Multicarrier Faster-than-Nyquist Signaling Transceivers: From Theory to Practice

The demand for spectrum resources in cellular systems worldwide has seen a tremendous escalation in the recent past. The mobile phones of today are capable of being cameras taking pictures and videos, able to browse the Internet, do video calling and much more than an yesteryear computer. Due to the variety and the amount of information that is being transmitted the demand for spectrum resources is continuously increasing. Efficient use of bandwidth resources has hence become a key parameter in the design and realization of wireless communication systems. Faster-than-Nyquist (FTN) signaling is one such technique that achieves bandwidth efficiency by making better use of the available spectrum resources at the expense of higher processing complexity in the transceiver. This thesis addresses the challenges and design trade offs arising during the hardware realization of Faster-than-Nyquist signaling transceivers. The FTN system has been evaluated for its achievable performance compared to the processing overhead in the transmitter and the receiver. Coexistence with OFDM systems, a more popular multicarrier scheme in existing and upcoming wireless standards, has been considered by designing FTN specific processing blocks as add-ons to the conventional transceiver chain. A multicarrier system capable of operating under both orthogonal and FTN signaling has been developed. The performance of the receiver was evaluated for AWGN and fading channels. The FTN system was able to achieve 2x improvement in bandwidth usage with similar performance as that of an OFDM system. The extra processing in the receiver was in terms of an iterative decoder for the decoding of FTN modulated signals. An efficient hardware architecture for the iterative decoder reusing the FTN specific processing blocks and realize different functionality has been designed. An ASIC implementation of this decoder was implemented in a 65nm CMOS technology and the implemented chip has been successfully verified for its functionality

On zero-forcing equalization for short-filtered multicarrier faster-than-Nyquist signaling

Within the context of faster-than-Nyquist signaling, a low-complexity multicarrier system based on short-length filters and zero-forcing turbo equalization is introduced. Short-length filters allow a reduced-size block processing while zero-forcing equalization allows a linear reduced-complexity implementation. Furthermore, rectangular and out-of-band energy minimization pulse shaping demonstrates competitive performance results over an additive white Gaussian noise channel while keeping a lower computational cost than other multicarrier faster-than-Nyquist systems

FTN multicarrier transmission based on tight Gabor frames

A multicarrier signal can be synthesized thanks to a symbol sequence and a Gabor family (i.e., a regularly time-frequency shifted version of a generator pulse). In this article, we consider the case where the signaling density is increased such that inter-pulse interference is unavoidable.Over an additive white Gaussian noise channel, we show that the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio is maximized when the transmitter and the receiver use the same tight Gabor frame. What is more, we give practical efficient realization schemes and show how to build tight frames based on usual generators. Theoretical and simulated bit-error-probability are given for a non-coded system using quadrature amplitude modulations. Such a characterization is then used to predict the convergence of a coded system using low-density parity-check codes. We also study the robustness of such a system to errors on the received bits in an interference cancellation context

Optical Time-Frequency Packing: Principles, Design, Implementation, and Experimental Demonstration

Time-frequency packing (TFP) transmission provides the highest achievable spectral efficiency with a constrained symbol alphabet and detector complexity. In this work, the application of the TFP technique to fiber-optic systems is investigated and experimentally demonstrated. The main theoretical aspects, design guidelines, and implementation issues are discussed, focusing on those aspects which are peculiar to TFP systems. In particular, adaptive compensation of propagation impairments, matched filtering, and maximum a posteriori probability detection are obtained by a combination of a butterfly equalizer and four 8-state parallel Bahl-Cocke-Jelinek-Raviv (BCJR) detectors. A novel algorithm that ensures adaptive equalization, channel estimation, and a proper distribution of tasks between the equalizer and BCJR detectors is proposed. A set of irregular low-density parity-check codes with different rates is designed to operate at low error rates and approach the spectral efficiency limit achievable by TFP at different signal-to-noise ratios. An experimental demonstration of the designed system is finally provided with five dual-polarization QPSK-modulated optical carriers, densely packed in a 100 GHz bandwidth, employing a recirculating loop to test the performance of the system at different transmission distances.Comment: This paper has been accepted for publication in the IEEE/OSA Journal of Lightwave Technolog

Analysis of a FTN Multicarrier System: Interference Mitigation Based on Tight Gabor Frames

Cognitive radio applications require flexible waveforms to overcome several challenges such as opportunistic spectrum allocation and white spaces utilization. In this context, multicarrier modulations generalizing traditional cyclic-prefix orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing are particularly justified to fit time-frequency characteristics of the channel while improving spectral efficiency.In our theoretical framework, a multicarrier signal is described as a Gabor family the coefficients of which are the symbols to be transmitted and the generators are the time-frequency shifted pulse shapes to be used. In this article, we consider the case where non-rectangular pulse shapes are used with a signaling density increased such that inter-pulse interference is unavoidable. Such an interference is minimized when the Gabor family used is a tight frame. We show that, in this case, interference can be approximated as an additive Gaussian noise. This allows us to compute theoretical and simulated bit-error-probability for a non-coded system using a quadrature phase-shift keying constellation. Such a characterization is then used in order to predict the convergence of a coded system using low-density parity check codes. We also study the robustness of such a system to errors on the received bits in an interference cancellation context

