Optimal Cooperative MIMO Scheme in Wireless Sensor Networks

Cooperative Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) has been proposed as a transmission strategy to combat the fading problem in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) to reduce the retransmission probability and lower the transmission energy. Among the earliest work on cooperative MIMO in WSNs is the analysis of the Space-Time Block Coding (STBC) scheme to achieve lower Bit Error Rate (BER) and significant energy savings. The work is continued with the implementation of the Low-Energy Adaptive Clustering Hierarchy (LEACH) Medium Access Control (MAC) protocol for clustered-based architectures. The combination of STBC and the LEACH scheme resulted in a significant improvement in transmission energy efficiency compared to the Single-Input Single Output (SISO) scheme. Further study is conducted to compare the performance of STBC and various Spatial Multiplexing (SM) schemes such as Vertical Bell Labs Layered Space-Time (V-BLAST) and Diagonal BLAST. In this study, LEACH MAC was also utilized and lower transmission energy and latency were achieved against the SISO scheme. However, the centralized architecture leads to energy wastage and higher latency compared to a distributed architecture. On the other hand, the implementation of a distributed architecture needs to consider synchronisation issues. Thus a practical cooperative MIMO scheme for distributed asynchronous WSNs is needed. Moreover, a practical MAC that can suit cooperative transmission is required. A combination of a practical MAC protocol and an efficient MIMO scheme for asynchronous cooperative transmission leads to a more energy efficient and lower latency cooperative MIMO system. A combination of a MAC protocol and a cooperative SM scheme for cooperative MIMO transmission has been proposed in previous study where the combined scheme achieves significant energy efficiency and lower latency. Furthermore, a transmit Maximum Ratio Combiner (MRC) scheme is suggested to be more tolerant to the jitter difference than the Alamouti STC scheme in network with imperfect transmitting nodes synchronisation. In this chapter, we expand these studies to two other cooperative MIMO schemes, namely Beamforming (BF) and STBC for both network scenarios: perfect and imperfect transmitting nodes synchronisation. The optimal cooperative MIMO scheme combined with an appropriate MAC protocol should lead to the lowest energy consumption and lowest packet latency

Wireless model-based predictive networked control system over cooperative wireless network

Owing to their distributed architecture, networked control systems (NCSs) are proven to be feasible in scenarios where a spatially distributed feedback control system is required. Traditionally, such NCSs operate over real-time wired networks. Recently, in order to achieve the utmost flexibility, scalability, ease of deployment, and maintainability, wireless networks such as IEEE 802.11 wireless local area networks (LANs) are being preferred over dedicated wired networks. However, conventional NCSs with event-triggered controllers and actuators cannot operate over such general purpose wireless networks since the stability of the system is compromised due to unbounded delays and unpredictable packet losses that are typical in the wireless medium. Approaching the wireless networked control problem from two perspectives, this work introduces a practical wireless NCS and an implementation of a cooperative medium access control protocol that work jointly to achieve decent control under severe impairments, such as unbounded delay, bursts of packet loss and ambient wireless traffic. The proposed system is evaluated on a dedicated test platform under numerous scenarios and significant performance gains are observed, making cooperative communications a strong candidate for improving the reliability of industrial wireless networks

Quasi-orthogonal space-frequency coding in non-coherent cooperative broadband networks

© 2014 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.So far, complex valued orthogonal codes have been used differentially in cooperative broadband networks. These codes however achieve less than unitary code rate when utilized in cooperative networks with more than two relays. Therefore, the main challenge is how to construct unitary rate codes for non-coherent cooperative broadband networks with more than two relays while exploiting the achievable spatial and frequency diversity. In this paper, we extend full rate quasi-orthogonal codes to differential cooperative broadband networks where channel information is unavailable. From this, we propose a generalized differential distributed quasi-orthogonal space-frequency coding (DQSFC) protocol for cooperative broadband networks. Our proposed scheme is able to achieve full rate, and full spatial and frequency diversity in cooperative networks with any number of relays. Through pairwise error probability analysis we show that the diversity gain of our scheme can be improved by appropriate code construction and sub-carrier allocation. Based on this, we derive sufficient conditions for the proposed code structure at the source node and relay nodes to achieve full spatial and frequency diversity.Peer reviewe

