Joint data detection and channel estimation for OFDM systems

We develop new blind and semi-blind data detectors and channel estimators for orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. Our data detectors require minimizing a complex, integer quadratic form in the data vector. The semi-blind detector uses both channel correlation and noise variance. The quadratic for the blind detector suffers from rank deficiency; for this, we give a low-complexity solution. Avoiding a computationally prohibitive exhaustive search, we solve our data detectors using sphere decoding (SD) and V-BLAST and provide simple adaptations of the SD algorithm. We consider how the blind detector performs under mismatch, generalize the basic data detectors to nonunitary constellations, and extend them to systems with pilots and virtual carriers. Simulations show that our data detectors perform well

Turbo space-time coding for mimo systems : designs and analyses

Multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems can provide high diversity, high data rate or a mix of both, for wireless communications. This dissertation combines both modes and suggests analyses and techniques that advance the state of the art of MIMO systems. Specifically, this dissertation studies turbo space-time coding schemes for MIMO systems. Before the designs of turbo space-time codes are presented, a fundamental tool to analyze and design turbo coding schemes, the extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart method, is extended from the binary/nonbinary code case to coded modulation case. This extension prepares the convergence analysis for turbo space-time code. Turbo space-time codes with symbols precoded by randomly chosen unitary time variant linear transformations (TVLT) are investigated in this dissertation. It is shown that turbo codes with TVLT achieve full diversity gain and good coding gain with high probability. The probability that these design goals are not met is shown to vanish exponentially with the Hamming distance between codewords (number of different columns). Hence, exhaustive tests of the rank and the determinant criterion are not required. As an additional benefit of the application of TVLT, with the removal of the constant modulation condition, it is proved that throughput rates achieved by these codes are significantly higher than the rates achievable by conventional space-time codes. Finally, an EXIT chart analysis for turbo space-time codes with TVLT is developed, with application to predicting frame error rate (FER) performance without running full simulation. To increase the data rate of turbo-STC without exponentially increasing the decoding complexity, a multilevel turbo space-time coding scheme with TVLT is proposed. An iterative joint demapping and decoding receiver algorithm is also proposed. For MIMO systems with a large number of transmit antennas, two types of layered turbo space-time (LTST) coding schemes are studied. For systems with low order modulation, a type of LTST with a vertical encoding structure and a low complexity parallel interference cancellation (PlC) receiver is shown to achieve close to capacity performance. For high order modulation, another type of LTST with a horizontal encoding structure, TVLT, and an ordered successive interference cancellation (OSIC) receiver is shown to achieve better performance than conventional layered space-time coding schemes, where ordering is not available in the SIC detection

Turbo space-time coded modulation : principle and performance analysis

A breakthrough in coding was achieved with the invention of turbo codes. Turbo codes approach Shannon capacity by displaying the properties of long random codes, yet allowing efficient decoding. Coding alone, however, cannot fully address the problem of multipath fading channel. Recent advances in information theory have revolutionized the traditional view of multipath channel as an impairment. New results show that high gains in capacity can be achieved through the use of multiple antennas at the transmitter and the receiver. To take advantage of these new results in information theory, it is necessary to devise methods that allow communication systems to operate close to the predicted capacity. One such method recently invented is space-time coding, which provides both coding gain and diversity advantage. In this dissertation, a new class of codes is proposed that extends the concept of turbo coding to include space-time encoders as constituent building blocks of turbo codes. The codes are referred to as turbo spacetime coded modulation (turbo-STCM). The motivation behind the turbo-STCM concept is to fuse the important properties of turbo and space-time codes into a unified design framework. A turbo-STCM encoder is proposed, which consists of two space-time codes in recursive systematic form concatenated in parallel. An iterative symbol-by-symbol maximum a posteriori algorithm operating in the log domain is developed for decoding turbo-STCM. The decoder employs two a posteriori probability (APP) computing modules concatenated in parallel; one module for each constituent code. The analysis of turbo-STCM is demonstrated through simulations and theoretical closed-form expressions. Simulation results are provided for 4-PSK and 8-PSK schemes over the Rayleigh block-fading channel. It is shown that the turbo-STCM scheme features full diversity and full coding rate. The significant gain can be obtained in performance over conventional space-time codes of similar complexity. The analytical union bound to the bit error probability is derived for turbo-STCM over the additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and the Rayleigh block-fading channels. The bound makes it possible to express the performance analysis of turbo-STCM in terms of the properties of the constituent space-time codes. The union bound is demonstrated for 4-PSK and 8-PSK turbo-STCM with two transmit antennas and one/two receive antennas. Information theoretic bounds such as Shannon capacity, cutoff rate, outage capacity and the Fano bound, are computed for multiantenna systems over the AWGN and fading channels. These bounds are subsequently used as benchmarks for demonstrating the performance of turbo-STCM

