Spread-Spectrum Random-Access Communications for HF Channels

Coordinated Science Laboratory was formerly known as Control Systems LaboratoryOffice of Naval Research / N00014-80-C-080

Underwater acoustic communications

The underwater acoustic medium poses unique challenges to the design of robust, high throughput digital communications. The aim of this work is to identify modulation and receiver processing techniques to enable the reliable transfer of data at high rate, at range between two, potentially mobile parties using acoustics. More generally, this work seeks to investigate techniques to effectively communicate between two or more parties over a wide range of channel conditions where data rate is a key but not always the absolute performance requirement. Understanding the intrinsic ocean mechanisms that influence signal coherence, the relationship between signal coherence and optimum signal design, and the development of robust modulation and receiver processing techniques are the main areas of study within this work. New and established signal design, modulation, synchronisation, equalisation and spatial processing techniques are investigated. Several new, innovative techniques are presented which seek to improve the robustness of ‘classical’ solutions to the underwater acoustic communications problem. The performance of these techniques to mitigate the severe temporal dispersion of the underwater channel and its unique temporal variability are assessed. A candidate modulation, synchronisation and equalisation architecture is proposed based on a spatial-temporal adaptive signal processing (STAP) receiver. Comprehensive simulation results are presented to demonstrate the performance of the candidate receiver to time selective, frequency selective and spatially selective channel behaviour. Several innovative techniques are presented which maximise system performance over a wider range of operational and environmental conditions. Field trials results are presented based on system evaluation over a wide range of geographically distinct environments demonstrating system performance over a diverse range of ocean bathymetry, topography and background noise conditions. A real time implementation of the system is reported and field trials results presented demonstrating the capability of the system to support a wide range of data formats including video at useful frame rates. Within this work, several novel techniques have been developed which have extended the state of the art in high data rate underwater communications:- • Robust, high fidelity open loop synchronisation techniques capable of operating at marginal signal-to-noise ratios over a wide range of severely time spread environments. These high probability of synchronisation, low probability of false alarm techniques, provide the means for ‘burst’ open loop synchronisation in time, Doppler and space (bearing). The techniques have been demonstrated in communication and position fixing/navigation systems to provide repeatable range accuracy’s to centimetric order. • Novel closed loop synchronisation compensation for STAP receiver architectures. Specifically, this work has demonstrated the performance benefits of including both delay lock loop (DLL) and phase lock loop (PLL) support for acoustic adaptive receivers to offload tracking effort from the fractional feedforward equaliser section. It has been shown that the addition of a DLL/PLL outperforms the PLL only case for Doppler errors exceeding a few fractions of a knot. • Recycling of training data has been demonstrated as a potentially useful means to improve equaliser convergence in difficult acoustic channels. With suitable processing power, training data recycling introduces no additional transmission time overhead, which may be a limiting factor in battery powered applications. • Forward and time reverse decoding of packet data has been demonstrated as an effective means to overcome some non-minimum phase channel conditions. It has also been shown that there may be further benefits in terms of improved bit error performance, by exploiting concurrent forward and backward symbol data under modest channel conditions. • Several wideband techniques have been developed and demonstrated to be effective at resolving and coherently tracking difficult doubly spread acoustic channels. In particular, wideband spread spectrum techniques have been shown to be effective at resolving acoustic multipath, and with the aid of independent delay lock loops, track individual path arrivals. Techniques have been developed which can effect coherent or non-coherent recombination of these paths with a view to improving the robustness of an acoustic link operating at very low signal-to-noise levels. • Demonstrated throughputs of up to 41kbps in a difficult, tropical environment, featuring significant biological noise levels for mobile platforms at range up to 1.5km. • Demonstrated throughputs of between 300bps and 1600bps in a shallow, reverberant environment, at a range up to 21km at LF. • Implemented and demonstrated all algorithms in real time systems

Comparative study and performance evaluation of MC-CDMA and OFDM over AWGN and fading channels environment

