Full-duplex wireless communications: challenges, solutions and future research directions

The family of conventional half-duplex (HD) wireless systems relied on transmitting and receiving in different time-slots or frequency sub-bands. Hence the wireless research community aspires to conceive full-duplex (FD) operation for supporting concurrent transmission and reception in a single time/frequency channel, which would improve the attainable spectral efficiency by a factor of two. The main challenge encountered in implementing an FD wireless device is the large power difference between the self-interference (SI) imposed by the device’s own transmissions and the signal of interest received from a remote source. In this survey, we present a comprehensive list of the potential FD techniques and highlight their pros and cons. We classify the SI cancellation techniques into three categories, namely passive suppression, analog cancellation and digital cancellation, with the advantages and disadvantages of each technique compared. Specifically, we analyse the main impairments (e.g. phase noise, power amplifier nonlinearity as well as in-phase and quadrature-phase (I/Q) imbalance, etc.) that degrading the SI cancellation. We then discuss the FD based Media Access Control (MAC)-layer protocol design for the sake of addressing some of the critical issues, such as the problem of hidden terminals, the resultant end-to-end delay and the high packet loss ratio (PLR) due to network congestion. After elaborating on a variety of physical/MAC-layer techniques, we discuss potential solutions conceived for meeting the challenges imposed by the aforementioned techniques. Furthermore, we also discuss a range of critical issues related to the implementation, performance enhancement and optimization of FD systems, including important topics such as hybrid FD/HD scheme, optimal relay selection and optimal power allocation, etc. Finally, a variety of new directions and open problems associated with FD technology are pointed out. Our hope is that this treatise will stimulate future research efforts in the emerging field of FD communication

Channel Estimation in Half and Full Duplex Relays

abstract: Both two-way relays (TWR) and full-duplex (FD) radios are spectrally efficient, and their integration shows great potential to further improve the spectral efficiency, which offers a solution to the fifth generation wireless systems. High quality channel state information (CSI) are the key components for the implementation and the performance of the FD TWR system, making channel estimation in FD TWRs crucial. The impact of channel estimation on spectral efficiency in half-duplex multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) TWR systems is investigated. The trade-off between training and data energy is proposed. In the case that two sources are symmetric in power and number of antennas, a closed-form for the optimal ratio of data energy to total energy is derived. It can be shown that the achievable rate is a monotonically increasing function of the data length. The asymmetric case is discussed as well. Efficient and accurate training schemes for FD TWRs are essential for profiting from the inherent spectrally efficient structures of both FD and TWRs. A novel one-block training scheme with a maximum likelihood (ML) estimator is proposed to estimate the channels between the nodes and the residual self-interference (RSI) channel simultaneously. Baseline training schemes are also considered to compare with the one-block scheme. The Cramer-Rao bounds (CRBs) of the training schemes are derived and analyzed by using the asymptotic properties of Toeplitz matrices. The benefit of estimating the RSI channel is shown analytically in terms of Fisher information. To obtain fundamental and analytic results of how the RSI affects the spectral efficiency, one-way FD relay systems are studied. Optimal training design and ML channel estimation are proposed to estimate the RSI channel. The CRBs are derived and analyzed in closed-form so that the optimal training sequence can be found via minimizing the CRB. Extensions of the training scheme to frequency-selective channels and multiple relays are also presented. Simultaneously sensing and transmission in an FD cognitive radio system with MIMO is considered. The trade-off between the transmission rate and the detection accuracy is characterized by the sum-rate of the primary and the secondary users. Different beamforming and combining schemes are proposed and compared.Dissertation/ThesisDoctoral Dissertation Electrical Engineering 201

Wireless transmission protocols using relays for broadcast and information exchange channels

