MIMO signal processing in offset-QAM based filter bank multicarrier systems

Next-generation communication systems have to comply with very strict requirements for increased flexibility in heterogeneous environments, high spectral efficiency, and agility of carrier aggregation. This fact motivates research in advanced multicarrier modulation (MCM) schemes, such as filter bank-based multicarrier (FBMC) modulation. This paper focuses on the offset quadrature amplitude modulation (OQAM)-based FBMC variant, known as FBMC/OQAM, which presents outstanding spectral efficiency and confinement in a number of channels and applications. Its special nature, however, generates a number of new signal processing challenges that are not present in other MCM schemes, notably, in orthogonal-frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM). In multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) architectures, which are expected to play a primary role in future communication systems, these challenges are intensified, creating new interesting research problems and calling for new ideas and methods that are adapted to the particularities of the MIMO-FBMC/OQAM system. The goal of this paper is to focus on these signal processing problems and provide a concise yet comprehensive overview of the recent advances in this area. Open problems and associated directions for future research are also discussed.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Analysis and Mitigation of Channel Non-Reciprocity in TDD MIMO Systems

The ever-growing demands for higher number of connected devices as well as higher data rates and more energy efficient wireless communications have necessitated the use of new technical solutions. One of the main enablers in this respect is Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) systems in which transmitting and receiving sides are equipped with multiple antennas. Such systems need precise information of the MIMO radio channel available at the transmitter side to reach their full potential. Owing to the reciprocity of uplink and downlink channels in Time Division Duplexing (TDD) systems, Base Stations (BSs) may acquire the required channel state information for downlink transmission by processing the received uplink pilots. However, such reciprocity only applies to the physical propagation channels and does not take into consideration the so-called observable or effective uplink and downlink channels which also include the possible non-reciprocal behavior of the involved transceiver circuits and antenna systems. This thesis focuses on the channel non-reciprocity problem in TDD MIMO systems due to mismatches in Frequency Response (FR) and mutual coupling of transmitting and receiving chains of transceivers and associated antenna systems. The emphasis in the work and developments is placed on multi-user MIMO precoded downlink transmission. In this respect, the harmful impacts of channel non-reciprocity on the performance of such downlink transmission are analyzed. Additionally, non-reciprocity mitigation methods are developed seeking to reclaim TDD reciprocity and thus to avoid the involved performance degradations. Firstly, the focus is on the small-scale MIMO systems where BSs are equipped with relatively limited number of antennas, say in the order of 4 to 8. The provided analysis on Zero-Forcing (ZF) and eigen-based precoding schemes in single-cell scenario shows that both schemes experience considerable performance degradations in the presence of FR and mutual coupling mismatches. Whereas, in general, the system performance is more sensitive to i) non-reciprocity sources in the BS transceiver; and ii) mutual coupling mismatches. Then, assuming reasonably good antenna isolation, an Over-The-Air (OTA) pilot-based algorithm is proposed to efficiently mitigate the BS transceiver non-reciprocity. The numerical results indicate high accuracy in estimating the BS transceiver non- reciprocity parameters as well as considerable improvement in the performance of the system. In multi-cell scenario, both centralized and decentralized precoding approaches are covered while the focus is on the impacts of FR mismatches of UE transceivers. The how that there is severe degradation in the performance of decentralized precoding while centralized precoding is immune to such channel non-reciprocity impacts. Secondly, the so-called massive MIMO systems are considered in which the number of antennas in the BS side is increased with an order of magnitude or more. Based on the detailed developed signal models, closed-form analytical expressions are first provided for effective signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratios of both ZF and maximum ratio transmission precoding schemes. The analysis covers the joint impacts of channel non-reciprocity and imperfect uplink channel estimation and shows that while both precoding schemes suffer from channel non-reciprocity impacts, ZF is more sensitive to such non-idealities. Next, a concept and an algorithm are proposed, involving UE side measurements and processing, to be deployed in the UE side to efficiently estimate the level of BS transceiver non-reciprocity. This enables the UEs to inform the BS about the optimum time to perform channel non-reciprocity mitigation round and thus improves the spectral efficiency. Finally, in order to mitigate channel non-reciprocity in massive MIMO systems, an efficient iterative OTA pilot-based algorithm is proposed which estimates and mitigates transceiver non-reciprocity impacts in both BS and UE sides. Compared to the state-of-the-art methods, the simulation results indicate substantial improvements in system spectral efficiency when the proposed method is being used. Overall, the analyses provided in this thesis can be used as valuable tools to better understand practical TDD MIMO systems which can be very helpful in designing such systems. Furthermore, the channel non-reciprocity mitigation methods proposed in this thesis can be deployed in practical TDD MIMO syst channel reciprocity and thus significantly increase the spectral efficiency

