Design and analysis approaches to compact directional antennas for cognitive radio

Cognitive radio (CR) ist eine neuartige Technologie, die es erlaubt die spektralen Funkressourcen intelligent und effektiv zu nutzen. Jüngste Messkampagnen beweisen, dass die zugewiesenen Frequenzbänder der lizenzierenden Benutzer nicht effizient genutzt werden. Außerdem benötigen moderne Funktechnologien mehr Spektrum, um wachsenden DatenÃijbertragungsrate- und Quality-of- Service-Anforderungen gerecht zu werden. Cognitive radio erlaubt die Sekundärnutzung von nicht vollständig genutzten Frequenzbereichen, wobei die Primärnutzung durch Lizenzinhaber nicht gestört werden darf.Seit der ersten Erwähnung von Cognitive radio im Jahr 1999 lag der Fokus auf Frequenz- bzw. spektralen Ressourcen. Allerdings ist dies für die Anforderungen von zukunftsweisenden Funktechnologien nicht ausreichend. Eine Kombination aus der Betrachtung von Frequenz, Raum/Richtung und Zeit ermöglicht eine noch effizientere Nutzung des Funkspektrums. Dabei kommen Technologien wie beispielsweise die Schätzung der Empfangsrichtung und die Interferenzunterdrückung zum Einsatz. In dieser Arbeit werden Methoden des Entwurfs und der Analyse von direktiven Multibandantennen zur Bereitstellung richtungs- und frequenzabhängiger Funktionalitäten vorgestellt. Dies geschieht mit Hilfe orthogonal angeordneter Multibandantennen und mit kompakten Multibandantennenarrays.Die entworfenen Antennen wurden mit Hilfe von Simulationen, Messungen und durch die Emulation von channel-sounder-Messungen analysiert. Als Referenzantennensystem dient eine konzentrische Anordnung aus Monopolantennenarrays und Absorberplatten zwischen den Antennenelementen. Dieses Referenzantennensystem wurde für die Durchführung von Machbarkeitsstudien in Messkampagnen eingesetzt. Mit einem aus neun Elementen bestehenden Array können entsprechend neun Freiheitsgrade erzielt werden. Diese setzen sich aus drei wählbaren Frequenzbändern (GSM 900 MHz, GSM 1800 MHz, und IEEE 802.11b/g) und drei Richtungen pro Frequenzband zusammen. Das Referenzantennensystem ist in der Lage, Frequenzbänder und Signaleinfallsrichtungen mit einem Signal-zu-Interferenz-Verhältnis von 20 dB unter den reflexionsarmen Bedingungen in einer Absorberkammer aufzulösen. Für das Band des GSM 1800 wurde eine Feldmessung in der Umgebung von vier Basisstationen durchgeführt.Das spektrale Sensing erfolgte nach dem Prinzip der Leistungsdetektion. Möglichkeiten zur richtungsselektiven Kommunikation konnten in einer Vielzahl von GSM-Kanälen für ca. 50 % der Beobachtungszeit detektiert werden. Durch die Reduzierung der Zwischenelementabstände konnte eine kompakte Antenne des konzentrischen Antennenarrays konstruiert werden. Dies führt zu einer gegenseitigen Verkopplung der Antennenelemente und damit zu einer Beeinflussung der Stromverteilung und schließlich der Antennenrichtdiagramme. Um diese Effekte zu minimieren, wurde ein multibandfähiges Anpassungs- und Entkopplungsnetzwerk entworfen, welches die Entkopplung und Anpassung der Antennenelemente mit Modenspezifischen Lasten ermöglicht. Die Rekonfigurierbarkeit in jedem Frequenzband wird durch kapazitive Justierung mit Hilfe von Varaktordioden erreicht. Das multibandfähige Anpassungs- und Entkopplungsnetzwerk und das rekonfigurierbare Netzwerk für GSM 900 wurden auf einer Leiterplatte realisiert und im Hinblick auf Entkopplung, Anpassung, und Strahlungsdiagramme der Ports getestet. Die 10 dB-Bandbreite für Anpassung und Entkopplung der statischen Netzwerke ist ca. 30 MHz. Das rekonfigurierbare Netzwerk stellt eine Bandbreite von mehr als 100 MHz bereit, die mit insgesamt 5 Stufen erreicht wird.Die Richtdiagramme waren in verschiedenen Richtungen mit einem Korrelationskoeffizient kleiner als 30 % orthogonal, und in verschiedenen Frequenzbereichen mit einer Korrelation besser als 70 % selbstähnlich. Schließlich wurde das Verhalten von Richtantennen in heterogenen Ausbreitungsszenarien durch Simulation und Emulation untersucht. Dies beinhalteten Kanalmodelle für Simulation von statischen Szenarien und vorhandenen channel-sounder-Messungen zur Emulation der Mobilitätsszenarien. Verschiedene gemessene und analytisch bestimmte Richtdiagramme wurden verwendet, um die Verfügbarkeit von richtungsabhängigen Kommunikationsressourcen für Cognitive radio zu untersuchen.Simulationen mit analytischen Richtdiagrammen von uniform zirkularer Arrays zeigten, dass die Empfangssignalstärke über die Einfallsrichtungen proportional zum Nebenkeulenpegel der direktiven Richtdiagramme ist. Ein Nebenkeulenpegelvon 20 dB eines Antennenarrays mit 6 Elementen wurde als Optimum gefunden. Die richtungsabhängigen Sendemöglichkeiten von ca. 50 % wurden mit einem Sensing-Schwellwert kleiner -120 dB für mobile Szenarien ermittelt. Die Verfügbarkeit richtungsabhängiger Ressourcen ist abhängig von dem Schwellwert des gewählten Algorithmus für das spektrale Sensing.Zusammenfassend lässt sich sagen, dass sorgfältig konstruierte direktive Antennen die Existenz richtungsabhängiger Ressourcen für Cognitive radio aufspüren können. Anpassungs- und Entkopplungsnetzwerke für kompakte Antennenarrays können mittels kommerziell verfügbaren konzentrierten Bauelementen mit engen Toleranzen hergestellt werden. Die Rekonfigurierbarkeit solcher Netzwerke kann mittels Varaktordioden erreicht werden. Richtungsabhängige Kommunikation ist mit den vorgeschlagenen Antennen sowohl in statischen als auch mobilen Szenarien möglich.Cognitive radio is an emerging