22nd International Conference on Telecommunications (ICT 2015)

A Wavelet Compression Based Channel Feedback

Protocol for Spatially Correlated Massive MIMO
Systems

Pengbiao Wang*, Junfeng Wangt, Chenglin Zhao* and Xiaokai Liu*

*Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications,
School of Information and Telecommunication Engineering, Beijing, China
Email: {pbwang, clzhao, liu_xiaokai}@bupt.edu.cn
^The State Radio Monitoring Center Testing Center, Beijing, China
Email: wangjunfeng@srtc.org.cn

AbstractEquipped with large scale antenna arrays, massive
multiple input multiple output systems are qualified with several
benefits including enhanced throughput, power efficiency, and
anti-interference ability, etc. The acquisition of such advantages
requires adequate channel state information at transmitter. In
frequency division duplex multiple input multiple output systems,
channel state information is extracted through channel feedback
mechanism which is not easy to implement due to the fact
that the feedback overhead is critical with so many antennas.
However, large scale antenna arrays may introduce correlation
elements into channel state information due to the limit of the base
station size. Therefore, we propose a wavelet compression based
channel feedback protocol aiming to reduce the feedback load
by exploiting the correlation features among large scale antenna
arrays. We take a point-to-point massive multiple input multiple
output system into consideration, and both Jakes correlation
model and exponential correlation model are applied to make the
numerical simulations and verify the performance of the proposed
wavelet compression based feedback scheme.
I. INTRODUCTION
Massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) has attract-
ed the attention of academia for several years since Marzetta
firstly introduced this concept in 2010 [1]. Equipped with an
order of magnitude more elements than systems like long-term
evolution (LTE) that is being built today, massive MIMO offers
a plethora of advantages over conventional MIMO systems
including huge improvements in throughput, potential power
savings, inexpensive low-power components, simplification of
the media access control (MAC) layer, robustness to inter-
ference and others. It thus contains a new research field in
communication theory and propagation theory etc. High di-
mensional channel vectors bring in overwhelming overhead to
acquire channel state information (CSI) [2], [3]. Consequently,
obtaining accurate CSI plays a key role in promoting system
performance in massive MIMO systems.
In general, there have two threads to achieve the acquisition
of CSI in MTMO systems corresponding to their duplex modes:
time division duplex (TDD) mode and frequency division
duplex (FDD) mode. In TDD mode, the leading advantage
is base station (BS) can implicitly get CSI profit from channel
reciprocity if adequate training method and pilots designed
in the uplink [1]. In FDD mode, however, a given range of
spectrum is divided in two uncorrelated parts allocated to
uplink and downlink respectively. To get CSI, a common way
is to occupy part of uplink resources to feed back CSI to the
BS [4], [5]. This kind of limited feedback mechanism has been
studied for a long time.
A large body of literature devoted to accurate CSI acquisi-
tion for MIMO FDD systems is presented in [6]. Performance
of a series of feedback approaches applied in different sce-
narios is analyzed theoretically and verified by simulations.
Among these, codebook based feedback algorithms including
vector quantizaiton approach are the most commonly adopted
feedback designs and have gained excellent performance in
conventional MIMO systems [7]. When it turns to massive MI-
MO systems, however, due to the fact that feedback overhead,
storage requirement and codeword searching computational
complexity would be substantial with excess antennas, these
codebook based approaches appear to be infeasible. This
motivates designing highly efficient CSI feedback mechanisms.
In [8], a new hierarchical codebook and an adaptive se-
lection algorithm are proposed to make a tradeoff between
the system performance and feedback overhead and to reduce
the feedback overhead without impacting the precoding per-
formance in some case. It is worth noting further, the increase-
ment in the number of antennas with space constraints reduces
inter-antennas spacing and brings correlation among antennas
[9]. To adapt spatially correlated regime, a noncoherent trellis
coded quantization method is developed in [10]. In addition,
compression based method provides another view of reducing
feedback load. Junho Lee used sparse approximation to exploit
the correlation information and project large dimensional CSI
onto low dimensional random sequences [9]. And compressive
sensing (CS) based channel feedback protocols to reduce
feedback overhead are also provided in [11].
In this paper, we propose to adopt wavelet compression
to reduce CSI feedback data size. Wavelets, rooted in ap-
proximation theory, are a mathematical tool for hierarchically
decomposing functions which have been widely applied to
image compression and shown to be pretty effective [12].
However, its rare to see wavelet transformation (WT) based
compression used in channel state acquisition. This paper, to
our knowledge, is the first to study how to use WT to exploit
the sparse structure of CSI with purpose to reduce the feedback
overhead under spatially correlated antenna arrays.

