Cooperative diversity for the cellular uplink: Sharing strategies, performance analysis, and receiver design

In this thesis, we propose data sharing schemes for the cooperative diversity in a cellular uplink to exploit diversity and enhance throughput performance of the system. Particularly, we consider new two and three-or-more user decode and forward (DF) protocols using space time block codes. We discuss two-user and three-user amplify and forward (AF) protocols and evaluate the performance of the above mentioned data sharing protocols in terms of the bit error rate and the throughput in an asynchronous code division multiple access (CDMA) cellular uplink. We develop a linear receiver for joint space-time decoding and multiuser detection that provides full diversity and near maximum-likelihood performance.;We also focus on a practical situation where inter-user channel is noisy and cooperating users can not successfully estimate other user\u27s data. We further design our system model such that, users decide not to forward anything in case of symbol errors. Channel estimation plays an important role here, since cooperating users make random estimation errors and the base station can not have the knowledge of the errors or the inter-user channels. We consider a training-based approach for channel estimation. We provide an information outage probability analysis for the proposed multi-user sharing schemes. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)

Ultra-Reliable Short-Packet Communications: Fundamental Limits and Enabling Technologies

The paradigm shift from 4G to 5G communications, anticipated to enable ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC), will enforce a radical change in the design of wireless communication systems. Unlike in 4G systems, where the main objective is to provide a large transmission rate, in URLLC, as implied by its name, the objective is to enable transmissions with low latency and, simultaneously, very high reliability. Since low latency implies the use of short data packets, the tension between blocklength and reliability is studied in URLLC.Several key enablers for URLLC communications have been designated in the literature. Of special importance are diversity-enabling technologies such as multiantenna systems and feedback protocols. Furthermore, it is not only important to introduce additional diversity by means of the above examples, one must also guarantee that thescarce number of channel uses are used in an optimal way. Therefore, it is imperative to develop design guidelines for how to enable reliable detection of incoming data, how to acquire channel-state information, and how to construct efficient short-packet channel codes. The development of such guidelines is at the heart of this thesis. This thesis focuses on the fundamental performance of URLLC-enabling technologies. Specifically, we provide converse (upper) bounds and achievability (lower) bounds on the maximum coding rate, based on finite-blocklength information theory, for systems that employ the key enablers outlined above. With focus on the wireless channel, modeled via a block-fading assumption, we are able to provide answers to questions like: howto optimally utilize spatial and frequency diversity, how far from optimal short-packet channel codes perform, how multiantenna systems should be designed to serve a given number of users, and how to design feedback schemes when the feedback link is noisy. In particular, this thesis is comprised out of four papers. In Paper A, we study the short-packet performance over the Rician block-fading channel. In particular, we present achievability bounds for pilot-assisted transmission with several different decoders that allow us to quantify the impact, on the achievable performance, of imposed pilots and mismatched decoding. Furthermore, we design short-packet channel codes that perform within 1 dB of our achievability bounds. Paper B studies multiuser massive multiple-input multiple-output systems with short packets. We provide an achievability bound on the average error probability over quasistatic spatially correlated Rayleigh-fading channels. The bound applies to arbitrary multiuser settings, pilot-assisted transmission, and mismatched decoding. This makes it suitable to assess the performance in the uplink/downlink for arbitrary linear signal processing. We show that several lessons learned from infinite-blocklength analyses carry over to the finite-blocklength regime. Furthermore, for the multicell setting with randomly placed users, pilot contamination should be avoided at all cost and minimum mean-squared error signal processing should be used to comply with the stringent requirements of URLLC.In Paper C, we consider sporadic transmissions where the task of the receiver is to both detect and decode an incoming packet. Two novel achievability bounds, and a novel converse bound are presented for joint detection-decoding strategies. It is shown that errors associated with detection deteriorates performance significantly for very short packet sizes. Numerical results also indicate that separate detection-decoding strategies are strictly suboptimal over block-fading channels.Finally, in Paper D, variable-length codes with noisy stop-feedback are studied via a novel achievability bound on the average service time and the average error probability. We use the bound to shed light on the resource allocation problem between the forward and the feedback channel. For URLLC applications, it is shown that enough resources must be assigned to the feedback link such that a NACK-to-ACK error becomes rarer than the target error probability. Furthermore, we illustrate that the variable-length stop-feedback scheme outperforms state-of-the-art fixed-length no-feedback bounds even when the stop-feedback bit is noisy

