Resource Management in Multicarrier Based Cognitive Radio Systems

The ever-increasing growth of the wireless application and services affirms the importance of the effective usage of the limited radio spectrum. Existing spectrum management policies have led to significant spectrum under-utilization. Recent measurements showed that large range of the spectrum is sparsely used in both temporal and spatial manner. This conflict between the inefficient usage of the spectrum and the continuous evolution in the wireless communication calls upon the development of more flexible management policies. Cognitive radio (CR) with the dynamic spectrum access (DSA) is considered to be a key technology in making the best solution of this conflict by allowing a group of secondary users (SUs) to share the radio spectrum originally allocated to the primary user (PUs). The operation of CR should not negatively alter the performance of the PUs. Therefore, the interference control along with the highly dynamic nature of PUs activities open up new resource allocation problems in CR systems. The resource allocation algorithms should ensure an effective share of the temporarily available frequency bands and deliver the solutions in timely fashion to cope with quick changes in the network. In this dissertation, the resource management problem in multicarrier based CR systems is considered. The dissertation focuses on three main issues: 1) design of efficient resource allocation algorithms to allocate subcarriers and powers between SUs such that no harmful interference is introduced to PUs, 2) compare the spectral efficiency of using different multicarrier schemes in the CR physical layer, specifically, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and filter bank multicarrier (FBMC) schemes, 3) investigate the impact of the different constraints values on the overall performance of the CR system. Three different scenarios are considered in this dissertation, namely downlink transmission, uplink transmission, and relayed transmission. For every scenario, the optimal solution is examined and efficient sub-optimal algorithms are proposed to reduce the computational burden of obtaining the optimal solution. The suboptimal algorithms are developed by separate the subcarrier and power allocation into two steps in downlink and uplink scenarios. In the relayed scenario, dual decomposition technique is used to obtain an asymptotically optimal solution, and a joint heuristic algorithm is proposed to find the suboptimal solution. Numerical simulations show that the proposed suboptimal algorithms achieve a near optimal performance and perform better than the existing algorithms designed for cognitive and non-cognitive systems. Eventually, the ability of FBMC to overcome the OFDM drawbacks and achieve more spectral efficiency is verified which recommends the consideration of FBMC in the future CR systems.El crecimiento continuo de las aplicaciones y servicios en sistemas inal´ambricos, indica la importancia y necesidad de una utilizaci´on eficaz del espectro radio. Las pol´ıticas actuales de gesti´on del espectro han conducido a una infrautilizaci´on del propio espectro radioel´ectrico. Recientes mediciones en diferentes entornos han mostrado que gran parte del espectro queda poco utilizado en sus ambas vertientes, la temporal, y la espacial. El permanente conflicto entre el uso ineficiente del espectro y la evoluci´on continua de los sistemas de comunicaci´on inal´ambrica, hace que sea urgente y necesario el desarrollo de esquemas de gesti´on del espectro m´as flexibles. Se considera el acceso din´amico (DSA) al espectro en los sistemas cognitivos como una tecnolog´ıa clave para resolver este conflicto al permitir que un grupo de usuarios secundarios (SUs) puedan compartir y acceder al espectro asignado inicialmente a uno o varios usuarios primarios (PUs). Las operaciones de comunicaci´on llevadas a cabo por los sistemas radio cognitivos no deben en ning´un caso alterar (interferir) los sistemas primarios. Por tanto, el control de la interferencia junto al gran dinamismo de los sistemas primarios implica nuevos retos en el control y asignaci´on de los recursos radio en los sistemas de comunicaci´on CR. Los algoritmos de gesti´on y asignaci´on de recursos (Radio Resource Management-RRM) deben garantizar una participaci´on efectiva de las bandas con frecuencias disponibles temporalmente, y ofrecer en cada momento oportunas soluciones para hacer frente a los distintos cambios r´apidos que influyen en la misma red. En esta tesis doctoral, se analiza el problema de la gesti´on de los recursos radio en sistemas multiportadoras CR, proponiendo varias soluciones para su uso eficaz y coexistencia con los PUs. La tesis en s´ı, se centra en tres l´ıneas principales: 1) el dise˜no de algoritmos eficientes de gesti´on de recursos para la asignaci´on de sub-portadoras y distribuci´on de la potencia en sistemas segundarios, evitando asi cualquier interferencia que pueda ser perjudicial para el funcionamiento normal de los usuarios de la red primaria, 2) analizar y comparar la eficiencia espectral alcanzada a la hora de utilizar diferentes esquema de transmisi´on multiportadora en la capa f´ısica del sistema CR, espec´ıficamente en sistemas basados en OFDM y los basados en banco de filtros multiportadoras (Filter bank Multicarrier-FBMC), 3) investigar el impacto de las diferentes limitaciones en el rendimiento total del sistema de CR. Los escenarios considerados en esta tesis son tres, es decir; modo de transmisi´on descendente (downlink), modo de transmisi´on ascendente (uplink), y el modo de transmisi´on ”Relay”. En cada escenario, la soluci´on ´optima es examinada y comparada con algoritmos sub- ´optimos que tienen como objetivo principal reducir la carga computacional. Los algoritmos sub-´optimos son llevados a cabo en dos fases mediante la separaci´on del propio proceso de distribuci´on de subportadoras y la asignaci´on de la potencia en los modos de comunicaci´on descendente (downlink), y ascendente (uplink). Para los entornos de tipo ”Relay”, se ha utilizado la t´ecnica de doble descomposici´on (dual decomposition) para obtener una soluci´on asint´oticamente ´optima. Adem´as, se ha desarrollado un algoritmo heur´ıstico para poder obtener la soluci´on ´optima con un reducido coste computacional. Los resultados obtenidos mediante simulaciones num´ericas muestran que los algoritmos sub-´optimos desarrollados logran acercarse a la soluci´on ´optima en cada uno de los entornos analizados, logrando as´ı un mayor rendimiento que los ya existentes y utilizados tanto en entornos cognitivos como no-cognitivos. Se puede comprobar en varios resultados obtenidos en la tesis la superioridad del esquema multiportadora FBMC sobre los sistemas basados en OFDM para los entornos cognitivos, causando una menor interferencia que el OFDM en los sistemas primarios, y logrando una mayor eficiencia espectral. Finalmente, en base a lo analizado en esta tesis, podemos recomendar al esquema multiportadora FBMC como una id´onea y potente forma de comunicaci´on para las futuras redes cognitivas

