Single-Carrier Modulation versus OFDM for Millimeter-Wave Wireless MIMO

This paper presents results on the achievable spectral efficiency and on the energy efficiency for a wireless multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) link operating at millimeter wave frequencies (mmWave) in a typical 5G scenario. Two different single-carrier modem schemes are considered, i.e., a traditional modulation scheme with linear equalization at the receiver, and a single-carrier modulation with cyclic prefix, frequency-domain equalization and FFT-based processing at the receiver; these two schemes are compared with a conventional MIMO-OFDM transceiver structure. Our analysis jointly takes into account the peculiar characteristics of MIMO channels at mmWave frequencies, the use of hybrid (analog-digital) pre-coding and post-coding beamformers, the finite cardinality of the modulation structure, and the non-linear behavior of the transmitter power amplifiers. Our results show that the best performance is achieved by single-carrier modulation with time-domain equalization, which exhibits the smallest loss due to the non-linear distortion, and whose performance can be further improved by using advanced equalization schemes. Results also confirm that performance gets severely degraded when the link length exceeds 90-100 meters and the transmit power falls below 0 dBW.Comment: accepted for publication on IEEE Transactions on Communication

Joint transceiver design for MIMO channel shortening.

Channel shortening equalizers can be employed to shorten the effective impulse response of a long intersymbol interference (ISI) channel in order, for example, to decrease the computational complexity of a maximum-likelihood sequence estimator (MLSE) or to increase the throughput efficiency of an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission scheme. In this paper, the issue of joint transmitter–receiver filter design is addressed for shortening multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) ISI channels. A frequency-domain approach is adopted for the transceiver design which is effectively equivalent to an infinite-length time-domain design. A practical space–frequency waterfilling algorithm is also provided. It is demonstrated that the channel shortening equalizer designed according to the time-domain approach suffers from an error-floor effect. However, the proposed techniques are shown to overcome this problem and outperform the time-domain channel shortening filter design. We also demonstrate that the proposed transceiver design can be considered as a MIMO broadband beamformer with constraints on the time-domain multipath length. Hence, a significant diversity gain could also be achieved by choosing strong eigenmodes of the MIMO channel. It is also found that the proposed frequency-domain methods have considerably low computational complexity as compared with their time-domain counterparts

MIMO-UFMC Transceiver Schemes for Millimeter Wave Wireless Communications

The UFMC modulation is among the most considered solutions for the realization of beyond-OFDM air interfaces for future wireless networks. This paper focuses on the design and analysis of an UFMC transceiver equipped with multiple antennas and operating at millimeter wave carrier frequencies. The paper provides the full mathematical model of a MIMO-UFMC transceiver, taking into account the presence of hybrid analog/digital beamformers at both ends of the communication links. Then, several detection structures are proposed, both for the case of single-packet isolated transmission, and for the case of multiple-packet continuous transmission. In the latter situation, the paper also considers the case in which no guard time among adjacent packets is inserted, trading off an increased level of interference with higher values of spectral efficiency. At the analysis stage, the several considered detection structures and transmission schemes are compared in terms of bit-error-rate, root-mean-square-error, and system throughput. The numerical results show that the proposed transceiver algorithms are effective and that the linear MMSE data detector is capable of well managing the increased interference brought by the removal of guard times among consecutive packets, thus yielding throughput gains of about 10 - 13 $\%$. The effect of phase noise at the receiver is also numerically assessed, and it is shown that the recursive implementation of the linear MMSE exhibits some degree of robustness against this disturbance

Multi-user spatial diversity techniques for wireless communication systems

Multiple antennas at the transmitter and receiver, formally known as multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems have the potential to either increase the data rates through spatial multiplexing or enhance the quality of services through exploitation of diversity. In this thesis, the problem of downlink spatial multiplexing, where a base station (BS) serves multiple users simultaneously in the same frequency band is addressed. Spatial multiplexing techniques have the potential to make huge saving in the bandwidth utilization. We propose spatial diversity techniques with and without the assumption of perfect channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter. We start with proposing improvement to signal-to-leakage ratio (SLR) maximization based spatial multiplexing techniques for both fiat fading and frequency selective channels. [Continues.

