Channel Sounding for the Masses: Low Complexity GNU 802.11b Channel Impulse Response Estimation

New techniques in cross-layer wireless networks are building demand for ubiquitous channel sounding, that is, the capability to measure channel impulse response (CIR) with any standard wireless network and node. Towards that goal, we present a software-defined IEEE 802.11b receiver and CIR estimation system with little additional computational complexity compared to 802.11b reception alone. The system implementation, using the universal software radio peripheral (USRP) and GNU Radio, is described and compared to previous work. By overcoming computational limitations and performing direct-sequence spread-spectrum (DS-SS) matched filtering on the USRP, we enable high-quality yet inexpensive CIR estimation. We validate the channel sounder and present a drive test campaign which measures hundreds of channels between WiFi access points and an in-vehicle receiver in urban and suburban areas

Channel Sounding and Measurements for Pico Cells for LTE and Future Wireless Networks

Wireless networks are the preferred future access networks for both defense and civilian deployments as part of telecommunication networks. The successful implementation of long term evolution (LTE) networks and applications such as the Internet of Things (IoT) in the telecommunication infrastructure has guaranteed rates of up to 100 Mbps while supporting ultra-dense wireless access network. With the incorporation of LTE-Advanced and fifth-generation wireless protocols, the data rates are expected to reach upto 1 Gbps. Hence, there is a pertinent requirement to carry out channel measurements at sub 1 GHz, 2 GHz, and 3 GHz bands to enable the design and implementation of optimum transceivers for pico-cells of LTE and future wireless networks. For the first time measurements and comparison with standard models of channel impulse response models have also been carried out in five different terrains namely Urban, Semi-Urban, Forest, Rural, and Desert terrains in the Indian sub-continent to effectively cover a variety of deployments of future wireless access networks for defense wireless network

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationThe wireless radio channel is typically thought of as a means to move information from transmitter to receiver, but the radio channel can also be used to detect changes in the environment of the radio link. This dissertation is focused on the measurements we can make at the physical layer of wireless networks, and how we can use those measurements to obtain information about the locations of transceivers and people. The first contribution of this work is the development and testing of an open source, 802.11b sounder and receiver, which is capable of decoding packets and using them to estimate the channel impulse response (CIR) of a radio link at a fraction of the cost of traditional channel sounders. This receiver improves on previous implementations by performing optimized matched filtering on the field-programmable gate array (FPGA) of the Universal Software Radio Peripheral (USRP), allowing it to operate at full bandwidth. The second contribution of this work is an extensive experimental evaluation of a technology called location distinction, i.e., the ability to identify changes in radio transceiver position, via CIR measurements. Previous location distinction work has focused on single-input single-output (SISO) radio links. We extend this work to the context of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radio links, and study system design trade-offs which affect the performance of MIMO location distinction. The third contribution of this work introduces the "exploiting radio windows" (ERW) attack, in which an attacker outside of a building surreptitiously uses the transmissions of an otherwise secure wireless network inside of the building to infer location information about people inside the building. This is possible because of the relative transparency of external walls to radio transmissions. The final contribution of this dissertation is a feasibility study for building a rapidly deployable radio tomographic (RTI) imaging system for special operations forces (SOF). We show that it is possible to obtain valuable tracking information using as few as 10 radios over a single floor of a typical suburban home, even without precise radio location measurements

Physical Layer Simulation Study for the Co-existence of WLAN Standards

Interference is a prime factor that limits the performance of devices within the 2.4 GHz ISM Band. Due to the ISM Band being unlicensed and free to all users, there is an abundance of devices within this frequency range. The three most prominent of such devices used for data communication consist of Bluetooth, Wifi, and Zigbee. In order to understand whether these three protocols can co-exist with each other, a physical layer system model will be developed for each protocol. These systems models will be combined and their interaction with each other examined to determine the effects of the interference under different channel conditions. The channel models will consist of general AWGN and Rayleigh fading channels, along with a site-specific case involving both Ricean and Rayleigh fading

Wideband mobile propagation channels: Modelling measurements and characterisation for microcellular environments

EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

Estudio y simulación de la tecnología WIFI de acceso inalámbrico

Este proyecto se basa en el estudio de la capa PHY de sistemas WLAN (Estándar 802.11) y mas concretamente en las revisiones basadas en OFDM (802.11 a/g). En este estudio se ha realizado una simulación mediante el software de MatLab v7.0 de una modulación OFDM cumpliendo las características que presentaba el estándar 802.11 a/g. En está simulación se ha estudiado el efecto del Delay Spread, el efecto de realizar una estimación de canal y que diferencias hay respecto el caso en que este no se estima y un estudio de la movilidad. Todo esto ha sido analizado para diversos tipos de escenarios con propagación multicamino, tanto en entornos abiertos como cerrados, con LOS y NLOS y con escenarios donde existían diferentes materiales o minerales que podían afectar a la correcta propagación de la señal. Para llevar a cabo estos objetivos, en primer lugar se presentará una breve descripción de las redes WLAN y de otros estándares inalámbricos de banda ancha, su arquitectura y la estructura de protocolos, sus ventajas e inconvenientes y un estudio de mercado de las mismas redes WLAN. Seguido se presentará un estudio detallado del canal de comunicaciones inalámbricos en el cual presentamos tanto la dispersión temporal del canal como su variabilidad temporal junto con los modelos estadísticos que describen tanto los canales LOS como NLOS. Finalmente se presentarán los diferentes escenarios reales que se han estudiado y los resultados de las simulaciones efectuadas sobre estos mismos escenarios

Improving the Performance of Medium Access Control Protocols for Mobile Adhoc Network with Smart Antennas

Requirements for high quality links and great demand for high throughput in Wireless LAN especially Mobile Ad-hoc Network has motivated new enhancements and work in Wireless communications such as Smart Antenna Systems. Smart (adaptive) Antennas enable spatial reuse, increase throughput and they increase the communication range because of the increase directivity of the antenna array. These enhancements quantified for the physical layer may not be efficiently utilized, unless the Media Access Control (MAC) layer is designed accordingly. This thesis implements the behaviours of two MAC protocols, ANMAC and MMAC protocols in OPNET simulator. This method is known as the Physical-MAC layer simulation model. The entire physical layer is written in MATLAB, and MATLAB is integrated into OPNET to perform the necessary stochastic physical layer simulations. The aim is to investigate the performance improvement in throughput and delay of the selected MAC Protocols when using Smart Antennas in a mobile environment. Analytical methods were used to analyze the average throughput and delay performance of the selected MAC Protocols with Adaptive Antenna Arrays in MANET when using spatial diversity. Comparison study has been done between the MAC protocols when using Switched beam antenna and when using the proposed scheme. It has been concluded that the throughput and delay performance of the selected protocols have been improved by the use of Adaptive Antenna Arrays. The throughput and delay performance of ANMAC-SW and ANMAC-AA protocols was evaluated in details against regular Omni 802.11 stations. Our results promise significantly enhancement over Omni 802.11, with a throughput of 25% for ANMAC-SW and 90% for ANMC-AA. ANMAC-AA outperforms ANMAC-SW protocol by 60%. Simulation experiments indicate that by using the proposed scheme with 4 Adaptive Antenna Array per a node, the average throughput in the network can be improved up to 2 to 2.5 times over that obtained by using Switched beam Antennas. The proposed scheme improves the performances of both ANMAC and MMAC protocols but ANMAC outperforms MMAC by 30%