Performance evaluation of non-prefiltering vs. time reversal prefiltering in distributed and uncoordinated IR-UWB ad-hoc networks

Time Reversal (TR) is a prefiltering scheme mostly analyzed in the context of centralized and synchronous IR-UWB networks, in order to leverage the trade-off between communication performance and device complexity, in particular in presence of multiuser interference. Several strong assumptions have been typically adopted in the analysis of TR, such as the absence of Inter-Symbol / Inter-Frame Interference (ISI/IFI) and multipath dispersion due to complex signal propagation. This work has the main goal of comparing the performance of TR-based systems with traditional non-prefiltered schemes, in the novel context of a distributed and uncoordinated IR-UWB network, under more realistic assumptions including the presence of ISI/IFI and multipath dispersion. Results show that, lack of power control and imperfect channel knowledge affect the performance of both non-prefiltered and TR systems; in these conditions, TR prefiltering still guarantees a performance improvement in sparse/low-loaded and overloaded network scenarios, while the opposite is true for less extreme scenarios, calling for the developement of an adaptive scheme that enables/disables TR prefiltering depending on network conditions

Detection Strategies and Intercept Metrics for Intra-Pulse Radar-Embedded Communications

This thesis presents various detection strategies and intercept metrics to evaluate and design an intra-pulse radar-embedded communication system. This system embeds covert communication symbols in masking interference provided by the reflections of a pulsed radar emission. This thesis considers the case where the communicating device is a transponder or tag present in an area that is illuminated by a radar. The radar is considered to be the communication receiver. As with any communication system, performance (as measured by reliability and data rate) should be maximized between the tag and radar. However, unlike conventional communication systems, the symbols here should also have a low-probability of intercept (LPI). This thesis examines the trade-offs associated with the design of a practical radar-embedded communication system. A diagonally-loaded decorrelating receiver is developed and enhanced with a second stage based on the Neyman-Pearson criterion. For a practical system, the communication symbols will likely encounter multipath. The tag may then use a pre-distortion strategy known as time-reversal to improve the signal-to-noise ratio at the radar receiver thereby enhancing communication performance. The development of several intercept metrics are shown and the logic behind the design evolutions are explained. A formal analysis of the processing gain by the desired receiver relative to the intercept receivers is given. Finally, simulations are shown for all cases, to validate the design metrics

Spatiotemporal processing and time-reversal for underwater acoustic communications

Thesis (Nav. E.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Ocean Engineering; and, (S.M.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, 2005.Includes bibliographical references (p. 67).High-rate underwater acoustic communication can be achieved using transmitter/receiver arrays. Underwater acoustic channels can be characterized as rapidly time-varying systems that suffer severe Inter Symbol Interferences (ISI) caused by multi-path propagation. Multi-channel combining and equalization, as well as time-reversal techniques, have been used over these channels to reduce the effect of ISI. As an alternative, a spatiotemporal focusing technique had been proposed. This technique is similar to time-reversal but it explicitly takes into account elimination of ISI. To do so, the system relies on the knowledge of channel responses. In practice, however, only channel estimates are available. To assess the system performance for imperfectly estimated time-varying channels, a simulation analysis was conducted. Underwater acoustic channels were modeled using geometrical representations of a 3-path propagation model. Multi-path fading was incorporated using auto regressive models. Simulations were conducted with various estimator delay scenarios for both the spatiotemporal focusing and simple time-reversal. Results demonstrate performance dependence on the non-dimensional product of estimation delay and Doppler spread.(cont.) In particular, it has been shown that when this product is low, the performance of spatiotemporal focusing remains superior to simple time- reversal.by Daniel Y. Wang.S.M.Nav.E

Alamouti OFDM/OQAM systems with time reversal technique

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing with Offset Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (OFDM/OQAM) is a multicarrier modulation scheme that can be considered as an alternative to the conventional Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) with Cyclic Prefix (CP) for transmission over multipath fading channels. In this paper, we investigate the combination of the OFDM/OQAM with Alamouti system with Time Reversal (TR) technique. TR can be viewed as a precoding scheme which can be combined with OFDM/OQAM and easily carried out in a Multiple Input Single Output (MISO) context such as Alamouti system. We present the simulation results of the performance of OFDM/OQAM system in SISO case compared with the conventional CP-OFDM system and the performance of the combination Alamouti OFDM/OQAM with TR compared to Alamouti CP-OFDM. The performance is derived by computing the Bit Error Rate (BER) as a function of the transmit signal-to-noise ratio (SNR)

The 'Other' laughs back: Humour and resistance in anti-racist comedy

This is the author's accepted manuscript. The final published article is available from the link below. Copyright @ 2010 The Author.This article outlines the ‘reverse discourses’ of black, African-American and Afro-Caribbean comedians in the UK and USA. These reverse discourses appear in comic acts that employ the sign-systems of embodied and cultural racism but develop, or seek to develop, a reverse semantic effect. I argue the humour of reverse discourse is significant in relation to racism because it forms a type of resistance that can, first, act rhetorically against racist meaning and so attack racist truth claims and points of ambivalence. Second, and connected to this, it can rhetorically resolve the ambiguity of the reverse discourse itself. Alongside this, and paradoxically, reverse discourses also contain a polysemic element that can, at times, reproduce racism. The article seeks to develop a means of analysing the relationship between racist and non-racist meaning in such comedic performance.ESR