Digital signal processing techniques for peak-to-average power ratio mitigation in MIMO–OFDM systems

The focus of this thesis is to mitigate the very large peak-to-average transmit power ratios (PAPRs) inherent to conventional orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, particularly in the context of transmission over multi-input multi-output (MIMO) wireless broadband channels. This problem is important as a large PAPR generally needs an expensive radio frequency (RF) power amplifier at the transmitter due to the requirement for linear operation over a wide amplitude range and such a cost would be compounded when multiple transmit antennas are used. Advanced signal processing techniques which can reduce PAPR whilst retain the integrity of digital transmission therefore have considerable potential for application in emergent MIMO–OFDM wireless systems and form the technical contributions of this study. [Continues.

Mitigating PAPR in cooperative wireless networks with frequency selective channels and relay selection

The focus of this thesis is peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) reduction in cooperative wireless networks which exploit orthogonal frequency division multiplexing in transmission. To reduce the PAPR clipping is employed at the source node. The first contribution focuses upon an amplify-and-forward (AF) type network with four relay nodes which exploits distributed closed loop extended orthogonal space frequency block coding to improve end-to-end performance. Oversampling and filtering are used at the source node to reduce out-of-band interference and the iterative amplitude reconstruction decoding technique is used at the destination node to mitigate in-band distortion which is introduced by the clipping process. In addition, by exploiting quantized group feedback and phase rotation at two of the relay nodes, the system achieves full cooperative diversity in addition to array gain. The second contribution area is outage probability analysis in the context of multi-relay selection in a cooperative AF network with frequency selective fading channels. The gains of time domain multi-path fading channels with L paths are modeled with an Erlang distribution. General closed form expressions for the lower and upper bounds of outage probability are derived for arbitrary channel length L as a function of end-to-end signal to noise ratio. This analysis is then extended for the case when single relay selection from an arbitrary number of relay nodes M is performed. The spatial and temporal cooperative diversity gain is then analysed. In addition, exact form of outage probability for multi-path channel length L = 2 and selecting the best single relay from an arbitrary number of relay nodes M is obtained. Moreover, selecting a pair of relays when L = 2 or 3 is additionally analysed. Finally, the third contribution context is outage probability analysis of a cooperative AF network with single and two relay pair selection from M available relay nodes together with clipping at the source node, which is explicitly modelled. MATLAB and Maple software based simulations are employed throughout the thesis to support the analytical results and assess the performance of algorithms and methods

