Spatial Division Multiple Access (SDMA) in Wireless Communications

Bjorn Ottersten,

Royal Institute of Technology 100 44 STOCKHOLM

Signal Processing

In Proceedings of Nordic Radio Symposium, 1995 IR-S3-SB-9507

ROYAL INSTITUTE OF TECHNOLOGY

Department of Signals, Sensors & Systems Signal Processing S-100 44 STOCKHOLM

KUNGL TEKNISKA HGSKOLAN

Institutionen fr Signaler, Sensorer & System Signalbehandling 100 44 STOCKHOLM

Spatial Division Multiple Access (SDMA) in Wireless Communications

Bjorn Ottersten, Signal Processing

Royal Institute of Technology 100 44 STOCKHOLM

This paper describes the utilization of antenna arrays at the base stations of wireless communication systems. Multiple antennas can provide a processing gain to increase the base station range and improve coverage. Also, by exploiting the angular selectivity of an antenna array at the base stations of a wireless system, users may be spatially multiplexed to increase system capacity. We address several aspects of the reception and transmission problems that arise when the spatial dimension is considered. Both the forward and reverse channels are discussed and an overview of related research conducted at the signal processing group, KTH is presented.

Abstract

1 Introduction
The dramatic expansion of wireless communications over the last years has emphasized the importance of e cient use of frequency bandwidth. There is an increasing demand for capacity in wireless systems which traditionally directly translates into a demand for more bandwidth which is quite limited. Also, the infrastructural investment costs are often a limiting factor when deploying a new system that must have wide area coverage. It is therefore of great interest to increase the range by employing antenna arrays. Traditional telecommunication schemes multiplex channels in frequency and/or time. However, the spatial dimension is in general used in a very rudimentary fashion by, for example, using certain channels in certain geographical areas (cell planning). By employing an array of antennas, it is possible to multiplex channels in the spatial dimension just as in the frequency and time dimensions. Recently, a more e cient use of the spatial dimension has appeared as a means of increasing the capacity in wireless communication systems without exploiting additional bandwidth 1, 2]. By employing an array of antennas at the base stations of a cellular system when receiving and transmitting over the communication channel, the spatial dimension may be used to separate several users operating in the same channel. Also, using an array of antennas is a way of increasing the gain of the system thereby increasing the range and coverage. Of course, the hardware requirements are more demanding but this permits a sparser infrastructure and will often be more cost e ective. In general, increasing the range of cellular systems is of great interest initially, for example, 1

when deploying the new PCS system in the US. However, we may expect that demand for increased system capacity will follow shortly after adequate coverage is achieved.

2 Exploiting the Spatial Dimension

To achieve increased range in a cellular systems, it may be argued that the mobile to base communication (up link) is the critical link. It is desirable that the mobiles operate at low powers and thus, for acquisition, the base stations must be able to detect weak signals of short duration in a noisy and possibly interfering environment. In the down link (base to mobile communication), increased range may be achieved by for example increasing the transmit power. When receiving communication signals at an antenna array, the proposed signal processing methods for distinguishing di erent messages, can be grouped in two main categories; those that exploit array response information and those that do not. Since in general, the array con guration is known, the array response is known (or may be calibrated) for an incident wave from a given location 3]. This assumes that the scenario is well behaved in the sense that the propagation may be modeled by a single, or small number of paths. These methods will be referred to as using directional information and include techniques proposed in e.g. 1, 4, 5]. The other class of methods, make little or no assumptions on the array response but rely on other properties for separating the signals. In 4, 6], a reference signal is assumed available which may be correlated with the array output to achieve signal separation. This reference signal may be a known training sequence, a known code sequence 7], or may be generated by feeding back decisions 8]. There are a number of methods that make use of the constant modulus property or nite alphabet of communication signals to separate them 9, 10]. To achieve increased system capacity by employing an array of antennas at the base stations, the frequency reuse distance may be decreased 11, 12] or the frequency channels may be reused with in a cell 1] (or a combination thereof). In both cases, the interference in the system induced by other users is of course increased. In the up-link, this is manifested by the cross-talk problem. Mobiles operating on the same channel (frequency/time slot) with dramatically di erent signal amplitudes caused by, for example, fading are di cult to separate. It is di cult to adequately suppress the stronger signal when estimating the weaker signal resulting in cross-talk. In some sense the down link problem may be even more sever, especially in frequency division duplex (FDD) systems 1]. The fading caused by local scattering around the mobile (or the base station) is observable in the up-link but unobservable in the down link due to the uncorrelatedness of the fading processes at the di erent frequencies. The up and down link channels are not reciprocal. The down link problem has received limited attention. In 11] a method is proposed which does not exploit directional information whereas in 1] a modelbased approach using this information is proposed.

3 A Spatial Channel Model

In 13, 2] a model of the at fading due to local scattering is developed taking the spatial dimension into account. The propagation between the mobile and the array is modeled 2

as a superposition of a large number of rays originating from local scatterers at the mobile. We assume independent scattering, an angular distribution of the scatterers which is Gaussian (as seen from the array), and that the relative time delays for di erent propagation paths are small compared to the inverse of the bandwidth of the communication signal. Assuming a uniform linear array with element spacing in wavelengths, the signal received at the array may then be modeled as

(B( ; ))kl = e?2 (k?l)]2 2 cos2

x(t) = vs(t) + n(t) v 2 N (0; R( ; )) 2I R( ; ) p a( )a ( ) B( ; ) + n a( ) = 1; ej2 sin ; : : : ; ej2 (m?1) sin ]T

