Multiuser MIMO-OFDM for Next-Generation Wireless Systems

This overview portrays the 40-year evolution of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) research. The amelioration of powerful multicarrier OFDM arrangements with multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems has numerous benefits, which are detailed in this treatise. We continue by highlighting the limitations of conventional detection and channel estimation techniques designed for multiuser MIMO OFDM systems in the so-called rank-deficient scenarios, where the number of users supported or the number of transmit antennas employed exceeds the number of receiver antennas. This is often encountered in practice, unless we limit the number of users granted access in the base station’s or radio port’s coverage area. Following a historical perspective on the associated design problems and their state-of-the-art solutions, the second half of this treatise details a range of classic multiuser detectors (MUDs) designed for MIMO-OFDM systems and characterizes their achievable performance. A further section aims for identifying novel cutting-edge genetic algorithm (GA)-aided detector solutions, which have found numerous applications in wireless communications in recent years. In an effort to stimulate the cross pollination of ideas across the machine learning, optimization, signal processing, and wireless communications research communities, we will review the broadly applicable principles of various GA-assisted optimization techniques, which were recently proposed also for employment inmultiuser MIMO OFDM. In order to stimulate new research, we demonstrate that the family of GA-aided MUDs is capable of achieving a near-optimum performance at the cost of a significantly lower computational complexity than that imposed by their optimum maximum-likelihood (ML) MUD aided counterparts. The paper is concluded by outlining a range of future research options that may find their way into next-generation wireless systems

Collaborative modulation multiple access for single hop and multihop networks

While the bandwidth available for wireless networks is limited, the world has seen an unprecedented growth in the number of mobile subscribers and an ever increasing demand for high data rates. Therefore efficient utilisation of bandwidth to maximise link spectral efficiency and number of users that can be served simultaneously are primary goals in the design of wireless systems. To achieve these goals, in this thesis, a new non-orthogonal uplink multiple access scheme which combines the functionalities of adaptive modulation and multiple access called collaborative modulation multiple access (CMMA) is proposed. CMMA enables multiple users to access the network simultaneously and share the same bandwidth even when only a single receive antenna is available and in the presence of high channel correlation. Instead of competing for resources, users in CMMA share resources collaboratively by employing unique modulation sets (UMS) that differ in phase, power, and/or mapping structure. These UMS are designed to insure that the received signal formed from the superposition of all users’ signals belongs to a composite QAM constellation (CC) with a rate equal to the sum rate of all users. The CC and its constituent UMSs are designed centrally at the BS to remove ambiguity, maximize the minimum Euclidian distance (dmin) of the CC and insure a minimum BER performance is maintained. Users collaboratively precode their transmitted signal by performing truncated channel inversion and phase rotation using channel state information (CSI ) obtained from a periodic common pilot to insure that their combined signal at the BS belongs to the CC known at the BS which in turn performs a simple joint maximum likelihood detection without the need for CSI. The coherent addition of users’ power enables CMMA to achieve high link spectral efficiency at any time without extra power or bandwidth but on the expense of graceful degradation in BER performance. To improve the BER performance of CMMA while preserving its precoding and detection structure and without the need for pilot-aided channel estimation, a new selective diversity combining scheme called SC-CMMA is proposed. SC-CMMA optimises the overall group performance providing fairness and diversity gain for various users with different transmit powers and channel conditions by selecting a single antenna out of a group of L available antennas that minimises the total transmit power required for precoding at any one time. A detailed study of capacity and BER performance of CMMA and SC-CMMA is carried out under different level of channel correlations which shows that both offer high capacity gain and resilience to channel correlation. SC-CMMA capacity even increase with high channel correlation between users’ channels. CMMA provides a practical solution for implementing the multiple access adder channel (MAAC) in fading environments hence a hybrid approach combining both collaborative coding and modulation referred to as H-CMMA is investigated. H-CMMA divides users into a number of subgroups where users within a subgroup are assigned the same modulation set and different multiple access codes. H-CMMA adjusts the dmin of the received CC by varying the number of subgroups which in turn varies the number of unique constellation points for the same number of users and average total power. Therefore H-CMMA can accommodate many users with different rates while flexibly managing the complexity, rate and BER performance depending on the SNR. Next a new scheme combining CMMA with opportunistic scheduling using only partial CSI at the receiver called CMMA-OS is proposed to combine both the power gain of CMMA and the multiuser diversity gain that arises from users’ channel independence. To avoid the complexity and excessive feedback associated with the dynamic update of the CC, the BS takes into account the independence of users’ channels in the design of the CC and its constituent UMSs but both remain unchanged thereafter. However UMS are no longer associated with users, instead channel gain’s probability density function is divided into regions with identical probability and each UMS is associated with a specific region. This will simplify scheduling as users can initially chose their UMS based on their CSI and the BS will only need to resolve any collision when the channels of two or more users are located at the same region. Finally a high rate cooperative communication scheme, called cooperative modulation (CM) is proposed for cooperative multiuser systems. CM combines the reliability of the cooperative diversity with the high spectral efficiency and multiple access capabilities of CMMA. CM maintains low feedback and high spectral efficiency by restricting relaying to a single route with the best overall channel. Two possible variations of CM are proposed depending on whether CSI available only at the users or just at the BS and the selected relay. The first is referred to Precode, Amplify, and Forward (PAF) while the second one is called Decode, Remap, and Forward (DMF). A new route selection algorithm for DMF based on maximising dmin of random CC is also proposed using a novel fast low-complexity multi-stage sphere based algorithm to calculate the dmin at the relay of random CC that is used for both relay selection and detection

