Comprehensive performance analysis of fully cooperative communication in WBANs

© 2013 IEEE. While relay-based cooperative networks (widely known in the literature as cooperative communication), where relays only forward signals from the sources to the destination, have been extensively researched, fully cooperative systems have not been thoroughly examined. Unlike relay networks, in a fully cooperative network, each node acts as both a source node sending its own data and a relay forwarding its partner's data to the destination. Mutual cooperation between neighboring nodes is believed to improve the overall system error performance, especially when space-time codes are incorporated. However, a comprehensive performance analysis of space-time-coded fully cooperative communication from all three perspectives, namel,y error performance, outage probability, and energy efficiency, is still missing. Answers to the commonly asked questions of whether, in what conditions, and to what extent the space-time-coded fully cooperative communication is better than direct transmission are still unknown. Motivated by this fact and inspired by the increasing popularity of healthcare applications in wireless body area networks (WBANs), this paper derives for the first time a comprehensive performance analysis of a decode-and-forward space-time coded fully cooperative communication network in Rayleigh and Rician fading channels in either identically or non-identically distributed fading scenario. Numerical analysis of error performance, outage probability, and energy efficiency, validated by simulations, show that fully cooperative communication is better than direct transmission from all three aspects in many cases, especially at a low-power and low signal-to-noise ratio regime, which is a typical working condition in WBANs

Diversity receiver design and channel statistic estimation in fading channels

The main goal of this thesis is to provide an in-depth study of two important techniques that are effective in improving the performance, data rate, or bandwidth-efficiency in wireless communication systems. The two techniques are, first, diversity combining equipped with quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), and second, the estimation of fading channel statistical properties;To effectively combat the adverse effect of fading and to improve the error rate performance in wireless communications, one of the major approaches is to employ diversity combining techniques. In the first part of this thesis, we focus on the equal gain combining (EGC) and hybrid-selection equal gain combining (HS/EGC) for bandwidth-efficient wireless systems (i.e. QAM systems). For EGC QAM systems, we propose the receiver structure and the corresponding decision variables, and then study the effects of imperfect channel estimation (ICE) and quantify the loss of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) gain caused by ICE. For HS/EGC QAM system, we develop a general approach to derive unified error rate and outage probability formulas over various types of fading channels based on the proposed HS/EGC receiver. The main contribution of this work lies in that it provides effective hybrid diversity schemes and new analytical approaches to enable thorough analysis and effective design of bandwidth efficient wireless communication systems which suffer from ICE and operate in realistic multipath channels;Channel statistic information is proven to be critical in determining the systems design, achievable data rate, and achievable performance. In the second part of this thesis, we study the estimation of the fading channel Statistics and Probability; We propose several iterative algorithms to estimate the first- and second-order statistics of general fading or composite fading-shadowing channels and derive the Cramer-Rao bounds (CRBs) for all the cases. We demonstrate that these iterative methods are efficient in the sense that they achieve their corresponding CRBs. The main contribution of this work is that it bridges the gap between the broad utilization of fading channel statistical properties and the lack of systematic study that makes such statistical properties available

Cross-Layer Design for Multi-Antenna Ultra-Wideband Systems

Ultra-wideband (UWB) is an emerging technology that offers great promises to satisfy the growing demand for low cost and high-speed digital wireless home networks. The enormous bandwidth available, the potential for high data rates, as well as the potential for small size and low processing power long with low implementation cost, all present a unique opportunity for UWB to become a widely adopted radio solution for future wireless home-networking technology. Nevertheless, in order for UWB devices to coexist with other existing wireless technology, the transmitted power level of UWB is strictly limited by the FCC spectral mask. Such limitation poses significant design challenges to any UWB system. This thesis introduces various means to cope with these design challenges. Advanced technologies including multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) coding, cooperative communications, and cross-layer design are employed to enhance the performance and coverage range of UWB systems. First a MIMO-coding framework for multi-antenna UWB communication systems is developed. By a technique of band hopping in combination with jointly coding across spatial, temporal, and frequency domains, the proposed scheme is able to exploit all the available spatial and frequency diversity, richly inherent in UWB channels. Then, the UWB performance in realistic UWB channel environments is characterized. The proposed performance analysis successfully captures the unique multipath-rich property and random-clustering phenomenon of UWB channels. Next, a cross-layer channel allocation scheme for UWB multiband OFDM systems is proposed. The proposed scheme optimally allocates subbands, transmitted power, and data rates among users by taking into consideration the performance requirement, the power limitation, as well as the band hopping for users with different data rates. Also, an employment of cooperative communications in UWB systems is proposed to enhance the UWB performance and coverage by exploiting the broadcasting nature of wireless channels and the cooperation among UWB devices. Furthermore, an OFDM cooperative protocol is developed and then applied to enhance the performance of UWB systems. The proposed cooperative protocol not only achieves full diversity but also efficiently utilizes the available bandwidth

Improved Ultra Wideband Communication System through Adaptive Modulation and Spatial Diversity