Η απαίτηση για εφαρμογές υψηλής ταχύτητας μετάδοσης δεδομένων έχει αυξηθεί σημαντικά τα τελευταία χρόνια. Η πίεση των χρηστών σήμερα για ταχύτερες επικοινωνίες, ανεξαρτήτως κινητής ή σταθερής, χωρίς επιπλέον κόστος είναι μια πραγματικότητα. Για να πραγματοποιηθούν αυτές οι απαιτήσεις, προτάθηκε ένα νέο σχήμα που συνδυάζει ψηφιακή διαμόρφωση και πολλαπλές προσβάσεις, για την ακρίβεια η Πολλαπλή Πρόσβαση με διαίρεση Κώδικα Πολλαπλού Φέροντος (Multi-Carrier Code Division Multiple Access MC-CDMA). Η εφαρμογή του Γρήγορου Μετασχηματισμού Φουριέ (Fast Fourier Transform,FFT) που βασίζεται στο (Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing, OFDM) χρησιμοποιεί τις περίπλοκες λειτουργίες βάσεως και αντικαθίσταται από κυματομορφές για να μειώσει το επίπεδο της παρεμβολής. Έχει βρεθεί ότι οι μετασχηματισμένες κυματομορφές (Wavelet Transform,W.T.) που βασίζονται στον Haar είναι ικανές να μειώσουν το ISI και το ICI, που προκαλούνται από απώλειες στην ορθογωνιότητα μεταξύ των φερόντων, κάτι που τις καθιστά απλούστερες για την εφαρμογή από του FFT. Επιπλέον κέρδος στην απόδοση μπορεί να επιτευχθεί αναζητώντας μια εναλλακτική λειτουργία ορθογωνικής βάσης και βρίσκοντας ένα καλύτερο μετασχηματισμό από του Φουριέ (Fourier) και τον μετασχηματισμό κυματομορφής (Wavelet Transform). Στην παρούσα εργασία, υπάρχουν τρία προτεινόμενα μοντέλα. Το 1ο, ( A proposed Model ‘1’ of OFDM based In-Place Wavelet Transform), το 2ο, A proposed Model ‘2’ based In-Place Wavelet Transform Algorithm and Phase Matrix (P.M) και το 3ο, A proposed Model ‘3’ of MC-CDMA Based on Multiwavelet Transform. Οι αποδόσεις τους συγκρίθηκαν με τα παραδοσιακά μοντέλα μονού χρήστη κάτω από διαφορετικά κανάλια (Κανάλι AWGN, επίπεδη διάλειψη και επιλεκτική διάλειψη).The demand for high data rate wireless multi-media applications has increased significantly in the past few years. The wireless user’s pressure towards faster communications, no matter whether mobile, nomadic, or fixed positioned, without extra cost is nowadays a reality. To fulfill these demands, a new scheme which combines wireless digital modulation and multiple accesses was proposed in the recent years, namely, Multicarrier-Code Division Multiple Access (MC-CDMA). The Fourier based OFDM uses the complex exponential bases functions and it is replaced by wavelets in order to reduce the level of interference. It is found that the Haar-based wavelets are capable of reducing the ISI and ICI, which are caused by the loss in orthogonality between the carriers. Further performance gains can be made by looking at alternative orthogonal basis functions and finding a better transform rather than Fourier and wavelet transform. In this thesis, there are three proposed models [Model ‘1’ (OFDM based on In-Place Wavelet Transform, Model ‘2’ (MC-CDMA based on IP-WT and Phase Matrix) and Model ‘3’ (MC-CDMA based on Multiwavelet Transform)] were created and then comparison their performances with the traditional models for single user system were compared under different channel characteristics (AWGN channel, flat fading and selective fading). The conclusion of my study as follows, the models (1) was achieved much lower bit error rates than traditional models based FFT. Therefore these models can be considered as an alternative to the conventional MC-CDMA based FFT. The main advantage of using In-Place wavelet transform in the proposed models that it does not require an additional array at each sweep such as in ordered Fast Haar wavelet transform, which makes it simpler for implementation than FFT. The model (2) gave a new algorithm based on In-Place wavelet transform with first level processing multiple by PM was proposed. The model (3) gave much lower bit error than other two models in additional to traditional models

Mobile and Wireless Communications

Mobile and Wireless Communications have been one of the major revolutions of the late twentieth century. We are witnessing a very fast growth in these technologies where mobile and wireless communications have become so ubiquitous in our society and indispensable for our daily lives. The relentless demand for higher data rates with better quality of services to comply with state-of-the art applications has revolutionized the wireless communication field and led to the emergence of new technologies such as Bluetooth, WiFi, Wimax, Ultra wideband, OFDMA. Moreover, the market tendency confirms that this revolution is not ready to stop in the foreseen future. Mobile and wireless communications applications cover diverse areas including entertainment, industrialist, biomedical, medicine, safety and security, and others, which definitely are improving our daily life. Wireless communication network is a multidisciplinary field addressing different aspects raging from theoretical analysis, system architecture design, and hardware and software implementations. While different new applications are requiring higher data rates and better quality of service and prolonging the mobile battery life, new development and advanced research studies and systems and circuits designs are necessary to keep pace with the market requirements. This book covers the most advanced research and development topics in mobile and wireless communication networks. It is divided into two parts with a total of thirty-four stand-alone chapters covering various areas of wireless communications of special topics including: physical layer and network layer, access methods and scheduling, techniques and technologies, antenna and amplifier design, integrated circuit design, applications and systems. These chapters present advanced novel and cutting-edge results and development related to wireless communication offering the readers the opportunity to enrich their knowledge in specific topics as well as to explore the whole field of rapidly emerging mobile and wireless networks. We hope that this book will be useful for students, researchers and practitioners in their research studies

