Study on the application of NOMA techniques for heterogeneous satellite terminals

This paper addresses the application of nonorthogonal multiple-access techniques (NOMA) to those satellite relayed communications for which a significant imbalance in the link quality of user terminals can be expected. The Signal-to-Interference and Noise Ratio (SINR) imbalance could be caused by the coexistence of different types of terminals, possibly with different antenna sizes, and offering different classes of service. This link SINR asymmetry can be exploited to outperform orthogonal access schemes under different rate metrics, paying special attention to fairness in the service provision. Both forward and asynchronous return link are addressed, with minimum signaling information and emphasis on some relevant implementation issues such as framing and synchronization

A collaborative P2P Scheme for NAT Traversal Server discovery based on topological information

In the current Internet picture more than 70% of the hosts are located behind Network Address Translators (NATs). This is not a problem for the client/server paradigm. However, the Internet has evolved, and nowadays the largest portion of the traffic is due to peer-to-peer (p2p) applications. This scenario presents an important challenge: two hosts behind NATs (NATed hosts) cannot establish direct communications. The easiest way to solve this problem is by using a third entity, called Relay, that forwards the traffic between the NATed hosts. Although many efforts have been devoted to avoid the use of Relays, they are still needed in many situations. Hence, the selection of a suitable Relay becomes critical to many p2p applications. In this paper, we propose the Gradual Proximity Algorithm (GPA): a simple algorithm that guarantees the selection of a topologically close-by Relay. We present a measurement-based analysis, showing that the GPA minimizes both the delay of the relayed communication and the transit traffic generated by the Relay, being a QoS-aware and ISP-friendly solution. Furthermore, the paper presents the Peer-to-Peer NAT Traversal Architecture (P2P-NTA), which is a global, distributed and collaborative solution, based on the GPA. This architecture addresses the Relay discovery/selection problem. We have performed large-scale simulations based on real measurements, which validate our proposal. The results demonstrate that the P2P-NTA performs similarly to direct communications with reasonably large deployments of p2p applications. In fact, only 5% of the communications experience an extra delay that may degrade the QoS due to the use of Relays. Furthermore, the amount of extra transit traffic generated is only 6%. We also show that the P2P-NTA largely outperforms other proposals, where the QoS degradation affects up to more than 50% of the communications, and the extra traffic generated goes beyond 80%.This work has been partially funded by the Grants MEDIANET (S2009/TIC-1466) from the Regional Government of Madrid and CON-PARTE (TEC2007-67966-C03- 03) by the Ministry of Science and Innovation of Spain.Publicad

The Distribution of Minimum of Ratios of Two Random Variables and Its Application in Analysis of Multi-hop Systems

The distributions of random variables are of interest in many areas of science. In this paper, ascertaining on the importance of multi-hop transmission in contemporary wireless communications systems operating over fading channels in the presence of cochannel interference, the probability density functions (PDFs) of minimum of arbitrary number of ratios of Rayleigh, Rician, Nakagami-m, Weibull and α-µ random variables are derived. These expressions can be used to study the outage probability as an important multi-hop system performance measure. Various numerical results complement the proposed mathematical analysis

Level Crossing Rate and Average Fade Duration of the Multihop Rayleigh Fading Channel

We present a novel analytical framework for the evaluation of important second order statistical parameters, as the level crossing rate (LCR) and the average fade duration (AFD) of the amplify-and-forward multihop Rayleigh fading channel. More specifically, motivated by the fact that this channel is a cascaded one, which can be modelled as the product of N fading amplitudes, we derive novel analytical expressions for the average LCR and AFD of the product of N Rayleigh fading envelopes, or of the recently so-called N*Rayleigh channel. Furthermore, we derive simple and efficient closed-form approximations to the aforementioned parameters, using the multivariate Laplace approximation theorem. It is shown that our general results reduce to the specific dual-hop case, previously published. Numerical and computer simulation examples verify the accuracy of the presented mathematical analysis and show the tightness of the proposed approximations

