Cooperative diversity techniques for high-throughput wireless relay networks

Relay communications has attracted a growing interest in wireless communications with application to various enhanced technologies. This thesis considers a number of issues related to data throughput in various wireless relay network models. Particularly, new implementations of network coding (NC) and space-time coding (STC) techniques are investigated to offer various means of achieving high-throughput relay communications. Firstly, this thesis investigates different practical automatic repeat request (ARQ) retransmission protocols based on NC for two-way wireless relay networks to improve throughput efficiency. Two improved NC-based ARQ schemes are designed based on go-back-N and selective-repeat (SR) protocols. Addressing ARQ issues in multisource multidestination relay networks, a new NC-based ARQ protocol is proposed and two packet-combination algorithms are developed for retransmissions at relay and sources to significantly improve the throughput. In relation to the concept of channel quality indicator (CQI) reporting in two-way relay networks, two new efficient CQI reporting schemes are designed based on NC to improve the system throughput by allowing two terminals to simultaneously estimate the CQI of the distant terminal-relay link without incurring additional overhead. The transmission time for CQI feedback at the relays is reduced by half while the increase in complexity and the loss of performance are shown to be negligible. Furthermore, a low-complexity relay selection scheme is suggested to reduce the relay searching complexity. For the acknowledgment (ACK) process, this thesis proposes a new block ACK scheme based on NC to significantly reduce the ACK overheads and therefore produce an enhanced throughput. The proposed scheme is also shown to improve the reliability of block ACK transmission and reduce the number of data retransmissions for a higher system throughput. Additionally, this thesis presents a new cooperative retransmission scheme based on relay cooperation and NC to considerably reduce the number of retransmission packets and im- prove the reliability of retransmissions for a more power efficient and higher throughput system with non-overlapped retransmissions. Moreover, two relay selection schemes are recommended to determine the optimised number of relays for the retransmission. Finally, with respect to cognitive wireless relay networks (CWRNs), this thesis proposes a new cooperative spectrum sensing (CSS) scheme to improve the spectrum sensing performance and design a new CSS scheme based on NC for three-hop CWRNs to improve system throughput. Furthermore, a new distributed space-time-frequency block code (DSTFBC) is designed for a two- hop nonregenerative CWRN over frequency-selective fading channels. The proposed DSTFBC design achieves higher data rate, spatial diversity gain, and decoupling detection of data blocks at all destination nodes with a low-complexity receiver structure

A review of modulation techniques for use in a satellite multipath environment

Modulation techniques for use in satellite multipath environmen

Splitting algorithm for DMT optimal cooperative MAC protocols in wireless mesh networks

A cooperative protocol for wireless mesh networks is proposed in this paper. The protocol implements both on-demand relaying and a selection of the best relay terminal so only one terminal is relaying the source message when cooperation is needed. Two additional features are also proposed. The best relay is selected with a splitting algorithm. This approach allows fast relay selection within less than three time-slots, on average. Moreover, a pre-selection of relay candidates is performed prior to the splitting algorithm. Only terminals that are able to improve the direct path are pre-selected. So efficient cooperation is now guaranteed. We prove that this approach is optimal in terms of diversity-multiplexing trade-off. The protocol has been designed in the context of Nakagami-mfading channels. Simulation results show that the performance of the splitting algorithm does not depend on channel statistics

Performance Analysis of Relay Selection Schemes in Multi-Hop Decode-and-Forward Networks

This paper analyses the data rate achieved by various relay selection schemes in a single-user multi-hop relay network with decode-and-forward (DF) relaying. While the single-user relay selection problem is well studied in the literature, research on achievable rate maximization is limited to dual-hop networks and multi-hop networks with a single relay per hop. We fill this important gap by focusing on achievable rate maximization in multi-hop, multi-relay networks. First, we consider optimal relay selection and obtain two approximations to the achievable rate. Next, we consider three existing sub-optimal relay selection strategies namely hop-by-hop, ad-hoc and block-by-block relay selection and obtain exact expressions for the achievable rate under each of these strategies. We also extend the sliding window based relay selection to the DF relay network and derive an approximation to the achievable rate. Further, we investigate the impact of window size in sliding window based relay selection and show that a window size of three is sufficient to achieve most of the possible performance gains. Finally, we extend this analysis to a noise limited multi-user network where the number of available relay nodes is large compared to the number of users and derive approximations to the achievable sum-rate

