Composite and Cascaded Generalized-K Fading Channel Modeling and Their Diversity and Performance Analysis

The introduction of new schemes that are based on the communication among nodes has motivated the use of composite fading models due to the fact that the nodes experience different multipath fading and shadowing statistics, which subsequently determines the required statistics for the performance analysis of different transceivers. The end-to-end signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) statistics plays an essential role in the determination of the performance of cascaded digital communication systems. In this thesis, a closed-form expression for the probability density function (PDF) of the end-end SNR for independent but not necessarily identically distributed (i.n.i.d.) cascaded generalized-K (GK) composite fading channels is derived. The developed PDF expression in terms of the Meijer-G function allows the derivation of subsequent performance metrics, applicable to different modulation schemes, including outage probability, bit error rate for coherent as well as non-coherent systems, and average channel capacity that provides insights into the performance of a digital communication system operating in N cascaded GK composite fading environment. Another line of research that was motivated by the introduction of composite fading channels is the error performance. Error performance is one of the main performance measures and derivation of its closed-form expression has proved to be quite involved for certain systems. Hence, in this thesis, a unified closed-form expression, applicable to different binary modulation schemes, for the bit error rate of dual-branch selection diversity based systems undergoing i.n.i.d. GK fading is derived in terms of the extended generalized bivariate Meijer G-function

Probability of error and outage in a Rice-lognormal channel for terrestrial and satellite personal communications

This letter addresses performance evaluation in a nonselective fading channel modeled by a combination of Rice and lognormal (RLN) statistics, The RLN model is valid under widely different environmental conditions, both for terrestrial cellular and for satellite personal communication systems, The letter provides semianalytical expressions for the average error probability in the RLN channel for coherent M-ary phase shift keying (PSK) and noncoherent M-ary orthogonal transmissions, then it highlights the relationship between outage probability and cell coverage for macro and microcellular systems, and finally it provides some error probability results for nongeostationary (non-GEO) satellite systems

Spatial modulation : improving throughput over non-cascaded fading channels and performance analysis over cascaded fading channels.

Thesis (M.Sc.Eng.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, Durban, 2012.Small mobile devices which have an ability to access the world wide web (WWW) wirelessly are in demand of late. This demand is attributed to the fact that video and audio streaming are cost effectively accessible via the WWW through wireless fidelity (Wi-Fi). This high demand for cheap real-time multimedia access via Wi-Fi makes it imperative for researchers to develop a wireless local area network (WLAN) standard, such as IEEE (802.11n), that has high data throughput and/or link reliability. The current drawback with the IEEE (802.11n) standard is that it is not power efficient for battery powered small mobile devices because of the high complexity multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) scheme implemented within the standard. Spatial modulation (SM) is a recently proposed low complexity MIMO scheme that can achieve high data throughput with good link reliability whilst being power efficient for small mobile devices. This study is aimed at further improving data throughputs of SM and also determining the bit error rate (BER) performance of SM in a city centre environment. Conventional spatial modulation has been investigated in literature with most research efforts geared towards improving the BER performance and minimizing receiver complexity of the scheme over non-cascaded fading channels. We propose adaptive M-ary quadrature amplitude spatial modulation (A-QASM) as a scheme that will improve the average throughput in comparison to conventional spatial modulation given a target BER constraint. The analytical BER lower bound is derived for this proposed scheme and validated by the Monte Carlo simulation results. The simulation results also prove that the average throughput of the proposed scheme (A-QASM) outperforms that of conventional spatial modulation. The definition for the received SNR of the A-QASM scheme is also proposed. In research literature, conventional spatial modulation has been discussed in depth in non-cascaded wireless fading channels. The performance analysis derived in literature in non-cascaded wireless fading channels; does not apply in predicting the BER performance of a mobile device, using conventional spatial modulation, in an environment where there is signal diffraction (i.e city centre or a forest) which makes the signal susceptible to independent cascaded fading. This study contributes by developing an analytical framework for the BER lower bound of conventional spatial modulation over cascaded fading channels. Simulation results closely agree with the derived theoretical framework

Modeling and Analysis of Massive Low Earth Orbit Communication Networks

Non-terrestrial networks are foreseen as a crucial component for developing 6th generation (6G) of wireless cellular networks by many telecommunication industries. Among non-terrestrial networks, low Earth orbit (LEO) communication satellites have shown a great potential in providing global seamless coverage for remote and under-served regions where conventional terrestrial networks are either not available or not economically justifiable to deploy. In addition, to the date of writing this summary, LEO communication networks have became highly commercialized with many prominent examples, compared to other non-terrestrial networks, e.g., high altitude platforms (HAPs) which are still in prototyping stage. Despite the rapid promotion of LEO constellations, theoretical methodologies to study the performance of such massive networks at large are still missing from the scientific literature. While commercial plans must obviously have been simulated before deployment of these constellations, the deterministic and network-specific simulations rely on instantaneous positions of satellites and, consequently, are unable to characterize the performance of massive satellite networks in a generic scientific form, given the constellation parameters. In order to address this problem, in this thesis, a generic tractable approach is proposed to analyze the LEO communication networks using stochastic geometry as a central tool. Firstly, satellites are modeled as a point process which enables using the mathematics of stochastic geometry to formulate two performance metrics of the network, namely, coverage probability and data rate, in terms of constellation parameters. The derivations are applicable to any given LEO constellation regardless of satellites’ actual locations on orbits. Due to specific geometry of satellites, there is an inherent mismatch between the actual distribution of satellites and the point processes that are used to model their locality. Secondly, different approaches have thus been investigated to eliminate this modeling error and improve the accuracy of the analytical derivations. The results of this research are published in seven original publications which are attached to this summary. In these publications, coverage probability and average achievable data rate of LEO satellite networks are derived for several communication scenarios in both uplink and downlink directions under different propagation models and user association techniques. Moreover, the analysis was generalized to cover the performance analysis of a multi-altitude constellation which imitates the geometry of some well-known commercial constellations with satellites orbiting on multiple altitude levels. While direct communication between the satellites and ground terminals is the main studied communication scenario in this thesis, the performance of a LEO network as a backhaul for aerial platforms is also addressed and compared with terrestrial backhaul networks. Finally, all analytical derivations, obtained from stochastic modeling of the LEO constellations, are verified through Monte Carlo simulations and compared with actual simulated constellations to ensure their accuracy. Through the numerical results, the performance metrics are evaluated in terms of different constellation parameters, e.g., altitude, inclination angle, and total number of satellites, which reveals their optimal values that maximize the capacity and/or coverage probability. Therefore, other than performance analysis, several insightful guidelines can be also extracted regarding the design of LEO satellite networks based on the numerical results. Stochastic modeling of a LEO satellite network, which is proposed for the first time ever in this thesis, extends the application of stochastic geometry in wireless communication field from planar two-dimensional (2D) networks to highly heterogeneous three-dimensional (3D) spherical networks. In fact, the results show that stochastic modeling can also be utilized to precisely model the networks with deterministic nodes’ locations and specific distribution of nodes over the Euclidean space. Thus, the proposed methodology reported herein paves the way for comprehensive analytical understanding and generic performance study of heterogeneous massive networks in the future