On orbit validation of solar sailing control laws with thin-film spacecraft

Many innovative approaches to solar sail mission and trajectory design have been proposed over the years, but very few ever have the opportunity to be validated on orbit with real spacecraft. Thin- Film Spacecraft/Lander/Rovers (TF-SL Rs) are a new class of very low cost, low mass space vehicle which are ideal for inexpensively and quickly testing in flight new approaches to solar sailing. This paper describes using TF- SLR based micro solar sails to implement a generic solar sail test bed on orbit. TF -SLRs are high area- to-mass ratio (A/m) spacecraft developed for very low cost consumer and scientific deep space missions. Typically based on a 5 μm or thinner metalised substrate, they include an integrated avionics and payload system -on-chip (SoC) die bonded to the substrate with passive components and solar cells printed or deposited by Metal Organic Chemical Vapour Deposition (MOCVD). The avionics include UHF/S- band transceivers, processors, storage, sensors and attitude control provided by integrated magnetorquers and reflectivity control devices. Resulting spacecraft have a typical thickness of less than 50 μm, are 80 mm in diameter, and have a mass of less than 100 mg resulting in sail loads of less than 20 g/m 2 . TF -SLRs are currently designed for direct dispensing in swarms from free flying 0.5U Interplanetary CubeSats or dispensers attached to launch vehicles. Larger 160 mm, 320 mm and 640 mm diameter TF -SLRs utilizing a CubeSat compatible TWIST deployment mechanism that maintains the high A/m ratio are also under development. We are developing a mission to demonstrate the utility of these devices as a test bed for experimenting with a variety of mission designs and control laws. Batches of up to one hundred TF- SLRs will be released on earth escape trajectories, with each batch executing a heterogeneous or homogenous mixture of control laws and experiments. Up to four releases at different points in orbit are currently envisaged with experiments currently being studied in MATLAB and GMA T including managing the rate of separation of individual spacecraft, station keeping and single deployment/substantially divergent trajectory development. It is also hoped to be able to demonstrate uploading new experiment designs while in orbit and to make this capability available to researchers around the world. A suitable earth escape mission is currently being sought and it is hoped the test bed could be on orbit in 2017/18

On Amplify-and-Forward Relaying Over Hyper-Rayleigh Fading Channels

Relayed transmission holds promise for the next generation of wireless communication systems due to the performance gains it can provide over non-cooperative systems. Recently hyper-Rayleigh fading, which represents fading conditions more severe than Rayleigh fading, has received attention in the context of many practical communication scenarios. Though power allocation for Amplify-and-Forward (AF) relaying networks has been studied in the literature, a theoretical analysis of the power allocation problem for hyper-Rayleigh fading channels is a novel contribution of this work. We develop an optimal power allocation (OPA) strategy for a dual-hop AF relaying network in which the relay-destination link experiences hyper-Rayleigh fading. A new closed-form expression for the average signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at destination is derived and it is shown to provide a new upper-bound on the average SNR at destination, which outperforms a previously proposed upper-bound based on the well-known harmonic-geometric mean inequality. An OPA across the source and relay nodes, subject to a sum-power constraint, is proposed and it is shown to provide measurable performance gains in average SNR and SNR outage at the destination relative to the case of equal power allocation

Media streams allocation and load patterns for a WebRTC cloud architecture

Web Real-Time Communication (WebRTC) is seeing a rapid rise in adoption footprint. This standard provides an audio/video platform-agnostic communications framework for the Web build-in right in the browser. The complex technology stack of a full implementation of the standard is vast and includes elements of various computational disciplines like: content delivery, audio/video processing, media transport and quality of experience control, for both P2P and Cloud relayed communications. To the best of our knowledge, no previous study examines the impact of Cloud back-end load and media quality at production scale for a media stream processing application, as well as load mitigation for Cloud media Selective Forwarding Units. The contribution of this work is the analysis and exploitation of server workload (predictable session size, strong periodical load patterns) and media bit rate patterns that are derived from real user traffic (toward our test environment), over an extended period of time. Additionally, a simple and effective load balancing scheme is discussed to fairly distribute big sessions over multiple servers by exploiting the discovered patterns of stable session sizes and server load predictability. A Cloud simulation environment was built to compare the performance of the algorithm with other load allocation policies. This work is a basis for more advanced resource allocation algorithms and media Service Level Objectives (SLO) spanning multiple Cloud entities.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft