Broadcasting over the Relay Channel with Oblivious Cooperative Strategy

This paper investigates the problem of information transmission over the simultaneous relay channel with two users (or two possible channel outcomes) where for one of them the more suitable strategy is Decode-and-Forward (DF) while for the other one is Compress-and-Forward (CF). In this setting, it is assumed that the source wishes to send common and private informations to each of the users (or channel outcomes). This problem is relevant to: (i) the transmission of information over the broadcast relay channel (BRC) with different relaying strategies and (ii) the transmission of information over the conventional relay channel where the source is oblivious to the coding strategy of relay. A novel coding that integrates simultaneously DF and CF schemes is proposed and an inner bound on the capacity region is derived for the case of general memoryless BRCs. As special case, the Gaussian BRC is studied where it is shown that by means of the suggested broadcast coding the common rate can be improved compared to existing strategies. Applications of these results arise in broadcast scenarios with relays or in wireless scenarios where the source does not know whether the relay is collocated with the source or with the destination.Comment: 6 pages, presented at Allerton 201

Cooperative Strategies for Simultaneous and Broadcast Relay Channels

Consider the \emph{simultaneous relay channel} (SRC) which consists of a set of relay channels where the source wishes to transmit common and private information to each of the destinations. This problem is recognized as being equivalent to that of sending common and private information to several destinations in presence of helper relays where each channel outcome becomes a branch of the \emph{broadcast relay channel} (BRC). Cooperative schemes and capacity region for a set with two memoryless relay channels are investigated. The proposed coding schemes, based on \emph{Decode-and-Forward} (DF) and \emph{Compress-and-Forward} (CF) must be capable of transmitting information simultaneously to all destinations in such set. Depending on the quality of source-to-relay and relay-to-destination channels, inner bounds on the capacity of the general BRC are derived. Three cases of particular interest are considered: cooperation is based on DF strategy for both users --referred to as DF-DF region--, cooperation is based on CF strategy for both users --referred to as CF-CF region--, and cooperation is based on DF strategy for one destination and CF for the other --referred to as DF-CF region--. These results can be seen as a generalization and hence unification of previous works. An outer-bound on the capacity of the general BRC is also derived. Capacity results are obtained for the specific cases of semi-degraded and degraded Gaussian simultaneous relay channels. Rates are evaluated for Gaussian models where the source must guarantee a minimum amount of information to both users while additional information is sent to each of them.Comment: 32 pages, 7 figures, To appear in IEEE Trans. on Information Theor

A Non-Orthogonal Cooperative Multiple Access (NCMA) Protocol and Low ML Decoding Complexity Codes

A half-duplex constrained Non-orthogonal Cooperative Multiple Access (NCMA) protocol suitable for transmission of information from N users to a single destination in a wireless fading channel is proposed. Transmission in this protocol comprises of a broadcast phase and a cooperation phase. In the broadcast phase, each user takes turn broadcasting its data to all other users and the destination in an orthogonal fashion in time. In the cooperation phase, each user transmits a linear function of what it received from all other users as well as its own data. In contrast to the orthogonal extension of cooperative relay protocols to the cooperative multiple access channels wherein at any point of time, only one user is considered as a source and all the other users behave as relays and do not transmit their own data, the NCMA protocol relaxes the orthogonality built into the protocols and hence allows for a more spectrally efficient usage of resources. Code design criteria for achieving full diversity of N in the NCMA protocol is derived using Pair Wise Error Probability (PEP) analysis and it is shown that this can be achieved with a minimum total time duration of 2N - 1 channel uses. Explicit construction of full diversity codes is then provided for arbitrary number of users. Since the maximum likelihood decoding complexity grows exponentially with the number of users, the notion of g-group decodable codes is introduced for the setup and a set of necessary and sufficient conditions is also obtained

Degrees of Freedom of Certain Interference Alignment Schemes with Distributed CSIT

In this work, we consider the use of interference alignment (IA) in a MIMO interference channel (IC) under the assumption that each transmitter (TX) has access to channel state information (CSI) that generally differs from that available to other TXs. This setting is referred to as distributed CSIT. In a setting where CSI accuracy is controlled by a set of power exponents, we show that in the static 3-user MIMO square IC, the number of degrees-of-freedom (DoF) that can be achieved with distributed CSIT is at least equal to the DoF achieved with the worst accuracy taken across the TXs and across the interfering links. We conjecture further that this represents exactly the DoF achieved. This result is in strong contrast with the centralized CSIT configuration usually studied (where all the TXs share the same, possibly imperfect, channel estimate) for which it was shown that the DoF achieved at receiver (RX) i is solely limited by the quality of its own feedback. This shows the critical impact of CSI discrepancies between the TXs, and highlights the price paid by distributed precoding.Comment: This is an extended version of a conference submission which will be presented at the IEEE conference SPAWC, Darmstadt, June 201

Cooperative Lattice Coding and Decoding

A novel lattice coding framework is proposed for outage-limited cooperative channels. This framework provides practical implementations for the optimal cooperation protocols proposed by Azarian et al. In particular, for the relay channel we implement a variant of the dynamic decode and forward protocol, which uses orthogonal constellations to reduce the channel seen by the destination to a single-input single-output time-selective one, while inheriting the same diversity-multiplexing tradeoff. This simplification allows for building the receiver using traditional belief propagation or tree search architectures. Our framework also generalizes the coding scheme of Yang and Belfiore in the context of amplify and forward cooperation. For the cooperative multiple access channel, a tree coding approach, matched to the optimal linear cooperation protocol of Azarain et al, is developed. For this scenario, the MMSE-DFE Fano decoder is shown to enjoy an excellent tradeoff between performance and complexity. Finally, the utility of the proposed schemes is established via a comprehensive simulation study.Comment: 25 pages, 8 figure

Content Sharing in Mobile Networks with Infrastructure: Planning and Management

This thesis focuses on mobile ad-hoc networks (with pedestrian or vehicular mobility) having infrastructure support. We deal with the problems of design, deployment and management of such networks. A first issue to address concerns infrastructure itself: how pervasive should it be in order for the network to operate at the same time efficiently and in a cost-effective manner? How should the units composing it (e.g., access points) be placed? There are several approaches to such questions in literature, and this thesis studies and compares them. Furthermore, in order to effectively design the infrastructure, we need to understand how and how much it will be used. As an example, what is the relationship between infrastructure-to-node and node-to-node communication? How far away, in time and space, do data travel before its destination is reached? A common assumption made when dealing with such problems is that perfect knowledge about the current and future node mobility is available. In this thesis, we also deal with the problem of assessing the impact that an imperfect, limited knowledge has on network performance. As far as the management of the network is concerned, this thesis presents a variant of the paradigm known as publish-and-subscribe. With respect to the original paradigm, our goal was to ensure a high probability of finding the requested content, even in presence of selfish, uncooperative nodes, or even nodes whose precise goal is harming the system. Each node is allowed to get from the network an amount of content which corresponds to the amount of content provided to other nodes. Nodes with caching capabilities are assisted in using their cache in order to improve the amount of offered conten

Market scenarios and alternative administrative frameworks for US educational satellite systems

Costs and benefits of developing an operational educational satellite system in the U.S. are analyzed. Scenarios are developed for each educational submarket and satellite channel and ground terminal requirements for a large-scale educational telecommunications system are estimated. Alternative organizational frameworks for such a system are described