Performance Evaluation of 802.15.4 UWB PHY for High Speed Data Rate under IEEE Channel Mode

In modern day society the increase of data generation and transfer has been an issue that researchers are working on. This generated and shared data might have a different purpose but one thing is certain, the reception. This communication can cover continents, countries, cities or even just a few meters. For the purpose of the later, personal area networks (PAN) have been created with a main focus to lower the energy consumption. The protocol that is created under IEEE is 802.15.4 and it has multiple applications in the context of next generation sensor networks. This thesis investigates the performance IEEE 802.15.4 UWB PHY for high data rates over IEEE multipath fading channels and introduces receivers aiming to diversity and to mitigate the intersymbol interference (ISI) that might appear. We simulate the protocols highest mandatory data rate over slow, block faded, realistic IEEE channel models such as, residential, office, outdoor and industrial. The simulation includes Reed Solomon (RS) channel coding, optimal successive erasure decoding (SED), and coherent RAKE receivers. We verify that the selective RAKE (sRAKE) perform better than the nonselective RAKE (n-sRAKE) in all environments and also the increase of fingers is mandatory in order to improve performance. In cases with low number of fingers the ISI mitigation techniques like Maximum-Likehood Sequence Estimator (MLSE) & RAKE combination or Maximum Ration Combining (MRC) ISI cancellation receivers, can provide some gain in large delay spread environments. In cases with high number of ingers the MRC received employs its full diversity since the received power is arger than before. Overall the apply of optimal errors and erasures decoding can urther improve the system performance by adding a small gain, lowering existing it Error Probability (BEP) even more.A huge percentage of data has been generated in the last two years and it will grow more, as every one of us is constantly producing and releasing data. The latest years has been an extensive research on capacity maximization, bit rate increment and power optimization. That research lead to the development of various protocols for cellular and personal area networks (PAN), where they each utilizes the frequency spectrum differently. Even if cellular networks have the ability to cover large area, development of multiple personal area networks can be developed for the purpose to offload data from the cellular network. Keeping in mind the research needs, 802.15.4 UWH PHY is a solid candidate when it comes to data transfer in a small area. This protocol offers various mandatory transmission modes that can be selected depending the channel parameters and various data rate needs. Time hopping and spreading sequence offers the existence of multiuser environment where multiple transceivers can co-exist. Overall the complexity, cost and energy consumption for transmission and reception can be kept low, matching the research needs. The main issues regarding 802.15.4 UWH PHY and high speed data rates is first, the energy dispersion of the transmitted symbol to multiple bins and second, the appearance of Inter Symbol Interference (ISI) in high delay profile environments. The solution in the former problem is the necessary implementation of a RAKE receiver. Regarding the latter, literature offers multiple ways to mitigate the ISI but the aim should be to keep the lowest complexity possible regarding the implementation. In this thesis we evaluate the performance of 802.15.4 UWB PHY for high speed data rates under IEEE channel models. Various receivers has been build for the purpose of this thesis, Maximum Ratio Combining (MRC), MRC with Inter Symbol Interference and MLSE & RAKE combination receiver. The MRC is a simple RAKE receiver with maximum diversity, MRC with ISI cancellation is based on the MRC receiver with the ability to mitigate ISI, and MLSE & RAKE combination is an optimum ISI mitigation receiver without the diversity of the MRC

