are then added together. This total sum is denoted as S . 4) The i-th receiving antenna is excited with a large number of plane wave sources. The number of plane wave sources is similar to the number of scatterers around the receiver. Each of these plane waves will be multiply with S that was obtained in Step 3. 5) Obtain the load current induced when excited by all the plane waves obtained in Step 4. With the load current, the voltage Vout,i that is developed across the terminal load ZL can be determined numerically. 6) As discussed above, the channel response hij which is given by Vout,i /Vin,j can be obtained. This corresponds to a single channel realisation. 7) Repeat Step 1, expect that the unit voltage source is now applied across the (j + 1)-th transmitting antenna. This will continue until the T -th transmitting antenna is being simulated. 8) With all the channel responses of the system, the channel matrices H1 and H2 can thus be calculated and obtained. H1 is obtained by considering the channel responses of Antenna 1 and 2 at the transmitter and Antenna 3 and 4 at the receiver. Similarly, H2 is obtained by considering 1 and 2 at the transmitter and Antenna 5 and 6 at the receiver. 9) H1 and H2 are then used to calculate the sum capacity using the sum power iterative water lling algorithm
3. CAPACITY SIMULATION 3.1. Normalization

Normalization is needed to remove the actual distances of the scatterers from the transmitting antennas and from the receiving antennas and the path loss for wave propagation from the transmitter to the receiver. The normalization method that will be used is to [11] calculate the average power received by a single isolated antenna when all the transmitting antennas are transmitting in the same rich multipath environment. All the channel matrix elements are then divided by this average power. In subsequent simulations, the antennas are designed with the following parameters. Each monopole is designed to be of length 29.8 mm and the operating frequency is 2.4 GHz. The antenna load impedance is xed at 50 .
3.2. Simulation Results 4 2 2 System

The rst simulation is a 4 2 2 system, which has four transmitting antennas transmitting and on the receiving side, there are two users which two antennas each. In order to characterize the MU MIMO system, we vary two parameters which are the antenna spacing and the user spacing. The number of scatterers at both sides is kept at 50. Table 1 summarizes the cases that we are considering. Case 1 allows the investigation of antenna spacing on the sum-rate capacity. In case 2, by keeping the antenna spacing constant, the eect of user spacing can be examined. In case 1, the user spacing is kept at 1 to remove correlation due to user spacing. This retains the impact of antenna spacing on sum-rate capacity. In addition, by keeping the user spacing to a 1, it prevents the error arising from the lack of considerations for scatterers that are present

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in between the two users. For case 2, the antenna spacing is kept at 0.4 in order to minimize the correlation eect due to the proximity of surrounding antennas. When the antenna spacing is varied from 0.05 to 0.4, the following sum-rate capacity is obtained. When the user spacing is varied from 0.05 to 0.7, the following sum-rate capacity is obtained. In both cases, it can be seen that as the antenna spacing and user spacing increases, the sumrate capacity increases. This is similar to the case of the Single User MIMO Systems. The main reason for the increase in capacity is that when the antenna or user spacing increases, the amount of correlation between the antennas decreases. This reduces the mutual coupling eect and brings about a higher capacity. When the mutual coupling eect is insignicant, the simulated sum-rate capacity approaches the i.i.d case. In both cases, the distance between the antenna and the user spacing is found to be 0.4 in order for the sum-rate capacity to converge.
3.3. Simulation Results 6 3 2 System

In this section, the number of antenna elements is increased. This will allow a deeper insight to the changes of the sum-rate capacity when the number of antenna elements increases. The system simulated is 6 3 2 which has six transmitting antennas and the receiving side has two users of
Table 1: Simulation parameters for two cases. Simulation Cases 1 2 Antenna Spacing Varied from 0.05 to 0.5 Kept at 0.4 User spacing Kept at 1 Varied from 0.05 to about 0.7

Figure 3: This graph shows the eect of dierent antenna spacing on the sum-rate capacity. The user spacing is kept constant at 1.

