Timing and Carrier Synchronization in Wireless Communication Systems: A Survey and Classification of Research in the Last 5 Years

Timing and carrier synchronization is a fundamental requirement for any wireless communication system to work properly. Timing synchronization is the process by which a receiver node determines the correct instants of time at which to sample the incoming signal. Carrier synchronization is the process by which a receiver adapts the frequency and phase of its local carrier oscillator with those of the received signal. In this paper, we survey the literature over the last 5 years (2010–2014) and present a comprehensive literature review and classification of the recent research progress in achieving timing and carrier synchronization in single-input single-output (SISO), multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), cooperative relaying, and multiuser/multicell interference networks. Considering both single-carrier and multi-carrier communication systems, we survey and categorize the timing and carrier synchronization techniques proposed for the different communication systems focusing on the system model assumptions for synchronization, the synchronization challenges, and the state-of-the-art synchronization solutions and their limitations. Finally, we envision some future research directions

A Framework for Enhancing the Energy Efficiency of IoT Devices in 5G Network

A wide range of services, such as improved mobile broadband, extensive machine-type communication, ultra-reliability, and low latency, are anticipated to be delivered via the 5G network. The 5G network has developed as a multi-layer network that uses numerous technological advancements to provide a wide array of wireless services to fulfil such a diversified set of requirements. Several technologies, including software-defined networking, network function virtualization, edge computing, cloud computing, and tiny cells, are being integrated into the 5G networks to meet the needs of various requirements. Due to the higher power consumption that will arise from such a complicated network design, energy efficiency becomes crucial. The network machine learning technique has attracted a lot of interest from the scientific community because it has the potential to play a crucial role in helping to achieve energy efficiency. Utilization factor, access latency, arrival rate, and other metrics are used to study the proposed scheme. It is determined that our system outperforms the present scheme after comparing the suggested scheme to these parameters

Diversity techniques for broadband wireless communications: performance enhancement and analysis

The diversity techniques have been proven to be effective for next generation broadband wireless communications, and are the focus of this thesis. The diversity techniques can be broadly categorized into three types: Space, Time, and Frequency. In this thesis, we are mainly concerned with frequency and space diversity techniques. Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) is a frequency diversity technique which offers several benefits such as easier digital implementation, immunity to multipath channels, low complexity channel equalization, etc. Despite these desirable features, there are few inherent problems in OFDM such as high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR). High PAPR demands large dynamic range in the transmitted chain such as digital to analog converter (DAC) and power amplifier (PA). Unless pre-processed, the transmitted signal gets distorted due to quantization errors and inter-modulation. In the initial stage of PhD candidature, the author focused on PAPR reduction techniques. A simple modification on conventional iterative clipping and filtering (ICF) technique was proposed which has less computational complexity. The power savings achievable from clipping and filtering method was considered next. Furthermore the ICF is compared with another distortion-less PAPR reduction technique called Selective Mapping (SLM) based on power savings. Finally, impact of clipping and filtering on the channel estimation was analyzed. Space diversity seeks to exploit the multi-path characteristics of wireless channels to improve the performance. The simplest form of the space diversity is the receive diversity where two or more antennas with sufficient spacing collect independent copies of the same transmitted signal, which contributes to better signal reception. In this thesis new analytical expressions for spectral efficiency, capacity, and error rates were presented for adaptive systems with channel estimation error. Beamforming (steering signal towards desired receiver) is another useful technique in multiple-antenna systems to further improve the system performance. MRT (Maximal Ratio Transmission) or MIMO-MRC is such system where the transmitter, based on channel feedback from the receiver, uses weighting factors to steer the transmitted signal. Closed form expressions for symbol error rates were derived for MRT system with channel estimation error. The results were extended to evaluate closed form expressions of error rates for Rectangular QAM. Antenna correlation was considered in another contribution on MRC systems. Relay and Cooperative networks represent another form of spatial diversity and have recently attracted significant research attention. These networks rely on intermediate nodes called "relays" to establish communication between the source and the destination. In addition to coverage extension, the relay networks have shown to offer cooperative diversity when there is a direct link or multiple relays. The first contribution is to analyze a dual-hop amplify-forward relay networks with dissimilar fading scenarios. Next error rates of Rectangular QAM for decode-forward selection relay system are derived. Multiple antenna at relay is included to analyze the benefits of dual spatial diversity over Rayleigh and Nakagami fading channels. Antenna selection is a cost-effective way to exploit the antenna diversity. General Order Antenna Selection (GOAS), based on Ordered Statistics, is used to evaluate signal statistics for a MIMO relay network

Analysis and Optimization of Cooperative Wireless Networks

Recently, cooperative communication between users in wireless networks has attracted a considerable amount of attention. A significant amount of research has been conducted to optimize the performance of different cooperative communication schemes, subject to some resource constraints such as power, bandwidth, and time. However, in previous research, each optimization problem has been investigated separately, and the optimal solution for one problem is usually not optimal for the other problems. This dissertation focuses on joint optimization or cross-layer optimization in wireless cooperative networks. One important obstacle is the non-convexity of the joint optimization problem, which makes the problem difficult to solve efficiently. The first contribution of this dissertation is the proposal of a method to efficiently solve a joint optimization problem of power allocation, time scheduling and relay selection strategy in Decode-and-Forward cooperative networks. To overcome the non-convexity obstacle, the dual optimization method for non-convex problems \cite{Yu:2006}, is applied by exploiting the time-sharing properties of wireless OFDM systems when the number of subcarriers approaches infinity. The second contribution of this dissertation is the design of practical algorithms to implement the aforementioned method for optimizing the cooperative network. The difficulty of this work is caused by the randomness of the data, specifically, the randomness of the channel condition, and the real-time requirements of computing. The proposed algorithms were analyzed rigorously and the convergence of the algorithms is shown.\\ Furthermore, a joint optimization problem of power allocation and computational functions for the advanced cooperation scheme, Compute-and-Forward, is also analyzed, and an iterative algorithm to solve this problem is also introduced