Space-time-frequency methods for interference-limited communication systems

textTraditionally, noise in communication systems has been modeled as an additive, white Gaussian noise process with independent, identically distributed samples. Although this model accurately reflects thermal noise present in communication system electronics, it fails to capture the statistics of interference and other sources of noise, e.g. in unlicensed communication bands. Modern communication system designers must take into account interference and non-Gaussian noise to maximize efficiencies and capacities of current and future communication networks. In this work, I develop new multi-dimensional signal processing methods to improve performance of communication systems in three applications areas: (i) underwater acoustic, (ii) powerline, and (iii) multi-antenna cellular. In underwater acoustic communications, I address impairments caused by strong, time-varying and Doppler-spread reverberations (self-interference) using adaptive space-time signal processing methods. I apply these methods to array receivers with a large number of elements. In powerline communications, I address impairments caused by non-Gaussian noise arising from devices sharing the powerline. I develop and apply a cyclic adaptive modulation and coding scheme and a factor-graph-based impulsive noise mitigation method to improve signal quality and boost link throughput and robustness. In cellular communications, I develop a low-latency, high-throughput space-time-frequency processing framework used for large scale (up to 128 antenna) MIMO. This framework is used in the world's first 100-antenna MIMO system and processes up to 492 Gbps raw baseband samples in the uplink and downlink directions. My methods prove that multi-dimensional processing methods can be applied to increase communication system performance without sacrificing real-time requirements.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

Técnicas de pré-codificação para sistemas multicelulares coordenados

Doutoramento em TelecomunicaçõesCoordenação Multicélula é um tópico de investigação em rápido crescimento e uma solução promissora para controlar a interferência entre células em sistemas celulares, melhorando a equidade do sistema e aumentando a sua capacidade. Esta tecnologia já está em estudo no LTEAdvanced sob o conceito de coordenação multiponto (COMP). Existem várias abordagens sobre coordenação multicélula, dependendo da quantidade e do tipo de informação partilhada pelas estações base, através da rede de suporte (backhaul network), e do local onde essa informação é processada, i.e., numa unidade de processamento central ou de uma forma distribuída em cada estação base. Nesta tese, são propostas técnicas de pré-codificação e alocação de potência considerando várias estratégias: centralizada, todo o processamento é feito na unidade de processamento central; semidistribuída, neste caso apenas parte do processamento é executado na unidade de processamento central, nomeadamente a potência alocada a cada utilizador servido por cada estação base; e distribuída em que o processamento é feito localmente em cada estação base. Os esquemas propostos são projectados em duas fases: primeiro são propostas soluções de pré-codificação para mitigar ou eliminar a interferência entre células, de seguida o sistema é melhorado através do desenvolvimento de vários esquemas de alocação de potência. São propostas três esquemas de alocação de potência centralizada condicionada a cada estação base e com diferentes relações entre desempenho e complexidade. São também derivados esquemas de alocação distribuídos, assumindo que um sistema multicelular pode ser visto como a sobreposição de vários sistemas com uma única célula. Com base neste conceito foi definido uma taxa de erro média virtual para cada um desses sistemas de célula única que compõem o sistema multicelular, permitindo assim projectar esquemas de alocação de potência completamente distribuídos. Todos os esquemas propostos foram avaliados em cenários realistas, bastante próximos dos considerados no LTE. Os resultados mostram que os esquemas propostos são eficientes a remover a interferência entre células e que o desempenho das técnicas de alocação de potência propostas é claramente superior ao caso de não alocação de potência. O desempenho dos sistemas completamente distribuídos é inferior aos baseados num processamento centralizado, mas em contrapartida podem ser usados em sistemas em que a rede de suporte não permita a troca de grandes quantidades de informação.Multicell coordination is a promising solution for cellular wireless systems to mitigate inter-cell interference, improving system fairness and increasing capacity and thus is already under study in LTE-A under the coordinated multipoint (CoMP) concept. There are several coordinated transmission approaches depending on the amount of information shared by the transmitters through the backhaul network and where the processing takes place i.e. in a central processing unit or in a distributed way on each base station. In this thesis, we propose joint precoding and power allocation techniques considering different strategies: Full-centralized, where all the processing takes place at the central unit; Semi-distributed, in this case only some process related with power allocation is done at the central unit; and Fulldistributed, where all the processing is done locally at each base station. The methods are designed in two phases: first the inter-cell interference is removed by applying a set of centralized or distributed precoding vectors; then the system is further optimized by centralized or distributed power allocation schemes. Three centralized power allocation algorithms with per-BS power constraint and different complexity tradeoffs are proposed. Also distributed power allocation schemes are proposed by considering the multicell system as superposition of single cell systems, where we define the average virtual bit error rate (BER) of interference-free single cell system, allowing us to compute the power allocation coefficients in a distributed manner at each BS. All proposed schemes are evaluated in realistic scenarios considering LTE specifications. The numerical evaluations show that the proposed schemes are efficient in removing inter-cell interference and improve system performance comparing to equal power allocation. Furthermore, fulldistributed schemes can be used when the amounts of information to be exchanged over the backhaul is restricted, although system performance is slightly degraded from semi-distributed and full-centralized schemes, but the complexity is considerably lower. Besides that for high degrees of freedom distributed schemes show similar behaviour to centralized ones

