8 research outputs found
Non-Orthogonal Signal and System Design for Wireless Communications
The thesis presents research in non-orthogonal multi-carrier signals, in which: (i) a new signal format termed truncated orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (TOFDM) is proposed to improve data rates in wireless communication systems, such as those used in mobile/cellular systems and wireless local area networks (LANs), and (ii) a new design and experimental implementation of a real-time spectrally efficient frequency division multiplexing (SEFDM) system are reported. This research proposes a modified version of the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) format, obtained by truncating OFDM symbols in the time-domain. In TOFDM, subcarriers are no longer orthogonally packed in the frequency-domain as time samples are only partially transmitted, leading to improved spectral efficiency. In this work, (i) analytical expressions are derived for the newly proposed TOFDM signal, followed by (ii) interference analysis, (iii) systems design for uncoded and coded schemes, (iv) experimental implementation and (v) performance evaluation of the new proposed signal and system, with comparisons to conventional OFDM systems. Results indicate that signals can be recovered with truncated symbol transmission. Based on the TOFDM principle, a new receiving technique, termed partial symbol recovery (PSR), is designed and implemented in software de ned radio (SDR), that allows efficient operation of two users for overlapping data, in wireless communication systems operating with collisions. The PSR technique is based on recovery of collision-free partial OFDM symbols, followed by the reconstruction of complete symbols to recover progressively the frames of two users suffering collisions. The system is evaluated in a testbed of 12-nodes using SDR platforms. The thesis also proposes channel estimation and equalization technique for non-orthogonal signals in 5G scenarios, using an orthogonal demodulator and zero padding. Finally, the implementation of complete SEFDM systems in real-time is investigated and described in detail
A practical system for improved efficiency in frequency division multiplexed wireless networks
Spectral efficiency is a key design issue for all wireless communication systems. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a very well-known technique for efficient data transmission over many carriers overlapped in frequency. Recently, several studies have appeared that describe spectrally efficient variations of multi-carrier systems where the condition of orthogonality is dropped. Proposed techniques suffer from two weaknesses: firstly, the complexity of generating the signal is increased. Secondly, the signal detection is computationally demanding. Known methods suffer either unusably high complexity or high error rates because of the inter-carrier interference. This study addresses both problems by proposing new transmitter and receiver architectures whose design is based on using the simplification that a rational spectrally efficient frequency division multiplexing (SEFDM) system can be treated as a set of overlapped and interleaving OFDM systems. The efficacy of the proposed designs is shown through detailed simulation of systems with different signal types and carrier dimensions. The decoder is heuristic but in practice produces very good results that are close to the theoretical best performance in a variety of settings. The system is able to produce efficiency gains of up to 20% with negligible impact on the required signal-to-noise ratio
Spectrally efficient multicarrier communication systems: signal detection, mathematical modelling and optimisation
This thesis considers theoretical, analytical and engineering design issues relating
to non-orthogonal Spectrally Efficient Frequency Division Multiplexing (SEFDM)
communication systems that exhibit significant spectral merits when compared to Orthogonal
FDM (OFDM) schemes. Alas, the practical implementation of such systems
raises significant challenges, with the receivers being the bottleneck.
This research explores detection of SEFDM signals. The mathematical foundations
of such signals lead to proposals of different orthonormalisation techniques as required
at the receivers of non-orthogonal FDM systems. To address SEFDM detection, two
approaches are considered: either attempt to solve the problem optimally by taking
advantage of special cases properties or to apply sub-optimal techniques that offer reduced
complexities at the expense of error rates degradation. Initially, the application
of sub-optimal linear detection techniques, such as Zero Forcing (ZF) and Minimum
Mean Squared Error (MMSE), is examined analytically and by detailed modelling. To
improve error performance a heuristic algorithm, based on a local search around an
MMSE estimate, is designed by combining MMSE with Maximum Likelihood (ML)
detection. Yet, this new method appears to be efficient for BPSK signals only. Hence,
various variants of the sphere decoder (SD) are investigated. A Tikhonov regularised
SD variant achieves an optimal solution for the detection of medium size signals in
low noise regimes. Detailed modelling shows the SD detector to be well suited to the
SEFDM detection, however, with complexity increasing with system interference and
noise. A new design of a detector that offers a good compromise between computational
complexity and error rate performance is proposed and tested through modelling
and simulation. Standard reformulation techniques are used to relax the original optimal
detection problem to a convex Semi-Definite Program (SDP) that can be solved
in polynomial time. Although SDP performs better than other linear relaxations, such
as ZF and MMSE, its deviation from optimality also increases with the deterioration
of the system inherent interference. To improve its performance a heuristic algorithm
based on a local search around the SDP estimate is further proposed. Finally, a modified
SD is designed to implement faster than the local search SDP concept. The new
method/algorithm, termed the pruned or constrained SD, achieves the detection of
realistic SEFDM signals in noisy environments
Spectrally efficient FDM communication signals and transceivers: design, mathematical modelling and system optimization
This thesis addresses theoretical, mathematical modelling and design issues of Spectrally Efficient
FDM (SEFDM) systems. SEFDM systems propose bandwidth savings when compared to
Orthogonal FDM (OFDM) systems by multiplexing multiple non-orthogonal overlapping carriers.