Cooperative jamming for secrecy in decentralized wireless networks

Cooperative jamming as a physical layer security enhancement has recently drawn considerable attention. While most existing works focus on communication systems with a small number of nodes, we investigate the use of cooperative jamming for providing secrecy in large-scale decentralized networks consisting of randomly distributed legitimate users and eavesdroppers. A modified slotted ALOHA protocol, named CJ-ALOHA, is considered where each legitimate transmitter either sends its message signal or acts as a helping jammer according to a message transmission probability p. We derive the secrecy transmission capacity to characterize the network throughput and show how the throughput is affected by the CJ-ALOHA protocol. Both analytical and numerical insights are provided on the design of the CJ-ALOHA protocol for optimal throughput performance.This work was supported by the Australian Research Council's Discovery Projects funding scheme (project no. DP110102548)

Throughput, Bit-Cost, Network State Information: Tradeoffs in Cooperative CSMA Protocols

In wireless local area networks, spatially varying channel conditions result in a severe performance discrepancy between different nodes in the uplink, depending on their position. Both throughput and energy expense are affected. Cooperative protocols were proposed to mitigate these discrepancies. However, additional network state information (NSI) from other nodes is needed to enable cooperation. The aim of this work is to assess how NSI and the degree of cooperation affect throughput and energy expenses. To this end, a CSMA protocol called fairMAC is defined, which allows to adjust the amount of NSI at the nodes and the degree of cooperation among the nodes in a distributed manner. By analyzing the data obtained by Monte Carlo simulations with varying protocol parameters for fairMAC, two fundamental tradeoffs are identified: First, more cooperation leads to higher throughput, but also increases energy expenses. Second, using more than one helper increases throughput and decreases energy expenses, however, more NSI has to be acquired by the nodes in the network. The obtained insights are used to increase the lifetime of a network. While full cooperation shortens the lifetime compared to no cooperation at all, lifetime can be increased by over 25% with partial cooperation.Comment: Some typos in v1 were corrected, to be presented at ISWCS 2010 in York, United Kingdo

Consensus-Based Attitude Maneuver of Multi-spacecraft with Exclusion Constraints

Some space missions involve cooperative multi-vehicle teams, for such purposes as interferometry and optimal sensor coverage, for example, NASA Terrestrial Planet Finder Mission. Cooperative navigation introduces extra constraints of exclusion zones between the spacecraft to protect them from damaging each other. This is in addition to external exclusion constraints introduced by damaging or blinding celestial objects. This work presents a quaternion-based attitude consensus protocol, using the communication topology of the team of spacecraft. The resulting distributed Laplacians of their communication graph are applied by semidefinite programming (SDP), to synthesize a series of time-varying optimal stochastic matrices. The matrices are used to generate various cooperative attitude maneuvers from the initial attitudes of the spacecraft. Exclusion constraints are satisfied by quaternion-based quadratically constrained attitude control (Q-CAC), where both static and dynamic exclusion zones are identified every time step, expressed as time-varying linear matrix inequalities (LMI) and solved by semidefinite programming

Wireless-powered cooperative communications: protocol design, performance analysis and resource allocation

Radio frequency (RF) energy transfer technique has attracted much attention and has recently been regarded as a key enabling technique for wireless-powered communications. However, the high attenuation of RF energy transfer over distance has greatly limited the performance and applications of WPCNs in practical scenarios. To overcome this essential hurdle, in this thesis we propose to combat the propagation attenuation by incorporating cooperative communication techniques in WPCNs. This opens a new paradigm named wireless-powered cooperative communication and raises many new research opportunities with promising applications. In this thesis, we focus on the novel protocol design, performance analysis and resource allocation of wireless-powered cooperative communication networks (WPCCNs). We first propose a harvest-then-cooperate (HTC) protocol for WPCCNs, where the wireless-powered source and relay(s) harvest energy from the AP in the downlink (DL) and work cooperatively in the uplink (UL) for transmitting source information. The average throughput performance of the HTC protocol with two single relay selection schemes is analyzed. We then design two novel protocols and study the optimal resource allocation for another setup of WPCCNs with a hybrid relay that has a constant power supply. Besides cooperating with the source for UL information transmission, the hybrid relay also transmits RF energy concurrently with the AP during the DL energy transfer phase. Subsequently, we adopt the Stackelberg game to model the strategic interactions in power beacon (PB)-assisted WPCCNs, where PBs are deployed to provide wireless charging services to wireless-powered users via RF energy transfer and are installed by different operators with the AP. Finally, we develop a distributed power splitting framework using non-cooperative game theory for a large-scale WPCCN, where multiple source-destination pairs communicate through their dedicated wireless-powered relays