Optimal resource sharing and spectrum leasing in energy efficient relay-assisted networks

Assuming a bidirectional relay assisted network, we first study the problem of optimal resource sharing between two transceiver pairs. One of the pairs, referred to as the primary pair, owns the spectral resources while the other pair, called the secondary pair, is considered to own the relay infrastructure. Assuming amplify-and-forward relaying scheme and aiming to establish a cooperation between the two networks, we study three different design problems in a single carrier scenario. In the first approach we maximize the smaller of the secondary transceiver rates subject to two separate constraints on the total powers consumed in the primary and the secondary networks while providing a minimum data rate to the primary pair. In the second approach, we replace the per network power constraint by a constraint on the average total power consumed in both networks. The third approach combines the two aforementioned methods to materialize spectrum leasing and sharing for the case when the primary network is active with a certain probability. Then we investigate two different design approaches to the multi-carrier scenario. The first approach relies on maximizing the secondary network average sum-rate subject to two spectral power masks for the two networks while providing a minimum sum-rate to the primary pair in a multi-relay scenario. In the second approach, we replace the spectral power mask for each network by a constraint on the total power consumed in that network. Different from the previous studies, we further investigate the resource allocation problem between several energy harvesting relay nodes such that a unidirectional communication link is established between a pair of users and the harvested energy is optimally allocated between the relays such that the overall throughput of the network is maximized. Assuming the availability of full knowledge of channel state information and that of the energy packets, we maximize the throughput of the network under two sets of constraints on the status of the battery. We then consider the problem of maximizing the average throughput of the system, for the case when only the statistics of the channels are available

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

Relay-Aided Communication in Large Interference Limited Wireless Networks

In recent years, the number of active wireless devices increases exponentially and it is, therefore, to expect that the interference increases as well. Interference between communication links is the major performance limiting factor in today's communication networks. Hence, the handling of the overall interference in a network is one major challenge in wireless communication networks of the future. If the interference signals are weak in comparison to the useful signal, they can be simply treated as noise. If the interference signals are strong in comparison to the useful signal, they can be reliably decoded and subtracted from the received signal at the receivers. However, in multiuser communication networks, the interference and the useful signal are often of comparable signal strength. The conventional approach to handle these interference signals is to orthogonalize the useful signal and the interference signals using, e.g., time division multiple access (TDMA) or frequency division multiple access (FDMA). In the past few years, instead of orthogonalization, interference alignment (IA) has been developed as an efficient technique to handle interference signals, especially in the high signal to noise ratio (SNR) region. The basic idea of IA is to align multiple interference signals in a particular subspace of reduced dimension at each receiver. The objective is to minimize the signal dimensions occupied by interference at each receiver. In order to perform IA, the receive space is divided into two disjoint subspaces, the useful signal subspace and the interference signal subspace. Each transmitting node designs its transmit filters in such a way that at each receiving node, all interference signals are within the interference subspace and only the useful signal is in the useful subspace. In this thesis, the focus is on large interference limited wireless communication networks. In contrast to the conventional use of relays, for extending the coverage, in this thesis, the relays are used to manipulate the effective end-to-end channel between the transmitters and receivers to perform IA in the network. Since the relays are used to assist the process of IA and not interested in the data streams transmitted by the nodes, amplify-and-forward relays are sufficient to support the process of IA. Therefore, the main focus of this thesis is on amplify-and-forward relays. Throughout this thesis, it is assumed that all nodes and relays are multi-antenna half-duplex devices. When considering large networks, the assumption that all nodes are connected to all relays does not hold due to physical propagation phenomena, e.g., high path loss and shadowing. In such large networks, the distances between different nodes may differ a lot, leading to links of considerably different signal strengths, where sufficiently weak links may be neglected. Hence, large networks are in general partially connected. In this thesis, three important interference-limited relay aided wireless network topologies are investigated, the partially connected relay aided multi-pair pair-wise communication network, the fully connected multi-group multi-way relaying network and the partially connected multi-group multi-way relaying network. For each of these topologies, new algorithms to perform IA are developed in this thesis. First, a large partially connected relay aided pair-wise communication network is considered. The concept of an appropriate partitioning of a partially connected network into subnetworks which are themselves fully connected is introduced. Each of these subnetworks contains a single relay and all nodes being connected to this relay. Some nodes or even communication pairs may be connected to multiple relays. The bidirectional pair-wise communication between the nodes takes place via the intermediate relays, using the two-way relaying protocol. Only relays which are connected to both nodes of a communication pair can serve this pair. Hence, it is assumed that all communication pairs in the entire network are served by at least one relay. The most challenging part of such a partially connected network is the handling of nodes which are connected to multiple relays. Hence, techniques called simultaneous signal alignment (SSA) and simultaneous channel alignment (SCA), are proposed to perform signal alignment (SA) and channel alignment (CA) with multiple relays simultaneously. SA means that all nodes transmit to the relay in such a way that the signals of each communicating pair are pair-wise aligned at the relay. For CA, which is dual to SA, the receive filter of each node is designed such that the effective channels between the relay and both nodes of a communicating pair span the same subspace. A closed-form solution to perform IA in this network topology is obtained and the properness conditions for SSA and SCA are derived. It is shown that local channel state information (CSI) is sufficient to perform IA in partially connected networks, whereas in fully connected relay aided networks, global CSI is required in general. Through simulations, it is shown that the proposed closed-form solution achieves more degrees of freedom (DoF) than the reference algorithms and has better sum-rate performance, especially in the high SNR-region. Especially in large wireless networks, it may happen that not both nodes of a communication pair are connected to the same relays. If a single node of a communication pair is in addition connected to a relay which, therefore, cannot assist the communication, this node receives only interference and no useful signal from this relay. Such a node suffers from inter-subnetwork interference, due to the connection by an inter-subnetwork link to the additional relay. Hence, in this thesis, a closed form algorithm which minimizes the inter-subnetwork interference power in the whole partially connected network is proposed and the properness conditions are derived. The condition under which an interference free-communication can be achieved by the proposed inter-subnetwork interference power minimization algorithm is derived. Further, it is shown that the proposed inter-subnetwork interference power minimization algorithm achieves a higher sum rate in comparison to the considered reference algorithm. Secondly, a fully connected multi-group multi-way relaying networks is considered. In such a network, multiple nodes form a group and each node wants to share its message with all other nodes in its group via an intermediate relay. The group-wise communication between the nodes inside a group takes place via the intermediate relay, using a transmission strategy considering several multiple access (MAC) phases and several multicast (MC) phases, in general. In this thesis, a multicast IA algorithm to handle the interference in such a network is proposed. The idea of the proposed algorithm is that in each of the MC phases, a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) interference multicast channel is created by separating the antennas of the relay into as many clusters as groups in the network. Each of these clusters serves a specific group of nodes and transmits in such a way that the signals transmitted from different clusters are aligned at the receiving nodes of the non-intended multicast groups. It is shown that the minimum required number of antennas at the relay is independent of the number of nodes per group, which is an important property since the number of antennas available at the relay is limited in general. Furthermore, the properness conditions for the proposed multicast IA algorithm are derived. It is shown that the proposed multicast algorithm outperforms a reference algorithm for a broad range of SNR values, while still requiring less antennas at the relay. Finally, a large partially connected multi-group multi-way relay network is considered. In contrast to the fully connected multi-group multi-way relaying network, multiple relays are considered in this partially connected network. Such a partially connected network can be partitioned into subnetworks that are themselves fully connected. Hence, such a partially connected network consists of multiple subnetworks, where each of these contains a single relay and all groups of nodes which are connected to this relay. Each group of nodes may be connected to one or multiple relays. This means that not all groups of nodes are connected to all relays in the network. However, any group is connected to at least one relay which serves this group of nodes. The group-wise exchange of data between the nodes inside a group is performed via the multi-way relaying protocol. The most challenging part of such a partially connected network is the handling of the nodes inside groups which are connected to multiple relays. To overcome this challenge, new techniques called simultaneous group signal alignment (SGSA) and simultaneous group channel alignment (SGCA) are introduced to perform SA and CA in partially connected multi-group multi-way relaying networks. A closed-form IA solution for this network topology is obtained and the properness conditions for the solvability of SGSA and SGCA are derived. It is shown that the proposed IA algorithm outperforms the reference algorithm in terms of sum rate and DoF

