Design of Waveform Set for Multiuser Ultra-Wideband Communications

The thesis investigates the design of analogue waveform sets for multiuser and UWB communications using suitably chosen Hermite-Rodriguez basis functions. The non-linear non-convex optimization problem with time and frequency domains constraints has been transformed into suitable forms and then solved using a standard optimization package. The proposed approach is more flexible and efficient than existing approaches in the literature. Numerical results show that orthogonal waveform sets with high spectral efficiency can be produced

Ultra Wideband Communications: from Analog to Digital

Ultrabreitband-Signale (Ultra Wideband [UWB]) können einen signifikanten Nutzen im Bereich drahtloser Kommunikationssysteme haben. Es sind jedoch noch einige Probleme offen, die durch Systemdesigner und Wissenschaftler gelöst werden müssen. Ein Funknetzsystem mit einer derart großen Bandbreite ist normalerweise auch durch eine große Anzahl an Mehrwegekomponenten mit jeweils verschiedenen Pfadamplituden gekennzeichnet. Daher ist es schwierig, die zeitlich verteilte Energie effektiv zu erfassen. Außerdem ist in vielen Fällen der naheliegende Ansatz, ein kohärenter Empfänger im Sinne eines signalangepassten Filters oder eines Korrelators, nicht unbedingt die beste Wahl. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wird dabei auf die bestehende Problematik und weitere Lösungsmöglichkeiten eingegangen. Im ersten Abschnitt geht es um „Impulse Radio UWB”-Systeme mit niedriger Datenrate. Bei diesen Systemen kommt ein inkohärenter Empfänger zum Einsatz. Inkohärente Signaldetektion stellt insofern einen vielversprechenden Ansatz dar, als das damit aufwandsgünstige und robuste Implementierungen möglich sind. Dies trifft vor allem in Anwendungsfällen wie den von drahtlosen Sensornetzen zu, wo preiswerte Geräte mit langer Batterielaufzeit nötigsind. Dies verringert den für die Kanalschätzung und die Synchronisation nötigen Aufwand, was jedoch auf Kosten der Leistungseffizienz geht und eine erhöhte Störempfindlichkeit gegenüber Interferenz (z.B. Interferenz durch mehrere Nutzer oder schmalbandige Interferenz) zur Folge hat. Um die Bitfehlerrate der oben genannten Verfahren zu bestimmen, wurde zunächst ein inkohärenter Combining-Verlust spezifiziert, welcher auftritt im Gegensatz zu kohärenter Detektion mit Maximum Ratio Multipath Combining. Dieser Verlust hängt von dem Produkt aus der Länge des Integrationsfensters und der Signalbandbreite ab. Um den Verlust durch inkohärentes Combining zu reduzieren und somit die Leistungseffizienz des Empfängers zu steigern, werden verbesserte Combining-Methoden für Mehrwegeempfang vorgeschlagen. Ein analoger Empfänger, bei dem der Hauptteil des Mehrwege-Combinings durch einen „Integrate and Dump”-Filter implementiert ist, wird für UWB-Systeme mit Zeit-Hopping gezeigt. Dabei wurde die Einsatzmöglichkeit von dünn besetzten Codes in solchen System diskutiert und bewertet. Des Weiteren wird eine Regel für die Code-Auswahl vorgestellt, welche die Stabilität des Systems gegen Mehrnutzer-Störungen sicherstellt und gleichzeitig den Verlust durch inkohärentes Combining verringert. Danach liegt der Fokus auf digitalen Lösungen bei inkohärenter Demodulation. Im Vergleich zum Analogempfänger besitzt ein Digitalempfänger einen Analog-Digital-Wandler im Zeitbereich gefolgt von einem digitalen Optimalfilter. Der digitale Optimalfilter dekodiert den Mehrfachzugriffscode kohärent und beschränkt das inkohärente Combining auf die empfangenen Mehrwegekomponenten im Digitalbereich. Es kommt ein schneller Analog-Digital-Wandler mit geringer Auflösung zum Einsatz, um einen vertretbaren Energieverbrauch zu gewährleisten. Diese