On-board the Satellite Interference Detection with Imperfect Signal Cancellation

Interference issues have been identified as a threat for satellite communication systems and services, resulting in throughput degradation and revenue loss to the satellite operators. In this context, an on-board spectrum monitoring unit (SMU) can be used to detect interference reliably. Current satellite SMUs are deployed on the ground and the introduction of an in-orbit SMU can bring several benefits, e.g. simplifying the ground based station in multibeam systems. This paper proposes a two-step algorithm for on-board interference detection, exploiting the frame structure of DVB-S2X standard, which employs pilot symbols for data transmission. Assuming that the pilot signal is known at the receiver, it can be removed from the total received signal. Then, an Energy Detection (ED) technique can be applied on the remaining signal in order to decide the presence or absence of interference. The simulation results show that the proposed technique outperforms the conventional ED in low interference-to-signal and noise ratios (ISNRs)

Spectrum Monitoring Algorithms for Wireless and Satellite Communications

Nowadays, there is an increasing demand for more efficient utilization of the radio frequency spectrum as new terrestrial and space services are deployed resulting in the congestion of the already crowded frequency bands. In this context, spectrum monitoring is a necessity. Spectrum monitoring techniques can be applied in a cognitive radio network, exploiting the spectrum holes and allowing the secondary users to have access in an unlicensed frequency band for them, when it is not occupied by the primary user. Furthermore, spectrum monitoring techniques can be used for interference detection in wireless and satellite communications. These two topics are addressed in this thesis. In the beginning, a detailed survey of the existing spectrum monitoring techniques according to the way that cognitive radio users 1) can detect the presence or absence of the primary user; and 2) can access the licensed spectrum is provided. Subsequently, an overview of the problem of satellite interference and existing methods for its detection are discussed, while the contributions of this thesis are presented as well. Moreover, this thesis discusses some issues in a cognitive radio system such as the reduction of the secondary user's throughput of the conventional \listen before talk" access method in the spectrum. Then, the idea of simultaneous spectrum sensing and data transmission through the collaboration of the secondary transmitter with receiver is proposed to address these concerns. First, the secondary receiver decodes the signal from the secondary transmitter, then, removes it from the total received signal and finally, applies spectrum sensing in the remaining signal in order to decide if the primary user is active or idle. The effects of the imperfect signal cancellation due to decoding errors, which are ignored in the existing literature, are considered in our analysis. The analytical expressions for the probabilities of false alarm and detection are derived and numerical results through simulations are also presented to validate the proposed study. Furthermore, the threat of interference for the satellite communications services is studied in this thesis. It proposes the detection of interference on-board the satellite by introducing a spectrum monitoring unit within the satellite transponder. This development will bring several benefits such as faster reaction time and simplification of the ground stations in multi-beam satellite systems. Then, two algorithms for the detection of interference are provided. The first detection scheme is based on energy detector with signal cancellation exploiting the pilot symbols. The second detection scheme considers a two-stage detector, where first, the energy detector with signal cancellation in the pilot domain is performed, and if required, an energy detector with signal cancellation in the data domain is carried out in the second stage. Moreover, the analytical expressions for the probabilities of false alarm and detection are derived and numerical results through simulations are provided to verify the accuracy of the proposed analysis. Finally, this thesis goes one step further and the developed algorithms are evaluated experimentally using software defined radios, particularly universal software radio peripherals (USRPs), while it concludes discussing some open research topics

Minimum mean-squared error iterative successive parallel arbitrated decision feedback detectors for DS-CDMA systems

