Near-Instantaneously Adaptive HSDPA-Style OFDM Versus MC-CDMA Transceivers for WIFI, WIMAX, and Next-Generation Cellular Systems

Burts-by-burst (BbB) adaptive high-speed downlink packet access (HSDPA) style multicarrier systems are reviewed, identifying their most critical design aspects. These systems exhibit numerous attractive features, rendering them eminently eligible for employment in next-generation wireless systems. It is argued that BbB-adaptive or symbol-by-symbol adaptive orthogonal frequency division multiplex (OFDM) modems counteract the near instantaneous channel quality variations and hence attain an increased throughput or robustness in comparison to their fixed-mode counterparts. Although they act quite differently, various diversity techniques, such as Rake receivers and space-time block coding (STBC) are also capable of mitigating the channel quality variations in their effort to reduce the bit error ratio (BER), provided that the individual antenna elements experience independent fading. By contrast, in the presence of correlated fading imposed by shadowing or time-variant multiuser interference, the benefits of space-time coding erode and it is unrealistic to expect that a fixed-mode space-time coded system remains capable of maintaining a near-constant BER

NASA. Lewis Research Center Advanced Modulation and Coding Project: Introduction and overview

The Advanced Modulation and Coding Project at LeRC is sponsored by the Office of Space Science and Applications, Communications Division, Code EC, at NASA Headquarters and conducted by the Digital Systems Technology Branch of the Space Electronics Division. Advanced Modulation and Coding is one of three focused technology development projects within the branch's overall Processing and Switching Program. The program consists of industry contracts for developing proof-of-concept (POC) and demonstration model hardware, university grants for analyzing advanced techniques, and in-house integration and testing of performance verification and systems evaluation. The Advanced Modulation and Coding Project is broken into five elements: (1) bandwidth- and power-efficient modems; (2) high-speed codecs; (3) digital modems; (4) multichannel demodulators; and (5) very high-data-rate modems. At least one contract and one grant were awarded for each element

Advanced Modulation and Coding Technology Conference

The objectives, approach, and status of all current LeRC-sponsored industry contracts and university grants are presented. The following topics are covered: (1) the LeRC Space Communications Program, and Advanced Modulation and Coding Projects; (2) the status of four contracts for development of proof-of-concept modems; (3) modulation and coding work done under three university grants, two small business innovation research contracts, and two demonstration model hardware development contracts; and (4) technology needs and opportunities for future missions

Multi-Gigabaud Solutions for Millimeter-wave Communication

With the growing number of mobile network and internet services subscriptions, faster communication will provide a better experience for users. In the next generation mobile network, the fifth generation (5G), communication data rate will achieve several Gigabits per second with ultra-low latency. The capacity enhancement of the mobile backhaul and fronthaul is a challenge. The transmission capacity can be enhanced by increasing the bandwidth, increasing the spectrum efficiency and increasing both the bandwidth and the spectrum efficiency at the same time. \ua0Millimeter-wave frequency bands have the bandwidth in the order of GHz which provide great opportunities to realize high data rate communications. In this case, millimeter-wave frontend modules and wideband modems are needed in communication systems. In this thesis, a 40 Gbps real-time differential quadrature phase shift keying (DQPSK) modem has been presented to support high-speed communications [A]. As a complete system, it aims to work together with the D-band frontend module published in [1] providing more than 40 GHz bandwidth. In this modem, the modulator is realized in a single field programmable gate array (FPGA) and the demodulator is based on analog components. Although millimeter-wave frequency bands could provide wide available bandwidth, it is challenging to generate high output power of the carrier signal. In addition, the transmitter needs to back off several dB in output power in order to avoid the non-linear distortion caused by power amplifiers. In this thesis, an outphasing power combining transmitter is proposed [B] to use the maximum output power of power amplifiers while maintaining the signal quality at the same time. This transmitter is demonstrated at E-band with commercially available components.Increasing the spectrum efficiency is an additional method to enhance the transmission capacity. High order modulation signals such as quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) signals are commonly used for this purpose.\ua0 In this case, receivers usually require coherent detection in order to demodulate the signals. Limited by the sampling rate of the analog to digital converters (ADCs), the traditional digital carrier recovery methods can be only applied to a symbol rate lower than the sampling rate. A synchronous baseband receiver is proposed [C] with a carrier recovery subsystem which only requires a low-speed ADC with a sampling rate of 100 MSps

New Concept of PLC Modems: Multi-Carrier System for Frequency Selective Slow-Fading Channels Based on Layered SCCC Turbocodes