Collaborative modulation multiple access for single hop and multihop networks

While the bandwidth available for wireless networks is limited, the world has seen an unprecedented growth in the number of mobile subscribers and an ever increasing demand for high data rates. Therefore efficient utilisation of bandwidth to maximise link spectral efficiency and number of users that can be served simultaneously are primary goals in the design of wireless systems. To achieve these goals, in this thesis, a new non-orthogonal uplink multiple access scheme which combines the functionalities of adaptive modulation and multiple access called collaborative modulation multiple access (CMMA) is proposed. CMMA enables multiple users to access the network simultaneously and share the same bandwidth even when only a single receive antenna is available and in the presence of high channel correlation. Instead of competing for resources, users in CMMA share resources collaboratively by employing unique modulation sets (UMS) that differ in phase, power, and/or mapping structure. These UMS are designed to insure that the received signal formed from the superposition of all users’ signals belongs to a composite QAM constellation (CC) with a rate equal to the sum rate of all users. The CC and its constituent UMSs are designed centrally at the BS to remove ambiguity, maximize the minimum Euclidian distance (dmin) of the CC and insure a minimum BER performance is maintained. Users collaboratively precode their transmitted signal by performing truncated channel inversion and phase rotation using channel state information (CSI ) obtained from a periodic common pilot to insure that their combined signal at the BS belongs to the CC known at the BS which in turn performs a simple joint maximum likelihood detection without the need for CSI. The coherent addition of users’ power enables CMMA to achieve high link spectral efficiency at any time without extra power or bandwidth but on the expense of graceful degradation in BER performance. To improve the BER performance of CMMA while preserving its precoding and detection structure and without the need for pilot-aided channel estimation, a new selective diversity combining scheme called SC-CMMA is proposed. SC-CMMA optimises the overall group performance providing fairness and diversity gain for various users with different transmit powers and channel conditions by selecting a single antenna out of a group of L available antennas that minimises the total transmit power required for precoding at any one time. A detailed study of capacity and BER performance of CMMA and SC-CMMA is carried out under different level of channel correlations which shows that both offer high capacity gain and resilience to channel correlation. SC-CMMA capacity even increase with high channel correlation between users’ channels. CMMA provides a practical solution for implementing the multiple access adder channel (MAAC) in fading environments hence a hybrid approach combining both collaborative coding and modulation referred to as H-CMMA is investigated. H-CMMA divides users into a number of subgroups where users within a subgroup are assigned the same modulation set and different multiple access codes. H-CMMA adjusts the dmin of the received CC by varying the number of subgroups which in turn varies the number of unique constellation points for the same number of users and average total power. Therefore H-CMMA can accommodate many users with different rates while flexibly managing the complexity, rate and BER performance depending on the SNR. Next a new scheme combining CMMA with opportunistic scheduling using only partial CSI at the receiver called CMMA-OS is proposed to combine both the power gain of CMMA and the multiuser diversity gain that arises from users’ channel independence. To avoid the complexity and excessive feedback associated with the dynamic update of the CC, the BS takes into account the independence of users’ channels in the design of the CC and its constituent UMSs but both remain unchanged thereafter. However UMS are no longer associated with users, instead channel gain’s probability density function is divided into regions with identical probability and each UMS is associated with a specific region. This will simplify scheduling as users can initially chose their UMS based on their CSI and the BS will only need to resolve any collision when the channels of two or more users are located at the same region. Finally a high rate cooperative communication scheme, called cooperative modulation (CM) is proposed for cooperative multiuser systems. CM combines the reliability of the cooperative diversity with the high spectral efficiency and multiple access capabilities of CMMA. CM maintains low feedback and high spectral efficiency by restricting relaying to a single route with the best overall channel. Two possible variations of CM are proposed depending on whether CSI available only at the users or just at the BS and the selected relay. The first is referred to Precode, Amplify, and Forward (PAF) while the second one is called Decode, Remap, and Forward (DMF). A new route selection algorithm for DMF based on maximising dmin of random CC is also proposed using a novel fast low-complexity multi-stage sphere based algorithm to calculate the dmin at the relay of random CC that is used for both relay selection and detection

Peak to average power ratio reduction and error control in MIMO-OFDM HARQ System

Currently, multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMOOFDM) systems underlie crucial wireless communication systems such as commercial 4G and 5G networks, tactical communication, and interoperable Public Safety communications. However, one drawback arising from OFDM modulation is its resulting high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). This problem increases with an increase in the number of transmit antennas. In this work, a new hybrid PAPR reduction technique is proposed for space-time block coding (STBC) MIMO-OFDM systems that combine the coding capabilities to PAPR reduction methods, while leveraging the new degree of freedom provided by the presence of multiple transmit chairs (MIMO). In the first part, we presented an extensive literature review of PAPR reduction techniques for OFDM and MIMO-OFDM systems. The work developed a PAPR reduction technique taxonomy, and analyzed the motivations for reducing the PAPR in current communication systems, emphasizing two important motivations such as power savings and coverage gain. In the tax onomy presented here, we include a new category, namely, hybrid techniques. Additionally, we drew a conclusion regarding the importance of hybrid PAPR reduction techniques. In the second part, we studied the effect of forward error correction (FEC) codes on the PAPR for the coded OFDM (COFDM) system. We simulated and compared the CCDF of the PAPR and its relationship with the autocorrelation of the COFDM signal before the inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) block. This allows to conclude on the main characteristics of the codes that generate high peaks in the COFDM signal, and therefore, the optimal parameters in order to reduce PAPR. We emphasize our study in FEC codes as linear block codes, and convolutional codes. Finally, we proposed a new hybrid PAPR reduction technique for an STBC MIMO-OFDM system, in which the convolutional code is optimized to avoid PAPR degradation, which also combines successive suboptimal cross-antenna rotation and inversion (SS-CARI) and iterative modified companding and filtering schemes. The new method permits to obtain a significant net gain for the system, i.e., considerable PAPR reduction, bit error rate (BER) gain as compared to the basic MIMO-OFDM system, low complexity, and reduced spectral splatter. The new hybrid technique was extensively evaluated by simulation, and the complementary cumulative distribution function (CCDF), the BER, and the power spectral density (PSD) were compared to the original STBC MIMO-OFDM signal

Evaluating the effectiveness of Cooperative/Coordinated Multipoint (CoMP) LTE feature in uplink and downlink transmissions

