Low-resolution ADC receiver design, MIMO interference cancellation prototyping, and PHY secrecy analysis.

This dissertation studies three independent research topics in the general field of wireless communications. The first topic focuses on new receiver design with low-resolution analog-to-digital converters (ADC). In future massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems, multiple high-speed high-resolution ADCs will become a bottleneck for practical applications because of the hardware complexity and power consumption. One solution to this problem is to adopt low-cost low-precision ADCs instead. In Chapter II, MU-MIMO-OFDM systems only equipped with low-precision ADCs are considered. A new turbo receiver structure is proposed to improve the overall system performance. Meanwhile, ultra-low-cost communication devices can enable massive deployment of disposable wireless relays. In Chapter III, the feasibility of using a one-bit relay cluster to help a power-constrained transmitter for distant communication is investigated. Nonlinear estimators are applied to enable effective decoding. The second topic focuses prototyping and verification of a LTE and WiFi co-existence system, where the operation of LTE in unlicensed spectrum (LTE-U) is discussed. LTE-U extends the benefits of LTE and LTE Advanced to unlicensed spectrum, enabling mobile operators to offload data traffic onto unlicensed frequencies more efficiently and effectively. With LTE-U, operators can offer consumers a more robust and seamless mobile broadband experience with better coverage and higher download speeds. As the coexistence leads to considerable performance instability of both LTE and WiFi transmissions, the LTE and WiFi receivers with MIMO interference canceller are designed and prototyped to support the coexistence in Chapter IV. The third topic focuses on theoretical analysis of physical-layer secrecy with finite blocklength. Unlike upper layer security approaches, the physical-layer communication security can guarantee information-theoretic secrecy. Current studies on the physical-layer secrecy are all based on infinite blocklength. Nevertheless, these asymptotic studies are unrealistic and the finite blocklength effect is crucial for practical secrecy communication. In Chapter V, a practical analysis of secure lattice codes is provided

In-band-full-duplex integrated access and backhaul enabled next generation wireless networks

In sixth generation (6G) wireless networks, the severe traffic congestion in the microwave frequencies motivates the exploration of the large available bandwidth in the millimetre-wave (mmWave) frequencies to achieve higher network capacity and data rate. Since large-scale antenna arrays and dense base station deployment are required, the hybrid beamforming architecture and the recently proposed integrated access and backhaul (IAB) networks become potential candidates for providing cost and hardware-friendly techniques for 6G wireless networks. In addition, in-band-full-duplex (IBFD) has been recently paid much more research attention since it can make the transmission and reception occur in the same time and frequency band, which nearly doubles the communication spectral efficiency (SE) compared with state-of-the-art half-duplex (HD) systems. Since 6G will explore sensing as its new capability, future wireless networks can go far beyond communications. Motivated by this, the development of integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) systems, where radar and communication systems share the same spectrum resources and hardware, has become one of the major goals in 6G. This PhD thesis focuses on the design and analysis of IBFD-IAB wireless networks in the frequency range 2 (FR2) band (≥ 24.250 GHz) at mmWave frequencies for the potential use in 6G. Firstly, we develop a novel design for the single-cell FR2-IBFD-IAB networks with subarray-based hybrid beamforming, which can enhance the SE and coverage while reducing the latency. The radio frequency (RF) beamformers are obtained via RF codebooks given by a modified matrix-wise Linde-Buzo-Gray (LBG) algorithm. The self-interference (SI) is cancelled in three stages, where the first stage of antenna isolation is assumed to be successfully deployed. The second stage consists of the optical domain-based RF cancellation, where cancellers are connected with the RF chain pairs. The third stage is comprised of the digital cancellation via successive interference cancellation followed by minimum mean-squared error (MSE) baseband receiver. Multiuser interference in the access link is cancelled by zero-forcing at the IAB-node transmitter. The proposed codebook algorithm avoids undesirable low-rank behaviour, while the proposed staged-SI cancellation (SIC) shows satisfactory cancellation performance in the wideband IBFD scenario. However, the system performance can be affected by the hardware impairments (HWI) and RF effective channel estimation errors. Secondly, we study an FR2-IBFD-ISAC-IAB network for vehicle-to-everything communications, where the IAB-node acts as a roadside unit performing sensing and communication simultaneously (i.e., at the same time and frequency band). The SI due to the IBFD operation will be cancelled in the propagation, analogue, and digital domains; only the residual SI (RSI) is reserved for performance analysis. Considering the subarray-based hybrid beamforming structure, including HWI and RF effective SI channel estimation error, the unscented Kalman filter is used for tracking multiple vehicles in the studied scenario. The proposed system shows an enhanced SE compared with the HD system, and the tracking MSEs averaged across all vehicles of each state parameter are close to their posterior Cramér-Rao lower bounds. Thirdly, we analyse the performance of the multi-cell wideband single-hop backhaul FR2-IBFD-IAB networks by using stochastic geometry analysis. We model the wired-connected next generation NodeBs (gNBs) as the Matérn hard-core point process (MHCPP) to meet the real-world deployment requirement and reduce the cost caused by wired connection in the network. We first derive association probabilities that reflect how likely the typical user-equipment is served by a gNB or an IAB-node based on the maximum long-term averaged biased-received-desired-signal power criteria. Further, by leveraging the composite Gamma-Lognormal distribution, we derive results for the signal to interference plus noise ratio coverage, capacity with outage, and ergodic capacity of the network. In order to assess the impact of noise, we consider the sidelobe gain on inter-cell interference links and the analogue to digital converter quantization noise. Compared with the HD transmission, the designated system shows an enhanced capacity when the SIC operates successfully. We also study how the power bias and density ratio of the IAB-node to gNB, and the hard-core distance can affect system performance. Overall, this thesis aims to contribute to the research efforts of shaping the 6G wireless networks by designing and analysing the FR2-IBFD-IAB inspired networks in the FR2 band at mmWave frequencies that will be potentially used in 6G for both communication only and ISAC scenarios

