Modified quasi-orthogonal space-time block coding in distributed wireless networks

Cooperative networks have developed as a useful technique that can achieve the same advantage as multi-input and multi-output (MIMO) wireless systems such as spatial diversity, whilst resolving the difficulties of co-located multiple antennas at individual nodes and avoiding the effect of path-loss and shadowing. Spatial diversity in cooperative networks is known as cooperative diversity, and can enhance system reliability without sacrificing the scarce bandwidth resource or consuming more transmit power. It enables single-antenna terminals in a wireless relay network to share their antennas to form a virtual antenna array on the basis of their distributed locations. However, there remain technical challenges to maximize the benefit of cooperative communications, e.g. data rate, asynchronous transmission and outage. In this thesis, therefore, firstly, a modified distributed quasi-orthogonal space-time block coding (M-D-QO-STBC) scheme with increased code gain distance (CGD) for one-way and two-way amplify-and-forward wireless relay networks is proposed. This modified code is designed from set partitioning a larger codebook formed from two quasi-orthogonal space time block codes with different signal rotations then the subcodes are combined and pruned to arrive at the modified codebook with the desired rate in order to increase the CGD. Moreover, for higher rate codes the code distance is maximized by using a genetic algorithm to search for the optimum rotation matrix. This scheme has very good performance and significant coding gain over existing codes such as the open-loop and closed-loop QO-STBC schemes. In addition, the topic of outage probability analysis in the context of multi-relay selection from $N$ available relay nodes for one-way amplify-and-forward cooperative relay networks is considered together with the best relay selection, the $N^{th}$ relay selection and best four relay selection in two-way amplify-and-forward cooperative relay networks. The relay selection is performed either on the basis of a max-min strategy or one based on maximizing exact end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio. Furthermore, in this thesis, robust schemes for cooperative relays based on the M-D-QO-STBC scheme for both one-way and two-way asynchronous cooperative relay networks are considered to overcome the issue of a synchronism in wireless cooperative relay networks. In particular, an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) data structure is employed with cyclic prefix (CP) insertion at the source in the one-way cooperative relay network and at the two terminal nodes in the two-way cooperative network to combat the effects of time asynchronism. As such, this technique can effectively cope with the effects of timing errors. Finally, outage probability performance of a proposed amplify-and-forward cooperative cognitive relay network is evaluated and the cognitive relays are assumed to exploit an overlay approach. A closed form expression for the outage probability for multi-relay selection cooperation over Rayleigh frequency flat fading channels is derived for perfect and imperfect spectrum acquisitions. Furthermore, the M-QO-STBC scheme is also proposed for use in wireless cognitive relay networks. MATLAB and Maple software based simulations are employed throughout the thesis to support the analytical results and assess the performance of new algorithms and methods

DMT Optimal Cooperative Protocols with Destination-Based Selection of the Best Relay

We design a cooperative protocol in the context of wireless mesh networks in order to increase the reliability of wireless links. Destination terminals ask for cooperation when they fail in decoding data frames transmitted by source terminals. In that case, each destination terminal D calls a specific relay terminal B with a signaling frame to help its transmission with source terminal S. To select appropriate relays, destination terminals maintain tables of relay terminals, one for each possible source address. These tables are constituted by passively overhearing ongoing transmissions. Hence, when cooperation is needed between S and D, and when a relay B is found by terminal D in the relay table associated with terminal S, the destination terminal sends a negative acknowledgment frame that contains the address of B. When the best relay B has successfully decoded the source message, it sends a copy of the data frame to D using a selective decode-andforward transmission scheme. The on-demand approach allows maximization of the spatial multiplexing gain and the cooperation of the best relay allows maximization of the spatial diversity order. Hence, the proposed protocol achieves optimal diversitymultiplexing trade-off performance. Moreover, this performance is achieved through a collision-free selection process

Distributed space-time block coding in cooperative relay networks with application in cognitive radio

Spatial diversity is an effective technique to combat the effects of severe fading in wireless environments. Recently, cooperative communications has emerged as an attractive communications paradigm that can introduce a new form of spatial diversity which is known as cooperative diversity, that can enhance system reliability without sacrificing the scarce bandwidth resource or consuming more transmit power. It enables single-antenna terminals in a wireless relay network to share their antennas to form a virtual antenna array on the basis of their distributed locations. As such, the same diversity gains as in multi-input multi-output systems can be achieved without requiring multiple-antenna terminals. In this thesis, a new approach to cooperative communications via distributed extended orthogonal space-time block coding (D-EO-STBC) based on limited partial feedback is proposed for cooperative relay networks with three and four relay nodes and then generalized for an arbitrary number of relay nodes. This scheme can achieve full cooperative diversity and full transmission rate in addition to array gain, and it has certain properties that make it alluring for practical systems such as orthogonality, flexibility, low computational complexity and decoding delay, and high robustness to node failure. Versions of the closed-loop D-EO-STBC scheme based on cooperative orthogonal frequency division multiplexing type transmission are also proposed for both flat and frequency-selective fading channels which can overcome imperfect synchronization in the network. As such, this proposed technique can effectively cope with the effects of fading and timing errors. Moreover, to increase the end-to-end data rate, this scheme is extended for two-way relay networks through a three-time slot framework. On the other hand, to substantially reduce the feedback channel overhead, limited feedback approaches based on parameter quantization are proposed. In particular, an optimal one-bit partial feedback approach is proposed for the generalized D-O-STBC scheme to maximize the array gain. To further enhance the end-to-end bit error rate performance of the cooperative relay system, a relay selection scheme based on D-EO-STBC is then proposed. Finally, to highlight the utility of the proposed D-EO-STBC scheme, an application to cognitive radio is studied

