Channel Coding in Molecular Communication

This dissertation establishes and analyzes a complete molecular transmission system from a communication engineering perspective. Its focus is on diffusion-based molecular communication in an unbounded three-dimensional fluid medium. As a basis for the investigation of transmission algorithms, an equivalent discrete-time channel model (EDTCM) is developed and the characterization of the channel is described by an analytical derivation, a random walk based simulation, a trained artificial neural network (ANN), and a proof of concept testbed setup. The investigated transmission algorithms cover modulation schemes at the transmitter side, as well as channel equalizers and detectors at the receiver side. In addition to the evaluation of state-of-the-art techniques and the introduction of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM), the novel variable concentration shift keying (VCSK) modulation adapted to the diffusion-based transmission channel, the lowcomplex adaptive threshold detector (ATD) working without explicit channel knowledge, the low-complex soft-output piecewise linear detector (PLD), and the optimal a posteriori probability (APP) detector are of particular importance and treated. To improve the error-prone information transmission, block codes, convolutional codes, line codes, spreading codes and spatial codes are investigated. The analysis is carried out under various approaches of normalization and gains or losses compared to the uncoded transmission are highlighted. In addition to state-of-the-art forward error correction (FEC) codes, novel line codes adapted to the error statistics of the diffusion-based channel are proposed. Moreover, the turbo principle is introduced into the field of molecular communication, where extrinsic information is exchanged iteratively between detector and decoder. By means of an extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart analysis, the potential of the iterative processing is shown and the communication channel capacity is computed, which represents the theoretical performance limit for the system under investigation. In addition, the construction of an irregular convolutional code (IRCC) using the EXIT chart is presented and its performance capability is demonstrated. For the evaluation of all considered transmission algorithms the bit error rate (BER) performance is chosen. The BER is determined by means of Monte Carlo simulations and for some algorithms by theoretical derivation

Self-concatenated code design and its application in power-efficient cooperative communications

In this tutorial, we have focused on the design of binary self-concatenated coding schemes with the help of EXtrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) charts and Union bound analysis. The design methodology of future iteratively decoded self-concatenated aided cooperative communication schemes is presented. In doing so, we will identify the most important milestones in the area of channel coding, concatenated coding schemes and cooperative communication systems till date and suggest future research directions

Transmission strategies for broadband wireless systems with MMSE turbo equalization