Design and analysis of iteratively decodable codes for ISI channels

Recent advancements in iterative processing have allowed communication systems to perform close to capacity limits withmanageable complexity.For manychannels such as the AWGN and flat fading channels, codes that perform only a fraction of a dB from the capacity have been designed in the literature. In this dissertation, we will focus on the design and analysis of near-capacity achieving codes for another important class of channels, namely inter-symbol interference (ISI)channels. We propose various coding schemes such as low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, parallel and serial concatenations for ISI channels when there is no spectral shaping used at the transmitter. The design and analysis techniques use the idea of extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) function matching and provide insights into the performance of different codes and receiver structures. We then present a coding scheme which is the concatenation of an LDPC code with a spectral shaping block code designed to be matched to the channel??s spectrum. We will discuss how to design the shaping code and the outer LDPC code. We will show that spectral shaping matched codes can be used for the parallel concatenation to achieve near capacity performance. We will also discuss the capacity of multiple antenna ISI channels. We study the effects of transmitter and receiver diversities and noisy channel state information on channel capacity

On the Performance Analysis of Cooperative Vehicular Communication

Vehicular networking is envisioned to be a key technology area for significant growth in the coming years. Although the expectations for this emerging technology are set very high, many practical aspects remain still unsolved for a vast deployment of vehicular networks. This dissertation addresses the enabling physical layer techniques to meet the challenges in vehicular networks operating in mobile wireless environments. Considering the infrastructure-less nature of vehicular networks, we envision cooperative diversity well positioned to meet the demanding requirements of vehicular networks with their underlying distributed structure. Cooperative diversity has been proposed as a powerful means to enhance the performance of high-rate communications over wireless fading channels. It realizes spatial diversity advantages in a distributed manner where a node uses others antennas to relay its message creating a virtual antenna array. Although cooperative diversity has garnered much attention recently, it has not yet been fully explored in the context of vehicular networks considering the unique characteristics of vehicular networks, this dissertation provides an error performance analysis study of cooperative transmission schemes for various deployment and traffic scenarios. In the first part of this dissertation, we investigate the performance of a cooperative vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) system with amplify-and-forward relaying for typical traffic scenarios under city/urban settings and a highway area. We derive pairwise error probability (PEP) expressions and demonstrate the achievable diversity gains. The effect of imperfect channel state information (CSI) is also studied through an asymptotical PEP analysis. We present Monte-Carlo simulations to confirm the analytical derivations and present the error rate performance of the vehicular scheme with perfect and imperfect-CSI. In the second part, we consider road-to-vehicle (R2V) communications in which roadside access points use cooperating vehicles as relaying terminals. Under the assumption of decode-and-forward relaying, we derive PEP expressions for single-relay and multi-relay scenarios. In the third part, we consider a cooperative multi-hop V2V system in which direct transmission is not possible and investigate its performance through the PEP derivation and diversity gain analysis. Monte-Carlo simulations are further provided to con firm the analytical derivations and provide insight into the error rate performance improvement