Shannon demonstrated that the channel capacity depends of the ratio of the received signal power to interference plus noise power (SINR). Inter-cell interference caused by neighbouring base stations (BSs) has been identified as one of the most severe problem towards the deployment of LTE technology as it can significantly deteriorate the performance of cellside User Equipment (UE). However, because of regulatory and radiation restrictions as well as operational costs, signal power may only be increased only up to a certain limit to reduce the interference. The other common radio propagation impairment is multipath. Multipath refers to a scenario where multiple copies of a signal propagate to a receiver using different paths. The paths can be created due to signal reflection, scattering and diffraction. As will be discussed later the effects of multipath contribute little to intercell interference because multipath characteristics such as delay spread are compensated for using cyclic prefixes. In this work, we will limit our scope to interference as it has been identified as the main cause of performance degradation for cell edge users due to the full frequency reuse technique used in LTE. To mitigate interference 3GPP devised options of increasing the capacity in LTEAdvanced Release 12 which include the use of spectral aggregation, employing Multiple Input and Multiple Output (MIMO) Antenna techniques, deploying more base stations and micro and femto cells, increasing the degree of sectorisation and Coordinated Multipoint (CoMP). We are primarily interested in evaluating performance improvements introduced when uplink (UL) and downlink (DL) coordinated/cooperative multipoint (CoMP) is enabled in LTE Advanced Release 12 as a way of reducing interference among sites. The CoMP option of reducing interference does not require deployment of new equipment compared to the other options mentioned above hence network deployment costs are minimal. CoMP in theory is known to reduce interference especially for cell edge users and therefore improves network fairness. With CoMP, multiple points coordinate with each other such that transmission of signals to and from other points do not incur serious interference or the interference can even be exploited as a meaningful signal. In September 2011 work on specifications for CoMP support was started in 3GPP LTEAdvanced as one of the core features in LTE-Advanced Release 11 to improve cell edge user throughput as well as the average network throughput. We set to do field measurements in the evaluation of the effectiveness of CoMP in LTE. 3GPP LTE Release 12 was used and cell edge users' performance was the focus. The network operates in 2330 - 2350 MHz band (Channel 40). From the field measurements, it was demonstrated that the CoMP (Scenario 2) feature indeed effective in improving service quality/user experience/fairness for cell edge users. CoMP inherently improves network capacity. A seven (7) percent throughput was noticed

Unified Framework for Multicarrier and Multiple Access based on Generalized Frequency Division Multiplexing