978-1-4799-8078-9/15/$31.00 2015 IEEE 303

 22nd International Conference on Telecommunications (ICT 2015)
The remainder of this paper is organized as follows. Section
II introduces the system model and illustrates how to realize
wavelet compression feedback briefly. Section i n provides
the detail design of the channel feedback mechanism and
the analysis of the performance theoretically. In section IV,
simulation results are presented. Finally, section V concludes
the paper.
II. SYSTEM DISCRIPTION
In this paper, we focus on a point-to-point massive MIMO
system. Antenna arrays at both ends are assumed to be uniform
linear arrays (ULA) that are spatially correlated with equal
antenna spacing. Optimal precoding scheme is adopted at the
transmitter and the feedback channel is assumed to be an ideal
(error-free, zero delay) channel. Further, temporal channel
correlation is ignored here. We also assume perfect CSI can
be estimated at the receiver considering CSI compression is
our main focus.
A. System Model
The input-output relation of the MIMO system is described
by the following vector notation:
yt = Hxt + nt
NtXl
where t is the discrete time index, xt C and yt e
CNrXl are the signal vector transmitted and received at time t.
nt ~ AA(0,1) denotes the AWGN noise with zero-mean and
unit variance. The correlated channel matrix can be formulated
as:
H RR HufiRj, (2)
where Hud, representing a Nrx Nt matrix with independent
and identically distributed (i.i.d) complex zero-mean, unit vari-
ance and Gaussian random entries, is the Rayleigh block fading
propagation channel between antenna arrays at both ends. RT
and RR are the spatial correlations corresponding to transmit
antenna arrays and receive antenna arrays, respectively. And
R,{ denotes the square root of R(.y
Here, we take into account two commonly used spatial
correlation models. The first is the Jakes model, thus any
element of RT and RR (the correlation coefficient between
the ith and j t h antenna in an antenna array) is
nj = J0(2irdij/d0)
where d\j is the distance between the marked antennas, do
is the carrier wavelength, and Jo(-) denotes the zeroth-order
Bessel function of first kind. And the second is the exponential
model which is given as
.Nt-1
a tpv(x, y) along vertical direction and ipD(x, y) along diagonal
1 direction.
Ri
Nt-1
La
-Nr-1
1 a
a 1
RR = (5)
-,Nr-l
where 0 < a < 1 is the correlation parameter which is a real
number.
B. Brief Illustration of Wavelet Compression Based Channel
Feedback
In this paper, we consider a single-user MIMO (SU-
MIMO) regime with large scale antenna arrays. We focus
on H as the target signal going to be processed by the
proposed feedback mechanism. CSI matrice H should be
processed and returned as a whole at receiver. In this case,
two-dimensional (2D) wavelet analysis should be considered.
In 2D wavelet analysis the signal to analyze is a matrice, so
at every level of decomposition the horizontal data is filtered
and the approximation and details produced from this are
afterwards filtered on columns. Consequently, four sub-signals
are produced [13].
Note that these sub-signals can be vectorized to form a
vector as the output of wavelet analysis which is namely the
coefficients we desire to get. A minority of the coefficients
concentrate on some critical values, while others are distributed
near zero. We could discard all but feed back the T largest
coefficients along with their indexes which can provide a
compression ratio of roughly 2T/P. Here, P denotes the total
number of the coefficients. At the transmitter, the received
vector with 2T elements can be matriculated to reconstruct the
(1) original signal by performing inverse wavelet transform. This
is the compression strategy we adopt in this paper to reduce
the feedback load. The schematic of the proposed feedback
mechanism is illustrated in Figure 1.
III. WAVELET COMPRESSION BASED FEEDBACK
PROTOCOL ANALYSIS
A. Implementation of Wavelet Compression Based Feedback
As aforementioned, we take the full channel matrix H to be
the target signal. For the sake of convenience, we use notation
H to denote the target signal matrice in rest of the paper,
which represents either the real part or imaginary part. In
practical implement, the discrete form of wavelet transform
(DWT) is mostly considered. And we consider 2D wavelet
transformation due to reasons that the target signal is a matrix.
The scaling and wavelet functions are functions with two
variables, denoted by <j>(x,y) and i/j(x,y). They are defined
as
(l>j,m,n(x>y) = 22 0(2 J x -m,23y-n) (6)
(3)
$,m,n(*.V) = zh^Vx-rn, Vy-n), = {H, V,D} (7)
where m and x range from 0 to M 1; n and y range
from 0 to N 1, assuming the target signal is a M x N
matrix [14]. Formula (7) contains three wavelet functions
of separable directions, i/jH(x,y) along horizontal direction,
(4)
Thus wavelet analysis of the target signal can be formulated
as
M-liV-l
W(j>{jQ,m,n) = ^2 ^2 H(x,y)cf>jo,mtn(x,y) (8)
x=0 j/=0
M-lN-1
Wj(i.m,n) = J2 H(x,y^i^x,y) i = {H, V, D}
x=0 y=0
(9)
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 22nd International Conference on Telecommunications (ICT 2015)

