Physical waveform research for beyond 52.6 GHz in 5G NR networks

Historically, in order to fulfil all the requirements for the new generations, the frequency bands have been expanded from generation to generation. In particular for the fifth generation new radio (5G NR), where the use of millimetre wave (mmWave) frequencies can offer higher bandwidths, communications in frequencies beyond 52.6 GHz seem really promising and are now under discussion in the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) standardisation for the 5G NR future releases. More concretely, both academia and industry are doing research for the frequency range between 52.6 GHz and 114.25 GHz. The reasons why communications beyond 52.6 GHz are interesting is because in those frequencies, high data rate and low latency can be provided due to the large and contiguous channel bandwidth that is available. Also, new use cases can be explored in this frequency range since high accuracy positioning is possible at higher carrier frequencies, such as Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) radar sensing, that allows new kinds of services. New challenges appear at higher frequencies, or other implementation issues that were not critical in lower frequencies start to become dominant and have to be taken into consideration while defining the new modulations and comparing the possible candidates. The main problems that have to be faced at higher frequencies are the poor propagation conditions (propagation losses are higher than in frequencies below 52.6 GHz), and the radio frequency (RF) impairments that electronic components may have, especially the lower power amplifier (PA) efficiency. Therefore, in order to have a good signal quality, if the peak to average power ratio (PAPR) of the original signal is high, the back-off should be high to make the PA work in the linear region. Thus, the waveform design has to be focused on generating signals with “nearly constant” envelope in order to be able to work closer to the saturation zone of the amplifier without distorting the signal. Also, another problem that has to be taken into account is the large phase noise (PN) present at these frequencies. The main goal of this work is the comparison between different modulations for discrete Fourier transform (DFT) Spread OFDM (DFTs-OFDM) in order to find a suitable candidate that can be part of the 5G NR communications for carrier frequencies beyond 52.6 GHz, and targeting specially low spectral efficiency (between 1 and 2 bps/Hz). Therefore, the main modulation references are pulse shaped π/2- binary phase shift keying (BPSK) and quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) supported in 5G NR Release 15 up link (UL). In this Thesis, several modulation candidates have been tested under realistic conditions by using a 3GPP 5G NR compliant radio link simulator in Matlab. In order to find the best candidate, the waveforms should be able to present good characteristics that can overcome the problems present in mmWave communications. The main contribution of this thesis is to propose a new "constrained" phase shift keying (PSK) modulation, called CPSK, which applies a constraint to the symbols that are transmitted in order to reduce the PAPR of the signal. The results have shown that under the mmWave communications conditions (such as low PA efficiency and high PN), the new CPSK modulations can provide significant improvement with the evaluated PA model when compared to QPSK modulation, and together with extensive link level performance evaluations, a clear link budget gain can also be shown for specific CPSK modulation candidates and pulse shaped π/2-BPSK

D4.1 Draft air interface harmonization and user plane design

The METIS-II project envisions the design of a new air interface in order to fulfil all the performance requirements of the envisioned 5G use cases including some extreme low latency use cases and ultra-reliable transmission, xMBB requiring additional capacity that is only available in very high frequencies, as well as mMTC with extremely densely distributed sensors and very long battery life requirements. Designing an adaptable and flexible 5G Air Interface (AI), which will tackle these use cases while offering native multi-service support, is one of the key tasks of METIS-II WP4. This deliverable will highlight the challenges of designing an AI required to operate in a wide range of spectrum bands and cell sizes, capable of addressing the diverse services with often diverging requirements, and propose a design and suitability assessment framework for 5G AI candidates.Aydin, O.; Gebert, J.; Belschner, J.; Bazzi, J.; Weitkemper, P.; Kilinc, C.; Leonardo Da Silva, I.... (2016). D4.1 Draft air interface harmonization and user plane design. https://doi.org/10.13140/RG.2.2.24542.0288

Design and analysis of adaptively modulated optical orthogonal frequency division multiple access multiband passive optical networks

