An Analog Baseband Approach for Designing Full-Duplex Radios

Recent wireless testbed implementations have proven that full-duplex communication is in fact possible and can outperform half-duplex systems. Many of these implementations modify existing half-duplex systems to operate in full-duplex. To realize the full potential of full-duplex, radios need to be designed with self-interference in mind. In our work, we use an experimental setup with a patch antenna prototype to characterize the self-interference channel between two radios. In doing so, we form an analytical model to design analog baseband cancellation techniques. We show that our cancellation scheme can provide up to 10 dB improved signal strength, 2.5 bps/Hz increase in rate, and a 10,000 improvement in BER as compared to the RF only cancellation provided by the patch antenna.Comment: 5 pages, 8 figures, to appear in 2013 Asilomar Conference proceeding

Reference Receiver Based Digital Self-Interference Cancellation in MIMO Full-Duplex Transceivers

In this paper we propose and analyze a novel self-interference cancellation structure for in-band MIMO full-duplex transceivers. The proposed structure utilizes reference receiver chains to obtain reference signals for digital self-interference cancellation, which means that all the transmitter-induced nonidealities will be included in the digital cancellation signal. To the best of our knowledge, this type of a structure has not been discussed before in the context of full-duplex transceivers. First, we will analyze the overall achievable performance of the proposed cancellation scheme, while also providing some insight into the possible bottlenecks. We also provide a detailed formulation of the actual cancellation procedure, and perform an analysis into the effect of the received signal of interest on self-interference coupling channel estimation. The achieved performance of the proposed reference receiver based digital cancellation procedure is then assessed and verified with full waveform simulations. The analysis and waveform simulation results show that under practical transmitter RF/analog impairment levels, the proposed reference receiver based cancellation architecture can provide substantially better self-interference suppression than any existing solution, despite deploying only low-complexity linear digital processing.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figures. To be presented in the 2014 IEEE Broadband Wireless Access Worksho

Joint Design of Multi-Tap Analog Cancellation and Digital Beamforming for Reduced Complexity Full Duplex MIMO Systems

Incorporating full duplex operation in Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) systems provides the potential of boosting throughput performance. However, the hardware complexity of the analog self-interference canceller scales with the number of transmit and receive antennas, thus exploiting the benefits of analog cancellation becomes impractical for full duplex MIMO transceivers. In this paper, we present a novel architecture for the analog canceller comprising of reduced number of taps (tap refers to a line of fixed delay and variable phase shifter and attenuator) and simple multiplexers for efficient signal routing among the transmit and receive radio frequency chains. In contrast to the available analog cancellation architectures, the values for each tap and the configuration of the multiplexers are jointly designed with the digital beamforming filters according to certain performance objectives. Focusing on a narrowband flat fading channel model as an example, we present a general optimization framework for the joint design of analog cancellation and digital beamforming. We also detail a particular optimization objective together with its derived solution for the latter architectural components. Representative computer simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed low complexity full duplex MIMO system over lately available ones.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures, IEEE ICC 201

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