AWGN

bits Coding & bits

X Detection &
Modulation Decoding

VX H
AWGN
Matriculated Extract real and imaginary parts
Inverse 2D Wavelet Transformation 2D Wavelet Compression
Combine real and imaginary parts Vectorization
SVD
Finite Feedback Channel

Fig. 1: Flowchart of the proposed wavelet compression based feedback regime

where H(x,y) represents the target signal elements and
{H, V, D} denote horizontal, vertical and diagonal direc-
tion respectively. So {W^(jo,m,n)} and {W^(j,m,n)\i = the T largest elements of w(/3) is denoted by WT(/3). The
H,V,D} consist of the coefficients which are the sparse
representation of H.
The inverse wavelet transformation is formulated as:
H{x, y)=^2^2 W^ijo, m, n)4>j0im<n(x, y)
],m,n\xiV)
i=H,V,D j=jo *n n independently in next period. The feedback channel is assumed
(10)
The wavelet transformation coefficient matrix of H is
denoted as W. And we denote the vectorization of the original
CSI H and that of the sparse CSI W as h and w respectively.
After the T largest elements of w along with their indexes
are received at the transmitter, they can be matriculated to
approximately reconstruct CSI matrix denoted as H by inverse
wavelet transformation shown in formula (10).
B. Compression and Reconstruction Performance Analysis
The wavelet compression we adopted above is a kind of
lossy compression method, because the coefficients we neglect
are around zero though, they still contain some energy. So the
CSI we reconstruct cannot be identical to the practical CSI
if the compression ratio j3 is smaller than 200%(compression
ratio is denoted as the number of coefficients remained divided
by that of the total coefficients). We can use Grassmannian
subspace packing to verify the restore performance of the
compression scheme [15]. Denote the vectorization of the
reconstructed H(/3) as h(/3) under the given compression ratio
/3, then the chordal distance between the two lines generated
from h and h{fl) can be expressed as
\\tih{P)\\
dis{p) =
i i-
\\h\w\Hm
(ii)
where |||| denotes the Frobenius norm. Meanwhile, we can
compute the ratio of the remained expansion coefficients
energy to full expansion coefficients energy to get the energy
loss performance of the wavelet compression method. Suppose
energy loss ratio at the given compression ratio /3 is
Eio..(P) = 1
iitMAir (12)
\w\
C. Sum-Rate Capacity Performance Analysis
Assuming it's a rayleigh block fading channel that may re-
main approximately constant for one block period and change
to be ideal and without delay. Thus the transmitter can get the
error-free compressed CSI information sent by the receiver. In
SU-MIMO systems, the singular value decomposition (SVD)
has been proved to yield the optimum precoding solution [16].
To illustrate, the SVD of i f is i f = *7EV f , where U is the
Nr x Nr left singular matrix and V is the Nt x Nt right singular
matrix and S is the Nr x Nt singular value matrix with rank
r. And with the precoding operation, the NT x Nt channel can
be transformed into r (1 < r < min(Nr,Nt)) parallel single
input single output (SISO) subchannels, where r is the rank of
the channel matrix. Consequently, the input-output relationship
becomes
yt =Sa; t + ht (13)
Then we get
At k 1,-
Vt (14)
k JVr
where x\ are the bits transmitted through the kth sub-channel
at time t. The total sum-rate capacity is the sum of the r sub-
channels' rate. The transmitter transmits multiple independent
zero mean complex Gaussian data streams simultaneously with
waterfilling power allocation mechanism. Assume the transmit
power allocated to the kth antenna is pk (i.e., E(xk xk) = pk)
and the overall transmit power constraint requires YH:=i Pk =
P. The transmit power over the parallel channels can be
expressed as
Pfe = ( M - ^ ) + l<k<r (15)