Figure 4: This graph shows the eects of varying user spacing on the sum-rate capacity. The antenna spacing is xed at 0.4.

Figure 5: The graph shows the eect of dierent antenna spacing of the MIMO array have on the sum-rate capacity when the number of antennas increases. The user spacing is kept at 1.

Figure 6: This graph shows the eect of dierent user spacing of the MIMO array have on the sumrate capacity when there are more antenna elements. The antenna spacing is kept constant at 0.4.

Progress In Electromagnetics Research Symposium Proceedings, KL, MALAYSIA, March 2730, 2012 1321 Table 2: Sum-rate capacities of various systems. MU MIMO System 422 622 422 632 Sum-rate Capacity (bits/s/Hz) 5.9828 6.2975 5.9828 7.307

three receiving antennas each. When the antenna spacing is varied from 0.05 to 0.5, the sum-rate capacity in Fig. 5 is obtained. When the user spacing is varied from 0.05 to 0.7, the sum-rate capacity in Fig. 6 is obtained. From the results, it can be seen that as the number of antenna at both the transmitting side and receiving side increases, the systems sum-rate capacities increase as well. Despite an increase in overall capacity, the capacity per antenna actually decreases. This is due to the increase in mutual coupling eect when the number of antenna elements increases.
3.4. Simulation Results Comparison

In this section, simulations will be done to examine the eect of varying the number of transmitting antennas and receiving antennas separately. To do so, the following systems will be compared. They are namely, 4 2 2 and 6 3 2 for the investigation of the eect of the number of receiving antennas, and 4 2 2 and 6 2 2 for the investigation of the eect of varying the transmitting antennas. This section is useful in practical applications as sum-rate capacity is obtained quickly by using the simulation process derived in this paper. In the simulations of the various systems, the antenna spacing is kept at 0.4 and the user spacing is 1. The power received per receiving antenna is 1W after the normalization process. The results are summarized in Table 2. It shows the eects on the sum-rate capacity when the number of transmitting antennas and receiving antennas are changed. As seen in the table, when the number of transmitting and receiving antennas increases, the sum-rate capacity increases as well. However, it can be seen that when the number of receiving antennas increases, the increase in capacity is greater. This is because in the 6 2 2 system, the system is not maximizing its capabilities as not all its transmitting beams are utilized at the same time.
4. CONCLUSION

In this paper, a simulation procedure for MU MIMO BC systems has been presented. It provides a much simpler method to model MU MIMO channels which are dicult and impractical to be analyzed using a theoretical approach. This paper also presented several results through the simulations. The simulations of the 4 2 2 and 6 3 2 systems show that the sum-rate capacities changes according to the eect of correlation and mutual coupling, the eects which are not yet extensively covered in MU MIMO research. The nal comparison across various systems helped to examine the eects of the number of transmitting antennas and receiving antennas. This will give good insights to practical implementations.
REFERENCES

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7. Jindal, N., W. Rhee, S. Vishwanath, S. A. Jafar, and A. Goldsmith, Sum power iterative water-lling for multi-antenna gaussian broadcast channels, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, Vol. 51, No. 4, 15701580, Apr. 2005 8. Costa, M. H., Writing on dirty paper, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, Vol. 29, No. 3, 439441, May 1983. 9. Weingarten, H., Y. Steinberg, and S. Shamai (Shitz), The capacity region of the gaussian multiple-input multiple-output broadcast channel, IEEE Trans. Inf. Theory, Vol. 52, No. 9, 39363964, Sep. 2006. 10. Viberg, M., T. Boman, U. Carlberg, L. Pettersson, S. Ali, and E. Arabi, Simulation of MIMO antenna systems in simulink and embedded matlab, Nordic MATLAB User Conference, Stockholm, 2008. 11. Hui, H. T. and X. Wang, Building antenna characteristics into multiple-input and multipleoutput channel simulation, International Journal of Electronics, Vol. 97, No. 6, 703714, Jun. 2010. 12. Vucetic, N. and J. Yuan, Space Time Coding, John Wiley & Sons, 2003.