radio technology, promising intelligent and effective use of spectrum resources. State-of-the-art measurement campaigns show that the allocated spectrum is not efficiently used by the licensed users. On the other hand, future radio technologies require more spectrum to meet high capacity and quality of service requirements. Cognitive radio proposes secondary usage of the under-utilised spectrum resources while preserving the access-rights of the licensed (primary) users.Since the introduction of cognitive radio, in 1999, the focus of cognitive radio communications has been on frequency resources. However, frequency resourcealone may not be sufficient to fulfil the needs of future communication systems. A combination of frequency, space/direction, and time can ensure a more efficient use of the spectrum, by employing techniques like direction-of-arrival estimation, interference mitigation, etcetera. Approaches to design and analyse compact multi-band directional antennas, required to support directional as well as frequency resources, are proposed in this thesis. Design of such antennas was accomplished with orthogonal arrangement of multi-band antennas, and with compact multi-band antenna arrays. Analysis of directional antennas was carried out with simulations, measurement campaigns, and emulation of channel sounder measurements. A concentric arrangement of monopole antenna arrays was used as a reference antenna system, where directional patterns were obtained using metallic/absorber walls between antenna elements. This reference antenna system was used to perform proof-of-principle measurement campaigns. With an antenna array of nine elements, nine degrees-of-freedom (frequency-directional resources) were obtained at the antenna ports. These consist of three selectable frequency bands, namely GSM 900 MHz, GSM 1800 MHz, and IEEE 802.11b/g, and three directions per frequency band. The reference antenna system was capable of separating frequency and directions with a signal-to-interference-ratio of 20 dB, inside an anechoic chamber. An outdoor measurement of such an antenna system was carried out for GSM 1800 MHz, at a location surrounded by four base-stations. Power detection was used as the spectrum sensing algorithm. The opportunity to communicate in a certain direction using the occupied frequency channels was observed for about 50 % of the sensing time for various GSM channels.This concentric arrangement was made compact by reducing the inter-element spacing. The reduction of inter-element spacing results in mutual coupling between the antenna elements, which disturbs the current distribution and hence the beam patterns of the antenna arrays. To reduce this negative effect, a multiband decoupling and matching network was designed to mitigate the element coupling and to match the elements with mode-specific loads. Reconfigurable networks were designed with the help of the capacitive tuning of varactor diodes. The multi-band decoupling and matching network, and the reconfigurable network for GSM 900 MHz were manufactured on a printed circuit board, and tested in terms of decoupling, matching, and resulting port beam patterns. The 10 dB bandwidth for matching and decoupling by the fixed network, for compact antenna arrangement with an inter-element spacing of lambda/6, was about 30 MHz. Reconfigurable network provided a bandwidth above 100 MHz, achievable with five reconfigurable states. The patterns were orthogonal in different directions with correlation coefficients less than 30 % and self-similar at different frequency bands with a correlation better than 70 %.Finally, the behaviour of directional antennas under heterogeneous propagation scenarios was studied using simulation and emulation. This involved channel models for statistical simulation of static scenarios, and existing channel sounder measurements for emulation of mobility scenarios. Various measured and analytical beam patterns were used to study the availability of directional communications resources for cognitive radio. Simulations with analytical patterns of uniform circular arrays indicated that the received signal strength is directly proportional to the side-lobe level of the directional patterns. A side-lobe level of 20 dB, achievable with an array of 6 elements, was found to be optimum. The opportunity to communicate in certain directions using the occupied frequency channels (directional opportunity) was obtained for 50% of the total snapshots for a threshold level lower than -120 dB, in mobility scenarios. The availability of directional resources was dependent on the threshold level chosen for the spectrum sensing algorithm.It is concluded that well-designed directional antennas can identify the existence of directional resources for cognitive radio communications. Exploitation of unexplored antenna strategies for cognitive radio empowers a cognitive node with significant additional degrees-of-freedom. However, angular distribution of multipath, mobility of primary or secondary user, and speed of detection influence the usability of directional resources for cognitive radio. Decoupling and matching networks for compact arrays can be fabricated with off-the-shelf lumped elements with tight tolerances. Such networks can be made reconfigurable using varactor diodes. The work presented in the thesis is expected to facilitate the design of future directional antennas for cognitive radios resulting in more efficient utilisation of the spectrum

