Performance Analysis and Mitigation Techniques for I/Q-Corrupted OFDM Systems

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) has become a widely adopted modulation technique in modern communications systems due to its multipath resilience and low implementation complexity. The direct conversion architecture is a popular candidate for low-cost, low-power, fully integrated transceiver designs. One of the inevitable problems associated with analog signal processing in direct conversion involves the mismatches in the gain and phases of In-phase (I) and Quadrature-phase (Q) branches. Ideally, the I and Q branches of the quadrature mixer will have perfectly matched gains and are orthogonal in phase. Due to imperfect implementation of the electronics, so called I/Q imbalance emerges and creates interference between subcarriers which are symmetrically apart from the central subcarrier. With practical imbalance levels, basic transceivers fail to maintain the sufficient image rejection, which in turn can cause interference with the desired transmission. Such an I/Q distortion degrades the systems performance if left uncompensated. Moreover, the coexistence of I/Q imbalance and other analog RF imperfections with digital baseband and higher layer functionalities such as multiantenna transmission and radio resource management, reduce the probability of successful transmission. Therefore, mitigation of I/Q imbalance is an essential substance in designing and implementing modern communications systems, while meeting required performance targets and quality of service. This thesis considers techniques to compensate and mitigate I/Q imbalance, when combined with channel estimation, multiantenna transmission, transmission power control, adaptive modulation and multiuser scheduling. The awareness of the quantitative relationship between transceiver parameters and system parameters is crucial in designing and dimensioning of modern communications systems. For this purpose, analytical models to evaluate the performance of an I/Q distorted system are considered

Timing and Carrier Synchronization in Wireless Communication Systems: A Survey and Classification of Research in the Last 5 Years

Timing and carrier synchronization is a fundamental requirement for any wireless communication system to work properly. Timing synchronization is the process by which a receiver node determines the correct instants of time at which to sample the incoming signal. Carrier synchronization is the process by which a receiver adapts the frequency and phase of its local carrier oscillator with those of the received signal. In this paper, we survey the literature over the last 5 years (2010–2014) and present a comprehensive literature review and classification of the recent research progress in achieving timing and carrier synchronization in single-input single-output (SISO), multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), cooperative relaying, and multiuser/multicell interference networks. Considering both single-carrier and multi-carrier communication systems, we survey and categorize the timing and carrier synchronization techniques proposed for the different communication systems focusing on the system model assumptions for synchronization, the synchronization challenges, and the state-of-the-art synchronization solutions and their limitations. Finally, we envision some future research directions

I/Q Imbalance in Multiantenna Systems: Modeling, Analysis and RF-Aware Digital Beamforming