This monograph details efficient transmission strategies for single-carrier wireless broadband communication systems employing iterative (turbo) equalization. In particular, the first part focuses on the design and analysis of low complexity and robust MMSE-based turbo equalizers operating in the frequency domain. Accordingly, several novel receiver schemes are presented which improve the convergence properties and error performance over the existing turbo equalizers. The second part discusses concepts and algorithms that aim to increase the power and spectral efficiency of the communication system by efficiently exploiting the available resources at the transmitter side based upon the channel conditions. The challenging issue encountered in this context is how the transmission rate and power can be optimized, while a specific convergence constraint of the turbo equalizer is guaranteed.Die vorliegende Arbeit beschäftigt sich mit dem Entwurf und der Analyse von effizienten Übertragungs-konzepten für drahtlose, breitbandige Einträger-Kommunikationssysteme mit iterativer (Turbo-) Entzerrung und Kanaldekodierung. Dies beinhaltet einerseits die Entwicklung von empfängerseitigen Frequenzbereichs-entzerrern mit geringer Komplexität basierend auf dem Prinzip der Soft Interference Cancellation Minimum-Mean Squared-Error (SC-MMSE) Filterung und andererseits den Entwurf von senderseitigen Algorithmen, die durch Ausnutzung von Kanalzustandsinformationen die Bandbreiten- und Leistungseffizienz in Ein- und Mehrnutzersystemen mit Mehrfachantennen (sog. Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO)) verbessern. Im ersten Teil dieser Arbeit wird ein allgemeiner Ansatz für Verfahren zur Turbo-Entzerrung nach dem Prinzip der linearen MMSE-Schätzung, der nichtlinearen MMSE-Schätzung sowie der kombinierten MMSE- und Maximum-a-Posteriori (MAP)-Schätzung vorgestellt. In diesem Zusammenhang werden zwei neue Empfängerkonzepte, die eine Steigerung der Leistungsfähigkeit und Verbesserung der Konvergenz in Bezug auf existierende SC-MMSE Turbo-Entzerrer in verschiedenen Kanalumgebungen erzielen, eingeführt. Der erste Empfänger - PDA SC-MMSE - stellt eine Kombination aus dem Probabilistic-Data-Association (PDA) Ansatz und dem bekannten SC-MMSE Entzerrer dar. Im Gegensatz zum SC-MMSE nutzt der PDA SC-MMSE eine interne Entscheidungsrückführung, so dass zur Unterdrückung von Interferenzen neben den a priori Informationen der Kanaldekodierung auch weiche Entscheidungen der vorherigen Detektions-schritte berücksichtigt werden. Durch die zusätzlich interne Entscheidungsrückführung erzielt der PDA SC-MMSE einen wesentlichen Gewinn an Performance in räumlich unkorrelierten MIMO-Kanälen gegenüber dem SC-MMSE, ohne dabei die Komplexität des Entzerrers wesentlich zu erhöhen. Der zweite Empfänger - hybrid SC-MMSE - bildet eine Verknüpfung von gruppenbasierter SC-MMSE Frequenzbereichsfilterung und MAP-Detektion. Dieser Empfänger besitzt eine skalierbare Berechnungskomplexität und weist eine hohe Robustheit gegenüber räumlichen Korrelationen in MIMO-Kanälen auf. Die numerischen Ergebnisse von Simulationen basierend auf Messungen mit einem Channel-Sounder in Mehrnutzerkanälen mit starken räumlichen Korrelationen zeigen eindrucksvoll die Überlegenheit des hybriden SC-MMSE-Ansatzes gegenüber dem konventionellen SC-MMSE-basiertem Empfänger. Im zweiten Teil wird der Einfluss von System- und Kanalmodellparametern auf die Konvergenzeigenschaften der vorgestellten iterativen Empfänger mit Hilfe sogenannter Korrelationsdiagramme untersucht. Durch semi-analytische Berechnungen der Entzerrer- und Kanaldecoder-Korrelationsfunktionen wird eine einfache Berechnungsvorschrift zur Vorhersage der Bitfehlerwahrscheinlichkeit von SC-MMSE und PDA SC-MMSE Turbo Entzerrern für MIMO-Fadingkanäle entwickelt. Des Weiteren werden zwei Fehlerschranken für die Ausfallwahrscheinlichkeit der Empfänger vorgestellt. Die semi-analytische Methode und die abgeleiteten Fehlerschranken ermöglichen eine aufwandsgeringe Abschätzung sowie Optimierung der Leistungsfähigkeit des iterativen Systems. Im dritten und abschließenden Teil werden Strategien zur Raten- und Leistungszuweisung in Kommunikationssystemen mit konventionellen iterativen SC-MMSE Empfängern untersucht. Zunächst wird das Problem der Maximierung der instantanen Summendatenrate unter der Berücksichtigung der Konvergenz des iterativen Empfängers für einen Zweinutzerkanal mit fester Leistungsallokation betrachtet. Mit Hilfe des Flächentheorems von Extrinsic-Information-Transfer (EXIT)-Funktionen wird eine obere Schranke für die erreichbare Ratenregion hergeleitet. Auf Grundlage dieser Schranke wird ein einfacher Algorithmus entwickelt, der für jeden Nutzer aus einer Menge von vorgegebenen Kanalcodes mit verschiedenen Codierraten denjenigen auswählt, der den instantanen Datendurchsatz des Mehrnutzersystems verbessert. Neben der instantanen Ratenzuweisung wird auch ein ausfallbasierter Ansatz zur Ratenzuweisung entwickelt. Hierbei erfolgt die Auswahl der Kanalcodes für die Nutzer unter Berücksichtigung der Einhaltung einer bestimmten Ausfallwahrscheinlichkeit (outage probability) des iterativen Empfängers. Des Weiteren wird ein neues Entwurfskriterium für irreguläre Faltungscodes hergeleitet, das die Ausfallwahrscheinlichkeit von Turbo SC-MMSE Systemen verringert und somit die Zuverlässigkeit der Datenübertragung erhöht. Eine Reihe von Simulationsergebnissen von Kapazitäts- und Durchsatzberechnungen werden vorgestellt, die die Wirksamkeit der vorgeschlagenen Algorithmen und Optimierungsverfahren in Mehrnutzerkanälen belegen. Abschließend werden außerdem verschiedene Maßnahmen zur Minimierung der Sendeleistung in Einnutzersystemen mit senderseitiger Singular-Value-Decomposition (SVD)-basierter Vorcodierung untersucht. Es wird gezeigt, dass eine Methode, welche die Leistungspegel des Senders hinsichtlich der Bitfehlerrate des iterativen Empfängers optimiert, den konventionellen Verfahren zur Leistungszuweisung überlegen ist

