104 research outputs found
New challenges in wireless and free space optical communications
AbstractThis manuscript presents a survey on new challenges in wireless communication systems and discusses recent approaches to address some recently raised problems by the wireless community. At first a historical background is briefly introduced. Challenges based on modern and real life applications are then described. Up to date research fields to solve limitations of existing systems and emerging new technologies are discussed. Theoretical and experimental results based on several research projects or studies are briefly provided. Essential, basic and many self references are cited. Future researcher axes are briefly introduced
Holographic MIMO Communications: Theoretical Foundations, Enabling Technologies, and Future Directions
Future wireless systems are envisioned to create an endogenously
holography-capable, intelligent, and programmable radio propagation
environment, that will offer unprecedented capabilities for high spectral and
energy efficiency, low latency, and massive connectivity. A potential and
promising technology for supporting the expected extreme requirements of the
sixth-generation (6G) communication systems is the concept of the holographic
multiple-input multiple-output (HMIMO), which will actualize holographic radios
with reasonable power consumption and fabrication cost. The HMIMO is
facilitated by ultra-thin, extremely large, and nearly continuous surfaces that
incorporate reconfigurable and sub-wavelength-spaced antennas and/or
metamaterials. Such surfaces comprising dense electromagnetic (EM) excited
elements are capable of recording and manipulating impinging fields with utmost
flexibility and precision, as well as with reduced cost and power consumption,
thereby shaping arbitrary-intended EM waves with high energy efficiency. The
powerful EM processing capability of HMIMO opens up the possibility of wireless
communications of holographic imaging level, paving the way for signal
processing techniques realized in the EM-domain, possibly in conjunction with
their digital-domain counterparts. However, in spite of the significant
potential, the studies on HMIMO communications are still at an initial stage,
its fundamental limits remain to be unveiled, and a certain number of critical
technical challenges need to be addressed. In this survey, we present a
comprehensive overview of the latest advances in the HMIMO communications
paradigm, with a special focus on their physical aspects, their theoretical
foundations, as well as the enabling technologies for HMIMO systems. We also
compare the HMIMO with existing multi-antenna technologies, especially the
massive MIMO, present various...Comment: double column, 58 page
SMARAD - Centre of Excellence in Smart Radios and Wireless Research - Activity Report 2008 - 2010
Centre of Excellence in Smart Radios and Wireless Research (SMARAD), originally established with the name Smart and Novel Radios Research Unit, is aiming at world-class research and education in Future radio and antenna systems, Cognitive radio, Millimetre wave and THz techniques, Sensors, and Materials and energy, using its expertise in RF, microwave and millimetre wave engineering, in integrated circuit design for multi-standard radios as well as in wireless communications.
SMARAD has the Centre of Excellence in Research status from the Academy of Finland since 2002 (2002-2007 and 2008-2013). Currently SMARAD consists of five research groups from three departments, namely the Department of Radio Science and Engineering, Department of Micro and Nanosciences, and Department of Signal Processing and Acoustics, all within the Aalto University School of Electrical Engineering. The total number of employees within the research unit is about 100 including 8 professors, about 30 senior scientists and about 40 graduate students and several undergraduate students working on their Master thesis.
The relevance of SMARAD to the Finnish society is very high considering the high national income from exports of telecommunications and electronics products. The unit conducts basic research but at the same time maintains close co-operation with industry. Novel ideas are applied in design of new communication circuits and platforms, transmission techniques and antenna structures. SMARAD has a well-established network of co-operating partners in industry, research institutes and academia worldwide. It coordinates a few EU projects. The funding sources of SMARAD are diverse including the Academy of Finland, EU, ESA, Tekes, and Finnish and foreign telecommunications and semiconductor industry. As a byproduct of this research SMARAD provides highest-level education and supervision to graduate students in the areas of radio engineering, circuit design and communications through Aalto University and Finnish graduate schools such as Graduate School in Electronics, Telecommunications and Automation (GETA).