Multiple-Symbol Differential Detection for Single-Antenna and Multiple-Antenna Systems over Ricean-fading Channels

This paper considers multiple symbol differential detection (DD) for both single-antenna and multiple-antenna systems over flat Ricean-fading channels. We derive the optimal multiple symbol detection (MSD) decision rules for both Mary differential phase-shift keying (MDPSK) and differential unitary space-time modulation (DUSTM). The sphere decoder (SD) is adopted to solve the MSD for MDPSK. As well, an improved SD is proposed by using the Schnorr-Euchner strategy. A suboptimal MSD based decision feedback DD algorithm is proposed for the MSD of DUSTM. We also develop a sphere decoding bound intersection detector (SD-BID) to optimally solve the MSD problem for DUSTM, which still maintains low complexity. Simulation results show that our proposed MSD algorithms for both single-antenna and multiple-antenna systems reduce the error floor of conventional DD but with reasonably low computational complexity

Bandwidth-efficient communication systems based on finite-length low density parity check codes

Low density parity check (LDPC) codes are linear block codes constructed by pseudo-random parity check matrices. These codes are powerful in terms of error performance and, especially, have low decoding complexity. While infinite-length LDPC codes approach the capacity of communication channels, finite-length LDPC codes also perform well, and simultaneously meet the delay requirement of many communication applications such as voice and backbone transmissions. Therefore, finite-length LDPC codes are attractive to employ in low-latency communication systems. This thesis mainly focuses on the bandwidth-efficient communication systems using finite-length LDPC codes. Such bandwidth-efficient systems are realized by mapping a group of LDPC coded bits to a symbol of a high-order signal constellation. Depending on the systems' infrastructure and knowledge of the channel state information (CSI), the signal constellations in different coded modulation systems can be two-dimensional multilevel/multiphase constellations or multi-dimensional space-time constellations. In the first part of the thesis, two basic bandwidth-efficient coded modulation systems, namely LDPC coded modulation and multilevel LDPC coded modulation, are investigated for both additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and frequency-flat Rayleigh fading channels. The bounds on the bit error rate (BER) performance are derived for these systems based on the maximum likelihood (ML) criterion. The derivation of these bounds relies on the union bounding and combinatoric techniques. In particular, for the LDPC coded modulation, the ML bound is computed from the Hamming distance spectrum of the LDPC code and the Euclidian distance profile of the two-dimensional constellation. For the multilevel LDPC coded modulation, the bound of each decoding stage is obtained for a generalized multilevel coded modulation, where more than one coded bit is considered for level. For both systems, the bounds are confirmed by the simulation results of ML decoding and/or the performance of the ordered-statistic decoding (OSD) and the sum-product decoding. It is demonstrated that these bounds can be efficiently used to evaluate the error performance and select appropriate parameters (such as the code rate, constellation and mapping) for the two communication systems.The second part of the thesis studies bandwidth-efficient LDPC coded systems that employ multiple transmit and multiple receive antennas, i.e., multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. Two scenarios of CSI availability considered are: (i) the CSI is unknown at both the transmitter and the receiver; (ii) the CSI is known at both the transmitter and the receiver. For the first scenario, LDPC coded unitary space-time modulation systems are most suitable and the ML performance bound is derived for these non-coherent systems. To derive the bound, the summation of chordal distances is obtained and used instead of the Euclidean distances. For the second case of CSI, adaptive LDPC coded MIMO modulation systems are studied, where three adaptive schemes with antenna beamforming and/or antenna selection are investigated and compared in terms of the bandwidth efficiency. For uncoded discrete-rate adaptive modulation, the computation of the bandwidth efficiency shows that the scheme with antenna selection at the transmitter and antenna combining at the receiver performs the best when the number of antennas is small. For adaptive LDPC coded MIMO modulation systems, an achievable threshold of the bandwidth efficiency is also computed from the ML bound of LDPC coded modulation derived in the first part

