Sidelobe Suppression and Agile Transmission Techniques for Multicarrier-based Cognitive Radio Systems

With the advent of new high data rate wireless applications, as well as growth of existing wireless services, demand for additional bandwidth is rapidly increasing. Existing spectrum allocation policies of the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) prohibits unlicensed access to licensed spectrum, constraining them instead to several heavily populated, interference-prone frequency bands, which causes spectrum scarcity. However, it has been shown by several spectrum measurement campaigns that the current licensed spectrum usage across time and frequency is inefficient. Therefore, a concept of unlicensed users temporarily ``borrowing spectrum from incumbent license holders to improve the spectrum utilization, called ``spectrum pooling , which is based on dynamic spectrum access (DSA), is proposed. Cognitive radio is a communication paradigm that employs software-defined radio technology in order to perform DSA and offers versatile, powerful and portable wireless transceivers. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a promising candidate for cognitive radio transmission. OFDM supports high data rates that are robust to channel impairments. In addition, some subcarriers can be deactivated which constitutes a non-contiguous OFDM (NC-OFDM) transmission. However, one of the biggest problems for OFDM transmission is high out-of-band (OOB) radiation, which is caused by sinc-type function representing the symbols during one time constant. Thus, high sidelobe may occur that will interfere with neighboring transmissions. This thesis presents two novel techniques for NC-OFDM sidelobe suppression. Another concern about cognitive radio systems is that the influence of frequency-selective fading channel. Consequently, this thesis also presents a combined approach employing power loading, bit allocation and sidelobe suppression for OFDM-based cognitive radio systems optimization

Low-complexity soft-decision feedback turbo equalization for multilevel modulations

This dissertation proposes two new decision feedback equalization schemes suitable for multilevel modulation systems employing turbo equalization. One is soft-decision feedback equalization (SDFE) that takes into account the reliability of both soft a priori information and soft decisions of the data symbols. The proposed SDFE exhibits lower signal to noise ratio (SNR) threshold that is required for water fall bit error rate (BER) and much faster convergence than the near-optimal exact minimum mean square error linear equalizer (Exact-MMSE-LE) for high-order constellation modulations. The proposed SDFE also offers a low computational complexity compared to the Exact-MMSE-LE. The drawback of the SDFE is that its coefficients cannot reach the matched filter bound (MFB) and therefore after a large number of iterations (e.g. 10), its performance becomes inferior to that of the Exact-MMSE-LE. Therefore, soft feedback intersymbol interference (ISI) canceller-based (SIC) structure is investigated. The SIC structure not only exhibits the same low complexity, low SNR threshold and fast convergence as the SDFE but also reaches the MFB after a large number of iterations. Both theoretical analysis and numerical simulations demonstrate why the SIC achieves MFB while the SDFE cannot. These two turbo equalization structures are also extended from single-input single-output (SISO) systems to multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems and applied in high data-rate underwater acoustic (UWA) communications --Abstract, page iv

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

MSAT-X: A technical introduction and status report

A technical introduction and status report for the Mobile Satellite Experiment (MSAT-X) program is presented. The concepts of a Mobile Satellite System (MSS) and its unique challenges are introduced. MSAT-X's role and objectives are delineated with focus on its achievements. An outline of MSS design philosophy is followed by a presentation and analysis of the MSAT-X results, which are cast in a broader context of an MSS. The current phase of MSAT-X has focused notably on the ground segment of MSS. The accomplishments in the four critical technology areas of vehicle antennas, modem and mobile terminal design, speech coding, and networking are presented. A concise evolutionary trace is incorporated in each area to elucidate the rationale leading to the current design choices. The findings in the area of propagation channel modeling are also summarized and their impact on system design discussed. To facilitate the assessment of the MSAT-X results, technology and subsystem recommendations are also included and integrated with a quantitative first-generation MSS design

Residue number system coded differential space-time-frequency coding.