During years 2008 – 2010, 21 doctor degrees were awarded to the students of SMARAD. In the same period, the SMARAD researchers published 141 refereed journal articles and 333 conference papers
Eigenvalue based SNR Estimation for Cognitive Radio in Presence of Channel Correlation
In addition to spectrum sensing capability required by a Cognitive Radio (CR), Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) estimation of the primary signals is crucial in order to adapt its coverage area dynamically using underlay techniques. Furthermore, in practical scenarios, the fading channel may be correlated due to various causes such as insufficient scattering in the propagation path and antenna mutual coupling. In this context, we consider the SNR estimation problem for a CR in the presence of channel correlation. We study an eigenvaluebased SNR estimation technique for large-scale CR networks using asymptotic Random Matrix Theory (RMT). We carry out detailed theoretical analysis of the signal plus noise hypothesis to derive the asymptotic eigenvalue probability distribution function (a.e.p.d.f.) of the received signal’s covariance matrix in the presence of the correlated channel. Then an SNR estimation technique based on the derived a.e.p.d.f. is proposed for PU SNR in the presence of channel correlation and its performance is evaluated in terms of normalized Mean Square Error (MSE). It is shown that the PU SNR can be accurately estimated in the presence of channel correlation using the proposed technique even in low SNR region
Multi-Polarized Channel Characterization
Machine-to-machine (M2M) communication is becoming an important aspect of warehouse management, remote control, robotics, traffic control, supply chain management, fleet management and telemedicine. M2M is expected to become a significant portion of the Industrial Internet and, more broadly, the Internet of Things (IoT). The environments in which M2M systems are expected to operate may be challenging in terms of radio wave propagation due to their cluttered, multipath nature, which can cause deep signal fades and signal depolarization. Polarization diversity in two dimensions is a well-known technique to mitigate such fades. But in the presence of reflectors and retarders where multipath components arrive from any direction, we find the detrimental effects to be three-dimensional and thus consider herein mitigation approaches that are also 3D. The objectives of this dissertation are three. First, to provide a theoretical framework for depolarization in three dimensions. Second, to prepare a tripolar antenna design that meets cost, power consumption, and simplicity requirements of M2M applications and that can mitigate the expected channel effects. Finally, to develop new channel models in three dimensional space for wireless systems.
Accordingly, this dissertation presents a complete description of 3D electromagnetic fields, in terms of their polarization characteristics and confirms the advantage of employing tripolar antennas in multipath conditions. Furthermore, the experimental results illustrate that highly variable depolarization occurs across all three spatial dimensions and is dependent on small changes in frequency and space. Motivated by these empirical results, we worked with a collaborating institution to develop a three-dimensional tripolar antenna that can be integrated with a commercially available wireless sensor. This dissertation presents the testing results that show that this design significantly improves channels over traditional 2D approaches. The implications of tripolar antenna integration on M2M systems include reduction in energy use, longer wireless communication link distances, and/or greater link reliability. Similar results are shown for a planar antenna design that enables four different polarization configurations. Finally, the work presents a novel three-dimensional geometry-based stochastic channel model that builds the channel as a sum of shell-like sub-regions, where each sub-region consists of groups of multipath components. The model is validated with empirical data to show the approach may be used for system analyses in indoor environments
Antennas and Propagation Aspects for Emerging Wireless Communication Technologies
The increasing demand for high data rate applications and the delivery of zero-latency multimedia content drives technological evolutions towards the design and implementation of next-generation broadband wireless networks. In this context, various novel technologies have been introduced, such as millimeter wave (mmWave) transmission, massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems, and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) schemes in order to support the vision of fifth generation (5G) wireless cellular networks. The introduction of these technologies, however, is inextricably connected with a holistic redesign of the current transceiver structures, as well as the network architecture reconfiguration. To this end, ultra-dense network deployment along with distributed massive MIMO technologies and intermediate relay nodes have been proposed, among others, in order to ensure an improved quality of services to all mobile users. In the same framework, the design and evaluation of novel antenna configurations able to support wideband applications is of utmost importance for 5G context support. Furthermore, in order to design reliable 5G systems, the channel characterization in these frequencies and in the complex propagation environments cannot be ignored because it plays a significant role. In this Special Issue, fourteen papers are published, covering various aspects of novel antenna designs for broadband applications, propagation models at mmWave bands, the deployment of NOMA techniques, radio network planning for 5G networks, and multi-beam antenna technologies for 5G wireless communications
