NASA Unmanned Aircraft (UA) Control and Non-Payload Communication (CNPC) System Waveform Trade Studies

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) represent a new capability that will provide a variety of services in the government (public) and commercial (civil) aviation sectors. The growth of this potential industry has not yet been realized due to the lack of a common understanding of what is required to safely operate UAS in the National Airspace System (NAS). To address this deficiency, NASA has established a project called UAS Integration in the NAS (UAS in the NAS), under the Integrated Systems Research Program (ISRP) of the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD). This project provides an opportunity to transition concepts, technology, algorithms, and knowledge to the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) and other stakeholders to help them define the requirements, regulations, and issues for routine UAS access to the NAS. The safe, routine, and efficient integration of UAS into the NAS requires new radio frequency (RF) spectrum allocations and a new data communications system which is both secure and scalable with increasing UAS traffic without adversely impacting the Air Traffic Control (ATC) communication system. These data communications, referred to as Control and Non-Payload Communications (CNPC), whose purpose is to exchange information between the unmanned aircraft and the ground control station to ensure safe, reliable, and effective unmanned aircraft flight operation. A Communications Subproject within the UAS in the NAS Project has been established to address issues related to CNPC development, certification and fielding. The focus of the Communications Subproject is on validating and allocating new RF spectrum and data link communications to enable civil UAS integration into the NAS. The goal is to validate secure, robust data links within the allocated frequency spectrum for UAS. A vision, architectural concepts, and seed requirements for the future commercial UAS CNPC system have been developed by RTCA Special Committee 203 (SC-203) in the process of determining formal recommendations to the FAA in its role provided for under the Federal Advisory Committee Act. NASA intends to conduct its research and development in keeping with this vision and associated architectural concepts. The prototype communication systems developed and tested by NASA will be used to validate and update the initial SC-203 requirements in order to provide a foundation for SC-203's Minimum Aviation System Performance Standards (MASPS)

Linearisation, error correction coding and equalisation for multi-level modulation schemes

University of Technology, Sydney. Faculty of Engineering.Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has been standardised for digital audio broadcasting (DAB), digital video broadcasting (DVB) and wireless local area networks (WLAN). OFDM systems are capable of effectively coping with frequency- selective fading without using complex equalisation structures. The modulation and demodulation processes using fast fourier transform (FFT) and its inverse (IFFT) can be implemented very efficiently. More recently, multicarrier code division multiple access (MC-CDMA) based on the combination of OFDM and conventional CDMA has received growing attention in the field of wireless personal communication and digital multimedia broadcasting. It can cope with channel frequency selectivity due to its own capabilities of overcoming the asynchronous nature of multimedia data traffic and higher capacity over conventional multiple access techniques. On the other hand, multicarrier modulation schemes are based on the transmission of a given set of signals on large numbers of orthogonal subcarriers. Due to the fact that the multicarrier modulated (MCM) signal is a superposition of many amplitude modulated sinusoids, its probability density function is nearly Gaussian. Therefore, the MCM signal is characterised by a very high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). As a result of the high PAPR, the MCM signal is severely distorted when a nonlinear high power amplifier (HPA) is employed to obtain sufficient transmitting power. This is very common in most communication systems, and decreases the performance significantly. The simplest way to avoid the nonlinear distortion is substantial output backoff (OBO) operating in the linear region of the HPA. However, because of the high OBO, the peak transmit power has to be decreased. For this reason, many linearisation techniques have been proposed to compensate for the nonlinearity without applying high OBO. The predistortion techniques have been known and studied as one of the most promising means to solve the problem. In this thesis, an improved memory mapping predistortion technique devised to reduce the large computational complexity of a fixed point iterative (FPI) predistorter is proposed, suitable especially for multicarrier modulation schemes. The proposed memory mapping predistortion technique is further extended to compensate for nonlinear distortion with memory caused by a shaping linear filter. The case of varying HPA characteristics is also considered by using an adaptive memory mapping predistorter which updates the lookup table (LUT) and counteracts these variations. Finally, an amplitude memory mapping predistorter is presented to reduce the LUT size. Channel coding techniques have been widely used as an effective solution against channel fading in wireless environments. Amongst these, particular attention has been paid to turbo codes due to their performance being close to the Shannon limit. In-depth study and evaluation of turbo coding has been carried out for constant envelope signaling systems such as BPSK, QPSK and M-ary PSK. In this thesis, the performance of TTCM-OFDM systems with high-order modulation schemes, e.g. 16-QAM and 64-QAM, is investigated and compared with conventional channel coding schemes such as Reed-Solomon and convolutional coding. The analysis is performed in terms of spectral efficiency over a multipath fading channel and in presence of an HPA. Maximum a-priori probability (MAP), soft output Viterbi algorithm (SOVA) and pragmatic algorithms are compared for non-binary turbo decoding with these systems. For this setup, iterative multiuser detection in TTCM/MC-CDMA systems with M-QAM is introduced and investigated, adopting a set of random codes to decrease the PAPR. As another application of TTCM, the performance of multicode CDMA systems with TTCM for outer coding over multipath fading channels is investigated