Low-Complexity Multicarrier Waveform Processing Schemes fo Future Wireless Communications

Wireless communication systems deliver enormous variety of services and applications. Nowa- days, wireless communications play a key-role in many fields, such as industry, social life, education, and home automation. The growing demand for wireless services and applications has motivated the development of the next generation cellular radio access technology called fifth-generation new radio (5G-NR). The future networks are required to magnify the delivered user data rates to gigabits per second, reduce the communication latency below 1 ms, and en- able communications for massive number of simple devices. Those main features of the future networks come with new demands for the wireless communication systems, such as enhancing the efficiency of the radio spectrum use at below 6 GHz frequency bands, while supporting various services with quite different requirements for the waveform related key parameters. The current wireless systems lack the capabilities to handle those requirements. For exam- ple, the long-term evolution (LTE) employs the cyclic-prefix orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (CP-OFDM) waveform, which has critical drawbacks in the 5G-NR context. The basic drawback of CP-OFDM waveform is the lack of spectral localization. Therefore, spectrally enhanced variants of CP-OFDM or other multicarrier waveforms with well localized spectrum should be considered. This thesis investigates spectrally enhanced CP-OFDM (E-OFDM) schemes to suppress the out-of-band (OOB) emissions, which are normally produced by CP-OFDM. Commonly, the weighted overlap-and-add (WOLA) scheme applies smooth time-domain window on the CP- OFDM waveform, providing spectrally enhanced subcarriers and reducing the OOB emissions with very low additional computational complexity. Nevertheless, the suppression perfor- mance of WOLA-OFDM is not sufficient near the active subband. Another technique is based on filtering the CP-OFDM waveform, which is referred to as F-OFDM. F-OFDM is able to provide well-localized spectrum, however, with significant increase in the computational com- plexity in the basic scheme with time-domain filters. Also filter-bank multicarrier (FBMC) waveforms are included in this study. FBMC has been widely studied as a potential post- OFDM scheme with nearly ideal subcarrier spectrum localization. However, this scheme has quite high computational complexity while being limited to uniformly distributed sub- bands. Anyway, filter-bank based waveform processing is one of the main topics of this work. Instead of traditional polyphase network (PPN) based uniform filter banks, the focus is on fast-convolution filter banks (FC-FBs), which utilize fast Fourier transform (FFT) domain processing to realize effectively filter-banks with high flexibility in terms of subcarrier bandwidths and center frequencies. FC-FBs are applied for both FBMC and F-OFDM waveform genera- tion and processing with greatly increased flexibility and significantly reduced computational complexity. This study proposes novel structures for FC-FB processing based on decomposition of the FC-FB structure consisting of forward and inverse discrete Fourier transforms (DFT and IDFT). The decomposition of multirate FC provides means of reducing the computational complexity in some important specific scenarios. A generic FC decomposition model is proposed and analyzed. This scheme is mathematically equivalent to the corresponding direct FC imple- mentation, with exactly the same performance. The benefits of the optimized decomposition structure appear mainly in communication scenarios with relatively narrow active transmis- sion band, resulting in significantly reduced computational complexity compared to the direct FC structure. The narrowband scenarios find their places in the recent 3GPP specification of cellular low- power wide-area (LPWA) access technology called narrowband internet-of-things (NB-IoT). NB-IoT aims at introducing the IoT to LTE and GSM frequency bands in coexistence with those technologies. NB-IoT uses CP-OFDM based waveforms with parameters compatible with the LTE. However, additional means are needed also for NB-IoT transmitters to improve the spec- trum localization. For NB-IoT user devices, it is important to consider ultra-low complexity solutions, and a look-up table (LUT) based approach is proposed to implement NB-IoT uplink transmitters with filtered waveforms. This approach provides completely multiplication-free digital baseband implementations and the addition rates are similar or smaller than in the basic NB-IoT waveform generation without the needed elements for spectrum enhancement. The basic idea includes storing full or partial waveforms for all possible data symbol combinations. Then the transmitted waveform is composed through summation of needed stored partial waveforms and trivial phase rotations. The LUT based scheme is developed with different vari- ants tackling practical implementations issues of NB-IoT device transmitters, considering also the effects of nonlinear power amplifier. Moreover, a completely multiplication and addition- free LUT variant is proposed and found to be feasible for very narrowband transmission, with up to 3 subcarriers. The finite-wordlength performance of LUT variants is evaluated through simulations

