Optimising Cooperative Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio Networks Using Interference Alignment and Space-Time Coding

In this thesis, the process of optimizing Cooperative Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio has been investigated in fast-fading environments where simulation results have shown that its performance is limited by the Probability of Reporting Errors. By proposing a transmit diversity scheme using Differential space-time block codes (D-STBC) where channel state information (CSI) is not required and regarding multiple pairs of Cognitive Radios (CR’s) with single antennas as a virtual MIMO antenna arrays in multiple clusters, Differential space-time coding is applied for the purpose of decision reporting over Rayleigh channels. Both Hard and Soft combination schemes were investigated at the fusion center to reveal performance advantages for Hard combination schemes due to their minimal bandwidth requirements and simplistic implementation. The simulations results show that this optimization process achieves full transmit diversity, albeit with slight performance degradation in terms of power with improvements in performance when compared to conventional Cooperative Spectrum Sensing over non-ideal reporting channels. Further research carried out in this thesis shows performance deficits of Cooperative Spectrum Sensing due to interference on sensing channels of Cognitive Radio. Interference Alignment (IA) being a revolutionary wireless transmission strategy that reduces the impact of interference seems well suited as a strategy that can be used to optimize the performance of Cooperative Spectrum Sensing. The idea of IA is to coordinate multiple transmitters so that their mutual interference aligns at their receivers, facilitating simple interference cancellation techniques. Since its inception, research efforts have primarily been focused on verifying IA’s ability to achieve the maximum degrees of freedom (an approximation of sum capacity), developing algorithms for determining alignment solutions and designing transmission strategies that relax the need for perfect alignment but yield better performance. With the increased deployment of wireless services, CR’s ability to opportunistically sense and access the unused licensed frequency spectrum, without causing harmful interference to the licensed users becomes increasingly diminished, making the concept of introducing IA in CR a very attractive proposition. For a multiuser multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) overlay CR network, a space-time opportunistic IA (ST-OIA) technique has been proposed that allows spectrum sharing between a single primary user (PU) and multiple secondary users (SU) while ensuring zero interference to the PUs. With local CSI available at both the transmitters and receivers of SUs, the PU employs a space-time WF (STWF) algorithm to optimize its transmission and in the process, frees up unused eigenmodes that can be exploited by the SU. STWF achieves higher performance than other WF algorithms at low to moderate signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regimes, which makes it ideal for implementation in CR networks. The SUs align their transmitted signals in such a way their interference impairs only the PU’s unused eigenmodes. For the multiple SUs to further exploit the benefits of Cooperative Spectrum Sensing, it was shown in this thesis that IA would only work when a set of conditions were met. The first condition ensures that the SUs satisfy a zero interference constraint at the PU’s receiver by designing their post-processing matrices such that they are orthogonal to the received signal from the PU link. The second condition ensures a zero interference constraint at both the PU and SUs receivers i.e. the constraint ensures that no interference from the SU transmitters is present at the output of the post-processing matrices of its unintended receivers. The third condition caters for the multiple SUs scenario to ensure interference from multiple SUs are aligned along unused eigenmodes. The SU system is assumed to employ a time division multiple access (TDMA) system such that the Principle of Reciprocity is employed towards optimizing the SUs transmission rates. Since aligning multiple SU transmissions at the PU is always limited by availability of spatial dimensions as well as typical user loads, the third condition proposes a user selection algorithm by the fusion centre (FC), where the SUs are grouped into clusters based on their numbers (i.e. two SUs per cluster) and their proximity to the FC, so that they can be aligned at each PU-Rx. This converts the cognitive IA problem into an unconstrained standard IA problem for a general cognitive system. Given the fact that the optimal power allocation algorithms used to optimize the SUs transmission rates turns out to be an optimal beamformer with multiple eigenbeams, this work initially proposes combining the diversity gain property of STBC, the zero-forcing function of IA and beamforming to optimize the SUs transmission rates. However, this solution requires availability of CSI, and to eliminate the need for this, this work then combines the D-STBC scheme with optimal IA precoders (consisting of beamforming and zero-forcing) to maximize the SUs data rates

Joint transceiver design and power optimization for wireless sensor networks in underground mines

