Performance evaluation of cross-layer energy-efficient transmit antenna selection for spatial multiplexing systems

Abstract Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and cognitive radio (CR) are key techniques for present and future high-speed wireless technologies. On the other hand, there are rising energy costs and greenhouse emissions associated with the provision of high-speed wireless communications. Consequently, the design of high-speed energy efficient systems is paramount for next-generation wireless systems. This thesis studies energy-efficient antenna selection for spatial multiplexing multiple-antenna systems from a cross-layer perspective, contrary to the norm, where physical-layer energy efficiency metrics are optimized. The enhanced system performance achieved by cross-layer designs in wireless networks motivates this research. The aim of the thesis is to propose and analyze novel cross-layer energy-efficient transmit antenna selection schemes that enhance energy efficiency and system performance - with regard to throughput, transmission latency, packet error rate and receiver buffer requirements. Firstly, this thesis derives the analytical expression for data link throughput for point-to-point spatial multiplexing multiple-antenna systems - which include MIMO and underlay CR MIMO systems - equipped with linear receivers with N-process stop-and-wait (N-SAW) as the automatic repeat request (ARQ) protocol. The performance of cross-layer transmit antenna selection, which maximizes the derived throughput metric, is then analyzed. The impact of packet size, number of SAW processes and the stalling of packets inside the receiver reordering buffer is considered in the investigation. The results show that the cross-layer approach, which takes into account system characteristics at both the data link and physical layers, has superior performance in comparison with the conventional physical-layer approach, which optimizes capacity. Secondly, this thesis proposes a cross-layer energy efficiency metric, based on the derived system throughput. Energy-efficient transmit antenna selection for spatial multiplexing MIMO systems, which maximizes the proposed cross-layer energy efficiency metric, by jointly optimizing the transmit antenna subset and transmit power, subject to spectral efficiency and transmit power constraints, is then introduced and analyzed. Additionally, adaptive modulation is incorporated into the proposed cross-layer scheme to enhance system performance. Cross-layer energyefficient transmit antenna selection for underlay CR MIMO systems, where interference constraints now come into play, is then considered. Lastly, this thesis develops novel reduced complexity versions of the proposed cross-layer energyefficient transmit antenna selection schemes - along with detailed complexity analysis - which shows that the proposed cross-layer approach attains significant energy efficiency and performance gains at affordable computational complexity

AirSync: Enabling Distributed Multiuser MIMO with Full Spatial Multiplexing

The enormous success of advanced wireless devices is pushing the demand for higher wireless data rates. Denser spectrum reuse through the deployment of more access points per square mile has the potential to successfully meet the increasing demand for more bandwidth. In theory, the best approach to density increase is via distributed multiuser MIMO, where several access points are connected to a central server and operate as a large distributed multi-antenna access point, ensuring that all transmitted signal power serves the purpose of data transmission, rather than creating "interference." In practice, while enterprise networks offer a natural setup in which distributed MIMO might be possible, there are serious implementation difficulties, the primary one being the need to eliminate phase and timing offsets between the jointly coordinated access points. In this paper we propose AirSync, a novel scheme which provides not only time but also phase synchronization, thus enabling distributed MIMO with full spatial multiplexing gains. AirSync locks the phase of all access points using a common reference broadcasted over the air in conjunction with a Kalman filter which closely tracks the phase drift. We have implemented AirSync as a digital circuit in the FPGA of the WARP radio platform. Our experimental testbed, comprised of two access points and two clients, shows that AirSync is able to achieve phase synchronization within a few degrees, and allows the system to nearly achieve the theoretical optimal multiplexing gain. We also discuss MAC and higher layer aspects of a practical deployment. To the best of our knowledge, AirSync offers the first ever realization of the full multiuser MIMO gain, namely the ability to increase the number of wireless clients linearly with the number of jointly coordinated access points, without reducing the per client rate.Comment: Submitted to Transactions on Networkin

Precoding for Outage Probability Minimization on Block Fading Channels

The outage probability limit is a fundamental and achievable lower bound on the word error rate of coded communication systems affected by fading. This limit is mainly determined by two parameters: the diversity order and the coding gain. With linear precoding, full diversity on a block fading channel can be achieved without error-correcting code. However, the effect of precoding on the coding gain is not well known, mainly due to the complicated expression of the outage probability. Using a geometric approach, this paper establishes simple upper bounds on the outage probability, the minimization of which yields to precoding matrices that achieve very good performance. For discrete alphabets, it is shown that the combination of constellation expansion and precoding is sufficient to closely approach the minimum possible outage achieved by an i.i.d. Gaussian input distribution, thus essentially maximizing the coding gain.Comment: Submitted to Transactions on Information Theory on March 23, 201

Optimized Iterative (Turbo) Reception for QAM OFDM with CFO over Unknown Double-Selective Channels

A novel iterative (turbo) receiver is introduced, suitable for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) employing quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) and receiver diversity. The system operates over a double-selective channel and includes a carrier frequency offset (CFO). We propose a maximum a posteriori probability expectation-maximization (MAP-EM) receiver with a different EM parameter division than standard methods. In such standard MAP-EM receivers, the E-step parameters correspond to the channel, while the M-step parameters correspond to the CFO and data symbols. This standard receiver parameter division results into a highly complex receiver for QAM, due to the large modulated symbol alphabet size, and the non-constant constellation symbol amplitude. In this paper, a new receiver framework introduces a different parameter division that leads to reduced complexity turbo receivers for QAM signaling, while still achieving close to optimal system performance. The new approach adapts the sum-product algorithm (SPA) parameter framework to the MAP-EM receiver. Thus, in the new receiver framework, the E-step parameters are data symbols, while the M-step parameters are the channel and the CFO. We evaluate the performance of the proposed receiver with and without automatic repeat request (ARQ), where in the former case packet combining applies to further improve performance