High rate space time code with linear decoding complexity for multiple transmitting antennas

The multipath nature of the wireless channel, results in a superposition of the signals of each path at the receiver. This can lead to either constructive or destructive interference. Strong destructive interference is frequently referred to as deep fade and may result in temporary failure of communication due to the severe drop in the channel\u27s signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). To avoid this situation, signal diversity might be introduced. When having more than one antenna at the transmitter and / or receiver, forming a Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) channel, spatial diversity can be employed to overcome the fading problem. Space time block codes (STBC) have been shown to be used well with the MIMO channel. Each type of STBC is designed to optimize a different criteria such as rate and diversity, while other characteristics of the code are its error performance and decoding computational complexity. The Orthogonal STBC (OSTBC) family of codes is known to achieve full diversity as well as very simple implementation of the Maximum Likelihood (ML) decoder. However, it was proven that, with complex symbol constellation one cannot achieve a full rate code when the number of transmitting antennas is larger than two. Quasi OSTBC are codes with full rate but with the penalty of more complex decoding, and in general does not achieve full diversity. In this work, new techniques for OSTBC transmission / decoding are explored, such that a full rate code can be transmitted and decoded with linear complexity. The Row Elimination Method (REM) for OSTBC transmission is introduced, which basically involves the transmission of only part of the original OSTBC codeword, resulting in a full rate code termed Semi-Orthogonal STBC (SSTBC). Novel decoding scheme is presented, such that the SSTBC decoding computational complexity remains linear although the transmitted codeword is not orthogonal anymore. A new OSTBC, that complies with the new scheme\u27s requirements, is presented for any number of transmit antennas. The performance of the new scheme is studied under various settings, such as system with limited feedback and multiple antennas at the receiver. The general decoding techniques presented for STBC, assume perfect channel knowledge at the receiver. It was shown, that the performance of any STBC system is severely degraded due to partial channel state information, results from imperfect channel estimation. To minimize the performance loss, one may lengthen the training sequences used for the channel estimation which, inevitably, results in some rate loss. In addition, complex decoding schemes can be used at the receiver to jointly decode the data while enhancing the channel estimation. It is suggested in this work to apply adaptive techniques to mitigate the performance loss without the penalty of additional rate loss or complex decoding. Namely, the bootstrap algorithm is used to further refine the received signals, resulting in better effective rate and performance in the presence of channel estimation errors. Modified implementations for the bootstrap\u27s weights calculation method are also presented, to improve the convergence rate of the algorithm, as well as to maintain a very low computational burden

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

Unitary space-time modulation via Cayley transform

A prevoiusly proposed method for communicating with multiple antennas over block fading channels is unitary space-time modulation (USTM). In this method, the signals transmitted from the antennas, viewed as a matrix with spatial and temporal dimensions, form a unitary matrix, i.e., one with orthonormal columns. Since channel knowledge is not required at the receiver, USTM schemes are suitable for use on wireless links where channel tracking is undesirable or infeasible, either because of rapid changes in the channel characteristics or because of limited system resources. Previous results have shown that if suitably designed, USTM schemes can achieve full channel capacity at high SNR and, moreover, that all this can be done over a single coherence interval, provided the coherence interval and number of transmit antennas are sufficiently large, which is a phenomenon referred to as autocoding. While all this is well recognized, what is not clear is how to generate good performing constellations of (nonsquare) unitary matrices that lend themselves to efficient encoding/decoding. The schemes proposed so far either exhibit poor performance, especially at high rates, or have no efficient decoding algorithms. We propose to use the Cayley transform to design USTM constellations. This work can be viewed as a generalization, to the nonsquare case, of the Cayley codes that have been proposed for differential USTM. The codes are designed based on an information-theoretic criterion and lend themselves to polynomial-time (often cubic) near-maximum-likelihood decoding using a sphere decoding algorithm. Simulations suggest that the resulting codes allow for effective high-rate data transmission in multiantenna communication systems without knowing the channel. However, our preliminary results do not show a substantial advantage over training-based schemes

