Scheduling and Codeword Length Optimization in Time Varying Wireless Networks

In this paper, a downlink scenario in which a single-antenna base station communicates with K single antenna users, over a time-correlated fading channel, is considered. It is assumed that channel state information is perfectly known at each receiver, while the statistical characteristics of the fading process and the fading gain at the beginning of each frame are known to the transmitter. By evaluating the random coding error exponent of the time-correlated fading channel, it is shown that there is an optimal codeword length which maximizes the throughput. The throughput of the conventional scheduling that transmits to the user with the maximum signal to noise ratio is examined using both fixed length codewords and variable length codewords. Although optimizing the codeword length improves the performance, it is shown that using the conventional scheduling, the gap between the achievable throughput and the maximum possible throughput of the system tends to infinity as K goes to infinity. A simple scheduling that considers both the signal to noise ratio and the channel time variation is proposed. It is shown that by using this scheduling, the gap between the achievable throughput and the maximum throughput of the system approaches zero

Multiuser Random Beamforming in Millimetre-Waves Channels

This thesis aims to show that in mmWaves channels, schemes based on randomly-directional beamforming allow to harness both the spatial multiplexing and multi-user diversity characterizing the broadcast channel by using only limited feedback and a simple transmitter architecture. The number of necessary users with respect to the number of transmitting antennas for optimal performances is investigated as well as the fairness issue, for which the use of NOMA is shown to be advantageous w.r.t. OMA

Advanced Access Schemes for Future Broadband Wireless Networks

International audienc

Information Technology

The new millennium has been labeled as the century of the personal communications revolution or more specifically, the digital wireless communications revolution. The introduction of new multimedia services has created higher loads on available radio resources. These services can be presented in different levels of quality of service. Namely, the task of the radio resource manager is to provide these levels. Radio resources are scarce and need to be shared by many users. The sharing has to be carried out in an efficient way avoiding as much as possible any waste of resources. The main contribution focus of this work is on radio resource management in opportunistic systems. In opportunistic communications dynamic rate and power allocation may be performed over the dimensions of time, frequency and space in a wireless system. In this work a number of these allocation schemes are proposed. A downlink scheduler is introduced in this work that controls the activity of the users. The scheduler is a simple integral controller that controls the activity of users, increasing or decreasing it depending on the degree of proximity to a requested quality of service level. The scheduler is designed to be a best effort scheduler; that is, in the event the requested quality of service (QoS) cannot be attained, users are always guaranteed the basic QoS level provided by a proportional fair scheduler. In a proportional fair scheduler, the user with the best rate quality factor is selected. The rate quality here is the instantaneous achievable rate divided by the average throughput Uplink scheduling is more challenging than its downlink counterpart due to signalling restrictions and additional constraints on resource allocations. For instance, in long term evolution systems, single carrier FDMA is to be utilized which requires the frequency domain resource allocation to be done in such a way that a user could only be allocated subsequent bands. We suggest for the uplink a scheduler that follows a heuristic approach in its decision. The scheduler is mainly based on the gradient algorithm that maximizes the gradient of a certain utility. The utility could be a function of any QoS. In addition, an optimal uplink scheduler for the same system is presented. This optimal scheduler is valid in theory only, nevertheless, it provides a considerable benchmark for evaluation of performance for the heuristic scheduler as well as other algorithms of the same system. A study is also made for the feedback information in a multi-carrier system. In a multi-carrier system, reporting the channel state information (CSI) of every subcarrier will result in huge overhead and consequent waste in bandwidth. In this work the subcarriers are grouped into subbands which are in turn grouped into blocks and a study is made to find the minimum amount of information for the adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) of the blocks. The thesis also deals with admission control and proposes an opportunistic admission controller. The controller gradually integrates a new user requesting admission into the system. The system is probed to examine the effect of the new user on existing connections. The user is finally fully admitted if by the end of the probing, the quality of service (QoS) of existing connections did not drop below a certain threshold. It is imperative to mention that the research work of this thesis is mainly focused on non-real time applications.fi=Opinnäytetyö kokotekstinä PDF-muodossa.|en=Thesis fulltext in PDF format.|sv=Lärdomsprov tillgängligt som fulltext i PDF-format

