Interference in vehicle-to-vehicle communication networks - analysis, modeling, simulation and assessment

In wireless vehicular communication networks the periodic transmission of status updates by all vehicles represents a basic service primitive, in particular for safety related applications. Due to the limited communication resources the question raises how much data each node may provide such that the quality of service required by applications can still be guaranteed under realistic interference conditions. Local broadcasts capacity is introduced and analyzed to tackle this open question

Role of Interference and Computational Complexity in Modern Wireless Networks: Analysis, Optimization, and Design

Owing to the popularity of smartphones, the recent widespread adoption of wireless broadband has resulted in a tremendous growth in the volume of mobile data traffic, and this growth is projected to continue unabated. In order to meet the needs of future systems, several novel technologies have been proposed, including cooperative communications, cloud radio access networks (RANs) and very densely deployed small-cell networks. For these novel networks, both interference and the limited availability of computational resources play a very important role. Therefore, the accurate modeling and analysis of interference and computation is essential to the understanding of these networks, and an enabler for more efficient design.;This dissertation focuses on four aspects of modern wireless networks: (1) Modeling and analysis of interference in single-hop wireless networks, (2) Characterizing the tradeoffs between the communication performance of wireless transmission and the computational load on the systems used to process such transmissions, (3) The optimization of wireless multiple-access networks when using cost functions that are based on the analytical findings in this dissertation, and (4) The analysis and optimization of multi-hop networks, which may optionally employ forms of cooperative communication.;The study of interference in single-hop wireless networks proceeds by assuming that the random locations of the interferers are drawn from a point process and possibly constrained to a finite area. Both the information-bearing and interfering signals propagate over channels that are subject to path loss, shadowing, and fading. A flexible model for fading, based on the Nakagami distribution, is used, though specific examples are provided for Rayleigh fading. The analysis is broken down into multiple steps, involving subsequent averaging of the performance metrics over the fading, the shadowing, and the location of the interferers with the aim to distinguish the effect of these mechanisms that operate over different time scales. The analysis is extended to accommodate diversity reception, which is important for the understanding of cooperative systems that combine transmissions that originate from different locations. Furthermore, the role of spatial correlation is considered, which provides insight into how the performance in one location is related to the performance in another location.;While it is now generally understood how to communicate close to the fundamental limits implied by information theory, operating close to the fundamental performance bounds is costly in terms of the computational complexity required to receive the signal. This dissertation provides a framework for understanding the tradeoffs between communication performance and the imposed complexity based on how close a system operates to the performance bounds, and it allows to accurately estimate the required data processing resources of a network under a given performance constraint. The framework is applied to Cloud-RAN, which is a new cellular architecture that moves the bulk of the signal processing away from the base stations (BSs) and towards a centralized computing cloud. The analysis developed in this part of the dissertation helps to illuminate the benefits of pooling computing assets when decoding multiple uplink signals in the cloud. Building upon these results, new approaches for wireless resource allocation are proposed, which unlike previous approaches, are aware of the computing limitations of the network.;By leveraging the accurate expressions that characterize performance in the presence of interference and fading, a methodology is described for optimizing wireless multiple-access networks. The focus is on frequency hopping (FH) systems, which are already widely used in military systems, and are becoming more common in commercial systems. The optimization determines the best combination of modulation parameters (such as the modulation index for continuous-phase frequency-shift keying), number of hopping channels, and code rate. In addition, it accounts for the adjacent-channel interference (ACI) and determines how much of the signal spectrum should lie within the operating band of each channel, and how much can be allowed to splatter into adjacent channels.;The last part of this dissertation contemplates networks that involve multi-hop communications. Building on the analytical framework developed in early parts of this dissertation, the performance of such networks is analyzed in the presence of interference and fading, and it is introduced a novel paradigm for a rapid performance assessment of routing protocols. Such networks may involve cooperative communications, and the particular cooperative protocol studied here allows the same packet to be transmitted simultaneously by multiple transmitters and diversity combined at the receiver. The dynamics of how the cooperative protocol evolves over time is described through an absorbing Markov chain, and the analysis is able to efficiently capture the interference that arises as packets are periodically injected into the network by a common source, the temporal correlation among these packets and their interdependence

Full-duplex wireless communications: challenges, solutions and future research directions

The family of conventional half-duplex (HD) wireless systems relied on transmitting and receiving in different time-slots or frequency sub-bands. Hence the wireless research community aspires to conceive full-duplex (FD) operation for supporting concurrent transmission and reception in a single time/frequency channel, which would improve the attainable spectral efficiency by a factor of two. The main challenge encountered in implementing an FD wireless device is the large power difference between the self-interference (SI) imposed by the device’s own transmissions and the signal of interest received from a remote source. In this survey, we present a comprehensive list of the potential FD techniques and highlight their pros and cons. We classify the SI cancellation techniques into three categories, namely passive suppression, analog cancellation and digital cancellation, with the advantages and disadvantages of each technique compared. Specifically, we analyse the main impairments (e.g. phase noise, power amplifier nonlinearity as well as in-phase and quadrature-phase (I/Q) imbalance, etc.) that degrading the SI cancellation. We then discuss the FD based Media Access Control (MAC)-layer protocol design for the sake of addressing some of the critical issues, such as the problem of hidden terminals, the resultant end-to-end delay and the high packet loss ratio (PLR) due to network congestion. After elaborating on a variety of physical/MAC-layer techniques, we discuss potential solutions conceived for meeting the challenges imposed by the aforementioned techniques. Furthermore, we also discuss a range of critical issues related to the implementation, performance enhancement and optimization of FD systems, including important topics such as hybrid FD/HD scheme, optimal relay selection and optimal power allocation, etc. Finally, a variety of new directions and open problems associated with FD technology are pointed out. Our hope is that this treatise will stimulate future research efforts in the emerging field of FD communication

