Real-time dynamic spectrum management for multi-user multi-carrier communication systems

Dynamic spectrum management is recognized as a key technique to tackle interference in multi-user multi-carrier communication systems and networks. However existing dynamic spectrum management algorithms may not be suitable when the available computation time and compute power are limited, i.e., when a very fast responsiveness is required. In this paper, we present a new paradigm, theory and algorithm for real-time dynamic spectrum management (RT-DSM) under tight real-time constraints. Specifically, a RT-DSM algorithm can be stopped at any point in time while guaranteeing a feasible and improved solution. This is enabled by the introduction of a novel difference-of-variables (DoV) transformation and problem reformulation, for which a primal coordinate ascent approach is proposed with exact line search via a logarithmicly scaled grid search. The concrete proposed algorithm is referred to as iterative power difference balancing (IPDB). Simulations for different realistic wireline and wireless interference limited systems demonstrate its good performance, low complexity and wide applicability under different configurations.Comment: 14 pages, 9 figures. This work has been submitted to the IEEE for possible publicatio

Optimal multi-user spectrum balancing for digital subscriber lines

Crosstalk is a major issue in modern digital subscriber line (DSL) systems such as ADSL and VDSL. Static spectrum management, which is the traditional way of ensuring spectral compatibility, employs spectral masks that can be overly conservative and lead to poor performance. This paper presents a centralized algorithm for optimal spectrum balancing in DSL. The algorithm uses the dual decomposition method to optimize spectra in an efficient and computationally tractable way. The algorithm shows significant performance gains over existing dynamic spectrum management (DSM) techniques, e.g., in one of the cases studied, the proposed centralized algorithm leads to a factor-of-four increase in data rate over the distributed DSM algorithm iterative waterfilling

FAST Copper for Broadband Access

FAST Copper is a multi-year, U.S. NSF funded project that started in 2004, and is jointly pursued by the research groups of Mung Chiang at Princeton University, John Cioffi at Stanford University, and Alexander Fraser at Fraser Research Lab, and in collaboration with several industrial partners including AT&T. The goal of the FAST Copper Project is to provide ubiquitous, 100 Mbps, fiber/DSL broadband access to everyone in the US with a phone line. This goal will be achieved through two threads of research: dynamic and joint optimization of resources in Frequency, Amplitude, Space, and Time (thus the name 'FAST') to overcome the attenuation and crosstalk bottlenecks, and the integration of communication, networking, computation, modeling, and distributed information management and control for the multi-user twisted pair network

Spectrum optimization in multi-user multi-carrier systems with iterative convex and nonconvex approximation methods

Several practical multi-user multi-carrier communication systems are characterized by a multi-carrier interference channel system model where the interference is treated as noise. For these systems, spectrum optimization is a promising means to mitigate interference. This however corresponds to a challenging nonconvex optimization problem. Existing iterative convex approximation (ICA) methods consist in solving a series of improving convex approximations and are typically implemented in a per-user iterative approach. However they do not take this typical iterative implementation into account in their design. This paper proposes a novel class of iterative approximation methods that focuses explicitly on the per-user iterative implementation, which allows to relax the problem significantly, dropping joint convexity and even convexity requirements for the approximations. A systematic design framework is proposed to construct instances of this novel class, where several new iterative approximation methods are developed with improved per-user convex and nonconvex approximations that are both tighter and simpler to solve (in closed-form). As a result, these novel methods display a much faster convergence speed and require a significantly lower computational cost. Furthermore, a majority of the proposed methods can tackle the issue of getting stuck in bad locally optimal solutions, and hence improve solution quality compared to existing ICA methods.Comment: 33 pages, 7 figures. This work has been submitted for possible publicatio

Multi-User Signal and Spectra Coordination for Digital Subscriber Lines

The appetite amongst consumers for ever higher data-rates seems insatiable. This booming market presents a huge opportunity for telephone and cable operators. It also presents a challenge: the delivery of broadband services to millions of customers across sparsely populated areas. Fully fibre-based networks, whilst technically the most advanced solution, are prohibitively expensive to deploy. Digital subscriber lines (DSL) provide an alternative solution. Seen as a stepping-stone to a fully fibre-based network, DSL operates over telephone lines that are already in place, minimizing the cost of deployment. The basic principle behind DSL technology is to increase data-rate by widening the transmission bandwidth. Unfortunately, operating at high frequencies, in a medium originally designed for voice-band transmission, leads to crosstalk between the different DSLs. Crosstalk is typically 10-15 dB larger than the background noise and is the dominant source of performance degradation in DSL. This thesis develops practical multi-user techniques for mitigating crosstalk in DSL. The techniques proposed have low complexity, low latency, and are compatible with existing customer premises equipment (CPE). In addition to being practical, the techniques also yield near-optimal performance, operating close to the theoretical multi-user channel capacity. Multi-user techniques are based on the coordination of the different users in a network, and this can be done on either a spectral or signal level

Joint Spectrum Management and Constrained Partial Crosstalk Cancellation in a Multi-User xDSL Environment

Publication in the conference proceedings of EUSIPCO, Florence, Italy, 200