ACCEPTED FROM OPEN CALL
Achieving High Spectrum Efficiency on
High Speed Train for 5G New Radio and Beyond
Shuangfeng Han, Chih-Lin I, Tian Xie, Sen Wang, Yuhong Huang, Linglong Dai, Qi Sun, and Chunfeng Cui
Abstract
Realizing high mobile data rates in high mobility
scenarios has been an important yet challenging
target for wireless communications. One typical sce-
nario of such “double high” communications is the
HST, which has been one of the most representative
infrastructures in more and more countries, especial-
ly in China. However, the current SE in HST com-
munications according to the measurements is far
from satisfactory to meet the data rate demand gen-
erated by the intensive users on HSTs. To address
this issue, potential technologies to improve the SE
performance of HST communications under various
CSI assumptions are presented in this article. Specif-
ically, two open loop beamforming methods with
the help of location information (i.e., the location
based MIMO precoding and the location assisted
MIMO precoder cycling) are first proposed, which
are shown to be robust to HST channel variations.
Then, we study closed loop beamforming strategies,
where channel prediction is proposed to be the key
to obtain the essential CSI (e.g., channel matrix or
channel covariance) with a low overhead. As HSTs
usually go through complicated environments, a
big data aided adaptation mechanism between the
investigated methods is further proposed. Numerical
results demonstrate that the proposed approaches
are capable of achieving over 10 SE performance
than the current HST transmission strategies and
worthy to be studied and discussed in the future 5G
New Radio (NR) standardization. It is anticipated
that communications with high data rates in high
mobility scenarios will be well supported for HSTs
in the 5G era.
Introduction
With the expected initial commercialization in
2020, 5G mobile communication is gathering
increasing interest and momentum around the
world [1, 2]. Currently, the 3rd Generation Part-
nership Project (3GPP) is actively progressing in
the standardization of 5G new radio (NR). New
features and solutions have been adopted in NR
technical reports and specifications, including the
service based network architecture, the two-layer
(central unit and distributed unit) radio access net-
work architecture, the air interface with flexible
frame structure, and so on.
For the future direction of NR standardization,
it would be necessary to examine the performance
gap between 5G requirements and the current
Digital Object Identifier: Shuangfeng Han, Chih-Lin I, Tian Xie, Sen Wang, Yuhong Huang, Dai, Qi Sun, and Chunfeng Cui are with the
10.1109/MWC.001.1800260 China Mobile Research Institute; Linglong Dai is with Tsinghua University.
62 1536-1284/19/$25.00 © 2019 IEEE
NR specification. The Key Performance Indica-
tors (KPIs) for 5G, as defined by the International
Telecommunications Union (ITU) [3], include peak
data rates of 20 Gb/s, user experienced data rates
of 100 Mb/s, supporting up to 500 km/h mobility,
less than 1 ms latency, and so on. Although not all
requirements are supposed to be fulfilled simulta-
neously, the design of networks and radio access
for 5G should provide enough flexibility to support
various applications in diversified scenarios [4].
A closer look at 5G standardization and the
anticipated service requirements may bring our
attention to the scenario with diversified KPIs.
One typical example is the high speed train (HST),
which features a speed of over 350 km/h, inten-
sive passenger density, a possibly higher service
activating ratio, and a higher probability of high
data rate service such as high definition (HD) vid-
eos. The recent development of HSTs (especially in
China) as an emerging high mobility transportation
system has revealed the urgent demand for high
spectrum efficiency (SE) in HST communications,
especially for those countries lacking abundantly
available high frequency bands (e.g., millimeter
wave band) and having to rely on lower frequen-
cy bands around 3.5 GHz. To give a brief com-
putation of the SE demand in HST scenarios, we
only consider the data traffic generated from the
passengers. A rough way to calculate the required
HST SE can be introduced as follows. Suppose a
HST with 1000 passengers and a 30 percent ser-
vice activation ratio. For each passenger, a mini-
mum 5 Mb/s downlink data rate is supposed to
be provided. Given 100 MHz bandwidth at 3.5
GHz bands, the minimum required SE should be
15 bps/Hz. Moreover, other systems in HSTs such
as surveillance devices will also incur high data traf-
fic, which further aggravates the SE demand in HST
scenarios. However, as measured by China Mobile,
the actual SE in China Railway High-speed (CRH)
is only 1 bps/Hz. Therefore, the SE performance in
the HST scenario needs to be boosted significantly.
