Channel equalization to achieve high bit rates in discrete multitone systems

textMulticarrier modulation (MCM) techniques such as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and discrete multi-tone (DMT) modulation are attractive for high-speed data communications due to the ease with which MCM can combat channel dispersion. With all the benefits MCM could give, DMT modulation has an extra ability to perform dynamic bit loading, which has the potential to exploit fully the available bandwidth in a slowly time-varying channel. In broadband wireline communications, DMT modulation is standardized for asymmetric digital subscribe line (ADSL) and very-high-bit-rate digital subscriber line (VDSL) modems. ADSL and VDSL standards are used by telephone companies to provide high speed data service to residences and offices. In an ADSL receiver, an equalizer is required to compensate for the channel’s dispersion in the time domain and the channel’s distortion in the frequency domain of the transmitted waveform. This dissertation proposes design methods for linear equalizers to increase the bit rate of the connection. The methods are amenable to implementation on programmable fixed-point digital signal processors, which are employed in ADSL/VDSL transceivers. A conventional ADSL equalizer consists of a time-domain equalizer, a fast Fourier transform, and a frequency domain equalizer. The time domain equalizer (TEQ) is a finite impulse response filter that when coupled with a discretized channel produces an equivalent channel whose impulse response is shorter than that of the discretized channel. This channel shortening is required by the ADSL standards. In this dissertation, I first propose a linear phase TEQ design that exploits symmetry in existing eigen-filter approaches such as minimum mean square error(MMSE), maximum shortening signal to noise ratio (MSSNR) and minimum intersymbol interference (Min-ISI) equalizers. TEQs with symmetric coefficients can reach the same performance as non-symmetric ones with much lower training complexity. Second, I improve Min-ISI design. I reformulate the cost function to make long TEQs design feasible. I remove the dependency of transmission delay in order to reduce the complexity associated with delay optimization. The quantized weighting is introduced to further lower the complexity. I also propose an iterative optimization procedure of Min-ISI that completely avoids Cholesky decomposition hence is better suited for a fixed-point implementation. Finally I propose a dual-path TEQ structure, which designs a standard singleFIR TEQ to achieve good bit rate over the entire transmission bandwidth, and designs another FIR TEQ to improve the bit rate over a subset of subcarriers. Dualpath TEQ can be viewed as a special case of a complex valued filter bank structure that delivers the best bit rate of existing DMT equalizers. However, dual-path TEQ provides a very good tradeoff between achievable bit rate vs. implementation complexity on a programmable digital signal processor.Electrical and Computer Engineerin

Channel Estimation in Multicarrier Communication Systems

The data rate and spectrum efficiency of wireless mobile communications have been significantly improved over the last decade or so. Recently, the advanced systems such as 3GPP LTE and terrestrial digital TV broadcasting have been sophisticatedly developed using OFDM and CDMA technology. In general, most mobile communication systems transmit bits of information in the radio space to the receiver. The radio channels in mobile radio systems are usually multipath fading channels, which cause inter-symbol interference (ISI) in the received signal. To remove ISI from the signal, there is a need of strong equalizer which requires knowledge on the channel impulse response (CIR).This is primarily provided by a separate channel estimator. Usually the channel estimation is based on the known sequence of bits, which is unique for a certain transmitter and which is repeated in every transmission burst. Thus, the channel estimator is able to estimate CIR for each burst separately by exploiting the known transmitted bits and the corresponding received samples. In this thesis we investigate and compare various efficient channel estimation schemes for OFDM systems which can also be extended to MC DS-CDMA systems.The channel estimation can be performed by either inserting pilot tones into all subcarriers of OFDM symbols with a specific period or inserting pilot tones into each OFDM symbol. Two major types of pilot arrangement such as block type and comb type pilot have been focused employing Least Square Error (LSE) and Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) channel estimators. Block type pilot sub-carriers is especially suitable for slow-fading radio channels whereas comb type pilots provide better resistance to fast fading channels. Also comb type pilot arrangement is sensitive to frequency selectivity when comparing to block type arrangement. However, there is another supervised technique called Implicit Training (IT) based channel estimation which exploits the first order statistics in the received data, induced by superimposing periodic training sequences with good correlation properties, along with the information symbols. Hence, the need for additional time slots for training the equalizer is avoided. The performance of the estimators is presented in terms of the mean square estimation error (MSEE) and bit error rate (BER)