Mobile to mobile channel modelling for wireless communications

Wireless communication has been experiencing many recent advances in mobile to mobile (M2M) applications. M2M communication systems differ from conventional fixed to mobile systems by having both transmitter and receiver in low elevation and in motion. This raises the need to come up with new channel models and perform statistical analysis on M2M communication channels looking from a different perspective. This need motivated us to perform the research outlined in this thesis. In reviewing the literature we found that though in general the M2M channel models are sparse, a major gap exists in the non geometrical stochastic based mathematical channel models. In filling this gap, we develop a novel mathematical non geometrical stochastic multiple input multiple output (MIMO) M2M channel model for two dimensional (2D) and three dimensional (3D) scattering environments. This model is based on the underlying physics of free space wave propagation and can be used as a framework for any environment by selecting suitable complex scattering gain functions. In addition, we extend this novel model to multicarrier M2M which is the first multicarrier channel model in the non geometrical stochastic M2M category. Based on our novel M2M channel model, we carry out an extensive analysis in space-time correlation, space-frequency correlation and second order channel statistics. With the choice of suitable parameters, this analysis and channel model can be used for any wireless environment. Thus, we claim that our novel channel model together with the analysis performed in this thesis can be taken as a generalized framework. A significant contribution of our analysis is the consideration of the impact of transmitter and receiver speed to space-time and space-frequency correlation, which is not available in the literature. Using a von Mises-Fisher distribution as the angular power distribution, the usefulness of the derived temporal correlation function is discussed. The simulation results corroborate the fact that both space-time and space-frequency correlations are reduced when transmitter or receiver speed increases. The rate of reduction of space-time correlation in von Mises-Fisher distribution scattering environment is more than in the isotropic environment. Under second order channel statistics, we consider Rice, Rayleigh and Nakagami fading channels in four different non-isotropic scattering environments with angle of departure (AoD) and angle of arrival (AoA) distributions given by (i) separable Truncated Gaussian, (ii) separable von-Mises, (iii) truncated Gaussian bivariate and (iv) truncated Laplacian bivariate distributions. We show that the major second order statistics, namely, the level crossing rate (LCR) and the average fade duration (AFD), in different fading channels can be expressed in terms of known scattering coefficients of the AoD and AoA distributions. As the channel models and their respective measurements provide reliable knowledge of the channel for the design and analysis of M2M systems, the proposed channel model and the corresponding analysis will be useful for the design, testing and performance evaluation of future M2M communication systems