However, achieving high SE in HST scenarios
is not a trivial task. Conventionally, the high rank
single-user (SU) MIMO and multiple-user (MU)
MIMO based on various channel information
assumptions are utilized to boost the SE perfor-
mance, which allow simultaneous transmission of
multiple data streams [5]. Unfortunately, high rank
SU-MIMO is not very feasible in HST scenarios,
since the channel is generally rank deficient due
to the strong antenna correlation. Additionally,
IEEE Wireless Communications • October 2019
it is also challenging to implement convention-
al MU-MIMO in HST communications, because
the base stations are generally deployed close to
the railways and the severe inter-user interference
would significantly degrade the system perfor-
mance.
Employing beamforming to improve the SE is
an efficient and promising approach in HST scenar-
ios, which has been widely studied recently [6–8].
Train-trackside network architectures based on dif-
ferent MIMO techniques, including beamforming
and spatial multiplexing, were proposed for milli-
meter-wave HST communication in [6]. Low com-
plexity MIMO-OFDM transmission schemes based
on simple antenna selection methods with spatial
multiplexing were investigated in [7] to boost the
throughput of HST communications. In [8], low
complexity beamforming strategies with transmit
diversity were proposed for line of sight (LOS) sce-
narios, where the location of HST helps the BSs
to generate beams to the roof-top relays. These
beamforming methods for HST scenarios are high-
ly dependent on the accurate channel state infor-
mation (CSI). To address this issue, an expectation
maximization based uplink blind channel estimator
using historical information was designed in [9]
for HST scenarios. In [10], a position information
aided channel estimation scheme was proposed,
where only parts of the transmit antennas send
pilots to reduce the overhead. Apart from the full
dimension CSI, a hardware framework to estimate
the m-parameter in Nakagami fading channels was
investigated in [11], which presented satisfying per-
formance in various HST environments. However,
the performance of CSI acquisition strategies gen-
erally degrades as the mobility of users increases,
which makes it challenging to apply current beam-
forming methods in HST scenarios.
Therefore, exploring beamforming approaches
robust to the time-varying HST channels is the key
to enable high SE performance in HST communi-
cations. Very recent channel measurement of HST
scenarios reveals that the channel characteristics of
typical HST scenarios such as open space, cuttings,
viaducts, tunnels, hilly terrain, stations, and cross-
ing bridges have their distinguishing characteristics
of pathloss, shadowing, Rician K-factors, angular,
Doppler and delay spread [12]. More important-
ly, line-of-sight (LOS) with various K-factors (e.g.,
smaller than 0 dB in tunnels, very small in viaducts,
or distance dependent in open space rural areas) is
the dominant channel characteristic in most scenar-
ios [12, 13]. Compared with beamforming using
accurate full dimension CSI, beamforming focusing
on the LOS part of CSI is much easier to imple-
ment and more robust to the motion of HSTs, thus
more suitable for HST communications.
In this article, we endeavor to explore poten-
tial transmission schemes to achieve high SE on
HSTs, with various channel information assump-
tions for diversified HST scenarios. In the follow-
ing section, we will study open loop beamforming
methods with the help of location information of
the HSTs, where a location based MIMO precod-
ing and a location assisted MIMO precoder cycling
approach are proposed. Open loop beamform-
ing, which does not require explicit accurate CSI, is
more robust to channel variations and can achieve
moderate SE performance. This article then contin-
ues to study the closed loop beamforming, where
IEEE Wireless Communications • October 2019
channel prediction is the key method to obtain the We assume that the
channel matrix or channel covariance with a low location information
overhead. The proposed channel prediction based of each relay can be
beamforming can achieve high SE performance, estimated accurately
especially in scenarios with strong LOS compo-
nents. As the HSTs will go through diversified sce- via global positioning
narios, it is critical to design an efficient framework system (GPS) and is fed
to switch between the proposed MIMO modes. To back to the BS period-
address this, a big data aided adaptation mecha- ically. Note that the
nism of the proposed MIMO modes is then inves- omnidirectional uplink
tigated. After that, we highlight some promising
future research opportunities for HST communica- transmission of the
tions. Finally, we conclude the article. relay’s GPS information
or sounding signals can
Location Information Assisted achieve much better
Open Loop Schemes performance than the
beam based directional
In this section, we will introduce several open
loop transmission schemes in HST scenarios, uplink transmission.