Energy Efficiency Optimization in Green Wireless Communications

The rising energy concern and the ubiquity of energy-consuming wireless applications have sparked a keen interest in the development and deployment of energy-efficient and eco-friendly wireless communication technology. Green Wireless Communications aims to find innovative solutions to improve energy efficiency, and to relieve/reduce the carbon footprint of wireless industry, while maintaining/improving performance metrics. Looking back at the wireless communications of the past decades, the air-interface design and network deployment had mainly focused on the spectral efficiency, instead of energy efficiency. From the cellular network to the personal area network, no matter what size the wireless network is, the milestones along the evolutions of wireless networks had always been higher-and-higher data rates throughout these years. Most of these throughput-oriented optimizations lead to a full-power operation to support a higher throughput or spectral efficiency, which is typically not energy-efficient. To qualify as green wireless communications, we believe that a candidate technology needs to be of high energy efficiency, reduced electromagnetic pollution, and low-complexity. In this dissertation research, towards the evolution of the green wireless communications, we have extended our efforts in two important aspects of the wireless communications system: air-interface and networking. In the first aspect of this work, we study a promising green communications technology, the time reversal system, as a novel air-interface of the future green wireless communications. We propose a concept of time reversal division multiple access (TRDMA) as a novel wireless media access scheme for wireless broadband networks, and investigate its fundamental theoretical limits. Motivated by the great energy-harvesting potential of the TRDMA, we develop an asymmetric architecture for the TRDMA based multiuser networks. The unique asymmetric architecture shifts the most complexity to the BS in both downlink and uplink schemes, facilitating very low-cost terminal users in the networks. To further enhance the system performance, a 2D parallel interference cancellation scheme is presented to explore the inherent structure of the interference signals, and therefore efficiently improve the resulting SINR and system performance. In the second aspect of this work, we explore the energy-saving potential of the cooperative networking for cellular systems. We propose a dynamic base-station switching strategy and incorporate the cooperative base-station operation to improve the energy-efficiency of the cellular networks without sacrificing the quality of service of the users. It is shown that significant energy saving potential can be achieved by the proposed scheme

Transceiver design and system optimization for ultra-wideband communications

This dissertation investigates the potential promises and proposes possible solutions to the challenges of designing transceivers and optimizing system parameters in ultra-wideband (UWB) systems. The goal is to provide guidelines for UWB transceiver implementations under constraints by regulation, existing interference, and channel estimation. New UWB pulse shapes are invented that satisfy the Federal Communications Commission spectral mask. Parameters are designed to possibly implement the proposed pulses. A link budget is quantified based on an accurate frequency-dependent path loss calculation to account for variations across the ultra-wide bandwidth of the signal. Achievable information rates are quantified as a function of transmission distance over additive white Gaussian noise and multipath channels under specific UWB constraints: limited power spectral density, specific modulation formats, and a highly dispersive channel. The effect of self-interference (SI) and inter-symbol interference (ISI) on channel capacity is determined, and modulation formats that mitigate against this effect is identified. Spreading gains of familiar UWB signaling formats are evaluated, and UWB signals are proved to be spread spectrum. Conditions are formulated for trading coding gain with spreading gain with only a small impact on performance. Numerical results are examined to demonstrate that over a frequency-selective channel, the spreading gain may be beneficial in reducing the SI and ISI resulting in higher information rates. A reduced-rank adaptive filtering technique is applied to the problem of interference suppression and optimum combining in UWB communications. The reduced-rank combining method, in particular the eigencanceler, is proposed and compared with a minimum mean square error Rake receiver. Simulation results are evaluated to show that the performance of the proposed method is superior to the minimum mean square error when the correlation matrix is estimated from limited data. Impact of channel estimation on UWB system performance is investigated when path delays and path amplitudes are jointly estimated. Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) expressions for the variance of path delay and amplitude estimates are formulated using maximum likelihood estimation. Using the errors obtained from the CRB, the effective signal-to-noise ratio for UWB Rake receivers employing maximum ratio combining (MRC) is devised in the presence of channel path delay and amplitude errors. An exact expression of the bit error rate (BER) for UWB Rake receivers with MRC is derived with imperfect estimates of channel path delays and amplitudes. Further, this analysis is applied to design optimal transceiver parameters. The BER is used as part of a binary symmetric channel and the achievable information rates are evaluated. The optimum power allocation and number of symbols allocated to the pilot are developed with respect to maximizing the information rate. The optimal signal bandwidth to be used for UWB communications is determined in the presence of imperfect channel state information. The number of multipath components to be collected by Rake receivers is designed to optimize performance with non-ideal channel estimation

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

Ultra Wideband

Ultra wideband (UWB) has advanced and merged as a technology, and many more people are aware of the potential for this exciting technology. The current UWB field is changing rapidly with new techniques and ideas where several issues are involved in developing the systems. Among UWB system design, the UWB RF transceiver and UWB antenna are the key components. Recently, a considerable amount of researches has been devoted to the development of the UWB RF transceiver and antenna for its enabling high data transmission rates and low power consumption. Our book attempts to present current and emerging trends in-research and development of UWB systems as well as future expectations