Mehrdimensionale Kanalschätzung für MIMO-OFDM

DIGITAL wireless communication started in the 1990s with the wide-spread deployment of GSM. Since then, wireless systems evolved dramatically. Current wireless standards approach the goal of an omnipresent communication system, which fulfils the wish to communicate with anyone, anywhere at anytime. Nowadays, the acceptance of smartphones and/or tablets is huge and the mobile internet is the core application. Given the current growth, the estimated data traffic in wireless networks in 2020 might be 1000 times higher than that of 2010, exceeding 127 exabyte. Unfortunately, the available radio spectrum is scarce and hence, needs to be utilized efficiently. Key technologies, such as multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) as well as various MIMO precoding techniques increase the theoretically achievable channel capacity considerably and are used in the majority of wireless standards. On the one hand, MIMO-OFDM promises substantial diversity and/or capacity gains. On the other hand, the complexity of optimum maximum-likelihood detection grows exponentially and is thus, not sustainable. Additionally, the required signaling overhead increases with the number of antennas and thereby reduces the bandwidth efficiency. Iterative receivers which jointly carry out channel estimation and data detection are a potential enabler to reduce the pilot overhead and approach optimum capacity at often reduced complexity. In this thesis, a graph-based receiver is developed, which iteratively performs joint data detection and channel estimation. The proposed multi-dimensional factor graph introduces transfer nodes that exploit correlation of adjacent channel coefficients in an arbitrary number of dimensions (e.g. time, frequency, and space). This establishes a simple and flexible receiver structure that facilitates soft channel estimation and data detection in multi-dimensional dispersive channels, and supports arbitrary modulation and channel coding schemes. However, the factor graph exhibits suboptimal cycles. In order to reach the maximum performance, the message exchange schedule, the process of combining messages, and the initialization are adapted. Unlike conventional approaches, which merge nodes of the factor graph to avoid cycles, the proposed message combining methods mitigate the impairing effects of short cycles and retain a low computational complexity. Furthermore, a novel detection algorithm is presented, which combines tree-based MIMO detection with a Gaussian detector. The resulting detector, termed Gaussian tree search detection, integrates well within the factor graph framework and reduces further the overall complexity of the receiver. Additionally, particle swarm optimization (PSO) is investigated for the purpose of initial channel estimation. The bio-inspired algorithm is particularly interesting because of its fast convergence to a reasonable MSE and its versatile adaptation to a variety of optimization problems. It is especially suited for initialization since no a priori information is required. A cooperative approach to PSO is proposed for large-scale antenna implementations as well as a multi-objective PSO for time-varying frequency-selective channels. The performance of the multi-dimensional graph-based soft iterative receiver is evaluated by means of Monte Carlo simulations. The achieved results are compared to the performance of an iterative state-of-the-art receiver. It is shown that a similar or better performance is achieved at a lower complexity. An appealing feature of iterative semi-blind channel estimation is that the supported pilot spacings may exceed the limits given the by Nyquist-Shannon sampling theorem. In this thesis, a relation between pilot spacing and channel code is formulated. Depending on the chosen channel code and code rate, the maximum spacing approaches the proposed “coded sampling bound”.Die digitale drahtlose Kommunikation begann in den 1990er Jahren mit der zunehmenden Verbreitung von GSM. Seitdem haben sich Mobilfunksysteme drastisch weiterentwickelt. Aktuelle Mobilfunkstandards nähern sich dem Ziel eines omnipräsenten Kommunikationssystems an und erfüllen damit den Wunsch mit jedem Menschen zu jeder Zeit