which are able to achieve high spectrum efficien-
cy, and do not rely on explicit CSI. To achieve this
target, we find that the location information of the
HSTs is helpful in beamforming designs.
Location Based Beamforming for LOS Scenarios
In LOS scenarios, the signals can be directly beam-
formed toward the trains with help of location
information. To enable this, we first introduce the
considered topology in HST scenarios as shown
in Fig. 1a, where each carriage is equipped with
one relay deployed on the roof top. These relays
have omnidirectional antennas to communicate
with the BSs and then transmit (or receive) data to
(from) the passengers in the carriage. We assume
that the location information of each relay can be
estimated accurately via global positioning system
(GPS) and is fed back to the BS periodically. Note
that the omnidirectional uplink transmission of the
relay’s GPS information or sounding signals can
achieve much better performance than the beam
based directional uplink transmission.
Once the location information is obtained, the
BS is capable of implementing location based beam-
forming to all relays, which constructs optimized
beamforming vectors in LOS scenarios and even
exhibit acceptable performance in some NLOS
scenarios [12, 13]. If there is no GPS available, the
beamforming weights can be designed based on
the uplink angles of arrival (AOAs), which can be
accurately estimated via Multiple Signal Classifica-
tion (MUSIC) or Estimation of Signal Parameters
via Rotational Invariance Technique (ESPRIT) algo-
rithms. Therefore, location based multi-beamforming
seems motivated in LOS dominant environments,
for example, the open rural areas.
The topology of the HST wireless communica-
tion network is simplified in Fig. 1b, where D is the
BS-railway distance, L is the length of HST, and C
is the cell edge point on the railway. For location
based beamforming, the performance is mainly
determined by inter-beam interference, which
ultimately depends on the width of each beam,
q = a – b, and the number of beams.
Suppose the SE requirement at point C is X bps/
Hz. We need to jointly determine the BS antenna
number N, the transmit power P, the BS-railway
distance D, and the BS-BS distance x + L to meet
the cell edge SE target. The distance D and x + L
can be represented as a function of a, q, and L.
For a given q, it can be easily derived that there is
63
 only one optimal a maximizing the BS-BS distance,
thus minimizing the density of BSs correspondingly.
Therefore, one possible approach to determine
the network topology is provided. The optimal a
can be found for each given q, and the cell edge
SE can also be obtained for each (a, q) combina-
tion given the BS antenna number N and transmit
power P. Then, the best combination can be select-
ed out of those (a, q) candidates, which maximizes
the distance x + L. In the above discussions, we do
not consider the height of BSs for the presentation
clarity. However, the analysis in this section can be
(a) Beamforming to HST relays easily extended to optimize the BS height as well.
In Fig. 2, we present the relationships between
x L (length of the HST)
x + L and D under different antenna number N and
transmit power P settings given a 15 bps/Hz sum
A
rate threshold.1 In addition, fully digital beamform-
(distance to railway)

D E C ing is considered in our cases, where the BS gener-

ates one beam for each relay based on their spatial
directions. The signal-to-interference-and-noise-ratio
D

(SINR) for the kth user is defined as

T Pηk a
G (θ )
Pksig N k k
SINR k = inf =
BS Pk + σ 2k Pηi a (1)
∑ Gi (θ k ) + σ 2k
i≠k N
(b) Network topology in HST scenarios
sig inf a
where P k , P k , hk, G k , and s k2 represent the
The mth carriage received signal power, the received interference
power, the path loss, the antenna gain, and the
A noise power for the kth relay, respectively. Addi-
tionally, P denotes the BS total transmit power,
D P 
EP  and N is the number of BS antennas. The 3GPP
path loss model is employed to generate h k, and
a
the antenna gain Gk can be calculated as
N –1 2
Gka (θ) = ∑ e j2πnd[cos(θk )−cos(θ)] , (2)
BS n=0
where d = 0.5 denotes the normalized antenna
(c) Beamforming with precoder cycling spacing, and qk is the broadside angle for the kth
relay’s beam.