Relays have been used to overcome existing network performance bottlenecks in meeting the growing demand for large bandwidth and high quality of service (QoS) in wireless networks. This thesis proposes several wireless transmission protocols using relays in practical multi-user broadcast and information exchange channels. The main theme is to demonstrate that efficient use of relays provides an additional dimension to improve reliability, throughput, power efficiency and secrecy. First, a spectrally efficient cooperative transmission protocol is proposed for the multiple-input and singleoutput (MISO) broadcast channel to improve the reliability of wireless transmission. The proposed protocol mitigates co-channel interference and provides another dimension to improve the diversity gain. Analytical and simulation results show that outage probability and the diversity and multiplexing tradeoff of the proposed cooperative protocol outperforms the non-cooperative scheme. Second, a two-way relaying protocol is proposed for the multi-pair, two-way relaying channel to improve the throughput and reliability. The proposed protocol enables both the users and the relay to participate in interference cancellation. Several beamforming schemes are proposed for the multi-antenna relay. Analytical and simulation results reveal that the proposed protocol delivers significant improvements in ergodic capacity, outage probability and the diversity and multiplexing tradeoff if compared to existing schemes. Third, a joint beamforming and power management scheme is proposed for multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) two-way relaying channel to improve the sum-rate. Network power allocation and power control optimisation problems are formulated and solved using convex optimisation techniques. Simulation results verify that the proposed scheme delivers better sum-rate or consumes lower power when compared to existing schemes. Fourth, two-way secrecy schemes which combine one-time pad and wiretap coding are proposed for the scalar broadcast channel to improve secrecy rate. The proposed schemes utilise the channel reciprocity and employ relays to forward secret messages. Analytical and simulation results reveal that the proposed schemes are able to achieve positive secrecy rates even when the number of users is large. All of these new wireless transmission protocols help to realise better throughput, reliability, power efficiency and secrecy for wireless broadcast and information exchange channels through the efficient use of relays

Resource allocation for relay based green communication systems

The relay based cooperative network is one of the promising techniques for next generation wireless communications, which can help extend the cell coverage and enhance the diversity. To deploy relays efficiently with limited power and bandwidth under certain performance requirements, resource allocation (RA) plays an increasingly important role in the system design. In recent years, with the fast growth of the number of mobile phone users, great portion of CO2 emission is contributed by wireless communication systems. The combination of relay techniques and RA schemes reveals the solution to green communications, which aims to provide high data rate with low power consumption. In this thesis, RA is investigated for next generation relay based green wireless systems, including the long-range cellular systems, and the short-range point-to-point (P2P) systems. In the first contribution, an optimal asymmetric resource allocation (ARA) scheme is proposed for the decode-and-forward (DF) dual-hop multi-relay OFDMA cellular systems in the downlink. With this scheme, the time slots for the two hops via each of the relays are designed to be asymmetric, i.e., with K relays in a cell, a total of 2K time slots may be of different durations, which enhances the degree of freedom over the previous work. Also, a destination may be served by multiple relays at the same time to enhance the transmission diversity. Moreover, closed-form results for optimal resource allocation are derived, which require only limited amount of feedback information. Numerical results show that, due to the multi-time and multi-relay diversities, the proposed ARA scheme can provide a much better performance than the scheme with symmetric time allocation, as well as the scheme with asymmetric time allocation for a cell composed of independent single-relay sub-systems, especially when the relays are relatively close to the source. As a result, with the optimal relay location, the system can achieve high throughput in downlink with limited transmit power. In the second contribution, the power consumption in relay based 60 GHz cooperative networks is studied, which is based on three-terminal diversity amplify-and-forward (DAF) and diversity DF (DDF) relaying strategies. A total power consumption model including drive power, decoding power, and power consumption of power amplifier (PA) is proposed, excluding the transmit power, as it is relatively small compared to decoding power and PA power in the indoor environment. This model is formulated as a function of drive power, which gives an easy access to the system level power allocation. To minimise the system total power consumption, the optimal drive power can be allocated to the source node by numerical searching method while satisfying the data rate requirement. The impact of relay locations on the total power consumption is also investigated. It is shown that, with the same data rate requirement, in the small source-relay separation case, DAF consumes slightly less power than DDF; while with larger source-relay separation, DAF consumes much more power than DDF. In the future work, multiuser relay-based short-range communication systems will be considered for the 60 GHz communication in the fading channel scenario, which extends the proposed power consumption model in a more practical way. The power consumption model of other components, such as analog-to-digital converter, data buffer, modulation/demodulation could also be considered to provide more details about green P2P communications