Massive MIMO Extensions to the COST 2100 Channel Model: Modeling and Validation

To enable realistic studies of massive multiple-input multiple-output systems, the COST 2100 channel model is extended based on measurements. First, the concept of a base station-side visibility region (BS-VR) is proposed to model the appearance and disappearance of clusters when using a physically-large array. We find that BS-VR lifetimes are exponentially distributed, and that the number of BS-VRs is Poisson distributed with intensity proportional to the sum of the array length and the mean lifetime. Simulations suggest that under certain conditions longer lifetimes can help decorrelating closely-located users. Second, the concept of a multipath component visibility region (MPC-VR) is proposed to model birth-death processes of individual MPCs at the mobile station side. We find that both MPC lifetimes and MPC-VR radii are lognormally distributed. Simulations suggest that unless MPC-VRs are applied the channel condition number is overestimated. Key statistical properties of the proposed extensions, e.g., autocorrelation functions, maximum likelihood estimators, and Cramer-Rao bounds, are derived and analyzed.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions of Wireless Communication

On the Performance Gain of NOMA over OMA in Uplink Communication Systems

In this paper, we investigate and reveal the ergodic sum-rate gain (ESG) of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) over orthogonal multiple access (OMA) in uplink cellular communication systems. A base station equipped with a single-antenna, with multiple antennas, and with massive antenna arrays is considered both in single-cell and multi-cell deployments. In particular, in single-antenna systems, we identify two types of gains brought about by NOMA: 1) a large-scale near-far gain arising from the distance discrepancy between the base station and users; 2) a small-scale fading gain originating from the multipath channel fading. Furthermore, we reveal that the large-scale near-far gain increases with the normalized cell size, while the small-scale fading gain is a constant, given by $\gamma$ = 0.57721 nat/s/Hz, in Rayleigh fading channels. When extending single-antenna NOMA to $M$-antenna NOMA, we prove that both the large-scale near-far gain and small-scale fading gain achieved by single-antenna NOMA can be increased by a factor of $M$ for a large number of users. Moreover, given a massive antenna array at the base station and considering a fixed ratio between the number of antennas, $M$, and the number of users, $K$, the ESG of NOMA over OMA increases linearly with both $M$ and $K$. We then further extend the analysis to a multi-cell scenario. Compared to the single-cell case, the ESG in multi-cell systems degrades as NOMA faces more severe inter-cell interference due to the non-orthogonal transmissions. Besides, we unveil that a large cell size is always beneficial to the ergodic sum-rate performance of NOMA in both single-cell and multi-cell systems. Numerical results verify the accuracy of the analytical results derived and confirm the insights revealed about the ESG of NOMA over OMA in different scenarios.Comment: 51 pages, 7 figures, invited paper, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Communication