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where (j, is the waterfill level, x+ is defined as max(x, 0). If Fig.2.(a) and Fig.3.(a) show the chordal distance perfor-
the feedback channel is ideal without compression scheme, the mance between the perfect CSI vector before compression
ergodic sum-rate capacity can be computed: and the reconstructed CSI vector after compression. With
the decrease of the antenna spacing or the growth of the
correlation parameter, the correlation level of the CSI matrix
Cideal=Ej2log2(l + ^ ) (16)
becomes strong. Consequently, at a given compression ratio,
k=l the reconstructed CSI is more approximated to the perfect CSI
where the additive noise covariance matrix of the r sub- which can produce a relatively smaller chordal distance in both
channels is assumed to be Rfr a2Ir. However, wavelet correlation models.
compression is a lossy compression method, so the CSI matrix
Fig.2.(b) and Fig.3.(b) present the energy loss performance
H reconstructed is not ideal, thus the parallel data-pipes are
of the compressed CSI compared to that before wavelet
degraded due to the interference from other channels. With a
compression. Stronger correlation level means energy can be
given compression ratio /3, the received signal bit at the kth
concentrated on a smaller amount of coefficients. So with a
sub-stream is
given compression ratio, the energy loss performance decreases
as the antenna spacing reduces or correlation parameter rises.
We can also notice that the energy performance goes in
> ~ ' rrr coincidence with the chordal distance performance.
signal desired
interference
(17)
Fig.2.(c) and Fig.3.(c) say the performance gap between the
+ fikt k,l = 1, ,r sum-rate with perfect CSI and that with the reconstructed CSI,
respectively. We can conclude that with a strong correlation
noise
level, the sum-rate loss is tiny. The sum-rate loss increases
where Vk(P) is the kth column of the right singular matrix of as the antenna spacing grows or the correlation parameter
the reconstructed CSI matrix H(/3) at the given compression decreases. Further, sum-rate loss decreases with the growth
ratio p. According to Shannon theory, the capacity of the kth of compression ratio due to the reasons that more feedback
sub-channel is load can be used to reconstruct better CSI. However, because
half of the feedback load is occupied by the index of the mass
C(k,/3) = log2(l + llv^lW)lf ) (18)
coefficients, the sum-rate loss is not able to touch 0 although
the compression ratio reaches 1.
Ullv>!wii +*
The compressed sum-rate is V. CONCLUSION

In this paper, we propose a wavelet compression based

Ccom(/3) = E^C(k,p) feedback strategy for spatially correlated point-to-point mas-
fe=i sive MIMO systems. Wavelet compression is able to com-
r press the CSI estimated at the receiver. The outputted sparse
= EY,log2{l + representation would be sent to transmitter aiming to be
fe=i
EUI|V^^^(^)||2 + CT2 reconstructed and enhance the system performance. Simulation
(19) results reveal the compression and reconstruction performance
of wavelet compression scheme and analyze the system perfor-
The sum-rate loss is mance under different compression ratios and varying corre-
lation level using two kinds of correlation models. In general,
Closs\P) = Cideal ~ Ccom(p) (20) this paper provides a novel mechanism to reduce the feedback
load in spatially correlated massive MIMO systems.
which calculates the sum-rate loss using the wavelet compres-
sion feedback scheme when compared to the ideal feedback
ACKNOWLEDGMENT
channel.
This work was supported by the National Natural Science
IV. NUMERICAL SIMULATION Foundation of China (F010301).

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