UNIFIED ANALYSIS OF TWO-HOP COOPERATIVE AMPLIFY-AND-FORWARD MULTI-RELAY NETWORKS

ABSTRACT This article develops an extremely simple and tight closed-form approximation for the moment generating function (MGF) of signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for two-hop amplify-and-forward relayed paths over generalized fading environments. The resulting expression facilitates efficient analysis of twohop cooperative amplify-and-forward (CAF) multi-relay networks over a myriad of stochastic channel models (including mixed-fading scenarios where fading statistics of distinct links in the relayed path may be from different family of distributions). The efficacy of our proposed MGF expression for computing the average symbol error rate (ASER), outage probability, and the ergodic capacity (with limited channel side-information among cooperating nodes) is also studied. Numerical results indicate that the proposed MGF expression tightly approximates the exact MGF formulas and outperforms the existing MGF of lower and upper bounds of the half-harmonic mean (HM) SNR, while overcoming the difficulties associated in deriving a

Partial network coding with cooperation : a study over multi-hop communications in wireless networks

The imperfections of the propagation channel due to channel fading and the self-generated noise from the RF front-end of the receiver cause errors in the received signal in electronic communication systems. When network coding is applied, more errors occur because of error propagation due to the inexact decoding process. In this dissertation we present a system called Partial Network Coding with Cooperation (PNC-COOP) for wireless ad hoc networks. It is a system which combines opportunistic network coding with decode-and-forward cooperative diversity, in order to reduce this error propagation by trading off some transmission degrees of freedom. PNC-COOP is a decentralized, energy efficient strategy which provides a substantial benefit over opportunistic network coding when transmission power is a concern. The proposed scheme is compared with both opportunistic network coding and conventional multi-hop transmission analytically and through simulation. Using a 3-hop communication scenario, in a 16-node wireless ad hoc network, it is shown that PNC-COOP improves the BER performance by 5 dB compared to opportunistic network coding. On average, it reduces the energy used by each sender node around 10% and reduces the overall transmitted energy of the network by 3.5%. When retransmission is applied, it is shown analytically that PNC-COOP performs well at relatively low to medium SNR while the throughput is comparable to that of opportunistic network coding. The effectiveness of both opportunistic network coding and PNC-COOP depends not only on the amount of network coding but also on other factors that are analyzed and discussed in this dissertation.Keywords: opportunistic network coding, Telecommunications, cooperative diversity, network coding, user cooperatio

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

Extension and practical evaluation of the spatial modulation concept

The spatial modulation (SM) concept combines, in a novel fashion, digital modulation and multiple antenna transmission for low complexity and spectrally efficient data transmission. The idea considers the transmit antenna array as a spatial constellation diagram with the transmit antennas as the constellation points. To this extent, SM maps a sequence of bits onto a signal constellation point and onto a spatial constellation point. The information is conveyed by detecting the transmitting antenna (the spatial constellation point) in addition to the signal constellation point. In this manner, inter-channel interference is avoided entirely since transmission is restricted to a single antenna at any transmission instance. However, encoding binary information in the spatial domain means that the number of transmit antennas must be a power of two. To address this constraint, fractional bit encoded spatial modulation (FBE—SM) is proposed. FBE–SMuses the theory of modulus conversion to facilitate fractional bit rates over time. In particular, it allows each transmitter to use an arbitrary number of transmit antennas. Furthermore, the application of SM in a multi-user, interference limited scenario has never been considered. To this extent, the average bit error rate (ABER) of SM is characterised in the interference limited scenario. The ABER performance is first analysed for the interference-unaware detector. An interference-aware detector is then proposed and compared with the cost and complexity equivalent detector for a single–input multiple–output (SIMO) system. The application of SM with an interference-aware detector results in coding gains for the system. Another area of interest involves using SM for relaying systems. The aptitude of SM to replace or supplement traditional relaying networks is analysed and its performance is compared with present solutions. The application of SM to a fixed relaying system, termed dual-hop spatial modulation (Dh-SM), is shown to have an advantage in terms of the source to destination ABER when compared to the classical decode and forward (DF) relaying scheme. In addition, the application of SM to a relaying system employing distributed relaying nodes is considered and its performance relative to Dh-SM is presented. While significant theoretical work has been done in analysing the performance of SM, the implementation of SM in a practical system has never been shown. In this thesis, the performance evaluation of SM in a practical testbed scenario is presented for the first time. To this extent, the empirical results validate the theoretical work presented in the literature

Mitigation techniques through spatial diversity combining and relay-assisted technology in a turbulence impaired and misaligned free space optical channel.

