Performance evaluation of fixed WiMax physical layer under high fading channels

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Master of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.A radio channel characteristic modelling is essential in every network planning. This project deals with the performance of WiMax networks in an outdoor environment while using fading channel models. The radio channels characteristics are analyzed by simulations have been done using Matlab programming. Stanford University Interim(SUI) Channels set was proposed to simulate the fixed broadband wireless access channel environments where IEEE 802.16d is to be deployed. It has six channel models that are grouped into three categories according to three typical different outdoor Terrains, in order to give a comprehensive study of fading channels on the overall performance of the system, WiMax system has been tested under SUI channels that modified into account for 30o directional antennas, with 90% cell coverage and with 99.9% reliability in its geographical covered area. Furthermore, in order to combat the fading which occurs in urban areas and improve the capacity and the throughput of the system, multiples antennas at both ends of communication link are used, the transmission gain obtained when using multiple antennas instead of only a single antenna. Space-time coding and maximum ratio combining for more than one transmit and receive antenna is implemented to allow performance investigations in various MIMO scenarios. It has been concluded that uses multiple antennas at the receiver offers a significant improvement of 3 dB of gain in the channel SNR. This thesis also contain implementation of all compulsory features of the WiMax OFDM physical layer specified in IEEE 802.16-2004 using Matlab coding. In order to combat the temporal variations in quality on a multipath fading channel, an adaptive modulation technique is used. This technique employs multiple modulation schemes to instantaneously adapt to the variations in the channel SNR, thus maximizing the system throughput and improving BER performance. WiMax transceiver has been tested with and without encoding and studied the effect of encoding on multipath channel. Testing the system with flexible channel bandwidth has been part of this thesis. Finally it has been explained in this thesis the affect of increasing the size of cyclic prefix on overall performance of WiMax system

Channel Estimation in Multicarrier Communication Systems

The data rate and spectrum efficiency of wireless mobile communications have been significantly improved over the last decade or so. Recently, the advanced systems such as 3GPP LTE and terrestrial digital TV broadcasting have been sophisticatedly developed using OFDM and CDMA technology. In general, most mobile communication systems transmit bits of information in the radio space to the receiver. The radio channels in mobile radio systems are usually multipath fading channels, which cause inter-symbol interference (ISI) in the received signal. To remove ISI from the signal, there is a need of strong equalizer which requires knowledge on the channel impulse response (CIR).This is primarily provided by a separate channel estimator. Usually the channel estimation is based on the known sequence of bits, which is unique for a certain transmitter and which is repeated in every transmission burst. Thus, the channel estimator is able to estimate CIR for each burst separately by exploiting the known transmitted bits and the corresponding received samples. In this thesis we investigate and compare various efficient channel estimation schemes for OFDM systems which can also be extended to MC DS-CDMA systems.The channel estimation can be performed by either inserting pilot tones into all subcarriers of OFDM symbols with a specific period or inserting pilot tones into each OFDM symbol. Two major types of pilot arrangement such as block type and comb type pilot have been focused employing Least Square Error (LSE) and Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) channel estimators. Block type pilot sub-carriers is especially suitable for slow-fading radio channels whereas comb type pilots provide better resistance to fast fading channels. Also comb type pilot arrangement is sensitive to frequency selectivity when comparing to block type arrangement. However, there is another supervised technique called Implicit Training (IT) based channel estimation which exploits the first order statistics in the received data, induced by superimposing periodic training sequences with good correlation properties, along with the information symbols. Hence, the need for additional time slots for training the equalizer is avoided. The performance of the estimators is presented in terms of the mean square estimation error (MSEE) and bit error rate (BER)

Software Implementation of Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM)Scheme for Mobile Radio Channel

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a transmission technique which ensures efficient utilization of the spectrum by allowing overlap of carriers. OFDM is a combination of modulation and multiplexing that is used in the transmission of information and data. Compared with the other wireless transmission techniques like Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA), Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA), OFDM has numerous advantages like high spectral density, its robustness to channel fading, its ability to overcome several radio impairment factors such as effect of AWGN, impulse noise, multipath fading, etc. Due to this it finds wide application in Digital Audio Broadcasting (DAB), Digital Video Broadcasting (DVB), and Wireless LAN. Most of the wireless LAN standards like IEEE 802.11a or IEEE 802.11g use the OFDM as the main multiplexing scheme for better use of spectrum. In fact in the 4G telecommunication system OFDMA is the backbone of it. This project deals with the software simulation of this OFDM system in a mobile radio channel using the software tools of MATLAB® and SIMULINK®. From this simulation the performance of OFDM system in mobile radio channel is studied. Apart from this we also compare the OFDM system performance with the performance of the DS-CDMA system in the mobile radio channel

Contributions to channel modelling and performance estimation of HAPS-based communication systems regarding IEEE Std 802.16TM