an jedem Ort kommunizieren zu können. Heutzutage ist die Akzeptanz von Smartphones und Tablets immens und das mobile Internet ist die zentrale Anwendung. Ausgehend von dem momentanen Wachstum wird das Datenaufkommen in Mobilfunk-Netzwerken im Jahr 2020, im Vergleich zum Jahr 2010, um den Faktor 1000 gestiegen sein und 100 Exabyte überschreiten. Unglücklicherweise ist die verfügbare Bandbreite beschränkt und muss daher effizient genutzt werden. Schlüsseltechnologien, wie z.B. Mehrantennensysteme (multiple-input multiple-output, MIMO), orthogonale Frequenzmultiplexverfahren (orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing, OFDM) sowie weitere MIMO Codierverfahren, vergrößern die theoretisch erreichbare Kanalkapazität und kommen bereits in der Mehrheit der Mobil-funkstandards zum Einsatz. Auf der einen Seite verspricht MIMO-OFDM erhebliche Diversitäts- und/oder Kapazitätsgewinne. Auf der anderen Seite steigt die Komplexität der optimalen Maximum-Likelihood Detektion exponientiell und ist infolgedessen nicht haltbar. Zusätzlich wächst der benötigte Mehraufwand für die Kanalschätzung mit der Anzahl der verwendeten Antennen und reduziert dadurch die Bandbreiteneffizienz. Iterative Empfänger, die Datendetektion und Kanalschätzung im Verbund ausführen, sind potentielle Wegbereiter um den Mehraufwand des Trainings zu reduzieren und sich gleichzeitig der maximalen Kapazität mit geringerem Aufwand anzunähern. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wird ein graphenbasierter Empfänger für iterative Datendetektion und Kanalschätzung entwickelt. Der vorgeschlagene multidimensionale Faktor Graph führt sogenannte Transferknoten ein, die die Korrelation benachbarter Kanalkoeffizienten in beliebigen Dimensionen, z.B. Zeit, Frequenz und Raum, ausnutzen. Hierdurch wird eine einfache und flexible Empfängerstruktur realisiert mit deren Hilfe weiche Kanalschätzung und Datendetektion in mehrdimensionalen, dispersiven Kanälen mit beliebiger Modulation und Codierung durchgeführt werden kann. Allerdings weist der Faktorgraph suboptimale Schleifen auf. Um die maximale Performance zu erreichen, wurde neben dem Ablauf des Nachrichtenaustausches und des Vorgangs zur Kombination von Nachrichten auch die Initialisierung speziell angepasst. Im Gegensatz zu herkömmlichen Methoden, bei denen mehrere Knoten zur Vermeidung von Schleifen zusammengefasst werden, verringern die vorgeschlagenen Methoden die leistungsmindernde Effekte von Schleifen, erhalten aber zugleich die geringe Komplexität des Empfängers. Zusätzlich wird ein neuartiger Detektionsalgorithmus vorgestellt, der baumbasierte Detektionsalgorithmen mit dem sogenannten Gauss-Detektor verknüpft. Der resultierende baumbasierte Gauss-Detektor (Gaussian tree search detector) lässt sich ideal in das graphenbasierte Framework einbinden und verringert weiter die Gesamtkomplexität des Empfängers. Zusätzlich wird Particle Swarm Optimization (PSO) zum Zweck der initialen Kanalschätzung untersucht. Der biologisch inspirierte Algorithmus ist insbesonders wegen seiner schnellen Konvergenz zu einem akzeptablen MSE und seiner vielseitigen Abstimmungsmöglichkeiten auf eine Vielzahl von Optimierungsproblemen interessant. Da PSO keine a priori Informationen benötigt, ist er speziell für die Initialisierung geeignet. Sowohl ein kooperativer Ansatz für PSO für Antennensysteme mit extrem vielen Antennen als auch ein multi-objective PSO für Kanäle, die in Zeit und Frequenz dispersiv sind, werden evaluiert. Die Leistungsfähigkeit des multidimensionalen graphenbasierten iterativen Empfängers wird mit Hilfe von Monte Carlo Simulationen untersucht. Die Simulationsergebnisse werden mit denen eines dem Stand der Technik entsprechenden Empfängers verglichen. Es wird gezeigt, dass ähnliche oder bessere Ergebnisse mit geringerem Aufwand erreicht werden. Eine weitere ansprechende Eigenschaft von iterativen semi-blinden Kanalschätzern ist, dass der mögliche Abstand von Trainingssymbolen die Grenzen des Nyquist-Shannon Abtasttheorem überschreiten kann. Im Rahmen dieser Arbeit wird eine Beziehung zwischen dem Trainingsabstand und dem Kanalcode formuliert. In Abhängigkeit des gewählten Kanalcodes und der Coderate folgt der maximale Trainingsabstand der vorgeschlagenen “coded sampling bound”

