Temporal and spatial combining for 5G mmWave small cells

This chapter proposes the combination of temporal processing through Rake combining based on direct sequence-spread spectrum (DS-SS), and multiple antenna beamforming or antenna spatial diversity as a possible physical layer access technique for fifth generation (5G) small cell base stations (SBS) operating in the millimetre wave (mmWave) frequencies. Unlike earlier works in the literature aimed at previous generation wireless, the use of the beamforming is presented as operating in the radio frequency (RF) domain, rather than the baseband domain, to minimise power expenditure as a more suitable method for 5G small cells. Some potential limitations associated with massive multiple input-multiple output (MIMO) for small cells are discussed relating to the likely limitation on available antennas and resultant beamwidth. Rather than relying, solely, on expensive and potentially power hungry massive MIMO (which in the case of a SBS for indoor use will be limited by a physically small form factor) the use of a limited number of antennas, complimented with Rake combining, or antenna diversity is given consideration for short distance indoor communications for both the SBS) and user equipment (UE). The proposal’s aim is twofold: to solve eroded path loss due to the effective antenna aperture reduction and to satisfy sensitivity to blockages and multipath dispersion in indoor, small coverage area base stations. Two candidate architectures are proposed. With higher data rates, more rigorous analysis of circuit power and its effect on energy efficiency (EE) is provided. A detailed investigation is provided into the likely design and signal processing requirements. Finally, the proposed architectures are compared to current fourth generation long term evolution (LTE) MIMO technologies for their anticipated power consumption and EE

On-Orbit Validation of a Framework for Spacecraft-Initiated Communication Service Requests with NASA's SCaN Testbed

We design, analyze, and experimentally validate a framework for demand-based allocation of high-performance space communication service in which the user spacecraft itself initiates a request for service. Leveraging machine-to-machine communications, the automated process has potential to improve the responsiveness and efficiency of space network operations. We propose an augmented ground station architecture in which a hemispherical-pattern antenna allows for reception of service requests sent from any user spacecraft within view. A suite of ground-based automation software acts upon these direct-to-Earth requests and allocates access to high-performance service through a ground station or relay satellite in response to immediate user demand. A software-defined radio transceiver, optimized for reception of weak signals from the helical antenna, is presented. Design and testing of signal processing equipment and a software framework to handle service requests is discussed. Preliminary results from on-orbit demonstrations with a testbed onboard the International Space Station are presented to verify feasibility of the concept

Novel wireless modulation technique based on noise

In this paper, a new RF modulation technique is presented. Instead of using sinusoidal carriers as information bearer, pure noise is applied. This allows very simple radio architectures to be used. Spread-spectrum based technology is applied to modulate the noise bearer. Since the transmission bandwidth of the noise bearer can be made very wide, up to ultra-wideband regions, extremely large processing gains can be obtained. This will provide robustness in interference-prone environments. To avoid the local regeneration of the noise reference at the receiver, the Transmit-Reference (TR) concept is applied. In this concept, both the reference noise signal and the modulated noise signal are transmitted, together forming\ud the bearer. The reference and modulated signals are separated by applying a time offset. By applying different delay times for different channels (users) a new multiple access scheme results based on delay: Delay Division Multiple Access (DDMA). A theoretical analysis is given for the link performance of a single-user and a multi-user system. A testbed has been built to demonstrate the concept. The demonstrator operates in a 50 MHz bandwidth centered at 2.4 GHz. Processing gains ranging from 10¿30 dB have been tested. The testbed confirms the basic behavior as predicted by the theory

Software Defined Radio Implementation Of Ds-Cdma In Inter-Satellite Communications For Small Satellites

The increased usage of CubeSats recently has changed the communication philosophy from long-range point-to-point propagations to a multi-hop network of small orbiting nodes. Separating system tasks into many dispersed satellites can increase system survivability, versatility, configurability, adaptability, and autonomy. Inter-satellite links (ISL) enable the satellites to exchange information and share resources while reducing the traffic load to the ground. Establishment and stability of the ISL are impacted by factors such as the satellite orbit and attitude, antenna configuration, constellation topology, mobility, and link range. Software Defined Radio (SDR) is beginning to be heavily used in small satellite communications for applications such as base stations. A software-defined radio is a software program that does the functionality of a hardware system. The digital signal processing blocks are incorporated into the software giving it more flexibility and modulation. With this, the idea of a remote upgrade from the ground as well as the potential to accommodate new applications and future services without hardware changes is very promising. Realizing this, my idea is to create an inter-satellite link using software defined radio. The advantages of this are higher data rates, modification of operating frequencies, possibility of reaching higher frequency bands for higher throughputs, flexible modulation, demodulation and encoding schemes, and ground modifications. However, there are several challenges in utilizing the software-defined radio to create an inter-satellite link communication for small satellites. In this paper, we designed and implemented a multi-user inter-satellite communication network using SDRs, where Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technique is utilized to manage the multiple accesses to shared communication channel among the satellites. This model can be easily reconfigured to support any encoding/decoding, modulation, and other signal processing schemes