On OSTBC Codes for LTE-A Systems-Design and Performance Evaluation

Long Term Evolution-Advanced (LTE-A) is a Fourth Generation (4G) standard of wireless communications that introduces high data rate, high performance, and low delay. These features of LTE-A resulted from the new techniques developed for wireless communications such as Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) technique. At the heart of this technique is the Space Time Codes, which were developed by the researchers in recent decades to achieve the mentioned features. The designs of OSTBC codes for MIMO systems having any number of transmit antennas and any number of receive antennas have attracted the attention of many researchers. Based on the theory of real and complex orthogonal designs, this paper deals with the design of real and complex OSTBC codes to be used with real signal set constellation such PAM and complex signal constellation such as PSK and QAM. Real and complex OSTBC codes for MIMO systems with two, three, four, five, six, seven and eight transmit antennas and any number of receive antennas, are presented. Simple linear processing ML decoders are derived and presented. The used channel is Rayleigh fading channel MIMO and assumed to behave in a “quasi-static” fashion. Finally, the performances of OSTBC schemes were evaluated and compared in terms of the Bit Error Rate (BER) and Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR). The environment of simulation is MATLAB which is a powerful tool for mathematical calculation and system simulation. The methods of modulations chosen are QPSK, 16QAM, 64QAM, and 128QAM with gray scale mapping

Hybrid solutions to instantaneous MIMO blind separation and decoding: narrowband, QAM and square cases

Future wireless communication systems are desired to support high data rates and high quality transmission when considering the growing multimedia applications. Increasing the channel throughput leads to the multiple input and multiple output and blind equalization techniques in recent years. Thereby blind MIMO equalization has attracted a great interest.Both system performance and computational complexities play important roles in real time communications. Reducing the computational load and providing accurate performances are the main challenges in present systems. In this thesis, a hybrid method which can provide an affordable complexity with good performance for Blind Equalization in large constellation MIMO systems is proposed first. Saving computational cost happens both in the signal sep- aration part and in signal detection part. First, based on Quadrature amplitude modulation signal characteristics, an efficient and simple nonlinear function for the Independent Compo- nent Analysis is introduced. Second, using the idea of the sphere decoding, we choose the soft information of channels in a sphere, and overcome the so- called curse of dimensionality of the Expectation Maximization (EM) algorithm and enhance the final results simultaneously. Mathematically, we demonstrate in the digital communication cases, the EM algorithm shows Newton -like convergence.Despite the widespread use of forward -error coding (FEC), most multiple input multiple output (MIMO) blind channel estimation techniques ignore its presence, and instead make the sim- plifying assumption that the transmitted symbols are uncoded. However, FEC induces code structure in the transmitted sequence that can be exploited to improve blind MIMO channel estimates. In final part of this work, we exploit the iterative channel estimation and decoding performance for blind MIMO equalization. Experiments show the improvements achievable by exploiting the existence of coding structures and that it can access the performance of a BCJR equalizer with perfect channel information in a reasonable SNR range. All results are confirmed experimentally for the example of blind equalization in block fading MIMO systems

Channel estimation and signal enhancement for DS-CDMA systems

This dissertation focuses on topics of Bayesian-based multiuser detection, space-time (S-T) transceiver design, and S-T channel parameter estimation for direct-sequence code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) systems. Using the Bayesian framework, various linear and simplified nonlinear multiuser detectors are proposed, and their performances are analyzed. The simplified non-linear Bayesian solutions can bridge the performance gap between sub-optimal linear multiuser detectors and the optimum multiuser detector. To further improve the system capacity and performance, S-T transceiver design approaches with complexity constraint are investigated. Novel S-T receivers of low-complexity that jointly use the temporal code-signature and the spatial signature are proposed. Our solutions, which lead to generalized near-far resistant S-T RAKE receivers, achieve better interference suppression than the existing S-T RAKE receivers. From transmitter side, we also proposed a transmit diversity (TD) technique in combination with differential detection for the DS-CDMA systems. It is shown that the proposed S-T TD scheme in combination with minimum variance distortionless response transceiver (STTD+MVDR) is near-far resistant and outperforms the conventional STTD and matched filter based (STTD+MF) transceiver scheme. Obtaining channel state information (CSI) is instrumental to optimum S-T transceiver design in wireless systems. Another major focus of this dissertation is to estimate the S-T channel parameters. We proposed an asymptotic, joint maximum likelihood (ML) method of estimating multipath channel parameters for DS-CDMA systems. An iterative estimator is proposed to further simplify the computation. Analytical and simulation results show that the iterative estimation scheme is near-far resistant for both time delays and DOAs. And it reaches the corresponding CRBs after a few iterations

Self-concatenated code design and its application in power-efficient cooperative communications

In this tutorial, we have focused on the design of binary self-concatenated coding schemes with the help of EXtrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) charts and Union bound analysis. The design methodology of future iteratively decoded self-concatenated aided cooperative communication schemes is presented. In doing so, we will identify the most important milestones in the area of channel coding, concatenated coding schemes and cooperative communication systems till date and suggest future research directions