The aim of this thesis is to explore innovative technical solutions of utilising Optical Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OOFDM) in intensity modulation and direct detection (IMDD) based future access networks to provide multi-service capability with a minimum 1 Gb/s per user. This thesis extensively investigates and analyses the feasibility and performance of adaptively modulated optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing multiple access passive optical networks (AMOOFDMA PONs) upstream transmission systems by numerically simulating AMOOFDMA PONs using experimentally determined parameters. OOFDM transceivers incorporating reflective semiconductor optical amplifiers (RSOAs) and distributed feedback (DFB) lasers are utilised in the transceivers and intensity modulation and direct detection (IMDD) transmission systems are also employed to achieve a low complexity, high speed and large bandwidth PON as a solution for next generation access networks. Numerical simulations has also being undertaken to improve overall AMOOFDMA PON performance and power budget by incorporating optical band-pass filters (OBPFs) at the output of optical network units (ONUs). A major challenge of making PONs spectrally efficient has been addressed in this thesis by investigating the AMOOFDMA PON with ONUs on a single upstream wavelength. The performance of the single upstream wavelength AMOOFDMA PON is compared to the multiple wavelength AMOOFDMA PON. Another major challenge in AMOOFDMA PONs namely improving system capacity has also been addressed by implementing multiband transmission in an AMOOFDMA PON. Results show that for a multiple upstream OOFDMA IMDD PON system over 25 km single mode fibre (SMF) can achieve an aggregated data rate of 11.25 Gb/s and the minimum wavelength spacing between ONUs are independent of the number of ONUs. Results also show that a single upstream wavelength AMOOFDMA IMDD PON with multiband incorporated at the ONUs can achieve a aggregated line rate of 21.25 Gb/s over 25 km SMF

Waveform Advancements and Synchronization Techniques for Generalized Frequency Division Multiplexing

To enable a new level of connectivity among machines as well as between people and machines, future wireless applications will demand higher requirements on data rates, response time, and reliability from the communication system. This will lead to a different system design, comprising a wide range of deployment scenarios. One important aspect is the evolution of physical layer (PHY), specifically the waveform modulation. The novel generalized frequency division multiplexing (GFDM) technique is a prominent proposal for a flexible block filtered multicarrier modulation. This thesis introduces an advanced GFDM concept that enables the emulation of other prominent waveform candidates in scenarios where they perform best. Hence, a unique modulation framework is presented that is capable of addressing a wide range of scenarios and to upgrade the PHY for 5G networks. In particular, for a subset of system parameters of the modulation framework, the problem of symbol time offset (STO) and carrier frequency offset (CFO) estimation is investigated and synchronization approaches, which can operate in burst and continuous transmissions, are designed. The first part of this work presents the modulation principles of prominent 5G candidate waveforms and then focuses on the GFDM basic and advanced attributes. The GFDM concept is extended towards the use of OQAM, introducing the novel frequency-shift OQAM-GFDM, and a new low complexity model based on signal processing carried out in the time domain. A new prototype filter proposal highlights the benefits obtained in terms of a reduced out-of-band (OOB) radiation and more attractive hardware implementation cost. With proper parameterization of the advanced GFDM, the achieved gains are applicable to other filtered OFDM waveforms. In the second part, a search approach for estimating STO and CFO in GFDM is evaluated. A self-interference metric is proposed to quantify the effective SNR penalty caused by the residual time and frequency misalignment or intrinsic inter-symbol interference (ISI) and inter-carrier interference (ICI) for arbitrary pulse shape design in GFDM. In particular, the ICI can be used as a non-data aided approach for frequency estimation. Then, GFDM training sequences, defined either as an isolated preamble or embedded as a midamble or pseudo-circular pre/post-amble, are designed. Simulations show better OOB emission and good estimation results, either comparable or superior, to state-of-the-art OFDM system in wireless channels

