Survey of Inter-satellite Communication for Small Satellite Systems: Physical Layer to Network Layer View

Small satellite systems enable whole new class of missions for navigation, communications, remote sensing and scientific research for both civilian and military purposes. As individual spacecraft are limited by the size, mass and power constraints, mass-produced small satellites in large constellations or clusters could be useful in many science missions such as gravity mapping, tracking of forest fires, finding water resources, etc. Constellation of satellites provide improved spatial and temporal resolution of the target. Small satellite constellations contribute innovative applications by replacing a single asset with several very capable spacecraft which opens the door to new applications. With increasing levels of autonomy, there will be a need for remote communication networks to enable communication between spacecraft. These space based networks will need to configure and maintain dynamic routes, manage intermediate nodes, and reconfigure themselves to achieve mission objectives. Hence, inter-satellite communication is a key aspect when satellites fly in formation. In this paper, we present the various researches being conducted in the small satellite community for implementing inter-satellite communications based on the Open System Interconnection (OSI) model. This paper also reviews the various design parameters applicable to the first three layers of the OSI model, i.e., physical, data link and network layer. Based on the survey, we also present a comprehensive list of design parameters useful for achieving inter-satellite communications for multiple small satellite missions. Specific topics include proposed solutions for some of the challenges faced by small satellite systems, enabling operations using a network of small satellites, and some examples of small satellite missions involving formation flying aspects.Comment: 51 pages, 21 Figures, 11 Tables, accepted in IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorial

Scaling up MIMO: Opportunities and Challenges with Very Large Arrays

This paper surveys recent advances in the area of very large MIMO systems. With very large MIMO, we think of systems that use antenna arrays with an order of magnitude more elements than in systems being built today, say a hundred antennas or more. Very large MIMO entails an unprecedented number of antennas simultaneously serving a much smaller number of terminals. The disparity in number emerges as a desirable operating condition and a practical one as well. The number of terminals that can be simultaneously served is limited, not by the number of antennas, but rather by our inability to acquire channel-state information for an unlimited number of terminals. Larger numbers of terminals can always be accommodated by combining very large MIMO technology with conventional time- and frequency-division multiplexing via OFDM. Very large MIMO arrays is a new research field both in communication theory, propagation, and electronics and represents a paradigm shift in the way of thinking both with regards to theory, systems and implementation. The ultimate vision of very large MIMO systems is that the antenna array would consist of small active antenna units, plugged into an (optical) fieldbus.Comment: Accepted for publication in the IEEE Signal Processing Magazine, October 201

Proceedings of the Second International Mobile Satellite Conference (IMSC 1990)

Presented here are the proceedings of the Second International Mobile Satellite Conference (IMSC), held June 17-20, 1990 in Ottawa, Canada. Topics covered include future mobile satellite communications concepts, aeronautical applications, modulation and coding, propagation and experimental systems, mobile terminal equipment, network architecture and control, regulatory and policy considerations, vehicle antennas, and speech compression

Raking the Cocktail Party

We present the concept of an acoustic rake receiver---a microphone beamformer that uses echoes to improve the noise and interference suppression. The rake idea is well-known in wireless communications; it involves constructively combining different multipath components that arrive at the receiver antennas. Unlike spread-spectrum signals used in wireless communications, speech signals are not orthogonal to their shifts. Therefore, we focus on the spatial structure, rather than temporal. Instead of explicitly estimating the channel, we create correspondences between early echoes in time and image sources in space. These multiple sources of the desired and the interfering signal offer additional spatial diversity that we can exploit in the beamformer design. We present several "intuitive" and optimal formulations of acoustic rake receivers, and show theoretically and numerically that the rake formulation of the maximum signal-to-interference-and-noise beamformer offers significant performance boosts in terms of noise and interference suppression. Beyond signal-to-noise ratio, we observe gains in terms of the \emph{perceptual evaluation of speech quality} (PESQ) metric for the speech quality. We accompany the paper by the complete simulation and processing chain written in Python. The code and the sound samples are available online at \url{http://lcav.github.io/AcousticRakeReceiver/}.Comment: 12 pages, 11 figures, Accepted for publication in IEEE Journal on Selected Topics in Signal Processing (Special Issue on Spatial Audio