Nevertheless, the deliberate collapse of orthogonality poses significant challenges on the
SEFDM system in terms of performance and complexity, both issues are addressed in this work.
This thesis first investigates the mathematical properties of the SEFDM system and reveals the
links between the system conditioning and its main parameters through closed form formulas
derived for the Intercarrier Interference (ICI) and the system generating matrices. A rigorous
and efficient mathematical framework, to represent non-orthogonal signals using Inverse Discrete
Fourier Transform (IDFT) blocks, is proposed. This is subsequently used to design simple
SEFDM transmitters and to realize a new Matched Filter (MF) based demodulator using the
Discrete Fourier Transforms (DFT), thereby substantially simplifying the transmitter and demodulator
design and localizing complexity at detection stage with no premium at performance.
Operation is confirmed through the derivation and numerical verification of optimal detectors
in the form of Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Sphere Decoder (SD). Moreover, two new linear
detectors that address the ill conditioning of the system are proposed: the first based on
the Truncated Singular Value Decomposition (TSVD) and the second accounts for selected ICI
terms and termed Selective Equalization (SelE). Numerical investigations show that both detectors
substantially outperform existing linear detection techniques. Furthermore, the use of the
Fixed Complexity Sphere Decoder (FSD) is proposed to further improve performance and avoid
the variable complexity of the SD. Ultimately, a newly designed combined FSD-TSVD detector
is proposed and shown to provide near optimal error performance for bandwidth savings of 20%
with reduced and fixed complexity.
The thesis also addresses some practical considerations of the SEFDM systems. In particular,
mathematical and numerical investigations have shown that the SEFDM signal is prone to high
Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR) that can lead to significant performance degradations.
Investigations of PAPR control lead to the proposal of a new technique, termed SLiding Window
(SLW), utilizing the SEFDM signal structure which shows superior efficacy in PAPR control
over conventional techniques with lower complexity. The thesis also addresses the performance
of the SEFDM system in multipath fading channels confirming favourable performance and
practicability of implementation. In particular, a new Partial Channel Estimator (PCE) that
provides better estimation accuracy is proposed. Furthermore, several low complexity linear
and iterative joint channel equalizers and symbol detectors are investigated in fading channels
conditions with the FSD-TSVD joint equalization and detection with PCE obtained channel
estimate facilitating near optimum error performance, close to that of OFDM for bandwidth
savings of 25%. Finally, investigations of the precoding of the SEFDM signal demonstrate a
potential for complexity reduction and performance improvement.
