Design guidelines for spatial modulation

A new class of low-complexity, yet energyefficient Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) transmission techniques, namely the family of Spatial Modulation (SM) aided MIMOs (SM-MIMO) has emerged. These systems are capable of exploiting the spatial dimensions (i.e. the antenna indices) as an additional dimension invoked for transmitting information, apart from the traditional Amplitude and Phase Modulation (APM). SM is capable of efficiently operating in diverse MIMO configurations in the context of future communication systems. It constitutes a promising transmission candidate for large-scale MIMO design and for the indoor optical wireless communication whilst relying on a single-Radio Frequency (RF) chain. Moreover, SM may also be viewed as an entirely new hybrid modulation scheme, which is still in its infancy. This paper aims for providing a general survey of the SM design framework as well as of its intrinsic limits. In particular, we focus our attention on the associated transceiver design, on spatial constellation optimization, on link adaptation techniques, on distributed/ cooperative protocol design issues, and on their meritorious variants

Dispensing with channel estimation: differentially modulated cooperative wireless communications

As a benefit of bypassing the potentially excessive complexity and yet inaccurate channel estimation, differentially encoded modulation in conjunction with low-complexity noncoherent detection constitutes a viable candidate for user-cooperative systems, where estimating all the links by the relays is unrealistic. In order to stimulate further research on differentially modulated cooperative systems, a number of fundamental challenges encountered in their practical implementations are addressed, including the time-variant-channel-induced performance erosion, flexible cooperative protocol designs, resource allocation as well as its high-spectral-efficiency transceiver design. Our investigations demonstrate the quantitative benefits of cooperative wireless networks both from a pure capacity perspective as well as from a practical system design perspective

Detect-and-forward relaying aided cooperative spatial modulation for wireless networks

A novel detect-and-forward (DeF) relaying aided cooperative SM scheme is proposed, which is capable of striking a flexible tradeoff in terms of the achievable bit error ratio (BER), complexity and unequal error protection (UEP). More specifically, SM is invoked at the source node (SN) and the information bit stream is divided into two different sets: the antenna index-bits (AI-bits) as well as the amplitude and phase modulation-bits (APM-bits). By exploiting the different importance of the AI-bits and the APM-bits in SM detection, we propose three low-complexity, yet powerful relay protocols, namely the partial, the hybrid and the hierarchical modulation (HM) based DeF relaying schemes. These schemes determine the most appropriate number of bits to be re-modulated by carefully considering their potential benefits and then assigning a specific modulation scheme for relaying the message. As a further benefit, the employment of multiple radio frequency (RF) chains and the requirement of tight inter-relay synchronization (IRS) can be avoided. Moreover, by exploiting the benefits of our low-complexity relaying protocols and our inter-element interference (IEI) model, a low-complexity maximum-likelihood (ML) detector is proposed for jointly detecting the signal received both via the source-destination (SD) and relay-destination (RD) links. Additionally, an upper bound of the BER is derived for our DeF-SM scheme. Our numerical results show that the bound is asymptotically tight in the high-SNR region and the proposed schemes provide beneficial system performance improvements compared to the conventional MIMO schemes in an identical cooperative scenario.<br/

Wireless transmission protocols using relays for broadcast and information exchange channels

Relays have been used to overcome existing network performance bottlenecks in meeting the growing demand for large bandwidth and high quality of service (QoS) in wireless networks. This thesis proposes several wireless transmission protocols using relays in practical multi-user broadcast and information exchange channels. The main theme is to demonstrate that efficient use of relays provides an additional dimension to improve reliability, throughput, power efficiency and secrecy. First, a spectrally efficient cooperative transmission protocol is proposed for the multiple-input and singleoutput (MISO) broadcast channel to improve the reliability of wireless transmission. The proposed protocol mitigates co-channel interference and provides another dimension to improve the diversity gain. Analytical and simulation results show that outage probability and the diversity and multiplexing tradeoff of the proposed cooperative protocol outperforms the non-cooperative scheme. Second, a two-way relaying protocol is proposed for the multi-pair, two-way relaying channel to improve the throughput and reliability. The proposed protocol enables both the users and the relay to participate in interference cancellation. Several beamforming schemes are proposed for the multi-antenna relay. Analytical and simulation results reveal that the proposed protocol delivers significant improvements in ergodic capacity, outage probability and the diversity and multiplexing tradeoff if compared to existing schemes. Third, a joint beamforming and power management scheme is proposed for multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) two-way relaying channel to improve the sum-rate. Network power allocation and power control optimisation problems are formulated and solved using convex optimisation techniques. Simulation results verify that the proposed scheme delivers better sum-rate or consumes lower power when compared to existing schemes. Fourth, two-way secrecy schemes which combine one-time pad and wiretap coding are proposed for the scalar broadcast channel to improve secrecy rate. The proposed schemes utilise the channel reciprocity and employ relays to forward secret messages. Analytical and simulation results reveal that the proposed schemes are able to achieve positive secrecy rates even when the number of users is large. All of these new wireless transmission protocols help to realise better throughput, reliability, power efficiency and secrecy for wireless broadcast and information exchange channels through the efficient use of relays

Efficient Power Allocation Schemes for Hybrid Decode-Amplify-Forward Relay Based Wireless Cooperative Network

