An Analysis of Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) of Ultra Wideband(UWB) and IEEE 802.11A Wireless Local Area Network (WLAN) Employing Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM)

Military communications require the rapid deployment of mobile, high-bandwidth systems. These systems must provide anytime, anywhere capabilities with minimal interference to existing military, private, and commercial communications. Ultra Wideband (UWB) technology is being advanced as the next generation radio technology and has the potential to revolutionize indoor wireless communications. The ability of UWB to mitigate multipath fading, provide high-throughput data rates (e.g., greater than 100 Mbps), provide excellent signal penetration (e.g., through walls), and low implementation costs makes it an ideal technology for a wide range of private and public sector applications. Preliminary UWB studies conducted by The Institute for Telecommunications Science (ITS) and the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) have discovered that potential exists for harmful interference to occur. While these studies have provided initial performance estimates, the interference effects of UWB transmissions on coexisting spectral users are largely unknown. This research characterizes the electromagnetic interference (EMI) effects of UWB on the throughput performance of an IEEE 802.11a ad-hoc network. Radiated measurements in an anechoic chamber investigate interference performance using three modulation schemes (BPSK, BPPM, and OOK) and four pulse repetition frequencies over two Unlicensed National Information Infrastructure (U-NII) channels. Results indicate that OOK and BPPM can degrade throughput performance by up to 20% at lower pulse repetition frequencies (PRFs) in lower U-NII channels. Minimal performance degradation (less than one percent) due to interference was observed for BPSK at the lower PRFs and higher U-NII channels

SWIFT: A Narrowband-Friendly Cognitive Wideband Network

Wideband technologies in the unlicensed spectrum can satisfy the ever-increasing demands for wireless bandwidth created by emerging rich media applications. The key challenge for such systems, however, is to allow narrowband technologies that share these bands (say, 802.11 a/b/g/n, Zigbee) to achieve their normal performance, without compromising the throughput or range of the wideband network.This paper presents SWIFT, the first system where high-throughput wideband nodes are shown in a working deployment to coexist with unknown narrowband devices, while forming a network of their own. Prior work avoids narrowband devices by operating below the noise level and limiting itself to a single contiguous unused band. While this achieves coexistence, it sacrifices the throughput and operating distance of the wideband device. In contrast, SWIFT creates high throughput wireless links by weaving together non-contiguous unused frequency bands that change as narrowband devices enter or leave the environment. This design principle of cognitive aggregation allows SWIFT to achieve coexistence, while operating at normal power, and thereby obtaining higher throughput and greater operating range. We implement SWIFT on a wideband hardware platform, and evaluate it in the presence of 802.11 devices. In comparison to a baseline that coexists with narrowband devices by operating below their noise level, SWIFT is equally narrowband-friendly but achieves 3.6x-10.5x higher throughput and 6x greater range

Comparison of Bit Error Rate and Power Spectral Density on the Ultra Wideband Impulse Radio Systems

Ultra-Wideband (UWB) is defined as a wireless transmission scheme that occupies a bandwidth of more than 25% of its center frequency. UWB Impulse Radio (UWB-IR) is a popular implementation of the UWB technology. In UWB-IR, information is encoded in baseband without any carrier modulation. Pulse shaping and baseband modulation scheme are two of the determinants on the performance of the UWB-IR. In this thesis, both temporal and spectral characteristics of the UWB-IR are examined because all radio signals exist in both the time and frequency domains. Firstly, the bit error rate (BER) performance of the UWB-IR is investigated via simulation using three modulation schemes: Pulse position modulation (PPM), on-off shift keying (OOK), and binary phase shift keying (BPSK). The results are verified for three different pulse shaping named Gaussian first derivative, Gaussian second derivative, and return-to-zero (RZ) Manchester. Secondly, the effects of the UWB-IR parameters on the power spectral density (PSD) are investigated because PSD provides information on how the power is distributed over the radio frequency (RF) spectrum and determines the interference of UWB-IR and the existing systems to each other in the spectrum. The investigated UWB-IR parameters include pulse duration, pulse repetition rate, modulation scheme, and pseudorandom codes