Cross-Layer Design for Multi-Antenna Ultra-Wideband Systems

Ultra-wideband (UWB) is an emerging technology that offers great promises to satisfy the growing demand for low cost and high-speed digital wireless home networks. The enormous bandwidth available, the potential for high data rates, as well as the potential for small size and low processing power long with low implementation cost, all present a unique opportunity for UWB to become a widely adopted radio solution for future wireless home-networking technology. Nevertheless, in order for UWB devices to coexist with other existing wireless technology, the transmitted power level of UWB is strictly limited by the FCC spectral mask. Such limitation poses significant design challenges to any UWB system. This thesis introduces various means to cope with these design challenges. Advanced technologies including multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) coding, cooperative communications, and cross-layer design are employed to enhance the performance and coverage range of UWB systems. First a MIMO-coding framework for multi-antenna UWB communication systems is developed. By a technique of band hopping in combination with jointly coding across spatial, temporal, and frequency domains, the proposed scheme is able to exploit all the available spatial and frequency diversity, richly inherent in UWB channels. Then, the UWB performance in realistic UWB channel environments is characterized. The proposed performance analysis successfully captures the unique multipath-rich property and random-clustering phenomenon of UWB channels. Next, a cross-layer channel allocation scheme for UWB multiband OFDM systems is proposed. The proposed scheme optimally allocates subbands, transmitted power, and data rates among users by taking into consideration the performance requirement, the power limitation, as well as the band hopping for users with different data rates. Also, an employment of cooperative communications in UWB systems is proposed to enhance the UWB performance and coverage by exploiting the broadcasting nature of wireless channels and the cooperation among UWB devices. Furthermore, an OFDM cooperative protocol is developed and then applied to enhance the performance of UWB systems. The proposed cooperative protocol not only achieves full diversity but also efficiently utilizes the available bandwidth

Advanced Resource Management Techniques for Next Generation Wireless Networks

The increasing penetration of mobile devices in everyday life is posing a broad range of research challenges to meet such a massive data demand. Mobile users seek connectivity "anywhere, at anytime". In addition, killer applications with multimedia contents, like video transmissions, require larger amounts of resources to cope with tight quality constraints. Spectrum scarcity and interference issues represent the key aspects of next generation wireless networks. Consequently, designing proper resource management solutions is critical. To this aim, we first propose a model to better assess the performance of Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA)-based simulated cellular networks. A link abstraction of the downlink data transmission can provide an accurate performance metric at a low computational cost. Our model combines Mutual Information-based multi-carrier compression metrics with Link-Level performance profiles, thus expressing the dependency of the transmitted data Block Error Rate (BLER) on the SINR values and on the modulation and coding scheme (MCS) being assigned. In addition, we aim at evaluating the impact of Jumboframes transmission in LTE networks, which are packets breaking the 1500-byte legacy value. A comparative evaluation is performed based on diverse network configuration criteria, thus highlighting specific limitations. In particular, we observed rapid buffer saturation under certain circumstances, due to the transmission of oversized packets with scarce radio resources. A novel cross-layer approach is proposed to prevent saturation, and thus tune the transmitted packet size with the instantaneous channel conditions, fed back through standard CQI-based procedures. Recent advances in wireless networking introduce the concept of resource sharing as one promising way to enhance the performance of radio communications. As the wireless spectrum is a scarce resource, and its usage is often found to be inefficient, it may be meaningful to design solutions where multiple operators join their efforts, so that wireless access takes place on shared, rather than proprietary to a single operator, frequency bands. In spite of the conceptual simplicity of this idea, the resulting mathematical analysis may be very complex, since it involves analytical representation of multiple wireless channels. Thus, we propose an evaluative tool for spectrum sharing techniques in OFDMA-based wireless networks, where multiple sharing policies can be easily integrated and, consequently, evaluated. On the other hand, relatively to contention-based broadband wireless access, we target an important issue in mobile ad hoc networks: the intrinsic inefficiency of the standard transmission control protocol (TCP), which presents degraded performance mainly due to mechanisms such as congestion control and avoidance. In fact, TCP was originally designed for wired networks, where packet losses indicate congestion. Conversely, channels in wireless networks might vary rapidly, thus most loss events are due to channel errors or link layer contention. We aim at designing a light-weight cross-layer framework which, differently from many other works in the literature, is based on the cognitive network paradigm. It includes an observation phase, i.e., a training set in which the network parameters are collected; a learning phase, in which the information to be used is extracted from the data; a planning phase, in which we define the strategies to trigger; an acting phase, which corresponds to dynamically applying such strategies during network simulations. The next generation mobile infrastructure frontier relies on the concept of heterogeneous networks. However, the existence of multiple types of access nodes poses new challenges such as more stringent interference constraints due to node densification and self-deployed access. Here, we propose methods that aim at extending femto cells coverage range by enabling idle User Equipments (UE) to serve as relays. This way, UEs otherwise connected to macro cells can be offloaded to femto cells through UE relays. A joint resource allocation and user association scheme based on the solutions of a convex optimization problem is proposed. Another challenging issue to be addressed in such scenarios is admission control, which is in charge of ensuring that, when a new resource reservation is accepted, previously connected users continue having their QoS guarantees honored. Thus, we consider different approaches to compute the aggregate projected capacity in OFDMA-based networks, and propose the E-Diophantine solution, whose mathematical foundation is provided along with the performance improvements to be expected, both in accuracy and computational terms