Wireless communications has experienced an unprecedented increase in data rates, numbers of active devices and selection of applications during recent years. However, this is expected to be just a start for future developments where a wireless connection is seen as a fundamental resource for almost any electrical device, no matter where and when it is operating. Since current radio technologies cannot provide such services with reasonable costs or even at all, a multitude of technological developments will be needed. One of the most important subjects, in addition to higher bandwidths and flexible network functionalities, is the exploitation of multiple antennas in base stations (BSs) as well as in user equipment (UEs). That kind of multiantenna communications can boost the capacity of an individual UE-BS link through spatial antenna multiplexing and increase the quality as well as robustness of the link via antenna diversity. Multiantenna technologies provide improvements also on the network level through spatial UE multiplexing and sophisticated interference management. Additionally, multiple antennas can provide savings in terms of the dissipated power since transmission and reception can be steered more efficiently in space, and thus power leakage to other directions is decreased. However, several issues need to be considered in order to get multiantenna technologies widely spread. First, antennas and the associated transceiver chains are required to be simple and implementable with low costs. Second, size of the antennas and transceivers need to be minimized. Finally, power consumption of the system must be kept under control. The importance of these requirements is even emphasized when considering massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems consisting of devices equipped with tens or even hundreds of antennas.In this thesis, we consider multiantenna devices where the associated transceiver chains are implemented in such a way that the requirements above can be met. In particular, we focus on the direct-conversion transceiver principle which is seen as a promising radio architecture for multiantenna systems due to its low costs, small size, low power consumption and good flexibility. Whereas these aspects are very promising, direct-conversion transceivers have also some disadvantages and are vulnerable to certain imperfections in the analog radio frequency (RF) electronics in particular. Since the effects of these imperfections usually get even worse when optimizing costs of the devices, the scope of the thesis is on the effects and mitigation of one of the most severe RF imperfection, namely in-phase/quadrature (I/Q) imbalance.Contributions of the thesis can be split into two main themes. First of them is multiantenna narrowband beamforming under transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX) I/Q imbalances. We start by creating a model for the signals at the TX and RX, both under I/Q imbalances. Based on these models we derive analytical expressions for the antenna array radiation patterns and notice that I/Q imbalance distorts not only the signals but also the radiation characteristics of the array. After that, stemming from the nature of the distortion, we utilize widely-linear (WL) processing, where the signals and their complex conjugates are processed jointly, for the beamforming task under I/Q imbalance. Such WL processing with different kind of statistical and adaptive beamforming algorithms is finally shown to provide a flexible operation as well as distortion-free signals and radiation patterns when being under various I/Q imbalance schemes.The second theme extends the work to wideband systems utilizing orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM)-based waveforms. The focus is on uplink communications and BS RX processing in a multiuser MIMO (MU-MIMO) scheme where spatial UE multiplexing is applied and further UE multiplexing takes place in frequency domain through the orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) principle. Moreover, we include the effects of external co-channel interference into our analysis in order to model the challenges in heterogeneous networks. We formulate a flexible signal model for a generic uplink scheme where I/Q imbalance occurs on both TX and RX sides. Based on the model, we analyze the signal distortion in frequency domain and develop augmented RX processing methods which process signals at mirror subcarrier pairs jointly. Additionally, the proposed augmented methods are numerically shown to outperform corresponding per-subcarrier method in terms of the instantaneous signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio (SINR). Finally, we address some practical aspects and conclude that the augmented processing principle is a promising tool for RX processing in multiantenna wideband systems under I/Q imbalance.The thesis provides important insight for development of future radio networks. In particular, the results can be used as such for implementing digital signal processing (DSP)-based RF impairment mitigation in real world transceivers. Moreover, the results can be used as a starting point for future research concerning, e.g., joint effects of multiple RF impairments and their mitigation in multiantenna systems. Overall, this thesis and the associated publications can help the communications society to reach the ambitious aim of flexible, low-cost and high performance radio networks in the future