Implementation of Deep-Learning-Based CSI Feedback Reporting on 5G NR-Compliant Link-Level Simulator
Advances in machine learning have widened the range of its applications in many fields. In particular, deep learning has attracted much interest for its ability to provide solutions where the derivation of a rigorous mathematical model of the problem is troublesome. Our interest was drawn to the application of deep learning for channel state information feedback reporting, a crucial problem in frequency division duplexing (FDD) 5G networks, where knowledge of the channel characteristics is fundamental to exploiting the full potential of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. We designed a framework adopting a 5G New Radio convolutional neural network, called NR-CsiNet, with the aim of compressing the channel matrix experienced by the user at the receiver side and then reconstructing it at the transmitter side. In contrast to similar solutions, our framework is based on a 5G New Radio fully compliant simulator, thus implementing a channel generator based on the latest 3GPP 3-D channel model. Moreover, realistic 5G scenarios are considered by including multi-receiving antenna schemes and noisy downlink channel estimation. Simulations were carried out to analyze and compare the performance with current feedback reporting schemes, showing promising results for this approach from the point of view of the block error rate and throughput of the 5G data channel
Interference charecterisation, location and bandwidth estimation in emerging WiFi networks
Wireless LAN technology based on the IEEE 802.11 standard, commonly referred
to as WiFi, has been hugely successful not only for the last hop access to the Internet
in home, office and hotspot scenarios but also for realising wireless backhaul in mesh
networks and for point -to -point long- distance wireless communication. This success
can be mainly attributed to two reasons: low cost of 802.11 hardware from reaching
economies of scale, and operation in the unlicensed bands of wireless spectrum.The popularity of WiFi, in particular for indoor wireless access at homes and offices,
has led to significant amount of research effort looking at the performance issues
arising from various factors, including interference, CSMA/CA based MAC protocol
used by 802.11 devices, the impact of link and physical layer overheads on application
performance, and spatio-temporal channel variations. These factors affect the performance
of applications and services that run over WiFi networks. In this thesis, we
experimentally investigate the effects of some of the above mentioned factors in the
context of emerging WiFi network scenarios such as multi- interface indoor mesh networks,
802.11n -based WiFi networks and WiFi networks with virtual access points
(VAPs). More specifically, this thesis comprises of four experimental characterisation
studies: (i) measure prevalence and severity of co- channel interference in urban WiFi
deployments; (ii) characterise interference in multi- interface indoor mesh networks;
(iii) study the effect of spatio-temporal channel variations, VAPs and multi -band operation
on WiFi fingerprinting based location estimation; and (iv) study the effects of
newly introduced features in 802.11n like frame aggregation (FA) on available bandwidth
estimation.With growing density of WiFi deployments especially in urban areas, co- channel
interference becomes a major factor that adversely affects network performance. To
characterise the nature of this phenomena at a city scale, we propose using a new measurement
methodology called mobile crowdsensing. The idea is to leverage commodity
smartphones and the natural mobility of people to characterise urban WiFi co- channel
interference. Specifically, we report measurement results obtained for Edinburgh, a
representative European city, on detecting the presence of deployed WiFi APs via the
mobile crowdsensing approach. These show that few channels in 2.4GHz are heavily
used and there is hardly any activity in the 5GHz band even though relatively it
has a greater number of available channels. Spatial analysis of spectrum usage reveals
that co- channel interference among nearby APs operating in the same channel
can be a serious problem with around 10 APs contending with each other in many locations. We find that the characteristics of WiFi deployments at city -scale are similar
to those of WiFi deployments in public spaces of different indoor environments. We
validate our approach in comparison with wardriving, and also show that our findings
generally match with previous studies based on other measurement approaches. As
an application of the mobile crowdsensing based urban WiFi monitoring, we outline a
cloud based WiFi router configuration service for better interference management with
global awareness in urban areas.For mesh networks, the use of multiple radio interfaces is widely seen as a practical
way to achieve high end -to -end network performance and better utilisation of
available spectrum. However this gives rise to another type of interference (referred to
as coexistence interference) due to co- location of multiple radio interfaces. We show
that such interference can be so severe that it prevents concurrent successful operation
of collocated interfaces even when they use channels from widely different frequency
bands. We propose the use of antenna polarisation to mitigate such interference and
experimentally study its benefits in both multi -band and single -band configurations. In
particular, we show that using differently polarised antennas on a multi -radio platform
can be a helpful counteracting mechanism for alleviating receiver blocking and adjacent
channel interference phenomena that underlie multi -radio coexistence interference.
