Cooperative diversity using MIMO systems

Multipath fading is one of the primary factors for degrading the performance in a wireless network. Information theoretic and past research suggest the use various diversity techniques to combat fading in wireless networks. Antenna diversity, a form of diversity technique, when incorporated in a wireless transceiver increases the system capacity and is one of the effective methods to combat fading in wireless systems. Also, recent research by Laneman et.al., Sendonaris et.al. suggests that cooperation among users in a wireless networks is an effective approach for a better signal reception in multipath fading environments. The diversity gains obtained by cooperation among the users of a wireless network is termed as cooperative diversity . Although, prior research in cooperative diversity considers users equipped with single antenna, in practical scenarios users may be able to accommodate multiple antennas due to the recent advanced research in semiconductor industry. Hence, the primary purpose of this thesis is to design, simulate and analyze an end-end performance of multi-antenna wireless systems employing cooperative multi antenna relay nodes so as to exploit the cooperative diversity and antenna diversity simultaneously in a wireless networks. Three main contributions to the area of cooperative multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless systems is presented in this thesis. First, we perform information theoretic analysis to study the impact of antenna arrays on cooperative wireless networks and propose the best possible distribution of antenna arrays among the three terminals of a simple three terminal cooperative relay network. Second, we design, simulate, and analyze a cooperative multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless systems employing orthogonal space-time block codes as proposed by Alamouti in 1998 with a decode-and-forward (DF) relay terminal. We implement a maximal ratio combining receiver that provides almost twice the diversity gain with respect to point-point multiple input multiple output link. Finally, we implement a practical receiver for cooperative reception using multiple antennas at all nodes based on Bell-Labs Layered Space Time architecture (BLAST). We incorporate a practical adaptive decode-and-forward (DF) relaying technique for reliable signal retransmission for both Alamouti space-time coding and the BLAST schemes. Results presented in terms of bit error rates and throughput show that remarkable performance gains are achievable by combining the concepts drawn from space-time coding, cooperative relaying and array processing

Distributed transmission schemes for wireless communication networks

In this thesis new techniques are presented to achieve performance enhancement in wireless cooperative networks. In particular, techniques to improve transmission rate and maximise end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio are described. An offset transmission scheme with full interference cancellation for a wireless cooperative network with frequency flat links and four relays is introduced. This method can asymptotically, as the size of the symbol block increases, achieve maximum transmission rate together with full cooperative diversity provided the destination node has multiple antennas. A novel full inter-relay interference cancellation method that also achieves asymptotically maximum rate and full cooperative diversity is then designed for which the destination node only requires a single antenna. Two- and four-relay selection schemes for wireless cooperative amplify and forward type networks are then studied in order to overcome the degradation of end-to-end bit error rate performance in single-relay selection networks when there are feedback errors in the relay to destination node links. Outage probability analysis for a four-relay selection scheme without interference is undertaken. Outage probability analysis of a full rate distributed transmission scheme with inter-relay interference is also studied for best single- and two-relay selection networks. The advantage of multi-relay selection when no interference occurs and when adjacent cell interference is present at the relay nodes is then shown theoretically. Simulation results for outage probability analysis are included which support the theoretical expressions. Finally, outage probability analysis of a cognitive amplify and forward type relay network with cooperation between certain secondary users, chosen by best single-, two- and four-relay selection is presented. The cognitive amplify and forward relays are assumed to exploit an underlay approach, which requires adherence to an interference constraint on the primary user. The relay selection scheme is performed either with a max−min strategy or one based on maximising exact end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio. The outage probability analyses are again confirmed by numerical evaluations

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

Cross-layer design for wireless sensor relay networks

In recent years, the idea of wireless sensor networks has gathered a great deal of attention. A distributed wireless sensor network may have hundreds of small sensor nodes. Each individual sensor contains both processing and communication elements and is designed in some degree to monitor the environmental events specified by the end user of the network. Information about the environment is gathered by sensors and delivered to a remote collector. This research conducts an investigation with respect to the energy efficiency and the cross-layer design in wireless sensor networks. Motivated by the multipath utilization and transmit diversity capability of space-time block codes (STBC), a new energy efficient cooperative routing algorithm using the STBC is proposed. Furthermore, the steady state performance of the network is analyzed via a Markov chain model. The proposed approach in this dissertation can significantly reduce the energy consumption and improve the power efficiency. This work also studies the application of differential STBC for wireless multi-hop sensor networks over fading channels. Using differential STBC, multiple sensors are selected acting as parallel relay nodes to receive and relay collected data. The proposed technique offers low complexity, since it does not need to track or estimate the time-varying channel coefficients. Analysis and simulation results show that the new approach can improve the system performance. This dissertation models the cooperative relay method for sensor networks using a Markov chain and an M/G/1 queuing system. The analytical and simulation results indicate system improvements in terms of throughput and end-to-end delay. Moreover, the impact of network resource constraints on the performance of multi-hop sensor networks with cooperative relay is also investigated. The system performance under assumptions of infinite buffer or finite buffer sizes is studied, the go through delay and the packet drop probability are improved compared to traditional single relay method. Moreover, a packet collision model for crucial nodes in wireless sensor networks is introduced. Using such a model, a space and network diversity combining (SNDC) method is designed to separate the collision at the collector. The network performance in terms of throughput, delay, energy consumption and efficiency are analyzed and evaluated