Phase noise effects on OFDM : analysis and mitigation

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a promising technique which has high spectrum efficiency and the robustness against channel frequency selectivity. One drawback of OFDM is its sensitivity to phase noise. It has been shown that even small phase noise leads to significant performance loss of OFDM. Therefore, phase noise effects on OFDM systems need to be analyzed and methods be provided to its mitigation. Motivated by what have been proposed in the literature, the exact signal to interference plus noise ratio (SINR) is derived in this dissertation for arbitrary phase noise levels. In a multiple access environment with multiple phase noise, the closed form of bit error rate (BER) performance is derived as a function of phase noise parameters. Due to the detrimental effects of phase noise on OFDM, phase noise mitigation is quite necessary. Several schemes are proposed to mitigate both single and multiple phase noise. It is shown that, while outperforming conventional methods, these schemes have the performance close to no-phase-noise case. Two general approaches are presented which extend the conventional schemes proposed in the literature, making them special cases of these general approaches. Moreover, different implementation techniques are also presented. Analytical and numerical results are provided to compare the performance of these migitation approaches and implementation techniques. Similar to OFDM, an OFDM system with multiple antennas, i.e., Multiple Input. Multiple Output (MIMO)-OFDM, also suffer severe performance degradation due to phase noise, and what have been proposed in the literature may not be applicable to MIMO-OFDM. Therefore, a new scheme is proposed to mitigate phase noise for MIMO-OFDM, which provides significant performance gains over systems without phase noise mitigation. This scheme provides a very simple structure and achieves adequate performance with high spectrum efficiency, which makes it very attractive for practical implementations

High Capacity CDMA and Collaborative Techniques

The thesis investigates new approaches to increase the user capacity and improve the error performance of Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) by employing adaptive interference cancellation and collaborative spreading and space diversity techniques. Collaborative Coding Multiple Access (CCMA) is also investigated as a separate technique and combined with CDMA. The advantages and shortcomings of CDMA and CCMA are analysed and new techniques for both the uplink and downlink are proposed and evaluated. Multiple access interference (MAI) problem in the uplink of CDMA is investigated first. The practical issues of multiuser detection (MUD) techniques are reviewed and a novel blind adaptive approach to interference cancellation (IC) is proposed. It exploits the constant modulus (CM) property of digital signals to blindly suppress interference during the despreading process and obtain amplitude estimation with minimum mean squared error for use in cancellation stages. Two new blind adaptive receiver designs employing successive and parallel interference cancellation architectures using the CM algorithm (CMA) referred to as ‘CMA-SIC’ and ‘BA-PIC’, respectively, are presented. These techniques have shown to offer near single user performance for large number of users. It is shown to increase the user capacity by approximately two fold compared with conventional IC receivers. The spectral efficiency analysis of the techniques based on output signal-to interference-and-noise ratio (SINR) also shows significant gain in data rate. Furthermore, an effective and low complexity blind adaptive subcarrier combining (BASC) technique using a simple gradient descent based algorithm is proposed for Multicarrier-CDMA. It suppresses MAI without any knowledge of channel amplitudes and allows large number of users compared with equal gain and maximum ratio combining techniques normally used in practice. New user collaborative schemes are proposed and analysed theoretically and by simulations in different channel conditions to achieve spatial diversity for uplink of CCMA and CDMA. First, a simple transmitter diversity and its equivalent user collaborative diversity techniques for CCMA are designed and analysed. Next, a new user collaborative scheme with successive interference cancellation for uplink of CDMA referred to as collaborative SIC (C-SIC) is investigated to reduce MAI and achieve improved diversity. To further improve the performance of C-SIC under high system loading conditions, Collaborative Blind Adaptive SIC (C-BASIC) scheme is proposed. It is shown to minimize the residual MAI, leading to improved user capacity and a more robust system. It is known that collaborative diversity schemes incur loss in throughput due to the need of orthogonal time/frequency slots for relaying source’s data. To address this problem, finally a novel near-unity-rate scheme also referred to as bandwidth efficient collaborative diversity (BECD) is proposed and evaluated for CDMA. Under this scheme, pairs of users share a single spreading sequence to exchange and forward their data employing a simple superposition or space-time encoding methods. At the receiver collaborative joint detection is performed to separate each paired users’ data. It is shown that the scheme can achieve full diversity gain at no extra bandwidth as inter-user channel SNR becomes high. A novel approach of ‘User Collaboration’ is introduced to increase the user capacity of CDMA for both the downlink and uplink. First, collaborative group spreading technique for the downlink of overloaded CDMA system is introduced. It allows the sharing of the same single spreading sequence for more than one user belonging to the same group. This technique is referred to as Collaborative Spreading CDMA downlink (CS-CDMA-DL). In this technique T-user collaborative coding is used for each group to form a composite codeword signal of the users and then a single orthogonal sequence is used for the group. At each user’s receiver, decoding of composite codeword is carried out to extract the user’s own information while maintaining a high SINR performance. To improve the bit error performance of CS-CDMA-DL in Rayleigh fading conditions, Collaborative Space-time Spreading (C-STS) technique is proposed by combining the collaborative coding multiple access and space-time coding principles. A new scheme for uplink of CDMA using the ‘User Collaboration’ approach, referred to as CS-CDMA-UL is presented next. When users’ channels are independent (uncorrelated), significantly higher user capacity can be achieved by grouping multiple users to share the same spreading sequence and performing MUD on per group basis followed by a low complexity ML decoding at the receiver. This approach has shown to support much higher number of users than the available sequences while also maintaining the low receiver complexity. For improved performance under highly correlated channel conditions, T-user collaborative coding is also investigated within the CS-CDMA-UL system