Software Defined Radio Implementation Of Ds-Cdma In Inter-Satellite Communications For Small Satellites

The increased usage of CubeSats recently has changed the communication philosophy from long-range point-to-point propagations to a multi-hop network of small orbiting nodes. Separating system tasks into many dispersed satellites can increase system survivability, versatility, configurability, adaptability, and autonomy. Inter-satellite links (ISL) enable the satellites to exchange information and share resources while reducing the traffic load to the ground. Establishment and stability of the ISL are impacted by factors such as the satellite orbit and attitude, antenna configuration, constellation topology, mobility, and link range. Software Defined Radio (SDR) is beginning to be heavily used in small satellite communications for applications such as base stations. A software-defined radio is a software program that does the functionality of a hardware system. The digital signal processing blocks are incorporated into the software giving it more flexibility and modulation. With this, the idea of a remote upgrade from the ground as well as the potential to accommodate new applications and future services without hardware changes is very promising. Realizing this, my idea is to create an inter-satellite link using software defined radio. The advantages of this are higher data rates, modification of operating frequencies, possibility of reaching higher frequency bands for higher throughputs, flexible modulation, demodulation and encoding schemes, and ground modifications. However, there are several challenges in utilizing the software-defined radio to create an inter-satellite link communication for small satellites. In this paper, we designed and implemented a multi-user inter-satellite communication network using SDRs, where Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) technique is utilized to manage the multiple accesses to shared communication channel among the satellites. This model can be easily reconfigured to support any encoding/decoding, modulation, and other signal processing schemes

Narrowband Interference Suppression in Wireless OFDM Systems

Signal distortions in communication systems occur between the transmitter and the receiver; these distortions normally cause bit errors at the receiver. In addition interference by other signals may add to the deterioration in performance of the communication link. In order to achieve reliable communication, the effects of the communication channel distortion and interfering signals must be reduced using different techniques. The aim of this paper is to introduce the fundamentals of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA), to review and examine the effects of interference in a digital data communication link and to explore methods for mitigating or compensating for these effects

Insights and approaches for low-complexity 5G small-cell base-station design for indoor dense networks

This paper investigates low-complexity approaches to small-cell base-station (SBS) design, suitable for future 5G millimeter-wave (mmWave) indoor deployments. Using large-scale antenna systems and high-bandwidth spectrum, such SBS can theoretically achieve the anticipated future data bandwidth demand of 10000 fold in the next 20 years. We look to exploit small cell distances to simplify SBS design, particularly considering dense indoor installations. We compare theoretical results, based on a link budget analysis, with the system simulation of a densely deployed indoor network using appropriate mmWave channel propagation conditions. The frequency diverse bands of 28 and 72 GHz of the mmWave spectrum are assumed in the analysis. We investigate the performance of low-complexity approaches using a minimal number of antennas at the base station and the user equipment. Using the appropriate power consumption models and the state-of-the-art sub-component power usage, we determine the total power consumption and the energy efficiency of such systems. With mmWave being typified nonline-of-sight communication, we further investigate and propose the use of direct sequence spread spectrum as a means to overcome this, and discuss the use of multipath detection and combining as a suitable mechanism to maximize link reliability

Space Station communications and tracking systems modeling and RF link simulation

In this final report, the effort spent on Space Station Communications and Tracking System Modeling and RF Link Simulation is described in detail. The effort is mainly divided into three parts: frequency division multiple access (FDMA) system simulation modeling and software implementation; a study on design and evaluation of a functional computerized RF link simulation/analysis system for Space Station; and a study on design and evaluation of simulation system architecture. This report documents the results of these studies. In addition, a separate User's Manual on Space Communications Simulation System (SCSS) (Version 1) documents the software developed for the Space Station FDMA communications system simulation. The final report, SCSS user's manual, and the software located in the NASA JSC system analysis division's VAX 750 computer together serve as the deliverables from LinCom for this project effort