Unified Framework for Multicarrier and Multiple Access based on Generalized Frequency Division Multiplexing

The advancements in wireless communications are the key-enablers of new applications with stringent requirements in low-latency, ultra-reliability, high data rate, high mobility, and massive connectivity. Diverse types of devices, ranging from tiny sensors to vehicles, with different capabilities need to be connected under various channel conditions. Thus, modern connectivity and network techniques at all layers are essential to overcome these challenges. In particular, the physical layer (PHY) transmission is required to achieve certain link reliability, data rate, and latency. In modern digital communications systems, the transmission is performed by means of a digital signal processing module that derives analog hardware. The performance of the analog part is influenced by the quality of the hardware and the baseband signal denoted as waveform. In most of the modern systems such as fifth generation (5G) and WiFi, orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is adopted as a favorite waveform due to its low-complexity advantages in terms of signal processing. However, OFDM requires strict requirements on hardware quality. Many devices are equipped with simplified analog hardware to reduce the cost. In this case, OFDM does not work properly as a result of its high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) and sensitivity to synchronization errors. To tackle these problems, many waveforms design have been recently proposed in the literature. Some of these designs are modified versions of OFDM or based on conventional single subcarrier. Moreover, multicarrier frameworks, such as generalized frequency division multiplexing (GFDM), have been proposed to realize varieties of conventional waveforms. Furthermore, recent studies show the potential of using non-conventional waveforms for increasing the link reliability with affordable complexity. Based on that, flexible waveforms and transmission techniques are necessary to adapt the system for different hardware and channel constraints in order to fulfill the applications requirements while optimizing the resources. The objective of this thesis is to provide a holistic view of waveforms and the related multiple access (MA) techniques to enable efficient study and evaluation of different approaches. First, the wireless communications system is reviewed with specific focus on the impact of hardware impairments and the wireless channel on the waveform design. Then, generalized model of waveforms and MA are presented highlighting various special cases. Finally, this work introduces low-complexity architectures for hardware implementation of flexible waveforms. Integrating such designs with software-defined radio (SDR) contributes to the development of practical real-time flexible PHY.:1 Introduction 1.1 Baseband transmission model 1.2 History of multicarrier systems 1.3 The state-of-the-art waveforms 1.4 Prior works related to GFDM 1.5 Objective and contributions 2 Fundamentals of Wireless Communications 2.1 Wireless communications system 2.2 RF transceiver 2.2.1 Digital-analogue conversion 2.2.2 QAM modulation 2.2.3 Effective channel 2.2.4 Hardware impairments 2.3 Waveform aspects 2.3.1 Single-carrier waveform 2.3.2 Multicarrier waveform 2.3.3 MIMO-Waveforms 2.3.4 Waveform performance metrics 2.4 Wireless Channel 2.4.1 Line-of-sight propagation 2.4.2 Multi path and fading process 2.4.3 General baseband statistical channel model 2.4.4 MIMO channel 2.5 Summary 3 Generic Block-based Waveforms 3.1 Block-based waveform formulation 3.1.1 Variable-rate multicarrier 3.1.2 General block-based multicarrier model 3.2 Waveform processing techniques 3.2.1 Linear and circular filtering 3.2.2 Windowing 3.3 Structured representation 3.3.1 Modulator 3.3.2 Demodulator 3.3.3 MIMO Waveform processing 3.4 Detection 3.4.1 Maximum-likelihood detection 3.4.2 Linear detection 3.4.3 Iterative Detection 3.4.4 Numerical example and insights 3.5 Summary 4 Generic Multiple Access Schemes 57 4.1 Basic multiple access and multiplexing schemes 4.1.1 Infrastructure network system model 4.1.2 Duplex schemes 4.1.3 Common multiplexing and multiple access schemes 4.2 General multicarrier-based multiple access 4.2.1 Design with fixed set of pulses 4.2.2 Computational model 4.2.3 Asynchronous multiple access 4.3 Summary 5 Time-Frequency Analyses of Multicarrier 5.1 General time-frequency representation 5.1.1 Block representation 5.1.2 Relation to Zak transform 5.2 Time-frequency spreading 5.3 Time-frequency block in LTV channel 5.3.1 Subcarrier and subsymbol numerology 5.3.2 Processing based on the time-domain signal 5.3.3 Processing based on the frequency-domain signal 5.3.4 Unified signal model 5.4 summary 6 Generalized waveforms based on time-frequency shifts 6.1 General time-frequency shift 6.1.1 Time-frequency shift design 6.1.2 Relation between the shifted pulses 6.2 Time-frequency shift in Gabor frame 6.2.1 Conventional GFDM 6.3 GFDM modulation 6.3.1 Filter bank representation 6.3.2 Block representation 6.3.3 GFDM matrix structure 6.3.4 GFDM demodulator 6.3.5 Alternative interpretation of GFDM 6.3.6 Orthogonal modulation and GFDM spreading 6.4 Summary 7 Modulation Framework: Architectures and Applications 7.1 Modem architectures 7.1.1 General modulation matrix structure 7.1.2 Run-time flexibility 7.1.3 Generic GFDM-based architecture 7.1.4 Flexible parallel multiplications architecture 7.1.5 MIMO waveform architecture 7.2 Extended GFDM framework 7.2.1 Architectures complexity and flexibility analysis 7.2.2 Number of multiplications 7.2.3 Hardware analysis 7.3 Applications of the extended GFDM framework 7.3.1 Generalized FDMA 7.3.2 Enchantment of OFDM system 7.4 Summary 7 Conclusions and Future work

