On the Performance of the Relay-ARQ Networks

This paper investigates the performance of relay networks in the presence of hybrid automatic repeat request (ARQ) feedback and adaptive power allocation. The throughput and the outage probability of different hybrid ARQ protocols are studied for independent and spatially-correlated fading channels. The results are obtained for the cases where there is a sum power constraint on the source and the relay or when each of the source and the relay are power-limited individually. With adaptive power allocation, the results demonstrate the efficiency of relay-ARQ techniques in different conditions.Comment: Accepted for publication in IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol. 201

H2-ARQ-relaying: spectrum and energy efficiency perspectives

In this paper, we propose novel Hybrid Automatic Repeat re-Quest (HARQ) strategies used in conjunction with hybrid relaying schemes, named as H2-ARQ-Relaying. The strategies allow the relay to dynamically switch between amplify-and-forward/compress-and-forward and decode-and-forward schemes according to its decoding status. The performance analysis is conducted from both the spectrum and energy efficiency perspectives. The spectrum efficiency of the proposed strategies, in terms of the maximum throughput, is significantly improved compared with their non-hybrid counterparts under the same constraints. The consumed energy per bit is optimized by manipulating the node activation time, the transmission energy and the power allocation between the source and the relay. The circuitry energy consumption of all involved nodes is taken into consideration. Numerical results shed light on how and when the energy efficiency can be improved in cooperative HARQ. For instance, cooperative HARQ is shown to be energy efficient in long distance transmission only. Furthermore, we consider the fact that the compress-and-forward scheme requires instantaneous signal to noise ratios of all three constituent links. However, this requirement can be impractical in some cases. In this regard, we introduce an improved strategy where only partial and affordable channel state information feedback is needed

Wireless industrial monitoring and control networks: the journey so far and the road ahead

While traditional wired communication technologies have played a crucial role in industrial monitoring and control networks over the past few decades, they are increasingly proving to be inadequate to meet the highly dynamic and stringent demands of today’s industrial applications, primarily due to the very rigid nature of wired infrastructures. Wireless technology, however, through its increased pervasiveness, has the potential to revolutionize the industry, not only by mitigating the problems faced by wired solutions, but also by introducing a completely new class of applications. While present day wireless technologies made some preliminary inroads in the monitoring domain, they still have severe limitations especially when real-time, reliable distributed control operations are concerned. This article provides the reader with an overview of existing wireless technologies commonly used in the monitoring and control industry. It highlights the pros and cons of each technology and assesses the degree to which each technology is able to meet the stringent demands of industrial monitoring and control networks. Additionally, it summarizes mechanisms proposed by academia, especially serving critical applications by addressing the real-time and reliability requirements of industrial process automation. The article also describes certain key research problems from the physical layer communication for sensor networks and the wireless networking perspective that have yet to be addressed to allow the successful use of wireless technologies in industrial monitoring and control networks

Correlation-based Cross-layer Communication in Wireless Sensor Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are event based systems that rely on the collective effort of densely deployed sensor nodes continuously observing a physical phenomenon. The spatio-temporal correlation between the sensor observations and the cross-layer design advantages are significant and unique to the design of WSN. Due to the high density in the network topology, sensor observations are highly correlated in the space domain. Furthermore, the nature of the energy-radiating physical phenomenon constitutes the temporal correlation between each consecutive observation of a sensor node. This unique characteristic of WSN can be exploited through a cross-layer design of communication functionalities to improve energy efficiency of the network. In this thesis, several key elements are investigated to capture and exploit the correlation in the WSN for the realization of advanced efficient communication protocols. A theoretical framework is developed to capture the spatial and temporal correlations in WSN and to enable the development of efficient communication protocols. Based on this framework, spatial Correlation-based Collaborative Medium Access Control (CC-MAC) protocol is described, which exploits the spatial correlation in the WSN in order to achieve efficient medium access. Furthermore, the cross-layer module (XLM), which melts common protocol layer functionalities into a cross-layer module for resource-constrained sensor nodes, is developed. The cross-layer analysis of error control in WSN is then presented to enable a comprehensive comparison of error control schemes for WSN. Finally, the cross-layer packet size optimization framework is described.Ph.D.Committee Chair: Ian F. Akyildiz; Committee Member: Douglas M. Blough; Committee Member: Mostafa Ammar; Committee Member: Raghupathy Sivakumar; Committee Member: Ye (Geoffrey) L