Digitaltechnik macht den Einsatz langer Analogverzögerungen bei differentieller Demodulation unnötig und ermöglicht viele Arten der digitalen Signalverarbeitung. Im Vergleich zur Analogtechnik reduziert sie nicht nur den inkohärenten Combining-Verlust, sonder zeigt auch eine stärkere Resistenz gegenüber Störungen. Dabei werden die Auswirkungen der Auflösung und der Abtastrate der Analog-Digital-Umsetzung analysiert. Die Resultate zeigen, dass die verminderte Effizienz solcher Analog-Digital-Wandler gering ausfällt. Weiterhin zeigt sich, dass im Falle starker Mehrnutzerinterferenz sogar eine Verbesserung der Ergebnisse zu beobachten ist. Die vorgeschlagenen Design-Regeln spezifizieren die Anwendung der Analog-Digital-Wandler und die Auswahl der Systemparameter in Abhängigkeit der verwendeten Mehrfachzugriffscodes und der Modulationsart. Wir zeigen, wie unter Anwendung erweiterter Modulationsverfahren die Leistungseffizienz verbessert werden kann und schlagen ein Verfahren zur Unterdrückung schmalbandiger Störer vor, welches auf Soft Limiting aufbaut. Durch die Untersuchungen und Ergebnissen zeigt sich, dass inkohärente Empfänger in UWB-Kommunikationssystemen mit niedriger Datenrate ein großes Potential aufweisen. Außerdem wird die Auswahl der benutzbaren Bandbreite untersucht, um einen Kompromiss zwischen inkohärentem Combining-Verlust und Stabilität gegenüber langsamen Schwund zu erreichen. Dadurch wurde ein neues Konzept für UWB-Systeme erarbeitet: wahlweise kohärente oder inkohärente Empfänger, welche als UWB-Systeme Frequenz-Hopping nutzen. Der wesentliche Vorteil hiervon liegt darin, dass die Bandbreite im Basisband sich deutlich verringert. Mithin ermöglicht dies einfach zu realisierende digitale Signalverarbeitungstechnik mit kostengünstigen Analog-Digital-Wandlern. Dies stellt eine neue Epoche in der Forschung im Bereich drahtloser Sensorfunknetze dar. Der Schwerpunkt des zweiten Abschnitts stellt adaptiven Signalverarbeitung für hohe Datenraten mit „Direct Sequence”-UWB-Systemen in den Vordergrund. In solchen Systemen entstehen, wegen der großen Anzahl der empfangenen Mehrwegekomponenten, starke Inter- bzw. Intrasymbolinterferenzen. Außerdem kann die Funktionalität des Systems durch Mehrnutzerinterferenz und Schmalbandstörungen deutlich beeinflusst werden. Um sie zu eliminieren, wird die „Widely Linear”-Rangreduzierung benutzt. Dabei verbessert die Rangreduzierungsmethode das Konvergenzverhalten, besonders wenn der gegebene Vektor eine sehr große Anzahl an Abtastwerten beinhaltet (in Folge hoher einer Abtastrate). Zusätzlich kann das System durch die Anwendung der R-linearen Verarbeitung die Statistik zweiter Ordnung des nicht-zirkularen Signals vollständig ausnutzen, was sich in verbesserten Schätzergebnissen widerspiegelt. Allgemeine kann die Methode der „Widely Linear”-Rangreduzierung auch in andern Bereichen angewendet werden, z.B. in „Direct Sequence”-Codemultiplexverfahren (DS-CDMA), im MIMO-Bereich, im Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM) und beim Beamforming.The aim of this thesis is to investigate key issues encountered in the design of transmission schemes and receiving techniques for Ultra Wideband (UWB) communication systems. Based on different data rate applications, this work is divided into two parts, where energy efficient and robust physical layer solutions are proposed, respectively. Due to a huge bandwidth of UWB signals, a considerable amount of multipath arrivals with various path gains is resolvable at the receiver. For low data rate impulse radio UWB systems, suboptimal non-coherent detection is a simple way to effectively capture the multipath energy. Feasible techniques that increase the power efficiency and the interference robustness