Avec les grands développements des technologies de communication sans fil, les réseaux de capteurs sans fil (WSN) ont attiré beaucoup d’attention dans le monde entier au cours de la dernière décennie. Les réseaux de capteurs sans fil sont maintenant utilisés pour a surveillance sanitaire, la gestion des catastrophes, la défense, les télécommunications, etc. De tels réseaux sont utilisés dans de nombreuses applications industrielles et commerciales comme la surveillance des processus industriels et de l’environnement, etc. Un réseau WSN est une collection de transducteurs spécialisés connus sous le nom de noeuds de capteurs avec une liaison de communication distribuée de manière aléatoire dans tous les emplacements pour surveiller les paramètres. Chaque noeud de capteur est équipé d’un transducteur, d’un processeur de signal, d’une unité d’alimentation et d’un émetteur-récepteur. Les WSN sont maintenant largement utilisés dans l’industrie minière souterraine pour surveiller certains paramètres environnementaux, comme la quantité de gaz, d’eau, la température, l’humidité, le niveau d’oxygène, de poussière, etc. Dans le cas de la surveillance de l’environnement, un WSN peut être remplacé de manière équivalente par un réseau à relais à entrées et sorties multiples (MIMO). Les réseaux de relais multisauts ont attiré un intérêt de recherche important ces derniers temps grâce à leur capacité à augmenter la portée de la couverture. La liaison de communication réseau d’une source vers une destination est mise en oeuvre en utilisant un schéma d’amplification/transmission (AF) ou de décodage/transfert (DF). Le relais AF reçoit des informations du relais précédent et amplifie simplement le signal reçu, puis il le transmet au relais suivant. D’autre part, le relais DF décode d’abord le signal reçu, puis il le transmet au relais suivant au deuxième étage s’il peut parfaitement décoder le signal entrant. En raison de la simplicité analytique, dans cette thèse, nous considérons le schéma de relais AF et les résultats de ce travail peuvent également être développés pour le relais DF. La conception d’un émetteur/récepteur pour le relais MIMO multisauts est très difficile. Car à l’étape de relais L, il y a 2L canaux possibles. Donc, pour un réseau à grande échelle, il n’est pas économique d’envoyer un signal par tous les liens possibles. Au lieu de cela, nous pouvons trouver le meilleur chemin de la source à la destination qui donne le rapport signal sur bruit (SNR) de bout en bout le plus élevé. Nous pouvons minimiser la fonction objectif d’erreur quadratique moyenne (MSE) ou de taux d’erreur binaire (BER) en envoyant le signal utilisant le chemin sélectionné. L’ensemble de relais dans le chemin reste actif et le reste des relais s’éteint, ce qui permet d’économiser de l’énergie afin d’améliorer la durée de vie du réseau. Le meilleur chemin de transmission de signal a été étudié dans la littérature pour un relais MIMO à deux bonds mais est plus complexe pour un ...With the great developments in wireless communication technologies, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) have gained attention worldwide in the past decade and are now being used in health monitoring, disaster management, defense, telecommunications, etc. Such networks are used in many industrial and consumer applications such as industrial process and environment monitoring, among others. A WSN network is a collection of specialized transducers known as sensor nodes with a communication link distributed randomly in any locations to monitor environmental parameters such as water level, and temperature. Each sensor node is equipped with a transducer, a signal processor, a power unit, and a transceiver. WSNs are now being widely used in the underground mining industry to monitor environmental parameters, including the amount of gas, water, temperature, humidity, oxygen level, dust, etc. The WSN for environment monitoring can be equivalently replaced by a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) relay network. Multi-hop relay networks have attracted significant research interest in recent years for their capability in increasing the coverage range. The network communication link from a source to a destination is implemented using the amplify-and-forward (AF) or decode-and-forward (DF) schemes. The AF relay receives information from the previous relay and simply amplifies the received signal and then forwards it to the next relay. On the other hand, the DF relay first decodes the received signal and then forwards it to the next relay in the second stage if it can perfectly decode the incoming signal. For analytical simplicity, in this thesis, we consider the AF relaying scheme and the results of this work can also be developed for the DF relay. The transceiver design for multi-hop MIMO relay is very challenging. This is because at the L-th relay stage, there are 2L possible channels. So, for a large scale network, it is not economical to send the signal through all possible links. Instead, we can find the best path from source-to-destination that gives the highest end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). We can minimize the mean square error (MSE) or bit error rate (BER) objective function by sending the signal using the selected path. The set of relay in the path remains active and the rest of the relays are turned off which can save power to enhance network life-time. The best path signal transmission has been carried out in the literature for 2-hop MIMO relay and for multiple relaying it becomes very complex. In the first part of this thesis, we propose an optimal best path finding algorithm at perfect channel state information (CSI). We consider a parallel multi-hop multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) AF relay system where a linear minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) receiver is used at the destination. We simplify the parallel network into equivalent series multi-hop MIMO relay link using best relaying, where the best relay ..