FIGURE 1. The HST topology with beamforming: a) beamforming to HST
The basic finding is that under certain configura-
relays; b) network topology in HST scenarios; c) beamforming with precod- tions of N and P, there is an optimal D (the BS-Rail-
er cycling. way distance) that maximizes x + L (half of the BS-BS
distance along the railway), namely the optimized
650 D-L point. For example, when N = 32, the optimal
D is around 400 m, which yields the largest x + L.
N=32, P=24 dBm This is because either a too small or too large D will
600 N=32, P=29 dBm lead to a small q, which aggravates the inter beam
N=32, P=34 dBm interference between relays. Further, we observe
N=64, P=24 dBm
Optmized BS-BS distance (m)

550 that as the antenna number N or transmit power

N=64, P=29 dBm
P increases, the optimized D-L point will generally
N=64, P=34 dBm
move to the upper right, since a larger N provides
500 higher beamforming gains, and a higher transmit
power P leads to a larger coverage of the BS. In
450 addition, the increase of antenna number N will
play a more important role, since it can generate
narrower beams to improve the beamforming gain
400 and reduce the inter beam interference at the same
time. In contrast, a higher transmit power P increas-
350 es the received signal power and the inter-beam
interference simultaneously. Note that the proposed
location based beamforming method in HST sce-
300
narios can be applied to any frequency bands, for
example, sub-6 GHz and mmWave bands.
250
100 200 300 400 500 600
1 It should be pointed out that the results in Fig. 2 only serve as
BS-Railway distance (m) an example to illustrate the proposed optimization methodology.
In practical systems, the BS-railway distance should not exceed
FIGURE 2. Optimized BS-BS distance under different system configurations. 200 m in general [12].

64 IEEE Wireless Communications • October 2019

 Generally, there exists a gap between the
time when the GPS information is obtained at
the relays and the time when downlink data is
transmitted from the BS. Based on the GPS infor-
mation and the train’s speed and direction, the
BS could predict the exact location of each relay
when the downlink transmission starts. Moreover,
in the above location based beamforming, per-
fect GPS information of each relay is assumed.
In reality, however, the GPS location may not
be accurate enough, for example, possibly 1 ∼
3 m away from the real location. Beamforming
based on imperfect GPS information may surely
bring performance degradation, especially when
the HST is at point A, since the coverage of each
beam is the smallest at this point and the GPS
location error may incur severe performance loss.
One natural way to mitigate performance deg-
radation is to make the beam coverage much
larger than the GPS location error, for example,
using multiple adjacent narrow beams to trans-
mit the same data to each relay. Reducing the
antenna number may not be the optimal choice
since the inter-beam interference will be much (a) Performance of precoder cycling in multipath case 1
higher, thus possibly being incapable of meeting
the SE target. For lack of space, this issue will be
addressed in detail elsewhere.

Location Assisted MIMO Precoder Cycling

When the Rician K-factors for the HST channels
are relatively small, the location based beamform-
ing might not function well, because the optimal
beamforming direction is usually unknown due to
the weak LOS signals. In such situations, diversity
schemes such as precoder cycling or space time/
frequency block code can be employed. Take
precoder cycling as an example, whose princi-
ple is that when the transmitter does not have
any information of the channel, it will random-
ly select precoders from the codebook. When
the BS knows the location of the relays in Rician
channels with small K-factors, location assisted
precoder cycling schemes may help to significant-
ly enhance the SE performance.
