3,443 research outputs found
Low-Latency Short-Packet Transmissions: Fixed Length or HARQ?
We study short-packet communications, subject to latency and reliability
constraints, under the premises of limited frequency diversity and no time
diversity. The question addressed is whether, and when, hybrid automatic repeat
request (HARQ) outperforms fixed-blocklength schemes with no feedback (FBL-NF)
in such a setting. We derive an achievability bound for HARQ, under the
assumption of a limited number of transmissions. The bound relies on
pilot-assisted transmission to estimate the fading channel and scaled
nearest-neighbor decoding at the receiver. We compare our achievability bound
for HARQ to stateof-the-art achievability bounds for FBL-NF communications and
show that for a given latency, reliability, number of information bits, and
number of diversity branches, HARQ may significantly outperform FBL-NF. For
example, for an average latency of 1 ms, a target error probability of 10^-3,
30 information bits, and 3 diversity branches, the gain in energy per bit is
about 4 dB.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures, accepted to GLOBECOM 201
Feedback Communication Systems with Limitations on Incremental Redundancy
This paper explores feedback systems using incremental redundancy (IR) with
noiseless transmitter confirmation (NTC). For IR-NTC systems based on {\em
finite-length} codes (with blocklength ) and decoding attempts only at {\em
certain specified decoding times}, this paper presents the asymptotic expansion
achieved by random coding, provides rate-compatible sphere-packing (RCSP)
performance approximations, and presents simulation results of tail-biting
convolutional codes.
The information-theoretic analysis shows that values of relatively close
to the expected latency yield the same random-coding achievability expansion as
with . However, the penalty introduced in the expansion by limiting
decoding times is linear in the interval between decoding times. For binary
symmetric channels, the RCSP approximation provides an efficiently-computed
approximation of performance that shows excellent agreement with a family of
rate-compatible, tail-biting convolutional codes in the short-latency regime.
For the additive white Gaussian noise channel, bounded-distance decoding
simplifies the computation of the marginal RCSP approximation and produces
similar results as analysis based on maximum-likelihood decoding for latencies
greater than 200. The efficiency of the marginal RCSP approximation facilitates
optimization of the lengths of incremental transmissions when the number of
incremental transmissions is constrained to be small or the length of the
incremental transmissions is constrained to be uniform after the first
transmission. Finally, an RCSP-based decoding error trajectory is introduced
that provides target error rates for the design of rate-compatible code
families for use in feedback communication systems.Comment: 23 pages, 15 figure
Short Packet Structure for Ultra-Reliable Machine-type Communication: Tradeoff between Detection and Decoding
Machine-type communication requires rethinking of the structure of short
packets due to the coding limitations and the significant role of the control
information. In ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC), it is crucial
to optimally use the limited degrees of freedom (DoFs) to send data and control
information. We consider a URLLC model for short packet transmission with
acknowledgement (ACK). We compare the detection/decoding performance of two
short packet structures: (1) time-multiplexed detection sequence and data; and
(2) structure in which both packet detection and data decoding use all DoFs.
Specifically, as an instance of the second structure we use superimposed
sequences for detection and data. We derive the probabilities of false alarm
and misdetection for an AWGN channel and numerically minimize the packet error
probability (PER), showing that for delay-constrained data and ACK exchange,
there is a tradeoff between the resources spent for detection and decoding. We
show that the optimal PER for the superimposed structure is achieved for higher
detection overhead. For this reason, the PER is also higher than in the
preamble case. However, the superimposed structure is advantageous due to its
flexibility to achieve optimal operation without the need to use multiple
codebooks.Comment: Accepted at ICASSP 2018, special session on "Signal Processing for
Machine-Type Communications
Reliable Transmission of Short Packets through Queues and Noisy Channels under Latency and Peak-Age Violation Guarantees
This work investigates the probability that the delay and the peak-age of
information exceed a desired threshold in a point-to-point communication system
with short information packets. The packets are generated according to a
stationary memoryless Bernoulli process, placed in a single-server queue and
then transmitted over a wireless channel. A variable-length stop-feedback
coding scheme---a general strategy that encompasses simple automatic repetition
request (ARQ) and more sophisticated hybrid ARQ techniques as special
cases---is used by the transmitter to convey the information packets to the
receiver. By leveraging finite-blocklength results, the delay violation and the
peak-age violation probabilities are characterized without resorting to
approximations based on large-deviation theory as in previous literature.
