Particle Swarm Optimization for Energy Efficiency Antenna Selection in
MIMO Broadcasting Channel
Mahnaz Sinaie, Masumeh Sadat Tohidi, Paeiz Azmi
Communication system Lab, Tarbiat Modares University (TMU), Tehran, Iran
{m.sinaie,s.tohidikashani,pazmi}@modares.ac.ir
Abstract-Active transmit antenna selection (ATAS)
leads to minimize the energy consumption in MIMO
transmission, via adaptively choosing the optimal
active antenna configuration satisfying the capacity
requirement at the same time. This paper proposes a
new low complexity ATAS in MIMO downlink
channels. A computationally efficient approach,
particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm is
employed and the particles is defined as the discrete
binary antenna selection factor and the objective
function is to maximize energy efficiency
corresponding to the specified antenna represented by
the particles. Numerical results reveal that PSO
algorithm with low complexity converges to optimal
solution.
I.INTRODUCTION
Wireless communication turns to the era of
green. This is not only because of the exponential
traffic growth with the popularity of the smart phone
but also the limited energy source with ever higher
prices. Energy efficiency (EE), as a result, becomes
one of the major topics in the research of wireless
communications [1]. The EE is in general defined as
the capacity divided by the power consumption,
which denotes the delivered bits per-unit energy
measured in bits per-Joule. Up to now, the power
consumption models only consider the transmit
power associated with data transmission rate;
however, transmit power is only a part of the overall
energy budget. When the energy consumption of
other parts (e.g. circuit power consumption of the
transceiver), called transmit independent power
consumption, is taken into account the energy-
efficient metric will be change [2]. With the
capability of improving channel condition (channel
reliability or channel capacity), the MIMO
technology has been considered as a promising
candidate for the next generation of wireless
broadband communication [3]. However, this
technology has higher circuit power consumption
due to its use of multiple radio frequency (RF)
chains. Activating all available transmit antennas
and RF chains for transmission is not always energy
efficient although spectral efficient, as more RF
chains correspond to higher transmit-independent
power, inducing a tradeoff between the EE gain with
higher multiplexing/diversity and the EE loss with
more transmit independent power consumption
wasting.
Antenna selection approaches are widely used to
increase capacity or throughput in MIMO systems
[4-5]. However, the spectral efficient transmitter
antenna selection is always performed to choose the
active antennas when the number of radio frequency
chains is larger than the number of the antennas. If
we consider the case when the transmit antenna
number is equal to the RF chains, the purpose of the
antenna selection is saving power through turning
off the inactive RF chains, we can use the active
transmit antenna selection algorithms to increase
EE. Exhaustive search for managing RF considering
capacity requirement is proposed in [3]. In [6] a new
practical approach based on EE in MIMO-OFDMA
networks is suggested for RF chains selection and
subcarrier allocations. Jie Xu et.al in [7] suggested a
new joint power allocation and active antenna
selection in MIMO Broadcasting channels.
In all pervious articles, authors employed
exhaustive search which is not computationally
efficient, to select active antennas. Various
approaches are proposed for antenna selection
capacity based in [8], [9]. Recently, PSO algorithm
is employed in antenna selection [10]. Therefore,
based on this idea, different from the previous
works, we propose a low complexity approach for
ATAS in MIMO broadcasting channel based on
PSO. PSO is a powerful and promising optimization
method and characterized as a simple but
computationally efficient concept. Simulation
results showed that PSO algorithm selects the best
active transmit antenna to maximize EE objective
function with a very little computation.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. In
Section II the system model is introduced and the
antenna selection problem is introduced. Section III
presents the basic concept of PSO and the detailed
the PSO-based ATAS procedure. In Section IV,
numerical results are presented to show the
efficiency of PSO. Finally, we draw conclusion in
section V.
II. PROBLEM FORMULATION
The EE is defined as the achievable sum capacity
of MIMO BC divided by the total power
consumption at the BS. The EE depends on two
parameters: transmit power and the numbers of
active transmit antennas, therefore the EE
optimization problem can be denoted as follows:

The system consists of a single BS with transmit ( ,…, , )

antennas and users each with antennas. The = , (4)
downlink channel can be denoted as
According to duality between uplink and
= + , = 1, … , (1)
downlink channels, ∑ ( ) = ∑ (Σ ) , Eq.4
can be simplified and rewritten as:
where ∈∁ × , ∈ ∁ × are the independent
∑
Gaussian noise with each entry ∁ (0, ) and EE= ( )
∑ ( )
are each users’ path loss. Rayleigh fading channels
with bandwidth is considered and the channel
(5)
state information (CSI) is assumed to be perfectly
where is receivers’ covariance matrix. Since the
known at the transmitter and receiver and EE metric
numerator and denominator in Eq.5 are concave and
is supposed as capacity/ power consumption model.
affine respectively, Eq.5 is a concave fractional
The base station (BS) power model is motivated
programming [5]. By defining a non-negative
by [1]. As BSs take the main power consumption in
parameter , the above equation is converted to a
the cellular networks, the users’ consumed power is
not considered here. The power radiated to the convex function separating numerator and
environment for signal transmission is only a denominator with help of . Jie Xu et.al in [7]
portion of its total power consumption [1]. proposed an iterative water-filling solution to
Therefore, the practical circuit power, signal maximize the covariance matrix (Q) in the above EE
processing power, cooling loss etc. at the BS should function. Their proposed iterative water filling
be taken into account. Given the total BS antenna algorithm is summarized in below table:
number equal to and total transmit power as ,
Table 1.Iterative water-filling algorithms[5]
the total power consumption of a BS can be
Initialization: set = 0, = 1, … , ,
modeled as Repeat:
= + + (2) For =1:K
where denotes the power amplifier (PA) 1) I. calculate = + ∑ ,
efficiency; denotes the dynamic power = ( + ∑ ) /
,
∑ ( )
consumption proportional to the number of radio = + + , = | |
frequency (RF) chains, e.g. circuit power of RF
II. SVD decomposition as: =
chains which is always proportional to M; and
accounts for the static power independent of both M III. solve +∑ log 1 + −
( ) ∗
and including power consumption of the baseband
∗ ( ) ∗ [ ]
processing, battery unit etc.. [ ]
[ ] − × + =0
The sum capacity of the MIMO BC by dirty
∗
paper coding (DPC) is as follows [11]: , is diagonal with L nonzero element as
( ,…, , ) = [ ∗] ∗
= − ,k=0,…,L where
1 ( ) ∗ [ ]
∑ :∑ ,∑ ∑
= log + Σ [ ] = max ( , 0)
∗ ∗
1 V. ∗ =
+ (Σ + Σ ) 2) refresh ∗
+ log +⋯
1 End
+ Σ Until the EE converges.
( ⋯ )
+W , (3) As it’s obvious, reduction of active transmits
( ⋯ ) antenna number affects the EE and will increase EE
function. The exhaust search is the optimal selection
scheme. For each possible M ∈ {1, . . . ,m}, the
exhaust search algorithm calculates the EE and then
choose the optimal active transmit antenna set as
maximize the EE and the inactive RF chains are
switched off . However, the complexity of the
exhaust search is too high to implement especially
in real time applications. Therefore, we proposed
PSO algorithm to select active transmit antennas.
PSO is easy to implement and there are few
parameters to adjust and this optimization method
has been successfully applied to optimization of
convex and non convex problems [8].
III.PSO-BASED ANTENNA SELECTION
In this section we present ATAS scheme utilizing
PSO with Eq.5 as fitness function. PSO, first
developed by Kennedy and Eberhart in 1995. In
PSO algorithm, a group of random particles are
initialized in the searching space, all the particles
have fitness values which are evaluated by the
objective function to be optimized, and their
velocities which direct their “flying” direction
contribute an important part in PSO. Particles are
then “flown” through the problem space and finally
converge to best position that visited over all
iteration.[12].
We represent each selection of antenna by binary
string as X =  x1T , x2T ,..., xTM  , where xiT ∈ {0,1} is
binary index showing whether antenna is selected at
transmitter or not. denotes the position of particle
in PSO. So the dimension of the particle is M. We
use random distribution for initial feed of particles.
In each iteration and each particle the velocity
calculated as follows:
= + × (0,1) × − +
× (0,1) × − (6)
where and are position and velocity particle p
at the ith iteration respectively, c1 and c2 represent
the weighting of the stochastic acceleration terms
that pull each particle toward pbest and gbest
positions, rand(0,1) is random variable uniformly
distributed in interval (0,1), denoted best
position that particle p has been up to the ith
iteration, and is globally best position ever
visited by any particle up to ith iteration in terms of
fitness function. Updating the position of
corresponding particle is according to:
1 if rand (0,1) > σ (vip )
xip =  (7)
0 otherwise
where ( ) is the sigmoid function:
= (1 + exp (− )) (8)
In each iteration, after calculating velocity and
position and are updated. The
number of ones in X denotes total number of active
transmit antenna in each iteration so we can say that
the algorithm searches most possible subset of
active antenna and converges to gbest having locally
maximum fitness.
IV.EXPERIMENTAL RESULTS
To demonstrate effectiveness of our proposed
approach, we evaluate its performance under
different scenarios. We employ Matlab to simulate
MIMO system in computer with cor3 and 8MB
RAM. In the simulation, Rayleigh fading with
simplified path loss model is considered. Moreover,
The parameters are set as W = 5MHz, the noise
power is −110dBm, =83W, =45.5W,
=0.38 and path loss model is 128.1+83.6 log(d)
which d in kilometer.
For PSO algorithms, population size (p) is 10
and the maximum number of iteration (T) is 20.
Acceleration constant in PSO are chosen as
c1= c2= 2. The inertia weight factors in PSO are
chosen as ωmax = 0.9, ωmin = 0.4 .
The user number and transmit antenna number
M affect the EE in a complicated manner, adjusting
these parameters adaptively is important for
improving the EE. This is distinct from the spectral
efficient systems, where more always benefits. In
energy efficient systems, it’s obvious from EE
function that more active transmit antennas reduce
EE but with ATAS the EE values increase.
Exhaustive search method selects optimal active
transmit antennas to increase EE but it’s so
complicated to implement. Fig 1 and 2 display the
effect of different number of users and transmit
antennas respectively. With ATAS, the EE will
increase with increment of transmit antennas and the
PSO-based ATAS gives rise to EE values close to
exhaustive search values. When the number of users
increases, although spectral efficiency (SE) due to
limited source of bandwidth and interference reduce,
the EE will increase. Therefore, there are a trade-off
between EE and SE which it should be considered in
system designs.
Computational complexity can be expressed as
the number of function evaluation. In exhaustive
 numbers of particles influence on evaluation and
complexity, Fig4 shows impacts of particles on the
maximal iteration number. The figure shows that the
PSO algorithm doesn’t need many particles to
converge and P=5 is enough for different number of
transmit antennas. Table 2 exhibits the number of
evaluations for different number of transmit
antennas. It’s obvious that our proposed algorithm is
more time efficient than exhaustive search
algorithm, particularly in large transmit antennas
like cooperative base stations, to be employed
especially in real time communications.
Figure 1. The EE under different
BS antennas, where N=2, K=4, distance is 1km