Performance enhancement for LTE and beyond systems

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophyWireless communication systems have undergone fast development in recent years. Based on GSM/EDGE and UMTS/HSPA, the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) specified the Long Term Evolution (LTE) standard to cope with rapidly increasing demands, including capacity, coverage, and data rate. To achieve this goal, several key techniques have been adopted by LTE, such as Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output (MIMO), Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (OFDM), and heterogeneous network (HetNet). However, there are some inherent drawbacks regarding these techniques. Direct conversion architecture is adopted to provide a simple, low cost transmitter solution. The problem of I/Q imbalance arises due to the imperfection of circuit components; the orthogonality of OFDM is vulnerable to carrier frequency offset (CFO) and sampling frequency offset (SFO). The doubly selective channel can also severely deteriorate the receiver performance. In addition, the deployment of Heterogeneous Network (HetNet), which permits the co-existence of macro and pico cells, incurs inter-cell interference for cell edge users. The impact of these factors then results in significant degradation in relation to system performance. This dissertation aims to investigate the key techniques which can be used to mitigate the above problems. First, I/Q imbalance for the wideband transmitter is studied and a self-IQ-demodulation based compensation scheme for frequencydependent (FD) I/Q imbalance is proposed. This combats the FD I/Q imbalance by using the internal diode of the transmitter and a specially designed test signal without any external calibration instruments or internal low-IF feedback path. The instrument test results show that the proposed scheme can enhance signal quality by 10 dB in terms of image rejection ratio (IRR). In addition to the I/Q imbalance, the system suffers from CFO, SFO and frequency-time selective channel. To mitigate this, a hybrid optimum OFDM receiver with decision feedback equalizer (DFE) to cope with the CFO, SFO and doubly selective channel. The algorithm firstly estimates the CFO and channel frequency response (CFR) in the coarse estimation, with the help of hybrid classical timing and frequency synchronization algorithms. Afterwards, a pilot-aided polynomial interpolation channel estimation, combined with a low complexity DFE scheme, based on minimum mean squared error (MMSE) criteria, is developed to alleviate the impact of the residual SFO, CFO, and Doppler effect. A subspace-based signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) estimation algorithm is proposed to estimate the SNR in the doubly selective channel. This provides prior knowledge for MMSE-DFE and automatic modulation and coding (AMC). Simulation results show that this proposed estimation algorithm significantly improves the system performance. In order to speed up algorithm verification process, an FPGA based co-simulation is developed. Inter-cell interference caused by the co-existence of macro and pico cells has a big impact on system performance. Although an almost blank subframe (ABS) is proposed to mitigate this problem, the residual control signal in the ABS still inevitably causes interference. Hence, a cell-specific reference signal (CRS) interference cancellation algorithm, utilizing the information in the ABS, is proposed. First, the timing and carrier frequency offset of the interference signal is compensated by utilizing the cross-correlation properties of the synchronization signal. Afterwards, the reference signal is generated locally and channel response is estimated by making use of channel statistics. Then, the interference signal is reconstructed based on the previous estimate of the channel, timing and carrier frequency offset. The interference is mitigated by subtracting the estimation of the interference signal and LLR puncturing. The block error rate (BLER) performance of the signal is notably improved by this algorithm, according to the simulation results of different channel scenarios. The proposed techniques provide low cost, low complexity solutions for LTE and beyond systems. The simulation and measurements show good overall system performance can be achieved

Single carrier frequency domain equalization and energy efficiency optimization for MIMO cognitive radio.

This dissertation studies two separate topics in wireless communication systems. One topic focuses on the Single Carrier Frequency Domain Equalization (SC-FDE), which is a promising technique to mitigate the multipath effect in the broadband wireless communication. Another topic targets on the energy efficiency optimization in a multiple input multiple output (MIMO) cognitive radio network. For SC-FDE, the conventional linear receivers suffer from the noise amplification in deep fading channel. To overcome this, a fractional spaced frequency domain (FSFD) receiver based on frequency domain oversampling (FDO) is proposed for SC-FDE to improve the performance of the linear receiver under deep fading channels. By properly designing the guard interval, a larger sized Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) is equipped to oversample the received signal in frequency domain. Thus, the effect of frequency-selective fading can still be eliminated by a one-tap frequency domain filter. Two types of FSFD receivers are proposed based on the least square (LS) and minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion. Both the semi-analytical analysis and simulation results are given to evaluate the performance of the proposed receivers. Another challenge in SC-FDE is the in-phase/quadrature phase (IQ) imbalance caused by unideal radio frequency (RF) front-end at the transmitter or the receiver. Most existing works in single carrier transmission employ linear compensation methods, such as LS and MMSE, to combat the interference caused by IQ imbalance. Actually, for single carrier transmissions, it is possible for the receivers to adopt advanced nonlinear compensation methods to improve the system performance under IQ imbalance. For such purpose, an iterative decision feedback receiver is proposed to compensate the IQ imbalance caused by unideal RF front-end in SC-FDE. Numerical results show that the proposed iterative IQ imbalance compensation can significantly improve the performance of SC-FDE system under IQ imbalance compared with the conventional linear method. For the energy efficiency optimization in the MIMO cognitive radio network, multiple secondary users (SUs) coexisting with a primary user (PU) adjust their antenna radiation patterns and power allocations to achieve energy-efficient transmission. The optimization problems are formulated to maximize the energy efficiency of a cognitive radio network in both distributed and centralized point of views. Also, constraints on the transmission power and the interference to PU are introduced to protect the PU’s transmission. In order to solve the non-convex optimization problems, convex relaxations are used to transform them into equivalent problems with better tractability. Then three optimization algorithms are proposed to find the energy-efficient transmission strategies. Simulation results show that the proposed energy-efficiency optimization algorithms outperform the existing algorithms

