Realistic geometry-based stochastic channel models for advanced wireless MIMO systems

The employment of multiple antennas at both the Transmitter (Tx) and Receiver (Rx) enables the so-called Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) technologies to greatly improve the link reliability and increase the overall system capacity. MIMO has been recommended to be employed in various advanced wireless communication systems, e.g., the Fourth Generation (4G) wireless systems and beyond. For the successful design, performance test, and simulation of MIMO wireless communication systems, a thorough understanding of the underlying MIMO channels and corresponding models are indispensable. The approach of geometry-based stochastic modelling has widely been used due to its advantages, such as convenience for theoretical analysis and mathematical tractability. In addition, wireless Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communications play an important role in mobile relay-based cellular networks, vehicular ad hoc networks, and intelligent transportation systems. In V2V communication systems, both the Tx and Rx are in motion and equipped with low elevation antennas. This is di erent from conventional Fixed-to-Mobile (F2M) cellular systems, where only one terminal moves. This PhD project is therefore devoted to the modelling and simulation of wireless MIMO channels for both V2V and F2M communication systems. In this thesis, we rst propose a novel narrowband Three Dimensional (3D) theoretical Regular-Shape Geometry Based Stochastic Model (RS-GBSM) and the corresponding Sum-of-Sinusoids (SoS) simulation model for non-isotropic MIMO V2V Ricean fading channels. The proposed RS-GBSM has the ability to study the impact of the Vehicular Tra c Density (VTD) on channel statistics and jointly considers the azimuth and elevation angles by using the von Mises-Fisher (VMF) distribution. Moreover, a novel parameter computation method is proposed for jointly calculating the azimuth and elevation angles in the SoS channel simulator. Based on the proposed 3D theoretical RS-GBSM and its SoS simulation model, statistical properties are derived and thoroughly investigated. The impact of the elevation angle in the 3D model on key statistical properties is investigated by comparing with those of the corresponding Two Dimensional (2D) model. It is demonstrated that the 3D model is more practical to characterise real V2V channels, in particular for pico-cell scenarios. Secondly, actual V2V channel measurements have shown that the modelling assumption of Wide Sense Stationary (WSS) is valid only for very short time intervals. This fact inspires the requirement of non-WSS V2V channel models. Therefore, we propose a novel 3D theoretical wideband MIMO non-WSS V2V RS-GBSM and corresponding SoS simulation model. Due to the dynamic movement of both the Tx and Rx, the Angle of Departure (AoD) and Angle of Arrival (AoA) are time-variant, which makes our model non-stationary. The proposed RS-GBSMs are su ciently generic and adaptable to mimic various V2V scenarios. Furthermore, important local channel statistical properties are derived and thoroughly investigated. The impact of non-stationarity on these channel statistical properties is investigated by comparing with those of the corresponding WSS model. The proposed non-WSS RS-GBSMs are validated by measurements in terms of the channel stationary time. Thirdly, realistic MIMO channel models with a proper trade-o between accuracy and complexity are indispensable for the practical application. By comparing the accuracy and complexity of two latest F2M standardised channel models (i.e., LTE-A and IMT-A channel models), we employ some channel statistical properties as the accuracy metrics and the number of Real Operations (ROs) as the complexity metric. It is shown that the LTE-A MIMO channel model is simple but has signi cant aws in terms of the accuracy. The IMT-A channel model is complicated but has better accuracy. Therefore, we focus on investigating various complexity reduction methods to simplify the IMT-A channel model. The results have shown that the proposed methods do not degrade much the accuracy of the IMT-A channel model, whereas they can signi cantly reduce the complexity in terms of the number of ROs and channel coe cients computing time. Finally, to investigate the non-stationarity of the IMT-A MIMO channel model, we further propose a non-WSS channel model with time-varying AoDs and AoAs. The proposed time-varying functions can be applied to various scenarios according to moving features of Moving Clusters (MCs) and a Mobile Station (MS). Moreover, the impacts of time-varying AoDs and AoAs on local statistical properties are investigated thoroughly. Simulation results prove that statistical properties are varied with time due to the non-stationarity of the proposed channel model. In summary, the proposed reference models and channel simulators are useful for the design, testing, and performance evaluation of advanced wireless V2V and F2M MIMO communication systems

Design of Mobile Radio Channel Simulators Using the Iterative Nonlinear Least Square Approximation Method with Applications in Vehicle-to-X Communications