In this paper we propose minimum mean squared error (MMSE) iterative successive parallel arbitrated decision feedback (DF) receivers for direct sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) systems. We describe the MMSE design criterion for DF multiuser detectors along with successive, parallel and iterative interference cancellation structures. A novel efficient DF structure that employs successive cancellation with parallel arbitrated branches and a near-optimal low complexity user ordering algorithm are presented. The proposed DF receiver structure and the ordering algorithm are then combined with iterative cascaded DF stages for mitigating the deleterious effects of error propagation for convolutionally encoded systems with both Viterbi and turbo decoding as well as for uncoded schemes. We mathematically study the relations between the MMSE achieved by the analyzed DF structures, including the novel scheme, with imperfect and perfect feedback. Simulation results for an uplink scenario assess the new iterative DF detectors against linear receivers and evaluate the effects of error propagation of the new cancellation methods against existing ones

Joint energy and rate allocation for successive interference cancellation in the finite blocklength regime

© 2018 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, 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 component of this work in other works.This work addresses the optimization of the network spectral efficiency (SE) under successive interference cancellation (SIC) at a given blocklength n. We adopt a proof-of-concept satellite scenario where network users can vary their transmission power and select their transmission rate from a set of encoders, for which decoding is characterized by a known packet error rate (PER) function. In the large-system limit, we apply variational calculus (VC) to obtain the user-energy distribution, the assigned per-user rate and the SIC decoding order maximizing the network SE under a sum-power constraint at the SIC input. We analyze two encoder sets: (i) an infinite set of encoders achieving information-theoretic finite blocklength PER results over a continuum of code rates, where the large-n second order expansion of the maximal channel coding rate is used; (ii) a feasible finite set of encoders. Simulations quantify the performance gap between the two schemes.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Weak Interference Detection with Signal Cancellation in Satellite Communications

Interference is identified as a critical issue for satellite communication (SATCOM) systems and services. There is a growing concern in the satellite industry to manage and mitigate interference efficiently. While there are efficient techniques to monitor strong interference in SATCOM, weak interference is not so easily detected because of its low interference to signal and noise ratio (ISNR). To address this issue, this paper proposes and develops a technique which takes place on-board the satellite by decoding the desired signal, removing it from the total received signal and applying an Energy Detector (ED) in the remaining signal for the detection of interference. Different from the existing literature, this paper considers imperfect signal cancellation, examining how the decoding errors affect the sensing performance, derives the expressions for the probability of false alarm and provides a set of simulations results, verifying the efficiency of the technique

SDR Implementation of a Testbed for Real-Time Interference Detection with Signal Cancellation

Interference greatly affects the quality of service of wireless and satellite communications, having also a financial impact for the telecommunication operators. Therefore, as the interfering events increase due to the deployment of new services, there is an increasing demand for the detection and mitigation of interference. There are several interference detectors in the literature, evaluated by using extensive simulations. However, this paper goes one step further, designing, implementing and evaluating the performance of the developed interference detection algorithms experimentally using a software defined radio, and particularly the universal software radio peripheral platform. A realistic communication system is implemented, consisting of a transmitter, a channel emulator and a receiver. Based on this system, we implement all the appropriate communications features such as pulse shaping, synchronization and demodulation. The real-time system implementation is validated and evaluated through signal and interference detection. We observe that the interference detection threshold is critical to the functioning of the system. Several existing interference detection techniques fail in practice due to this fact. In this paper, we propose a robust and practically implementable method the selection of threshold. Finally, we present real-time experimental results for the probabilities of false alarm and detection in order to verify the accuracy of our study and reinforce our theoretical analysis

Study on the application of NOMA techniques for heterogeneous satellite terminals

This paper addresses the application of nonorthogonal multiple-access techniques (NOMA) to those satellite relayed communications for which a significant imbalance in the link quality of user terminals can be expected. The Signal-to-Interference and Noise Ratio (SINR) imbalance could be caused by the coexistence of different types of terminals, possibly with different antenna sizes, and offering different classes of service. This link SINR asymmetry can be exploited to outperform orthogonal access schemes under different rate metrics, paying special attention to fairness in the service provision. Both forward and asynchronous return link are addressed, with minimum signaling information and emphasis on some relevant implementation issues such as framing and synchronization