Performance analysis of collaborative hybrid-arq protocols over fading channels

Impairments due to multipath signal propagation on the performance of wireless communications systems can be efficiently mitigated with time, frequency or spatial diversity. To exploit spatial diversity, multiple-antenna technology has been thoroughly investigated and emerged as one of the most mature communications areas. However, the need for smaller user terminals, which results in insufficient spacing for antenna collocation, tends to limit the practical implementation of this technology. Without compromising terminal dimensions, future wireless networks will therefore have to exploit their broadcast nature and rely on collaboration between single-antenna terminals for exploiting spatial diversity. Among cooperative schemes, Collaborative ARQ transmission protocols, prescribing cooperation only when needed, i.e., upon erroneous decoding by the destination, emerge as an interesting solution in terms of achievable spectral efficiency. In this thesis, an information theoretical approach is presented for assessing the performance of Collaborative Hybrid-ARQ protocols based on Space-Time Block Coding. The expected number of retransmissions and the average throughput for Collaborative Hybrid-ARQ Type I and Chase Combining are derived in explicit form, while lower and upper bound are investigated for Collaborative Hybrid-ARQ Incremental Redundancy protocol, for any number of relays. Numerical results are presented to supplement the analysis and give insight into the performance of the considered scheme. Moreover, the issue of practical implementation of Space-Time Block Coding is investigated

Performance Analysis and Cooperation Mode Switch in HARQ-based Relaying

We study the optimal, in terms of power-limited outage probability (OP), placement of the relay and investigate the effect of relay placement on the optimal cooperation mode of the source and the relay nodes. Using hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) based relaying techniques, general expressions for the OP and the average transmit power are derived. The results are then particularized to the repetition time diversity (RTD) protocol. The analytical expressions are used to find the transmit powers minimizing the power-limited OP. Our results demonstrate that adaptive power allocation reduces the OP significantly. For instance, consider a Rayleigh fading channel, an OP of 10^-3 and a maximum of 2 RTD-based retransmissions. Then, compared to equal power allocation, the required transmission signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is reduced by 5 dB, if adaptive power allocation is utilized. Another important observation is that, depending on the relay positions and the total power budget, the system should switch between the single-node transmission mode and the joint transmission mode, in order to minimize the outage probability

Adaptive Space-Time Coding using ARQ

We study the energy-limited outage probability of the block space-time coding (STC)-based systems utilizing automatic repeat request (ARQ) feedback and adaptive power allocation. Taking the ARQ feedback costs into account, we derive closed-form solutions for the energy-limited optimal power allocation and investigate the diversity gain of different STCARQ schemes. Also, sufficient conditions are derived for the usefulness of ARQ, in terms of energy-limited outage probability. The results show that, for a large range of feedback costs, the energy efficiency is substantially improved by the combination of ARQ and STC techniques, if optimal power allocation is utilized

Collaborative HARQ Schemes for Cooperative Diversity Communications in Wireless Networks

Wireless technology is experiencing spectacular developments, due to the emergence of interactive and digital multimedia applications as well as rapid advances in the highly integrated systems. For the next-generation mobile communication systems, one can expect wireless connectivity between any devices at any time and anywhere with a range of multimedia contents. A key requirement in such systems is the availability of high-speed and robust communication links. Unfortunately, communications over wireless channels inherently suffer from a number of fundamental physical limitations, such as multipath fading, scarce radio spectrum, and limited battery power supply for mobile devices. Cooperative diversity (CD) technology is a promising solution for future wireless communication systems to achieve broader coverage and to mitigate wireless channels’ impairments without the need to use high power at the transmitter. In general, cooperative relaying systems have a source node multicasting a message to a number of cooperative relays, which in turn resend a processed version message to an intended destination node. The destination node combines the signal received from the relays, and takes into account the source’s original signal to decode the message. The CD communication systems exploit two fundamental features of the wireless medium: its broadcast nature and its ability to achieve diversity through independent channels. A variety of relaying protocols have been considered and utilized in cooperative wireless networks. Amplify and forward (AAF) and decode and forward (DAF) are two popular protocols, frequently used in the cooperative systems. In the AAF mode, the relay amplifies the received signal prior to retransmission. In the DAF mode, the relay fully decodes the received signal, re-encodes and forwards it to the destination. Due to the retransmission without decoding, AAF has the shortcoming that noise accumulated in the received signal is amplified at the transmission. DAF suffers from decoding errors that can lead to severe error propagation. To further enhance the quality of service (QoS) of CD communication systems, hybrid Automatic Repeat-reQuest (HARQ) protocols have been proposed. Thus, if the destination requires an ARQ retransmission, it could come from one of relays rather than the source node. This thesis proposes an improved HARQ scheme with an adaptive relaying protocol (ARP). Focusing on the HARQ as a central theme, we start by introducing the concept of ARP. Then we use it as the basis for designing three types of HARQ schemes, denoted by HARQ I-ARP, HARQ II-ARP and HARQ III-ARP. We describe the relaying protocols, (both AAF and DAF), and their operations, including channel access between the source and relay, the feedback scheme, and the combining methods at the receivers. To investigate the benefits of the proposed HARQ scheme, we analyze its frame error rate (FER) and throughput performance over a quasi-static fading channel. We can compare these with the reference methods, HARQ with AAF (HARQ-AAF) and HARQ with perfect distributed turbo codes (DTC), for which correct decoding is always assumed at the relay (HARQ-perfect DTC). It is shown that the proposed HARQ-ARP scheme can always performs better than the HARQ-AAF scheme. As the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the channel between the source and relay increases, the performance of the proposed HARQ-ARP scheme approaches that of the HARQ-perfect DTC scheme