MIMO communication systems: receiver design and diversity-multiplexing tradeoff analysis

After a few decades\u27 evolution of wireless communication systems, to ensure reliable high-speed communication over unreliable wireless channels is still one of the major challenges facing researchers and engineers. The use of multiple antennas at transmitter and receiver, known as multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications, is one promising technology delivering desired wireless services. The main goal of this thesis is to study two important issues in wireless MIMO communication systems: receiver design for coded MIMO systems, and diversity-multiplexing tradeoff analysis in general fading channels;In the first part of this thesis, we decompose the receiver design problem into two sub-problems: MIMO channel estimation and MIMO detection. For the MIMO channel estimation, we develop an expectation-maximization (EM) based semi-blind channel and noise covariance matrix estimation algorithm for space-time coding systems under spatially correlated noise. By incorporating the proposed channel estimator into the iterative receiver structure, both the channel estimation and the error-control decoding are improved significantly. We also derive the modified Cramer-Rao bounds (MCRB) for the unknown parameters as the channel estimation performance metric, and demonstrate that the proposed channel estimation algorithm can achieve the MCRB after several iterations. For the MIMO detection, we propose a novel low-complexity MIMO detection algorithm, which has only cubic order computational complexity, but with near-optimal performance. For a 4x4 turbo-coded system, we show that the proposed detector had the same performance as the maximum a posteriori (MAP) detector for BPSK modulation, and 0.1 dB advantage over the approximated MAP detector (list sphere decoding algorithm) for 16-QAM modulation at BER = 10-4;In the second part of this thesis, we derive the optimal diversity-multiplexing tradeoff for general MIMO fading channels, which include different fading types as special cases. We show that for a MIMO system with long coherence time, the optimal diversity-multiplexing tradeoff is also a piecewise linear function, and only the first segment is affected by different fading types. We proved that under certain full-rank assumptions spatial correlation has no effect on the optimal tradeoff. We also argued that non-zero channel means in general are not beneficial for multiplexing-diversity tradeoff

Improving Bandwidth Utilization in a 1 Tbps Airborne MIMO Communications Downlink

FEC techniques are compared for different MIMO configurations of a high altitude, extremely wide bandwidth radio frequency downlink. Monte Carlo simulations are completed in MATLAB® with the aim of isolating the impacts of turbo codes and LDPC codes on system throughput and error performance. The system is modeled as a transmit-only static array at an altitude of 60,000 feet, with no interferers in the channel. Transmissions are received by a static receiver array. Simulations attempt to determine what modulation types should be considered for practical implementation, and what FEC codes enable these modulation schemes. The antenna configurations used in this study are [44:352], [62:248], and [80:160] transmitters to receivers. Effects from waveform generation, mixing, down-conversion, and amplification are not considered. Criteria of interest were BER and throughput, with the maximum allowable value of the former set at 1 x 10-5, and the latter set at a 1 terabits per second (Tbps) transfer rate for a successful configuration. Results show that the best performing system configuration was unable to meet both criteria, but was capable of improving over Brueggen\u27s 2012 research, which used Reed-Solomon codes and a MIMO configuration of [80:160], by 18.6%. The best-case configuration produced a throughput rate of 0.83 Tbps at a BER of less than 1 x 10-8, by implementing a rate 2/3 LDPC code with QAM constellation of 16 symbols