Optimizing multiuser MIMO for access point cooperation in dense wireless networks

As the usage of wireless devices continues to grow rapidly in popularity, wireless networks that were once designed to support a few laptops must now host a much wider range of equipments, including smart phones, tablets, and wearable devices, that often run bandwidth-hungry applications. Improvements in wireless local access network (WLAN) technology are expected to help accommodate the huge traffic demands. In particular, advanced multicell Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) techniques, involving the cooperation of APs and multiuser MIMO processing techniques, can be used to satisfy the increasing demands from users in high-density environments. The objective of this thesis is to address the fundamental problems for multiuser MIMO with AP cooperation in dense wireless network settings. First, for a very common multiuser MIMO linear precoding technique, block diagonalization, a novel pairing-and-binary-tree based user selection algorithm is proposed. Second, without the zero-forcing constraint on the multiuser MIMO transmission, a general weighted sum rate maximization problem is formulated for coordinated APs. A scalable algorithm that performs a combined optimization procedure is proposed to determine the user selection and MIMO weights. Third, we study the fair and high-throughput scheduling problem by formally specifying an optimization problem. Two algorithms are proposed to solve the problem using either alternating optimization or a two-stage procedure. Fourth, with the coexistence of both stationary and mobile users, different scheduling strategies are suggested for different user types. The provided theoretical analysis and simulation results in this thesis lay out the foundation for the realization of the clustered WLAN networks with AP cooperation.Ph.D

Distributed Adaptation Techniques for Connected Vehicles

In this PhD dissertation, we propose distributed adaptation mechanisms for connected vehicles to deal with the connectivity challenges. To understand the system behavior of the solutions for connected vehicles, we first need to characterize the operational environment. Therefore, we devised a large scale fading model for various link types, including point-to-point vehicular communications and multi-hop connected vehicles. We explored two small scale fading models to define the characteristics of multi-hop connected vehicles. Taking our research into multi-hop connected vehicles one step further, we propose selective information relaying to avoid message congestion due to redundant messages received by the relay vehicle. Results show that the proposed mechanism reduces messaging load by up to 75% without sacrificing environmental awareness. Once we define the channel characteristics, we propose a distributed congestion control algorithm to solve the messaging overhead on the channels as the next research interest of this dissertation. We propose a combined transmit power and message rate adaptation for connected vehicles. The proposed algorithm increases the environmental awareness and achieves the application requirements by considering highly dynamic network characteristics. Both power and rate adaptation mechanisms are performed jointly to avoid one result affecting the other negatively. Results prove that the proposed algorithm can increase awareness by 20% while keeping the channel load and interference at almost the same level as well as improve the average message rate by 18%. As the last step of this dissertation, distributed cooperative dynamic spectrum access technique is proposed to solve the channel overhead and the limited resources issues. The adaptive energy detection threshold, which is used to decide whether the channel is busy, is optimized in this work by using a computationally efficient numerical approach. Each vehicle evaluates the available channels by voting on the information received from one-hop neighbors. An interdisciplinary approach referred to as entropy-based weighting is used for defining the neighbor credibility. Once the vehicle accesses the channel, we propose a decision mechanism for channel switching that is inspired by the optimal flower selection process employed by bumblebees foraging. Experimental results show that by using the proposed distributed cooperative spectrum sensing mechanism, spectrum detection error converges to zero

Heterogeneous integration of optical wireless communications within next generation networks

Unprecedented traffic growth is expected in future wireless networks and new technologies will be needed to satisfy demand. Optical wireless (OW) communication offers vast unused spectrum and high area spectral efficiency. In this work, optical cells are envisioned as supplementary access points within heterogeneous RF/OW networks. These networks opportunistically offload traffic to optical cells while utilizing the RF cell for highly mobile devices and devices that lack a reliable OW connection. Visible light communication (VLC) is considered as a potential OW technology due to the increasing adoption of solid state lighting for indoor illumination. Results of this work focus on a full system view of RF/OW HetNets with three primary areas of analysis. First, the need for network densication beyond current RF small cell implementations is evaluated. A media independent model is developed and results are presented that provide motivation for the adoption of hyper dense small cells as complementary components within multi-tier networks. Next, the relationships between RF and OW constraints and link characterization parameters are evaluated in order to define methods for fair comparison when user-centric channel selection criteria are used. RF and OW noise and interference characterization techniques are compared and common OW characterization models are demonstrated to show errors in excess of 100x when dominant interferers are present. Finally, dynamic characteristics of hyper dense OW networks are investigated in order to optimize traffic distribution from a network-centric perspective. A Kalman Filter model is presented to predict device motion for improved channel selection and a novel OW range expansion technique is presented that dynamically alters coverage regions of OW cells by 50%. In addition to analytical results, the dissertation describes two tools that have been created for evaluation of RF/OW HetNets. A communication and lighting simulation toolkit has been developed for modeling and evaluation of environments with VLC-enabled luminaires. The toolkit enhances an iterative site based impulse response simulator model to utilize GPU acceleration and achieves 10x speedup over the previous model. A software defined testbed for OW has also been proposed and applied. The testbed implements a VLC link and a heterogeneous RF/VLC connection that demonstrates the RF/OW HetNet concept as proof of concept