Distributed space time block coding and application in cooperative cognitive relay networks

The design and analysis of various distributed space time block coding schemes for cooperative relay networks is considered in this thesis. Rayleigh frequency flat and selective fading channels are assumed to model the links in the networks, and interference suppression techniques together with an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) type transmission approach are employed to mitigate synchronization errors at the destination node induced by the different delays through the relay nodes. Closed-loop space time block coding is first considered in the context of decode-and-forward (regenerative) networks. In particular, quasi orthogonal and extended orthogonal coding techniques are employed for transmission from four relay nodes and parallel interference cancellation detection is exploited to mitigate synchronization errors. Availability of a direct link between the source and destination nodes is studied. Outer coding is then added to gain further improvement in end-to-end performance and amplify-and-forward (non regenerative) type networks together with distributed space time coding are considered to reduce relay node complexity. A novel detection scheme is then proposed for decode-and-forward and amplify-and-forward networks with closed-loop extended orthogonal coding and closed-loop quasi-orthogonal coding which reduce the computational complexity of the parallel interference cancellation. The near-optimum detector is presented for relay nodes with single or dual antennas. End-to-end bit error rate simulations confirm the potential of the approach and its ability to mitigate synchronization errors

Millimetre-wave radio-over-fibre supported multi-antenna and multi-user transmission

In this thesis, various features of the RoF supported mmW communication for future wireless systems have been analysed including photonic generation of mmW for MIMO operation, performance analysis of mmW MIMO to achieve spatial diversity and spatial multiplexing with analog RoF fronthaul, and multi-user transmission in the 60 GHz-band using multiplexing-over-fibre transport and frequency-selective antenna. A low cost mmW generation system for two independent MIMO signals has been presented, consisting of a single optical Phase Modulator (PM). The different aspects of experimental analysis on RoF-supported mmW MIMO in this thesis, which were not considered before, include use of specific MIMO algorithm to understand the amount of improvement in coverage and data rate for a particular MIMO technique, performance comparison with SISO at several user locations, and verification of optimum RAU physical spacing for a particular transmission distance with the theoretical results. The results show that flexible and wider RAU spacings, required to obtain optimum performance in a mmW MIMO system, can be achieved using the proposed analog RoF fronthaul. The investigation was extended to verification of a method to individual measurement of mmW channel coefficients and performing MIMO processing, which shows that mmW channels are relatively static and analysis can be extended to much longer distances and making projections for N×N MIMO. For mmW multi-user transmission, a novel low cost, low complexity system using single RoF link and single RF chain with single transmitting antenna has been presented and characterized, which was based on large number of RF chains and multiple antenna units previously. The setup involves generation and RoF transport of a composite SCM signal, upconversion at the RAU and transmission of different frequency channels towards spatially distributed users using a frequency-selective Leaky-Wave-Antenna (LWA), to convert Frequency Division Multiplexing (FDM) in to Spatial Division Multiple Access (SDMA). Analysis on low user-signal spacing for the SCM shows the feasibility to serve a large number of users within a specific transmission bandwidth and experimental demonstration to achieve sum rate of 10Gb/s is shown by serving 20 users simultaneously. Furthermore, investigation on SNR degradation of high bandwidth signals due to beamsteering effect of the LWA and theoretical calculations of the sum data rate for different number of users is performed, which shows that the proposed system can provide much higher sum rates with high available SNR. It was also experimentally demonstrated that improvement in coverage and spectral efficiency is obtained by operating multiple LWAs using single RF chain. Finally, an experimental demonstration of a DWDM-RoF based 60 GHz multi-user transmission using single LWA is presented to show the feasibility to extend the setup for a multiple RAU based system, serving each at distinct optical wavelength and performing direct photonic upconversion at the RAU for low cost mmW generation

