Spectrally efficient emission mask shaping for OFDM cognitive radios

Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing has been widely adopted in recent years due to its inherent spectral efficiency and robustness to impulsive noise and fading. For cognitive radio applications in particular, it can enable flexible and agile spectrum allocation, yet suffers from spectral leakage in the form of large side lobes, leading to inter-channel interference, unless mitigated carefully. Hence, recent OFDM-based standards such as 802.11p for vehicular communication and 802.11af for TV whitespace impose strict spectrum emission mask limits to combat adjacent channel interference. Stricter masks allow channels to operate closer together, improving spectral efficiency at the cost of implementation difficulty. Meeting the strict limits is a significant challenge for implementing both 802.11p and 802.11af, yet remains an important requirement for enabling cost-effective systems. This paper proposes a novel method that embeds baseband filtering within a cognitive radio architecture to meet the specification for the most stringent 802.11p and 802.11af masks, while allowing ten 802.11af sub-carriers to occupy a single basic channel without violating SEM specifications. The proposed method, performed at baseband, relaxes otherwise strict RF filter requirements, allowing the RF subsystem to be implemented using much less stringent 802.11a designs, allowing cost reductions

Audio quality measurements for wireless microphones in spectrum pooling scenarios

In this contribution the influence of different broadband OFDM schemes on the perceptual audio quality of narrowband wireless microphone links is evaluated, since coexistence scenarios of wireless microphones and Orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) based services arise in the TV bands. Therefore, we present different non-contiguous cyclic-prefix (CP-)OFDM and offset quadrature amplitude modulation (OQAM-)OFDM system designs based on the spectrum pooling concept. We measure their power suppression in the subchannel allocated for the wireless microphone. As an indicator of the perceptual audio quality, we measure the objective difference grade of a colored noise audio signal emitted over a consumerlike hardware. The measurements show that the non-contiguous OQAM-OFDM scheme not only introduces lower interference to the FM link, but also has the advantage of requiring less number of notched carriers in comparison to CP-OFDM. By application of non-contiguous OQAM-OFDM with an appropriate number of notched carriers instead of the classical CP-OFDM scheme, wireless microphone systems can still sustain a significant low SIR when non-professional hardware is applied. © 2013 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.Sennheiser Electronic GmbH & Co. KGSennheiser electronic GmbH & Co. K

AirSync: Enabling Distributed Multiuser MIMO with Full Spatial Multiplexing

The enormous success of advanced wireless devices is pushing the demand for higher wireless data rates. Denser spectrum reuse through the deployment of more access points per square mile has the potential to successfully meet the increasing demand for more bandwidth. In theory, the best approach to density increase is via distributed multiuser MIMO, where several access points are connected to a central server and operate as a large distributed multi-antenna access point, ensuring that all transmitted signal power serves the purpose of data transmission, rather than creating "interference." In practice, while enterprise networks offer a natural setup in which distributed MIMO might be possible, there are serious implementation difficulties, the primary one being the need to eliminate phase and timing offsets between the jointly coordinated access points. In this paper we propose AirSync, a novel scheme which provides not only time but also phase synchronization, thus enabling distributed MIMO with full spatial multiplexing gains. AirSync locks the phase of all access points using a common reference broadcasted over the air in conjunction with a Kalman filter which closely tracks the phase drift. We have implemented AirSync as a digital circuit in the FPGA of the WARP radio platform. Our experimental testbed, comprised of two access points and two clients, shows that AirSync is able to achieve phase synchronization within a few degrees, and allows the system to nearly achieve the theoretical optimal multiplexing gain. We also discuss MAC and higher layer aspects of a practical deployment. To the best of our knowledge, AirSync offers the first ever realization of the full multiuser MIMO gain, namely the ability to increase the number of wireless clients linearly with the number of jointly coordinated access points, without reducing the per client rate.Comment: Submitted to Transactions on Networkin

Rapid prototyping and validation of FS-FBMC dynamic spectrum radio with simulink and ZynqSDR

