Analysis of hybrid-ARQ based relaying protocols under modulation constraints

In a seminal paper published in 2001, Caire and Tuninetti derived an information theoretic bound on the throughput of hybrid-ARQ in the presence of block fading. However, the results placed no constraints on the modulation used, and therefore the input to the channel was Gaussian. The purpose of this thesis is to investigate the impact of modulation constraints on the throughput of hybrid-ARQ in a block fading environment. First, we consider the impact of modulation constraints on information outage probability for a block fading channel with a fixed length codeword. Then, we consider the effect of modulation constraints upon the throughput of hybrid-ARQ, where the rate of the codeword varies depending on the instantaneous channel conditions. These theoretical bounds are compared against the simulated performance of HSDPA, a newly standardized hybrid-ARQ protocol that uses QPSK and 16-QAM bit interleaved turbo-coded modulation. The results indicate how much of the difference between HSDPA and the previous unconstrained modulation bound is due to the use of the turbo-code and how much is due to the modulation constraints. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Turbo Packet Combining Strategies for the MIMO-ISI ARQ Channel

This paper addresses the issue of efficient turbo packet combining techniques for coded transmission with a Chase-type automatic repeat request (ARQ) protocol operating over a multiple-input--multiple-output (MIMO) channel with intersymbol interference (ISI). First of all, we investigate the outage probability and the outage-based power loss of the MIMO-ISI ARQ channel when optimal maximum a posteriori (MAP) turbo packet combining is used at the receiver. We show that the ARQ delay (i.e., the maximum number of ARQ rounds) does not completely translate into a diversity gain. We then introduce two efficient turbo packet combining algorithms that are inspired by minimum mean square error (MMSE)-based turbo equalization techniques. Both schemes can be viewed as low-complexity versions of the optimal MAP turbo combiner. The first scheme is called signal-level turbo combining and performs packet combining and multiple transmission ISI cancellation jointly at the signal-level. The second scheme, called symbol-level turbo combining, allows ARQ rounds to be separately turbo equalized, while combining is performed at the filter output. We conduct a complexity analysis where we demonstrate that both algorithms have almost the same computational cost as the conventional log-likelihood ratio (LLR)-level combiner. Simulation results show that both proposed techniques outperform LLR-level combining, while for some representative MIMO configurations, signal-level combining has better ISI cancellation capability and achievable diversity order than that of symbol-level combining.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, and 2 table

Cross-layer hybrid automatic repeat request error control with turbo processing for wireless system

The increasing demand for wireless communication system requires an efficient design in wireless communication system. One of the main challenges is to design error control mechanism in noisy wireless channel. Forward Error Correction (FEC) and Automatic Repeat reQuest (ARQ) are two main error control mechanisms. Hybrid ARQ allows the use of either FEC or ARQ when required. The issues with existing Hybrid ARQ are reliability, complexity and inefficient design. Therefore, the design of Hybrid ARQ needs to be further improved in order to achieve performance close to the Shannon capacity. The objective of this research is to develop a Cross-Layer Design Hybrid ARQ defined as CLD_ARQ to further minimize error in wireless communication system. CLD_ARQ comprises of three main stages. First, a low complexity FEC defined as IRC_FEC for error detection and correction has been developed by using Irregular Repetition Code (IRC) with Turbo processing. The second stage is the enhancement of IRC_FEC defined as EM_IRC_FEC to improve the reliability of error detection by adopting extended mapping. The last stage is the development of efficient CLD_ARQ to include retransmission for error correction that exploits EM_IRC_FEC and ARQ. In the proposed design, serial iterative decoding and parallel iterative decoding are deployed in the error detection and correction. The performance of the CLD_ARQ is evaluated in the Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) channel using EXtrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) chart, bit error rate (BER) and throughput analysis. The results show significant Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) gain from the theoretical limit at BER of 10-5. IRC_FEC outperforms Recursive Systematic Convolutional Code (RSCC) by SNR gain up to 7% due to the use of IRC as a simple channel coding code. The usage of CLD_ARQ enhances the SNR gain by 53% compared to without ARQ due to feedback for retransmission. The adoption of extended mapping in the CLD_ARQ improves the SNR gain up to 50% due to error detection enhancement. In general, the proposed CLD_ARQ can achieve low BER and close to the Shannon‘s capacity even in worse channel condition

Cross-layer link adaptation for goodput optimization in MIMO BIC-OFDM systems

This work proposes a novel cross-layer link performance prediction (LPP) model and link adaptation (LA) strategy for soft-decoded multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) bit-interleaved coded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (BIC-OFDM) systems employing hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) protocols. The derived LPP, exploiting the concept of effective signal-to-noise ratio mapping (ESM) to model system performance over frequency-selective channels, does not only account for the actual channel state information at the transmitter and the adoption of practical modulation and coding schemes (MCSs), but also for the effect of the HARQ mechanism with bit-level combining at the receiver. Such method, named aggregated ESM, or αESM for short, exhibits an accurate performance prediction combined with a closed-form solution, enabling a flexible LA strategy, that selects at every protocol round the MCS maximizing the expected goodput (EGP), i.e., the number of correctly received bits per unit of time. The analytical expression of the EGP is derived capitalizing on the αESM and resorting to the renewal theory. Simulation results carried out in realistic wireless scenarios corroborate our theoretical claims and show the performance gain obtained by the proposed αESM-based LA strategy when compared with the best LA algorithms proposed so far for the same kind of systems

