Multilevel Coded Modulation for Unequal Error Protection and Multistage Decoding—Part II: Asymmetric Constellations

In this paper, multilevel coded asymmetric modulation with multistage decoding and unequal error protection (UEP) is discussed. These results further emphasize the fact that unconventional signal set partitionings are more promising than traditional (Ungerboeck-type) partitionings, to achieve UEP capabilities with multilevel coding and multistage decoding. Three types of unconventional partitionings are analyzed for asymmetric 8-PSK and 16-QAM constellations over the additive white Gaussian noise channel to introduce design guidelines. Generalizations to other PSK and QAM type constellations follow the same lines. Upper bounds on the bit-error probability based on union bound arguments are first derived. In some cases, these bounds become loose due to the large overlappings of decision regions associated with asymmetric constellations and unconventional partitionings. To overcome this problem, simpler and tighter approximated bounds are derived. Based on these bounds, it is shown that additional refinements can be achieved in the construction of multilevel UEP codes, by introducing asymmetries in PSK and QAM signal constellations

Practical LDPC coded modulation schemes for the fading broadcast channel with confidential messages

The broadcast channel with confidential messages is a well studied scenario from the theoretical standpoint, but there is still lack of practical schemes able to achieve some fixed level of reliability and security over such a channel. In this paper, we consider a quasi-static fading channel in which both public and private messages must be sent from the transmitter to the receivers, and we aim at designing suitable coding and modulation schemes to achieve such a target. For this purpose, we adopt the error rate as a metric, by considering that reliability (security) is achieved when a sufficiently low (high) error rate is experienced at the receiving side. We show that some conditions exist on the system feasibility, and that some outage probability must be tolerated to cope with the fading nature of the channel. The proposed solution exploits low-density parity-check codes with unequal error protection, which are able to guarantee two different levels of protection against noise for the public and the private information, in conjunction with different modulation schemes for the public and the private message bits.Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, to be presented at IEEE ICC'14 - Workshop on Wireless Physical Layer Securit

Cross-layer optimization of unequal protected layered video over hierarchical modulation

Abstract-unequal protection mechanisms have been proposed at several layers in order to improve the reliability of multimedia contents, especially for video data. The paper aims at implementing a multi-layer unequal protection scheme, which is based on a Physical-Transport-Application cross-layer design. Hierarchical modulation, in the physical layer, has been demonstrated to increase the overall user capacity of a wireless communications. On the other hand, unequal erasure protection codes at the transport layer turned out to be an efficient method to protect video data generated by the application layer by exploiting their intrinsic properties. In this paper, the two techniques are jointly optimized in order to enable recovering lost data in case the protection is performed separately. We show that the cross-layer design proposed herein outperforms the performance of hierarchical modulation and unequal erasure codes taken independently

Near-capacity iterative decoding of binary self-concatenated codes using soft decision demapping and 3-D EXIT charts

In this paper 3-D Extrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) charts are used to design binary Self-Concatenated Convolutional Codes employing Iterative Decoding (SECCC-ID), exchanging extrinsic information with the soft-decision demapper to approach the channel capacity. Recursive Systematic Convolutional (RSC) codes are selected as constituent codes, an interleaver is used for randomising the extrinsic information exchange of the constituent codes, while a puncturer helps to increase the achievable bandwidth efficiency. The convergence behaviour of the decoder is analysed with the aid of bit-based 3-D EXIT charts, for accurately calculating the operating EbN0 threshold, especially when SP based soft demapper is employed. Finally, we propose an attractive system configuration, which is capable of operating within about 1 dB from the channel capacity