Design of Joint Spatial and Power Domain Multiplexing Scheme for Massive MIMO Systems

Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) is one of the key techniques in 5th generation wireless systems (5G) due to its potential ability to improve spectral efficiency. Most of the existing works on massive MIMO only consider Time Division Duplex (TDD) operation that relies on channel reciprocity between uplink and downlink channels. For Frequency Division Duplex (FDD) systems, with continued efforts, some downlink multiuser MIMO scheme was recently proposed in order to enable “massive MIMO” gains and simplified system operations with limited number of radio frequency (RF) chains in FDD system. However these schemes, such as Joint Spatial Division and Multiplexing (JSDM) scheme and hybrid precoding scheme, only focus on multiuser transmission in spatial domain. Different from most of the existing works, this paper proposes Joint Spatial and Power Multiplexing (JSPM) scheme in FDD systems. It extends existing FDD schemes from spatial division and multiplexing to joint spatial and power domain to achieve more multiplexing gain. The user grouping and scheduling scheme of JSPM is studied and the asymptotic expression for the sum capacity is derived as well. Finally, simulations are conducted to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme

Capacity, coding and interference cancellation in multiuser multicarrier wireless communications systems

Multicarrier modulation and multiuser systems have generated a great deal of research during the last decade. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a multicarrier modulation generated with the inverse Discrete Fourier Transform, which has been adopted for standards in wireless and wire-line communications. Multiuser wireless systems using multicarrier modulation suffer from the effects of dispersive fading channels, which create multi-access, inter-symbol, and inter-carrier interference (MAI, ISI, ICI). Nevertheless, channel dispersion also provides diversity, which can be exploited and has the potential to increase robustness against fading. Multiuser multi-carrier systems can be implemented using Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA), a flexible orthogonal multiplexing scheme that can implement time and frequency division multiplexing, and using multicarrier code division multiple access (MC-CDMA). Coding, interference cancellation, and resource sharing schemes to improve the performance of multiuser multicarrier systems on wireless channels were addressed in this dissertation. Performance of multiple access schemes applied to a downlink multiuser wireless system was studied from an information theory perspective and from a more practical perspective. For time, frequency, and code division, implemented using OFDMA and MC-CDMA, the system outage capacity region was calculated for a correlated fading channel. It was found that receiver complexity determines which scheme offers larger capacity regions, and that OFDMA results in a better compromise between complexity and performance than MC-CDMA. From the more practical perspective of bit error rate, the effects of channel coding and interleaving were investigated. Results in terms of coding bounds as well as simulation were obtained, showing that OFDMAbased orthogonal multiple access schemes are more sensitive to the effectiveness of the code to provide diversity than non-orthogonal, MC-CDMA-based schemes. While cellular multiuser schemes suffer mainly from MAI, OFDM-based broadcasting systems suffer from ICI, in particular when operating as a single frequency network (SFN). It was found that for SFN the performance of a conventional OFDM receiver rapidly degrades when transmitters have frequency synchronization errors. Several methods based on linear and decision-feedback ICI cancellation were proposed and evaluated, showing improved robustness against ICI. System function characterization of time-variant dispersive channels is important for understanding their effects on single carrier and multicarrier modulation. Using time-frequency duality it was shown that MC-CDMA and DS-CDMA are strictly dual on dispersive channels. This property was used to derive optimal matched filter structures, and to determine a criterion for the selection of spreading sequences for both DS and MC CDMA. The analysis of multiple antenna systems provided a unified framework for the study of DS-CDMA and MC-CDMA on time and frequency dispersive channels, which can also be used to compare their performance

Nonorthogonal Multiple Access for 5G and Beyond

This work was supported in part by the U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under Grant EP/N029720/1 and Grant EP/N029720/2. The work of L. Hanzo was supported by the ERC Advanced Fellow Grant Beam-me-up

Cooperative Communications with Partial Channel State Information in Mobile Radio Systems

Future 4G mobile radio cellular networks are considered OFDM-MIMO systems. Cooperative communication based on coordinated base stations is a very promising concept to perform inter-cell interference management. This thesis deals with the concept of cooperative communication from its information-theoretic background to its practical system design. The main focus is a practical design of the joint detection scheme in the uplink and the joint transmission scheme in the downlink with partial channel-state information (CSI), i.e., significant CSI and imperfect CSI.Zukünftige zellulare 4G-Mobilfunksysteme können als OFDM-MIMO-Systeme betrachtet werden. In solchen zukünftigen Mobilfunksystemen ist kooperative Kommunikation, basierend auf koordinierten Basisstationen, ein sehr vielversprechendes Konzept zum Interzellinterferenzmanagement. Die vorliegende Arbeit behandelt das Konzept der kooperativen Kommunikation vom informationstheoretischen Hintergrund bis hin zum praktischen Systemdesign. Der Schwerpunkt der vorliegenden Arbeit liegt auf dem praktischen Design kooperativer Kommunikationssysteme mit partieller Kanalkenntnis