Unified Framework for Multicarrier and Multiple Access based on Generalized Frequency Division Multiplexing

The advancements in wireless communications are the key-enablers of new applications with stringent requirements in low-latency, ultra-reliability, high data rate, high mobility, and massive connectivity. Diverse types of devices, ranging from tiny sensors to vehicles, with different capabilities need to be connected under various channel conditions. Thus, modern connectivity and network techniques at all layers are essential to overcome these challenges. In particular, the physical layer (PHY) transmission is required to achieve certain link reliability, data rate, and latency. In modern digital communications systems, the transmission is performed by means of a digital signal processing module that derives analog hardware. The performance of the analog part is influenced by the quality of the hardware and the baseband signal denoted as waveform. In most of the modern systems such as fifth generation (5G) and WiFi, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is adopted as a favorite waveform due to its low-complexity advantages in terms of signal processing. However, OFDM requires strict requirements on hardware quality. Many devices are equipped with simplified analog hardware to reduce the cost. In this case, OFDM does not work properly as a result of its high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) and sensitivity to synchronization errors. To tackle these problems, many waveforms design have been recently proposed in the literature. Some of these designs are modified versions of OFDM or based on conventional single subcarrier. Moreover, multicarrier frameworks, such as generalized frequency division multiplexing (GFDM), have been proposed to realize varieties of conventional waveforms. Furthermore, recent studies show the potential of using non-conventional waveforms for increasing the link reliability with affordable complexity. Based on that, flexible waveforms and transmission techniques are necessary to adapt the system for different hardware and channel constraints in order to fulfill the applications requirements while optimizing the resources. The objective of this thesis is to provide a holistic view of waveforms and the related multiple access (MA) techniques to enable efficient study and evaluation of different approaches. First, the wireless communications system is reviewed with specific focus on the impact of hardware impairments and the wireless channel on the waveform design. Then, generalized model of waveforms and MA are presented highlighting various special cases. Finally, this work introduces low-complexity architectures for hardware implementation of flexible waveforms. Integrating such designs with software-defined radio (SDR) contributes to the development of practical real-time flexible PHY.:1 Introduction 1.1 Baseband transmission model 1.2 History of multicarrier systems 1.3 The state-of-the-art waveforms 1.4 Prior works related to GFDM 1.5 Objective and contributions 2 Fundamentals of Wireless Communications 2.1 Wireless communications system 2.2 RF transceiver 2.2.1 Digital-analogue conversion 2.2.2 QAM modulation 2.2.3 Effective channel 2.2.4 Hardware impairments 2.3 Waveform aspects 2.3.1 Single-carrier waveform 2.3.2 Multicarrier waveform 2.3.3 MIMO-Waveforms 2.3.4 Waveform performance metrics 2.4 Wireless Channel 2.4.1 Line-of-sight propagation 2.4.2 Multi path and fading process 2.4.3 General baseband statistical channel model 2.4.4 MIMO channel 2.5 Summary 3 Generic Block-based Waveforms 3.1 Block-based waveform formulation 3.1.1 Variable-rate multicarrier 3.1.2 General block-based multicarrier model 3.2 Waveform processing techniques 3.2.1 Linear and circular filtering 3.2.2 Windowing 3.3 Structured representation 3.3.1 Modulator 3.3.2 Demodulator 3.3.3 MIMO Waveform processing 3.4 Detection 3.4.1 Maximum-likelihood detection 3.4.2 Linear detection 3.4.3 Iterative Detection 3.4.4 Numerical example and insights 3.5 Summary 4 Generic Multiple Access Schemes 57 4.1 Basic multiple access and multiplexing schemes 4.1.1 Infrastructure network system model 4.1.2 Duplex schemes 4.1.3 Common multiplexing and multiple access schemes 4.2 General multicarrier-based multiple access 4.2.1 Design with fixed set of pulses 4.2.2 Computational model 4.2.3 Asynchronous multiple access 4.3 Summary 5 Time-Frequency Analyses of Multicarrier 5.1 General time-frequency representation 5.1.1 Block representation 5.1.2 Relation to Zak transform 5.2 Time-frequency spreading 5.3 Time-frequency block in LTV channel 5.3.1 Subcarrier and subsymbol numerology 5.3.2 Processing based on the time-domain signal 5.3.3 Processing based on the frequency-domain signal 5.3.4 Unified signal model 5.4 summary 6 Generalized waveforms based on time-frequency shifts 6.1 General time-frequency shift 6.1.1 Time-frequency shift design 6.1.2 Relation between the shifted pulses 6.2 Time-frequency shift in Gabor frame 6.2.1 Conventional GFDM 6.3 GFDM modulation 6.3.1 Filter bank representation 6.3.2 Block representation 6.3.3 GFDM matrix structure 6.3.4 GFDM demodulator 6.3.5 Alternative interpretation of GFDM 6.3.6 Orthogonal modulation and GFDM spreading 6.4 Summary 7 Modulation Framework: Architectures and Applications 7.1 Modem architectures 7.1.1 General modulation matrix structure 7.1.2 Run-time flexibility 7.1.3 Generic GFDM-based architecture 7.1.4 Flexible parallel multiplications architecture 7.1.5 MIMO waveform architecture 7.2 Extended GFDM framework 7.2.1 Architectures complexity and flexibility analysis 7.2.2 Number of multiplications 7.2.3 Hardware analysis 7.3 Applications of the extended GFDM framework 7.3.1 Generalized FDMA 7.3.2 Enchantment of OFDM system 7.4 Summary 7 Conclusions and Future work