Cooperative diversity techniques for high-throughput wireless relay networks

Relay communications has attracted a growing interest in wireless communications with application to various enhanced technologies. This thesis considers a number of issues related to data throughput in various wireless relay network models. Particularly, new implementations of network coding (NC) and space-time coding (STC) techniques are investigated to offer various means of achieving high-throughput relay communications. Firstly, this thesis investigates different practical automatic repeat request (ARQ) retransmission protocols based on NC for two-way wireless relay networks to improve throughput efficiency. Two improved NC-based ARQ schemes are designed based on go-back-N and selective-repeat (SR) protocols. Addressing ARQ issues in multisource multidestination relay networks, a new NC-based ARQ protocol is proposed and two packet-combination algorithms are developed for retransmissions at relay and sources to significantly improve the throughput. In relation to the concept of channel quality indicator (CQI) reporting in two-way relay networks, two new efficient CQI reporting schemes are designed based on NC to improve the system throughput by allowing two terminals to simultaneously estimate the CQI of the distant terminal-relay link without incurring additional overhead. The transmission time for CQI feedback at the relays is reduced by half while the increase in complexity and the loss of performance are shown to be negligible. Furthermore, a low-complexity relay selection scheme is suggested to reduce the relay searching complexity. For the acknowledgment (ACK) process, this thesis proposes a new block ACK scheme based on NC to significantly reduce the ACK overheads and therefore produce an enhanced throughput. The proposed scheme is also shown to improve the reliability of block ACK transmission and reduce the number of data retransmissions for a higher system throughput. Additionally, this thesis presents a new cooperative retransmission scheme based on relay cooperation and NC to considerably reduce the number of retransmission packets and im- prove the reliability of retransmissions for a more power efficient and higher throughput system with non-overlapped retransmissions. Moreover, two relay selection schemes are recommended to determine the optimised number of relays for the retransmission. Finally, with respect to cognitive wireless relay networks (CWRNs), this thesis proposes a new cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) scheme to improve the spectrum sensing performance and design a new CSS scheme based on NC for three-hop CWRNs to improve system throughput. Furthermore, a new distributed space-time-frequency block code (DSTFBC) is designed for a two- hop nonregenerative CWRN over frequency-selective fading channels. The proposed DSTFBC design achieves higher data rate, spatial diversity gain, and decoupling detection of data blocks at all destination nodes with a low-complexity receiver structure

Distributed space-time coding including the golden code with application in cooperative networks

This thesis presents new methodologies to improve performance of wireless cooperative networks using the Golden Code. As a form of space-time coding, the Golden Code can achieve diversity-multiplexing tradeoff and the data rate can be twice that of the Alamouti code. In practice, however, asynchronism between relay nodes may reduce performance and channel quality can be degraded from certain antennas. Firstly, a simple offset transmission scheme, which employs full interference cancellation (FIC) and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), is enhanced through the use of four relay nodes and receiver processing to mitigate asynchronism. Then, the potential reduction in diversity gain due to the dependent channel matrix elements in the distributed Golden Code transmission, and the rate penalty of multihop transmission, are mitigated by relay selection based on two-way transmission. The Golden Code is also implemented in an asynchronous one-way relay network over frequency flat and selective channels, and a simple approach to overcome asynchronism is proposed. In one-way communication with computationally efficient sphere decoding, the maximum of the channel parameter means is shown to achieve the best performance for the relay selection through bit error rate simulations. Secondly, to reduce the cost of hardware when multiple antennas are available in a cooperative network, multi-antenna selection is exploited. In this context, maximum-sum transmit antenna selection is proposed. End-to-end signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is calculated and outage probability analysis is performed when the links are modelled as Rayleigh fading frequency flat channels. The numerical results support the analysis and for a MIMO system maximum-sum selection is shown to outperform maximum-minimum selection. Additionally, pairwise error probability (PEP) analysis is performed for maximum-sum transmit antenna selection with the Golden Code and the diversity order is obtained. Finally, with the assumption of fibre-connected multiple antennas with finite buffers, multiple-antenna selection is implemented on the basis of maximum-sum antenna selection. Frequency flat Rayleigh fading channels are assumed together with a decode and forward transmission scheme. Outage probability analysis is performed by exploiting the steady-state stationarity of a Markov Chain model