Nonlinear effects in OFDM signal transmission over radio over fibre links

The dynamic range limitations that arise from nonlinearity in low-cost and low complexity directly modulated radio over fibre (RoF) links are examined. Statistical non linear models are presented and applied to the case of a RoF link with a low biased laser diode. The effects of distortion on the Error Vector Magnitude (EVM) performance of Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM) signals with different numbers of subcarriers and the connection to the Peak-ta-Average Power Ratio (PAPR) of the signals are investigated. Statistical distributions of the EVM over a large number of transmitted OFDM frames are gained from experimental measurements and analyses of idealized processes. The measurement results show that as the number of subcarriers is reduced the distribution means are not dependent in the expected way on the statistical PAPR of the transmitted OFDM signals. Instead, it is shown that in regions of moderate distortion the median of the EVM is more closely related to the statistical PAPR and to the required back-off for signals with different numbers of subcarriers. Through the employed statistical analysis, the asymptotic convergence of the EVM result to that expected in the idealized case is observed. The results of this analysis also show, how, including the EVM variance in estimations for back-off might be useful, how, in a measurement, the number of transmitted OFDM frames affects the estimated mean EVM. Differing EVM results for subcarriers at the edge and middle of the signal band show that distortion affects the subcarriers at the middle of the band to a stronger degree and that their behaviour is correlated "to the statistical PAPR of the individual signals. Then, a laser model validated against measured performance is designed arid used for simulating the performance of a subcarrier multiplexed 4th generation mobile/wireless RoF transmission system. Predictions indicate that the architecture provides adequate performance in terms of EVM, for different IFFT sizes and modulation levels of up to 256 QAM (at leastL and a combined raw data rate of up to 3.2 Gbps. Based on a 1.5% EVM transmitter requirement with 256 QAM, a system dynamic range of approximately 5.1 dB is predicted. Finally, the use of companding in a directly modulated RaF link, with the aim of reducing the amplification (and isolation) requirements in the remote antenna unit, is demonstrated, quantified through EVM measurements. The resulting improvements in output power are approximately 4.7 dB at an EVM transmitter requirement of 5.6 %, while in terms of the point of onset of distortion-induced EVM increase, the improvement is approximately 7.6 dB

Implementing carrier recovery for LTE 20 MHz on transport triggered architecture

Synchronization is a critical function in digital communications. Its failure may cause catastrophic effects on the transmission system performance. It is very important that the receiver is synchronised with the transmitter because it is not possible to correct frequencies/phases without any control mechanisms. Synchronization is different in Third Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) Long Term Evolution (LTE) for uplink and downlink because of the choice of multiple access scheme. Multiple access scheme for LTE downlink is Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) and Single Carrier-Frequency Division Multiple Access (SC-FDMA) for the uplink. OFDMA is susceptible to Carrier Frequency Offset (CFO). In case of a typical LTE system with a carrier frequency of 2.1 GHz, a frequency drift of 10ppm (10×10-6) of the local oscillator can cause an offset of 21 kHz. LTE system employs a fixed subcarrier spacing of 15 kHz. This offset caused by the local oscillator corresponds to 1.40 subcarrier spac-ings. The receiver extracts the information from the received signal to synchronise and compensate for any carrier frequency/phase offset. Increasing demand for data driven applications has put stress on communication systems to provide high data rates and increased bandwidth. This demand has ever been increasing and requires new standards to evolve and efficient hardware. It has been difficult to develop hardware at the pace new communication standards are developing. It also increases the cost of deployment of a technology for a brief period of time without covering the huge capital invested in the network. In order to meet the pace of evolving standards and covering the huge net-work costs, industry needs Software-Defined Radio (SDR). SDR is a radio communica-tion technology that is based on software defined wireless communication protocols instead of hardwired implementations. System components that are usually implemented in hardware are implemented by means of software on a computer or embedded system. LTE carrier recovery algorithm for LTE downlink with 20 MHz system bandwidth has been implemented in this thesis. The architecture chosen for implementation is Transport Triggered Architecture (TTA) with the goal to achieve real time constraints along with a certain flexibility and power consumption needed for an SDR platform. The target programming language is C with TTA specific extensions instead of hand optimized assembly with the aim to reduce the whole design time and still achieve the required optimizations and throughput. This design cycle time is also one of the im-portant aspects for product development in the industry