Semi-blind CFO estimation and ICA based equalization for wireless communication systems

In this thesis, a number of semi-blind structures are proposed for Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) based wireless communication systems, with Carrier Frequency Offset (CFO) estimation and Independent Component Analysis (ICA) based equalization. In the first contribution, a semi-blind non-redundant single-user Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) OFDM system is proposed, with a precoding aided CFO estimation approach and an ICA based equalization structure. A number of reference data sequences are carefully designed and selected from a pool of orthogonal sequences, killing two birds with one stone. On the one hand, the precoding based CFO estimation is performed by minimizing the sum cross-correlations between the CFO compensated signals and the rest of the orthogonal sequences in the pool. On the other hand, the same reference data sequences enable the elimination of permutation and quadrant ambiguities in the ICA equalized signals. Simulation results show that the proposed semi-blind MIMO OFDM system can achieve a Bit Error Rate (BER) performance close to the ideal case with perfect Channel State Information (CSI) and no CFO. In the second contribution, a low-complexity semi-blind structure, with a multi-CFO estimation method and an ICA based equalization scheme, is proposed for multiuser Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) OFDM systems. A short pilot is carefully designed offline for each user and has a two-fold advantage. On the one hand, using the pilot structure, a complex multi-dimensional search for multiple CFOs is divided into a number of low-complexity mono-dimensional searches. On the other hand, the cross-correlation between the transmitted and received pilots is explored to allow the simultaneous elimination of permutation and quadrant ambiguities in the ICA equalized signals. Simulation results show that the proposed semi-blind CoMP OFDM system can provide a BER performance close to the ideal case with perfect CSI and no CFO. In the third contribution, a semi-blind structure is proposed for Carrier Aggregation (CA) based CoMP Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) systems, with an ICA based joint Inter-Carrier Interference (ICI) mitigation and equalization scheme. The CFO-induced ICI is mitigated implicitly via ICA based equalization, without introducing feedback overhead for CFO correction. The permutation and quadrant ambiguities in the ICA equalized signals can be eliminated by a small number of pilots. Simulation results show that with a low training overhead, the proposed semi-blind equalization scheme can provide a BER performance close to the ideal case with perfect CSI and no CFO

