Achievable Rates and Resource Allocation Strategies for Imperfectly Known Fading Relay Channels

Achievable rates and resource allocation strategies for imperfectly known fading relay channels are studied. It is assumed that communication starts with the network training phase in which the receivers estimate the fading coefficients. Achievable rate expressions for amplify-and-forward and decode-and-forward relaying schemes with different degrees of cooperation are obtained. We identify efficient strategies in three resource allocation problems: (1) power allocation between data and training symbols, (2) time/bandwidth allocation to the relay, and (3) power allocation between the source and relay in the presence of total power constraints. It is noted that unless the source-relay channel quality is high, cooperation is not beneficial and noncooperative direct transmission should be preferred at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) values when amplify-and-forward or decode-and-forward with repetition coding is employed as the cooperation strategy. On the other hand, relaying is shown to generally improve the performance at low SNRs. Additionally, transmission schemes in which the relay and source transmit in nonoverlapping intervals are seen to perform better in the low-SNR regime. Finally, it is noted that care should be exercised when operating at very low SNR levels, as energy efficiency significantly degrades below a certain SNR threshold value

Achievable Rates and Resource Allocation Strategies for Imperfectly Known Fading Relay Channels

Achievable rates and resource allocation strategies for imperfectly known fading relay channels are studied. It is assumed that communication starts with the network training phase in which the receivers estimate the fading coefficients. Achievable rate expressions for amplify-and-forward and decode-and-forward relaying schemes with different degrees of cooperation are obtained. We identify efficient strategies in three resource allocation problems: (1) power allocation between data and training symbols, (2) time/bandwidth allocation to the relay, and (3) power allocation between the source and relay in the presence of total power constraints. It is noted that unless the source-relay channel quality is high, cooperation is not beneficial and noncooperative direct transmission should be preferred at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) values when amplify-and-forward or decode-and-forward with repetition coding is employed as the cooperation strategy. On the other hand, relaying is shown to generally improve the performance at low SNRs. Additionally, transmission schemes in which the relay and source transmit in nonoverlapping intervals are seen to perform better in the low-SNR regime. Finally, it is noted that care should be exercised when operating at very low SNR levels, as energy efficiency significantly degrades below a certain SNR threshold value

Relaying energy allocation in training-based amplify and forward relay communications

We consider relay-assisted communication in a training-based transmission scheme. Each transmission block consists of a training phase and a data transmission phase. The relay node employs the amplify-and-forward protocol during all transmissions. We focus on the relay signaling design and investigate the benefit of allowing for different relaying power during the training phase and the data transmission phase. Specifically, the relaying energy allocation between the two phases is optimized for maximizing the average received signal-to-noise ratio at the destination node. We study this optimization problem for both single-antenna relay and multi-antenna relay and derive a simple closed-form relaying energy allocation strategy that achieves near-optimal performance. This closed-form strategy depends only on the length of the data transmission phase but not on other system parameters such as the relaying energy budget, the number of antennas at the relay, and the distances between the source, relay and destination nodes.This work was supported by the Australian Research Council's Discovery Projects funding scheme (project no. DP0984950, DP110102548) and the Research Council of Norway through the project 197565/V30. The work has been carried out while T. Lamahewa was at the Australian National University

On the Average Rate of HARQ-Based Quasi-Static Spectrum Sharing Networks

Spectrum sharing networks are communication setups in which unlicensed secondary users are permitted to work within the spectrum resources of primary licensees. Considering quasi-static fading environments, this paper studies the effect of hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) feedback on the average rate of unlicensed spectrum sharing channels. The results are obtained for different scenarios; Under both peak and average secondary user transmission power constraints, the channel average rate is determined under primary user limited received interference power conditions when there is perfect information about the interference available at the secondary user transmitter. An approximate solution for power allocation between incremental redundancy (INR) HARQ-based data retransmissions is proposed which can be applied in single-user networks as well. Then, we investigate the effect of imperfect secondary-primary channel state information on the interference-limited average rate of the secondary channel. Finally, we restudy all mentioned scenarios in the case where the data transmission is constrained to have limited outage probability. Substantial performance improvement is observed with even a single HARQ-based retransmission in all simulations

Optimization of a Power Splitting Protocol for Two-Way Multiple Energy Harvesting Relay System

Energy harvesting (EH) combined with cooperative communications constitutes a promising solution for future wireless technologies. They enable additional efficiency and increased lifetime to wireless networks. This paper investigates a multiple-relay selection scheme for an EH-based two-way relaying (TWR) system. All relays are considered as EH nodes that harvest energy from renewable energy and radio frequency (RF) sources. Some of them are selected to forward data to the destinations. The power splitting (PS) protocol, by which the EH node splits the input RF signal into two components for EH and information transmission, is adopted at the relay nodes. The objective is to jointly optimize i) the set of selected relays, ii) their PS ratios, and iii) their transmit power levels in order to maximize data rate-based utilities over multiple coherent time slots. A joint-optimization solution based on geometric programming (GP) and binary particle swarm optimization is proposed to solve non-convex problems for two utility functions reflecting the level of fairness in the TWR transmission. Numerical results illustrate the system's behavior versus various parameters and show that the performance of the proposed scheme is very close to that of the optimal branch-and-bound method and that GP outperforms the dual problem-based method