An Assessment of Indoor Geolocation Systems

Currently there is a need to design, develop, and deploy autonomous and portable indoor geolocation systems to fulfil the needs of military, civilian, governmental and commercial customers where GPS and GLONASS signals are not available due to the limitations of both GPS and GLONASS signal structure designs. The goal of this dissertation is (1) to introduce geolocation systems; (2) to classify the state of the art geolocation systems; (3) to identify the issues with the state of the art indoor geolocation systems; and (4) to propose and assess four WPI indoor geolocation systems. It is assessed that the current GPS and GLONASS signal structures are inadequate to overcome two main design concerns; namely, (1) the near-far effect and (2) the multipath effect. We propose four WPI indoor geolocation systems as an alternative solution to near-far and multipath effects. The WPI indoor geolocation systems are (1) a DSSS/CDMA indoor geolocation system, (2) a DSSS/CDMA/FDMA indoor geolocation system, (3) a DSSS/OFDM/CDMA/FDMA indoor geolocation system, and (4) an OFDM/FDMA indoor geolocation system. Each system is researched, discussed, and analyzed based on its principle of operation, its transmitter, the indoor channel, and its receiver design and issues associated with obtaining an observable to achieve indoor navigation. Our assessment of these systems concludes the following. First, a DSSS/CDMA indoor geolocation system is inadequate to neither overcome the near-far effect not mitigate cross-channel interference due to the multipath. Second, a DSSS/CDMA/FDMA indoor geolocation system is a potential candidate for indoor positioning, with data rate up to 3.2 KBPS, pseudorange error, less than to 2 m and phase error less than 5 mm. Third, a DSSS/OFDM/CDMA/FDMA indoor geolocation system is a potential candidate to achieve similar or better navigation accuracy than a DSSS/CDMA indoor geolocation system and data rate up to 5 MBPS. Fourth, an OFDM/FDMA indoor geolocation system is another potential candidate with a totally different signal structure than the pervious three WPI indoor geolocation systems, but with similar pseudorange error performance

Coping with spectrum and energy scarcity in Wireless Networks: a Stochastic Optimization approach to Cognitive Radio and Energy Harvesting

In the last decades, we have witnessed an explosion of wireless communications and networking, spurring a great interest in the research community. The design of wireless networks is challenged by the scarcity of resources, especially spectrum and energy. In this thesis, we explore the potential offered by two novel technologies to cope with spectrum and energy scarcity: Cognitive Radio (CR) and Energy Harvesting (EH). CR is a novel paradigm for improving the spectral efficiency in wireless networks, by enabling the coexistence of an incumbent legacy system and an opportunistic system with CR capability. We investigate a technique where the CR system exploits the temporal redundancy introduced by the Hybrid Automatic Retransmission reQuest (HARQ) protocol implemented by the legacy system to perform interference cancellation, thus enhancing its own throughput. Recently, EH has been proposed to cope with energy scarcity in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Devices with EH capability harvest energy from the environment, e.g., solar, wind, heat or piezo-electric, to power their circuitry and to perform data sensing, processing and communication tasks. Due to the random energy supply, how to best manage the available energy is an open research issue. In the second part of this thesis, we design control policies for EH devices, and investigate the impact of factors such as the finite battery storage, time-correlation in the EH process and battery degradation phenomena on the performance of such systems. We cast both paradigms in a stochastic optimization framework, and investigate techniques to cope with spectrum and energy scarcity by opportunistically leveraging interference and ambient energy, respectively, whose benefits are demonstrated both by theoretical analysis and numerically. As an additional topic, we investigate the issue of channel estimation in UltraWide-Band (UWB) systems. Due to the large transmission bandwidth, the channel has been typically modeled as sparse. However, some propagation phenomena, e.g., scattering from rough surfaces and frequency distortion, are better modeled by a diffuse channel. We propose a novel Hybrid Sparse/Diffuse (HSD) channel model which captures both components, and design channel estimators based on it

Intelligent genetic algorithms for next-generation broadband multi-carrier CDMA wireless networks