The advancements in wireless communications are the key-enablers of new applications with stringent requirements in low-latency, ultra-reliability, high data rate, high mobility, and massive connectivity. Diverse types of devices, ranging from tiny sensors to vehicles, with different capabilities need to be connected under various channel conditions. Thus, modern connectivity and network techniques at all layers are essential to overcome these challenges. In particular, the physical layer (PHY) transmission is required to achieve certain link reliability, data rate, and latency. In modern digital communications systems, the transmission is performed by means of a digital signal processing module that derives analog hardware. The performance of the analog part is influenced by the quality of the hardware and the baseband signal denoted as waveform. In most of the modern systems such as fifth generation (5G) and WiFi, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is adopted as a favorite waveform due to its low-complexity advantages in terms of signal processing. However, OFDM requires strict requirements on hardware quality. Many devices are equipped with simplified analog hardware to reduce the cost. In this case, OFDM does not work properly as a result of its high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) and sensitivity to synchronization errors. To tackle these problems, many waveforms design have been recently proposed in the literature. Some of these designs are modified versions of OFDM or based on conventional single subcarrier. Moreover, multicarrier frameworks, such as generalized frequency division multiplexing (GFDM), have been proposed to realize varieties of conventional waveforms. Furthermore, recent studies show the potential of using non-conventional waveforms for increasing the link reliability with affordable complexity. Based on that, flexible waveforms and transmission techniques are necessary to adapt the system for different hardware and channel constraints in order to fulfill the applications requirements while optimizing the resources. The objective of this thesis is to provide a holistic view of waveforms and the related multiple access (MA) techniques to enable efficient study and evaluation of different approaches. First, the wireless communications system is reviewed with specific focus on the impact of hardware impairments and the wireless channel on the waveform design. Then, generalized model of waveforms and MA are presented highlighting various special cases. Finally, this work introduces low-complexity architectures for hardware implementation of flexible waveforms. Integrating such designs with software-defined radio (SDR) contributes to the development of practical real-time flexible PHY.:1 Introduction 1.1 Baseband transmission model 1.2 History of multicarrier systems 1.3 The state-of-the-art waveforms 1.4 Prior works related to GFDM 1.5 Objective and contributions 2 Fundamentals of Wireless Communications 2.1 Wireless communications system 2.2 RF transceiver 2.2.1 Digital-analogue conversion 2.2.2 QAM modulation 2.2.3 Effective channel 2.2.4 Hardware impairments 2.3 Waveform aspects 2.3.1 Single-carrier waveform 2.3.2 Multicarrier waveform 2.3.3 MIMO-Waveforms 2.3.4 Waveform performance metrics 2.4 Wireless Channel 2.4.1 Line-of-sight propagation 2.4.2 Multi path and fading process 2.4.3 General baseband statistical channel model 2.4.4 MIMO channel 2.5 Summary 3 Generic Block-based Waveforms 3.1 Block-based waveform formulation 3.1.1 Variable-rate multicarrier 3.1.2 General block-based multicarrier model 3.2 Waveform processing techniques 3.2.1 Linear and circular filtering 3.2.2 Windowing 3.3 Structured representation 3.3.1 Modulator 3.3.2 Demodulator 3.3.3 MIMO Waveform processing 3.4 Detection 3.4.1 Maximum-likelihood detection 3.4.2 Linear detection 3.4.3 Iterative Detection 3.4.4 Numerical example and insights 3.5 Summary 4 Generic Multiple Access Schemes 57 4.1 Basic multiple access and multiplexing schemes 4.1.1 Infrastructure network system model 4.1.2 Duplex schemes 4.1.3 Common multiplexing and multiple access schemes 4.2 General multicarrier-based multiple access 4.2.1 Design with fixed set of pulses 4.2.2 Computational model 4.2.3 Asynchronous multiple access 4.3 Summary 5 Time-Frequency Analyses of Multicarrier 5.1 General time-frequency representation 5.1.1 Block representation 5.1.2 Relation to Zak transform 5.2 Time-frequency spreading 5.3 Time-frequency block in LTV channel 5.3.1 Subcarrier and subsymbol numerology 5.3.2 Processing based on the time-domain signal 5.3.3 Processing based on the frequency-domain signal 5.3.4 Unified signal model 5.4 summary 6 Generalized waveforms based on time-frequency shifts 6.1 General time-frequency shift 6.1.1 Time-frequency shift design 6.1.2 Relation between the shifted pulses 6.2 Time-frequency shift in Gabor frame 6.2.1 Conventional GFDM 6.3 GFDM modulation 6.3.1 Filter bank representation 6.3.2 Block representation 6.3.3 GFDM matrix structure 6.3.4 GFDM demodulator 6.3.5 Alternative interpretation of GFDM 6.3.6 Orthogonal modulation and GFDM spreading 6.4 Summary 7 Modulation Framework: Architectures and Applications 7.1 Modem architectures 7.1.1 General modulation matrix structure 7.1.2 Run-time flexibility 7.1.3 Generic GFDM-based architecture 7.1.4 Flexible parallel multiplications architecture 7.1.5 MIMO waveform architecture 7.2 Extended GFDM framework 7.2.1 Architectures complexity and flexibility analysis 7.2.2 Number of multiplications 7.2.3 Hardware analysis 7.3 Applications of the extended GFDM framework 7.3.1 Generalized FDMA 7.3.2 Enchantment of OFDM system 7.4 Summary 7 Conclusions and Future work

WIMAX 802.16 PHYSICAL LAYER IMPLEMENTATION AND WIMAX COVERAGE AND PLANNING.

Over the last decade, the impact of wireless communication on the way we live and carry out business has been surpassed only by impact of the internet. But wireless communications is still in its infancy and the next stage of its development will be supplementing or replacing network infrastructure that was traditionally wired. The advent and adoption of the computer and the myriad software packages available for it offered the ability to generate a new wave of communication combining art, pictures, music and words into a targeted multimedia presentation. These presentations are large so that is requires higher bandwidth transmission facilities. Coupling this with the need for mobility, the solution would be wireless data delivery putting in consideration the bandwidth request. WiMAX technology is based on the IEEE 802.16 standard, it was only recently when the first IEEE 802.16 based equipment broadband began to enter the market. The additional spectrum, bandwidth and throughout capabilities of 802.16 will remarkably improve wireless data delivery and should allows even more wireless data service areas to be deployed economically. In this Final Year Project, a study about the IEEE 802.16 standard and mainly concentrate on the 802.16 PHY Layer behaviors was performed. A Simulink based model for the 802.16 PHY Layer was built for simulation and performance evaluation of WiMAX. MATLA