16-QAM Hierarchical Modulation Optimization in Relay Cooperative Networks

16-QAM Hierarchical Modulation Optimization in Relay Cooperative Networks Sara Sallam Recently, the concept of cooperative networks has attracted special attention in the field of wireless communications. This is due to their ability in achieving diversity with no extra hardware cost. The main drawback that characterizes cooperative networks is that they require extra transmission time slots compared to the traditional non-cooperative networks. Several strategies have been proposed in order to mitigate this disadvantage. One of the most recently adopted techniques is the use of hierarchical modulation. Hierarchical modulation was originally used in Digital Video Broadcast (DVB) applications. Lately, it has been applied in cooperative networks for its ability to transmit relative high data rate with acceptable performance. In this thesis, the application of a 4/16 QAM hierarchical modulation in cooperative networks is examined. This study focuses on a downlink cellular network scenario, composed of a Base Station, a Relay and two destinations. The Base Station intends to transmit two different streams of data to these two destinations by concatenating the two streams and broadcasting the resulting sequence using a non-uniform 4/16 QAM hierarchical modulation. Unlike previous work, the main contribution in this thesis is the optimization of the 16QAM constellation’s parameters according to each user’s channel condition. In other words, this method gives each user’s data the priority it needs in order to be detected as correctly as possible at the destination. Explicit closed form expressions of Hierarchical modulation Bit Error Rate in relay cooperative networks are derived. These BER expressions are used in order to select the constellation’s parameters that will achieve total minimum BER in coded and un-coded schemes. Results prove that the proposed method achieve noticeable improvement in both users performance compared to the use of uniform 16QAM constellation

Cooperative Transmission Techniques in Wireless Communication Networks

Cooperative communication networks have received significant interests from both academia and industry in the past decade due to its ability to provide spatial diversity without the need of implementing multiple transmit and/or receive antennas at the end-user terminals. These new communication networks have inspired novel ideas and approaches to find out what and how performance improvement can be provided with cooperative communications. The objective of this thesis is to design and analyze various cooperative transmission techniques under the two common relaying signal processing methods, namely decode-and-forward (DF) and amplify-and-forward (AF). For the DF method, the thesis focuses on providing performance improvement by mitigating detection errors at the relay(s). In particular, the relaying action is implemented adaptively to reduce the phenomenon of error propagation: whether or not a relay’s decision to retransmit depends on its decision variable and a predefined threshold. First, under the scenario that unequal error protection is employed to transmit different information classes at the source, a relaying protocol in a singlerelay network is proposed and its error performance is evaluated. It is shown that by setting the optimal signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) thresholds at the relay for different information classes, the overall error performance can be significantly improved. Second, for multiple-relay networks, a relay selection protocol, also based on SNR thresholds, is proposed and the optimal thresholds are also provided. Third, an adaptive relaying protocol and a low-complexity receiver are proposed when binary frequency-shift-keying (FSK) modulation is employed and neither the receiver nor the transmitter knows the fading coefficients. It is demonstrated that large performance improvements are possible when the optimal thresholds are implemented at the relays and destination. Finally, under the scenario that there is information feedback from the destination to the relays, a novel protocol is developed to achieve the maximum transmission throughput over a multiple-relay network while the bit-error rate satisfies a given constraint. With the AF method, the thesis examines a fixed-gain multiple-relay network in which the channels are temporally-correlated Rayleigh flat fading. Developed is a general framework for maximum-ratio-combining detection when M-FSK modulation is used and no channel state information is available at the destination. In particular, an upper-bound expression on the system’s error performance is derived and used to verify that the system achieves the maximal diversity order. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms the existing schemes for the multiple-relay network under consideration

Five decades of hierarchical modulation and its benefits in relay-aided networking

