Cooperative relaying in cellular networks for improving receiver diversity and cell radius

Title from PDF of title page, viewed on June 28, 2013Thesis advisor: Cory BeardVitaIncludes bibliographic references (pages 54-56)Thesis (M.S.)--School of Computing and Engineering. University of Missouri--Kansas City, 2013Wireless network sharing has been the principal idea in the recent developments of wireless communication systems not only for improvement in capacity, data rates and coverage area but when considering an emergency service model, establishing reliable communication is the foremost requirement. With the inception of cooperative relaying technology, a novel wireless relaying method of sharing the terminal node capabilities to forward the signal created a new paradigm to greatly improve the quality of the services and soon became the significant research area in 3G/4G cellular networks. The cooperative terminals (relays) exploit a larger form of space diversity to relay signals to destinations when placed in between source and destination to combat the effects of fading induced by multipath signal propagation. However, the position of the relay in between the source and destination plays a significant role in affecting the overall network performance. Our attempt in this thesis is to show how a cooperative relay can be used to provide improved coverage at the cell edge with certain reliability and also extend the cell radius by effectively positioning the relay. First, we investigate the famous 3-node relay assisted cellular system model and study the receiver diversity combining results by changing the relay positions with a relay forwarding the signal using the amplitude and forward protocol (AAF). The figure of merit of the considered 3-node system model is expressed in terms of Bit error rate (BER) and signal to noise ratio (SNR). The BER vs. SNR plots are computed for various linear receiver diversity combining techniques and are used to evaluate performance of the system. These results are also compared to the conventional cellular network performance with a single point-to-point link between source and destination. Second, we provide the problem formulation of the diversity results observed and solve to find the effective relay position with respect to the source and also compute the effective cell radius of the 3-node system model. To compute effective relay position, we use the Bernardin's coverage area probability relation with cell radius at the cell edge of the source where the relay is assumed to be placed with its probability of successfully forwarding the signal conditionally depending on its cell edge probability. We have obtained results of the two above problem formulations using MATLAB simulations. We have emulated the cooperative relaying technique in a cellular system to achieve 2nd order diversity when compared to the conventional cellular system. The BER vs. SNR plots for each of the combining techniques show the significant difference in the diversity results when the channel quality estimations are used compared to the other methods which don't. Signal to noise ratio combining (SNRC) and Estimated SNRC (ESNRC) perform 4≅5dB better than the other combining methods provided their SNR estimation is accurate. The highest diversity order (2nd) is achieved when the relay is placed close to the source and drops as the relay is moved towards the destination. Cell range extension results show that moving the relay to its optimal position between source and destination in a cell provides capabilities to extend the cell range to nearly 1.5 times the cell radius of the source and still performs within the acceptable coverage area probabilities.Introduction -- Literature survey -- Legacy cellular system model and problem description -- Relay system model for improved signal quality -- Relay system model for coverage extension -- Conclusion and future wor

Cooperative Transmission Protocols with High Spectral Efficiency and High Diversity Order Using Multiuser Detection and Network Coding

Cooperative transmission is an emerging communication technique that takes advantages of the broadcast nature of wireless channels. However, due to low spectral efficiency and the requirement of orthogonal channels, its potential for use in future wireless networks is limited. In this paper, by making use of multiuser detection (MUD) and network coding, cooperative transmission protocols with high spectral efficiency, diversity order, and coding gain are developed. Compared with the traditional cooperative transmission protocols with single-user detection, in which the diversity gain is only for one source user, the proposed MUD cooperative transmission protocols have the merits that the improvement of one user's link can also benefit the other users. In addition, using MUD at the relay provides an environment in which network coding can be employed. The coding gain and high diversity order can be obtained by fully utilizing the link between the relay and the destination. From the analysis and simulation results, it is seen that the proposed protocols achieve higher diversity gain, better asymptotic efficiency, and lower bit error rate, compared to traditional MUD and to existing cooperative transmission protocols.Comment: to appear, in the proceedings of IEEE International Conference on Communications, Glasgow, Scotland, 24-28 June 200

Quantifying Potential Energy Efficiency Gain in Green Cellular Wireless Networks

Conventional cellular wireless networks were designed with the purpose of providing high throughput for the user and high capacity for the service provider, without any provisions of energy efficiency. As a result, these networks have an enormous Carbon footprint. In this paper, we describe the sources of the inefficiencies in such networks. First we present results of the studies on how much Carbon footprint such networks generate. We also discuss how much more mobile traffic is expected to increase so that this Carbon footprint will even increase tremendously more. We then discuss specific sources of inefficiency and potential sources of improvement at the physical layer as well as at higher layers of the communication protocol hierarchy. In particular, considering that most of the energy inefficiency in cellular wireless networks is at the base stations, we discuss multi-tier networks and point to the potential of exploiting mobility patterns in order to use base station energy judiciously. We then investigate potential methods to reduce this inefficiency and quantify their individual contributions. By a consideration of the combination of all potential gains, we conclude that an improvement in energy consumption in cellular wireless networks by two orders of magnitude, or even more, is possible.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1210.843

Green Cellular Networks: A Survey, Some Research Issues and Challenges

Energy efficiency in cellular networks is a growing concern for cellular operators to not only maintain profitability, but also to reduce the overall environment effects. This emerging trend of achieving energy efficiency in cellular networks is motivating the standardization authorities and network operators to continuously explore future technologies in order to bring improvements in the entire network infrastructure. In this article, we present a brief survey of methods to improve the power efficiency of cellular networks, explore some research issues and challenges and suggest some techniques to enable an energy efficient or "green" cellular network. Since base stations consume a maximum portion of the total energy used in a cellular system, we will first provide a comprehensive survey on techniques to obtain energy savings in base stations. Next, we discuss how heterogeneous network deployment based on micro, pico and femto-cells can be used to achieve this goal. Since cognitive radio and cooperative relaying are undisputed future technologies in this regard, we propose a research vision to make these technologies more energy efficient. Lastly, we explore some broader perspectives in realizing a "green" cellular network technologyComment: 16 pages, 5 figures, 2 table

Dispensing with channel estimation: differentially modulated cooperative wireless communications

As a benefit of bypassing the potentially excessive complexity and yet inaccurate channel estimation, differentially encoded modulation in conjunction with low-complexity noncoherent detection constitutes a viable candidate for user-cooperative systems, where estimating all the links by the relays is unrealistic. In order to stimulate further research on differentially modulated cooperative systems, a number of fundamental challenges encountered in their practical implementations are addressed, including the time-variant-channel-induced performance erosion, flexible cooperative protocol designs, resource allocation as well as its high-spectral-efficiency transceiver design. Our investigations demonstrate the quantitative benefits of cooperative wireless networks both from a pure capacity perspective as well as from a practical system design perspective

Performance Analysis of Micro Unmanned Airborne Communication Relays for Cellular Networks

This paper analyses the potential of utilising small unmanned-aerial-vehicles (SUAV) as wireless relays for assisting cellular network performance. Whilst high altitude wireless relays have been investigated over the past 2 decades, the new class of low cost SUAVs offers new possibilities for addressing local traffic imbalances and providing emergency coverage.We present field-test results from an SUAV test-bed in both urban and rural environments. The results show that trough-to-peak throughput improvements can be achieved for users in poor coverage zones. Furthermore, the paper reinforces the experimental study with large-scale network analysis using both stochastic geometry and multi-cell simulation results.Comment: conferenc