PhDAdvances in Multimedia communications have shown the need for high data rate wireless links over short distances. This is to enhance flexibility, accessibility, portability and mobility of devices in home and enterprise environment thereby making users more productive. In 2004, the WiMedia group proposed the Multiband Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex Ultra Wideband (MB-OFDM UWB) system with a target of delivering data rate of 480Mbps over 3 metres. However, by now no existing commercial UWB product can meet this proposed specification. The project aims to investigate the reason why UWB technology has failed to realise its potential by carrying out detailed analysis and to seek ways of solving the technical problems. Detailed system analyses were carried out on the UWB technology using a commercial UWB product and a MB-OFDM UWB Evaluation kit. UWB channel measurements of different scenarios were carried out in order to characterise both time varying and time invariant channels. The scenarios are the realistic environments where UWB devices are operating with human subjects in various movement patterns. It gives insight into the effects of human object blocking on the MB-OFDM system performance and estimates an acceptable feedback rate in a UWB time varying channel when implementing an adaptive modulation. The adaptive modulation was proposed and implemented in the MB-OFDM system model to demonstrate the improved Bit Error Rate (BER) performance. Modulating bits are varied across the sub-channels depending on the signal to noise ratio (SNR). Sub-channels experiencing severe fading employ lower or no bit-loading while sub-channels with little or no fading utilise higher bit-loading to maintain a constant system data rate. Spatial diversity was employed to exploit different properties of the radio channel to improve performance. Good diversity gain of two receiving diversity systems using maximal ratio combining and antenna selection techniques is demonstrated in the measurements with the different antenna orientations. An antenna selection circuit is designed and implemented working together with AT90CAP9 UWB Evaluation kit, verifying an improved performance of the UWB system in an indoor environment. The maximal ratio combining technique is also implemented and demonstrated to give a better system performance on a test bed after post-processing

Interference driven antenna selection for Massive Multi-User MIMO

Low-complexity linear precoders are known to be close-to-optimal for massive multi-input multi-output (M-MIMO) systems. However, the large number of antennas at the transmitter imposes high computational burdens and high hardware overloads. In line with the above, in this paper we propose a low complexity antenna selection (AS) scheme which selects the antennas that maximize constructive interference between the users. Our analyses show that the proposed AS algorithm, in combination with a simple matched filter (MF) precoder at the transmitter, is able to achieve better performances than systems equipped with a more complex channel inversion (CI) precoder and computationally expensive AS techniques. First, we give an analytical definition of constructive and destructive interference, based on the phase of the received signals from phase-shifted-keying (PSK) modulated transmissions. Then, we introduce the proposed antenna selection algorithm, which identifies the antenna subset with the highest constructive interference, maximizing the power received by the user. In our studies, we derive the computational burden of the proposed technique with a rigorous and thorough analysis and we identify a closed form expression of the upper bound received power at the user side. In addition, we evaluate in detail the power benefits of the proposed transmission scheme by defining an efficiency metric based on the achieved throughput. The results presented in this paper prove that antenna selection and green radio concepts can be jointly used for power efficient M-MIMO, as they lead to significant power savings and complexity reductions

Exact modeling of multiple access interference, ber derivation and a method to improve the performance of UWB communication systems

Master'sMASTER OF ENGINEERIN

Ultra Wideband

Ultra wideband (UWB) has advanced and merged as a technology, and many more people are aware of the potential for this exciting technology. The current UWB field is changing rapidly with new techniques and ideas where several issues are involved in developing the systems. Among UWB system design, the UWB RF transceiver and UWB antenna are the key components. Recently, a considerable amount of researches has been devoted to the development of the UWB RF transceiver and antenna for its enabling high data transmission rates and low power consumption. Our book attempts to present current and emerging trends in-research and development of UWB systems as well as future expectations

Cooperative Radio Communications for Green Smart Environments

The demand for mobile connectivity is continuously increasing, and by 2020 Mobile and Wireless Communications will serve not only very dense populations of mobile phones and nomadic computers, but also the expected multiplicity of devices and sensors located in machines, vehicles, health systems and city infrastructures. Future Mobile Networks are then faced with many new scenarios and use cases, which will load the networks with different data traffic patterns, in new or shared spectrum bands, creating new specific requirements. This book addresses both the techniques to model, analyse and optimise the radio links and transmission systems in such scenarios, together with the most advanced radio access, resource management and mobile networking technologies. This text summarises the work performed by more than 500 researchers from more than 120 institutions in Europe, America and Asia, from both academia and industries, within the framework of the COST IC1004 Action on "Cooperative Radio Communications for Green and Smart Environments". The book will have appeal to graduates and researchers in the Radio Communications area, and also to engineers working in the Wireless industry. Topics discussed in this book include: • Radio waves propagation phenomena in diverse urban, indoor, vehicular and body environments• Measurements, characterization, and modelling of radio channels beyond 4G networks• Key issues in Vehicle (V2X) communication• Wireless Body Area Networks, including specific Radio Channel Models for WBANs• Energy efficiency and resource management enhancements in Radio Access Networks• Definitions and models for the virtualised and cloud RAN architectures• Advances on feasible indoor localization and tracking techniques• Recent findings and innovations in antenna systems for communications• Physical Layer Network Coding for next generation wireless systems• Methods and techniques for MIMO Over the Air (OTA) testin