1,637 research outputs found
Cooperative control of relay based cellular networks
PhDThe increasing popularity of wireless communications and the higher data
requirements of new types of service lead to higher demands on wireless networks.
Relay based cellular networks have been seen as an effective way to meet users’
increased data rate requirements while still retaining the benefits of a cellular
structure. However, maximizing the probability of providing service and spectrum
efficiency are still major challenges for network operators and engineers because of
the heterogeneous traffic demands, hard-to-predict user movements and complex
traffic models.
In a mobile network, load balancing is recognised as an efficient way to increase
the utilization of limited frequency spectrum at reasonable costs. Cooperative
control based on geographic load balancing is employed to provide flexibility for
relay based cellular networks and to respond to changes in the environment.
According to the potential capability of existing antenna systems, adaptive radio
frequency domain control in the physical layer is explored to provide coverage at
the right place at the right time.
This thesis proposes several effective and efficient approaches to improve
spectrum efficiency using network wide optimization to coordinate the coverage
offered by different network components according to the antenna models and
relay station capability. The approaches include tilting of antenna sectors,
changing the power of omni-directional antennas, and changing the assignment of
relay stations to different base stations. Experiments show that the proposed
approaches offer significant improvements and robustness in heterogeneous traffic
scenarios and when the propagation environment changes. The issue of predicting
the consequence of cooperative decisions regarding antenna configurations when
applied in a realistic environment is described, and a coverage prediction model is
proposed. The consequences of applying changes to the antenna configuration on
handovers are analysed in detail. The performance evaluations are based on a
system level simulator in the context of Mobile WiMAX technology, but the
concepts apply more generally
Ultra-Fast, Autonomous, Reconfigurable Communication System
The recent years have witnessed an increase in natural disasters in which the destruction of essential communication infrastructure has significantly affected the number of casualties. In 2005, Hurricane Katrina in the United States resulted in over 1,900 deaths, three million land-line phones disconnections, and more than 2000 cell sites going out of service. This incident highlighted an urgent need for a quick-deployment, efficient communication network for emergency relief purposes. In this research, a fully autonomous system to deploy Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) as the first phase disaster recovery communication network for wide-area relief is presented. As part of this system, an automation algorithm has been developed to control the deployment and positioning of the UAVs based on a traditional cell network structure utilizing 7-cell clusters in a hexagonal pattern. In addition to the software algorithm, a fully functional control interface was developed which allowed for full control of the system both locally and over an internet connection. This system represents a novel approach for handling a large-scale autonomous deployment of a UAV communications networks
Control of an indoor autonomous mobile communications relay via antenna diversity
Presented in this thesis is a motion planning scheme for enabling a quadrotor unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to serve as an autonomous communications relay in indoor or GPS-denied environments. The goal of the algorithm is to maximize the throughput of the end-to-end communications channel. An extremum-seeking controller steers the quadrotor while collision avoidance is provided by artificial potential fields. Extremum-seeking is model-free adaptive control method; it\u27s applicable in situations where there is a nonlinearity in the control problem and the nonlinearity has a local minimum or maximum. The extremum-seeking controller presented here is driven by antenna diversity and attempts to optimize the inputs to an unknown, time-varying cost function characterized by the RF environment. Each of the multiple antennas onboard the quadrotor receives the same incoming packets and provides associated signal strength measurements. The extremum-seeking controller then uses these measurements to autonomously fly the quadrotor communications relay to an optimal location so as to maximize throughput, all without positioning data. This work is motivated by the need to extend the operating ranges of robots in complex urban and indoor environments. The algorithm and necessary technical background are presented in detail. Simulations results verify the validity of the proposed extremum-seeking approach. Experiments demonstrate the feasability of implementing the extremum-seeking controller with tangible hardware
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