PROCESS FOR BREAKING DOWN THE LTE SIGNAL TO EXTRACT KEY INFORMATION

The increasingly important role of Long Term Evolution (LTE) has increased security concerns among the service providers and end users and made security of the network even more indispensable. The main thrust of this thesis is to investigate if the LTE signal can be broken down in a methodical way to obtain information that would otherwise be private; e.g., the Global Positioning System (GPS) location of the user equipment/base station or identity (ID) of the user. The study made use of signal simulators and software to analyze the LTE signal to develop a method to remove noise, breakdown the LTE signal and extract desired information. From the simulation results, it was possible to extract key information in the downlink like the Downlink Control Information (DCI), Cell-Radio Network Temporary Identifier (C-RNTI) and physical Cell Identity (Cell-ID). This information can be modified to cause service disruptions in the network within a reasonable amount of time and with modest computing resources.Defence Science and Technology Agency, SingaporeApproved for public release; distribution is unlimited

Waveform design and processing techniques in OFDM radar

Includes bibliographical referencesWith the advent of powerful digital hardware, software defined radio and radar have become an active area of research and development. This in turn has given rise to many new research directions in the radar community, which were previously not comprehensible. One such direction is the recently investigated OFDM radar, which uses OFDM waveforms instead of the classic linear frequency mod- ulated waveforms. Being a wideband signal, the OFDM symbol offers spectral efficiency along with improved range resolution, two enticing characteristics for radar. Historically a communication signal, OFDM is a special form of multi- carrier modulation, where a single data stream is transmitted over a number of lower rate carriers. The information is conveyed via sets of complex phase codes modulating the phase of the carriers. At the receiver, a demodulation stage estimates the transmitted phase codes and the information in the form of binary words is finally retrieved. In radar, the primary goal is to detect the presence of targets and possibly estimate some of their features through measurable quantities, e.g. range, Doppler, etc. Yet, being a young waveform in radar, more understanding is required to turn it into a standard radar waveform. Our goal, with this thesis, is to mature our comprehension of OFDM for radar and contribute to the realm of OFDM radar. First, we develop two processing alternatives for the case of a train of wideband OFDM pulses. In this, our first so-called time domain solution consists in applying a matched filter to compress the received echoes in the fast time before applying a fast Fourier transform in the slow time to form the range Doppler image. We motivate this approach after demonstrating that short OFDM pulses are Doppler tolerant. The merit of this approach is to conserve existing radar architectures while operating OFDM waveforms. The second so-called frequency domain solution that we propose is inspired from communication engineering research since the received echoes are tumbled in the frequency domain. After several manipulations, the range Doppler image is formed. We explain how this approach allows to retrieve an estimate of the unambiguous radial velocity, and propose two methods for that. The first method requires the use of identical sequence (IS) for the phase codes and is, as such, binding, while the other method works irrespective of the phase codes. Like the previous technique, this processing solution accommodates high Doppler frequencies and the degradation in the range Doppler image is negligible provided that the spacing between consecutive subcarriers is sufficient. Unfortunately, it suffers from the issue of intersymbol interference (ISI). After observing that both solutions provide the same processing gain, we clarify the constraints that shall apply to the OFDM signals in either of these solutions. In the first solution, special care has been employed to design OFDM pulses with low peak-to-mean power ratio (PMEPR) and low sidelobe level in the autocorrelation function. In the second solution, on the other hand, only the constraint of low PMEPR applies since the sidelobes of the scatterer characteristic function in the range Doppler image are Fourier based. Then, we develop a waveform-processing concept for OFDM based stepped frequency waveforms. This approach is intended for high resolution radar with improved low probability of detection (LPD) characteristics, as we propose to