Exploiting Diversity in Broadband Wireless Relay Networks

Fading is one of the most fundamental impairments to wireless communications. The standard approach to combating fading is by adding redundancy - or diversity - to help increase coverage and transmission speed. Motivated by the results in multiple-input multiple-output technologies, which are usually used at base stations or access points, cooperation commutation has been proposed to improve the performance of wireless networks which consist of low-cost single antenna devices. While the majority of the research in cooperative communication focuses on flat fading for its simplicity and easy analysis, in practice the underlying channels in broadband wireless communication systems such as cellular systems (UMTS/LTE) are more likely to exhibit frequency selective fading. In this dissertation, we consider a frequency selective fading channel model and explore distributed diversity techniques in broadband wireless relay networks, with consideration to practical issues such as channel estimation and complexity-performance tradeoffs. We first study a system model with one source, one destination and multiple decode-and-forward (DF) relays which share a single channel orthogonal to the source. We derive the diversity-multiplexing tradeoff (DMT) for several relaying strategies: best relay selection, random relay selection, and the case when all decoding relays participate. The best relay selection method selects the relay in the decoding set with the largest sum-squared relay-to-destination channel coefficients. This scheme can achieve the optimal DMT of the system at the expense of higher complexity, compared to the other two relaying strategies which do not always exploit the spatial diversity offered by the relays. Different from flat fading, we find special cases when the three relaying strategies have the same DMT. We further present a transceiver design and prove it can achieve the optimal DMT asymptotically. Monte Carlo simulations are presented to corroborate the theoretical analysis. We provide a detailed performance comparison of the three relaying strategies in channels encountered in practice. The work has been extended to systems with multiple amplify-and-forward relays. We propose two relay selection schemes with maximum likelihood sequential estimator and linear zero- forcing equalization at the destination respectively and both schemes can asymptotically achieve the optimal DMT. We next extend the results in the two-hop network, as previously studied, to multi-hop networks. In particular, we consider the routing problem in clustered multi-hop DF relay networks since clustered multi-hop wireless networks have attracted significant attention for their robustness to fading, hierarchical structure, and ability to exploit the broadcast nature of the wireless channel. We propose an opportunistic routing (or relay selection) algorithm for such networks. In contrast to the majority of existing approaches to routing in clustered networks, our algorithm only requires channel state information in the final hop, which is shown to be essential for reaping the diversity offered by the channel. In addition to exploiting the available diversity, our simple cross-layer algorithm has the flexibility to satisfy an additional routing objective such as maximization of network lifetime. We demonstrate through analysis and simulation that our proposed routing algorithm attains full diversity under certain conditions on the cluster sizes, and its diversity is equal to the diversity of more complicated approaches that require full channel state information. The final part of this dissertation considers channel estimation in relay networks. Channel state information is vital for exploiting diversity in cooperative networks. The existing literature on cooperative channel estimation assumes that block lengths are long and that channel estimation takes place within a fading block. However, if the forwarding delay needs to be reduced, short block lengths are preferred, and adaptive estimation through multiple blocks is required. In particular, we consider estimating the relay-to-destination channel in DF relay systems for which the presence of forwarded information is probabilistic since it is unknown whether the relay participates in the forwarding phase. A detector is used so that the update of the least mean square channel estimate is made only when the detector decides the presence of training data. We use the generalized likelihood ratio test and focus on the detector threshold for deciding whether the training sequence is present. We also propose a heuristic objective function which leads to a proper threshold to improve the convergence speed and reduce the estimation error. Extensive numerical results show the superior performance of using this threshold as opposed to fixed thresholds