Contention techniques for opportunistic communication in wireless mesh networks

Auf dem Gebiet der drahtlosen Kommunikation und insbesondere auf den tieferen Netzwerkschichten sind gewaltige Fortschritte zu verzeichnen. Innovative Konzepte und Technologien auf der physikalischen Schicht (PHY) gehen dabei zeitnah in zelluläre Netze ein. Drahtlose Maschennetzwerke (WMNs) können mit diesem Innovationstempo nicht mithalten. Die Mehrnutzer-Kommunikation ist ein Grundpfeiler vieler angewandter PHY Technologien, die sich in WMNs nur ungenügend auf die etablierte Schichtenarchitektur abbilden lässt. Insbesondere ist das Problem des Scheduling in WMNs inhärent komplex. Erstaunlicherweise ist der Mehrfachzugriff mit Trägerprüfung (CSMA) in WMNs asymptotisch optimal obwohl das Verfahren eine geringe Durchführungskomplexität aufweist. Daher stellt sich die Frage, in welcher Weise das dem CSMA zugrunde liegende Konzept des konkurrierenden Wettbewerbs (engl. Contention) für die Integration innovativer PHY Technologien verwendet werden kann. Opportunistische Kommunikation ist eine Technik, die die inhärenten Besonderheiten des drahtlosen Kanals ausnutzt. In der vorliegenden Dissertation werden CSMA-basierte Protokolle für die opportunistische Kommunikation in WMNs entwickelt und evaluiert. Es werden dabei opportunistisches Routing (OR) im zustandslosen Kanal und opportunistisches Scheduling (OS) im zustandsbehafteten Kanal betrachtet. Ziel ist es, den Durchsatz von elastischen Paketflüssen gerecht zu maximieren. Es werden Modelle für Überlastkontrolle, Routing und konkurrenzbasierte opportunistische Kommunikation vorgestellt. Am Beispiel von IEEE 802.11 wird illustriert, wie der schichtübergreifende Entwurf in einem Netzwerksimulator prototypisch implementiert werden kann. Auf Grundlage der Evaluationsresultate kann der Schluss gezogen werden, dass die opportunistische Kommunikation konkurrenzbasiert realisierbar ist. Darüber hinaus steigern die vorgestellten Protokolle den Durchsatz im Vergleich zu etablierten Lösungen wie etwa DCF, DSR, ExOR, RBAR und ETT.In the field of wireless communication, a tremendous progress can be observed especially at the lower layers. Innovative physical layer (PHY) concepts and technologies can be rapidly assimilated in cellular networks. Wireless mesh networks (WMNs), on the other hand, cannot keep up with the speed of innovation at the PHY due to their flat and decentralized architecture. Many innovative PHY technologies rely on multi-user communication, so that the established abstraction of the network stack does not work well for WMNs. The scheduling problem in WMNs is inherent complex. Surprisingly, carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) in WMNs is asymptotically utility-optimal even though it has a low computational complexity and does not involve message exchange. Hence, the question arises whether CSMA and the underlying concept of contention allows for the assimilation of advanced PHY technologies into WMNs. In this thesis, we design and evaluate contention protocols based on CSMA for opportunistic communication in WMNs. Opportunistic communication is a technique that relies on multi-user diversity in order to exploit the inherent characteristics of the wireless channel. In particular, we consider opportunistic routing (OR) and opportunistic scheduling (OS) in memoryless and slow fading channels, respectively. We present models for congestion control, routing and contention-based opportunistic communication in WMNs in order to maximize both throughput and fairness of elastic unicast traffic flows. At the instance of IEEE 802.11, we illustrate how the cross-layer algorithms can be implemented within a network simulator prototype. Our evaluation results lead to the conclusion that contention-based opportunistic communication is feasible. Furthermore, the proposed protocols increase both throughput and fairness in comparison to state-of-the-art approaches like DCF, DSR, ExOR, RBAR and ETT