One example of HST precoder cycling design
can be referred to as follows. The BS generates
a set of precoders for each relay, each of which
is designed to concentrate the transmitted signal
power in one certain direction around the relay, (b) Performance of precoder cycling in multipath case 2
as shown in Fig. 1c. Two cases with different mul-
tipath distributions are simulated under the sys- FIGURE 3. Precoder cycling for HST communications: a) performance of pre-
tem settings that D = 100 m, b = 45°, the HST has coder cycling in multipath case 1; b) performance of precoder cycling in
eight carriages, and the length of each carriage multipath case 2.
is 25 m. For simplicity, there are two signal paths
with equal power from the BS to each relay for to increase, the SE will decrease instead, since
both cases. In case 1 shown in Fig. 3a, the angular the beam width with more antennas gets smaller
directions of the signal paths are 2.5° and –2.5° and the received signal power at each relay will
deviation from the direction of each relay to the be smaller if the beamforming direction and the
BS, while in case 2 shown in Fig. 3b, the angular multipath direction mismatches. In addition, cycling
directions of the signal paths changed to 2.5° and with two precoders performs better than other
4°. The SE performance of four transmit schemes is schemes, because among the uniformly distributed
presented. Scheme 1 is relay location based beam- two precoders (with direction 3° and –3°), three
forming. Scheme 2 to 4 are precoder cycling in fre- precoders (with direction 3°, 0°, and –3°) and four
quency domain with two, three, and four precoders precoders (with direction 4°, 1°, –2°, and –5°), the
designed around the direction of the relay to the BS. two-precoder design best matches the multipath
From Fig. 3a, the SE performance of loca- distribution. Similar trends can also be observed in
tion based precoding generally improves as the Fig. 3b, where the main differences are that cycling
antenna number increases. This is mainly due to with three precoders performs worst owing to its
a reduced inter-beam interference with more BS poor match with the multipath distribution. For
antennas. When the antenna number continues both cases, precoder cycling schemes outperform

IEEE Wireless Communications • October 2019 65

 location based beamforming when the BS antenna
number is large (e.g., 16 and above) and the gap
increases as the antenna number gets larger.
According to the above analysis, to achieve a
favorable SE performance, the precoder codebook
for cycling is expected to be designed based on
channel multipath distributions.
Prediction Based Closed Loop Schemes
In this section, we discuss the feasibility of utilizing
the outdated CSI through predicting methods to
achieve high spectrum efficiency in HST scenari-
os. We present that channel prediction is a prom-
ising framework to enable closed loop schemes in
HST schemes.
(a) Performance of CSI prediction with 2 ms gap
(b) Performance of CSI prediction with 8 ms gap
FIGURE 4. MIMO precoding based on CSI prediction: a) performance of CSI
prediction with 2 ms gap; b) performance of CSI prediction with 8 ms gap.
66
MIMO Precoding Based on
Instantaneous CSI Prediction
Exploring the instantaneous CSI to enhance the
spectrum efficiency in HST scenarios is very chal-
lenging, since the acquired CSI is easily outdated
due to the short channel coherence time (e.g., less
than 1 ms). Fortunately, the predictable tracks of
trains provide the feasibility of predicting the instan-
taneous CSI with a low overhead and high accura-
cy, especially when the HST channel demonstrates
an obvious LOS characteristic, thus significantly
improving the SE of the system. Measurement
results have shown the predictability of the LOS
HST channels in a certain number of scenarios
[13]. Take the rural scenario as an example. The
LOS component may highly possibly experience a
power variation less than 0.2 dB during a time win-
dow of 60 ms for a speed of 350 km/h [13].
To be specific, denote H(t) = HLOS(t) + HNLOS(t)
the downlink channel matrix at time t, where HLOS
and HNLOS are the estimated LOS and NLOS chan-
nel components. The BS can predict the channel
H(t + d), that is, H(t + d) = HLOS(t + d) + HNLOS(t
+ d), where HLOS is a prediction of the downlink
LOS channel based on HLOS and the estimate of
path angle changing during t to t + d, and HNLOS
denotes a prediction of the NLOS channel which
is actually independent of HNLOS if d is larger than
the coherence time.
