Spectrum sharing systems for improving spectral efficiency in cognitive cellular network

Since spectrum is the invisible infrastructure that powers the wireless communication, the demand has been exceptionally increasing in recent years after the implementation of 4G and immense data requirements of 5G due to the applications, such as Internet-of-Things (IoT). Therefore, the effective optimization of the use of spectrum is immediately needed than ever before. The spectrum sensing is the prerequisite for optimal resource allocation in cognitive radio networks (CRN). Therefore, the spectrum sensing in wireless system with lower latency requirements is proposed first. In such systems with high spatial density of the base stations and users/objects, spectrum sharing enables spectrum reuse across very small regions. The proposed method in this Thesis is a multi-channel cooperative spectrum sensing technique, in which an independent network of sensors, namely, spectrum monitoring network, detects the spectrum availability. The locally aggregated decision in each zone associated with the zone aggregator (ZA) location is then passed to a decision fusion centre (DFC). The secondary base station (SBS) accordingly allocates the available channels to secondary users to maximize the spectral efficiency. The function of the DFC is formulated as an optimization problem with the objective of maximizing the spectral efficiency. The optimal detection threshold is obtained for different cases with various spatial densities of ZAs and SBSs. It is further shown that the proposed method reduces the spectrum sensing latency and results in a higher spectrum efficiency. Furthermore, a novel power allocation scheme for multicell CRN is proposed where the subchannel power allocation is performed by incorporating network-wide primary system communication activity. A collaborative subchannel monitoring scheme is proposed to evaluate the aggregated subchannel activity index (ASAI) to indicate the activity levels of primary users. Two utility functions are then defined to characterize the spectral efficiency (SE) and energy efficiency (EE) as a function of ASAI to formulate a utility maximization problem. The optimal transmit power allocation is then obtained with the objective of maximizing the total utility at the SBS, subject to maximum SBS transmit power and collision probability constraint at the primary receivers. Since optimal EE and SE are two contradicting objectives to obtain the transmit power allocation, the design approach to handle both EE and SE as a function of common network parameter, i.e., ASAI, is provided which ultimately proves the quantitative insights on efficient system design. Extensive simulation results confirm the analytical results and indicate a significant improvement in sensing latency and accuracy and a significant gain against the benchmark models on the rate performance, despite the proposed methods perform with lower signalling overhead

Spectrum sharing systems for improving spectral efficiency in cognitive cellular network

Since spectrum is the invisible infrastructure that powers the wireless communication, the demand has been exceptionally increasing in recent years after the implementation of 4G and immense data requirements of 5G due to the applications, such as Internet-of-Things (IoT). Therefore, the effective optimization of the use of spectrum is immediately needed than ever before. The spectrum sensing is the prerequisite for optimal resource allocation in cognitive radio networks (CRN). Therefore, the spectrum sensing in wireless system with lower latency requirements is proposed first. In such systems with high spatial density of the base stations and users/objects, spectrum sharing enables spectrum reuse across very small regions. The proposed method in this Thesis is a multi-channel cooperative spectrum sensing technique, in which an independent network of sensors, namely, spectrum monitoring network, detects the spectrum availability. The locally aggregated decision in each zone associated with the zone aggregator (ZA) location is then passed to a decision fusion centre (DFC). The secondary base station (SBS) accordingly allocates the available channels to secondary users to maximize the spectral efficiency. The function of the DFC is formulated as an optimization problem with the objective of maximizing the spectral efficiency. The optimal detection threshold is obtained for different cases with various spatial densities of ZAs and SBSs. It is further shown that the proposed method reduces the spectrum sensing latency and results in a higher spectrum efficiency. Furthermore, a novel power allocation scheme for multicell CRN is proposed where the subchannel power allocation is performed by incorporating network-wide primary system communication activity. A collaborative subchannel monitoring scheme is proposed to evaluate the aggregated subchannel activity index (ASAI) to indicate the activity levels of primary users. Two utility functions are then defined to characterize the spectral efficiency (SE) and energy efficiency (EE) as a function of ASAI to formulate a utility maximization problem. The optimal transmit power allocation is then obtained with the objective of maximizing the total utility at the SBS, subject to maximum SBS transmit power and collision probability constraint at the primary receivers. Since optimal EE and SE are two contradicting objectives to obtain the transmit power allocation, the design approach to handle both EE and SE as a function of common network parameter, i.e., ASAI, is provided which ultimately proves the quantitative insights on efficient system design. Extensive simulation results confirm the analytical results and indicate a significant improvement in sensing latency and accuracy and a significant gain against the benchmark models on the rate performance, despite the proposed methods perform with lower signalling overhead