Inter Carrier Interference Cancellation in OFDM Systems

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is an emerging multi-carrier modulation scheme, which has been adopted for several wireless standards such as IEEE 802.11a and HiperLAN2. A well-known problem of OFDM is its sensitivity to frequency offset between the transmitted and received carrier frequencies. This frequency offset introduces inter-carrier interference (ICI) in the OFDM symbol. This project investigates two methods for combating the effects of ICI: ICI self-cancellation (SC), and extended Kalman filter (EKF) method. These two methods are compared in terms of bit error rate performance, bandwidth efficiency, and computational complexity. Through simulations, it is shown that the two techniques are effective in mitigating the effects of ICI. For high values of the frequency offset and for higher order modulation schemes, EKF method performs better than the SC method

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

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing modulation and inter-carrier interference cancellation

The Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) technique, wireless channel models, and a pair of new intercarrier interference self-cancellation methods are investigated in this thesis. The first chapter addresses the history of OFDM, along with its principles and applications. Chapter two consists of three parts: the principal, the modern OFDM models, and the Peak to Average Power Ratio (PAPR) problem. Chapter two also summarizes possible PAPR solutions. Chapter three discusses a series of well-known wireless channel models, as well as the general formula for wireless channels. In Chapter four, ICI problem has been discussed, along with its existing solutions. Chapter five focuses on two new ICI self-cancellation schemes, namely the clustering method and the multi-codebook method. These two new methods show promising results through the simulations. A summary of this thesis and the discussion of future research are also provided in Chapter five

Analytical Characterization and Optimum Detection of Nonlinear Multicarrier Schemes

It is widely recognized that multicarrier systems such as orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) are suitable for severely time-dispersive channels. However, it is also recognized that multicarrier signals have high envelope fluctuations which make them especially sensitive to nonlinear distortion effects. In fact, it is almost unavoidable to have nonlinear distortion effects in the transmission chain. For this reason, it is essential to have a theoretical, accurate characterization of nonlinearly distorted signals not only to evaluate the corresponding impact of these distortion effects on the system’s performance, but also to develop mechanisms to combat them. One of the goals of this thesis is to address these challenges and involves a theoretical characterization of nonlinearly distorted multicarrier signals in a simple, accurate way. The other goal of this thesis is to study the optimum detection of nonlinearly distorted, multicarrier signals. Conventionally, nonlinear distortion is seen as a noise term that degrades the system’s performance, leading even to irreducible error floors. Even receivers that try to estimate and cancel it have a poor performance, comparatively to the performance associated to a linear transmission, even with perfect cancellation of nonlinear distortion effects. It is shown that the nonlinear distortion should not be considered as a noise term, but instead as something that contains useful information for detection purposes. The adequate receiver to take advantage of this information is the optimum receiver, since it makes a block-by-block detection, allowing us to exploit the nonlinear distortion which is spread along the signal’s band. Although the optimum receiver for nonlinear multicarrier schemes is too complex, due to its necessity to compare the received signal with all possible transmitted sequences, it is important to study its potential performance gains. In this thesis, it is shown that the optimum receiver outperforms the conventional detection, presenting gains not only relatively to conventional receivers that deal with nonlinear multicarrier signals, but also relatively to conventional receivers that deal with linear, multicarrier signals. We also present sub-optimum receivers which are able to approach the performance gains associated to the optimum detection and that can even outperform the conventional linear, multicarrier schemes

Wavelet-based multi-carrier code division multiple access systems

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