Simulation results are presented in Fig. 4 to ver-
ify the applicability of instantaneous CSI prediction
in MIMO precoding by considering Rician chan-
nels with various K-factors. We assume that the
network topology illustrated in Fig. 2 is employed,
the number of BS antennas is 64, and the train
speed is 500 km/h. Two different scenarios are
considered, that is, the estimated CSI for down-
link precoding (or for prediction) is outdated by 2
ms and 8 ms, respectively. For the CSI prediction
approach, we focus on updating the LOS compo-
nent according to the tracks of trains and outdated
CSI, which has been introduced in the above. From
Fig. 4, we can first find that the SE performance
with ideal CSI available is surely the best (achieved
via zero-forcing precoding), while the performance
of MU-MIMO based on outdated CSI is severely
degraded and the performance loss will increase as
the outdating time gets larger, for example, from
2 ms to 8 ms. Then, we also observe that the SE
performance of the MU-MIMO based on CSI pre-
diction will improve as the K-factor increases. So
is the SE performance gap between outdated CSI
based precoding and CSI predication based pre-
coding. Even for the case with 0 dB K-factor, SE
performance can be over 10 bps/Hz. However,
the gain of CSI prediction is achieved via slightly
increasing the reference signals overhead, which
possibly incurs additional signal delays.
Quite contrary to the widely accepted think-
ing that CSI on HST is hard to be obtained due to
its fast variation, our finding reveals that when the
K-factor is large, CSI can even be predicted and
utilized to achieve much better performance.
MIMO Precoding Based on
Channel Covariance Prediction
When the LOS channel component is not that
dominant, precoding based on instantaneous CSI
prediction will suffer from an obvious performance
IEEE Wireless Communications • October 2019
degradation. In such a scenario, a more practical
assumption is that the statistical CSI (e.g., channel
covariance) is available at the BS, since the chan-
nel statistics are likely to remain unchanged for a
longer period. However, the channel covariance
matrix supposed to be unchanged within a certain
time duration in low mobility scenarios, is actually
a function of time and train speed in HST scenar-
ios, and may still be outdated for downlink data
transmission.
To address the outdating problem of chan-
nel covariance, one straightforward method is to
reduce the time window T for channel measure-
ment. For the HST scenario, the subcarrier spac-
ing of the OFDM system can be as large as 60
kHz for lower bands (below 6 GHz) and several
hundreds of kHz for higher bands (e.g., millimeter
wave bands). Correspondingly, the symbol dura-
tion can be much smaller, for example, 16.66 us
for 60 kHz subcarrier spacing. This allows the BS to
collect enough samples of the channel to obtain its
covariance matrix within very short time duration,
for example, 5 ms. The distance traveled within
5 ms on HST is not that large (usually less than one
meter), thus significantly enhancing the usability of (a) Performance of covariance prediction with 5 dB K-factor
the covariance matrix for data precoding. Chan-
nel prediction can also be utilized to predict the
desired covariance channel for the following down-
link transmission.
To further reduce the overhead incurred at
each relay for sending uplink reference signals, the
covariance matrices measured by a certain relay
can be reused by the other relays. Given the dis-
tance between adjacent relays and the speed of
HST, the BS can calculate the precoders for the
other relays at proper downlink transmission slots
through reusing the covariance matrix of the first
relay. To this end, careful calibrations are required
among circuits for all the relays.
The performance of covariance based precod-
ing is illustrated in Fig. 5, where we consider a TDD
system with the same network configuration as in
Fig. 3 and adopt the typical Rician channel models
with different K-factors. The number of antennas
in the BS is N = 64. We assume that the train is
leaving the current BS and each relay measures
its covariance matrix through uplink reference sig-
nals (RSs) every 180 ms (exactly the time the train
takes to move the distance of one carriage). The
relays periodically send uplink RSs each 1 ms to
(b) Performance of covariance prediction with 15 dB K-factor
let the BS estimate the instantaneous CSI, and the
BS collects all CSI matrices within 180 ms to obtain FIGURE 5. Covariance matrix based MIMO precoding: a) Performance of
the covariance matrix. The covariance matrix mea- covariance prediction with 5 dB K-factor; b) Performance of covariance
sured by the former relay will be used by the lat- prediction with 15 dB K-factor.
ter ones to compute downlink precoders through
eigenvalue decompositions. To give a fair com- covariance based scheme gets smaller as the
parison, we normalize all precoders to have equal K-factor increases.