Cooperative Detection and Network Coding in Wireless Networks

In cooperative communication systems, multiple terminals in wireless networks share their antennas and resources for information exchange and processing. Recently, cooperative communications have been shown to achieve significant performance improvements in terms of transmission reliability, coverage area extension, and network throughput, with respect to existing classical communication systems. This dissertation is focused on two important applications of cooperative communications, namely: (i) cooperative distributed detection in wireless sensor networks, and (ii) many-to-many communications via cooperative space-time network coding. The first application of cooperative communications presented in this dissertation is concerned with the analysis and modeling of the deployment of cooperative relay nodes in wireless sensor networks. Particularly, in dense wireless sensor networks, sensor nodes continuously observe and collect measurements of a physical phenomenon. Such observations can be highly correlated, depending on the spatial separation between the sensor nodes as well as how the physical properties of the phenomenon are evolving over time. This unique characteristic of wireless sensor networks can be effectively exploited with cooperative communications and relays deployment such that the distributed detection performance is significantly improved as well as the energy efficiency. In particular, this dissertation studies the Amplify-and-Forward (AF) relays deployment as a function of the correlation of the observations and analyzes the achievable spatial diversity gains as compared with the classical wireless sensor networks. Moreover, it is demonstrated that the gains of cooperation can be further leveraged to alleviate bandwidth utilization inefficiencies in current sensor networks. Specifically, the deployment of cognitive AF cooperative relays to exploit empty/under-utilized time-slots and the resulting energy savings are studied, quantified and compared. The multiple terminal communication and information exchange form the second application of cooperative communications in this dissertation. Specifically, the novel concept of Space-Time-Network Coding (STNC) that is concerned with formulation of the many-to-many cooperative communications over Decode-and-Forward (DF) nodes is studied and analyzed. Moreover, the exact theoretical analysis as well as upper-bounds on the network symbol error rate performance are derived. In addition, the tradeoff between the number of communicating nodes and the timing synchronization errors is analyzed and provided as a network design guideline. With STNC, it is illustrated that cooperative diversity gains are fully exploited per node and significant performance improvements are achieved. It is concluded that the STNC scheme serves as a potential many-to-many cooperative communications scheme and that its scope goes much further beyond the generic source-relay-destination communications

Optimal Relay Selection for Physical-Layer Security in Cooperative Wireless Networks

In this paper, we explore the physical-layer security in cooperative wireless networks with multiple relays where both amplify-and-forward (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF) protocols are considered. We propose the AF and DF based optimal relay selection (i.e., AFbORS and DFbORS) schemes to improve the wireless security against eavesdropping attack. For the purpose of comparison, we examine the traditional AFbORS and DFbORS schemes, denoted by T-AFbORS and TDFbORS, respectively. We also investigate a so-called multiple relay combining (MRC) framework and present the traditional AF and DF based MRC schemes, called T-AFbMRC and TDFbMRC, where multiple relays participate in forwarding the source signal to destination which then combines its received signals from the multiple relays. We derive closed-form intercept probability expressions of the proposed AFbORS and DFbORS (i.e., P-AFbORS and P-DFbORS) as well as the T-AFbORS, TDFbORS, T-AFbMRC and T-DFbMRC schemes in the presence of eavesdropping attack. We further conduct an asymptotic intercept probability analysis to evaluate the diversity order performance of relay selection schemes and show that no matter which relaying protocol is considered (i.e., AF and DF), the traditional and proposed optimal relay selection approaches both achieve the diversity order M where M represents the number of relays. In addition, numerical results show that for both AF and DF protocols, the intercept probability performance of proposed optimal relay selection is strictly better than that of the traditional relay selection and multiple relay combining methods.Comment: 13 page

IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY (ACCEPTED) 1 An Energy-Efficient Uncoordinated Cooperative Scheme with Uncertain Relay Distribution Intensity

