Towards the Optimal Amplify-and-Forward Cooperative Diversity Scheme

In a slow fading channel, how to find a cooperative diversity scheme that achieves the transmit diversity bound is still an open problem. In fact, all previously proposed amplify-and-forward (AF) and decode-and-forward (DF) schemes do not improve with the number of relays in terms of the diversity multiplexing tradeoff (DMT) for multiplexing gains r higher than 0.5. In this work, we study the class of slotted amplify-and-forward (SAF) schemes. We first establish an upper bound on the DMT for any SAF scheme with an arbitrary number of relays N and number of slots M. Then, we propose a sequential SAF scheme that can exploit the potential diversity gain in the high multiplexing gain regime. More precisely, in certain conditions, the sequential SAF scheme achieves the proposed DMT upper bound which tends to the transmit diversity bound when M goes to infinity. In particular, for the two-relay case, the three-slot sequential SAF scheme achieves the proposed upper bound and outperforms the two-relay non-orthorgonal amplify-and-forward (NAF) scheme of Azarian et al. for multiplexing gains r < 2/3. Numerical results reveal a significant gain of our scheme over the previously proposed AF schemes, especially in high spectral efficiency and large network size regime.Comment: 30 pages, 11 figures, submitted to IEEE trans. IT, revised versio

Physical layer security jamming : Theoretical limits and practical designs in wireless networks

Physical layer security has been recently recognized as a promising new design paradigm to provide security in wireless networks. In addition to the existing conventional cryptographic methods, physical layer security exploits the dynamics of fading channels to enhance secured wireless links. In this approach, jamming plays a key role by generating noise signals to confuse the potential eavesdroppers, and significantly improves quality and reliability of secure communications between legitimate terminals. This article presents theoretical limits and practical designs of jamming approaches for physical layer security. In particular, the theoretical limits explore the achievable secrecy rates of user cooperation based jamming whilst the centralized, and game theoretic based precoding techniques are reviewed for practical implementations. In addition, the emerging wireless energy harvesting techniques are exploited to harvest the required energy to transmit jamming signals. Future directions of these approaches, and the associated research challenges are also briefly outlined

Physical layer security jamming: Theoretical limits and practical designs in wireless networks

Physical layer security has been recently recognized as a promising new design paradigm to provide security in wireless networks. In addition to the existing conventional cryptographic methods, physical layer security exploits the dynamics of fading channels to enhance secured wireless links. In this approach, jamming plays a key role by generating noise signals to confuse the potential eavesdroppers, and significantly improves quality and reliability of secure communications between legitimate terminals. This article presents theoretical limits and practical designs of jamming approaches for physical layer security. In particular, the theoretical limits explore the achievable secrecy rates of user cooperation based jamming whilst the centralized, and game theoretic based precoding techniques are reviewed for practical implementations. In addition, the emerging wireless energy harvesting techniques are exploited to harvest the required energy to transmit jamming signals. Future directions of these approaches, and the associated research challenges are also briefly outlined

Physical-Layer Cooperation in Coded OFDM Relaying Systems

Mobile communication systems nowadays require ever-increasing data rate and coverage of wide areas. One promising approach to achieve this goal is the application of cooperative communications enabled by introducing intermediate nodes known as relays to support the transmission between terminals. By processing and forwarding the receive message at the relays, the path-loss effect between the source and the destination is mitigated. One major limit factor for relay assisted communications is that a relay cannot transmit and receive using the same physical resources. Therefore, a half-duplex constraint is commonly assumed resulting in halved spectral efficiency. To combat this drawback, two-way relaying is introduced, where two sources exchange information with each. On the other hand, due to the physical limitation of the relays, e.g., wireless sensor nodes, it's not possible to implement multiple antennas at one relay, which prohibits the application of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques. However, when treating multiple relays as a cluster, a virtual antenna array is formed to perform MIMO techniques in a distributed manner. %This thesis aims at designing efficient one-way and two-way relaying schemes. Specifically, existing schemes from the literature are improved and new schemes are developed with the emphasis on coded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmissions. Of special interest is the application of physical-layer network coding (PLNC) for two-phase two-way relaying. In this case, a network coded message is estimated from the superimposed receive signal at the relay using PLNC schemes. The schemes are investigated based on a mutual information analysis and their performance are improved by a newly proposed phase control strategy. Furthermore, performance degradation due to system asynchrony is mitigated depending on different PLNC schemes. When multiple relays are available, novel cooperation schemes allowing information exchange within the relay cluster are proposed that facilitate distributed MIMO reception and transmission. Additionally, smart signaling approaches are presented to enable the cooperation at different levels with the cooperation overhead taken into account adequately in system performance evaluation