Traffic Scheduling in Point-to-Multipoint OFDMA-based Systems

The new generation of wireless networks (e.g., WiMAX, LTE-Advanced, Cognitive Radio) support many high resource-consuming services (e.g., VoIP, video conference, multiplayer interactive gaming, multimedia streaming, digital video broadcasting, mobile commerce). The main problem of such networks is that the bandwidth is limited, besides to be subject to fading process, and shared among multiple users. Therefore, a combination of sophisticated transmission techniques (e.g., OFDMA) and proper packet scheduling algorithms is necessary, in order to provide applications with suitable quality of service. This Thesis addresses the problem of traffic scheduling in Point-to-Multipoint OFDMA-based systems. We formally prove that in such systems, even a simple scheduling problem of a Service Class at a time, is NP-complete, therefore, computationally intractable. An optimal solution is unfeasible in term of time, thus, fast and simple scheduling heuristics are needed. First, we address the Best Effort traffic scheduling issue, in a system adopting variable-length Frames, with the objective of producing a legal schedule (i.e., the one meeting all system constraints) of minimum length. Besides, we present fast and simple heuristics, which generate suboptimal solutions, and evaluate their performance in the average case, as in the worst one. Then, we investigate the scheduling of Real Time traffic, with the objective of meeting as many deadlines as possible, or equivalently, minimizing the packet drop ratio. Specifically, we propose two scheduling heuristics, which apply two different resource allocation mechanisms, and evaluate their average-case performance by means of a simulation experiment

Resource allocation and optimization techniques in wireless relay networks

Relay techniques have the potential to enhance capacity and coverage of a wireless network. Due to rapidly increasing number of smart phone subscribers and high demand for data intensive multimedia applications, the useful radio spectrum is becoming a scarce resource. For this reason, two way relay network and cognitive radio technologies are required for better utilization of radio spectrum. Compared to the conventional one way relay network, both the uplink and the downlink can be served simultaneously using a two way relay network. Hence the effective bandwidth efficiency is considered to be one time slot per transmission. Cognitive networks are wireless networks that consist of different types of users, a primary user (PU, the primary license holder of a spectrum band) and secondary users (SU, cognitive radios that opportunistically access the PU spectrum). The secondary users can access the spectrum of the licensed user provided they do not harmfully affect to the primary user. In this thesis, various resource allocation and optimization techniques have been investigated for wireless relay and cognitive radio networks

Vehicular Dynamic Spectrum Access: Using Cognitive Radio for Automobile Networks

Vehicular Dynamic Spectrum Access (VDSA) combines the advantages of dynamic spectrum access to achieve higher spectrum efficiency and the special mobility pattern of vehicle fleets. This dissertation presents several noval contributions with respect to vehicular communications, especially vehicle-to-vehicle communications. Starting from a system engineering aspect, this dissertation will present several promising future directions for vehicle communications, taking into consideration both the theoretical and practical aspects of wireless communication deployment. This dissertation starts with presenting a feasibility analysis using queueing theory to model and estimate the performance of VDSA within a TV whitespace environment. The analytical tool uses spectrum measurement data and vehicle density to find upper bounds of several performance metrics for a VDSA scenario in TVWS. Then, a framework for optimizing VDSA via artificial intelligence and learning, as well as simulation testbeds that reflect realistic spectrum sharing scenarios between vehicle networks and heterogeneous wireless networks including wireless local area networks and wireless regional area networks. Detailed experimental results justify the testbed for emulating a mobile dynamic spectrum access environment composed of heterogeneous networks with four dimensional mutual interference. Vehicular cooperative communication is the other proposed technique that combines the cooperative communication technology and vehicle platooning, an emerging concept that is expected to both increase highway utilization and enhance both driver experience and safety. This dissertation will focus on the coexistence of multiple vehicle groups in shared spectrum, where intra-group cooperation and inter-group competition are investigated in the aspect of channel access. Finally, a testbed implementation VDSA is presented and a few applications are developed within a VDSA environment, demonstrating the feasibility and benefits of some features in a future transportation system