Radio Communications

In the last decades the restless evolution of information and communication technologies (ICT) brought to a deep transformation of our habits. The growth of the Internet and the advances in hardware and software implementations modified our way to communicate and to share information. In this book, an overview of the major issues faced today by researchers in the field of radio communications is given through 35 high quality chapters written by specialists working in universities and research centers all over the world. Various aspects will be deeply discussed: channel modeling, beamforming, multiple antennas, cooperative networks, opportunistic scheduling, advanced admission control, handover management, systems performance assessment, routing issues in mobility conditions, localization, web security. Advanced techniques for the radio resource management will be discussed both in single and multiple radio technologies; either in infrastructure, mesh or ad hoc networks

Wireless Backhaul Architectures for 5G Networks

This thesis investigates innovative wireless backhaul deployment strategies for dense small cells. In particular, the work focuses on improving the resource utilisation, reliability and energy efficiency of future wireless backhaul networks by increasing and exploiting the flexibility of the network. The wireless backhaul configurations and topology management schemes proposed in this thesis consider a dense urban area scenario with static users as well as an ultra-dense outdoor small cell scenario with vehicular traffic (pedestrians, bus users and car users). Moreover, a diverse range of traffic types such as file transfer, ultra-high definition (UHD) on-demand and real-time video streaming are used. In the first part of this thesis, novel dynamic two-tier Software Defined Networking (SDN) architecture is employed in backhaul network to facilitate complex network management tasks including multi-tenancy resource sharing and energy-aware topology management. The results show the proposed architecture can deliver efficient resource utilisation, and QoS guarantee. The second part of the thesis presents wireless backhaul architectures that serve ultra-dense outdoor small cells installed on street-level fixtures. The characteristics of vehicular communications including diverse mobility patterns and unevenly distributed traffic are investigated. The system-level performance of two key technologies for 5G backhaul are compared: massive MIMO backhaul using sub-6GHz band and millimetre (mm)-wave backhaul in the 71 – 76 GHz band. Finally, innovative wireless backhaul architectures delivered from street fibre cabinets for ultra-dense outdoor small cells with vehicular traffic is proposed, which can effectively minimise the need for additional sites, power and fibre infrastructure. Multi-hop backhaul configurations are presented in order to bring in an extra level of flexibility, and thus, improve the coverage of a street cabinet mm-wave backhaul network as well as distribute traffic loads