Multiuser random beamforming in mmWave channels

Cellular communications exploiting the mmWaves frequency range are com- ing within our technological reach. However the specificities of propagation at these frequencies calls for new transmission schemes. Concerning the downlink there are signs that opportunistic beamforming may be an effec- tive solution. This thesis aims to show that in mmWaves channels, schemes based on randomly-directional beamforming allow to harness both the spatial multiplexing and multiuser diversity characterizing the broadcast channel by using only limited feedback and a simple transmitter architecture. It is well- known that performances of random beamforming schemes become optimal when the number of users tends to infinity. Hence, the number of necessary users with respect to the number of transmitting antennas is investigated and the necessity of a linear relation between the two is confirmed. Opportunis- tic beamforming is furthermore analysed under the aspect of fairness. The possibility to combine it with proportional-fair scheduling with only a small sum-rate loss is shown. Finally, the allocation of multiple users per beam is considered and the advantage of NOMA over OMA under the point of view of fairness is displayed

A Cross-Layer Study of the Scheduling Problem

This thesis is inspired by the need to study and understand the interdependence between the transmission powers and rates in an interference network, and how these two relate to the outcome of scheduled transmissions. A commonly used criterion that relates these two parameters is the Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR). Under this criterion a transmission is successful if the SINR exceeds a threshold. The fact that this threshold is an increasing function of the transmission rate gives rise to a fundamental trade-off regarding the amount of time-sharing that must be permitted for optimal performance in accessing the wireless channel. In particular, it is not immediate whether more concurrent activations at lower rates would yield a better performance than less concurrent activations at higher rates. Naturally, the balance depends on the performance objective under consideration. Analyzing this fundamental trade-off under a variety of performance objectives has been the main steering impetus of this thesis. We start by considering single-hop, static networks comprising of a set of always-backlogged sources, each multicasting traffic to its corresponding destinations. We study the problem of joint scheduling and rate control under two performance objectives, namely sum throughput maximization and proportional fairness. Under total throughput maximization, we observe that the optimal policy always activates the multicast source that sustains the highest rate. Under proportional fairness, we explicitly characterize the optimal policy under the assumption that the rate control and scheduling decisions are restricted to activating a single source at any given time or all of them simultaneously. In the sequel, we extend our results in four ways, namely we (i) turn our focus on time-varying wireless networks, (ii) assume policies that have access to only a, perhaps inaccurate, estimate of the current channel state, (iii) consider a broader class of utility functions, and finally (iv) permit all possible rate control and scheduling actions. We introduce an online, gradient-based algorithm under a fading environment that selects the transmission rates at every decision instant by having access to only an estimate of the current channel state so that the total user utility is maximized. In the event that more than one rate allocation is optimal, the introduced algorithm selects the one that minimizes the transmission power sum. We show that this algorithm is optimal among all algorithms that do not have access to a better estimate of the current channel state. Next, we turn our attention to the minimum-length scheduling problem, i.e., instead of a system with saturated sources, we assume that each network source has a finite amount of data traffic to deliver to its corresponding destination in minimum time. We consider both networks with time-invariant as well as time-varying channels under unicast traffic. In the time-invariant (or static) network case we map the problem of finding a schedule of minimum length to finding a shortest path on a Directed Acyclic Graph (DAG). In the time-varying network case, we map the corresponding problem to a stochastic shortest path and we provide an optimal solution through stochastic control methods. Finally, instead of considering a system where sources are always backlogged or have a finite amount of data traffic, we focus on bursty traffic. Our objective is to characterize the stable throughput region of a multi-hop network with a set of commodities of anycast traffic. We introduce a joint scheduling and routing policy, having access to only an estimate of the channel state and further characterize the stable throughput region of the network. We also show that the introduced policy is optimal with respect to maximizing the stable throughput region of the network within a broad class of stationary, non-stationary, and anticipative policies