Resource allocation technique for powerline network using a modified shuffled frog-leaping algorithm

Resource allocation (RA) techniques should be made efficient and optimized in order to enhance the QoS (power & bit, capacity, scalability) of high-speed networking data applications. This research attempts to further increase the efficiency towards near-optimal performance. RA’s problem involves assignment of subcarriers, power and bit amounts for each user efficiently. Several studies conducted by the Federal Communication Commission have proven that conventional RA approaches are becoming insufficient for rapid demand in networking resulted in spectrum underutilization, low capacity and convergence, also low performance of bit error rate, delay of channel feedback, weak scalability as well as computational complexity make real-time solutions intractable. Mainly due to sophisticated, restrictive constraints, multi-objectives, unfairness, channel noise, also unrealistic when assume perfect channel state is available. The main goal of this work is to develop a conceptual framework and mathematical model for resource allocation using Shuffled Frog-Leap Algorithm (SFLA). Thus, a modified SFLA is introduced and integrated in Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) system. Then SFLA generated random population of solutions (power, bit), the fitness of each solution is calculated and improved for each subcarrier and user. The solution is numerically validated and verified by simulation-based powerline channel. The system performance was compared to similar research works in terms of the system’s capacity, scalability, allocated rate/power, and convergence. The resources allocated are constantly optimized and the capacity obtained is constantly higher as compared to Root-finding, Linear, and Hybrid evolutionary algorithms. The proposed algorithm managed to offer fastest convergence given that the number of iterations required to get to the 0.001% error of the global optimum is 75 compared to 92 in the conventional techniques. Finally, joint allocation models for selection of optima resource values are introduced; adaptive power and bit allocators in OFDM system-based Powerline and using modified SFLA-based TLBO and PSO are propose