This paper presents the research carried out in developing and targeting a novel real-time Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA) Frequency Spread Filter Bank Multicarrier (FS-FBMC) transmitter prototype to programmable ‘ZynqSDR’ Software Defined Radio (SDR) hardware, and introduces a series of experiments used to validate the design’s ‘cognitive’ DSA capabilities. This transmitter is a proof of concept, that uses DSA techniques to enable Secondary Users (SUs) to access the band traditionally used for FM Radio broadcasting (88-108 MHz), and establish data communication channels in vacant parts of the FM Radio Primary User (PU) spectrum using a multicarrier modulation scheme with a Non Contiguous (NC) channel mask. Once implemented on the hardware, the transmitter is subjected to various FM Radio environments sampled from around Central Scotland, and it is demonstrated that it can dynamically adapt its NC transmitter mask in real time to protect the FM Radio signals it detects. A video is presented of this dynamic on-hardware spectral reconfiguration, and the reader is encouraged to view the video to appreciate the responsiveness of the design. An investigation into potential FBMC guardband sizes is carried out, with initial findings indicating a guardband of 200 kHz (either side of an FM Radio station) is required in order to prevent interference with the PUs. This paper also demonstrates the capabilities of the MATLAB®/ Simulink ZynqSDR workflow, and provides a case study and reference design that we feel other researchers working in this field can benefit from

Doctor of Philosophy

dissertationWireless communications pervade all avenues of modern life. The rapid expansion of wireless services has increased the need for transmission schemes that are more spectrally efficient. Dynamic spectrum access (DSA) systems attempt to address this need by building a network where the spectrum is used opportunistically by all users based on local and regional measurements of its availability. One of the principal requirements in DSA systems is to initialize and maintain a control channel to link the nodes together. This should be done even before a complete spectral usage map is available. Additionally, with more users accessing the spectrum, it is important to maintain a stable link in the presence of significant interference in emergency first-responders, rescue, and defense applications. In this thesis, a new multicarrier spread spectrum (MC-SS) technique based on filter banks is presented. The new technique is called filter bank multicarrier spread spectrum (FB-MC-SS). A detailed theory of the underlying properties of this signal are given, with emphasis on the properties that lend themselves to synchronization at the receiver. Proposed algorithms for synchronization, channel estimation, and detection are implemented on a software-defined radio platform to complete an FB-MC-SS transceiver and to prove the practicality of the technique. FB-MC-SS is shown through physical experimentation to be significantly more robust to partial band interference compared to direct sequence spread spectrum. With a higher power interfering signal occupying 90% of its band, FB-MC-SS maintains a low bit error rate. Under the same interference conditions, DS-SS fails completely. This experimentation leads to a theoretical analysis that shows in a frequency selective channel with additive white noise, the FB-MC-SS system has performance that equals that obtained by a DS-SS system employing an optimal rake receiver. This thesis contains a detailed chapter on implementation and design, including lessons learned while prototyping the system. This is to assist future system designers to quickly gain proficiency in further development of this technology

