Advanced DSP Algorithms For Modern Wireless Communication Transceivers

A higher network throughput, a minimized delay and reliable communications are some of many goals that wireless communication standards, such as the fifthgeneration (5G) standard and beyond, intend to guarantee for its customers. Hence, many key innovations are currently being proposed and investigated by researchers in the academic and industry circles to fulfill these goals. This dissertation investigates some of the proposed techniques that aim at increasing the spectral efficiency, enhancing the energy efficiency, and enabling low latency wireless communications systems. The contributions lay in the evaluation of the performance of several proposed receiver architectures as well as proposing novel digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms to enhance the performance of radio transceivers. Particularly, the effects of several radio frequency (RF) impairments on the functionality of a new class of wireless transceivers, the full-duplex transceivers, are thoroughly investigated. These transceivers are then designed to operate in a relaying scenario, where relay selection and beamforming are applied in a relaying network to increase its spectral efficiency. The dissertation then investigates the use of greedy algorithms in recovering orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals by using sparse equalizers, which carry out the equalization in a more efficient manner when the low-complexity single tap OFDM equalizer can no longer recover the received signal due to severe interferences. The proposed sparse equalizers are shown to perform close to conventional optimal and dense equalizers when the OFDM signals are impaired by interferences caused by the insertion of an insufficient cyclic prefix and RF impairments

Timing and Carrier Synchronization in Wireless Communication Systems: A Survey and Classification of Research in the Last 5 Years

Timing and carrier synchronization is a fundamental requirement for any wireless communication system to work properly. Timing synchronization is the process by which a receiver node determines the correct instants of time at which to sample the incoming signal. Carrier synchronization is the process by which a receiver adapts the frequency and phase of its local carrier oscillator with those of the received signal. In this paper, we survey the literature over the last 5 years (2010–2014) and present a comprehensive literature review and classification of the recent research progress in achieving timing and carrier synchronization in single-input single-output (SISO), multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), cooperative relaying, and multiuser/multicell interference networks. Considering both single-carrier and multi-carrier communication systems, we survey and categorize the timing and carrier synchronization techniques proposed for the different communication systems focusing on the system model assumptions for synchronization, the synchronization challenges, and the state-of-the-art synchronization solutions and their limitations. Finally, we envision some future research directions

Power Allocation in Wireless Relay Networks

This thesis is mainly concerned with power allocation issues in wireless relay networks where a single or multiple relays assist transmission from a single or multiple sources to a destination. First, a network model with a single source and multiple relays is considered, in which both cases of orthogonal and non--orthogonal relaying are investigated. For the case of orthogonal relaying, two power allocation schemes corresponding to two partial channel state information (CSI) assumptions are proposed. Given the lack of full and perfect CSI, appropriate signal processing at the relays and/or destination is also developed. The performance behavior of the system with power allocation between the source and the relays is also analyzed. For the case of non-orthogonal relaying, it is demonstrated that optimal power allocation is not sufficiently effective. Instead, a relay beamforming scheme is proposed. A comprehensive comparison between the orthogonal relaying with power allocation scheme and the non-orthogonal relaying with beamforming scheme is then carried out, which reveals several interesting conclusions with respect to both error performance and system throughput. In the second part of the thesis, a network model with multiple sources and a single relay is considered. The transmission model is applicable for uplink channels in cellular mobile systems in which multiple mobile terminals communicate with the base station with the help of a single relay station. Single-carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) technique with frequency domain equalization is adopted in order to avoid the amplification of the multiple access interference at the relay. Minimizing the transmit power at the relay and optimizing the fairness among the sources in terms of throughput are the two objectives considered in implementing power allocation schemes. The problems are visualized as water-filling and water-discharging models and two optimal power allocation schemes are proposed, accordingly. Finally, the last part of the thesis is extended to a network model with multiple sources and multiple relays. The orthogonal multiple access technique is employed in order to avoid multiple access interference. Proposed is a joint optimal beamforming and power allocation scheme in which an alternative optimization technique is applied to deal with the non-convexity of the power allocation problem. Furthermore, recognizing the high complexity and large overhead information exchange when the number of sources and relays increases, a relay selection scheme is proposed. Since each source is supported by at most one relay, the feedback information from the destination to each relay can be significantly reduced. Using an equal power allocation scheme, relay selection is still an NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem. Nevertheless, the proposed sub-optimal scheme yields a comparable performance with a much lower computational complexity and can be well suited for practical systems

Power efficient designs for 5G wireless networks

In this dissertation, to step forward towards green communication, we study power efficient solutions in three potential 5G wireless networks, namely an asynchronous multicarrier two-way Amplify-and-Forward (AF) relay network, a multi-carrier two-way Filter-and-Forward (FF) network, and a massive Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) network using the Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) scheme. In the first network, two transceivers using the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) scheme communicate through multiple relays in an asynchronous manner. As an attempt to design a simple solution, we assume the AF protocol at the relays. We jointly design the power allocation and distributed beamforming coefficients to minimize the total transmission power subject to sum-rate constraints. We propose an optimal semi-closed form solution to this problem and we show that at the optimum, the end-to-end channel has only one non-zero tap. To extend the first work to high data-rate scenarios, we consider a second relaying-based network which consists of two OFDM-based transceivers and multiple FF relays. We propose two approaches to tackle a total transmission power minimization problem: a gradient steepest descent-based technique, and a low-complexity method enforcing a frequency-flat Channel Impulse Response (CIR) response at the optimum. As the last network, we consider a massive MIMO-NOMA network with both co-located and distributed structures. We study the joint problem of power allocation and user clustering to minimize the total transmit power subject to QoS constraints. We propose a novel clustering algorithm which groups the correlated users into the same cluster and has an unique ability to automatically switch between using the spatial-domain-MIMO and the power-domain-NOMA. We show that our proposed method can substantially improve the feasibility probability and power consumption performance compared to existing methods

