Abstract-In this paper, we study the multiuser detection (MUD) problem for a grant-free massive-device multiple access (MaDMA) system, where a large number of single-antenna user devices transmit sporadic data to a multi-antenna base station (BS). Specifically, we put forth two MUD schemes, termed random sparsity learning multiuser detection (RSL-MUD) and structured sparsity learning multiuser detection (SSL-MUD) for the time-slotted and non-time-slotted grant-free MaDMA systems, respectively. In RSL-MUD, active users generate and transmit data packets with random sparsity. In SSL-MUD, we introduce a sliding-window-based detection framework, and the user signals in each observation window naturally exhibit structured sparsity. We show that by exploiting the sparsity embedded in the user signals, we can recover the user activity state, the channel, and the user data in a single phase, without using pilot signals for channel estimation and/or active user identification. To this end, we develop a message-passing-based statistical inference framework for the BS to blindly detect the user data without any prior knowledge of the identities and the channel state information (CSI) of active users. The simulation results show that our RSL-MUD and SSL-MUD schemes significantly outperform their counterpart schemes in both reducing the transmission overhead and improving the error behavior of the system.
The authors in REF and [23] adopted the sparse dictionary learning to facilitate massive connectivity for a massive-device multiple access communication system, and the learning structure does not need any prior knowledge of active devices.
Sparsity Learning-Based Multiuser Detection in Grant-Free Massive-Device Multiple Access
IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications
IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications
Computer Science Engineering Mathematics