employ a frequency hopping scheme from pulse to pulse other than the conventional linear one. In the same way we treated our second alternative earlier, we derive our high range resolution processing in matrix terms and assess the degradation caused by high Doppler on the range profile. We propose using a bank of range migration filters to retrieve the radial velocity of the scatterer and realise that the issue of classical ambiguity in Doppler can be alleviated provided that the relative bandwidth, i.e. the total bandwidth covered by the train of pulses divided by the carrier frequency, is chosen carefully. After discussing a deterministic artefact caused by frequency hopping and the means to reduce it at the waveform design or processing level, we discuss the benefit offered by our concept in comparison to other standard wideband methods and emphasize on its LPD characteristics at the waveform and pulse level. In our subsequent analysis, we investigate genetic algorithm (GA) based techniques to finetune OFDM pulses in terms of radar requirements viz., low PMEPR only or low PMEPR and low sidelobe level together, as evoked earlier. To motivate the use of genetic algorithms, we establish that existing techniques are not exible in terms of the OFDM structure (the assumption that all carriers are present is always made). Besides, the use of advanced objective functions suited to particular configurations (e.g. low sidelobe level in proximity of the main autocorrelation peak) as well as the combination of multiple objective functions can be done elegantly with GA based techniques. To justify that solely phase codes are used for our optimisation(s), we stress that the weights applied to the carriers composing the OFDM signal can be spared to cope with other radar related challenges and we give an example with a case of enhanced detection. Next, we develop a technique where we exploit the instantaneous wideband trans- mission to characterise the type of the canonical scatterers that compose a target. Our idea is based on the well-established results from the geometrical theory of diffraction (GTD), where the scattered energy varies with frequency. We present the problem related to ISI, stress the need to design the transmitted pulse so as to reduce this risk and suggest having prior knowledge over the scatterers relative positions. Subsequently, we develop a performance analysis to assess the behaviour of our technique in the presence of additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). Then, we demonstrate the merit of integrating over several pulses to improve the characterisation rate of the scatterers. Because the scattering centres of a target resonate variably at different frequencies, frequency diversity is another enticing property which can be used to enhance the sensing performance. Here, we exploit this element of diversity to improve the classification function. We develop a technique where the classification takes place at the waveform design when few targets are present. In our case study, we have three simple targets. Each is composed of perfectly electrically conducting spheres for which we have exact models of the scattered field. We develop a GA based search to find optimal OFDM symbols that best discriminate one target against any other. Thereafter, the OFDM pulse used for probing the target in the scene is constructed by stacking the resulting symbols in time. After discussing the problem of finding the best frequency window to sense the target, we develop a performance analysis where our figure of merit is the overall probability of correct classification. Again, we prove the merit of integrating over several pulses to reach classification rates above 95%. In turn, this study opens onto new challenges in the realm of OFDM radar. We leave for future research the demonstration of the practical applicability of our novel concepts and mention manifold research axes, viz., a signal processing axis that would include methods to cope with inter symbol interference, range migration issues, methods to raise the ambiguity in Doppler when several echoes from distinct scatterers overlap in the case of our frequency domain processing solutions; an algorithmic axis that would concern the heuristic techniques employed in the design of our OFDM pulses. We foresee that further tuning might help speeding up our GA based algorithms and we expect that constrained multi- objective optimisation GA (MOO-GA) based techniques shall benefit the OFDM pulse design problem in radar. A system design axis that would account for the hardware components' behaviours, when possible, directly at the waveform design stage and would include implementation of the OFDM radar system