Cooperative communication in various wireless domains, such as cellular networks, sensor networks and wireless ad hoc networks, has gained significant interest recently. In cooperative network, relays between the source and the destination, form a virtual MIMO that creates spatial diversity at the destination, which overcomes the fading effect of wireless channels. Such relay assisted schemes have potential to increase the channel capacity and network coverage. Most current research on cooperative communication are focused broadly on efficient protocol design and analysis, resource allocation, relay selection and cross layer optimization. The first part of this research aims at introducing hybrid decode-amplify-forward (HDAF) relaying in a distributed Alamouti coded cooperative network. Performance of such adaptive relaying scheme in terms of symbol error rate (SER), outage probability and average channel capacity is derived theoretically and verified through simulation based study. This work is further extended to a generalized multi HDAF relaying cooperative frame work. Various efficient power allocation schemes such as maximized channel capacity based, minimized SER based and total power minimization based are proposed and their superiority in performance over the existing equal power allocation scheme is demonstrated in the simulation results. Due to the broadcast nature of wireless transmission, information privacy in wireless networks becomes a critical issue. In the context of physical layer security, the role of multi HDAF relaying based cooperative model with control jamming and multiple eavesdroppers is explored in the second part of the research. Performance evaluation parameters such as secrecy rate, secrecy outage and intercept probability are derived theoretically. Further the importance of the proposed power allocation schemes in enhancing the secrecy performance of the network in the presence of multiple eavesdroppers is studied in detail through simulation based study and analysis. For all the proposed power allocation schemes in this research, the optimization problems are defined under total power constraint and are solved using Lagrange multiplier method and also evolutionary algorithms such as Differential evolution and Invasive Weed Optimization are employed. Monte Carlo simulation based study is adopted throughout the research. It is concluded that HDAF relaying based wireless cooperative network with optimal power allocation schemes offers improved and reliable performance compared to conventional amplify forward and decode forward relaying schemes. Above research contributions will be applicable for future generation wireless cooperative networks

Performance analysis of wireless relay systems

There has been phenomenal interest in applying space-time coding techniques in wireless communications in the last two decades. In general, the benefit of applying space-time codes in multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) wireless channels is an increase in transmission reliability or system throughput (capacity). However, such a benefit cannot be obtained in some wireless systems where size or other constraints preclude the use of multiple antennas. As such, wireless relay communications has recently been proposed as a means to provide spatial diversity in the face of this limitation. In this approach, some users or relay nodes assist the transmission of other users’ information. This dissertation contributes to the advancement of wireless relay communications by investigating the performance of various relaying signal processing methods under different practical fading environments. In particular, it examines two main relaying methods, namely decode-and-forward (DF) and amplify-and-forward (AF). For DF, the focus is on the diversity analysis of relaying systems under various practical protocols when detection error at relays is taken into account. In order to effectively mitigate the phenomenon of error propagation, the smart relaying technique proposed by Wang et al. in [R1] is adopted. First, diversity analysis of a single-relay system under the scenario that only the relay is allowed to transmit in the second time slot (called Protocol II) is carried out. For Nakagami and Hoyt generalized fading channels, analytical and numerical results are provided to demonstrate that the system always obtains the maximal diversity when binary phase shift keying (BPSK) modulation is used. Second, a novel and low-complexity relaying system is proposed when smart relaying and equal gain combing (EGC) techniques are combined. In the proposed system, the destination requires only the phases of the channel state information in order to detect the transmitted signals. For the single-relay system with M-ary PSK modulation, it is shown that the system can achieve the maximal diversity under Nakagami and Hoyt fading channels. For the K-relay system, simulation results suggest that the maximal diversity can also be achieved. Finally, the diversity analysis for a smart relaying system under the scenario when both the source and relay are permitted to transmit in the second time slot (referred to as Protocol I) is presented. It is shown that Protocol I can achieve the same diversity order as Protocol II for the case of 1 relay. In addition, the diversity is very robust to the quality of the feedback channel as well as the accuracy of the quantization of the power scaling implemented at the relay. For AF, the dissertation considers a fixed-gain multiple-relay system with maximal ratio combining (MRC) detection at the destination under Nakagami fading channels. Different from the smart relaying for DF, all the channel state information is assumed to be available at the destination in order to perform MRC for any number of antennas. Upperbound and lowerbound on the system performance are then derived. Based on the bounds, it is shown that the system can achieve the maximal diversity. Furthermore, the tightness of the upperbound is demonstrated via simulation results. With only the statistics of all the channels available at the destination, a novel power allocation (PA) is then proposed. The proposed PA shows significant performance gain over the conventional equal PA

Wireless secrecy under multivariate correlated Nakagami-m fading

Current wireless secrecy research in the literature has mainly been performed for one wiretapper under correlated fading. In this paper, a new wireless secrecy framework for multiple wiretappers under multivariate exponentially-correlated (exp.c.) Nakagami-m fading is proposed. Using the distribution of multivariate exp.c. Nakagami-m fading, new, exact, and compact expressions for the ergodic secrecy capacity, and secrecy outage probability (SOP) under multiple wiretappers are obtained for an integer fading parameter m. A secrecy analysis is also performed for the first time in this paper using an adaptive on/off transmission encoder under multivariate exp.c. Nakagami-m fading. A secrecy analysis with three wiretappers under quadrivariate exp.c. Nakagami-m fading is also given, which shows the effectiveness of the new framework. Simulation results are shown to exactly match theoretical predictions