Equalizador híbrido na banda das ondas milimétricas para sistemas GFDM

Wireless communication using very-large multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antennas has been regarded as one of the enabling technologies for the future mobile communication. It refers to the idea of equipping cellular base stations (BSs) with a very large number of antennas giving the possibility to focusing the transmitted signal energy into very short-range areas, which will provide huge improvements in the capacity, in addition to the spectral and energy efficiency. Concurrently, this demand for high data rates and capacity led to the necessity of exploiting the enormous amount of spectrum in the millimeter wave (mmWave) bands. However, the combination of millimeter-wave communications arrays with a massive number of antennas has the potential to dramatically enhance the features of wireless communication. This combination implies high cost and power consumption in the conventional full digital architecture, where each RF chain is dedicated to one antenna. The solution is the use of a hybrid architecture, where a small number of RF chains are connected to a large number of antennas through a network of phase shifters. On the other hand, another important factor that affect the transmission quality is the modulation technique, which plays an important role in the performance of the transmission process, for instance, GFDM is a flexible non-orthogonal multicarrier modulation concept, that introduces additional degrees of freedom when compared to other multicarrier techniques. This flexibility makes GFDM a promising solution for the future cellular generations, because it can achieve different requirements, such as higher spectrum efficiency, better control of out-of-band (OOB) emissions, as well as achieving low peak to average power ratio (PAPR). In this work, we present an analog-digital transmitter and receiver structures. Considering a GFDM modulation technique to be implemented in the digital part, while in the analog part, we propose a full connected hybrid multiuser linear equalizer, combined with low complexity hybrid precoder for wideband millimeter-wave massive MIMO systems. The hybrid equalizer is optimized by minimizing the mean square error between the hybrid approach and the full digital counterpart. The results show that the performance of the proposed hybrid scheme is very close to the full digital counterpart and the gap reduces as the number of RF chains increases.O uso de um número elevado de antenas, também designado por MIMO massivo, tem sido considerada uma das tecnologias mais promissoras para os futuros sistemas de comunicação sem fios. Esta tecnologia, refere-se à ideia de equipar as estações base (BSs) com um número muito grande de antenas, dando a possibilidade de focar a energia do sinal transmitido em áreas de alcance muito restritas, o que proporcionará grandes melhorias na capacidade, além das espectrais e eficiência energética. Simultaneamente, a exigência por taxas de dados elevadas e capacidade levou à necessidade de explorar uma enorme quantidade de espectro nas bandas de ondas milimétricas (mmWave). A combinação de comunicação na banda das ondas milimétricas com terminais equipados com um grande número de antenas tem o potencial de melhorar drasticamente os recursos da comunicação sem fios. Considerando no entanto uma arquitetura digital, usada em sistemas MIMO convencionais, em que cada cadeia de RF é dedicada a uma antena, implica um custo e um consumo de energia elevados. A solução é o uso de uma arquitetura híbrida, na qual um pequeno número de cadeias de RF é conectado a um grande número de antenas através de um conjunto de deslocadores de fase. Outro fator importante que afeta a qualidade da transmissão é a técnica de modulação usada, que desempenha um papel importante no desempenho do processo de transmissão. O GFDM é um conceito de modulação de portadora múltipla, não ortogonal e flexível, que introduz graus de liberdade adicionais, quando comparado a outras técnicas de portadora múltipla, como o OFDM. Essa flexibilidade faz do GFDM uma solução promissora para as futuras gerações celulares, pois pode atender a diferentes requisitos, como maior eficiência de espectro, melhor controle das emissões fora de banda (OOB), além de atingir baixo rácio de potência média / pico ( PAPR). Neste trabalho, é assumido uma arquitetura hibrida no transmissor e recetor. Considera-se uma técnica de modulação GFDM a ser implementada na parte digital, enquanto na parte analógica, é proposto um equalizador linear híbrido multiutilizador totalmente conectado, i.e., cada cadeia RF está ligada a todas as antenas, combinado com um pré-codificador híbrido, de baixa complexidade para sistemas MIMO massivo de banda larga. O equalizador híbrido é otimizado, minimizando o erro quadrático médio entre a abordagem híbrida e a contraparte totalmente digital. Os resultados mostram que o desempenho do esquema híbrido proposto está muito próximo do equivalente digital, à medida que o número de cadeias de RF aumenta.Mestrado em Engenharia Eletrónica e Telecomunicaçõe

A frequency domain approach to synchronization of filterbank multicarrier systems in practice

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A Unified Multi-Functional Dynamic Spectrum Access Framework: Tutorial, Theory and Multi-GHz Wideband Testbed

Dynamic spectrum access is a must-have ingredient for future sensors that are ideally cognitive. The goal of this paper is a tutorial treatment of wideband cognitive radio and radar—a convergence of (1) algorithms survey, (2) hardware platforms survey, (3) challenges for multi-function (radar/communications) multi-GHz front end, (4) compressed sensing for multi-GHz waveforms—revolutionary A/D, (5) machine learning for cognitive radio/radar, (6) quickest detection, and (7) overlay/underlay cognitive radio waveforms. One focus of this paper is to address the multi-GHz front end, which is the challenge for the next-generation cognitive sensors. The unifying theme of this paper is to spell out the convergence for cognitive radio, radar, and anti-jamming. Moore’s law drives the system functions into digital parts. From a system viewpoint, this paper gives the first comprehensive treatment for the functions and the challenges of this multi-function (wideband) system. This paper brings together the inter-disciplinary knowledge