Quantifying Potential Energy Efficiency Gain in Green Cellular Wireless Networks

Conventional cellular wireless networks were designed with the purpose of providing high throughput for the user and high capacity for the service provider, without any provisions of energy efficiency. As a result, these networks have an enormous Carbon footprint. In this paper, we describe the sources of the inefficiencies in such networks. First we present results of the studies on how much Carbon footprint such networks generate. We also discuss how much more mobile traffic is expected to increase so that this Carbon footprint will even increase tremendously more. We then discuss specific sources of inefficiency and potential sources of improvement at the physical layer as well as at higher layers of the communication protocol hierarchy. In particular, considering that most of the energy inefficiency in cellular wireless networks is at the base stations, we discuss multi-tier networks and point to the potential of exploiting mobility patterns in order to use base station energy judiciously. We then investigate potential methods to reduce this inefficiency and quantify their individual contributions. By a consideration of the combination of all potential gains, we conclude that an improvement in energy consumption in cellular wireless networks by two orders of magnitude, or even more, is possible.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1210.843

Adaptive relay techniques for OFDM-based cooperative communication systems

Cooperative communication has been considered as a cost-effective manner to exploit the spatial diversity, improve the quality-of-service and extend transmission coverage. However, there are many challenges faced by cooperative systems which use relays to forward signals to the destination, such as the accumulation of multipath channels, complex resource allocation with the bidirectional asymmetric traffic and reduction of transmission efficiency caused by additional relay overhead. In this thesis, we aim to address the above challenges of cooperative communications, and design the efficient relay systems. Starting with the channel accumulation problem in the amplify-and-forward relay system, we proposed two adaptive schemes for single/multiple-relay networks respectively. These schemes exploit an adaptive guard interval (GI) technique to cover the accumulated delay spread and enhance the transmission efficiency by limiting the overhead. The proposed GI scheme can be implemented without any extra control signal. Extending the adaptive GI scheme to multiple-relay systems, we propose a relay selection strategy which achieves the trade-off between the transmission reliability and overhead by considering both the channel gain and the accumulated delay spread. We then consider resource allocation problem in the two-way decode-and-forward relay system with asymmetric traffic loads. Two allocation algorithms are respectively investigated for time-division and frequency-division relay systems to maximize the end-to-end capacity of the two-way system under a capacity ratio constraint. For the frequency-division systems, a balanced end-to-end capacity is defined as the objective function which combines the requirements of maximizing the end-to-end capacity and achieving the capacity ratio. A suboptimal algorithm is proposed for the frequency-division systems which separates subcarrier allocation and time/power allocation. It can achieve the similar performance with the optimal one with reduced complexity. In order to further enhance the transmission reliability and maintaining low processing delay, we propose an equalize-and-forward (EF) relay scheme. The EF relay equalizes the channel between source and relay to eliminate the channel accumulation without signal regeneration. To reduce the processing time, an efficient parallel structure is applied in the EF relay. Numerical results show that the EF relay exhibits low outage probability at the same data rate as compared to AF and DF schemes

On implementation aspects of decode and forward and compress and forward relay protocols

In this work, the common relay protocols Decode-and-Forward and Compress-and-Forward (CF) are investigated from a practical point of view: This involves on the one hand the impact of imperfections like channel and carrier phase stimation errors and on the other hand, the question of how to implement relay protocol specific signal processing like quantization for CF which is modeled in information theory simply by additive quantizer noise. To evaluate the performance, achievable rates are determined either numerically with the help of the Max-Flow Min-Cut theorem or by link level simulations.Diese Arbeit untersucht die Relay-Protokolle Decode-and-Forward und Compress-and-Forward (CF) mit dem Fokus auf einer praktischen Umsetzung. Es werden sowohl Störeinflüsse wie Kanal- und Phasenschätzfehler betrachtet als auch spezielle Kompressionsverfahren für das CF Protokoll implementiert. Von großer Bedeutung ist hier die Kompression in Form der Quantisierung, weil diese in der Informationstheorie lediglich durch Quantisierungsrauschen modelliert wird. Zur Auswertung der Leistungsfähigkeit der Protokolle werden die erzielbaren Raten entweder numerisch oder durch Simulation bestimmt

Asynchronous bi-directional relay-assisted communication networks

We consider an asynchronous bi-directional relay network, consisting of two singleantenna transceivers and multiple single-antenna relays, where the transceiver-relay paths are subject to different relaying and/or propagation delays. Such a network can be viewed as a multipath channel which can cause inter-symbol-interference (ISI) in the signals received by the two transceivers. Hence, we model such a communication scheme as a frequency selective multipath channel which produces ISI at the two transceivers, when the data rates are relatively high. We study both multi- and single-carrier communication schemes in such networks. In a multi-carrier communication scheme, to tackle ISI, the transceivers employ an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) scheme to diagonalize the end-to-end channel. The relays use simple amplify-and-forward relaying, thereby materializing a distributed beamformer. For such a scheme, we propose two different algorithms, based on the max-min fair design approach, to calculate the subcarrier power loading at the transceivers as well as the relay beamforming weights. In a single-carrier communication, assuming a block transmission/reception scheme, block channel equalization is used at the both transceivers to combat the inter-blockinterference (IBI). Assuming a limited total transmit power budget, we minimize the total mean squared error (MSE) of the estimated received signals at the both transceivers by optimally obtaining the transceivers??? powers and the relay beamforming weight vector as well as the block channel equalizers at the two transceivers