WMMSE-Based Processing in Cell-Free Massive MIMO Systems

Abstract

In this letter, we address the weighted sum-rate maximization problem in a cell-free massive multi-input multi-output (CF-mMIMO) system, subject to constraints on the minimum individual quality of service (QoS), maximum power consumption at each access point (AP), and maximum fronthaul capacity. By harnessing the low computational complexity weighted minimum mean square error (WMMSE) framework, two algorithms are proposed to solve the formulated mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problems with instantaneous/statistical channel state information (CSI). Our instantaneous CSI-based approach can be applied to jointly optimize the power control, precoding, and user association, while the statistical CSI-based approach can be utilized to jointly optimize the power control and user association. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed instantaneous CSI-based algorithm can provide approximately 66.72% sum-rate gain compared to the scheme with random user association, equal power allocation, and fixed local MMSE-based precoding design. Additionally, the statistical CSI-based algorithm offers competitive performance compared with the instantaneous CSI-based algorithm.