Analog Radio-over-Fiber Supported Increased RAU Spacing for 60GHz Distributed MIMO employing Spatial Diversity and Multiplexing

The improvements in coverage through spatial diversity and increased data rates through spatial multiplexing using a distributed Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) system are important targets for future wireless communications. Here, the appropriate separation of Remote Antenna Units (RAUs) at several user locations in a millimeter-wave system is demonstrated. An analog Radio over Fiber (RoF) fronthaul is used to achieve flexible spacing of distributed RAUs and transports two Gb/s data streams over 2.2km of fiber and up to 8m of 60 GHz wireless transmission distance. A performance comparison is performed between Single-Input Single-Output (SISO) and MIMO operation using different antenna spacing and transmission distance. Results show that the wider RAU spacing enabled by the RoF distribution provides improved results at longer distances, for both spatial diversity and for spatial multiplexing. Verification of a method for measuring each channel coefficient individually and using subsequent MIMO processing on these coefficients, enables an extension to the results showing the feasibility of 30m indoor transmission

Performance of MIMO Schemes in Radio-over-fibre-based Distributed Antenna System

The research presented in this thesis has focused on the use of MIMO wireless communications in a RoF-based DAS to improve wireless coverage and capacity performance in an indoor environment. The aim is to analyse the practical issues that cause throughput to deteriorate when commercial MIMO APs are used in a RoF-DAS, and also to verify that improved performance - lower error rates and higher capacities - can be achieved by a large physical separation between the RAUs when specific multi-antenna scheme algorithms are used. The performance of an IEEE 802.11n MIMO-supported AP and IEEE 802.11g spatial-diversity-supported AP are investigated in a RoF-DAS when different fibre lengths are connecting the AP in the central unit to the RAUs, and when the RAUs are widely separated. The analysis indicates that for MIMO, the throughput drops rapidly due to severe ISI caused by differential delay when the fibre-length difference exceeds a certain distance, while for spatial diversity high throughputs can be maintained even at large fibre-length difference. Further, it was observed that largely separated RAU may lead to power imbalances and the throughput drops in specific wireless user's positions when the received power imbalance was above 12-15dB for MIMO-supported AP, while for spatial-diversity-supported AP the power imbalance does not affect the throughput. The majority of previous works on RoF-DAS for improving MIMO systems were based on commercial products and the specific algorithms used within these products are unknown. An investigation was carried out at microwave frequency with SIMO algorithms in RoF-DAS uplink, MISO and MIMO algorithms in RoF-DAS downlink, and compared with the performance of a SISO system. This investigation was later extended to millimetre-wave frequency where larger bands of frequency are available enabling the possibility of wider bandwidth and higher data rates. The result shows significantly reduced error rate and modestly increased capacity for a wireless 1x2 SIMO uplink using MRC algorithm and 2x1 MISO downlink using Alamouti STBC algorithm. Also, error rate was reduced for a wireless 2x2 MIMO downlink using the zero-forcing algorithm while, most importantly, greatly increased capacity was achieved through the spatial multiplexing gain

On SFBC schemes for enabling virtual array concept in monostatic ISAC scenarios

The integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) paradigm is being proposed for 6G as a new feature of the physical layer (PHY), for tackling dual-functional applications, i.e., demanding radio-sensing and communication functions, such as the Internet of Things (IoT) and autonomous driving systems. This work considers the integration of sensing and communications functionalities in a unique platform. To achieve this goal, the use of orthogonal space frequency block codes (SFBC) is proposed. SFBC code orthogonality enables both the separation of communications data streams at a user terminal and the estimation of target parameters. The SFBC enhances the communications link diversity without requiring channel state information knowledge at the transmitter and enable the virtual antenna array concept for enhancing the direction-finding resolution. The use of different SFBCs provides a tradeoff between achieved diversity and sensing resolution. For example, an Alamouti code, applicable for the case with two transmitting antennas, duplicates sensing resolution and achieves a diversity order of two while the use of a Tarokh code, applicable for a scenario with four transmitting antennas, provides a fourfold better resolution and diversity order of four. However, the code rate achieved with the Tarokh code is half of the one achieved with the Alamouti code. Furthermore, the unambiguous range is reduced since the bandwidth is divided to multiplex the different antenna signals. For its simplicity, good performance and reduced integration requirements, the method is promising for future ISAC systems.publishe