Overall, this thesis provides the theoretical basis from which practical designs are derived to
pave the way to the first practical realization of SEFDM systems
Bandwidth Compressed Waveform and System Design for Wireless and Optical Communications: Theory and Practice
This thesis addresses theoretical and practical challenges of spectrally efficient frequency division multiplexing (SEFDM) systems in both wireless and optical domains. SEFDM improves spectral efficiency relative to the well-known orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) by non-orthogonally multiplexing overlapped sub-carriers. However, the deliberate violation of orthogonality results in inter carrier interference (ICI) and associated detection complexity, thus posing many challenges to practical implementations. This thesis will present solutions for these issues. The thesis commences with the fundamentals by presenting the existing challenges of SEFDM, which are subsequently solved by proposed transceivers. An iterative detection (ID) detector iteratively removes self-created ICI. Following that, a hybrid ID together with fixed sphere decoding (FSD) shows an optimised performance/complexity trade-off. A complexity reduced Block-SEFDM can subdivide the signal detection into several blocks. Finally, a coded Turbo-SEFDM is proved to be an efficient technique that is compatible with the existing mobile standards. The thesis also reports the design and development of wireless and optical practical systems. In the optical domain, given the same spectral efficiency, a low-order modulation scheme is proved to have a better bit error rate (BER) performance when replacing a higher order one. In the wireless domain, an experimental testbed utilizing the LTE-Advanced carrier aggregation (CA) with SEFDM is operated in a realistic radio frequency (RF) environment. Experimental results show that 40% higher data rate can be achieved without extra spectrum occupation. Additionally, a new waveform, termed Nyquist-SEFDM, which compresses bandwidth and suppresses out-of-band power leakage is investigated. A 4th generation (4G) and 5th generation (5G) coexistence experiment is followed to verify its feasibility. Furthermore, a 60 GHz SEFDM testbed is designed and built in a point-to-point indoor fiber wireless experiment showing 67% data rate improvement compared to OFDM. Finally, to meet the requirements of future networks, two simplified SEFDM transceivers are designed together with application scenarios and experimental verifications
Spectrum Optimisation in Wireless Communication Systems: Technology Evaluation, System Design and Practical Implementation
Two key technology enablers for next generation networks are examined in this thesis, namely Cognitive Radio (CR) and Spectrally Efficient Frequency Division Multiplexing (SEFDM). The first part proposes the use of traffic prediction in CR systems to improve the Quality of Service (QoS) for CR users. A framework is presented which allows CR users to capture a frequency slot in an idle licensed channel occupied by primary users. This is achieved by using CR to sense and select target spectrum bands combined with traffic prediction to determine the optimum channel-sensing order. The latter part of this thesis considers the design, practical implementation and performance evaluation of SEFDM. The key challenge that arises in SEFDM is the self-created interference which complicates the design of receiver architectures. Previous work has focused on the development of sophisticated detection algorithms, however, these suffer from an impractical computational complexity. Consequently, the aim of this work is two-fold; first, to reduce the complexity of existing algorithms to make them better-suited for application in the real world; second, to develop hardware prototypes to assess the feasibility of employing SEFDM in practical systems. The impact of oversampling and fixed-point effects on the performance of SEFDM is initially determined, followed by the design and implementation of linear detection techniques using Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs). The performance of these FPGA based linear receivers is evaluated in terms of throughput, resource utilisation and Bit Error Rate (BER). Finally, variants of the Sphere Decoding (SD) algorithm are investigated to ameliorate the error performance of SEFDM systems with targeted reduction in complexity. The Fixed SD (FSD) algorithm is implemented on a Digital Signal Processor (DSP) to measure its computational complexity. Modified sorting and decomposition strategies are then applied to this FSD algorithm offering trade-offs between execution speed and BER
Timing-Error Tolerance Techniques for Low-Power DSP: Filters and Transforms
Low-power Digital Signal Processing (DSP) circuits are critical to commercial System-on-Chip design for battery powered devices. Dynamic Voltage Scaling (DVS) of digital circuits can reclaim worst-case supply voltage margins for delay variation, reducing power consumption. However, removing static margins without compromising robustness is tremendously challenging, especially in an era of escalating reliability concerns due to continued process scaling. The Razor DVS scheme addresses these concerns, by ensuring robustness using explicit timing-error detection and correction circuits. Nonetheless, the design of low-complexity and low-power error correction is often challenging. In this thesis, the Razor framework is applied to fixed-precision DSP filters and transforms. The inherent error tolerance of many DSP algorithms is exploited to achieve very low-overhead error correction. Novel error correction schemes for DSP datapaths are proposed, with very low-overhead circuit realisations. Two new approximate error correction approaches are proposed. The first is based on an adapted sum-of-products form that prevents errors in intermediate results reaching the output, while the second approach forces errors to occur only in less significant bits of each result by shaping the critical path distribution. A third approach is described that achieves exact error correction using time borrowing techniques on critical paths. Unlike previously published approaches, all three proposed are suitable for high clock frequency implementations, as demonstrated with fully placed and routed FIR, FFT and DCT implementations in 90nm and 32nm CMOS. Design issues and theoretical modelling are presented for each approach, along with SPICE simulation results demonstrating power savings of 21 β 29%. Finally, the design of a baseband transmitter in 32nm CMOS for the Spectrally Efficient FDM (SEFDM) system is presented. SEFDM systems offer bandwidth savings compared to Orthogonal FDM (OFDM), at the cost of increased complexity and power consumption, which is quantified with the first VLSI architecture