Esquemas de retransmissão baseados no protocolo decodifica-e-encaminha em redes cognitivas do tipo underlay

Orientador: José Cândido Silveira Santos FilhoTese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Faculdade de Engenharia Elétrica e de ComputaçãoResumo: O conceito de compartilhamento de espectro do tipo underlay tem sido proposto como uma técnica promissora para contornar o problema da escassez e da subutilização do espectro, permitindo que usuários não licenciados, chamados de usuários secundários, possam acessar simultaneamente uma banda licenciada, alocada aos usuários primários, desde que o nível de interferência sobre os mesmos seja mantido abaixo de um dado limiar aceitável. Entretanto, isso implica que a potência de transmissão na rede secundária deve ser restringida, comprometendo assim a confiabilidade e a cobertura da comunicação. A fim de contornar esse problema, técnicas de retransmissão cooperativa, as quais proveem um novo tipo de diversidade espacial, podem ser exploradas como um meio eficaz para melhorar o desempenho da rede secundária. De fato, a utilização conjunta de ambas as técnicas ¿ compartilhamento de espectro do tipo underlay e retransmissão cooperativa ¿ em redes cooperativas e cognitivas tem recebido especial atenção, já que a eficiência espectral do sistema e o desempenho da rede secundária podem ser melhorados significativamente. Esta tese apresenta quatro contribuições principais na referida área. Em particular, estuda-se o efeito conjunto de duas restrições de potência importantes sobre o desempenho de outage de redes cooperativas e cognitivas, especificamente, o nível máximo de potência interferente tolerada pelo receptor primário e o valor máximo de potência transmitida nos usuários secundários. Foca-se em esquemas de retransmissão baseados no protocolo decodifica-e-encaminha, abordando cenários em que o enlace direto entre fonte e destino está disponível para transmitir informação útil. Como uma primeira contribuição, analisa-se o desempenho de dois esquemas baseados no protocolo de retransmissão half-duplex incremental, os quais exploram a diversidade espacial dos enlaces diretos em redes cooperativas e cognitivas multiusuário. A segunda contribuição investiga o impacto de estimativas desatualizadas do canal sobre o mecanismo de seleção de destino para um desses esquemas anteriores, focando-se apenas no aspecto cooperativo da rede, ou seja, desconsiderando-se o uso de compartilhamento espectral. A terceira contribuição estuda o desempenho de redes cooperativas e cognitivas baseadas no modo full-duplex. Para esse cenário, avalia-se o impacto tanto da autointerferência residual, que é inerente ao modo full-duplex, bem como das restrições de potência que caracterizam o compartilhamento de espectro do tipo underlay. Como contribuição final, motivada pelo compromisso entre a perda de eficiência espectral e o problema da autointerferência residual, próprios dos modos half-duplex e full-duplex, respectivamente, propõe-se e analisa-se um esquema de transmissão adaptativo para redes cooperativas e cognitivas, através do qual, antes de cada processo de comunicação, um dos seguintes modos de transmissão é selecionado: retransmissão half-duplex, retransmissão full-duplex ou transmissão direta. Para todos os cenários considerados, expressões analíticas exatas para a probabilidade de outage são obtidas. Adicionalmente, uma análise assintótica é realizada a fim de caracterizar a ordem de diversidade e o comportamento de outage da rede secundária no regime assintótico de alta relação sinal-ruído. Simulações de Monte Carlo validam os resultados analíticos apresentadosAbstract: Underlay spectrum sharing has been proposed as a promising technique to alleviate the problem of spectrum scarcity and underutilization, by enabling secondary (unlicensed) users to concurrently access a licensed band, provided that the resulting interference on the primary (licensed) users remains below a given acceptable level. However, such a technique implies that the transmit power at the secondary network must be constrained, thereby compromising the communication reliability and coverage. To counteract this, cooperative relaying techniques, which provide a new form of spatial diversity, can be exploited as an effective means to boost the performance of the secondary network. Indeed, the joint use of both techniques¿underlay spectrum sharing and cooperative relaying¿in cognitive relaying networks has drawn special attention, since the overall spectral efficiency and the secondary-network performance can be significantly improved. This dissertation comprises four main contributions in this field. In particular, we examine the combined effect of two crucial power constraints on the outage performance of cognitive relaying networks, namely, the maximum tolerable interference power at the primary receiver and the maximum transmit power at the secondary users. We focus on relaying schemes operating under the decode-and-forward protocol, for scenarios in which the direct link between source and destination is available to convey useful information. As a first contribution, we analyze the performance of two incremental half-duplex relaying schemes, which exploit the spatial diversity of the direct links in a multiuser scenario. Our second contribution investigates the impact of outdated channel estimates on the destination-scheduling mechanism of one of those incremental schemes, from the perspective of a cooperative network only, that is, in the absence of spectrum sharing. The third contribution addresses cognitive full-duplex relaying networks. More specifically, we assess the system performance as a function of both the residual self-interference, which is inherent to the full-duplex relaying mode, and the underlay spectrum-sharing power constraints. As a final contribution, driven by the tradeoff between the spectral-efficiency loss and the residual self-interference problem, intrinsic to the half- and full-duplex relaying modes, respectively, we propose and analyze an adaptive transmission scheme whereby, before each communication process, one out of the following transmission modes is selected: half-duplex relaying, full-duplex relaying, or direct transmission. For all the considered scenarios, exact analytical expressions for the outage probability are derived. In addition, an asymptotic analysis is performed to obtain further insights on the diversity order and outage behavior of the secondary network at the high signal-to-noise ratio regime. Monte Carlo simulations corroborate the accuracy of the presented mathematical analysisDoutoradoTelecomunicações e TelemáticaDoutor em Engenharia ElétricaCAPE