Frobenius norms of N. One important feature of HST communication
We find that in both Figs. 5a and 5b, the SE is that the power poles are uniformly and dense-
performance with refined covariance (i.e., each ly deployed along the railway, which may affect
relay uses the covariance matrix of the previous the channel measurement results. For HST with a
relay) outperforms that with the outdated covari- speed of 500 km/h, each power pole may block
ance (each relay uses its own covariance matrix). the relay for several milliseconds. The channel
Along with the increase of time, the train moves covariance matrix measured within this period can
away from the BS, resulting in a much reduced hardly be utilized for the data precoding in the
q. The SE performance of the three schemes next time window. Fortunately, this adverse impact
decreases accordingly to more severe inter- can be eliminated due to its periodicity, for exam-
beam interferences, and improves as the K-factor ple, the BS can discard these measurement results
increases. Also, the performance gap between and use a predicated covariance matrix based on
the perfect covariance based scheme and refined previous measurements.

IEEE Wireless Communications • October 2019 67

Thanks to the very high
probability of success-
Big Data Assisted Transmit Scheme Adaptation
ful prediction on HST’s In previous sections, four MIMO schemes are
mobility and location, proposed to achieve high spectrum efficiency on
HST, considering different channel characteristics
big data analytics may and CSI availability. Different HST scenarios (e.g.,
help to establish the rural, cuttings, viaducts, tunnels, stations, and cross-
mapping between opti- ing bridges) are featured by distinguished chan-
mal transmit schemes nel characteristics. Moreover, even for the same
and HST’s location kind of scenario, the CSI quality and accuracy may
also vary in different environments. Therefore, to
or channel statistics. provide consistent spectral efficiency, the MIMO
Various simulation transmission schemes should be smartly adapted to
results have shown the match the dedicated scenarios and CSI availability.
proposed schemes are Big data analytics [14, 15] help to facilitate
capable of achieving the optimal transmit scheme adaptation. Through
exploitation of the massive amount of contextual
multifold SE perfor- data, such as the trajectory and timetable of the
mance enhancement. train, the related vast amount of control signaling,
High mobility and high CSI obtained by reference signals estimation or
data rate are expected feedback, and the corresponding key performance
to be well supported indicator during the data transmission, it is able to
track, learn and build the CSI and channel charac-
for HST scenarios in teristics profiles and make intelligent transmission
the 5G era. scheme adaptation.
One promising solution is to train a classifica-
tion model for the optimal transmission scheme
with powerful machine learning tools (e.g., sup-
port vector machine or neural network), based on
the above mentioned historical contextual data.
With the trained model and real-time environ-
ment sensing, the optimal transmit scheme can be
accurately predicted. For example, the multipath
distribution can be analyzed beforehand, and a
mapping between location and the optimal num-
ber of precoders for cycling can be established.
Another example is that the optimal number of
relays simultaneously served by the BS may vary
since q is changing as the train moves. This can also
be done beforehand. Thus the SE performance can
be improved dramatically.
Future Research Opportunities
Serving HST Passengers without Relays: Not
all HST carriages can be equipped with relays
in practice due to the existing carriage contour
designs. For HSTs that are not equipped with
relays, direct communication between BSs and
passengers can be an alternative approach, but
still faces many challenges. For example, it would
be more difficult to obtain the CSI at the BS due
to complicated indoor scattering environments
and severe penetration loss. Location based
beamforming would be almost impossible as the
positioning accuracy can be much degraded in
such scenarios.
New Waveform Designs in HST Scenarios:
There have been considerable discussions on
whether a new type of transmission waveform
shall be adopted for 5G new radio on top of the
incumbent CP aided OFDM, such as filter bank
multicarrier (FBMC), generalized frequency-di-
vision multiplexing (GFDM), and so on. It still
remains unclear whether new waveform designs
are necessary to meet the requirements in HST
scenarios, especially the potentially very high SE
with very high mobility.
SE Enhancement in HSTs with Machine Learning
Methods: Machine learning for wireless commu-
nications, which has attracted much attention
68
recently, may help to potentially enhance the
SE in HST scenarios with its powerful predicting
ability. Due to the fixed railway tracks and gen-
erally constant speed of HSTs, the previously
measured channel information (CSI or channel
statistics) may possibly be utilized for the same
train or other trains running along the same track.