Adaptive relay techniques for OFDM-based cooperative communication systems

Cooperative communication has been considered as a cost-effective manner to exploit the spatial diversity, improve the quality-of-service and extend transmission coverage. However, there are many challenges faced by cooperative systems which use relays to forward signals to the destination, such as the accumulation of multipath channels, complex resource allocation with the bidirectional asymmetric traffic and reduction of transmission efficiency caused by additional relay overhead. In this thesis, we aim to address the above challenges of cooperative communications, and design the efficient relay systems. Starting with the channel accumulation problem in the amplify-and-forward relay system, we proposed two adaptive schemes for single/multiple-relay networks respectively. These schemes exploit an adaptive guard interval (GI) technique to cover the accumulated delay spread and enhance the transmission efficiency by limiting the overhead. The proposed GI scheme can be implemented without any extra control signal. Extending the adaptive GI scheme to multiple-relay systems, we propose a relay selection strategy which achieves the trade-off between the transmission reliability and overhead by considering both the channel gain and the accumulated delay spread. We then consider resource allocation problem in the two-way decode-and-forward relay system with asymmetric traffic loads. Two allocation algorithms are respectively investigated for time-division and frequency-division relay systems to maximize the end-to-end capacity of the two-way system under a capacity ratio constraint. For the frequency-division systems, a balanced end-to-end capacity is defined as the objective function which combines the requirements of maximizing the end-to-end capacity and achieving the capacity ratio. A suboptimal algorithm is proposed for the frequency-division systems which separates subcarrier allocation and time/power allocation. It can achieve the similar performance with the optimal one with reduced complexity. In order to further enhance the transmission reliability and maintaining low processing delay, we propose an equalize-and-forward (EF) relay scheme. The EF relay equalizes the channel between source and relay to eliminate the channel accumulation without signal regeneration. To reduce the processing time, an efficient parallel structure is applied in the EF relay. Numerical results show that the EF relay exhibits low outage probability at the same data rate as compared to AF and DF schemes

Mathematical optimization techniques for resource allocation and spatial multiplexing in spectrum sharing networks

Due to introduction of smart phones with data intensive multimedia and interactive applications and exponential growth of wireless devices, there is a shortage for useful radio spectrum. Even though the spectrum has become crowded, many spectrum occupancy measurements indicate that most of the allocated spectrum is underutilised. Hence radically new approaches in terms of allocation of wireless resources are required for better utilization of radio spectrum. This has motivated the concept of opportunistic spectrum sharing or the so-called cognitive radio technology that has great potential to improve spectrum utilization. The cognitive radio technology allows an opportunistic user namely the secondary user to access the spectrum of the licensed user (known as primary user) provided that the secondary transmission does not harmfully affect the primary user. This is possible with the introduction of advanced resource allocation techniques together with the use of wireless relays and spatial diversity techniques. In this thesis, various mathematical optimization techniques have been developed for the efficient use of radio spectrum within the context of spectrum sharing networks. In particular, optimal power allocation techniques and centralised and distributed beamforming techniques have been developed. Initially, an optimization technique for subcarrier and power allocation has been proposed for an Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) based secondary wireless network in the presence of multiple primary users. The solution is based on integer linear programming with multiple interference leakage and transmission power constraints. In order to enhance the spectrum efficiency further, the work has been extended to allow multiple secondary users to occupy the same frequency band under a multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) framework. A sum rate maximization technique based on uplink-downlink duality and dirty paper coding has been developed for the MIMO based OFDMA network. The work has also been extended to handle fading scenarios based on maximization of ergodic capacity. The optimization techniques for MIMO network has been extended to a spectrum sharing network with relays. This has the advantage of extending the coverage of the secondary network and assisting the primary network in return for the use of the primary spectrum. Finally, instead of considering interference mitigation, the recently emerged concept of interference alignment has been used for the resource allocation in spectrum sharing networks. The performances of all these new algorithms have been demonstrated using MATLAB based simulation studies

Power minimization in wireless systems with superposition coding.