Transmission Experiment of Bandwidth Compressed Carrier Aggregation in a Realistic Fading Channel

In this paper, an experimental testbed is designed to evaluate the performance of a bandwidth compressed multicarrier technique termed spectrally efficient frequency division multiplexing (SEFDM) in a carrier aggregation (CA) scenario1. Unlike orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), SEFDM is a non-orthogonal waveform which, relative to OFDM, packs more sub-carriers in a given bandwidth, thereby improving spectral efficiency. CA is a long term evolution-advanced (LTE-Advanced) featured technique that offers a higher throughput by aggregating multiple legacy radio bands. Considering the scarcity of radio spectrum, SEFDM signals can be utilized to enhance CA performance. The combination of the two techniques results in a larger number of aggregated component carriers (CCs) and therefore increased data rate in a given bandwidth with no additional spectral allocation. It is experimentally shown that CA-SEFDM can aggregate up to 7 CCs in a limited bandwidth while CA-OFDM can only put 5 CCs in the same bandwidth. In this work, LTE-like framed CA-SEFDM signals are generated and delivered through a realistic LTE channel. A complete experimental setup is described together with error performance and effective spectral efficiency comparisons. Experimental results show that the measured BER performance for CA-SEFDM is very close to CA-OFDM and the effective spectral efficiency of CA-SEFDM can be substantially higher than that of CA-OFDM

Experimental Demonstration of Spectrally Efficient Frequency Division Multiplexing Transmissions at E-Band

This paper presents the design and the experimental demonstration of transmission of spectrally efficient frequency division multiplexing (SEFDM) signals, using a single 5-GHz channel, from 81 to 86 CHz in the E-hand frequency allocation. A purpose-built E-band SEFDM experimental demonstrator, consisting of transmitter and receiver GaAs microwave integrated circuits, along with a complete chain of digital signal processing is explained. Solutions are proposed to solve the channel and phase offset estimation and equalization issues, which arise from the well-known intercarrier interference between the SEFDM signal subcarriers. This paper shows the highest transmission rate of 12 Gb/s over a bandwidth varying between 2.67 to 4 CHz depending on the compression level of the SEFDM signals, which results in a spectral efficiency improvement by up to 50%, compared to the conventional orthogonal frequency division multiplexing modulation format

Successive interference cancellation in multistream faster-than-Nyquist Signaling

In earlier work we have extended Mazo's concept of faster-than-Nyquist signaling to pulse trains that modulate adjacent subcarriers, a method we called two dimensional Mazo signaling. The signal processing is similar to orthogonal frequency division multiplex (OFDM) transmission. Despite pulses that are faster than the Nyquist limit and subcarriers that significantly overlap, the transmission achieves the isolated pulse error performance. In this paper we review the method and test a receiver based on successive interference cancellation. It virtually achieves the matched filter bound

Spectrally Efficient FDM over Satellite Systems with Advanced Interference Cancellation

For high data rates satellite systems, where multiple carriers are frequency division multiplexed with a slight overlap, the overall spectral efficiency is limited. This work applies highly overlapped carriers for satellite broadcast and broadband scenarios to achieve higher spectral efficiency. Spectrally efficient frequency division multiplexing (SEFDM) compresses subcarrier spacing to increase the spectral efficiency at the expense of orthogonality violation. SEFDM systems performance degrades compared to orthogonal signals, unless efficient interference cancellation is used. Turbo equalisation with interference cancellation is implemented to improve receiver performance for variable coding, compression and modulation/constellation proposals that may be applied in satellite communications settings. Such parameters may be set to satisfy pre-defined spectral efficiency values for a given quality index (QI) or associated application. Assuming LDPC coded data, the work proposes two approaches to receiver design; a simple matched filter approach and an approach utilising an iterative interference cancellation structure specially designed for SEFDM. Mathematical models and simulations studies are presented indicating promising gains to be achieved for SEFDM transmission with advanced transceiver architectures at the cost of increased complexity at the receiver

Nyquist-SEFDM: Pulse shaped multicarrier communication with sub-carrier spacing below the symbol rate

A new waveform design which simultaneously compresses bandwidth and suppresses out-of-band power leakage is studied in this work considering future 5th generation (5G) requirements. Thus, doubly created interference, coming from less than symbol rate packed sub-carriers and pulse shaping filters, is introduced. Therefore, this work, through using specially designed detectors, deals with the doubly created interference problem. It paves the way to non-orthogonal signal detection and non-orthogonal carrier aggregation (CA) system designs; both of importance to future wireless and wired communication systems