Thesis (Ph.D.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2007.The rapidly growing need for fast and reliable transmission over a wireless channel motivates the development of communication systems that can support high data rates at low complexity. Achieving reliable communication over a wireless channel is a challenging task largely due to the possibility of multipaths which may lead to intersymbol interference (ISI). Diversity techniques such as time, frequency and space are commonly used to combat multipath fading. Classical diversity techniques use repetition codes such that the information is replicated and transmitted over several channels that are sufficiently spaced. In fading channels, the performance across some diversity branches may be excessively attenuated, making throughput unacceptably small. In principle, more powerful coding techniques can be used to maximize the diversity order. This leads to bandwidth expansion or increased transmission power to accommodate the redundant bits. Hence there is need for coding and modulation schemes that provide low error rate performance in a bandwidth efficient manner. If diversity schemes are combined, more independent dimensions become available for information transfer. The first part of the thesis addresses achieving temporal diversity through employing error correcting coding schemes combined with interleaving. Noncoherent differential modulation does not require explicit knowledge or estimate of the channel, instead the information is encoded in the transitions. This lends itself to the possibility of turbo-like serial concatenation of a standard outer channel encoder with an inner modulation code amenable to noncoherent detection through an interleaver. An iterative approach to joint decoding and demodulation can be realized by exchanging soft information between the decoder and the demodulator. This has been shown to be effective and hold hope for approaching capacity over fast fading channels. However most of these schemes employ low rate convolutional codes as their channel encoders. In this thesis we propose the use of redundant residue number system codes. It is shown that these codes can achieve comparable performance at minimal complexity and high data rates. The second part deals with the possibility of combining several diversity dimensions into a reliable bandwidth efficient communication scheme. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has been used to combat multipaths. Combining OFDM with multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems to form MIMO-OFDM not only reduces the complexity by eliminating the need for equalization but also provides large channel capacity and a high diversity potential. Space-time coded OFDM was proposed and shown to be an effective transmission technique for MIMO systems. Spacefrequency coding and space-time-frequency coding were developed out of the need to exploit the frequency diversity due to multipaths. Most of the proposed schemes in the literature maximize frequency diversity predominantly from the frequency-selective nature of the fading channel. In this thesis we propose the use of residue number system as the frequency encoder. It is shown that the proposed space-time-frequency coding scheme can maximize the diversity gains over space, time and frequency domains. The gain of MIMO-OFDM comes at the expense of increased receiver complexity. Furthermore, most of the proposed space-time-frequency coding schemes assume frequency selective block fading channels which is not an ideal assumption for broadband wireless communications. Relatively high mobility in broadband wireless communications systems may result in high Doppler frequency, hence time-selective (rapid) fading. Rapidly changing channel characteristics impedes the channel estimation process and may result in incorrect estimates of the channel coefficients. The last part of the thesis deals with the performance of differential space-time-frequency coding in fast fading channels

Performance evaluation of communication systems with transmit diversity

Transmit diversity is a key technique to combat fading with multiple transmit antennae for next-generation wireless communication systems. Space-time block code (STBC) is a main component of this technique. This dissertation consists of four parts: the first three discuss performance evaluation of STBCs in various circumstances, the fourth outlines a novel differential scheme with full transmit diversity. In the first part, closed-form expressions for the bit error rate (BER) are derived for STBC based on Alamouti\u27s scheme and utilizing M-ary phase shift keying (MPSK) modulation. The analysis is carried out for a slow, flat Rayleigh fading channel with coherent detection and with non-coherent differential encoding/decoding. The BER expression for coherent detection is exact. But for differential detection it is an approximation appropriate for a high signal-to-noise ratio. Numerical results are provided for analysis and simulations for BPSK and QPSK modulations. A signal-to-noise ratio loss of approximately 3 dB always occurs with conventional differential detection for STBC compared to coherent detection. In the second part of this dissertation, a multiple-symbol differential detection (MSDD) technique is proposed for MPSK STBCs, which greatly reduces this performance loss by extending the observation interval for decoding. The technique uses maximum likelihood block sequence detection instead of traditional block-by-block detection and is carried out on the slow, flat Rayleigh fading channel. A generalized decision metric for an observation interval of N blocks is derived. It is shown that for a moderate number of blocks, MSDD provides more than 1.0 dB performance improvement corresponding to conventional differential detection. In addition, a closed-form pairwise error probability for differential BPSI( STBC is derived for an observation interval of N blocks, and an approximate BER is obtained to evaluate the performance. In the third part, the BER performance of STBC over a spatio-temporal correlated channel with coherent and noncoherent detection is illustrated, where a general space-time correlation model is utilized. The simulation results demonstrate that spatial correlation negatively effects the performance of the STBC scheme with differential detection but temporal correlation positively impacts it. However, with coherent detection, spatial correlation still has negative effect on the performance but temporal correlation has no impact on it. In the final part of this dissertation, a differential detection scheme for DS/CDMA MIMO link is presented. The transmission provides for full transmit and receive diversity gain using a simple detection scheme, which is a natural extension of differential detection combined with an orthogonal transmit diversity (OTD) approach. A capacity analysis for this scheme is illustrated