Energy-Efficient Beamforming Design for User-Centric Networks With Full-Duplex Wireless Fronthaul

In this paper, we investigate the joint beamforming design for access and fronthaul links in a user-centric network with full-duplex fronthaul. We formulate an optimization problem to maximize the network energy efficiency while guaranteeing fronthaul rate requirements. Particularly, the power consumed by self-interference cancellation at full-duplex access points (APs) is taken into consideration to comprehensively reflect the effect of full-duplex technology. Due to the non-convexity and the nonlinear fractional form of the formulated problem, we resort to the successive convex approximation method. The original problem is approximated as a convex second-order cone program. We then extend the study to the scenario of imperfect and partial channel state information (CSI). To avoid the intractable expression of the achievable rate in this case, we derive its lower bound for further beamforming design. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed algorithm in terms of energy efficiency and power consumption under both CSI scenarios. For our considered full-duplex fronthaul networks, moderate maximum transmit power of macro base station (MBS) and APs is sufficient to obtain desired energy efficiency performance. Moreover, the lower bound is verified to be tight at the low-maximum power region.