(1) (2) (3) (4) (5)

where, x(t), is a complex valued (m 1) vector, s(t) complex envelop of the transmitted signal with power p, n(t) is the additive spatially white noise, denotes element-wise multiplication, and v is a complex, Gaussian random vector with a distribution function parameterized by the nominal direction to the mobile, , and the angular spread (standard deviation), , see Figure 1. Equations (1-5) model the Rayleigh fading of the channel. If a direct path is present giving rise to a Rice distribution of the received amplitude, this may be modeled by introducing mean which is a scaled version of a( ) in (2). The vector a( ) is often termed the array response vector and represents the array output to a point source from direction . Frequency selective fading may be incorporated in the model by adding time delayed versions of the signal with di erent spatial characteristics. Also, interfering sources on the same frequency channel may eas- Figure 1: Geometry of the model characterizing the local ily be added to the model. scattering at the mobile. The spatial channel model described above has been validated against experimental data collected by Ericsson Radio Systems. In the eld experiments, a transmitter has been placed in urban areas approximately 1km from the receiving array 12]. The data has 3

Propagation Modeling and Data Experiments

been processed to gain insight into propagation e ects as well as into the behavior of some receiving algorithms. The standard deviation, , of the angular distribution is a critical parameter for SDMA systems, 1]. In 2, 13] the angular spread is found to be between two and six degrees in the experiments.

4 SDMA in the Up Link

Here, we will discuss some observations related to the model presented above. Due to the local scattering, the wavefront at the array represented by v is not planar, i.e., v 6= a( ); for any : (6) This may be interpreted as spatial diversity, i.e., the correlation between antenna elements decreases with distance, this is seen in the structure of the second moment of v in (3). The at fading becomes less sever at the array as the diversity increases, i.e., increases. Techniques that make no use of directional information, e.g., 6] e ciently exploit this fact and perform better as the angular spread increases. Methods that are based on directional information, a( ), for estimating the signals 4, 14] will in general deteriorate as the angular spread becomes larger. These methods which are related to traditional beamforming techniques, are derived from a point source model. This behavior is not surprising since v will not correspond to an array response vector for any . If the goal is to increase the range of a cellular system, this model error is not critical, however, the situation is quite di erent when attempting to host multiple mobiles in the same cell on the same frequency channel. This is most noticeable in situations where multiple mobiles are present and the signal amplitudes di er signi cantly. When estimating the weaker signal, it will be di cult to impose orthogonality to the stronger signal when constrained to the point source model resulting in cross talk between the spatial channels. Note that the signal at the array (neglecting noise) is still a low rank process lending itself to subspace based estimation techniques. However, the point source array response model is not appropriate.

5 SDMA in the Down Link

Note that we may model the down link spatial channel statistics as in (1) however, in most current FDD systems the up and down link at fading may be considered independent. If the main objective is increased range, this does not pose a major problem. However, the unobservable down link channel this one of the main obstacles if the intention is to also increase system capacity. An array could be employed at the mobile site as well but in many applications this is not considered a feasible solution. Another alternative is to attempt to estimate the channel by employing feedback 15]. This requires a complete redesign of protocols and signaling and is probably only possible in environments which are very slowly varying. This technique may be feasible for movable (rather than mobile) systems such as indoor wireless local area networks. If we are attempting to increase capacity in current FDD systems in the down link, the information gained from the signal separation techniques in the up link, can not 4

be used directly. Since the channels are not reciprocal, it is not possible to reuse an \optimal" weight vector obtained from receive data, in the transmit mode. One must at least attempt to \transform" the weights to the transmit frequency. However, this is not a well conditioned problem unless an array model is introduce. Using an array model and transforming weight vectors is precisely using directional information. It should be noted that in 11], a transmit scheme is proposed which does not use directional information. The down link scheme is based on statistical information estimated in the up link to take into account the unobservable fading. However, the frequency duplex distance is not compensated for causing the system to degrade in the presence of strong direct paths. In time division duplex (TDD) systems, the up and down link channels can be considered reciprocal if there is limited movement between receive and transmit. Up link channel information may then be used to achieve spatially selective transmission and thus increasing capacity. However, increasing capacity in current FDD cellular systems requires the use of directional information. Array response modeling is feasible for medium to large size cells with high placement of the base station antennas avoiding near eld scattering.

6 SDMA System
There are two main approaches for increasing capacity with antenna arrays. The frequency reuse distance may be decreased or multiple mobiles may be allocated to the same cell (or some combination of the above). In 1] it is shown that when directional information can be used, multiple mobiles per cell is a more e cient way of increasing capacity. Figure 2 displays the general structure of a SDMA system. There are several advantages with this approach to increasing capacity. To fully exploit de2: Possible con guration of an SDMA creased reuse distance, one must sup- Figure system. press signals to mobiles in other cells by forming nulls in the down link transmit pattern. This is very di cult even in a synchronous TDMA system because of propagation delays. With a small reuse distance, the desired and interfering signals fade independently at the mobile causing problems. Also, allocating mobiles to a frequency/spatial channel is easier when treated locally within a cell. By reducing the reuse distance, capacity is maximized when all frequencies are used in all cells whereas in the other scheme, at least in theory, capacity is hardware limited.
ANTENNA RECEIVERS / TRANS. SPATIAL DEMUX SDMA SPATIAL MUX PROCESSOR DEMODULATORS / MODULATORS

7 Summary

Providing adequate coverage and su cient capacity are two challenging problems for wireless communication systems. Antenna arrays at the base stations of cellular systems 5

can increase range compared to current systems. The capacity problem can be signi cantly mitigated by spatial division multiple access (SDMA) techniques. SDMA supports multiple connections on a single conventional channel, based on user localization steered reception and transmission schemes, and therefore assuredly o ers substantial capacity increases over current wireless system implementations.

References
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