Analytical methods for finding moments of random Vandermonde matrices with entries on the unit circle are developed. Vandermonde Matrices play an important role in signal processing and wireless applications such as direction of arrival estimation, precoding, and sparse sampling theory, just to name a few. Within this framework, we extend classical freeness results on random matrices with independent, identically distributed (i.i.d.) entries and show that Vandermonde structured matrices can be treated in the same vein with different tools. We focus on various types of matrices, such as Vandermonde matrices with and without uniform phase distributions, as well as generalized Vandermonde matrices. In each case, we provide explicit expressions of the moments of the associated Gram matrix, as well as more advanced models involving the Vandermonde matrix. Comparisons with classical i.i.d. random matrix theory are provided, and deconvolution results are discussed. We review some applications of the results to the fields of signal processing and wireless communications.

Situations in many fields of research, such as digital communications, nuclear physics and mathematical finance, can be modelled with random matrices. When the matrices get large, free probability theory is an invaluable tool for describing the asymptotic behaviour of many systems. It will be shown how free probability can be used to aid in source detection for certain systems. Sample covariance matrices for systems with noise are the starting point in our source detection problem. Multiplicative free deconvolution is shown to be a method which can aid in expressing limit eigenvalue distributions for sample covariance matrices, and to simplify estimators for eigenvalue distributions of covariance matrices.

We consider a cognitive radio scenario where a primary and a secondary user wish to communicate with their corresponding receivers simultaneously over frequency selective channels. Under realistic assumptions that the secondary transmitter has no side information about the primary's message and each transmitter knows only its local channels, we propose a Vandermonde precoder that cancels the interference from the secondary user by exploiting the redundancy of a cyclic prefix. Our numerical examples show that VFDM, with an appropriate design of the input covariance, enables the secondary user to achieve a considerable rate while generating zero interference to the primary user.

In many channel measurement applications, one needs to estimate some characteristics of the channels based on a limited set of measurements. This is mainly due to the highly time varying characteristics of the channel. In this contribution, it will be shown how free probability can be used for channel capacity estimation in MIMO systems. Free probability has already been applied in various application fields such as digital communications, nuclear physics and mathematical finance, and has been shown to be an invaluable tool for describing the asymptotic behaviour of many large-dimensional systems. In particular, using the concept of free deconvolution, we provide an asymptotically (w.r.t. the number of observations) unbiased capacity estimator for MIMO channels impaired with noise called the free probability based estimator. Another estimator, called the Gaussian matrix mean based estimator, is also introduced by slightly modifying the free probability based estimator. This estimator is shown to give unbiased estimation of the moments of the channel matrix for any number of observations. Also, the estimator has this property when we extend to MIMO channels with phase off-set and frequency drift, for which no estimator has been provided so far in the literature. It is also shown that both the free probability based and the Gaussian matrix mean based estimator are asymptotically unbiased capacity estimators as the number of transmit antennas go to infinity, regardless of whether phase off-set and frequency drift are present. The limitations in the two estimators are also explained. Simulations are run to assess the performance of the estimators for a low number of antennas and samples to confirm the usefulness of the asymptotic results.

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