Massive MIMO channel modelling for 5G wireless communication systems

Massive Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) wireless communication systems, equipped with tens or even hundreds of antennas, emerge as a promising technology for the Fifth Generation (5G) wireless communication networks. To design and evaluate the performance of massive MIMO wireless communication systems, it is essential to develop accurate, flexible, and efficient channel models which fully reflect the characteristics of massive MIMO channels. In this thesis, four massive MIMO channel models have been proposed. First, a novel non-stationary wideband multi-confocal ellipse Two-Dimensional (2-D) Geometry Based Stochastic Model (GBSM) for massive MIMO channels is proposed. Spherical wavefront is assumed in the proposed channel model, instead of the plane wavefront assumption used in conventional MIMO channel models. In addition, the Birth-Death (BD) process is incorporated into the proposed model to capture the dynamic properties of clusters on both the array and time axes. Second, we propose a novel theoretical non-stationary Three-Dimensional (3-D) wideband twin-cluster channel model for massive MIMO communication systems with carrier frequencies in the order of gigahertz (GHz). As the dimension of antenna arrays cannot be ignored for massive MIMO, nearfield effects instead of farfield effects are considered in the proposed model. These include the spherical wavefront assumption and a BD process to model non-stationary properties of clusters such as cluster appearance and disappearance on both the array and time axes. Third, a novel Kronecker Based Stochastic Model (KBSM) for massive MIMO channels is proposed. The proposed KBSM can not only capture antenna correlations but also the evolution of scatterer sets on the array axis. In addition, upper and lower bounds of KBSM channel capacities in both the high and low Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) regimes are derived when the numbers of transmit and receive antennas are increasing unboundedly with a constant ratio. Finally, a novel unified framework of GBSMs for 5G wireless channels is proposed. The proposed 5G channel model framework aims at capturing key channel characteristics of certain 5G communication scenarios, such as massive MIMO systems, High Speed Train (HST) communications, Machine-to-Machine (M2M) communications, and Milli-meter Wave (mmWave) communications

Spatio-Temporal processing for Optimum Uplink-Downlink WCDMA Systems

The capacity of a cellular system is limited by two different phenomena, namely multipath fading and multiple access interference (MAl). A Two Dimensional (2-D) receiver combats both of these by processing the signal both in the spatial and temporal domain. An ideal 2-D receiver would perform joint space-time processing, but at the price of high computational complexity. In this research we investigate computationally simpler technique termed as a Beamfom1er-Rake. In a Beamformer-Rake, the output of a beamfom1er is fed into a succeeding temporal processor to take advantage of both the beamformer and Rake receiver. Wireless service providers throughout the world are working to introduce the third generation (3G) and beyond (3G) cellular service that will provide higher data rates and better spectral efficiency. Wideband COMA (WCDMA) has been widely accepted as one of the air interfaces for 3G. A Beamformer-Rake receiver can be an effective solution to provide the receivers enhanced capabilities needed to achieve the required performance of a WCDMA system. We consider three different Pilot Symbol Assisted (PSA) beamforming techniques, Direct Matrix Inversion (DMI), Least-Mean Square (LMS) and Recursive Least Square (RLS) adaptive algorithms. Geometrically Based Single Bounce (GBSB) statistical Circular channel model is considered, which is more suitable for array processing, and conductive to RAKE combining. The performances of the Beam former-Rake receiver are evaluated in this channel model as a function of the number of antenna elements and RAKE fingers, in which are evaluated for the uplink WCDMA system. It is shown that, the Beamformer-Rake receiver outperforms the conventional RAKE receiver and the conventional beamformer by a significant margin. Also, we optimize and develop a mathematical formulation for the output Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) of a Beam former-Rake receiver. In this research, also, we develop, simulate and evaluate the SINR and Signal to Noise Ratio (Et!Nol performances of an adaptive beamforming technique in the WCDMA system for downlink. The performance is then compared with an omnidirectional antenna system. Simulation shows that the best perfom1ance can be achieved when all the mobiles with same Angle-of-Arrival (AOA) and different distance from base station are formed in one beam