This thesis was submitted for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy and awarded by Brunel University.This dissertation proposes a novel intelligent system architecture for next-generation broadband multi-carrier CDMA wireless networks. In our system, two novel and similar intelligent genetic algorithms, namely Minimum Distance guided GAs (MDGAs) are invented for both peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) reduction at the transmitter side and multi-user detection (MUD) at the receiver side. Meanwhile, we derive a theoretical BER performance analysis for the proposed MC-CDMA system in A WGN channel. Our analytical results show that the theoretical BER performance of synchronized MC-CDMA system is the same as that of the synchronized DS-CDMA system which is also used as a theoretical guidance of our novel MUD receiver design. In contrast to traditional GAs, our MDGAs start with a balanced ratio of exploration and exploitation which is maintained throughout the process. In our algorithms, a new replacement strategy is designed which increases significantly the convergence rate and reduces dramatically computational complexity as compared to the conventional GAs. The simulation results demonstrate that, if compared to those schemes using exhaustive search and traditional GAs, (1) our MDGA-based P APR reduction scheme achieves 99.52% and 50+% reductions in computational complexity, respectively; (2) our MDGA-based MUD scheme achieves 99.54% and 50+% reductions in computational complexity, respectively. The use of one core MDGA solution for both issues can ease the hardware design and dramatically reduce the implementation cost in practice

Design of tch-type sequences for communications

This thesis deals with the design of a class of cyclic codes inspired by TCH codewords. Since TCH codes are linked to finite fields the fundamental concepts and facts about abstract algebra, namely group theory and number theory, constitute the first part of the thesis. By exploring group geometric properties and identifying an equivalence between some operations on codes and the symmetries of the dihedral group we were able to simplify the generation of codewords thus saving on the necessary number of computations. Moreover, we also presented an algebraic method to obtain binary generalized TCH codewords of length N = 2k, k = 1,2, . . . , 16. By exploring Zech logarithm’s properties as well as a group theoretic isomorphism we developed a method that is both faster and less complex than what was proposed before. In addition, it is valid for all relevant cases relating the codeword length N and not only those resulting from N = p

Ultra Low Power Communication Protocols for UWB Impulse Radio Wireless Sensor Networks

This thesis evaluates the potential of Ultra Wideband Impulse Radio for wireless sensor network applications. Wireless sensor networks are collections of small electronic devices composed of one or more sensors to acquire information on their environment, an energy source (typically a battery), a microcontroller to control the measurements, process the information and communicate with its peers, and a radio transceiver to enable these communications. They are used to regularly collect information within their deployment area, often for very long periods of time (up to several years). The large number of devices often considered, as well as the long deployment durations, makes any manual intervention complex and costly. Therefore, these networks must self-configure, and automatically adapt to changes in their electromagnetic environment (channel variations, interferers) and network topology modifications: some nodes may run out of energy, or suffer from a hardware failure. Ultra Wideband Impulse Radio is a novel wireless technology that, thanks to its extremely large bandwidth, is more robust to frequency dependent propagation effects. Its impulsional nature makes it robust to multipath fading, as the short duration of the pulses leads most multipath components to arrive isolated. This technology should also enable high precision ranging through time of flight measurements, and operate at ultra low power levels. The main challenge is to design a system that reaches the same or higher degree of energy savings as existing narrowband systems considering all the protocol layers. As these radios are not yet widely available, the first part of this thesis presents Maximum Pulse Amplitude Estimation, a novel approach to symbol-level modeling of UWB-IR systems that enabled us to implement the first network simulator of devices compatible with the UWB physical layer of the IEEE 802.15.4A standard for wireless sensor networks. In the second part of this thesis, WideMac, a novel ultra low power MAC protocol specifically designed for UWB-IR devices is presented. It uses asynchronous duty cycling of the radio transceiver to minimize the power consumption, combined with periodic beacon emissions so that devices can learn each other's wake-up patterns and exchange packets. After an analytical study of the protocol, the network simulation tool presented in the first part of the thesis is used to evaluate the performance of WideMac in a medical body area network application. It is compared to two narrowband and an FM-UWB solutions. The protocol stack parameters are optimized for each solution, and it is observed that WideMac combined to UWB-IR is a credible technology for such applications. Similar simulations, considering this time a static multi-hop network are performed. It is found that WideMac and UWB-IR perform as well as a mature and highly optimized narrowband solution (based on the WiseMAC ULP MAC protocol), despite the lack of clear channel assessment functionality on the UWB radio. The last part of this thesis studies analytically a dual mode MAC protocol named WideMac-High Availability. It combines the Ultra Low PowerWideMac with the higher performance Aloha protocol, so that ultra low power consumption and hence long deployment times can be combined with high performance low latency communications when required by the application. The potential of this scheme is quantified, and it is proposed to adapt it to narrowband radio transceivers by combining WiseMAC and CSMA under the name WiseMAC-HA