Resource Management in Multicarrier Based Cognitive Radio Systems

The ever-increasing growth of the wireless application and services affirms the importance of the effective usage of the limited radio spectrum. Existing spectrum management policies have led to significant spectrum under-utilization. Recent measurements showed that large range of the spectrum is sparsely used in both temporal and spatial manner. This conflict between the inefficient usage of the spectrum and the continuous evolution in the wireless communication calls upon the development of more flexible management policies. Cognitive radio (CR) with the dynamic spectrum access (DSA) is considered to be a key technology in making the best solution of this conflict by allowing a group of secondary users (SUs) to share the radio spectrum originally allocated to the primary user (PUs). The operation of CR should not negatively alter the performance of the PUs. Therefore, the interference control along with the highly dynamic nature of PUs activities open up new resource allocation problems in CR systems. The resource allocation algorithms should ensure an effective share of the temporarily available frequency bands and deliver the solutions in timely fashion to cope with quick changes in the network. In this dissertation, the resource management problem in multicarrier based CR systems is considered. The dissertation focuses on three main issues: 1) design of efficient resource allocation algorithms to allocate subcarriers and powers between SUs such that no harmful interference is introduced to PUs, 2) compare the spectral efficiency of using different multicarrier schemes in the CR physical layer, specifically, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and filter bank multicarrier (FBMC) schemes, 3) investigate the impact of the different constraints values on the overall performance of the CR system. Three different scenarios are considered in this dissertation, namely downlink transmission, uplink transmission, and relayed transmission. For every scenario, the optimal solution is examined and efficient sub-optimal algorithms are proposed to reduce the computational burden of obtaining the optimal solution. The suboptimal algorithms are developed by separate the subcarrier and power allocation into two steps in downlink and uplink scenarios. In the relayed scenario, dual decomposition technique is used to obtain an asymptotically optimal solution, and a joint heuristic algorithm is proposed to find the suboptimal solution. Numerical simulations show that the proposed suboptimal algorithms achieve a near optimal performance and perform better than the existing algorithms designed for cognitive and non-cognitive systems. Eventually, the ability of FBMC to overcome the OFDM drawbacks and achieve more spectral efficiency is verified which recommends the consideration of FBMC in the future CR systems.El crecimiento continuo de las aplicaciones y servicios en sistemas inal´ambricos, indica la importancia y necesidad de una utilizaci´on eficaz del espectro radio. Las pol´ıticas actuales de gesti´on del espectro han conducido a una infrautilizaci´on del propio espectro radioel´ectrico. Recientes mediciones en diferentes entornos han mostrado que gran parte del espectro queda poco utilizado en sus ambas vertientes, la temporal, y la espacial. El permanente conflicto entre el uso ineficiente del espectro y la evoluci´on continua de los sistemas de comunicaci´on inal´ambrica, hace que sea urgente y necesario el desarrollo de esquemas de gesti´on del espectro m´as flexibles. Se considera el acceso din´amico (DSA) al espectro en los sistemas cognitivos como una tecnolog´ıa clave para resolver este conflicto al permitir que un grupo de usuarios secundarios (SUs) puedan compartir y acceder al espectro asignado inicialmente a uno o varios usuarios primarios (PUs). Las operaciones de comunicaci´on llevadas a cabo por los sistemas radio cognitivos no deben en ning´un caso alterar (interferir) los sistemas primarios. Por tanto, el control de la interferencia junto al gran dinamismo de los sistemas primarios implica nuevos retos en el control y asignaci´on de los recursos radio en los sistemas de comunicaci´on CR. Los algoritmos de gesti´on y asignaci´on de recursos (Radio Resource Management-RRM) deben garantizar una participaci´on efectiva de las bandas con frecuencias disponibles temporalmente, y ofrecer en cada momento oportunas soluciones para hacer frente a los distintos cambios r´apidos que influyen en la misma red. En esta tesis doctoral, se analiza el problema de la gesti´on de los recursos radio en sistemas multiportadoras CR, proponiendo varias soluciones para su uso eficaz y coexistencia con los PUs. La tesis en s´ı, se centra en tres l´ıneas principales: 1) el dise˜no de algoritmos eficientes de gesti´on de recursos para la asignaci´on de sub-portadoras y distribuci´on de la potencia en sistemas segundarios, evitando asi cualquier interferencia que pueda ser perjudicial para el funcionamiento normal de los usuarios de la red primaria, 2) analizar y comparar la eficiencia espectral alcanzada a la hora de utilizar diferentes esquema de transmisi´on multiportadora en la capa f´ısica del sistema CR, espec´ıficamente en sistemas basados en OFDM y los basados en banco de filtros multiportadoras (Filter bank Multicarrier-FBMC), 3) investigar el impacto de las diferentes limitaciones en el rendimiento total del sistema de CR. Los escenarios considerados en esta tesis son tres, es decir; modo de transmisi´on descendente (downlink), modo de transmisi´on ascendente (uplink), y el modo de transmisi´on ”Relay”. En cada escenario, la soluci´on ´optima es examinada y comparada con algoritmos sub- ´optimos que tienen como objetivo principal reducir la carga computacional. Los algoritmos sub-´optimos son llevados a cabo en dos fases mediante la separaci´on del propio proceso de distribuci´on de subportadoras y la asignaci´on de la potencia en los modos de comunicaci´on descendente (downlink), y ascendente (uplink). Para los entornos de tipo ”Relay”, se ha utilizado la t´ecnica de doble descomposici´on (dual decomposition) para obtener una soluci´on asint´oticamente ´optima. Adem´as, se ha desarrollado un algoritmo heur´ıstico para poder obtener la soluci´on ´optima con un reducido coste computacional. Los resultados obtenidos mediante simulaciones num´ericas muestran que los algoritmos sub-´optimos desarrollados logran acercarse a la soluci´on ´optima en cada uno de los entornos analizados, logrando as´ı un mayor rendimiento que los ya existentes y utilizados tanto en entornos cognitivos como no-cognitivos. Se puede comprobar en varios resultados obtenidos en la tesis la superioridad del esquema multiportadora FBMC sobre los sistemas basados en OFDM para los entornos cognitivos, causando una menor interferencia que el OFDM en los sistemas primarios, y logrando una mayor eficiencia espectral. Finalmente, en base a lo analizado en esta tesis, podemos recomendar al esquema multiportadora FBMC como una id´onea y potente forma de comunicaci´on para las futuras redes cognitivas