Enhancing spectrum utilization through cooperation and cognition in wireless systems

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, February 2013.This electronic version was submitted by the student author. The certified thesis is available in the Institute Archives and Special Collections."February 2013." Cataloged from student-submitted PDF version of thesis.Includes bibliographical references (p. 201-217).We have seen a proliferation of wireless technologies and devices in recent years. The resulting explosion of wireless demand has put immense pressure on available spectrum. Improving spectrum utilization is therefore necessary to enable wireless networks to keep up with burgeoning demand. This dissertation presents a cognitive and cooperative wireless architecture that significantly enhances spectrum utilization. Specifically, it introduces four new systems that embody a cross-layer design for cognition and cooperation. The first system, SWIFT, is a cognitive cross technology solution that enables wideband devices to exploit higher layer network semantics to adaptively sense which portions of the spectrum are occupied by unknown narrowband devices, and weave the remaining unoccupied spectrum bands into a single high-throughput wideband link. Second, FARA is a cooperative system that enables multi-channel wireless solutions like 802.11 to dynamically use all available channels for all devices in a performance-aware manner by using information from the physical layer and allocating to each link the frequency bands that show the highest performance for that link. SourceSync, the third system, enables wireless nodes in last-hop and wireless mesh networks to cooperatively transmit synchronously in order to exploit channel diversity and increase reliability. Finally, MegaMIMO enables wireless throughput to scale linearly with the number of transmitters by enabling multiple wireless transmitters to transmit simultaneously in the same frequency bands to multiple wireless receivers without interfering with each other. The systems in this dissertation demonstrate the practicality of cognitive and cooperative wireless systems to enable spectrum sharing. Further, as part of these systems, we design several novel primitives - adaptive spectrum sensing, time alignment, frequency synchronization, and distributed phase-coherent transmission, that can serve as fundamental building blocks for wireless cognition and cooperation. Finally, we have implemented all four systems described in this dissertation, and evaluated them in wireless testbeds, demonstrating large gains in practice.by Hariharan Shankar Rahul.Ph.D

Ultra-wideband systems exploiting orthonormal waveforms

textElectrical and Computer Engineerin

Analysis Of Time Synchronization Errors In High Data Rate Ultrawideban

Emerging Ultra Wideband (UWB) Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) systems hold the promise of delivering wireless data at high speeds, exceeding hundreds of megabits per second over typical distances of 10 meters or less. The purpose of this Thesis is to estimate the timing accuracies required with such systems in order to achieve Bit Error Rates (BER) of the order of magnitude of 10-12 and thereby avoid overloading the correction of irreducible errors due to misaligned timing errors to a small absolute number of bits in error in real-time relative to a data rate of hundreds of megabits per second. Our research approach involves managing bit error rates through identifying maximum timing synchronization errors. Thus, it became our research goal to determine the timing accuracies required to avoid operation of communication systems within the asymptotic region of BER flaring at low BERs in the resultant BER curves. We propose pushing physical layer bit error rates to below 10-12 before using forward error correction (FEC) codes. This way, the maximum reserve is maintained for the FEC hardware to correct for burst as well as recurring bit errors due to corrupt bits caused by other than timing synchronization errors