Near-capacity MIMOs using iterative detection

In this thesis, Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) techniques designed for transmission over narrowband Rayleigh fading channels are investigated. Specifically, in order to providea diversity gain while eliminating the complexity of MIMO channel estimation, a Differential Space-Time Spreading (DSTS) scheme is designed that employs non-coherent detection. Additionally, in order to maximise the coding advantage of DSTS, it is combined with Sphere Packing (SP) modulation. The related capacity analysis shows that the DSTS-SP scheme exhibits a higher capacity than its counterpart dispensing with SP. Furthermore, in order to attain additional performance gains, the DSTS system invokes iterative detection, where the outer code is constituted by a Recursive Systematic Convolutional (RSC) code, while the inner code is a SP demapper in one of the prototype systems investigated, while the other scheme employs a Unity Rate Code (URC) as its inner code in order to eliminate the error floor exhibited by the system dispensing with URC. EXIT charts are used to analyse the convergence behaviour of the iteratively detected schemes and a novel technique is proposed for computing the maximum achievable rate of the system based on EXIT charts. Explicitly, the four-antenna-aided DSTSSP system employing no URC precoding attains a coding gain of 12 dB at a BER of 10-5 and performs within 1.82 dB from the maximum achievable rate limit. By contrast, the URC aidedprecoded system operates within 0.92 dB from the same limit.On the other hand, in order to maximise the DSTS system’s throughput, an adaptive DSTSSP scheme is proposed that exploits the advantages of differential encoding, iterative decoding as well as SP modulation. The achievable integrity and bit rate enhancements of the system are determined by the following factors: the specific MIMO configuration used for transmitting data from the four antennas, the spreading factor used and the RSC encoder’s code rate.Additionally, multi-functional MIMO techniques are designed to provide diversity gains, multiplexing gains and beamforming gains by combining the benefits of space-time codes, VBLASTand beamforming. First, a system employing Nt=4 transmit Antenna Arrays (AA) with LAA number of elements per AA and Nr=4 receive antennas is proposed, which is referred to as a Layered Steered Space-Time Code (LSSTC). Three iteratively detected near-capacity LSSTC-SP receiver structures are proposed, which differ in the number of inner iterations employed between the inner decoder and the SP demapper as well as in the choice of the outer code, which is either an RSC code or an Irregular Convolutional Code (IrCC). The three systems are capable of operating within 0.9, 0.4 and 0.6 dB from the maximum achievable rate limit of the system. A comparison between the three iteratively-detected schemes reveals that a carefully designed two-stage iterative detection scheme is capable of operating sufficiently close to capacity at a lower complexity, when compared to a three-stage system employing a RSC or a two-stage system using an IrCC as an outer code. On the other hand, in order to allow the LSSTC scheme to employ less receive antennas than transmit antennas, while still accommodating multiple users, a Layered Steered Space-Time Spreading (LSSTS) scheme is proposed that combines the benefits of space-time spreading, V-BLAST, beamforming and generalised MC DS-CDMA. Furthermore, iteratively detected LSSTS schemes are presented and an LLR post-processing technique is proposed in order to improve the attainable performance of the iteratively detected LSSTS system.Finally, a distributed turbo coding scheme is proposed that combines the benefits of turbo coding and cooperative communication, where iterative detection is employed by exchanging extrinsic information between the decoders of different single-antenna-aided users. Specifically, the effect of the errors induced in the first phase of cooperation, where the two users exchange their data, on the performance of the uplink in studied, while considering different fading channel characteristics