Multitrack Detection for Magnetic Recording

The thesis develops advanced signal processing algorithms for magnetic recording to increase areal density. The exploding demand for cloud storage is motivating a push for higher areal densities, with narrower track pitches and shorter bit lengths. The resulting increase in interference and media noise requires improvements in read channel signal processing to keep pace. This thesis proposes the multitrack pattern-dependent noise-prediction algorithm as a solution to the joint maximum-likelihood multitrack detection problem in the face of pattern-dependent autoregressive Gaussian noise. The magnetic recording read channel has numerous parameters that must be carefully tuned for best performance; these include not only the equalizer coefficients but also any parameters inside the detector. This thesis proposes two new tuning strategies: one is to minimize the bit-error rate after detection, and the other is to minimize the frame-error rate after error-control decoding. Furthermore, this thesis designs a neural network read channel architecture and compares the performance and complexity with these traditional signal processing techniques.Ph.D

An Optimal Unequal Error Protection LDPC Coded Recording System

For efficient modulation and error control coding, the deliberate flipping approach imposes the run-length-limited(RLL) constraint by bit error before recording. From the read side, a high coding rate limits the correcting capability of RLL bit error. In this paper, we study the low-density parity-check (LDPC) coding for RLL constrained recording system based on the Unequal Error Protection (UEP) coding scheme design. The UEP capability of irregular LDPC codes is used for recovering flipped bits. We provide an allocation technique to limit the occurrence of flipped bits on the bit with robust correction capability. In addition, we consider the signal labeling design to decrease the number of nearest neighbors to enhance the robust bit. We also apply the density evolution technique to the proposed system for evaluating the code performances. In addition, we utilize the EXIT characteristic to reveal the decoding behavior of the recommended code distribution. Finally, the optimization approach for the best distribution is proven by differential evolution for the proposed system.Comment: 20 pages, 18 figure

Non-iterative joint decoding and signal processing: universal coding approach for channels with memory

A non-iterative receiver is proposed to achieve near capacity performance on intersymbol interference (ISI) channels. There are two main ingredients in the proposed design. i) The use of a novel BCJR-DFE equalizer which produces optimal soft estimates of the inputs to the ISI channel given all the observations from the channel and L past symbols exactly, where L is the memory of the ISI channel. ii) The use of an encoder structure that ensures that L past symbols can be used in the DFE in an error free manner through the use of a capacity achieving code for a memoryless channel. Computational complexity of the proposed receiver structure is less than that of one iteration of the turbo receiver. We also provide the proof showing that the proposed receiver achieves the i.i.d. capacity of any constrained input ISI channel. This DFE-based receiver has several advantages over an iterative (turbo) receiver, such as low complexity, the fact that codes that are optimized for memoryless channels can be used with channels with memory, and finally that the channel does not need to be known at the transmitter. The proposed coding scheme is universal in the sense that a single code of rate r; optimized for a memoryless channel, provides small error probability uniformly across all AWGN-ISI channels of i.i.d. capacity less than r: This general principle of a proposed non-iterative receiver also applies to other signal processing functions, such as timing recovery, pattern-dependent noise whiten ing, joint demodulation and decoding etc. This makes the proposed encoder and receiver structure a viable alternative to iterative signal processing. The results show significant complexity reduction and performance gain for the case of timing recovery and patter-dependent noise whitening for magnetic recording channels