Doktorgradsavhandling i informasjons- og kommunikasjonsteknologi, Universitetet i Agder, 2015Vehicle-to-X (V2X) communication systems are expected to provide tremendous benefits associated with the safety and traffic efficiency on roads. The successful deployment of emerging technologies like V2X requires channel models accurately representing fading statistics in environments where those technologies are used. The accuracy is, of course, a major concern when adapting or developing a suitable channel model for test and evaluation purposes. However, it is also important to take into account the simplicity of a channel model, which is crucial for efficient numerical computations and computer simulations. Reconciling simplicity and accuracy is a rather complex task to accomplish, which requires sophisticated parameter computation methods. To the best of our knowledge, only a limited number of investigations address the channel modelling and parametrization problems for vehicular propagation scenarios in the literature. In order to fill this gap, we concentrate on the development of new sophisticated channel modelling approaches and efficient parameter computation methods for the design of V2X communication systems in this dissertation. In general, there are two main applications of channel models: (1) for the design and test of wireless communication systems and (2) for the optimization of existing communication systems. For the design and test purposes, more general statistical models such as Rice and Rayleigh channel models are preferred. Those channel models provide a fundamental insight into propagation phenomena and at the same time they greatly simplify the theoretical and numerical computations to assess the performance of wireless communication systems. For the optimization purposes, however, measurement-based channel models are commonly used. The main advantage of such channel models is that they always accurately reflect the physical reality. In this dissertation, we will focus on the channel models designed for both of those application purposes. A significant part of this dissertation will be devoted to the thorough analysis and design of Rayleigh and Rice fading channel models. We investigate the correlation properties of those channels assuming asymmetrical shapes of Doppler power spectral densities (PSDs). In fact, this is what we often observe in real-world propagation scenarios. In this regard, we will present an analytical expression for the autocorrelation function (ACF) of Rice processes that captures such realistic scenarios. Another important contribution to this topic is the novel iterative nonlinear least square approximation method for the design of Rice and Rayleigh channel simulators based on sum-of-sinusoids (SOS), as well as sum-of-cisoids (SOC) approaches. The idea behind the proposed method is very simple. The parameters of the simulation model are extracted from the reference model, such as the stochastic Rice and Rayleigh channel models, by fitting the statistical properties of interest, e.g. the ACF and the probability density function (PDF). We show that the proposed method outperforms several other methods in designing channel simulators with desired distribution and correlation properties. We also show that the proposed method provides a subtle balance between channel model’s simplicity and accuracy in designing Rayleigh and Rice channel simulators. The parametrization is a process of determining the key parameters specifying the channel model. This process has a great influence on the reliability of the developed channel model. It is therefore highly desirable if those parameters are extracted from measurements. In fact, this idea constitutes the fundamental concept behind measurement-based channel modelling approach. The measurement-based models are important in the sense that they can be used for the optimizations of the wireless communication system. Hence, the problem of computing the channel model parameters from the measurements is of special interest. In this regard, we propose iterative nonlinear least square approximation method for the design of measurementbased channel simulators. Through detailed investigations and comparative studies, we demonstrate that the proposed method is highly flexible and outperforms several other conventional methods in terms of reproducing the correlation characteristics obtained from several measurements. In addition, we introduce a new approach for the design of channel models for V2X communications in tunnel environments, where the number of scatterers contributing to the total received power is relatively small

Performance investigation of spatial modulation systems under realistic channel models