Multi-carrier CDMA using convolutional coding and interference cancellation

SIGLEAvailable from British Library Document Supply Centre-DSC:DXN016251 / BLDSC - British Library Document Supply CentreGBUnited Kingdo

Deep Learning-Aided Multicarrier Systems

This paper proposes a deep learning (DL)-aided multicarrier (MC) system operating on fading channels, where both modulation and demodulation blocks are modeled by deep neural networks (DNNs), regarded as the encoder and decoder of an autoencoder (AE) architecture, respectively. Unlike existing AE-based systems, which incorporate domain knowledge of a channel equalizer to suppress the effects of wireless channels, the proposed scheme, termed as MC-AE, directly feeds the decoder with the channel state information and received signal, which are then processed in a fully data-driven manner. This new approach enables MC-AE to jointly learn the encoder and decoder to optimize the diversity and coding gains over fading channels. In particular, the block error rate of MC-AE is analyzed to show its higher performance gains than existing hand-crafted baselines, such as various recent index modulation-based MC schemes. We then extend MC-AE to multiuser scenarios, wherein the resultant system is termed as MU-MC-AE. Accordingly, two novel DNN structures for uplink and downlink MU-MC-AE transmissions are proposed, along with a novel cost function that ensures a fast training convergence and fairness among users. Finally, simulation results are provided to show the superiority of the proposed DL-based schemes over current baselines, in terms of both the error performance and receiver complexity

Interference-Mitigating Waveform Design for Next-Generation Wireless Systems

A brief historical perspective of the evolution of waveform designs employed in consecutive generations of wireless communications systems is provided, highlighting the range of often conflicting demands on the various waveform characteristics. As the culmination of recent advances in the field the underlying benefits of various Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) schemes are highlighted and exemplified. As an integral part of the appropriate waveform design, cognizance is given to the particular choice of the duplexing scheme used for supporting full-duplex communications and it is demonstrated that Time Division Duplexing (TDD) is substantially outperformed by Frequency Division Duplexing (FDD), unless the TDD scheme is combined with further sophisticated scheduling, MIMOs and/or adaptive modulation/coding. It is also argued that the specific choice of the Direct-Sequence (DS) spreading codes invoked in DS-CDMA predetermines the properties of the system. It is demonstrated that a specifically designed family of spreading codes exhibits a so-called interference-free window (IFW) and hence the resultant system is capable of outperforming its standardised counterpart employing classic Orthogonal Variable Spreading Factor (OVSF) codes under realistic dispersive channel conditions, provided that the interfering multi-user and multipath components arrive within this IFW. This condition may be ensured with the aid of quasisynchronous adaptive timing advance control. However, a limitation of the system is that the number of spreading codes exhibiting a certain IFW is limited, although this problem may be mitigated with the aid of novel code design principles, employing a combination of several spreading sequences in the time-frequency and spatial-domain. The paper is concluded by quantifying the achievable user load of a UTRA-like TDD Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) system employing Loosely Synchronized (LS) spreading codes exhibiting an IFW in comparison to that of its counterpart using OVSF codes. Both system's performance is enhanced using beamforming MIMOs