Timing synchronization for cooperative wireless communications

In this work the effect of perfect and imperfect synchronization on the performance of single-link and cooperative communication is investigated. A feedforward non- data-aided near maximum likelihood (NDA-NML) timing estimator which is effective for an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel and also for a flat-fading channel, is developed. The Cramer Rao bound (CRB) and modified Cramer Rao bound (MCRB) for the estimator for a single-link transmission over an AWGN channel is derived. A closed form expression for the probability distribution of the timing estimator is also derived. The bit-error-rate (BER) degradation of the NDA-NML timing estimator with raised cosine pulse shaping for static timing errors over an AWGN channel is characterized. A closed form expression is derived for the conditional bit error probability (BEP) with static timing errors of binary phase shift keying modulation over a Rayleigh fading channel using rectangular pulse shaping. The NDA-NML timing estimator is applied to a cooperative communication system with a source, a relay and a destination. A CRB for the estimator for asymptotically low signal-to-noise-ratio case is derived. The timing complexity of the NDA-NML estimator is derived and compared with a feedforward correlation based data-aided maximum likelihood (DA-ML) estimator. The BER performance of this system operating with a detect-and-forward relaying is studied, where the symbol timings are estimated independently for each channel. A feedforward data and channel aided maximum likelihood (DCA-ML) symbol timing estimator for cooperative communication operating over flat fading channels is then developed. For more severe fading the DCA-ML estimator performs better than the NDA- NML estimator and the DA-ML estimator. The performance gains of the DCA-ML estimator over that of the DA-ML estimator become more significant in cooperative transmission than in single-link node-to-node transmission. The NDA-NML symbol timing estimator is applied to three-node cooperative communication in fast flat-fading conditions with various signal constellations. It is found that timing errors have significant effect on performance in fast flat-fading channels. The lower complexity NDA-NML estimator performs well for larger signal constellations in fast fading, when compared to DA-ML estimator. The application of cooperative techniques for saving transmit power is discussed along with the related performance analysis with timing synchronization errors. It is found that power allocations at the source and relay nodes for transmissions, and the related timing errors at the relay and the destination nodes, have considerable effect on the BER performance for power constrained cooperative communication. The performance of multi-node multi-relay decode-and-forward cooperative com- munication system, of various architectures, operating under different fading con- ditions, with timing synchronization and various combining methods, is presented. Switch-and-stay combining and switch-and-examine combining are proposed for multi-node cooperative communication. Apart from the proposed two combining methods equal gain combining, maximal ratio combining and selection combining are also used. It is demonstrated that synchronization error has significant effect on performance in cooperative communication with a range of system architectures, and it is also demonstrated that performance degradation due to synchronization error increases with increasing diversity. It is demonstrated that decode-and- forward relaying strategy with timing synchronization, using a very simple coding scheme, performs better than detect-and-forward relaying with timing synchronization. Analytical expressions are derived for BEP with static and dynamic timing synchronization errors over Rayleigh fading channels using rectangular pulse shaping for amplify-and-forward and detect-and-forward cooperative communications. Moment generating function (MGF) based approach is utilized to find the analytical expressions. It is found that timing synchronization errors have an antagonistic effect on the BEP performance of cooperative communication. With the relay intelligence of knowing whether symbols are detected correctly or not, detect- and-forward cooperative communication performs better than the low complexity amplify-and-forward cooperative communication