Figure 3. Convergence behavior

of PSO algorithm for N=2, K=4, number of Particles=10
and M=4,6,8

Figure 2. The EE under different user number,

where M=4,N=2,distance is 1km

search ATAS algorithm, as power optimization is

M 
 × Iter = ( 2 − 1) × Iter
M
iterative, ∑  M
evaluation ,
m=1  m 

should be done to select the optimum active transmit

antennas where Iter is the number of iterations to
water filling algorithm converge, this is because all
the subset of transmit antenna must be checked to
select the maximal energy efficient state. Therefore
it is exponential with total number of transmit
antenna. However, PSO-based approach with less Figure 4. Convergence behavior
computation especially for large number of transmit of PSO algorithm for M=4, K=4, N=2 and number of
antennas, selects the optimum active transmit antennas. particles=5,8,10,13
For PSO, the number of evaluation is p × T × Iter ,
where p is the number of particles and T is the Table 2. Evaluation number for exhaustive search and
maximal iteration number of PSO. It’s clear that proposed algorithm for M=4,K=4,N=2,P=10
with large number of transmit antennas, the number M=4,N=2, M=8,N=2, M=10,N=2,
of evaluation for PSO algorithms is less than K=4,P=5 K=4,P=10 K=4,P=10
exhaustive search. Various simulations denoted that Proposed
150 400 500
the PSO algorithm for different number of transmit algorithm
antennas although we expect that more iterations to Exhaustiv
75 1275 5115
be converged, it converges after approximately 8 e search
iterations hence the parameter T is small. Fig3
shows convergence behavior of proposed PSO
algorithm for three examples. Moreover, the
 1. CONCLUSION [11] N. Jindal, W. Rhee, S. Vishwanath, S. Jafar, and A.
Goldsmith, "Sum power iterative water-filling for multi-
Active transmit antennas power consumption in antenna Gaussian broadcast channels, " IEEE Trans.
BS has a large impact on EE in MIMO broadcasting Inform. Theory, vol. 51, no. 4, pp. 1570–1580, Apr. 2005.
channels. Although exhaustive search is the optimal [12] J. Kennedy, R.C. Eberhart, "Particle Swarm
approach to select among transmit antenna, its Optimization," Proceedings of IEEE Conference. pp.
complexity is high to be implemented. Therefore, in 1924-1948, 1995
this paper, we proposed PSO based ATAS in MIMO
broadcasting channels. The simulation results show
that the proposed PSO-based approach, with much
less complexity than Exhaustive search, results
values close to optimum solution. Therefore, the
proposed approach can be implemented to have
energy efficient systems.

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

The authors would like to thank ITRC (Iran

telecommunication Research Center) for their invaluable
assistance and funding for this research.

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