PAPR Reduction Solutions for 5G and Beyond

The latest fifth generation (5G) wireless technology provides improved communication quality compared to earlier generations. The 5G New Radio (NR), specified by the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP), addresses the modern requirements of the wireless networks and targets improved communication quality in terms of for example peak data rates, latency and reliability. On the other hand, there are still various crucial issues that impact the implementation and energy-efficiency of 5G NR networks and their different deployments. The power-efficiency of transmitter power amplifiers (PAs) is one of these issues. The PA is an important unit of a communication system, which is responsible from amplifying the transmit signal towards the antenna. Reaching high PA power-efficiency is known to be difficult when the transmit waveform has a high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). The cyclic prefix (CP)-orthogonal frequencydivision multiplexing (OFDM) that is the main physical-layer waveform of 5G NR, suffers from such high PAPR challenge. There are generally many PAPR reduction methods proposed in the literature, however, many of these have either very notable computational complexity or impose substantial inband distortion. Moreover, 5G NR has new features that require redesigning the PAPR reduction methods. In line with these, the first contribution of this thesis is the novel frequencyselective PAPR reduction concept, where clipping noise is shaped in a frequencyselective manner over the active passband. This concept is in line with the 5G NR, where aggressive frequency-domain multiplexing is considered as an important feature. Utilizing the frequency-selective PAPR reduction enables the realization of the heterogeneous resource utilization within one passband. The second contribution of this thesis is the frequency-selective single-numerology (SN) and mixed-numerology (MN) PAPR reduction methods. The 5G NR targets utilizing different physical resource blocks (PRBs) and bandwidth parts (BWPs) within one passband flexibly. Yet, existing PAPR reduction methods do not exploit these features. Based on this, novel algorithms utilizing PRB and BWP level control of clipping noise are designed to meet error vector magnitude (EVM) limits of the modulations while reducing the PAPR. TheMNallocation has one critical challenge as inter numerology interference (INI) emerges after aggregation of subband signals. Proposed MN PAPR reduction algorithm overcomes this issue by cancelling INI within the PAPR reduction loop, which has not been considered earlier. The third contribution of this thesis is the proposal of two novel non-iterative PAPR reduction methods. First method utilizes the fast-convolution filteredOFDM (FC-F-OFDM) that has excellent spectral containment, and combines it with clipping. Moreover, clipping noise is also allocated to guard bands by filter passband extension (FPE) and clipping noise in out-of-band (OOB) regions is essentially filtered through FC filtering. The second method is the guard-tone reservation (GTR) which is applied to discrete Fourier transform-spread-OFDM (DFT-s-OFDM). Uniquely, GTR estimates the time domain peaks in data symbol domain before inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT), and uses guard band tones for PAPR reduction. The fourth contribution of the thesis is the design of two novel machine learning (ML) algorithms that improve the drawbacks of frequency-selective PAPRreduction. The first ML algorithm, PAPRer, models the nonlinear relation between the PAPR target and the realized PAPR value. Then, it auto-tunes the optimal PAPR target and this way minimizes the realized PAPR. The second ML algorithm, one-shot clipping-and-filtering (OSCF), solves the complexity problem of iterative clipping and filtering (ICF)-like methods by generating proper approximated clipping noise signal after running only one iteration, leading to very efficient PAPR reduction. Finally, an over-arching contribution of this thesis is the experimental validation of the performance benefits of the proposed methods by considering realistic 5GNR uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) testbeds that include realistic PAs and associated hardware. It is very important to confirm the practical benefits of the proposed methods and, this is realized with the conducted experimental work

Cooperative diversity schemes for wireless communication systems

Mestrado em Engenharia Electrónica e TelecomunicaçõesA presente dissertação insere-se na área das comunicações sem fios, ou mais especificamente na temática da diversidade cooperativa. Neste trabalho é feito o estudo, implementação e avaliação do desempenho de esquemas de diversidade cooperativa de baixa complexidade para sistemas de comunicação móvel. Estes esquemas são mapeados em modelos de simulação baseados em OFDMA e são completamente simulados em CoCentric System Studio. Os resultados obtidos com os modelos desenvolvidos mostram que os esquemas de diversidade cooperativa atenuam os efeitos do desvanecimento induzido pela propagação multipercurso, aumentando desta forma a capacidade e cobertura dos sistemas wireless. Os ganhos são particularmente altos quando as perdas de percurso são consideráveis, como é o caso das zonas urbanas densas. ABSTRACT: This dissertation is inserted into the wireless communication, or more specifically, into the cooperative diversity field. within this thesis, the performance of low-complexity cooperative diversity schemes projected for mobile communication systems are studied, implemented and evaluated. These schemes are mapped into simulation models based on OFDMA and are fully simulated in the CoCentric System Studio environment. The obtained results show that the proposed cooperative schemes for the uplink communication mitigate fading induced by multipath propagation, thereby increasing the capacity and coverage of wireless systems. Cooperation gains are particularly high when multipath losses are considerable, as is the case for dense urban regions