Ultra-wideband technology for short-range wireless communication

The ultra-wideband (UWB) radio core idea is to open large amounts of spectrum to a variety of users with little mutual interference between them. While ultra-wideband is being championed by several commercial companies, this technology has not followed the conventional path where commercial interest is preceded by years of academic research. This work attempts to fill in some of the gap by studying fundamental properties of communications with impulse-based radio UWB signals. We study jam resistance and capacity of UWB. Jam resistance is analyzed for binary pulse position modulation (PPM) with the interference being modeled as correlated Gaussian. Closed-form expressions are provided for the jam resistance of a PPM UWB system utilizing rectangular pulses. Simple approximations are obtained for special cases (narrowband interference). Such analysis is extended to other practical UWB waveforms such as Gaussian and Rayleigh monocycles. It is shown that under some conditions, the UWB jam resistance is superior to that of direct sequence spread spectrum (DS-SS). In the second part of this work, we study the capacity of the single-user UWB communication systems utilizing M-ary PPM and bi-phase as well as on-off keying modulation scheme over additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and multipath channels. Starting from the known capacity of M-ary modulated signals, the computation of UWB capacity over the AWGN channel takes into account UWB specific constraints. The constraints are the power spectrum density limitation under Federal Communications Commission (FCC) Part 15 rules and the spreading ratio required to achieve a specified jam resistance level. UWB capacity over AWGN channel is expressed as a function of spreading ratio and communication range. Trade-offs between capacity and range of communications and between capacity and spreading ratio are explored. We extend the study of capacity of UWB communications to the multipath channel using the modified S-V model proposed by the IEEE 802.15.3a task group. The complementary cumulative distribution function (CCDF) of the capacities, subject to the FCC power spectral density (PSD) limitation, are obtained for the all Rake (ARake) and selective Rake (SRake) receivers. In both of the cases, maximum ratio combining is employed. Finally, the capacity of multiple-access UWB communications is studied over the AWGN channel. Under certain assumptions, the multiple-access noise component at the receiver is modeled as Gaussian. An expression for the UWB capacity of the multiple-access channel is developed as a function of number of users

Optical code-division multiple access system and optical signal processing

This thesis presents our recent researches on the development of coding devices, the investigation of security and the design of systems in the optical cod-division multiple access (OCDMA) systems. Besides, the techniques of nonlinear signal processing used in the OCDMA systems fire our imagination, thus some researches on all-optical signal processing are carried out and also summarized in this thesis. Two fiber Bragg grating (FBG) based coding devices are proposed. The first coding device is a superstructured FBG (SSFBG) using ±π/2-phase shifts instead of conventional 0/π-phase shifts. The ±π/2-phase-shifted SSFBG en/decoders can not only conceal optical codes well in the encoded signals but also realize the reutilization of available codes by hybrid use with conventional 0/π-phase-shifted SSFBG en/decoders. The second FBG based coding device is synthesized by layer-peeling method, which can be used for simultaneous optical code recognition and chromatic dispersion compensation. Then, two eavesdropping schemes, one-bit delay interference detection and differential detection, are demonstrated to reveal the security vulnerability of differential phase-shift keying (DPSK) and code-shift keying (CSK) OCDMA systems. To address the security issue as well as increase the transmission capacity, an orthogonal modulation format based on DPSK and CSK is introduced into the OCDMA systems. A 2 bit/symbol 10 Gsymbol/s transmission system using the orthogonal modulation format is achieved. The security of the system can be partially guaranteed. Furthermore, a fully-asynchronous gigabit-symmetric OCDMA passive optical network (PON) is proposed, in which a self-clocked time gate is employed for signal regeneration. A remodulation scheme is used in the PON, which let downstream and upstream share the same optical carrier, allowing optical network units source-free. An error-free 4-user 10 Gbit/s/user duplex transmission over 50 km distance is reazlied. A versatile waveform generation scheme is then studied. A theoretical model is established and a waveform prediction algorithm is summarized. In the demonstration, various waveforms are generated including short pulse, trapezoidal, triangular and sawtooth waveforms and doublet pulse. ii In addition, an all-optical simultaneous half-addition and half-subtraction scheme is achieved at an operating rate of 10 GHz by using only two semiconductor optical amplifiers (SOA) without any assist light. Lastly, two modulation format conversion schemes are demonstrated. The first conversion is from NRZ-OOK to PSK-Manchester coding format using a SOA based Mach-Zehnder interferometer. The second conversion is from RZ-DQPSK to RZ-OOK by employing a supercontinuum based optical thresholder