ZTE Communications ›› 2025, Vol. 23 ›› Issue (2): 103-108.DOI: 10.12142/ZTECOM.202502011

• Research Papers • Previous Articles     Next Articles

Intelligent AP Clustering and Receiver Design for Uplink Cell-free Networks

AN Zhenyu1,4(), HE Shiwen1,2, YANG Li3, ZHAN Hang1, HUANG Yongming1,4   

  1. 1.Purple Mountain Laboratories, Nanjing 211111, China
    2.School of Computer Science and Engineering, Central South University, Changsha 410083, China
    3.ZTE Corporation, Shenzhen 518057, China
    4.National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory, School of Information Science and Engineering, Southeast University, Nanjing 210096, China
  • Received:2024-09-26 Online:2025-06-25 Published:2025-06-10
  • About author:AN Zhenyu (anzhenyu_155@126.com) is currently a senior engineer with Purple Mountain Laboratories, China. His research interests include optimization theory and ultra-reliable and low latency communications.
    HE Shiwen is a professor in the School of Computer Science and Engineering, Central South University, China. His research interests include wireless communication networks, distributed learning and optimization theory of computation, intelligent Internet of Things, etc.
    YANG Li is a senior engineer of ZTE Corporation. He is also an expert in the State Key Laboratory of Mobile Network and Mobile Multimedia Technology, China. His research interests include 3GPP protocol design, intelligent wireless networks, etc.
    ZHAN Hang is an engineer with Purple Mountain Laboratories. His research interests include knowledge graph theory of wireless communication networks, big data analysis and artificial intelligence algorithms.
    HUANG Yongming is a professor in the School of Information Science and Engineering, Southeast University, China. His current research interests include MIMO wireless communications, cooperative wireless communications and millimeter wave wireless communications.
  • Supported by:
    National Natural Science Foundation of China(62171474)

Abstract:

Cell-free networks can effectively reduce interference due to diversity gain. Two key technologies, access point (AP) clustering and transceiver design, play key roles in cell-free networks, and they are implemented at different layers of the air interface. To address the issues and obtain global optimal results, this paper proposes an uplink joint AP clustering and receiver optimization algorithm, where a cross-layer optimization model is built based on graph neural networks (GNNs) with low computational complexity. Experimental results show that the proposed algorithm can activate fewer APs for each user with a small performance loss compared with conventional algorithms.

Key words: AP clustering, cell-free networks, cross-layer optimization, graph neural network