The Murchison Widefield Array: Design Overview

The Murchison Widefield Array (MWA) is a dipole-based aperture array synthesis telescope designed to operate in the 80-300 MHz frequency range. It is capable of a wide range of science investigations, but is initially focused on three key science projects. These are detection and characterization of 3-dimensional brightness temperature fluctuations in the 21cm line of neutral hydrogen during the Epoch of Reionization (EoR) at redshifts from 6 to 10, solar imaging and remote sensing of the inner heliosphere via propagation effects on signals from distant background sources,and high-sensitivity exploration of the variable radio sky. The array design features 8192 dual-polarization broad-band active dipoles, arranged into 512 tiles comprising 16 dipoles each. The tiles are quasi-randomly distributed over an aperture 1.5km in diameter, with a small number of outliers extending to 3km. All tile-tile baselines are correlated in custom FPGA-based hardware, yielding a Nyquist-sampled instantaneous monochromatic uv coverage and unprecedented point spread function (PSF) quality. The correlated data are calibrated in real time using novel position-dependent self-calibration algorithms. The array is located in the Murchison region of outback Western Australia. This region is characterized by extremely low population density and a superbly radio-quiet environment,allowing full exploitation of the instrumental capabilities.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, 1 table. Accepted for publication in Proceedings of the IEE

Analysis of and techniques for adaptive equalization for underwater acoustic communication

Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution September 2011Underwater wireless communication is quickly becoming a necessity for applications in ocean science, defense, and homeland security. Acoustics remains the only practical means of accomplishing long-range communication in the ocean. The acoustic communication channel is fraught with difficulties including limited available bandwidth, long delay-spread, time-variability, and Doppler spreading. These difficulties reduce the reliability of the communication system and make high data-rate communication challenging. Adaptive decision feedback equalization is a common method to compensate for distortions introduced by the underwater acoustic channel. Limited work has been done thus far to introduce the physics of the underwater channel into improving and better understanding the operation of a decision feedback equalizer. This thesis examines how to use physical models to improve the reliability and reduce the computational complexity of the decision feedback equalizer. The specific topics covered by this work are: how to handle channel estimation errors for the time varying channel, how to use angular constraints imposed by the environment into an array receiver, what happens when there is a mismatch between the true channel order and the estimated channel order, and why there is a performance difference between the direct adaptation and channel estimation based methods for computing the equalizer coefficients. For each of these topics, algorithms are provided that help create a more robust equalizer with lower computational complexity for the underwater channel.This work would not have been possible without support from the O ce of Naval Research, through a Special Research Award in Acoustics Graduate Fellowship (ONR Grant #N00014-09-1-0540), with additional support from ONR Grant #N00014-05- 10085 and ONR Grant #N00014-07-10184

Interference Alignment Techniques for Multi-User MIMO Systems at Millimeter-Wave

In this work a review of the state-of-the-art of modern multi-user MIMO systems is given, presenting various algorithms that use interference alignment techniques to allocate multiple users over the same physical channel. In particular, the performance achieved with these methods over the millimeter-wave channel are evaluated. Finally, the work is completed with the description of a novel frequency domain non-linear equalizer for wideband channel

TTD Configurations for Near-Field Beamforming: Parallel, Serial, or Hybrid?

True-time delayers (TTDs) are popular components for hybrid beamforming architectures to combat the spatial-wideband effect in wideband near-field communications. A serial and a hybrid serial-parallel TTD configuration are investigated for hybrid beamforming architectures. Compared to the conventional parallel configuration, the serial configuration exhibits a cumulative time delay through multiple TTDs, which potentially alleviates the maximum delay requirements on the TTDs. However, independent control of individual TTDs becomes impossible in the serial configuration. In this context, a hybrid TTD configuration is proposed as a compromise solution. Furthermore, a power equalization approach is proposed to address the cumulative insertion loss of the serial and hybrid TTD configurations. Moreover, the wideband near-field beamforming design for different configurations is studied for maximizing the spectral efficiency in both single-user and multiple-user systems. 1) For single-user systems, a closed-form solution for the beamforming design is derived. The preferred user locations and the required maximum time delay of each TTD configuration are characterized. 2) For multi-user systems, a penalty-based iterative algorithm is developed to obtain a stationary point of the spectral efficiency maximization problem for each TTD configuration. In addition, a mixed-forward-and-backward (MFB) implementation is proposed to enhance the performance of the serial configuration. Our numerical results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed designs and unveil that i) compared to the conventional parallel configuration, both the serial and hybrid configurations can significantly reduce the maximum time delays required for the TTDs and ii) the hybrid configuration excels in single-user systems, while the serial configuration is preferred in multi-user systems.Comment: 13 pages, 8 figure

Sparse Filter Design Under a Quadratic Constraint: Low-Complexity Algorithms

This paper considers three problems in sparse filter design, the first involving a weighted least-squares constraint on the frequency response, the second a constraint on mean squared error in estimation, and the third a constraint on signal-to-noise ratio in detection. The three problems are unified under a single framework based on sparsity maximization under a quadratic performance constraint. Efficient and exact solutions are developed for specific cases in which the matrix in the quadratic constraint is diagonal, block-diagonal, banded, or has low condition number. For the more difficult general case, a low-complexity algorithm based on backward greedy selection is described with emphasis on its efficient implementation. Examples in wireless channel equalization and minimum-variance distortionless-response beamforming show that the backward selection algorithm yields optimally sparse designs in many instances while also highlighting the benefits of sparse design.Texas Instruments Leadership University Consortium Progra