Hierarchical modulation (HM), which is also known as layered modulation, has been widely adopted across the telecommunication industry. Its strict backward compatibility with single-layer modems and its low complexity facilitate the seamless upgrading of wireless communication services. The specific features of HM may be conveniently exploited for improving the throughput/information-rate of the system without requiring any extra bandwidth, while its complexity may even be lower than that of the equivalent system relying on conventional modulation schemes. As a recent research trend, the potential employment of HM in the context of cooperative communications has also attracted substantial research interests. Motivated by the lower complexity and higher flexibility of HM, we provide a comprehensive survey and conclude with a range of promising future research directions. Our contribution is the conception of a new cooperative communication paradigm relying on turbo trellis-coded modulation-aided twin-layer HM-16QAM and the analytical performance investigation of a four-node cooperative communication network employing a novel opportunistic routing algorithm. The specific performance characteristics evaluated include the distribution of delay, the outage probability, the transmit power of each node, the average packet power consumption, and the system throughput. The simulation results have demonstrated that when transmitting the packets formed by layered modulated symbol streams, our opportunistic routing algorithm is capable of reducing the transmit power required for each node in the network compared with that of the system using the traditional opportunistic routing algorithm. We have also illustrated that the minimum packet power consumption of our system using our opportunistic routing algorithm is also lower than that of the system using the traditional opportunistic routing algorithm

Signal optimization for Galileo evolution

Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) are present in our daily lives. Moreover, new users areemerging with further operation needs involving a constant evolution of the current navigationsystems. In the current framework of Galileo (GNSS European system) and especially within theGalileo E1 Open Service (OS), adding a new acquisition aiding signal could contribute to providehigher resilience at the acquisition phase, as well as to reduce the time to first fix (TTFF).Designing a new GNSS signal is always a trade-off between several performance figures of merit.The most relevant are the position accuracy, the sensitivity and the TTFF. However, if oneconsiders that the signal acquisition phase is the goal to design, the sensitivity and the TTFF havea higher relevance. Considering that, in this thesis it is presented the joint design of a GNSS signaland the message structure to propose a new Galileo 2nd generation signal, which provides ahigher sensitivity in the receiver and reduce the TTFF. Several aspects have been addressed inorder to design a new signal component. Firstly, the spreading modulation definition must considerthe radio frequency compatibility in order to cause acceptable level of interference inside the band.Moreover, the spreading modulation should provide good correlation properties and goodresistance against the multipath in order to enhance the receiver sensitivity and to reduce theTTFF. Secondly, the choice of the new PRN code is also crucial in order to ease the acquisitionphase. A simple model criterion based on a weighted cost function is used to evaluate the PRNcodes performance. This weighted cost function takes into account different figures of merit suchas the autocorrelation, the cross-correlation and the power spectral density. Thirdly, the design ofthe channel coding scheme is always connected with the structure of the message. A joint designbetween the message structure and the channel coding scheme can provide both, reducing theTTFF and an enhancement of the resilience of the decoded data. In this this, a new method to codesign the message structure and the channel coding scheme for the new G2G signal isproposed. This method provides the guideline to design a message structure whose the channelcoding scheme is characterized by the full diversity, the Maximum Distance Separable (MDS) andthe rate compatible properties. The channel coding is essential in order to enhance the datademodulation performance, especially in harsh environments. However, this process can be verysensitive to the correct computation of the decoder input. Significant improvements were obtainedby considering soft inputs channel decoders, through the Log Likelihood Ratio LLRs computation.However, the complete knowledge of the channel state information (CSI) was usually considered,which it is infrequently in real scenarios. In this thesis, we provide new methods to compute LLRlinear approximations, under the jamming and the block fading channels, considering somestatistical CSI. Finally, to transmit a new signal in the same carrier frequency and using the sameHigh Power Amplifier (HPA) generates constraints in the multiplexing design, since a constant orquasi constant envelope is needed in order to decrease the non-linear distortions. Moreover, themultiplexing design should provide high power efficiency to not waste the transmitted satellitepower. Considering the precedent, in this thesis, we evaluate different multiplexing methods,which search to integrate a new binary signal in the Galileo E1 band while enhancing thetransmitted power efficiency. Besides that, even if the work is focused on the Galileo E1, many ofthe concepts and methodologies can be easily extended to any GNSS signa