Zheng, Xiaoting.Thesis (M.Phil.)--Chinese University of Hong Kong, 2008.Includes bibliographical references (p. 64-69).Abstracts in English and Chinese.Abstract --- p.iAcknowledgement --- p.iiiChapter 1 --- Introduction --- p.1Chapter 1.1 --- Rayleigh Fading --- p.1Chapter 1.2 --- Transmission Schemes --- p.2Chapter 1.2.1 --- Frequency Division Multiple Access(FDMA) --- p.2Chapter 1.2.2 --- Time Division Multiple Access(TDMA) --- p.3Chapter 1.2.3 --- Code Division Multiple Access(CDMA) --- p.5Chapter 1.2.4 --- The Broadcast Channel --- p.5Chapter 1.3 --- Cooperative Transmissions --- p.9Chapter 1.3.1 --- Relaying Protocols --- p.10Chapter 1.4 --- Outline of Thesis --- p.12Chapter 2 --- Background Study --- p.13Chapter 2.1 --- Superposition Coding --- p.13Chapter 2.2 --- Cooperative Transmission --- p.15Chapter 2.2.1 --- Single Source Single Destination --- p.15Chapter 2.2.2 --- Multiple Sources Single Destination --- p.16Chapter 2.2.3 --- Single Source Multiple Destinations --- p.17Chapter 2.2.4 --- Multiple Sources Multiple Destinations --- p.17Chapter 2.3 --- Power Minimization --- p.18Chapter 2.3.1 --- Power Minimization in Code-Multiplexing System --- p.19Chapter 2.3.2 --- Power Minimization in Frequency-multiplexing System --- p.19Chapter 2.3.3 --- Power Minimization in Time-Multiplexing System --- p.20Chapter 3 --- Sum Power Minimization with Superposition Coding --- p.21Chapter 3.1 --- System Model --- p.22Chapter 3.2 --- Superposition Coding Scheme --- p.22Chapter 3.2.1 --- Optimal Superposition Coding Scheme --- p.22Chapter 3.2.2 --- Sub-optimal Superposition Coding Scheme --- p.27Chapter 3.3 --- Performance Evaluation --- p.30Chapter 3.4 --- Assignment Examples for Superposition Coding Scheme --- p.33Chapter 4 --- Source-cooperated Transmission in a Wireless Cluster --- p.42Chapter 4.1 --- System Model --- p.42Chapter 4.2 --- Selection Protocol --- p.44Chapter 4.2.1 --- Protocol Description and Problem Formulation --- p.44Chapter 4.2.2 --- Distributed Selection Algorithm --- p.46Chapter 4.2.3 --- Low Rate Regime --- p.50Chapter 4.3 --- Simulation Results --- p.52Chapter 4.3.1 --- Simulation Configuration --- p.53Chapter 4.3.2 --- Cases with a Smaller Feasible Solution Set --- p.53Chapter 4.3.3 --- Cases with a Larger Feasible Solution Set --- p.56Chapter 5 --- Conclusion and Future Work --- p.61Chapter 5.1 --- Conclusion --- p.61Chapter 5.2 --- Future Work --- p.62Chapter 5.2.1 --- Fairness --- p.62Chapter 5.2.2 --- Distributed Algorithm --- p.63Chapter 5.2.3 --- Game Theory --- p.63Chapter 5.2.4 --- Distributed Information --- p.63Bibliography --- p.6

Distributed Turbo Product Coding Techniques Over Cooperative Communication Systems

In this dissertation, we propose a coded cooperative communications framework based on Distributed Turbo Product Code (DTPC). The system uses linear block Extended Bose-Chaudhuri-Hochquenghem (EBCH) codes as component codes. The source broadcasts the EBCH coded frames to the destination and nearby relays. Each relay constructs a product code by arranging the corrected bit sequences in rows and re-encoding them vertically using EBCH as component codes to obtain an Incremental Redundancy (IR) for source\u27s data. Under this frame, we have investigated a number of interesting and important issues. First, to obtain, independent vertical parities from each relay in the same code space, we propose circular interleaving of the decoded EBCH rows before reencoding vertically. We propose and derive a novel soft information relay for the DTPC over cooperative network based on EBCH component codes. The relay generates Log-Likelihood Ratio (LLR) values for the decoded rows are used to construct a product code by re-encoding the matrix along the columns using a novel soft block encoding technique to obtain soft parity bits with different reliabilities that can be used as soft IR for source\u27s data which is forwarded to the destination. To minimize the overall decoding errors, we propose a power allocation method for the distributed encoded system when the channel attenuations for the direct and relay channels are known. We compare the performance of our proposed power allocation method with the fixed power assignments for DTPC system. We also develop a power optimization algorithm to check the validity of our proposed power allocation algorithm. Results for the power allocation and the power optimization prove on the potency of our proposed power allocation criterion and show the maximum possible attainable performance from the DTPC cooperative system. Finally, we propose new joint distributed Space-Time Block Code (STBC)-DTPC by generating the vertical parity on the relay and transmitting it to the destination using STBC on the source and relay. We tested our proposed system in a fast fading environment on the three channels connecting the three nodes in the cooperative network