Beamforming and Protection Strategies in Gaussian MISO Wiretap Systems with Partial Channel State Information

Within this thesis, we investigate the possibilities of physical layer secrecy for two special system models. In detail, we study beamforming and protection strategies in the Multiple-Input Single-Output (MISO) Gaussian Wiretap Channel (WTC) and the Gaussian two-hop relay WTC with multiple antennas at transmitter and receiver. In both system models, we examine the influence of partial Channel State Information (CSI) on the link to the eavesdropper and compare the achievable secrecy rates with the case of full CSI. We show for the MISO WTC that in the fast fading scenario the Beamforming Vector (BV) can be optimized such that the ergodic secrecy rate is maximized with regard to the degree of channel knowledge. Further we show that the ergodic secrecy rate can be significantly increased by usage of Artificial Noise (AN), if applied in a smart way. This means that the degree of channel knowledge on the link to the eavesdropper influences the portion of power that is spent for AN at the transmitter as well as the direction, in which the AN signal is sent. In addition, we apply the same beamforming and protection strategies to the slow fading scenario and find that these techniques also reduce the secrecy outage probability. For the two-hop relay WTC, we introduce Information Leakage Neutralization (IN) as a new protection strategy. If applied to a system model, where the transmitter has full CSI, the instantaneous secrecy rate performs almost as well as the instantaneous capacity of the peaceful system without an eavesdropper. The IN protected scheme outperforms the AN protected approach and performs much better than any beamforming scheme without additional protection mechanism. Another positive aspect of the IN protected scheme in the case of full CSI is that conventional channel codes can be applied instead of wiretap codes. For the case of partial CSI, where the transmitter has only an outdated estimate on the channel between relay and the eavesdropper, we show that the IN protected scheme can also be applied. Here, it strongly depends on the channel realizations and the delay of the estimate, whether the IN or the AN protection scheme should be applied.In dieser Arbeit wird das Leistungsvermögen der Sicherheit auf der physikalischen Schicht anhand von zwei speziellen Systemmodellen untersucht. Im Detail werden Beamforming- und Absicherungsstrategien im gaußschen Multiple-Input Single-Output (MISO) Wiretap Channel (WTC) und dem gaußschen Two-hop Relay WTC mit mehreren Antennen am Sender und Empfänger studiert. In beiden Systemmodellen wird der Einfluss von partieller Kanalkenntnis zum Abhörer betrachtet und die so erreichbaren Sicherheitsraten mit denen verglichen, die bei voller Kanalkenntnis erreichbar sind. Für den MISO WTC kann gezeigt werden, dass für Kanäle mit schnellem Schwund der Beamforming-Vektor in Hinblick auf die ergodische Sicherheitsrate unter Berücksichtigung des Grades der Kanalkenntnis optimiert werden kann. Zudem kann durch die intelligente Verwendung von künstlichem Rauschen (Artificial Noise, AN) die ergodische Sicherheitsrate signifikant erhöht werden. Hierbei nimmt der Grad der Kanalkenntnis direkt Einfluss auf die Aufteilung der Leistung zwischen Daten- und AN-Signal am Sender sowie auch auf die Richtung, in der das AN-Signal gesendet wird. Zudem kann gezeigt werden, dass dieselben Beamforming- und Absicherungsstrategien ebenfalls die Sicherheitsausfallwahrscheinlichkeit für Kanäle mit langsamem Schwund minimieren. Im gaußschen Two-hop Relay WTC wird Information Leakage Neutralization (IN) als neuartige Absicherungsstrategie eingeführt. Diese Absicherungsstrategie erreicht nahezu dieselben instantanen Raten wie ein friedvolles System ohne Abhörer, wenn es bei voller Kanalkenntnis am Sender eingesetzt wird. Weiterhin sind durch die IN-Absicherungsstrategie höhere Raten erreichbar als durch den Einsatz von AN. Zusätzlich kann im Fall von voller Kanalkenntnis auf den Einsatz von Wiretap-Codes verzichtet werden. Auch im Fall partieller Kanalkenntnis, wo der Sender nur eine veraltete Schätzung des Kanals zwischen Relay und Abhörer besitzt, kann gezeigt werden, dass die IN-Absicherungsstrategie angewendet werden kann. Hierbei hängt es jedoch stark von den Kanalrealisierungen und dem Alter der Kanalschätzung ab, ob die IN- oder die AN-Absicherungsstrategie bessere Ergebnisse bringt und daher angewandt werden sollte