Frequency domain equalization space-time block-coded CDMA transmission system

Abstract In this work we propose a space-time block-coded (STBF) CDMA transmission system suitable for use with frequency domain equalization (FDE) algorithms. We illustrate the FDE by implementing the maximal ratio combining, the zero forcing and the minimum mean squared error single user detection algorithms. A diversity gain analysis is developed and some interesting results are pointed out. It is shown through computer simulations that the proposed transmission system exhibits good performance in terms of bit error rate when compared to previously proposed STBC CDMA transmission systems.</p

Antenna array calibration in wireless communications

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High capacity multiuser multiantenna communication techniques

One of the main issues involved in the development of future wireless communication systems is the multiple access technique used to efficiently share the available spectrum among users. In rich multipath environment, spatial dimension can be exploited to meet the increasing number of users and their demands without consuming extra bandwidth and power. Therefore, it is utilized in the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology to increase the spectral efficiency significantly. However, multiuser MIMO (MU-MIMO) systems are still challenging to be widely adopted in next generation standards. In this thesis, new techniques are proposed to increase the channel and user capacity and improve the error performance of MU-MIMO over Rayleigh fading channel environment. For realistic system design and performance evaluation, channel correlation is considered as one of the main channel impurities due its severe influence on capacity and reliability. Two simple methods called generalized successive coloring technique (GSCT) and generalized iterative coloring technique (GICT) are proposed for accurate generation of correlated Rayleigh fading channels (CRFC). They are designed to overcome the shortcomings of existing methods by avoiding factorization of desired covariance matrix of the Gaussian samples. The superiority of these techniques is demonstrated by extensive simulations of different practical system scenarios. To mitigate the effects of channel correlations, a novel constellation constrained MU-MIMO (CC-MU-MIMO) scheme is proposed using transmit signal design and maximum likelihood joint detection (MLJD) at the receiver. It is designed to maximize the channel capacity and error performance based on principles of maximizing the minimum Euclidean distance (dmin) of composite received signals. Two signal design methods named as unequal power allocation (UPA) and rotation constellation (RC) are utilized to resolve the detection ambiguity caused by correlation. Extensive analysis and simulations demonstrate the effectiveness of considered scheme compared with conventional MU-MIMO. Furthermore, significant gain in SNR is achieved particularly in moderate to high correlations which have direct impact to maintain high user capacity. A new efficient receive antenna selection (RAS) technique referred to as phase difference based selection (PDBS) is proposed for single and multiuser MIMO systems to maximize the capacity over CRFC. It utilizes the received signal constellation to select the subset of antennas with highest (dmin) constellations due to its direct impact on the capacity and BER performance. A low complexity algorithm is designed by employing the Euclidean norm of channel matrix rows with their corresponding phase differences. Capacity analysis and simulation results show that PDBS outperforms norm based selection (NBS) and near to optimal selection (OS) for all correlation and SNR values. This technique provides fast RAS to capture most of the gains promised by multiantenna systems over different channel conditions. Finally, novel group layered MU-MIMO (GL-MU-MIMO) scheme is introduced to exploit the available spectrum for higher user capacity with affordable complexity. It takes the advantages of spatial difference among users and power control at base station to increase the number of users beyond the available number of RF chains. It is achieved by dividing the users into two groups according to their received power, high power group (HPG) and low power group (LPG). Different configurations of low complexity group layered multiuser detection (GL-MUD) and group power allocation ratio (η) are utilized to provide a valuable tradeoff between complexity and overall system performance. Furthermore, RAS diversity is incorporated by using NBS and a new selection algorithm called HPG-PDBS to increase the channel capacity and enhance the error performance. Extensive analysis and simulations demonstrate the superiority of proposed scheme compared with conventional MU-MIMO. By using appropriate value of (η), it shows higher sum rate capacity and substantial increase in the user capacity up to two-fold at target BER and SNR values