Outage Probability Analysis of Full-Duplex Amplify-and-Forward MIMO Relay Systems

abstract: Multiple-input multiple-output systems have gained focus in the last decade due to the benefits they provide in enhancing the quality of communications. On the other hand, full-duplex communication has attracted remarkable attention due to its ability to improve the spectral efficiency compared to the existing half-duplex systems. Using full-duplex communications on MIMO co-operative networks can provide us solutions that can completely outperform existing systems with simultaneous transmission and reception at high data rates. This thesis considers a full-duplex MIMO relay which amplifies and forwards the received signals, between a source and a destination that do not a have line of sight. Full-duplex mode raises the problem of self-interference. Though all the links in the system undergo frequency flat fading, the end-to-end effective channel is frequency selective. This is due to the imperfect cancellation of the self-interference at the relay and this residual self-interference acts as intersymbol interference at the destination which is treated by equalization. This also leads to complications in form of recursive equations to determine the input-output relationship of the system. This also leads to complications in the form of recursive equations to determine the input-output relationship of the system. To overcome this, a signal flow graph approach using Mason's gain formula is proposed, where the effective channel is analyzed with keen notice to every loop and path the signal traverses. This gives a clear understanding and awareness about the orders of the polynomials involved in the transfer function, from which desired conclusions can be drawn. But the complexity of Mason's gain formula increases with the number of antennas at relay which can be overcome by the proposed linear algebraic method. Input-output relationship derived using simple concepts of linear algebra can be generalized to any number of antennas and the computation complexity is comparatively very low. For a full-duplex amplify-and-forward MIMO relay system, assuming equalization at the destination, new mechanisms have been implemented at the relay that can compensate the effect of residual self-interference namely equal-gain transmission and antenna selection. Though equal-gain transmission does not perform better than the maximal ratio transmission, a trade-off can be made between performance and implementation complexity. Using the proposed antenna selection strategy, one pair of transmit-receive antennas at the relay is selected based on four selection criteria discussed. Outage probability analysis is performed for all the strategies presented and detailed comparison has been established. Considering minimum mean-squared error decision feedback equalizer at the destination, a bound on the outage probability has been obtained for the antenna selection case and is used for comparisons. A cross-over point is observed while comparing the outage probabilities of equal-gain transmission and antenna selection techniques, as the signal-to-noise ratio increases and from that point antenna selection outperforms equal-gain transmission and this is explained by the fact of reduced residual self-interference in antenna selection method.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis Electrical Engineering 201

A survey on reconfigurable intelligent surfaces: wireless communication perspective

Using reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) to improve the coverage and the data rate of future wireless networks is a viable option. These surfaces are constituted of a significant number of passive and nearly passive components that interact with incident signals in a smart way, such as by reflecting them, to increase the wireless system's performance as a result of which the notion of a smart radio environment comes to fruition. In this survey, a study review of RIS-assisted wireless communication is supplied starting with the principles of RIS which include the hardware architecture, the control mechanisms, and the discussions of previously held views about the channel model and pathloss; then the performance analysis considering different performance parameters, analytical approaches and metrics are presented to describe the RIS-assisted wireless network performance improvements. Despite its enormous promise, RIS confronts new hurdles in integrating into wireless networks efficiently due to its passive nature. Consequently, the channel estimation for, both full and nearly passive RIS and the RIS deployments are compared under various wireless communication models and for single and multi-users. Lastly, the challenges and potential future study areas for the RIS aided wireless communication systems are proposed