Numerical results illuminate the dependence of delay and peak-age violation
probability on system parameters such as the frame size and the undetected
error probability, and on the chosen packet-management policy. The guidelines
provided by our analysis are particularly useful for the design of low-latency
ultra-reliable communication systems.Comment: To appear in IEEE journal on selected areas of communication (IEEE
JSAC
Coded Computation Against Processing Delays for Virtualized Cloud-Based Channel Decoding
The uplink of a cloud radio access network architecture is studied in which
decoding at the cloud takes place via network function virtualization on
commercial off-the-shelf servers. In order to mitigate the impact of straggling
decoders in this platform, a novel coding strategy is proposed, whereby the
cloud re-encodes the received frames via a linear code before distributing them
to the decoding processors. Transmission of a single frame is considered first,
and upper bounds on the resulting frame unavailability probability as a
function of the decoding latency are derived by assuming a binary symmetric
channel for uplink communications. Then, the analysis is extended to account
for random frame arrival times. In this case, the trade-off between average
decoding latency and the frame error rate is studied for two different queuing
policies, whereby the servers carry out per-frame decoding or continuous
decoding, respectively. Numerical examples demonstrate that the bounds are
useful tools for code design and that coding is instrumental in obtaining a
desirable compromise between decoding latency and reliability.Comment: 11 pages and 12 figures, Submitte
Ultra-Reliable Short-Packet Communications: Fundamental Limits and Enabling Technologies
The paradigm shift from 4G to 5G communications, anticipated to enable ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC), will enforce a radical change in the design of wireless communication systems. Unlike in 4G systems, where the main objective is to provide a large transmission rate, in URLLC, as implied by its name, the objective is to enable transmissions with low latency and, simultaneously, very high reliability. Since low latency implies the use of short data packets, the tension between blocklength and reliability is studied in URLLC.Several key enablers for URLLC communications have been designated in the literature. Of special importance are diversity-enabling technologies such as multiantenna systems and feedback protocols. Furthermore, it is not only important to introduce additional diversity by means of the above examples, one must also guarantee that thescarce number of channel uses are used in an optimal way. Therefore, it is imperative to develop design guidelines for how to enable reliable detection of incoming data, how to acquire channel-state information, and how to construct efficient short-packet channel codes. The development of such guidelines is at the heart of this thesis. This thesis focuses on the fundamental performance of URLLC-enabling technologies. Specifically, we provide converse (upper) bounds and achievability (lower) bounds on the maximum coding rate, based on finite-blocklength information theory, for systems that employ the key enablers outlined above. With focus on the wireless channel, modeled via a block-fading assumption, we are able to provide answers to questions like: howto optimally utilize spatial and frequency diversity, how far from optimal short-packet channel codes perform, how multiantenna systems should be designed to serve a given number of users, and how to design feedback schemes when the feedback link is noisy. In particular, this thesis is comprised out of four papers. In Paper A, we study the short-packet performance over the Rician block-fading channel. In particular, we present achievability bounds for pilot-assisted transmission with several different decoders that allow us to quantify the impact, on the achievable performance, of imposed pilots and mismatched decoding. Furthermore, we design short-packet channel codes that perform within 1 dB of our achievability bounds. Paper B studies multiuser massive multiple-input multiple-output systems with short packets. We provide an achievability bound on the average error probability over quasistatic spatially correlated Rayleigh-fading channels. The bound applies to arbitrary multiuser settings, pilot-assisted transmission, and mismatched decoding. This makes it suitable to assess the performance in the uplink/downlink for arbitrary linear signal processing. We show that several lessons learned from infinite-blocklength analyses carry over to the finite-blocklength regime. Furthermore, for the multicell setting with randomly placed users, pilot contamination should be avoided at all cost and minimum mean-squared error signal processing should be used to comply with the stringent requirements of URLLC.In Paper C, we consider sporadic transmissions where the task of the receiver is to both detect and decode an incoming packet. Two novel achievability bounds, and a novel converse bound are presented for joint detection-decoding strategies. It is shown that errors associated with detection deteriorates performance significantly for very short packet sizes. Numerical results also indicate that separate detection-decoding strategies are strictly suboptimal over block-fading channels.Finally, in Paper D, variable-length codes with noisy stop-feedback are studied via a novel achievability bound on the average service time and the average error probability. We use the bound to shed light on the resource allocation problem between the forward and the feedback channel. For URLLC applications, it is shown that enough resources must be assigned to the feedback link such that a NACK-to-ACK error becomes rarer than the target error probability. Furthermore, we illustrate that the variable-length stop-feedback scheme outperforms state-of-the-art fixed-length no-feedback bounds even when the stop-feedback bit is noisy
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