Synchronization in Cooperative Communication Systems

Cooperative communication is an attractive solution to combat fading in wireless communication systems. Achieving synchronization is a fundamental requirement in such systems. In cooperative networks, multiple single antenna relay terminals receive and cooperatively transmit the source information to the destination. The multiple distributed nodes, each with its own local oscillator, give rise to multiple timing offsets (MTOs) and multiple carrier frequency offsets (MCFOs). Particularly, the received signal at the destination is the superposition of the relays' transmitted signals that are attenuated differently, are no longer aligned with each other in time, and experience phase rotations at different rates due to different channels, MTOs, and MCFOs, respectively. The loss of synchronization due to the presence of MTOs and MCFOs sets up the recovery of the source signal at the destination to be a very challenging task. This thesis seeks to develop estimation and compensation algorithms that can achieve synchronization and enable cooperative communication for both decode-and-forward (DF) and amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying networks in the presence of multiple impairments, i.e., unknown channel gains, MTOs, and MCFOs. In the first part of the thesis, a training-based transmission scheme is considered, in which training symbols are transmitted first in order to assist the joint estimation of multiple impairments at the destination node in DF and AF cooperative relaying networks. New transceiver structure at the relays and novel receiver design at the destination are proposed which allow for the decoding of the received signal in the presence of unknown channel gains, MTOs, and MCFOs. Different estimation algorithms, e.g., least squares (LS), expectation conditional maximization (ECM), space-alternating generalized expectation-maximization (SAGE), and differential evolution (DE), are proposed and analyzed for joint estimation of multiple impairments. In order to compare the estimation accuracy of the proposed estimators, Cramer-Rao lower bounds (CRLBs) for the multi-parameter estimation are derived. Next, in order to detect the signal from multiple relays in the presence of multiple impairments, novel optimal and sub-optimal minimum mean-square error (MMSE) compensation and maximum likelihood (ML) decoding algorithm are proposed for the destination receiver. It has been evidenced by numerical simulations that application of the proposed estimation and compensation methods in conjunction with space-time block codes achieve full diversity gain in the presence of channel and synchronization impairments. Considering training-based transmission scheme, this thesis also addresses the design of optimal training sequences for efficient and joint estimation of MTOs and multiple channel parameters. In the second part of the thesis, the problem of joint estimation and compensation of multiple impairments in non-data-aided (NDA) DF cooperative systems is addressed. The use of blind source separation is proposed at the destination to convert the difficult problem of jointly estimating the multiple synchronization parameters in the relaying phase into more tractable sub-problems of estimating many individual timing offsets and carrier frequency offsets for the independent relays. Next, a criteria for best relay selection is proposed at the destination. Applying the relay selection algorithm, simulation results demonstrate promising bit-error rate (BER) performance and realise the achievable maximum diversity order at the destination

Spectrally Efficient Cooperative Relay Networks using Signal Space Diversity

Cooperative relaying has received widespread attention in recent years from both academic and industrial communities. It offers significant benefits in enabling connectivity as well as in increasing coverage, power saving, spatial diversity and channel capacity. However, one of the main limitations of the conventional cooperative relaying system is the repetition of the received data by the relays, which reduces the spectral efficiency and the data rate. In this thesis, signal space diversity (SSD) based technique is proposed to incorporate into the conventional relaying system to enhance spectral efficiency, data rate and system performance. Firstly, SSD is introduced into a two-way cooperative relaying system with three-phase two-way decode-and-forward (DF) protocol. In this system, four symbols are exchanged in three time slots, thereby doubling the spectral efficiency and the data rate compared to the conventional three-phase two-way DF relaying system that uses six time slots to exchange the same four symbols. Next, SSD is employed in a dual-hop relaying system using DF protocol without a direct link between the source and the destination. In this system, two symbols are transmitted in three time slots as compared to four time slots to transmit the same two symbols in the conventional dual-hop DF relaying system. These proposed systems are designed to exploit the inherent diversity in the modulation signal-space by rotating and expanding the ordinary constellation. The improvement in spectral efficiency is achieved without adding extra complexity, bandwidth or transmit power. A comprehensive analysis of these proposed systems is carried out over Rayleigh fading channels, and closed-form expressions for various performance metrics, including error probability, outage probability and channel capacity, are derived and illustrated. An asymptotic approximation for the error probability is obtained and is used to illustrate the impact of system parameters and diversity gain on the system performance. The optimization of relay location and power allocation in these systems is also examined. Extensive Monte Carlo simulations are performed to ascertain the accuracy of the analytical results presented in the thesis. Indeed, it is observed that the use of SSD in cooperative relaying can play a major role in the system design and performance improvement

Cooperative Transmission Techniques in Wireless Communication Networks

Cooperative communication networks have received significant interests from both academia and industry in the past decade due to its ability to provide spatial diversity without the need of implementing multiple transmit and/or receive antennas at the end-user terminals. These new communication networks have inspired novel ideas and approaches to find out what and how performance improvement can be provided with cooperative communications. The objective of this thesis is to design and analyze various cooperative transmission techniques under the two common relaying signal processing methods, namely decode-and-forward (DF) and amplify-and-forward (AF). For the DF method, the thesis focuses on providing performance improvement by mitigating detection errors at the relay(s). In particular, the relaying action is implemented adaptively to reduce the phenomenon of error propagation: whether or not a relay’s decision to retransmit depends on its decision variable and a predefined threshold. First, under the scenario that unequal error protection is employed to transmit different information classes at the source, a relaying protocol in a singlerelay network is proposed and its error performance is evaluated. It is shown that by setting the optimal signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) thresholds at the relay for different information classes, the overall error performance can be significantly improved. Second, for multiple-relay networks, a relay selection protocol, also based on SNR thresholds, is proposed and the optimal thresholds are also provided. Third, an adaptive relaying protocol and a low-complexity receiver are proposed when binary frequency-shift-keying (FSK) modulation is employed and neither the receiver nor the transmitter knows the fading coefficients. It is demonstrated that large performance improvements are possible when the optimal thresholds are implemented at the relays and destination. Finally, under the scenario that there is information feedback from the destination to the relays, a novel protocol is developed to achieve the maximum transmission throughput over a multiple-relay network while the bit-error rate satisfies a given constraint. With the AF method, the thesis examines a fixed-gain multiple-relay network in which the channels are temporally-correlated Rayleigh flat fading. Developed is a general framework for maximum-ratio-combining detection when M-FSK modulation is used and no channel state information is available at the destination. In particular, an upper-bound expression on the system’s error performance is derived and used to verify that the system achieves the maximal diversity order. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms the existing schemes for the multiple-relay network under consideration