Interference Mitigation in Frequency Hopping Ad Hoc Networks

Radio systems today exhibit a degree of flexibility that was unheard of only a few years ago. Software-defined radio architectures have emerged that are able to service large swathes of spectrum, covering up to several GHz in the UHF bands. This dissertation investigates interference mitigation techniques in frequency hopping ad hoc networks that are capable of exploiting the frequency agility of software-defined radio platforms

Optimum Design of Spectral Efficient Green Wireless Communications

This dissertation focuses on the optimum design of spectral efficient green wireless communications. Energy efficiency (EE), which is defined as the inverse of average energy required to successfully deliver one information bit from a source to its destination, and spectral efficiency (SE), which is defined as the average data rate per unit bandwidth, are two fundamental performance metrics of wireless communication systems. We study the optimum designs of a wide range of practical wireless communication systems that can either maximize EE, or SE, or achieve a balanced tradeoff between the two metrics. There are three objectives in this dissertation. First, an accurate frame error rate (FER) expression is developed for practical coded wireless communication systems operating in quasi-static Rayleigh fading channels. The new FER expression enables the accurate modeling of EE and SE for various wireless communication systems. Second, the optimum designs of automatic repeat request (ARQ) and hybrid ARQ (HARQ) systems are performed to by using the EE and SE as design metrics. Specifically, a new metric of normalized EE, which is defined as the EE normalized by the SE, is proposed to achieve a balanced tradeoff between the EE and SE. Third, a robust frequency-domain on-off accumulative transmission (OOAT) scheme has been developed to achieve collision-tolerant media access control (CT-MAC) in a wireless network. The proposed frequency domain OOAT scheme can improve the SE and EE by allowing multiple users to transmit simultaneously over the same frequency bands, and the signal collisions at the receiver can be resolved by using signal processing techniques in the physical layer

Random-Access Techniques for Communication Networks with Spread-Spectrum Signaling

Coordinated Science Laboratory was formerly known as Control Systems LaboratoryOffice of Naval Research / U.S. Navy N00014-80-C-080

Energy and Spectral Efficient Wireless Communications

Energy and spectrum are two precious commodities for wireless communications. How to improve the energy and spectrum efficiency has become two critical issues for the designs of wireless communication systems. This dissertation is devoted to the development of energy and spectral efficient wireless communications. The developed techniques can be applied to a wide range of wireless communication systems, such as wireless sensor network (WSN) designed for structure health monitoring (SHM), medium access control (MAC) for multi-user systems, and cooperative spectrum sensing in cognitive radio systems. First, to improve the energy efficiency in SHM WSN, a new ultra low power (ULP) WSN is proposed to monitor the vibration properties of structures such as buildings, bridges, and the wings and bodies of aircrafts. The new scheme integrates energy harvesting, data sensing, and wireless communication into a unified process, and it achieves significant energy savings compared to existing WSNs. Second, a cross-layer collision tolerant (CT) MAC scheme is proposed to improve energy and spectral efficiency in a multi-user system with shared medium. When two users transmit simultaneously over a shared medium, a collision happens at the receiver. Conventional MAC schemes will discard the collided signals, which result in a waste of the precious energy and spectrum resources. In our proposed CT-MAC scheme, each user transmits multiple weighted replicas of a packet at randomly selected data slots in a frame, and the indices of the selected slots are transmitted in a special collision-free position slot at the beginning of each frame. Collisions of the data slots in the MAC layer are resolved by using multiuser detection (MUD) in the PHY layer. Compared to existing schemes, the proposed CT-MAC scheme can support more simultaneous users with a higher throughput. Third, a new cooperative spectrum sensing scheme is proposed to improve the energy and spectral efficiency of a cognitive radio network. A new Slepian-Wolf coded cooperation scheme is proposed for a cognitive radio network with two secondary users (SUs) performing cooperative spectrum sensing through a fusion center (FC). The proposed scheme can achieve significant performance gains compared to existing schemes