Space-Time Block Coding for Wireless Communications

Abstract Wireless designers constantly seek to improve the spectrum efficiency/capacity, coverage of wireless networks, and link reliability. Space-time wireless technology that uses multiple antennas along with appropriate signalling and receiver techniques offers a powerful tool for improving wireless performance. Some aspects of this technology have already been incorporated into various wireless network and cellular mobile standards. More advanced MIMO techniques are planned for future mobile networks, wireless local area network (LANs) and wide area network (WANs). Multiple antennas when used with appropriate space-time coding (STC) techniques can achieve huge performance gains in multipath fading wireless links. The fundamentals of space-time coding were established in the context of space-time Trellis coding by Tarokh, Seshadri and Calderbank. Alamouti then proposed a simple transmit diversity coding scheme and based on this scheme, general space-time block codes were further introduced by Tarokh, Jafarkhani and Calderbank. Since then space-time coding has soon evolved into a most vibrant research area in wireless communications. Recently, space-time block coding has been adopted in the third generation mobile communication standard which aims to deliver true multimedia capability. Space-time block codes have a most attractive feature of the linear decoding/detection algorithms and thus become the most popular among different STC techniques. The decoding of space-time block codes, however, requires knowledge of channels at the receiver and in most publications, channel parameters are assumed known, which is not practical due to the changing channel conditions in real communication systems. This thesis is mainly concerned with space-time block codes and their performances. The focus is on signal detection and channel estimation for wireless communication systems using space-time block codes. We first present the required background materials, discuss different implementations of space-time block codes using different numbers of transmit and receive antennas, and evaluate the performances of space-time block codes using binary phase-shift keying (BPSK), quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK), and quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM). Then, we investigate Tarokh’s joint detection scheme with no channel state information thoroughly, and also propose a new general joint channel estimation and data detection scheme that works with QPSK and 16-QAM and different numbers of antennas. Next, we further study Yang’s channel estimation scheme, and expand this channel estimation scheme to work with 16-QAM modulation. After dealing with complex signal constellations, we subsequently develop the equations and algorithms of both channel estimation schemes to further test their performances when real signals are used (BPSK modulation). Then, we simulate and compare the performances of the two new channel estimation schemes when employing different number of transmit and receive antennas and when employing different modulation methods. Finally, conclusions are drawn and further research areas are discussed

Transmission and detection for space-time block coding and v-blast systems

This dissertation focuses on topics of data transmission and detection of space -time block codes (STBC). The STBCs can be divided into two main categories, namely, the orthogonal space-time block codes (OSTBC) and the quasi-orthogonal space-time codes (Q-OSTBC). The space-time block coded systems from transceiver design perspective for both narrow-band and frequency selective wireless environment are studied. The dissertation also processes and studies a fast iterative detection scheme for a high-rate space-time transmission system, the V-BLAST system. In Chapter 2, a new OSTBC scheme with full-rate and full-diversity, which can be used on QPSK transceiver systems with four transmit antennas and any number of receivers is studied. The newly proposed coding scheme is a non-linear coding. Compared with full-diversity QOSTBC, an obvious advantage of our proposed new OSTBC is that the coded signals transmitted through all four transmit antennas do not experience any constellation expansion. In Chapter 3, a new fast coherent detection algorithm is proposed to provide maximum likelihood (ML) detection for Q-OSTBC. The new detection scheme is also very useful to analysis the diversity property of Q-OSTBC and design full diversity Q-OSTBC codes. The complexity of the new proposed detection algorithm can be independent to the modulation order and is especially suitable for high data rate transmission. In Chapter 4, the space-time coding schemes in frequency selective channels are studied. Q-OSTC transmission and detection schemes are firstly extended for frequency selective wireless environment. A new block based quasi-orthogonal space-time block encoding and decoding (Q-OSTBC) scheme for a wireless system with four transmit antennas is proposed in frequency selective fading channels. The proposed MLSE detection scheme effectively combats channel dispersion and frequency selectivity due to multipath, yet still provides full diversity gain. However, since the computational complexity of MLSE detection increases exponentially with the maximum delay of the frequency selective channel, a fast sub-optimal detection scheme using MMSE equalizer is also proposed, especially for channels with large delays. The Chapter 5 focuses on the V-BLAST system, an important high-rate space-time data transmission scheme. A reduced complexity ML detection scheme for VBLAST systems, which uses a pre-decoder guided local exhaustive search is proposed and studied. A polygon searching algorithm and an ordered successive interference cancellation (O-SIC) sphere searching algorithm are major components of the proposed multi-step ML detectors. At reasonable high SNRs, our algorithms have low complexity comparable to that of O-SIC algorithm, while they provide significant performance improvement. Another new low complexity algorithm termed ordered group-wise interference cancellation (O-GIC) is also proposed for the detection of high dimensional V-BLAST systems. The O-GIC based detection scheme is a sub-optimal detection scheme, however, it outperforms the O-SIC