System capacity enhancement for 5G network and beyond

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire, in fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of PhilosophyThe demand for wireless digital data is dramatically increasing year over year. Wireless communication systems like Laptops, Smart phones, Tablets, Smart watch, Virtual Reality devices and so on are becoming an important part of people’s daily life. The number of mobile devices is increasing at a very fast speed as well as the requirements for mobile devices such as super high-resolution image/video, fast download speed, very short latency and high reliability, which raise challenges to the existing wireless communication networks. Unlike the previous four generation communication networks, the fifth-generation (5G) wireless communication network includes many technologies such as millimetre-wave communication, massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), visual light communication (VLC), heterogeneous network (HetNet) and so forth. Although 5G has not been standardised yet, these above technologies have been studied in both academia and industry and the goal of the research is to enhance and improve the system capacity for 5G networks and beyond by studying some key problems and providing some effective solutions existing in the above technologies from system implementation and hardware impairments’ perspective. The key problems studied in this thesis include interference cancellation in HetNet, impairments calibration for massive MIMO, channel state estimation for VLC, and low latency parallel Turbo decoding technique. Firstly, inter-cell interference in HetNet is studied and a cell specific reference signal (CRS) interference cancellation method is proposed to mitigate the performance degrade in enhanced inter-cell interference coordination (eICIC). This method takes carrier frequency offset (CFO) and timing offset (TO) of the user’s received signal into account. By reconstructing the interfering signal and cancelling it afterwards, the capacity of HetNet is enhanced. Secondly, for massive MIMO systems, the radio frequency (RF) impairments of the hardware will degrade the beamforming performance. When operated in time duplex division (TDD) mode, a massive MIMO system relies on the reciprocity of the channel which can be broken by the transmitter and receiver RF impairments. Impairments calibration has been studied and a closed-loop reciprocity calibration method is proposed in this thesis. A test device (TD) is introduced in this calibration method that can estimate the transmitters’ impairments over-the-air and feed the results back to the base station via the Internet. The uplink pilots sent by the TD can assist the BS receivers’ impairment estimation. With both the uplink and downlink impairments estimates, the reciprocity calibration coefficients can be obtained. By computer simulation and lab experiment, the performance of the proposed method is evaluated. Channel coding is an essential part of a wireless communication system which helps fight with noise and get correct information delivery. Turbo codes is one of the most reliable codes that has been used in many standards such as WiMAX and LTE. However, the decoding process of turbo codes is time-consuming and the decoding latency should be improved to meet the requirement of the future network. A reverse interleave address generator is proposed that can reduce the decoding time and a low latency parallel turbo decoder has been implemented on a FPGA platform. The simulation and experiment results prove the effectiveness of the address generator and show that there is a trade-off between latency and throughput with a limited hardware resource. Apart from the above contributions, this thesis also investigated multi-user precoding for MIMO VLC systems. As a green and secure technology, VLC is achieving more and more attention and could become a part of 5G network especially for indoor communication. For indoor scenario, the MIMO VLC channel could be easily ill-conditioned. Hence, it is important to study the impact of the channel state to the precoding performance. A channel state estimation method is proposed based on the signal to interference noise ratio (SINR) of the users’ received signal. Simulation results show that it can enhance the capacity of the indoor MIMO VLC system