Energy-Efficient and Overhead-Aware Cooperative Communications

Due to the rapid growth of energy-hungry wireless multimedia services, telecom energy consumption is increasing at an extraordinary rate. Besides negative environmental impacts and higher energy bills for operators, it also affects user experience as improvements in battery technologies have not kept up with increasing mobile energy demands. Therefore, how to increase the energy efficiency (EE) of wireless communications has gained a lot of attention recently. Cooperative communication, where relays cooperatively retransmit the received data from the source to the destination, is seen as a promising technique to increases EE. Nevertheless, it requires more overhead than direct communication that needs to be taken into account for practical wireless cooperative networks. In order to achieve potential energy savings promised by cooperative communications in practical systems, overhead-aware cooperative relaying schemes with low overhead are imperative. For the case that not all relays can hear each other, i.e., hidden relays exist, an energy-efficient and a low-overhead cooperative relaying scheme is proposed. This scheme selects a subset of relays before data transmission, through the proactive participation of available relays using their local timers. Theoretical analysis of average EE under maximum transmission power constraint, using practical data packet length, and taking account of the overhead for obtaining channel state information (CSI), relay selection, and cooperative beamforming, is performed and a closed-form approximate expression for the optimal position of relays is derived. Furthermore, the overhead of the proposed scheme and the impact of data packet lengths on EE, are analysed. The analytical and simulation results reveal that the proposed scheme is significantly more energy-efficient than direct transmission, best relay selection, all relay selection, and a state-of-the-art existing cooperative relaying scheme. Moreover, the proposed scheme reduces the overhead and achieves higher energy savings for larger data packets. The conventional cooperative beamforming schemes rely on the feedback of CSIs of the best relays from the destination, which cause extra energy consumption and are prone to quantization errors in practical systems. In the case of clustered relays with location awareness and timer-based relay selection, where relays can overhear the transmission and know the location of each other, an energy-efficient overhead-aware cooperative relaying scheme is proposed, making CSI feedback from the destination dispensable. In order to avoid possible collisions between relay transmissions during best relays selection, a distributed mechanism for the selected relays to appropriately insert guard intervals before their transmissions is proposed. Average EE of the proposed scheme considering the related overhead is analysed. Moreover, the impact of the number of available relays, the number of selected relays and the location of relay cluster on EE is studied. The simulation results indicate that the proposed cooperative relaying scheme achieves higher EE than direct communication, best relay selection, and all relay selection for relay clusters located close to the source. Independent of the relay cluster location, the proposed scheme exhibits significantly higher EE than an existing cooperative relaying scheme. Device-to-device (D2D) communication in cellular networks that enable direct transmissions between user equipments (UEs) is seen as a promising way to improve both EE and spectral efficiency (SE). If the source UE (SUE) and the destination UE (DUE) are far away from each other or if the channel between them is too weak for direct transmission, then two-hop D2D communications, where relay UEs (RUEs) forward the SUE's data packets to the DUE, can be used. An energy- and spectral-efficient optimal adaptive forwarding strategy (OAFS) for two-hop D2D communications is proposed. In a distributed manner, the OAFS adaptively chooses between the best relay forwarding (BRF) and the cooperative relay beamforming (CRB) with the optimal number of selected RUEs, depending on which of them provides the higher instantaneous EE. In order to reduce the computational complexity of relay selection, a low-complexity sub-optimal adaptive forwarding strategy (SAFS) is proposed that selects between the BRF and the CRB with two RUEs by comparing their instantaneous EE. Theoretical analysis of the average EE and SE for the proposed adaptive forwarding strategies is performed considering maximum transmission power constraints, circuit power consumption and the overhead for the acquisition of CSI, forwarding mode selection and cooperative beamforming. The theoretical and simulation results show that the proposed OAFS and SAFS exhibit significantly higher EE and SE than the BRF, CRB, direct D2D communications and conventional cellular communications. For short to moderate SUE-to-DUE distances, SAFS is almost as energy- and spectral-efficient as OAFS