In order to fulfil the explosive demand for convenient wireless data access, novel wireless technologies such as the multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) have widely been used to improve the link reliability and capacity of wireless communication systems. In recent years, a new MIMO technology named the spatial modulation (SM) has attracted signi cant research interest due to its reported enhancement on the system performance with the reasonable system complexity. Before a new technology comes into real use, it is necessary to comprehensively evaluate its performance under different scenarios. In this thesis, we investigate the performance of SM systems under some important realistic scenarios for future wireless communications, such as the vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), the high-speed train (HST), and the massive MIMO scenarios. Firstly, the bit error rate (BER) performance of SM systems under a novel threedimensional (3D) geometry based stochastic model (GBSM) for V2V MIMO channels is investigated by both theoretical analysis and system simulations. The impacts of vehicle tra c density (VTD), Doppler effect, and 3D feature on the BER performance of SM systems are thoroughly studied. In addition, other MIMO technologies, such as the vertical Bell Labs layered space-time (V-BLAST), the Alamouti scheme are compared with SM under different simulation settings. Secondly, the BER performance of SM systems is studied under a non-stationary wideband HST GBSM considering the non-ideal channel estimation case. The timevarying behaviour of the channel and its impact on the performance of SM systems are comprehensively investigated. The accurate theoretical BER expression of SM systems under a non-stationary wideband HST channels with non-ideal channel estimation is derived. A novel statistic property named stationary interval in terms of the space-time correlation function (STCF) is introduced in order to clearly explain all theoretical and simulation results. Thirdly, the performance of SM systems is evaluated under a Kroneck-based massive MIMO channel model. As a massive MIMO system employs large numbers of antennas, antenna elements are distributed over a wide range. Thus, different antenna elements may observe different sets of clusters. How this phenomenon affects the performance of SM systems is investigated by considering a survival probability of clusters, which abstracts the birth-death process of each cluster in the channel model. Moreover, the performance of SM systems is also compared with that of other MIMO technologies under the massive MIMO channel model. In summary, all research works in this thesis have considered realistic MIMO channel models, which are meaningful for the test, performance evaluation, and implementation of SM technology for future advanced wireless communications systems

Modelling, Analysis, and Simulation of Underwater Acoustic Channels : Doctoral Dissertation for the Degree Philosophiae Doctor (PhD) at the Faculty of Engineering and Science, Specialization in Information and Communication Technology

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Characterization, Avoidance and Repair of Packet Collisions in Inter-Vehicle Communication Networks

This work proposes a combined and accurate simulation of wireless channel, physical layer and networking aspects in order to bridge the gaps between the corresponding research communities. The resulting high fidelity simulations enable performance optimizations across multiple layers, and are used in the second part of this thesis to evaluate the impact of fast-fading channel characteristics on Carrier-Sense Multiple Access, and to quantify the benefit of successive interference cancellation

Characterization, Avoidance and Repair of Packet Collisions in Inter-Vehicle Communication Networks

This work proposes a combined and accurate simulation of wireless channel, physical layer and networking aspects in order to bridge the gaps between the corresponding research communities. The resulting high fidelity simulations enable performance optimizations across multiple layers, and are used in the second part of this thesis to evaluate the impact of fast-fading channel characteristics on Carrier-Sense Multiple Access, and to quantify the benefit of successive interference cancellation

Distributed Adaptation Techniques for Connected Vehicles

In this PhD dissertation, we propose distributed adaptation mechanisms for connected vehicles to deal with the connectivity challenges. To understand the system behavior of the solutions for connected vehicles, we first need to characterize the operational environment. Therefore, we devised a large scale fading model for various link types, including point-to-point vehicular communications and multi-hop connected vehicles. We explored two small scale fading models to define the characteristics of multi-hop connected vehicles. Taking our research into multi-hop connected vehicles one step further, we propose selective information relaying to avoid message congestion due to redundant messages received by the relay vehicle. Results show that the proposed mechanism reduces messaging load by up to 75% without sacrificing environmental awareness. Once we define the channel characteristics, we propose a distributed congestion control algorithm to solve the messaging overhead on the channels as the next research interest of this dissertation. We propose a combined transmit power and message rate adaptation for connected vehicles. The proposed algorithm increases the environmental awareness and achieves the application requirements by considering highly dynamic network characteristics. Both power and rate adaptation mechanisms are performed jointly to avoid one result affecting the other negatively. Results prove that the proposed algorithm can increase awareness by 20% while keeping the channel load and interference at almost the same level as well as improve the average message rate by 18%. As the last step of this dissertation, distributed cooperative dynamic spectrum access technique is proposed to solve the channel overhead and the limited resources issues. The adaptive energy detection threshold, which is used to decide whether the channel is busy, is optimized in this work by using a computationally efficient numerical approach. Each vehicle evaluates the available channels by voting on the information received from one-hop neighbors. An interdisciplinary approach referred to as entropy-based weighting is used for defining the neighbor credibility. Once the vehicle accesses the channel, we propose a decision mechanism for channel switching that is inspired by the optimal flower selection process employed by bumblebees foraging. Experimental results show that by using the proposed distributed cooperative spectrum sensing mechanism, spectrum detection error converges to zero