Contributions to the Performance Analysis of Intervehicular Communications Systems and Schemes

RÉSUMÉ Le but des systèmes de communication intervéhicule (Inter-Vehicle Communication – IVC) est d'améliorer la sécurité de conduite en utilisant des capteurs et des techniques de communication sans fil pour être en mesure de communiquer mutuellement sans aucune intervention extérieure. Avec l'utilisation de ces systèmes, les communications véhicule à véhicule (V2V) peuvent être plus efficaces dans la prévention des accidents et la décongestion de la circulation que si chaque véhicule travaillait individuellement. Une des solutions proposées pour les systèmes IVC est l’utilisation des systèmes de communication coopérative, qui en principe, augmentent l'efficacité spectrale et énergétique, la couverture du réseau, et réduit la probabilité de défaillance. La diversité d'antenne (entrées multiples sorties multiples « Multiple-Input Multiple-Output » ou MIMO) peut également être une alternative pour les systèmes IVC pour améliorer la capacité du canal et la diversité (fiabilité), mais en échange d’une complexité accrue. Toutefois, l'application de telles solutions est difficile, car les communications sans fil entre les véhicules sont soumises à d’importants effets d'évanouissements des canaux appelés (canaux sujets aux évanouissements de n*Rayleigh, « n*Rayleigh fading channels»), ce qui conduit à la dégradation des performances. Par conséquent, dans cette thèse, nous proposons une analyse de la performance globale des systèmes de transmission coopératifs et MIMO sur des canaux sujets aux évanouissements de n*Rayleigh. Cette analyse permettra d’aider les chercheurs pour la conception et la mise en œuvre de systèmes de communication V2V avec une complexité moindre. En particulier, nous étudions d'abord la performance de la sélection du relais de coopération avec les systèmes IVC, on suppose que la transmission via « Amplify-and-Forward» (AF) ou bien «Decode-and-Forward» (DF) est assurée par N relais pour transférer le message de la source à la destination. La performance du système est analysée en termes de probabilité de défaillance, la probabilité d'erreur de symbole, et la capacité moyenne du canal. Les résultats numériques démontrent que la sélection de relais réalise une diversité de l'ordre de (d≈mN/n) pour les deux types de relais, où m est un paramètre évanouissement de Rayleigh en cascade. Nous étudions ensuite la performance des systèmes IVC à sauts multiples avec et sans relais régénératifs. Dans cette étude, nous dérivons des expressions approximatives pour la probabilité de défaillance et le niveau d’évanouissement lorsque la diversité en réception basée sur le ratio maximum de combinaison (MRC) est employée. En outre, nous analysons la répartition de puissance pour le système sous-jacent afin de minimiser la probabilité globale de défaillance. Nous montrons que la performance des systèmes régénératifs est meilleure que celle des systèmes non régénératifs lorsque l’ordre de cascade n est faible, tandis qu’ils ont des performances similaires lorsque n est élevé. Ensuite, nous considérons le problème de la détection de puissance des signaux inconnus aux n* canaux de Rayleigh. Dans ce travail, de nouvelles expressions approximatives sont dérivées de la probabilité de détection moyenne avec et sans diversité en réception MRC. En outre, la performance du système est analysée lorsque la détection de spectre coopérative (CSS) est considérée sous diverses contraintes de canaux (par exemple, les canaux de communication parfaits et imparfaits). Les résultats numériques ont montré que la fiabilité de détection diminue à mesure que l'ordre n augmente et s’améliore sensiblement lorsque CSS emploie le schéma MRC. Il est démontré que CSS avec le schéma MRC maintient la probabilité de fausse alarme minimale dans les canaux d’information imparfaite plutôt que d'augmenter le nombre d'utilisateurs en coopération. Enfin, nous présentons une nouvelle approche pour l'analyse des performances des systèmes IVC sur n*canaux de Rayleigh, en utilisant n_T antennes d'émission et n_R antennes de réception pour lutter contre l'effet d’évanouissement. Dans ce contexte, nous évaluons la performance des systèmes MIMO-V2V basés sur la sélection des antennes d'émission avec un ratio maximum de combinaison (TAS/MRC) et la sélection combinant (TAS/SC). Dans cette étude, nous dérivons des expressions analytiques plus précises pour la probabilité de défaillance, la probabilité d'erreur de symbole, et l’évanouissement sur n*canaux Rayleigh. Il est montré que les deux régimes ont le même ordre de diversité maximale équivalent à (d≈mn_T n_R /n) . En outre, TAS / MRC offre un gain de performance mieux que TAS/ SC lorsque le nombre d'antennes de réception est plus que celle des antennes d’émission, mais l’amélioration de la performance est limitée lorsque n augmente.----------Abstract The purpose of intervehicular communication (IVC) systems is to enhance driving safety, in which vehicles use sensors and wireless communication techniques to talk to each other without any roadside intervention. Using these systems, vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications can be more effective in avoiding accidents and traffic congestion than if each vehicle works individually. A potential solution can be implemented in this research area using cooperative communications systems which, in principle, increase spectral and power efficiency, network coverage, and reduce the outage probability. Antenna diversity (i.e., multiple-input multiple output (MIMO) systems) can also be an alternative solution for IVC systems to enhance channel capacity and diversity (reliability) but in exchange of an increased complexity. However, applying such solutions is challenging since wireless communications among vehicles is subject to harsh fading channels called ‘n*Rayleigh fading channels’, which leads to performance degradation. Therefore, in this thesis we provide a comprehensive performance analysis of cooperative transmission and MIMO systems over n*Rayleigh fading channels that help researchers for the design and implementation of V2V communication systems with lower complexity. Specifically, we first investigate the performance of cooperative IVC systems with relay selection over n*Rayleigh fading channels, assuming that both the decode-and-forward and the amplify-and-forward relaying protocols are achieved by N relays to transfer the source message to the destination. System performance is analyzed in terms of outage probability, symbol error probability, and average channel capacity. The numerical results have shown that the best relay selection approach achieves the diversity order of (d≈mN/n) where m is a cascaded Rayleigh fading parameter. Second, we investigate the performance of multihop-IVC systems with regenerative and non-regenerative relays. In this study, we derive approximate closed-form expressions for the outage probability and amount of fading when the maximum ratio combining (MRC) diversity reception is employed. Further, we analyze the power allocation for the underlying scheme in order to minimize the overall outage probability. We show that the performance of regenerative systems is better than that of non-regenerative systems when the cascading order n is low and they have similar performance when n is high. Third, we consider the problem of energy detection of unknown signals over n*Rayleigh fading channels. In this work, novel approximate expressions are derived for the average probability of detection with and without MRC diversity reception. Moreover, the system performance is analyzed when cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) is considered under various channel constraints (e.g, perfect and imperfect reporting channels). The numerical results show that the detection reliability decreases as the cascading order n increases and substantially improves when CSS employs MRC schemes. It is demonstrated that CSS with MRC scheme keeps the probability of false alarm minimal under imperfect reporting channels rather than increasing the number of cooperative users. Finally, we present a new approach for the performance analysis of IVC systems over n*Rayleigh fading channels, using n_T transmit and n_R receive antennas to combat fading influence. In this context, we evaluate the performance of MIMO-V2V systems based on the transmit antenna selection with maximum ratio combining (TAS/MRC) and selection combining (TAS/SC) schemes. In this study, we derive tight analytical expressions for the outage probability, the symbol error probability, and the amount of fading over n*Rayleigh fading channels. It is shown that both schemes have the same maximum diversity order equivalent to (d≈mn_T n_R /n). In addition, TAS/MRC offers a better performance gain than TAS/SC scheme when the number of receive antennas is more than that of transmit antennas, but the performance improvement is limited as n increases