Abstract-Due to signal fading and user mobility in wireless networks, quality-of-service (QoS) provisioning for wireless services becomes more challenging. As a promising technique, cooperative communications make use of the broadcasting nature of wireless medium to facilitate data transmission, and thereby reduce energy consumption. However, in many studies on wireless cooperative diversity, it is often assumed that the number of relays or the relay distribution intensity is known a priori. In this paper, we relax such assumption and propose an algorithm to estimate the relay intensity for a backoff-based cooperative scheme, where the relays are distributed as a homogeneous Poisson point process (PPP). It is proved that the algorithm can converge to an optimal solution with the minimum estimation error. Based on the estimated relay intensity, we further investigate a distributed energy saving strategy, which selectively turns off some relays to reduce energy consumption while maintaining the required transmission success probability. The performance of the proposed cooperative scheme is analytically evaluated with respect to the collision probability. The numerical and simulation results demonstrate the high accuracy and efficiency of the intensity estimation algorithm and also validate the theoretical analysis. Moreover, the proposed cooperative scheme exhibits significant energy saving and satisfactory transmission performance, which offers a good match to accommodate green communications in wireless networks. Index Terms-Cooperative wireless networks, distributed relaying, intensity estimation, energy efficiency

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

Rate enhancement and multi-relay selection schemes for application in wireless cooperative networks

In this thesis new methods are presented to achieve performance enhancement in wireless cooperative networks. In particular, techniques to improve transmission rate, mitigate asynchronous transmission and maximise end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio are described. An offset transmission scheme with full interference cancellation for a two-hop synchronous network with frequency flat links and four relays is introduced. This approach can asymptotically, as the symbol block size increases, achieve maximum transmission rate together with full cooperative diversity provided the destination node has multiple antennas. A novel full inter-relay interference cancellation method that also achieves asymptotically maximum rate and full cooperative diversity is then designed which only requires a single antenna at the destination node. Extension to asynchronous networks is then considered through the use of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) type transmission with a cyclic prefix, and interference cancellation techniques are designed for situations when synchronization errors are present in only the second hop or both the first and second hop. End-to-end bit error rate evaluations, with and without outer coding, are used to assess the performance of the various offset transmission schemes. Multi-relay selection methods for cooperative amplify and forward type networks are then studied in order to overcome the degradation of end-to-end bit error rate performance in single-relay selection networks when there are feedback errors in the destination to relay node links. Outage probability analysis for two and four relay selection is performed to show the advantage of multi-relay selection when no interference occurs and when adjacent cell interference is present both at the relay nodes and the destination node. Simulation studies are included which support the theoretical expressions. Finally, outage probability analysis of a cognitive amplify and forward type relay network with cooperation between certain secondary users, chosen by single and multi-relay (two and four) selection is presented. The cognitive relays are assumed to exploit an underlay approach, which requires adherence to an interference constraint on the primary user. The relay selection is performed either with a max-min strategy or one based on maximising exact end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio. The analyses are again confirmed by numerical evaluations

Efficient Power Allocation Schemes for Hybrid Decode-Amplify-Forward Relay Based Wireless Cooperative Network

Cooperative communication in various wireless domains, such as cellular networks, sensor networks and wireless ad hoc networks, has gained significant interest recently. In cooperative network, relays between the source and the destination, form a virtual MIMO that creates spatial diversity at the destination, which overcomes the fading effect of wireless channels. Such relay assisted schemes have potential to increase the channel capacity and network coverage. Most current research on cooperative communication are focused broadly on efficient protocol design and analysis, resource allocation, relay selection and cross layer optimization. The first part of this research aims at introducing hybrid decode-amplify-forward (HDAF) relaying in a distributed Alamouti coded cooperative network. Performance of such adaptive relaying scheme in terms of symbol error rate (SER), outage probability and average channel capacity is derived theoretically and verified through simulation based study. This work is further extended to a generalized multi HDAF relaying cooperative frame work. Various efficient power allocation schemes such as maximized channel capacity based, minimized SER based and total power minimization based are proposed and their superiority in performance over the existing equal power allocation scheme is demonstrated in the simulation results. Due to the broadcast nature of wireless transmission, information privacy in wireless networks becomes a critical issue. In the context of physical layer security, the role of multi HDAF relaying based cooperative model with control jamming and multiple eavesdroppers is explored in the second part of the research. Performance evaluation parameters such as secrecy rate, secrecy outage and intercept probability are derived theoretically. Further the importance of the proposed power allocation schemes in enhancing the secrecy performance of the network in the presence of multiple eavesdroppers is studied in detail through simulation based study and analysis. For all the proposed power allocation schemes in this research, the optimization problems are defined under total power constraint and are solved using Lagrange multiplier method and also evolutionary algorithms such as Differential evolution and Invasive Weed Optimization are employed. Monte Carlo simulation based study is adopted throughout the research. It is concluded that HDAF relaying based wireless cooperative network with optimal power allocation schemes offers improved and reliable performance compared to conventional amplify forward and decode forward relaying schemes. Above research contributions will be applicable for future generation wireless cooperative networks