Performance analysis of diversity techniques in wireless communication systems: Cooperative systems with CCI and MIMO-OFDM systems

This Dissertation analyzes the performance of ecient digital commu- nication systems, the performance analysis includes the bit error rate (BER) of dier- ent binary and M-ary modulation schemes, and the average channel capacity (ACC) under dierent adaptive transmission protocols, namely, the simultaneous power and rate adaptation protocol (OPRA), the optimal rate with xed power protocol (ORA), the channel inversion with xed rate protocol (CIFR), and the truncated channel in- version with xed transmit power protocol (CTIFR). In this dissertation, BER and ACC performance of interference-limited dual-hop decode-and-forward (DF) relay- ing cooperative systems with co-channel interference (CCI) at both the relay and destination nodes is analyzed in small-scale multipath Nakagami-m fading channels with arbitrary (integer as well as non-integer) values of m. This channel condition is assumed for both the desired signal as well as co-channel interfering signals. In addition, the practical case of unequal average fading powers between the two hops is assumed in the analysis. The analysis assumes an arbitrary number of indepen- dent and non-identically distributed (i.n.i.d.) interfering signals at both relay (R) and destination (D) nodes. Also, the work extended to the case when the receiver employs the maximum ratio combining (MRC) and the equal gain combining (EGC) schemes to exploit the diversity gain

Performance analysis of wireless relay systems

There has been phenomenal interest in applying space-time coding techniques in wireless communications in the last two decades. In general, the benefit of applying space-time codes in multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) wireless channels is an increase in transmission reliability or system throughput (capacity). However, such a benefit cannot be obtained in some wireless systems where size or other constraints preclude the use of multiple antennas. As such, wireless relay communications has recently been proposed as a means to provide spatial diversity in the face of this limitation. In this approach, some users or relay nodes assist the transmission of other users’ information. This dissertation contributes to the advancement of wireless relay communications by investigating the performance of various relaying signal processing methods under different practical fading environments. In particular, it examines two main relaying methods, namely decode-and-forward (DF) and amplify-and-forward (AF). For DF, the focus is on the diversity analysis of relaying systems under various practical protocols when detection error at relays is taken into account. In order to effectively mitigate the phenomenon of error propagation, the smart relaying technique proposed by Wang et al. in [R1] is adopted. First, diversity analysis of a single-relay system under the scenario that only the relay is allowed to transmit in the second time slot (called Protocol II) is carried out. For Nakagami and Hoyt generalized fading channels, analytical and numerical results are provided to demonstrate that the system always obtains the maximal diversity when binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulation is used. Second, a novel and low-complexity relaying system is proposed when smart relaying and equal gain combing (EGC) techniques are combined. In the proposed system, the destination requires only the phases of the channel state information in order to detect the transmitted signals. For the single-relay system with M-ary PSK modulation, it is shown that the system can achieve the maximal diversity under Nakagami and Hoyt fading channels. For the K-relay system, simulation results suggest that the maximal diversity can also be achieved. Finally, the diversity analysis for a smart relaying system under the scenario when both the source and relay are permitted to transmit in the second time slot (referred to as Protocol I) is presented. It is shown that Protocol I can achieve the same diversity order as Protocol II for the case of 1 relay. In addition, the diversity is very robust to the quality of the feedback channel as well as the accuracy of the quantization of the power scaling implemented at the relay. For AF, the dissertation considers a fixed-gain multiple-relay system with maximal ratio combining (MRC) detection at the destination under Nakagami fading channels. Different from the smart relaying for DF, all the channel state information is assumed to be available at the destination in order to perform MRC for any number of antennas. Upperbound and lowerbound on the system performance are then derived. Based on the bounds, it is shown that the system can achieve the maximal diversity. Furthermore, the tightness of the upperbound is demonstrated via simulation results. With only the statistics of all the channels available at the destination, a novel power allocation (PA) is then proposed. The proposed PA shows significant performance gain over the conventional equal PA