Effects of Piconet Saturation on a Bluetooth Streaming Audio Channel

Bluetooth is a technology for wireless personal area networks (WPAN) that eliminates the need for cables, standardizes interfaces, and can automate many standard office processes such as sending and receiving email, synchronizing schedules, or exchanging business cards. With each workstation creating its own Bluetooth network, called a piconet, different Air Force environments have the potential, in some cases, to create more than 50 overlapping piconets, which significantly increases the potential for inter-piconet interference. This research investigates the effects of inter-piconet interference on a Bluetooth channel, streaming audio, offered at 24, 40, and 64 Kbps. It shows that as the number of overlapping piconets increases from zero to five, the effects on packet error rate are significant, climbing at times to just under 9%

Collecting and Analyzing Failure Data of Bluetooth Personal Area Networks

This work presents a failure data analysis campaign on Bluetooth Personal Area Networks (PANs) conducted on two kind of heterogeneous testbeds (working for more than one year). The obtained results reveal how failures distribution are characterized and suggest how to improve the dependability of Bluetooth PANs. Specically, we dene the failure model and we then identify the most effective recovery actions and masking strategies that can be adopted for each failure. We then integrate the discovered recovery actions and masking strategies in our testbeds, improving the availability and the reliability of 3.64% (up to 36.6%) and 202% (referred to the Mean Time To Failure), respectively

A characterization of the performance of Bluetooth 2.x + EDR technology in noisy environments

Bluetooth (BT) is by far the most popular shortrange technology for the development of wireless personal area networks and body area networks. Nowadays, BT 2.0 and 2.1 ? EDR are the most extended and implemented versions of BT standard. This article presents an analytical model that computes the packet delay of transmissions that utilize this version of BT in noisy environments. The model, which takes into account the packet retransmissions caused by noise, is particularized to calculate the mean packet delay as a function of the signal-to-noise ratio for the different enhanced data rates provided by BT 2.0 and 2.1 specifications. Thus, the model permits evaluating the efficiency of using these enhanced rates in the presence of a certain noise level.Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TEC2009-13763-C02-01Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación TEC2013-42711-

Efficient and Interference-Resilient Wireless Connectivity for IoT Applications

With the coming of age of the Internet of Things (IoT), demand on ultra-low power (ULP) and low-cost radios will continue to boost tremendously. The Bluetooth-Low-energy (BLE) standard provides a low power solution to connect IoT nodes with mobile devices, however, the power of maintaining a connection with a reasonable latency remains the limiting factor in defining the lifetime of event-driven BLE devices. BLE radio power consumption is in the milliwatt range and can be duty cycled for average powers around 30μW, but at the expense of long latency. Furthermore, wireless transceivers traditionally perform local oscillator (LO) calibration using an external crystal oscillator (XTAL) that adds significant size and cost to a system. Removing the XTAL enables a true single-chip radio, but an alternate means for calibrating the LO is required. Innovations in both the system architecture and circuits implementation are essential for the design of truly ubiquitous receivers for IoT applications. This research presents two porotypes as back-channel BLE receivers, which have lower power consumption while still being robust in the presents of interference and able to receive back-channel message from BLE compliant transmitters. In addition, the first crystal-less transmitter with symmetric over-the-air clock recovery compliant with the BLE standard using a GFSK-Modulated BLE Packet is presented.PHDElectrical and Computer EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/162942/1/abdulalg_1.pd

Simultaneous Transmission and Reception: Algorithm, Design and System Level Performance

Full Duplex or Simultaneous transmission and reception (STR) in the same frequency at the same time can potentially double the physical layer capacity. However, high power transmit signal will appear at receive chain as echoes with powers much higher than the desired received signal. Therefore, in order to achieve the potential gain, it is imperative to cancel these echoes. As these high power echoes can saturate low noise amplifier (LNA) and also digital domain echo cancellation requires unrealistically high resolution analog-to-digital converter (ADC), the echoes should be cancelled or suppressed sufficiently before LNA. In this paper we present a closed-loop echo cancellation technique which can be implemented purely in analogue domain. The advantages of our method are multiple-fold: it is robust to phase noise, does not require additional set of antennas, can be applied to wideband signals and the performance is irrelevant to radio frequency (RF) impairments in transmit chain. Next, we study a few protocols for STR systems in carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) network and investigate MAC level throughput with realistic assumptions in both single cell and multiple cells. We show that STR can reduce hidden node problem in CSMA network and produce gains of up to 279% in maximum throughput in such networks. Finally, we investigate the application of STR in cellular systems and study two new unique interferences introduced to the system due to STR, namely BS-BS interference and UE-UE interference. We show that these two new interferences will hugely degrade system performance if not treated appropriately. We propose novel methods to reduce both interferences and investigate the performances in system level.Comment: 20 pages. This manuscript will appear in the IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication

