AirSync: Enabling Distributed Multiuser MIMO with Full Spatial Multiplexing

The enormous success of advanced wireless devices is pushing the demand for higher wireless data rates. Denser spectrum reuse through the deployment of more access points per square mile has the potential to successfully meet the increasing demand for more bandwidth. In theory, the best approach to density increase is via distributed multiuser MIMO, where several access points are connected to a central server and operate as a large distributed multi-antenna access point, ensuring that all transmitted signal power serves the purpose of data transmission, rather than creating "interference." In practice, while enterprise networks offer a natural setup in which distributed MIMO might be possible, there are serious implementation difficulties, the primary one being the need to eliminate phase and timing offsets between the jointly coordinated access points. In this paper we propose AirSync, a novel scheme which provides not only time but also phase synchronization, thus enabling distributed MIMO with full spatial multiplexing gains. AirSync locks the phase of all access points using a common reference broadcasted over the air in conjunction with a Kalman filter which closely tracks the phase drift. We have implemented AirSync as a digital circuit in the FPGA of the WARP radio platform. Our experimental testbed, comprised of two access points and two clients, shows that AirSync is able to achieve phase synchronization within a few degrees, and allows the system to nearly achieve the theoretical optimal multiplexing gain. We also discuss MAC and higher layer aspects of a practical deployment. To the best of our knowledge, AirSync offers the first ever realization of the full multiuser MIMO gain, namely the ability to increase the number of wireless clients linearly with the number of jointly coordinated access points, without reducing the per client rate.Comment: Submitted to Transactions on Networkin

Dispersive Fourier Transformation for Versatile Microwave Photonics Applications

Abstract: Dispersive Fourier transformation (DFT) maps the broadband spectrum of an ultrashort optical pulse into a time stretched waveform with its intensity profile mirroring the spectrum using chromatic dispersion. Owing to its capability of continuous pulse-by-pulse spectroscopic measurement and manipulation, DFT has become an emerging technique for ultrafast signal generation and processing, and high-throughput real-time measurements, where the speed of traditional optical instruments falls short. In this paper, the principle and implementation methods of DFT are first introduced and the recent development in employing DFT technique for widespread microwave photonics applications are presented, with emphasis on real-time spectroscopy, microwave arbitrary waveform generation, and microwave spectrum sensing. Finally, possible future research directions for DFT-based microwave photonics techniques are discussed as well

Design and demonstration of digital pre-distortion using software defined radio

Abstract. High data rates for large number of users set tight requirements for signal quality measured in terms of error vector magnitude (EVM). In radio transmitters, nonlinear distortion dominated by power amplifiers (PAs) often limits the achievable EVM. However, the linearity can be improved by linearization techniques. Digital pre-distortion (DPD) is one of these widely used linearization techniques for an effective distortion reduction over a wide bandwidth. In DPD, the nonlinearity of the transmitter is pre-compensated in the digital domain to achieve linear output. Moreover, DPD is used to enable PAs to operate in the power-efficient region with a decent linearity. As we are moving towards millimetre-wave frequencies to enable the wideband communications, the design of the DPD algorithm must be optimized in terms of performance and power consumption. Moreover, continuous development of wireless infrastructure motivates to make research on programmable and reconfigurable platforms in order to decrease the demonstration cost and time, especially for the demonstration purposes. This thesis illustrates and presents how software defined radio (SDR) platforms can be used to demonstrate DPD. Universal software defined peripheral (USRP) X300 is a commercial software defined radio (SDR) platform. The chosen model, X300, has two independent channels equipped with individual transceiver cards. SIMULINK is used to communicate with the device and the two channels of X300 are used as transmitter and receiver simultaneously in full-duplex mode. Hence, a single USRP device is acting as an operational transmitter and feedback receiver, simultaneously. The implemented USRP design consists of SIMULINK based transceiver design and lookup table based DPD in which the coefficients are calculated in MATLAB offline. An external PA, i.e. ZFL-2000+ together with a directional coupler and attenuator are connected between the TX/RX port and RX2 port to measure the nonlinearity. The nonlinearity transceiver is measured with and without the external PA. The experimental results show decent performance for linearization by using the USRP platform. However, the results differ widely due to the used USRP transceiver parameterization and PA operational point. The 16 QAM test signal with 500 kHz bandwidth is fed to the USRP transmit chain. As an example, the DPD algorithm improves the EVM from 7.6% to 2.1% and also the ACPR is reduced around 10 dB with the 16 QAM input signal where approximately + 2.2 dBm input power applied to the external PA