Machine learning methods can also help to track,
learn, and build the characteristic profiles of the
HST channels and facilitate the intelligent commu-
nication between the BS and HST.
Conclusions
High Speed Train is an important yet extremely
challenging scenario for future 5G wireless com-
munication systems. In this article, four potential
MIMO transmission technologies to achieve high
spectrum efficiency on HSTs are investigated, with
various channel information assumptions. Smart
adaptation of these schemes is further discussed.
Thanks to the very high probability of success-
ful prediction on HST’s mobility and location, big
data analytics may help to establish the mapping
between optimal transmit schemes and HST’s
location or channel statistics. Various simulation
results have shown the proposed schemes are
capable of achieving multifold SE performance
enhancement. High mobility and high data rate
are expected to be well supported for HST sce-
narios in the 5G era.
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IEEE Wireless Communications • October 2019
 Biographies
Shuangfeng Han (hanshuangfeng@chinamobile.com) received
his Ph.D. degree in electronic engineering from Tsinghua Univer-
sity in 2006. He is Fellow of the China Mobile Research Institute.
His research interests are mainly focused on 5G wireless commu-
nication systems and beyond, including massive MIMO, flexible
duplex, non-orthogonal multiple access, energy efficiency and
spectrum efficiency co-design, high spectrum efficiency technolo-
gies for high speed trains, and the application of wireless big data.
Chih-Lin I (icl@chinamobile.com) received her Ph.D. degree in
electrical engineering from Stanford University in 1988. She has
been working at AT&T Bell Labs, Director of AT&T HQ, Director
of ITRI Taiwan, and VPGD of ASTRI Hong Kong. In 2011, she
joined China Mobile as its chief scientist of wireless technolo-
gies. She is spearheading major initiatives including 5G, C-RAN,
high energy efficiency system architectures, technologies and
devices, and green energy.
Tian Xie (xietian@chinamobile.com) received his M.S. degree in
electronic engineering from Tsinghua University, Beijing, China, in
2018. He has been a researcher with the China Mobile Research
Institute since then. His research interests are massive MIMO, milli-
meter-wave communications, and new waveform design.
Sen Wang (wangsenyjy@chinamobile.com) received his Ph.D.
degree in information and communication engineering from
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China, in
2013. After graduation, he joined the Green Communication
Research Center (GCRC), China Mobile Research Institute, as a
project manager. His research interests include MIMO, multiple
access, radio resource allocation, and performance evaluation
for future cellular networks.
IEEE Wireless Communications • October 2019
Y uhong H uang (huangyuhong@chinamobile.com) received
her M.S. degree from Beijing University of Post and Telecom-
munications, China. She is the Deputy General Manager of the
China Mobile Research Institute. She has participated in several
important projects such as technical and strategic research,
specification, test and trial of GSM900/1800, GPRS/EDGE,
CMNet, WLAN, 3G, 4G TD-LTE and 5G. She is a board member
of NGMN and O-RAN.
Linglong Dai (daill@tsinghua.edu.cn) received his Ph.D. degree
in electronic engineering from Tsinghua University in 2011. He
is an associate professor with the Department of Electronic Engi-
neering, Tsinghua University, Beijing, China. His current research
interests include massive MIMO, millimeter-wave/THz commu-
nications, multiple access, sparse signal processing, and machine
learning for wireless communications.
Q i S un (sunqiyjy@chinamobile.com) received her Ph.D.
degree in information and communication engineering from
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications in 2014.
After graduation, she joined the Green Communication
Research Center of the China Mobile Research Institute. Her
current research interests include cross-layer resource allo-
cation for wireless networks, and big data enabled wireless
network design.
Chunfeng Cui (cuichunfeng@chinamobile.com) received his
Ph.D. degree from Beijing University of Posts and Communica-
tions in 2003, and has been with the China Mobile R&D Center
since then. He is the director of the Green Communications
Research Center of the China Mobile Research Institute. His
work focuses on the standardization of wireless communications
and research on advanced wireless communications.
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