High Order Modulation Protograph Codes

Digital communication coding methods for designing protograph-based bit-interleaved code modulation that is general and applies to any modulation. The general coding framework can support not only multiple rates but also adaptive modulation. The method is a two stage lifting approach. In the first stage, an original protograph is lifted to a slightly larger intermediate protograph. The intermediate protograph is then lifted via a circulant matrix to the expected codeword length to form a protograph-based low-density parity-check code

Frequency Domain Hybrid-ARQ Chase Combining for Broadband MIMO CDMA Systems

In this paper, we consider high-speed wireless packet access using code division multiple access (CDMA) and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO). Current wireless standards, such as high speed packet access (HSPA), have adopted multi-code transmission and hybrid-automatic repeat request (ARQ) as major technologies for delivering high data rates. The key technique in hybrid-ARQ, is that erroneous data packets are kept in the receiver to detect/decode retransmitted ones. This strategy is refereed to as packet combining. In CDMA MIMO-based wireless packet access, multi-code transmission suffers from severe performance degradation due to the loss of code orthogonality caused by both interchip interference (ICI) and co-antenna interference (CAI). This limitation results in large transmission delays when an ARQ mechanism is used in the link layer. In this paper, we investigate efficient minimum mean square error (MMSE) frequency domain equalization (FDE)-based iterative (turbo) packet combining for cyclic prefix (CP)-CDMA MIMO with Chase-type ARQ. We introduce two turbo packet combining schemes: i) In the first scheme, namely "chip-level turbo packet combining", MMSE FDE and packet combining are jointly performed at the chip-level. ii) In the second scheme, namely "symbol-level turbo packet combining", chip-level MMSE FDE and despreading are separately carried out for each transmission, then packet combining is performed at the level of the soft demapper. The computational complexity and memory requirements of both techniques are quite insensitive to the ARQ delay, i.e., maximum number of ARQ rounds. The throughput is evaluated for some representative antenna configurations and load factors to show the gains offered by the proposed techniques.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology (Apr 2009

An Overview of the ATSC 3.0 Physical Layer Specification

"(c) 2016 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other users, including reprinting/ republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted components of this work in other works.")This paper provides an overview of the physical layer specification of Advanced Television Systems Committee (ATSC) 3.0, the next-generation digital terrestrial broadcasting standard. ATSC 3.0 does not have any backwards-compatibility constraint with existing ATSC standards, and it uses orthogonal frequency division multiplexing-based waveforms along with powerful low-density parity check (LDPC) forward error correction codes similar to existing state-of-the-art. However, it introduces many new technological features such as 2-D non-uniform constellations, improved and ultra-robust LDPC codes, power-based layered division multiplexing to efficiently provide mobile and fixed services in the same radio frequency (RF) channel, as well as a novel frequency pre-distortion multiple-input single-output antenna scheme. ATSC 3.0 also allows bonding of two RF channels to increase the service peak data rate and to exploit inter-RF channel frequency diversity, and to employ dual-polarized multiple-input multiple-output antenna system. Furthermore, ATSC 3.0 provides great flexibility in terms of configuration parameters (e.g., 12 coding rates, 6 modulation orders, 16 pilot patterns, 12 guard intervals, and 2 time interleavers), and also a very flexible data multiplexing scheme using time, frequency, and power dimensions. As a consequence, ATSC 3.0 not only improves the spectral efficiency and robustness well beyond the first generation ATSC broadcast television standard, but also it is positioned to become the reference terrestrial broadcasting technology worldwide due to its unprecedented performance and flexibility. Another key aspect of ATSC 3.0 is its extensible signaling, which will allow including new technologies in the future without disrupting ATSC 3.0 services. This paper provides an overview of the physical layer technologies of ATSC 3.0, covering the ATSC A/321 standard that describes the so-called bootstrap, which is the universal entry point to an ATSC 3.0 signal, and the ATSC A/322 standard that describes the physical layer downlink signals after the bootstrap. A summary comparison between ATSC 3.0 and DVB-T2 is also provided.Fay, L.; Michael, L.; Gómez Barquero, D.; Ammar, N.; Caldwell, MW. (2016). An Overview of the ATSC 3.0 Physical Layer Specification. IEEE Transactions on Broadcasting. 62(1):159-171. doi:10.1109/TBC.2015.2505417S15917162