We also validate observations about adjacent channel interference from previous
studies via direct and microscopic observation of MAC behaviour.Location is an indispensable information for navigation and sensing applications.
The rapidly growing adoption of smartphones has resulted in a plethora of mobile
applications that rely on position information (e.g., shopping apps that use user position
information to recommend products to users and help them to find what they want
in the store). WiFi fingerprinting is a popular and well studied approach for indoor
location estimation that leverages the existing WiFi infrastructure and works based on
the difference in strengths of the received AP signals at different locations. However,
understanding the impact of WiFi network deployment aspects such as multi -band
APs and VAPs has not received much attention in the literature. We first examine the
impact of various aspects underlying a WiFi fingerprinting system. Specifically, we
investigate different definitions for fingerprinting and location estimation algorithms
across different indoor environments ranging from a multi- storey office building to
shopping centres of different sizes. Our results show that the fingerprint definition
is as important as the choice of location estimation algorithm and there is no single
combination of these two that works across all environments or even all floors of a given environment. We then consider the effect of WiFi frequency bands (e.g., 2.4GHz
and 5GHz) and the presence of virtual access points (VAPs) on location accuracy with
WiFi fingerprinting. Our results demonstrate that lower co- channel interference in the
5GHz band yields more accurate location estimation. We show that the inclusion of
VAPs has a significant impact on the location accuracy of WiFi fingerprinting systems;
we analyse the potential reasons to explain the findings.End -to -end available bandwidth estimation (ABE) has a wide range of uses, from
adaptive application content delivery, transport-level transmission rate adaptation and
admission control to traffic engineering and peer node selection in peer -to- peer /overlay
networks [ 1, 2]. Given its importance, it has been received much research attention in
both wired data networks and legacy WiFi networks (based on 802.11 a/b /g standards),
resulting in different ABE techniques and tools proposed to optimise different criteria
and suit different scenarios. However, effects of new MAC/PHY layer enhancements
in new and next generation WiFi networks (based on 802.11n and 802.11ac
standards) have not been studied yet. We experimentally find that among different
new features like frame aggregation, channel bonding and MIMO modes (spacial division
multiplexing), frame aggregation has the most harmful effect as it has direct
effect on ABE by distorting the measurement probing traffic pattern commonly used
to estimate available bandwidth. Frame aggregation is also specified in both 802.11n
and 802.1 lac standards as a mandatory feature to be supported. We study the effect of
enabling frame aggregation, for the first time, on the performance of the ABE using an
indoor 802.11n wireless testbed. The analysis of results obtained using three tools -
representing two main Probe Rate Model (PRM) and Probe Gap Model (PGM) based
approaches for ABE - led us to come up with the two key principles of jumbo probes
and having longer measurement probe train sizes to counter the effects of aggregating
frames on the performance of ABE tools. Then, we develop a new tool, WBest+ that
is aware of the underlying frame aggregation by incorporating these principles. The
experimental evaluation of WBest+ shows more accurate ABE in the presence of frame
aggregation.Overall, the contributions of this thesis fall in three categories - experimental
characterisation, measurement techniques and mitigation/solution approaches for performance
problems in emerging WiFi network scenarios. The influence of various factors
mentioned above are all studied via experimental evaluation in a testbed or real - world setting. Specifically, co- existence interference characterisation and evaluation
of available bandwidth techniques are done using indoor testbeds, whereas characterisation of urban WiFi networks and WiFi fingerprinting based location estimation are
carried out in real environments. New measurement approaches are also introduced
to aid better experimental evaluation or proposed as new measurement tools. These
include mobile crowdsensing based WiFi monitoring; MAC/PHY layer monitoring of
co- existence interference; and WBest+ tool for available bandwidth estimation. Finally,
new mitigation approaches are proposed to address challenges and problems
identified throughout the characterisation studies. These include: a proposal for crowd - based interference management in large scale uncoordinated WiFi networks; exploiting
antenna polarisation diversity to remedy the effects of co- existence interference
in multi -interface platforms; taking advantage of VAPs and multi -band operation for
better location estimation; and introducing the jumbo frame concept and longer probe
train sizes to improve performance of ABE tools in next generation WiFi networks
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