Nonlinear amplifier distortion in cooperative OFDM systems

OFDM (Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing) on lupaava langattoman tietoliikenteen teknologia johtuen sen hyvästä suorituskyvystä monitieympäristössä. Yhteistoiminnallisen tiedonvälityksen tekniikka on nykyisin jatkuvan tutkimuksen kohteena. Se hyödyntää muiden päätteiden antenneja virtuaalisen moniantennijärjestelmän luomiseen mahdollistaen moniantennijärjestelmille ominaisia kapasiteettihyötyjä. Tässä diplomityössä tutkitaan epälineaarista vahvistussäröä, kun näitä molempia tekniikoita käytetään yhdessä. Ensimmäiset kappaleet käsittelevät OFDM-järjestelmien ja epälineaaristen OFDM-järjestelmien särön sekä yhteistoiminnallisen tiedonvälityksen taustoja. Yhteistoiminnallisten OFDM-järjestelmien suorituskykyä mitataan simulaatioiden avulla epälineaarisen särön vaikuttaessa. Suorituskykyä mitataan bittivirhesuhteena käyttäen epäyhteistoiminnallista ja lineaarista yhteistoiminnallista järjestelmää vertailukohteena. Lisäksi särötermi myös analysoidaan. Systeemimalli sisältää epälineaarisen vahvistuksen välittimessä, jota mallinnetaan elektronisella tehovahvistimella. Lopuksi esitellään ja testataan tekniikka järjestelmän suorituskyvyn parantamiseen optimoimalla maksimisuhdeyhdistintä. Se optimoidaan mallintamalla vahvistussäröä normaalijakaumalla. Lisäksi esitellään ja testataan yhteistoiminnallisille järjestelmille sopiva tehovahvistimen epälineaarisuuden poistotekniikan muunnelma, jolla saadaan lähellä lineaarista tapausta olevia tuloksia.Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is a promising technique for wireless communications because of its good performance under multipath environments. The concept of cooperative communications is currently under constant research. It uses antennas of other terminals to create virtual multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems, providing capacity gains similar to those of MIMO systems. This thesis studies the issue of nonlinear amplifier distortion when these two techniques are used together. The first chapters give a background on OFDM systems, nonlinear distortion in OFDM systems, and Cooperative Communications. The performance of OFDM cooperative systems under nonlinear distortion are measured by simulations. The performance is measured in terms of BER using a non-cooperative system and a linear cooperative system as references. In addition, the distortion term is also analysed. The system model includes a non-linear amplifier at the relay, modelled as a solid state power amplifier (SSPA). A technique for improving the performance of the system, by optimising the maximum ratio combiner (MRC), is introduced and tested. The MRC is optimised by modelling the distortion noise as Gaussian. Also, a modification to the power amplifier nonlinearity cancellation (PANC) technique, suitable to cooperative systems, is introduced and tested, showing results close to the linear case

An Efficient Adaptive Distributed Space-Time Coding Scheme for Cooperative Relaying

A non-regenerative dual-hop wireless system based on a distributed space-time coding strategy is considered. It is assumed that each relay retransmits an appropriately scaled space-time coded version of its received signal. The main goal of this paper is to investigate a power allocation strategy in relay stations, which is based on minimizing the outage probability. In the high signal-to-noise ratio regime for the relay-destination link, it is shown that a threshold-based power allocation scheme (i.e., the relay remains silent if its channel gain with the source is less than a prespecified threshold) is optimum. Monte-Carlo simulations show that the derived on-off power allocation scheme performs close to optimum for finite signal-to-noise ratio values. Numerical results demonstrate a dramatic improvement in system performance as compared to the case that the relay stations forward their received signals with full power. In addition, a hybrid amplify-and-forward/detect-and-forward scheme is proposed for the case that the quality of the source-relay link is good. Finally, the robustness of the proposed scheme in the presence of channel estimation errors is numerically evaluated.Comment: submitted to IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications (24 pages

Digital signal processing techniques for peak-to-average power ratio mitigation in MIMO–OFDM systems

The focus of this thesis is to mitigate the very large peak-to-average transmit power ratios (PAPRs) inherent to conventional orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, particularly in the context of transmission over multi-input multi-output (MIMO) wireless broadband channels. This problem is important as a large PAPR generally needs an expensive radio frequency (RF) power amplifier at the transmitter due to the requirement for linear operation over a wide amplitude range and such a cost would be compounded when multiple transmit antennas are used. Advanced signal processing techniques which can reduce PAPR whilst retain the integrity of digital transmission therefore have considerable potential for application in emergent MIMO–OFDM wireless systems and form the technical contributions of this study. [Continues.