of non-coherent detection need to be investigated. For high data rate direct sequence UWB systems, a large number of multipath arrivals results in severe inter-/intra-symbol interference. Additionally, the system performance may also be deteriorated by multi-user interference and narrowband interference. It is necessary to develop advanced signal processing techniques at the receiver to suppress these interferences. Part I of this thesis deals with the co-design of signaling schemes and receiver architectures in low data rate impulse radio UWB systems based on non-coherent detection.● We analyze the bit error rate performance of non-coherent detection and characterize a non-coherent combining loss, i.e., a performance penalty with respect to coherent detection with maximum ratio multipath combining. The thorough analysis of this loss is very helpful for the design of transmission schemes and receive techniques innon-coherent UWB communication systems.● We propose to use optical orthogonal codes in a time hopping impulse radio UWB system based on an analog non-coherent receiver. The “analog” means that the major part of the multipath combining is implemented by an integrate and dump filter. The introduced semi-analytical method can help us to easily select the time hopping codes to ensure the robustness against the multi-user interference and meanwhile to alleviate the non-coherent combining loss.● The main contribution of Part I is the proposal of applying fully digital solutions in non-coherent detection. The proposed digital non-coherent receiver is based on a time domain analog-to-digital converter, which has a high speed but a very low resolution to maintain a reasonable power consumption. Compared to its analog counterpart, itnot only significantly reduces the non-coherent combining loss but also offers a higher interference robustness. In particular, the one-bit receiver can effectively suppress strong multi-user interference and is thus advantageous in separating simultaneously operating piconets.The fully digital solutions overcome the difficulty of implementing long analog delay lines and make differential UWB detection possible. They also facilitate the development of various digital signal processing techniques such as multi-user detection and non-coherent multipath combining methods as well as the use of advanced modulationschemes (e.g., M-ary Walsh modulation).● Furthermore, we present a novel impulse radio UWB system based on frequency hopping, where both coherent and non-coherent receivers can be adopted. The key advantage is that the baseband bandwidth can be considerably reduced (e.g., lower than 500 MHz), which enables low-complexity implementation of the fully digital solutions. It opens up various research activities in the application field of wireless sensor networks. Part II of this thesis proposes adaptive widely linear reduced-rank techniques to suppress interferences for high data rate direct sequence UWB systems, where second-order non-circular signals are used. The reduced-rank techniques are designed to improve the convergence performance and the interference robustness especially when the received vector contains a large number of samples (due to a high sampling rate in UWB systems). The widely linear processing takes full advantage of the second-order statistics of the non-circular signals and enhances the estimation performance. The generic widely linear reduced-rank concept also has a great potential in the applications of other systems such as Direct Sequence Code Division Multiple Access (DS-CDMA), Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) system, and Global System for Mobile Communications (GSM), or in other areas such as beamforming