New and future telecommunication networks are and will be broadband type. The existing terrestrial and space radio communication infrastructures might be supplemented by new wireless networks that make and will make use of aeronautics-technology. Our study/contribution is referring to radio communications based on radio stations aboard a stratospheric platform named, by ITU-R, HAPS (High Altitude Platform Station). These new networks have been proposed as an alternative technology within the ITU framework to provide various narrow/broadband communication services. With the possibility of having a payload for Telecommunications in an aircraft or a balloon (HAPS), it can be carried out radio communications to provide backbone connections on ground and to access to broadband points for ground terminals. The latest implies a complex radio network planning. Therefore, the radio coverage analysis at outdoors and indoors becomes an important issue on the design of new radio systems. In this doctoral thesis, the contribution is related to the HAPS application for terrestrial fixed broadband communications. HAPS was hypothesised as a quasi-static platform with height above ground at the so-called stratospheric layer. Latter contribution was fulfilled by approaching via simulations the outdoor-indoor coverage with a simple efficient computational model at downlink mode. This work was assessing the ITU-R recommendations at bands recognised for the HAPS-based networks. It was contemplated the possibility of operating around 2 GHz (1820 MHz, specifically) because this band is recognised as an alternative for HAPS networks that can provide IMT-2000 and IMT-Advanced services. The global broadband radio communication model was composed of three parts: transmitter, channel, and receiver. The transmitter and receiver parts were based on the specifications of the IEEE Std 802.16TM-2009 (with its respective digital transmission techniques for a robust-reliable link), and the channel was subjected to the analysis of radio modelling at the level of HAPS and terrestrial (outdoors plus indoors) parts. For the channel modelling was used the two-state characterisation (physical situations associated with the transmitted/received signals), the state-oriented channel modelling. One of the channel-state contemplated the environmental transmission situation defined by a direct path between transmitter and receiver, and the remaining one regarded the conditions of shadowing. These states were dependent on the elevation angle related to the ray-tracing analysis: within the propagation environment, it was considered that a representative portion of the total energy of the signal was received by a direct or diffracted wave, and the remaining power signal was coming by a specular wave, to last-mentioned waves (rays) were added the scattered and random rays that constituted the diffuse wave. At indoors case, the variations of the transmitted signal were also considering the following matters additionally: the building penetration, construction material, angle of incidence, floor height, position of terminal in the room, and indoor fading; also, these indoors radiocommunications presented different type of paths to reach the receiver: obscured LOS, no LOS (NLOS), and hard NLOS. The evaluation of the feasible performance for the HAPS-to-ground terminal was accomplished by means of thorough simulations. The outcomes of the experiment were presented in terms of BER vs. Eb/N0 plotting, getting significant positive conclusions for these kind of system as access network technology based on HAPS

A Survey of Air-to-Ground Propagation Channel Modeling for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles

In recent years, there has been a dramatic increase in the use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), particularly for small UAVs, due to their affordable prices, ease of availability, and ease of operability. Existing and future applications of UAVs include remote surveillance and monitoring, relief operations, package delivery, and communication backhaul infrastructure. Additionally, UAVs are envisioned as an important component of 5G wireless technology and beyond. The unique application scenarios for UAVs necessitate accurate air-to-ground (AG) propagation channel models for designing and evaluating UAV communication links for control/non-payload as well as payload data transmissions. These AG propagation models have not been investigated in detail when compared to terrestrial propagation models. In this paper, a comprehensive survey is provided on available AG channel measurement campaigns, large and small scale fading channel models, their limitations, and future research directions for UAV communication scenarios

PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS OF DIFFERENT SCHEMES FOR TRANSMISSION OF WATERMARKED MEDICAL IMAGES OVER FADING CHANNELS

ABSTRACT Performance Analysis of Different Schemes for Transmission of Watermarked Medical images over Fading Channels Praveen Kumar Korrai In this thesis, we investigate different types of robust schemes for transmission of medical images with concealed patient information as a watermark. In these schemes, spatial domain digital watermarking technique is adapted to embed the patient information as a watermark into the lower order bits of the medical images to reduce the storage and transmission overheads. The watermark, which comprises text data, is encrypted to prevent unauthorized access of data. To enhance the robustness of the embedded information, the encrypted watermark is coded by concatenation of Reed Solomon (RS) and low density parity check (LDPC) codes. A robust scheme for transmission of watermarked images over impulsive noisy wireless channels is first proposed and its performance analyzed. In this scheme, the bursty wireless channel is simulated by adding impulse noise to the watermark embedded image. Furthermore, turbo channel coding is used to correct the transmission errors over impulsive noisy wireless channels. However, single input single output (SISO) channel capacity is not enough to provide modern wireless services such as data and multimedia messaging services. Further, it is not reliable due to multipath fading. To overcome these problems, a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission scheme in which multiple antennas are used at both the transmitter and the receiver has emerged as one of the most significant technical breakthroughs in modern wireless communications. MIMO can improve the channel capacity and provide diversity gain. Hence, a scheme with a MIMO channel is proposed for the transmission of watermarked medical images over Rayleigh flat fading channels and its performance analyzed using MIMO maximum likelihood detector at the receiver. We present another scheme, namely, MIMO space frequency block coded OFDM (MIMO SFBC OFDM) in this thesis for transmission of watermarked medical images over Rayleigh fading channels to mitigate the detrimental effects due to frequency selective fading. The performance of this MIMO SFBC OFDM scheme is analyzed and compared with that of SISO-OFDM using minimum mean square error V-BLAST- based detection at the receiver. The efficacy of the different proposed schemes is illustrated through implementation results on watermarked medical images