Design and analysis of iteratively decodable codes for ISI channels

Recent advancements in iterative processing have allowed communication systems to perform close to capacity limits withmanageable complexity.For manychannels such as the AWGN and flat fading channels, codes that perform only a fraction of a dB from the capacity have been designed in the literature. In this dissertation, we will focus on the design and analysis of near-capacity achieving codes for another important class of channels, namely inter-symbol interference (ISI)channels. We propose various coding schemes such as low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, parallel and serial concatenations for ISI channels when there is no spectral shaping used at the transmitter. The design and analysis techniques use the idea of extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) function matching and provide insights into the performance of different codes and receiver structures. We then present a coding scheme which is the concatenation of an LDPC code with a spectral shaping block code designed to be matched to the channel??s spectrum. We will discuss how to design the shaping code and the outer LDPC code. We will show that spectral shaping matched codes can be used for the parallel concatenation to achieve near capacity performance. We will also discuss the capacity of multiple antenna ISI channels. We study the effects of transmitter and receiver diversities and noisy channel state information on channel capacity

Concatenated codes for the multiple-input multiple-output quasi-static fading channel

The use of multiple antennas at the transmitter and/or the receiver promises greatly increased capacity. This can be useful to meet the ever growing demand of wireless connectivity, provided we can find techniques to efficiently exploit the advantages of the Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) system. This work explores the MIMO system in a flat quasi-static fading scenario. Such a channel occurs, for example, in packet data systems, where the channel fade is constant for the duration of a codeword and changes independently from one transmission to another. We first show why it is hard to compute the true constrained modulation outage capacity. As an alternative, we present achievable lower bounds to this capacity based on existing space-time codes. The bounds we compute are the fundamental limits to the performance of these space-time codes under maximum-likelihood decoding, optimal outer codes and asymptotically long lengths. These bounds also indicate that MIMO systems have different behavior under Gaussian signaling (unconstrained input) and under the finite alphabet setting. Our results naturally suggest the use of concatenated codes to approach near-capacity performance. However, we show that a system utilizing an iterative decoder has a fundamental limit it cannot be universal and therefore it cannot perform arbitrarily close to its outage limit. Next, we propose two different transceiver structures that have good performance. The first structure is based on a novel BCJR-decision feedback decoder which results in performance within a dB of the outage limit. The second structure is based on recursive realizations of space-time trellis codes and uses iterative decoding at the receiver. This recursive structure has impressive performance even when the channel has time diversity. Thus, it forms the basis of a very flexible and robust MIMO transceiver structure

Filter bank multicarrier waveforms for future wireless networks: interference analysis and cancellation

Billions of devices are expected to connect to future wireless networks. Although conventional orthogonal division multiplexing (OFDM) has proven to be an effective physical layer waveform for enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB), it experiences various challenges. For example, OFDM experiences high out-of-band (OOB) emission caused by the use of rectangular filters. This causes interference to adjacent frequency bands and make OFDM highly sensitive to asynchronous transmissions. Filter bank multicarrier (FBMC) systems have emerged as a promising waveform candidate to satisfy the requirements of future wireless networks. They employ prototype filters with faster spectral decay, which results in better OOB emission and spectral efficiency compared to OFDM. Also, FBMC systems support asynchronous transmissions, which can reduce the signaling overhead in future applications. However, in FBMC systems there is no subcarriers orthogonality, resulting in intrinsic interference. The purpose of this thesis is to address the intrinsic interference problem to make FBMC a viable option for practical application in future wireless networks. In this thesis, iterative interference cancellation (IIC) receivers are developed for FBMC systems to improve their performance and applicability in future applications. First, an IIC receiver is studied for uncoded FBMC with quadrature amplitude modulation (FBMC-QAM) systems. To improve the decoding performance, bit-interleaved coded modulation with iterative decoding (BICM-ID) is incorporated into the IIC receiver design and the technique of extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) chart analysis is used to track the convergence of the IIC-based BICM-ID receiver. Furthermore, the energy harvesting capabilities of FBMC is considered. Particularly, FBMC is integrated with a simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) technique. Finally, an interference cancellation receiver is investigated for asynchronous FBMC systems in both single and mixed numerology systems. Analytical expressions are derived for the various schemes and simulations results are shown to verify the performance of the different FBMC systems