Spektralno-efikasna zelena bežična komunikacija pomoću kognitivnog UWB signalnog modela

This paper focuses on spectral lines suppression for non-coherent impulse-radio ultra-wideband (IR-UWB) signals in the presence of pulse attenuation and timing jitter. Particular attention is devoted to severely unbalanced (i.e. non-uniform distributed) data sources where a unified spectral analysis is considered for both uncorrelated and correlated M-ary biorthogonal data-stream scenarios. Indeed, the specific novelty insights of this paper are as follows: i) Proposal of a new spectral-efficient signal model as a modified version of transmitted-reference (TR) approach, where each transmitted symbol is represented by a preamble Data-based Statistical Reference (DSR) followed by a set of transmitted data pulses and within this context, the preamble signal is designed to eliminate spectral lines via an adaptive monitoring of data-stream statistics as the optimal spectral policy; ii) Performance analysis in order to derive optimal signal parameters; iii) Evaluation of the system capabilities over different predefined operational modes.Ovaj rad se fokusira na prigušenje spektralnih linija kod ne-koherentnih radio-impulsnih ultra-širokopojasnih (IR-UWB) signala prilikom slabljenja pulsa i vremenskog podrhtavanja. Posebna pažnja je pridana značajno neuravnoteženim (npr. ne-unifornmno distribuiranim) izvorima podataka gdje je jedinstvena spektralna analiza razmatrana za nekorelirane i korelirane M-arne biortogonalne scenarije prijenosa podataka. Novine predstavljene u ovom radu su: i) Novi spektralno-efikasni signalni model koji je modificirana verzija pristupa prijenosom-reference (TR), gdje se svaki preneseni simbol prikazuje pomoću preambule definirane statistikom reference podataka (DSR) koju slijedi skup prenesenih podatkovnih pulseva, te je u tom kontekstu preambula signala dizajnirana kako bi se eliminirale spektralne linije pomoću optimalnog spektralnog kriterija definiranog adaptivnim praćenjem statistike poslanih podataka; ii) Analiza performansi kako bi se dobili optimalni parametri signala i iii) Evaluacija sposobnosti sustava prilikom rada u različitim predefiniranim stanjima

Performance Enhancement of Ultra Wideband WPAN using Narrowband Interference Mitigation Techniques

A new promising technique adopted by 4G community is ultra-wideband technology, which offers a solution for high bandwidth, high data rate, low cost, low power consumption, position location capability etc. A conventional type of UWB communication is impulse radio, where very short transient pulses are transmitted rather than a modulated carrier. Consequently, the spectrum is spread over several GHz, complying with the definition of UWB. Currently, the Rake receiver used for spread spectrum is considered a very promising candidate for UWB reception, due to its capability of collecting multipath components. Since UWB signals occupy such a large bandwidth, they operate as an overlay system with other existing narrowband (NB) radio systems overlapping with their bands. In order to ensure a robust communication link, the issue of coexistence and interference of UWB systems with current indoor wireless systems must be considered. Ultra Wideband technology with its application, advantages and disadvantages are discussed in detail. Design of UWB short pulse and a detail study IEEE 802.15.3a UWB channel models statistical characteristics have been analyzed through simulation. Simulation studies are performed and improved techniques are suggested for interference reduction in both Impulse Radio based UWB and Transmitted Reference type of UWB system. Modified TR-UWB receiver with UWB pulse design at transmitter end and notch filtering at receiver’s front end proved to be more efficient in single NBI, multiple NBI and WBI suppression. Extensive simulation studies to support the efficacy of the proposed schemes are carried out in the MATLAB. Bit error rate (BER) performance study for different data rates over different UWB channel models are also analyzed using proposed receiver models. Performance improvement of TR-UWB system is noticed using the proposed techniques

Performance Analysis and Optimization of Tc-DTR IR-UWB Receivers over Multipath Fading Channels with Tone Interference

International audienceIn this paper, we analyze the performance of a particular class of transmitted-reference receivers for impulse radio ultra wideband communication systems, which is called chip-time differential transmitted-reference (Tc-DTR). The analysis aims at investigating the robustness of this receiver to single-tone and multi-tone narrowband interference (NBI) and comparing its performance with other non-coherent receivers that are proposed in the literature. It is shown that the Tc-DTR scheme provides more degrees of freedom for performance optimization and that it is inherently more robust to NBI than other non-coherent receivers. More specifically, it is analytically proved that the performance improvement is due to the chip-time-level differential encoding/decoding of the direct sequence (DS) code and to an adequate design of DS code and average pulse repetition time. The analysis encompasses performance metrics that are useful for both data detection (i.e., average bit error probability) and timing acquisition (i.e., false-alarm probability Pfa and detection probability Pd). Moving from the proposed sem-analytical framework, the optimal code design and system parameters are derived, and it is highlighted that the same optimization criteria can be applied to all the performance metrics considered in this paper. In addition, analytical frameworks and theoretical findings are substantiated through Monte Carlo simulations