Cooperative Transmission for Underwater Acoustic Communications

Underwater acoustic channels normally have low data rate, long propagation delay, severe multipath effect, and time varying fading. Cooperative transmission is a new wireless communication technique in which diversity gain is achieved by utilizing relay nodes as virtual antennae. In this paper, we investigate cooperative transmission techniques for underwater acoustic communications. First, we study the performance of several cooperative transmission schemes, originally designed for radio communications, in an underwater scenario. Second, by taking advantage of the low propagation speed of sound, we design a new wave cooperative transmission scheme. In this scheme, the relay nodes amplify the signal received from the source node, and then forward the signal immediately to the destination. The goal is to alter the multipath effect at the receiver. Third, we derive the performance upper bound for the proposed wave cooperative transmission scheme. The simulation results show that the proposed wave cooperative transmission has significant advantages over the traditional direct transmission and the existing cooperative transmission schemes originally designed for radio wireless networks. ©2008 IEEE

On the Performance Analysis of Cooperative Vehicular Communication

Vehicular networking is envisioned to be a key technology area for significant growth in the coming years. Although the expectations for this emerging technology are set very high, many practical aspects remain still unsolved for a vast deployment of vehicular networks. This dissertation addresses the enabling physical layer techniques to meet the challenges in vehicular networks operating in mobile wireless environments. Considering the infrastructure-less nature of vehicular networks, we envision cooperative diversity well positioned to meet the demanding requirements of vehicular networks with their underlying distributed structure. Cooperative diversity has been proposed as a powerful means to enhance the performance of high-rate communications over wireless fading channels. It realizes spatial diversity advantages in a distributed manner where a node uses others antennas to relay its message creating a virtual antenna array. Although cooperative diversity has garnered much attention recently, it has not yet been fully explored in the context of vehicular networks considering the unique characteristics of vehicular networks, this dissertation provides an error performance analysis study of cooperative transmission schemes for various deployment and traffic scenarios. In the first part of this dissertation, we investigate the performance of a cooperative vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) system with amplify-and-forward relaying for typical traffic scenarios under city/urban settings and a highway area. We derive pairwise error probability (PEP) expressions and demonstrate the achievable diversity gains. The effect of imperfect channel state information (CSI) is also studied through an asymptotical PEP analysis. We present Monte-Carlo simulations to confirm the analytical derivations and present the error rate performance of the vehicular scheme with perfect and imperfect-CSI. In the second part, we consider road-to-vehicle (R2V) communications in which roadside access points use cooperating vehicles as relaying terminals. Under the assumption of decode-and-forward relaying, we derive PEP expressions for single-relay and multi-relay scenarios. In the third part, we consider a cooperative multi-hop V2V system in which direct transmission is not possible and investigate its performance through the PEP derivation and diversity gain analysis. Monte-Carlo simulations are further provided to con firm the analytical derivations and provide insight into the error rate performance improvement

Cooperative Transmission Protocols with High Spectral Efficiency and High Diversity Order Using Multiuser Detection and Network Coding

Cooperative transmission is an emerging communication technique that takes advantages of the broadcast nature of wireless channels. However, due to low spectral efficiency and the requirement of orthogonal channels, its potential for use in future wireless networks is limited. In this paper, by making use of multiuser detection (MUD) and network coding, cooperative transmission protocols with high spectral efficiency, diversity order, and coding gain are developed. Compared with the traditional cooperative transmission protocols with single-user detection, in which the diversity gain is only for one source user, the proposed MUD cooperative transmission protocols have the merits that the improvement of one user's link can also benefit the other users. In addition, using MUD at the relay provides an environment in which network coding can be employed. The coding gain and high diversity order can be obtained by fully utilizing the link between the relay and the destination. From the analysis and simulation results, it is seen that the proposed protocols achieve higher diversity gain, better asymptotic efficiency, and lower bit error rate, compared to traditional MUD and to existing cooperative transmission protocols.Comment: to appear, in the proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Communications, Glasgow, Scotland, 24-28 June 200

Splitting algorithm for DMT optimal cooperative MAC protocols in wireless mesh networks

A cooperative protocol for wireless mesh networks is proposed in this paper. The protocol implements both on-demand relaying and a selection of the best relay terminal so only one terminal is relaying the source message when cooperation is needed. Two additional features are also proposed. The best relay is selected with a splitting algorithm. This approach allows fast relay selection within less than three time-slots, on average. Moreover, a pre-selection of relay candidates is performed prior to the splitting algorithm. Only terminals that are able to improve the direct path are pre-selected. So efficient cooperation is now guaranteed. We prove that this approach is optimal in terms of diversity-multiplexing trade-off. The protocol has been designed in the context of Nakagami-mfading channels. Simulation results show that the performance of the splitting algorithm does not depend on channel statistics