Interplay Between Transmission Delay, Average Data Rate, and Performance in Output Feedback Control over Digital Communication Channels

The performance of a noisy linear time-invariant (LTI) plant, controlled over a noiseless digital channel with transmission delay, is investigated in this paper. The rate-limited channel connects the single measurement output of the plant to its single control input through a causal, but otherwise arbitrary, coder-controller pair. An infomation-theoretic approach is utilized to analyze the minimal average data rate required to attain the quadratic performance when the channel imposes a known constant delay on the transmitted data. This infimum average data rate is shown to be lower bounded by minimizing the directed information rate across a set of LTI filters and an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. It is demonstrated that the presence of time delay in the channel increases the data rate needed to achieve a certain level of performance. The applicability of the results is verified through a numerical example. In particular, we show by simulations that when the optimal filters are used but the AWGN channel (used in the lower bound) is replaced by a simple scalar uniform quantizer, the resulting operational data rates are at most around 0.3 bits above the lower bounds.Comment: A less-detailed version of this paper has been accepted for publication in the proceedings of ACC 201

Millimeter Wave Cellular Networks: A MAC Layer Perspective

The millimeter wave (mmWave) frequency band is seen as a key enabler of multi-gigabit wireless access in future cellular networks. In order to overcome the propagation challenges, mmWave systems use a large number of antenna elements both at the base station and at the user equipment, which lead to high directivity gains, fully-directional communications, and possible noise-limited operations. The fundamental differences between mmWave networks and traditional ones challenge the classical design constraints, objectives, and available degrees of freedom. This paper addresses the implications that highly directional communication has on the design of an efficient medium access control (MAC) layer. The paper discusses key MAC layer issues, such as synchronization, random access, handover, channelization, interference management, scheduling, and association. The paper provides an integrated view on MAC layer issues for cellular networks, identifies new challenges and tradeoffs, and provides novel insights and solution approaches.Comment: 21 pages, 9 figures, 2 tables, to appear in IEEE Transactions on Communication

Backlog and Delay Reasoning in HARQ Systems

Recently, hybrid-automatic-repeat-request (HARQ) systems have been favored in particular state-of-the-art communications systems since they provide the practicality of error detections and corrections aligned with repeat-requests when needed at receivers. The queueing characteristics of these systems have taken considerable focus since the current technology demands data transmissions with a minimum delay provisioning. In this paper, we investigate the effects of physical layer characteristics on data link layer performance in a general class of HARQ systems. Constructing a state transition model that combines queue activity at a transmitter and decoding efficiency at a receiver, we identify the probability of clearing the queue at the transmitter and the packet-loss probability at the receiver. We determine the effective capacity that yields the maximum feasible data arrival rate at the queue under quality-of-service constraints. In addition, we put forward non-asymptotic backlog and delay bounds. Finally, regarding three different HARQ protocols, namely Type-I HARQ, HARQ-chase combining (HARQ-CC) and HARQ-incremental redundancy (HARQ-IR), we show the superiority of HARQ-IR in delay robustness over the others. However, we further observe that the performance gap between HARQ-CC and HARQ-IR is quite negligible in certain cases. The novelty of our paper is a general cross-layer analysis of these systems, considering encoding/decoding in the physical layer and delay aspects in the data-link layer

Area spectral efficiency of soft-decision space–time–frequency shift-keying-aided slow-frequency-hopping multiple access

Slow-frequency-hopping multiple access (SFHMA) can provide inherent frequency diversity and beneficially randomize the effects of cochannel interference. It may also be advantageously combined with our novel space-time–frequency shift keying (STFSK) scheme. The proposed system’s area spectral efficiency is investigated in various cellular frequency reuse structures. Furthermore, it is compared to both classic Gaussian minimum shift keying (GMSK)-aided SFHMA and GMSK-assisted time- division/frequency-division multiple access (TD/FDMA). The more sophisticated third-generation wideband code-division multiple access (WCDMA) and the fourth-generation Long Term Evolution (LTE) systems were also included in our comparisons. We demonstrate that the area spectral efficiency of the STFSK-aided SFHMA system is higher than the GMSK-aided SFHMA and TD/FDMA systems, as well as WCDMA, but it is only 60% of the LTE system