Wireless personal area networks and free-space optical links

This thesis is concerned with the link layer design of indoor (IrDA) and outdoor infrared links, as well as the performance of the higher layers of two major Wireless Personal Area Network (WPAN) technologies: IrDA and Bluetooth. Recent advancesin wireless technology have made it possible to put networking technology into small portable devices. During the past few years, WPAN technologies have been the subject of a tremendous growth both in research and development. Although many studies have been conducted on wireless links to address different issues on physical and link layers, wireless communications are still characterised by high error rates becauseof the frequently changing medium. On the other hand, performance studies of the higher layers are also very important. In this thesis, for the first time, a comprehensivestudy of the interactions betweenthe higher and the lower protocol layers of IrDA and Bluetooth has been carried out to improve the overall system performance. Mathematical models for the link layers are introduced for the infrared systems: infrared data association (IrDA) and free space optics (FSO). A model for the IrDA (indoor infrared) link layer is developed by considering the presence of bit errors. Based on this model, the effect of propagation delay on the link through put is investigated. An optimization study is also carried out to maximize the link throughput. FSO (outdoor infrared) links are often characterized by high speed and long link distance. A mathematical model for the FSO link layer is also developed. Significant improvement of the link throughput is achieved by optimizing the link parameters. Based on the link layer model, the performance of the IrDA higher layers (transport, session and application layers) is investigated. First, a mathematical model of TinyTP (transport protocol) is elaborated and subsequently verified by simulations. The effects of multiple connections and available buffer size are investigated. The throughput at the TinyTP level is optimized for different buffer sizes. Subsequently, the session layer, including Object Exchange (OBEX) and IrDA Burst (IrBurst) protocols, is studied and modelled. The derived mathematical model is verified by simulation results. A set of protocol parameters and hardware selection guidelines is proposed to optimize the overall system performance while also keeping the hardware requirementto a minimum. Finally, two rapidly developing IrDA applications, IrDA financial messaging(IrFM) and IrDA simple connection (IrSC), are studied. IrFM is investigated by comparison to other digital payment technologies, while the performance of IrSC is compared in two different technical approaches. In order to improve the throughput and minimize the transmission delay for the Bluetooth data applications, a systematic analysis is carried out for the Bluetooth Logical Link Control and Adaptation Layer Protocol (L2CAP). L2CAP is layered above the Bluetooth link layer (Baseband) and is essential to Bluetooth data applications. A simple and intuitive mathematical model is developed to derive simple equations for the L2CAP throughput and the average packet delay. The derived throughput equation, which is validated by simulations, takes into account bit errors as well as packet retry limits. Finally, a number of easy-to-implement performance enhancement schemes are proposed, including the optimum use of the protocol parameters

Energy-Efficient Wireless Connectivity and Wireless Charging For Internet-of-Things (IoT) Applications

During the recent years, the Internet-of-Things (IoT) has been rapidly evolving. It is indeed the future of communication that has transformed Things of the real world into smarter devices. To date, the world has deployed billions of “smart” connected things. Predictions say there will be 10’s of billions of connected devices by 2025 and in our lifetime we will experience life with a trillion-node network. However, battery lifespan exhibits a critical barrier to scaling IoT devices. Replacing batteries on a trillion-sensor scale is a logistically prohibitive feat. Self-powered IoT devices seems to be the right direction to stand up to that challenge. The main objective of this thesis is to develop solutions to achieve energy-efficient wireless-connectivity and wireless-charging for IoT applications. In the first part of the thesis, I introduce ultra-low power radios that are compatible with the Bluetooth Low-Energy (BLE) standard. BLE is considered as the preeminent protocol for short-range communications that support transmission ranges up to 10’s of meters. Number of low power BLE transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX) architectures have been designed, fabricated and tested in different planar CMOS and FinFET technologies. The low power operation is achieved by combining low power techniques in both the network and physical layers, namely: backchannel communication, duty-cycling, open-loop transmission/reception, PLL-less architectures, and mixer-first architectures. Further novel techniques have been proposed to further reduce the power the consumption of the radio design, including: a fast startup time and low startup energy crystal oscillators, an antenna-chip co-design approach for quadrature generation in the RF path, an ultra-low power discrete-time differentiator-based Gaussian Frequency Shift Keying (GFSK) demodulation scheme, an oversampling GFSK modulation/demodulation scheme for open loop transmission/reception and packet synchronization, and a cell-based design approach that allows automation in the design of BLE digital architectures. The implemented BLE TXs transmit fully-compliant BLE advertising packet that can be received by commercial smartphone. In the second part of the thesis, I introduce passive nonlinear resonant circuits to achieve wide-band RF energy harvesting and robust wireless power transfer circuits. Nonlinear resonant circuits modeled by the Duffing nonlinear differential equation exhibit interesting hysteresis characteristics in their frequency and amplitude responses that are exploited in designing self-adaptive wireless charging systems. In the magnetic-resonance wireless power transfer scenario, coupled nonlinear resonators are proposed to maintain the power transfer level and efficiency over a range of coupling factors without active feedback control circuitry. Coupling factor depends on the transmission distance, lateral, and angular misalignments between the charging pad and the device. Therefore, nonlinear resonance extends the efficient charging zones of a wireless charger without the requirement for a precise alignment.PHDElectrical EngineeringUniversity of Michigan, Horace H. Rackham School of Graduate Studieshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/169842/1/omaratty_1.pd