Detection of OFDM Signals Using Pilot Tones and Applications to Spectrum Sensing for Cognitive Radio Systems

Nowadays there are an increasing number of wireless devices which support wireless networking and the need for higher data rate communication is increasing rabidly. As more and more systems go wireless, approaching technologies will face spectral crowding and existence of wireless devices will be an important issue. Because of the limited bandwidth availability, accepting the request for higher capacity and data rates is a challenging task, demanding advanced technologies that can offers new methods of using the available radio spectrum. Cognitive radio introduces a key solution to the spectral increasing issue by presenting the opportunistic usage of spectrum that is not heavily occupied by licensed users. It is a latest idea in wireless communications systems which objective to have more adaptive and aware communication devices which can make better use of available natural resources. Cognitive radio appears to be an attractive solution to the spectral congestion problem by introducing the notion of opportunistic spectrum use. Cognitive radios can operate as a secondary systems on top of existence system which are called primary (or licensed) systems. In this case, secondary (cognitive) users need to detect the unused spectrum in order to be able to access it. Because of its many advantages, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has been successfully used in numerous wireless standards and technologies. It\u27s shown that OFDM will play an important role in realizing the cognitive radio concept as well by providing a proven, scalable, and adaptive technology for air interface. Researches show that OFDM technique is considered as a candidate for cognitive radio systems. The objective of this dissertation is to explore detecting of OFDM modulated signals using pilot tones information. Specifically we applying Time-Domain Symbol Cross-Correlation (TDSC) method in the confect of actual 4G wireless standards such as WIMAX and LTE. This detection is only based upon the knowledge of pilot structures without knowledge of received signal so that, it can be performed on every portion of the received signal. The approach induces Cross-Correlation between pilots subcarriers and exploits the deterministic and periodic characteristics of pilot mapping in the time frequency domain