Quality-Driven Cross-Layer Protocols for Video Streaming over Vehicular Ad-Hoc Networks

The emerging vehicular ad-hoc networks (VANETs) offer a variety of applications and new potential markets related to safety, convenience and entertainment, however, they suffer from a number of challenges not shared so deeply by other types of existing networks, particularly, in terms of mobility of nodes, and end-to-end quality of service (QoS) provision. Although several existing works in the literature have attempted to provide efficient protocols at different layers targeted mostly for safety applications, there remain many barriers to be overcome in order to constrain the widespread use of such networks for non-safety applications, specifically, for video streaming: 1) impact of high speed mobility of nodes on end-to-end QoS provision; 2) cross-layer protocol design while keeping low computational complexity; 3) considering customer-oriented QoS metrics in the design of protocols; and 4) maintaining seamless single-hop and multi-hop connection between the destination vehicle and the road side unit (RSU) while network is moving. This thesis addresses each of the above limitations in design of cross-layer protocols for video streaming application. 1) An adaptive MAC retransmission limit selection scheme is proposed to improve the performance of IEEE 802.11p standard MAC protocol for video streaming applications over VANETs. A multi-objective optimization framework, which jointly minimizes the probability of playback freezes and start-up delay of the streamed video at the destination vehicle by tuning the MAC retransmission limit with respect to channel statistics as well as packet transmission rate, is applied at road side unit (RSU). Two-hop transmission is applied in zones in which the destination vehicle is not within the transmission range of any RSU. In the multi-hop scenario, we discuss the computation of access probability used in the MAC adaptation scheme and propose a cross-layer path selection scheme; 2) We take advantage of similarity between multi-hop urban VANETs in dense traffic conditions and mesh connected networks. First, we investigate an application-centric routing scheme for video streaming over mesh connected overlays. Next, we introduce the challenges of urban VANETs compared to mesh networks and extend the proposed scheme in mesh network into a protocol for urban VANETs. A classification-based method is proposed to select an optimal path for video streaming over multi-hop mesh networks. The novelty is to translate the path selection over multi-hop networks to a standard classification problem. The classification is based on minimizing average video packet distortion at the receiving nodes. The classifiers are trained offline using a vast collection of video sequences and wireless channel conditions in order to yield optimal performance during real time path selection. Our method substantially reduces the complexity of conventional exhaustive optimization methods and results in high quality (low distortion). Next, we propose an application-centric routing scheme for real-time video transmission over urban multi-hop vehicular ad-hoc network (VANET) scenarios. Queuing based mobility model, spatial traffic distribution and prob- ability of connectivity for sparse and dense VANET scenarios are taken into consideration in designing the routing protocol. Numerical results demonstrate the gain achieved by the proposed routing scheme versus geographic greedy forwarding in terms of video frame distortion and streaming start-up delay in several urban communication scenarios for various vehicle entrance rate and traffic densities; and 3) finally, the proposed quality-driven routing scheme for delivering video streams is combined with a novel IP management scheme. The routing scheme aims to optimize the visual quality of the transmitted video frames by minimizing the distortion, the start-up delay, and the frequency of the streaming freezes. As the destination vehicle is in motion, it is unrealistic to assume that the vehicle will remain connected to the same access router (AR) for the whole trip. Mobile IP management schemes can benefit from the proposed multi-hop routing protocol in order to adapt proxy mobile IPv6 (PMIPv6) for multi-hop VANET for video streaming applications. The proposed cross-layer protocols can significantly improve the video streaming quality in terms of the number of streaming freezes and start-up delay over VANETs while achieving low computational complexity by using pattern classification methods for optimization