Title:  Optimizing Multi-user MIMO for Access Point Cooperation in Dense Wireless Networks

Committee: 

Dr. Blough, Advisor       

Dr. Barry, Chair

Dr. Weitnauer

Abstract:

The objective of the proposed research is to address the fundamental problems for multi-user Multiple-Input Multiple-Output  (MIMO) with access point (AP) cooperation in dense wireless networks.  As for the preliminary research, first, a weighted sum rate maximization (WSRM) problem is investigated for AP cooperation with per-AP power constraint. Linear MIMO precoder and combiner are jointly optimized to solve the problem and determine a subset of users to be served simultaneously.  Second, a high-throughput and fair scheduling framework is developed to address the resource management problem within a single cluster, where a large number of competing users are served by cooperative APs. The proposed WSRM algorithm works as a throughput optimization procedure to first generate a set of candidate communication sets that are both high-performing and have a good representation among all users. Then, the scheduling problem is to maximize the aggregate throughput while meeting a specified fairness objective.  For the proposed work, the fast user selection with MIMO weights design will be developed to improve the computational efficiency. Besides, MIMO link scheduling will be proposed to deal with the mobile users with time-varying channels. Finally, solutions which allow the proposed approaches for single cluster to scale to large number of APs will be investigated, which include the coordination scheme across clusters and interference management for cluster-edge users.