Interference mitigation and awareness for improved reliability

Wireless systems are commonly affected by interference from various sources. For example, a number of users that operate in the same wireless network can result in multiple-access interference (MAI). In addition, for ultrawideband (UWB) systems, which operate at very low power spectral densities, strong narrowband interference (NBI) can have significant effects on the communications reliability. Therefore, interference mitigation and awareness are crucial in order to realize reliable communications systems. In this chapter, pulse-based UWB systems are considered, and the mitigation of MAI is investigated first. Then, NBI avoidance and cancelation are studied for UWB systems. Finally, interference awareness is discussed for short-rate communications, next-generation wireless networks, and cognitive radios.Mitigation of multiple-access interference (MAI)In an impulse radio ultrawideband (IR-UWB) communications system, pulses with very short durations, commonly less than one nanosecond, are transmitted with a low-duty cycle, and information is carried by the positions or the polarities of pulses [1-5]. Each pulse resides in an interval called frame, and the positions of pulses within frames are determined according to time-hopping (TH) sequences specific to each user. The low-duty cycle structure together with TH sequences provide a multiple-access capability for IR-UWB systems [6].Although IR-UWB systems can theoretically accommodate a large number of users in a multiple-access environment [2, 4], advanced signal processing techniques are necessary in practice in order to mitigate the effects of interfering users on the detection of information symbols efficiently [6]. © Cambridge University Press 2011

A General Framework for Analyzing, Characterizing, and Implementing Spectrally Modulated, Spectrally Encoded Signals

Fourth generation (4G) communications will support many capabilities while providing universal, high speed access. One potential enabler for these capabilities is software defined radio (SDR). When controlled by cognitive radio (CR) principles, the required waveform diversity is achieved via a synergistic union called CR-based SDR. Research is rapidly progressing in SDR hardware and software venues, but current CR-based SDR research lacks the theoretical foundation and analytic framework to permit efficient implementation. This limitation is addressed here by introducing a general framework for analyzing, characterizing, and implementing spectrally modulated, spectrally encoded (SMSE) signals within CR-based SDR architectures. Given orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a 4G candidate signal, OFDM-based signals are collectively classified as SMSE since modulation and encoding are spectrally applied. The proposed framework provides analytic commonality and unification of SMSE signals. Applicability is first shown for candidate 4G signals, and resultant analytic expressions agree with published results. Implementability is then demonstrated in multiple coexistence scenarios via modeling and simulation to reinforce practical utility

Multi-band OFDM UWB receiver with narrowband interference suppression

A multi band orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MB-OFDM) compatible ultra wideband (UWB) receiver with narrowband interference (NBI) suppression capability is presented. The average transmit power of UWB system is limited to -41.3 dBm/MHz in order to not interfere existing narrowband systems. Moreover, it must operate even in the presence of unintentional radiation of FCC Class-B compatible devices. If this unintentional radiation resides in the UWB band, it can jam the communication. Since removing the interference in digital domain requires higher dynamic range of analog front-end than removing it in analog domain, a programmable analog notch filter is used to relax the receiver requirements in the presence of NBI. The baseband filter is placed before the variable gain amplifier (VGA) in order to reduce the signal swing at the VGA input. The frequency hopping period of MB-OFDM puts a lower limit on the settling time of the filter, which is inverse proportional to notch bandwidth. However, notch bandwidth should be low enough not to attenuate the adjacent OFDM tones. Since these requirements are contradictory, optimization is needed to maximize overall performance. Two different NBI suppression schemes are tested. In the first scheme, the notch filter is operating for all sub-bands. In the second scheme, the notch filter is turned on during the sub-band affected by NBI. Simulation results indicate that the UWB system with the first and the second suppression schemes can handle up to 6 dB and 14 dB more NBI power, respectively. The results of this work are not limited to MB-OFDM UWB system, and can be applied to other frequency hopping systems