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

Some MIMO applications in cognitive radio networks

In the last decade, the wireless communication technology has witnessed a rapid development, which led to a rapid growth in wireless applications and services. However, the radio spectrum resources scarcity resulting from using the traditional methods of fixed spectrum resources allocation has potential constraints on this wireless services rapid growth. Consequently, cognitive radio has been emerged as a possible solution for alleviating this spectrum scarcity problem by employing dynamic resource allocation strategies in order to utilize the available spectrum in a more efficient way so that finding opportunities for new wireless application services could be achieved. In cognitive radio networks, the radio spectrum resources utilization is improved by allowing unlicensed users, known as secondary users, to share the spectrum with licensed users, known as primary users, as long as this sharing do not induce harmful interference on the primary users, which completely entitled to utilize the spectrum. Motivated by MIMO techniques that have been used in practical systems as a means for high data rate transmission and a source for spatial diversity, and by its ease implementation with OFDM, different issues in multi-user MIMO (MU-MIMO) in both the uplink and downlink in the context of cognitive radio are studied in this thesis. More specifically, in the first thrust of this thesis, the spectrum spatial holes which could exist in an uplink MU-MIMO cell as a result of the possible free spatial dimensions resulted from the sparse activity of the primary users is studied; a modified sensing algorithm for these spectrum spatial holes that exploit both the block structure of the OFDM signals and the correlation of their activity states along time are proposed. The second thrust is concerned with cognitive radio relaying in the physical layer where the cognitive radio base station (CBS) relays the PU signal while transmitting its own signals to its SUs. We define secondary users with different priorities (different quality of service requirements); the different levels of priority for SUs are achieved by a newly proposed simple linear scheme based on zero forcing called Hierarchal Priority Zero Forcing scheme HPZF