Doctor of Philosophy in Electronic Engineering. University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2018.In recent times, spectrum resource scarcity in Radio Frequency (RF) systems is one of the biggest and prime issues in the area of wireless communications. Owing to the cost of spectrum, increase in the bandwidth allocation as alternative solution, employed in the recent past, does no longer offer an effective means to fulfilling high demand in higher data rates. Consequently, Free Space Optical (FSO) communication systems has received considerable attention in the research community as an attractive means among other popular solutions to offering high bandwidth and high capacity compared to conventional RF systems. In addition, FSO systems have positive features which include license-free operation, cheap and ease of deployment, immunity to interference, high security, etc. Thus, FSO systems have been favoured in many areas especially, as a viable solution for the last-mile connectivity problem and a potential candidate for heterogeneous wireless backhaul network. With these attractive features, however, FSO systems are weather-dependent wireless channels. Therefore, it is usually susceptible to atmospheric induced turbulence, pointing error and attenuation under adverse weather conditions which impose severe challenges on the system performance and transmission reliability. Thus, before widespread deployment of the system will be possible, promising mitigation techniques need to be found to address these problems. In this thesis, the performance of spatial diversity combining and relay-assisted techniques with Spatial Modulation (SM) as viable mitigating tools to overcome the problem of atmospheric channel impairments along the FSO communication system link is studied. Firstly, the performance analysis of a heterodyne FSO-SM system with different diversity combiners such as Maximum Ratio Combining (MRC), Equal Gain Combining (EGC) and Selection Combining (SC) under the influence of lognormal and Gamma-Gamma atmospheric-induced turbulence fading is presented. A theoretical framework for the system error is provided by deriving the Average Pairwise Error Probability (APEP) expression for each diversity scheme under study and union bounding technique is applied to obtain their Average Bit Error Rate (ABER). Under the influence of Gamma-Gamma turbulence, an APEP expression is obtained through a generalized infinite power series expansion approach and the system performance is further enhanced by convolutional coding technique. Furthermore, the performance of proposed system under the combined effect of misalignment and Gamma-Gamma turbulence fading is also studied using the same mathematical approach. Moreover, the performance analysis of relay-assisted dual-hop heterodyne FSO-SM system with diversity combiners over a Gamma-Gamma atmospheric turbulence channel using Decode-and-Forward (DF) relay and Amplify-and-Forward (AF) relay protocols also is presented. Under DF dual-hop FSO system, power series expansion of the modified Bessel function is used to derive the closed-form expression for the end-to-end APEP expressions for each of the combiners under study over Gamma-Gamma channel, and a tight upper bound on the ABER per hop is given. Thus, the overall end-to-end ABER for the dual-hop FSO system is then evaluated. Under AF dual-hop FSO system, the statistical characteristics of AF relay in terms of Moment Generating Function (MGF), Probability Density Function (PDF) and Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) are derived for the combined Gamma-Gamma turbulence and/or pointing error distributions channel in terms of Meijer-G function. Based on these expressions, the APEP for each of the under studied combiners is determined and the ABER for the system is given by using union bounding technique. By utilizing the derived ABER expressions, the effective capacity for the considered system is then obtained. Furthermore, the performance of a dual-hop heterodyne FSO-SM asymmetric RF/FSO relaying system with MRC as mitigation tools at the destination is evaluated. The RF link experiences Nakagami-m distribution and FSO link is subjected to Gamma-Gamma distribution with and/or without pointing error. The MGF of the system equivalent SNR is derived using the CDF of the system equivalent SNR. Utilizing the MGF, the APEP for the system is then obtained and the ABER for the system is determined. Finally, owing to the slow nature of the FSO channel, the Block Error Rate (BLER) performance of FSO Subcarrier Intensity Modulation (SIM) system with spatial diversity combiners employing Binary Phase Shift Keying (BPSK) modulation over Gamma-Gamma atmospheric turbulence with and without pointing error is studied. The channel PDF for MRC and EGC by using power series expansion of the modified Bessel function is derived. Through this, the BLER closed-form expressions for the combiners under study are obtained

Simultaneous Estimation of Multi-Relay MIMO Channels

This paper addresses training-based channel estimation in distributed amplify-and-forward (AF) multi-input multi-output (MIMO) multi-relay networks. To reduce channel estimation overhead and delay, a training algorithm that allows for simultaneous estimation of the entire MIMO cooperative network’s channel parameters at the destination node is proposed. The exact Cram´er- Rao lower bound (CRLB) for the problem is presented in closedform. Channel estimators that are capable of estimating the overall source-relay-destination channel parameters at the destination are also derived. Numerical results show that while reducing delay, the proposed channel estimators are close to the derived CRLB over a wide range of signal-to-noise ratio values and outperform existing channel estimation methods. Finally, extensive simulations demonstrate that the proposed training method and channel estimators can be effectively deployed in combination with cooperative optimization algorithms to significantly enhance the performance of AF relaying MIMO systems in terms of average-bit-error-rate

Security at the Physical Layer over GG Fading and mEGG Turbulence Induced RF-UOWC Mixed System

This work was supported in part by the National Research Foundation of Korea grant funded by the Korean Government (Ministry of Science and ICT) under Grant 2019R1A2C1083988, in part by the Ministry of Science and ICT, South Korea, under the Information Technology Research Center Support Program supervised by the Institute for Information and Communications Technology Planning and Evaluation, under Grant IITP-2021-2016-0-00313, and in part by Sejong University through its Faculty Research Program under Grant 20202021.Peer reviewedPublisher PD

First and Second Order Characteristics of a Wireless Three-hop Relay Channel with the Presence of Rayleigh Fading, Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, 2020, nr 2

In this paper, a wireless three-hop relay communication system operating in a Rayleigh multipath fading environment is analyzed. The output signal from such a system is a product of signal envelopes from all sections, meaning that it is actually a product of three random variables (RVs) with Rayleigh distribution. We considered here the first-order characteristics: probability density function (PDF), cumulative distribution function and outage probability (OP). Then, the moments and amount of fading (AoF) were derived in the closed forms. The second order characteristics we present include the following: level crossing rate (LCR) and average fade duration (AFD). A few graphs are given to show the impact of the specific parameters of the wireless three-hop relay syste