Uplink capacity of a variable density cellular system with multicell processing

In this work we investigate the information theoretic capacity of the uplink of a cellular system. Assuming centralised processing for all base stations, we consider a power-law path loss model along with variable cell size (variable density of Base Stations) and we formulate an average path-loss approximation. Considering a realistic Rician flat fading environment, the analytical result for the per-cell capacity is derived for a large number of users distributed over each cell. We extend this general approach to model the uplink of sectorized cellular system. To this end, we assume that the user terminals are served by perfectly directional receiver antennas, dividing the cell coverage area into perfectly non-interfering sectors. We show how the capacity is increased (due to degrees of freedom gain) in comparison to the single receiving antenna system and we investigate the asymptotic behaviour when the number of sectors grows large. We further extend the analysis to find the capacity when the multiple antennas used for each Base Station are omnidirectional and uncorrelated (power gain on top of degrees of freedom gain). We validate the numerical solutions with Monte Carlo simulations for random fading realizations and we interpret the results for the real-world systems

Spatio-Temporal processing for Optimum Uplink-Downlink WCDMA Systems

The capacity of a cellular system is limited by two different phenomena, namely multipath fading and multiple access interference (MAl). A Two Dimensional (2-D) receiver combats both of these by processing the signal both in the spatial and temporal domain. An ideal 2-D receiver would perform joint space-time processing, but at the price of high computational complexity. In this research we investigate computationally simpler technique termed as a Beamfom1er-Rake. In a Beamformer-Rake, the output of a beamfom1er is fed into a succeeding temporal processor to take advantage of both the beamformer and Rake receiver. Wireless service providers throughout the world are working to introduce the third generation (3G) and beyond (3G) cellular service that will provide higher data rates and better spectral efficiency. Wideband COMA (WCDMA) has been widely accepted as one of the air interfaces for 3G. A Beamformer-Rake receiver can be an effective solution to provide the receivers enhanced capabilities needed to achieve the required performance of a WCDMA system. We consider three different Pilot Symbol Assisted (PSA) beamforming techniques, Direct Matrix Inversion (DMI), Least-Mean Square (LMS) and Recursive Least Square (RLS) adaptive algorithms. Geometrically Based Single Bounce (GBSB) statistical Circular channel model is considered, which is more suitable for array processing, and conductive to RAKE combining. The performances of the Beam former-Rake receiver are evaluated in this channel model as a function of the number of antenna elements and RAKE fingers, in which are evaluated for the uplink WCDMA system. It is shown that, the Beamformer-Rake receiver outperforms the conventional RAKE receiver and the conventional beamformer by a significant margin. Also, we optimize and develop a mathematical formulation for the output Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) of a Beam former-Rake receiver. In this research, also, we develop, simulate and evaluate the SINR and Signal to Noise Ratio (Et!Nol performances of an adaptive beamforming technique in the WCDMA system for downlink. The performance is then compared with an omnidirectional antenna system. Simulation shows that the best perfom1ance can be achieved when all the mobiles with same Angle-of-Arrival (AOA) and different distance from base station are formed in one beam

Space time transceiver design over multipath fading channels

Imperial Users onl

Mobile and Wireless Communications

Mobile and Wireless Communications have been one of the major revolutions of the late twentieth century. We are witnessing a very fast growth in these technologies where mobile and wireless communications have become so ubiquitous in our society and indispensable for our daily lives. The relentless demand for higher data rates with better quality of services to comply with state-of-the art applications has revolutionized the wireless communication field and led to the emergence of new technologies such as Bluetooth, WiFi, Wimax, Ultra wideband, OFDMA. Moreover, the market tendency confirms that this revolution is not ready to stop in the foreseen future. Mobile and wireless communications applications cover diverse areas including entertainment, industrialist, biomedical, medicine, safety and security, and others, which definitely are improving our daily life. Wireless communication network is a multidisciplinary field addressing different aspects raging from theoretical analysis, system architecture design, and hardware and software implementations. While different new applications are requiring higher data rates and better quality of service and prolonging the mobile battery life, new development and advanced research studies and systems and circuits designs are necessary to keep pace with the market requirements. This book covers the most advanced research and development topics in mobile and wireless communication networks. It is divided into two parts with a total of thirty-four stand-alone chapters covering various areas of wireless communications of special topics including: physical layer and network layer, access methods and scheduling, techniques and technologies, antenna and amplifier design, integrated circuit design, applications and systems. These chapters present advanced novel and cutting-edge results and development related to wireless communication offering the readers the opportunity to enrich their knowledge in specific topics as well as to explore the whole field of rapidly emerging mobile and wireless networks. We hope that this book will be useful for students, researchers and practitioners in their research studies