On the Performance Analysis of Cooperative Vehicular Communication

Vehicular networking is envisioned to be a key technology area for significant growth in the coming years. Although the expectations for this emerging technology are set very high, many practical aspects remain still unsolved for a vast deployment of vehicular networks. This dissertation addresses the enabling physical layer techniques to meet the challenges in vehicular networks operating in mobile wireless environments. Considering the infrastructure-less nature of vehicular networks, we envision cooperative diversity well positioned to meet the demanding requirements of vehicular networks with their underlying distributed structure. Cooperative diversity has been proposed as a powerful means to enhance the performance of high-rate communications over wireless fading channels. It realizes spatial diversity advantages in a distributed manner where a node uses others antennas to relay its message creating a virtual antenna array. Although cooperative diversity has garnered much attention recently, it has not yet been fully explored in the context of vehicular networks considering the unique characteristics of vehicular networks, this dissertation provides an error performance analysis study of cooperative transmission schemes for various deployment and traffic scenarios. In the first part of this dissertation, we investigate the performance of a cooperative vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) system with amplify-and-forward relaying for typical traffic scenarios under city/urban settings and a highway area. We derive pairwise error probability (PEP) expressions and demonstrate the achievable diversity gains. The effect of imperfect channel state information (CSI) is also studied through an asymptotical PEP analysis. We present Monte-Carlo simulations to confirm the analytical derivations and present the error rate performance of the vehicular scheme with perfect and imperfect-CSI. In the second part, we consider road-to-vehicle (R2V) communications in which roadside access points use cooperating vehicles as relaying terminals. Under the assumption of decode-and-forward relaying, we derive PEP expressions for single-relay and multi-relay scenarios. In the third part, we consider a cooperative multi-hop V2V system in which direct transmission is not possible and investigate its performance through the PEP derivation and diversity gain analysis. Monte-Carlo simulations are further provided to con firm the analytical derivations and provide insight into the error rate performance improvement