The article introduces a novel concept of a PLC modem as a complement to the existing G3 and PRIME standards for communications using medium- or high-voltage overhead or cable lines. The proposed concept is based on the fact that the levels of impulse noise and frequency selectivity are lower on high-voltage lines than on low-voltage ones. Also, the demands for “cost-effective” circuitry design are not so crucial as in the case of modems for low-voltage level. In contract to these positive conditions, however, there is the need to overcome much longer distances and to take into account low SNR on the receiving side. With respect to the listed reasons, our concept makes use of MCM, instead of OFDM. The assumption of low SNR is compensated through the use of an efficient channel coding based on a serially concatenated turbo code. In addition, MCM offers lower latency and PAPR compared to OFDM. Therefore, when using MCM, it is possible to excite the line with higher power. The proposed concept has been verified during experimental transmission of testing data over a real, 5 km long, 22kV overhead line

Future benefits and applications of intelligent on-board processing to VSAT services

The trends and roles of VSAT services in the year 2010 time frame are examined based on an overall network and service model for that period. An estimate of the VSAT traffic is then made and the service and general network requirements are identified. In order to accommodate these traffic needs, four satellite VSAT architectures based on the use of fixed or scanning multibeam antennas in conjunction with IF switching or onboard regeneration and baseband processing are suggested. The performance of each of these architectures is assessed and the key enabling technologies are identified

BASEBAND RADIO MODEM DESIGN USING GRAPHICS PROCESSING UNITS

A modern radio or wireless communications transceiver is programmed via software and firmware to change its functionalities at the baseband. However, the actual implementation of the radio circuits relies on dedicated hardware, and the design and implementation of such devices are time consuming and challenging. Due to the need for real-time operation, dedicated hardware is preferred in order to meet stringent requirements on throughput and latency. With increasing need for higher throughput and shorter latency, while supporting increasing bandwidth across a fragmented spectrum, dedicated subsystems are developed in order to service individual frequency bands and specifications. Such a dedicated-hardware-intensive approach leads to high resource costs, including costs due to multiple instantiations of mixers, filters, and samplers. Such increases in hardware requirements in turn increases device size, power consumption, weight, and financial cost. If it can meet the required real-time constraints, a more flexible and reconfigurable design approach, such as a software-based solution, is often more desirable over a dedicated hardware solution. However, significant challenges must be overcome in order to meet constraints on throughput and latency while servicing different frequency bands and bandwidths. Graphics processing unit (GPU) technology provides a promising class of platforms for addressing these challenges. GPUs, which were originally designed for rendering images and video sequences, have been adapted as general purpose high-throughput computation engines for a wide variety of application areas beyond their original target domains. Linear algebra and signal processing acceleration are examples of such application areas. In this thesis, we apply GPUs as software-based, baseband radios and demonstrate novel, software-based implementations of key subsystems in modern wireless transceivers. In our work, we develop novel implementation techniques that allow communication system designers to use GPUs as accelerators for baseband processing functions, including real-time filtering and signal transformations. More specifically, we apply GPUs to accelerate several computationally-intensive, frontend radio subsystems, including filtering, signal mixing, sample rate conversion, and synchronization. These are critical subsystems that must operate in real-time to reliably receive waveforms. The contributions of this thesis can be broadly organized into 3 major areas: (1) channelization, (2) arbitrary resampling, and (3) synchronization. 1. Channelization: a wideband signal is shared between different users and channels, and a channelizer is used to separate the components of the shared signal in the different channels. A channelizer is often used as a pre-processing step in selecting a specific channel-of-interest. A typical channelization process involves signal conversion, resampling, and filtering to reject adjacent channels. We investigate GPU acceleration for a particularly efficient form of channelizer called a polyphase filterbank channelizer, and demonstrate a real-time implementation of our novel channelizer design. 2. Arbitrary resampling: following a channelization process, a signal is often resampled to at least twice the data rate in order to further condition the signal. Since different communication standards require different resampling ratios, it is desirable for a resampling subsystem to support a variety of different ratios. We investigate optimized, GPU-based methods for resampling using polyphase filter structures that are mapped efficiently into GPU hardware. We investigate these GPU implementation techniques in the context of interpolation (integer-factor increases in sampling rate), decimation (integer-factor decreases in sampling rate), and rational resampling. Finally, we demonstrate an efficient implementation of arbitrary resampling using GPUs. This implementation exploits specialized hardware units within the GPU to enable efficient and accurate resampling processes involving arbitrary changes in sample rate. 3. Synchronization: incoming signals in a wireless communications transceiver must be synchronized in order to recover the transmitted data properly from complex channel effects such as thermal noise, fading, and multipath propagation. We investigate timing recovery in GPUs to accelerate the most computationally intensive part of the synchronization process, and correctly align the incoming data symbols in the receiver. Furthermore, we implement fully-parallel timing error detection to accelerate maximum likelihood estimation