Transceiver design and system optimization for ultra-wideband communications

This dissertation investigates the potential promises and proposes possible solutions to the challenges of designing transceivers and optimizing system parameters in ultra-wideband (UWB) systems. The goal is to provide guidelines for UWB transceiver implementations under constraints by regulation, existing interference, and channel estimation. New UWB pulse shapes are invented that satisfy the Federal Communications Commission spectral mask. Parameters are designed to possibly implement the proposed pulses. A link budget is quantified based on an accurate frequency-dependent path loss calculation to account for variations across the ultra-wide bandwidth of the signal. Achievable information rates are quantified as a function of transmission distance over additive white Gaussian noise and multipath channels under specific UWB constraints: limited power spectral density, specific modulation formats, and a highly dispersive channel. The effect of self-interference (SI) and inter-symbol interference (ISI) on channel capacity is determined, and modulation formats that mitigate against this effect is identified. Spreading gains of familiar UWB signaling formats are evaluated, and UWB signals are proved to be spread spectrum. Conditions are formulated for trading coding gain with spreading gain with only a small impact on performance. Numerical results are examined to demonstrate that over a frequency-selective channel, the spreading gain may be beneficial in reducing the SI and ISI resulting in higher information rates. A reduced-rank adaptive filtering technique is applied to the problem of interference suppression and optimum combining in UWB communications. The reduced-rank combining method, in particular the eigencanceler, is proposed and compared with a minimum mean square error Rake receiver. Simulation results are evaluated to show that the performance of the proposed method is superior to the minimum mean square error when the correlation matrix is estimated from limited data. Impact of channel estimation on UWB system performance is investigated when path delays and path amplitudes are jointly estimated. Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) expressions for the variance of path delay and amplitude estimates are formulated using maximum likelihood estimation. Using the errors obtained from the CRB, the effective signal-to-noise ratio for UWB Rake receivers employing maximum ratio combining (MRC) is devised in the presence of channel path delay and amplitude errors. An exact expression of the bit error rate (BER) for UWB Rake receivers with MRC is derived with imperfect estimates of channel path delays and amplitudes. Further, this analysis is applied to design optimal transceiver parameters. The BER is used as part of a binary symmetric channel and the achievable information rates are evaluated. The optimum power allocation and number of symbols allocated to the pilot are developed with respect to maximizing the information rate. The optimal signal bandwidth to be used for UWB communications is determined in the presence of imperfect channel state information. The number of multipath components to be collected by Rake receivers is designed to optimize performance with non-ideal channel estimation

A General Framework for Analyzing, Characterizing, and Implementing Spectrally Modulated, Spectrally Encoded Signals

Fourth generation (4G) communications will support many capabilities while providing universal, high speed access. One potential enabler for these capabilities is software defined radio (SDR). When controlled by cognitive radio (CR) principles, the required waveform diversity is achieved via a synergistic union called CR-based SDR. Research is rapidly progressing in SDR hardware and software venues, but current CR-based SDR research lacks the theoretical foundation and analytic framework to permit efficient implementation. This limitation is addressed here by introducing a general framework for analyzing, characterizing, and implementing spectrally modulated, spectrally encoded (SMSE) signals within CR-based SDR architectures. Given orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a 4G candidate signal, OFDM-based signals are collectively classified as SMSE since modulation and encoding are spectrally applied. The proposed framework provides analytic commonality and unification of SMSE signals. Applicability is first shown for candidate 4G signals, and resultant analytic expressions agree with published results. Implementability is then demonstrated in multiple coexistence scenarios via modeling and simulation to reinforce practical utility

Emerging Communication Technologies (ECT) Phase 2 Report

The Emerging Communication Technology (ECT) project investigated three First Mile communication technologies in support of NASA s Second Generation Reusable Launch Vehicle (2nd Gen RLV), Orbital Space Plane, Advanced Range Technology Working Group (ARTWG) and the Advanced Spaceport Technology Working Group (ASTWG). These First Mile technologies have the purpose of interconnecting mobile users with existing Range Communication infrastructures. ECT was a continuation of the Range Information System Management (RISM) task started in 2002. RISM identified the three advance communication technologies investigated under ECT. These were Wireless Ethernet (Wi-Fi), Free Space Optics (FSO), and Ultra Wideband (UWB). Due to the report s size, it has been broken into three volumes: 1) Main Report 2) Appendices 3) UWB