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

[no abstract

Cognitive Radio Systems

Cognitive radio is a hot research area for future wireless communications in the recent years. In order to increase the spectrum utilization, cognitive radio makes it possible for unlicensed users to access the spectrum unoccupied by licensed users. Cognitive radio let the equipments more intelligent to communicate with each other in a spectrum-aware manner and provide a new approach for the co-existence of multiple wireless systems. The goal of this book is to provide highlights of the current research topics in the field of cognitive radio systems. The book consists of 17 chapters, addressing various problems in cognitive radio systems

Cooperative Radio Communications for Green Smart Environments

The demand for mobile connectivity is continuously increasing, and by 2020 Mobile and Wireless Communications will serve not only very dense populations of mobile phones and nomadic computers, but also the expected multiplicity of devices and sensors located in machines, vehicles, health systems and city infrastructures. Future Mobile Networks are then faced with many new scenarios and use cases, which will load the networks with different data traffic patterns, in new or shared spectrum bands, creating new specific requirements. This book addresses both the techniques to model, analyse and optimise the radio links and transmission systems in such scenarios, together with the most advanced radio access, resource management and mobile networking technologies. This text summarises the work performed by more than 500 researchers from more than 120 institutions in Europe, America and Asia, from both academia and industries, within the framework of the COST IC1004 Action on "Cooperative Radio Communications for Green and Smart Environments". The book will have appeal to graduates and researchers in the Radio Communications area, and also to engineers working in the Wireless industry. Topics discussed in this book include: • Radio waves propagation phenomena in diverse urban, indoor, vehicular and body environments• Measurements, characterization, and modelling of radio channels beyond 4G networks• Key issues in Vehicle (V2X) communication• Wireless Body Area Networks, including specific Radio Channel Models for WBANs• Energy efficiency and resource management enhancements in Radio Access Networks• Definitions and models for the virtualised and cloud RAN architectures• Advances on feasible indoor localization and tracking techniques• Recent findings and innovations in antenna systems for communications• Physical Layer Network Coding for next generation wireless systems• Methods and techniques for MIMO Over the Air (OTA) testin

Real-Time Waveform Prototyping

Mobile Netzwerke der fünften Generation zeichen sich aus durch vielfältigen Anforderungen und Einsatzszenarien. Drei unterschiedliche Anwendungsfälle sind hierbei besonders relevant: 1) Industrie-Applikationen fordern Echtzeitfunkübertragungen mit besonders niedrigen Ausfallraten. 2) Internet-of-things-Anwendungen erfordern die Anbindung einer Vielzahl von verteilten Sensoren. 3) Die Datenraten für Anwendung wie z.B. der Übermittlung von Videoinhalten sind massiv gestiegen. Diese zum Teil gegensätzlichen Erwartungen veranlassen Forscher und Ingenieure dazu, neue Konzepte und Technologien für zukünftige drahtlose Kommunikationssysteme in Betracht zu ziehen. Ziel ist es, aus einer Vielzahl neuer Ideen vielversprechende Kandidatentechnologien zu identifizieren und zu entscheiden, welche für die Umsetzung in zukünftige Produkte geeignet sind. Die Herausforderungen, diese Anforderungen zu erreichen, liegen jedoch jenseits der Möglichkeiten, die eine einzelne Verarbeitungsschicht in einem drahtlosen Netzwerk bieten kann. Daher müssen mehrere Forschungsbereiche Forschungsideen gemeinsam nutzen. Diese Arbeit beschreibt daher eine Plattform als Basis für zukünftige experimentelle Erforschung von drahtlosen Netzwerken unter reellen Bedingungen. Es werden folgende drei Aspekte näher vorgestellt: Zunächst erfolgt ein Überblick über moderne Prototypen und Testbed-Lösungen, die auf großes Interesse, Nachfrage, aber auch Förderungsmöglichkeiten stoßen. Allerdings ist der Entwicklungsaufwand nicht unerheblich und richtet sich stark nach den gewählten Eigenschaften der Plattform. Der Auswahlprozess ist jedoch aufgrund der Menge der verfügbaren Optionen und ihrer jeweiligen (versteckten) Implikationen komplex. Daher wird ein Leitfaden anhand verschiedener Beispiele vorgestellt, mit dem Ziel Erwartungen im Vergleich zu den für den Prototyp erforderlichen Aufwänden zu bewerten. Zweitens wird ein flexibler, aber echtzeitfähiger Signalprozessor eingeführt, der auf einer software-programmierbaren Funkplattform läuft. Der Prozessor ermöglicht die Rekonfiguration wichtiger Parameter der physikalischen Schicht während der Laufzeit, um eine Vielzahl moderner Wellenformen zu erzeugen. Es werden vier Parametereinstellungen 'LLC', 'WiFi', 'eMBB' und 'IoT' vorgestellt, um die Anforderungen der verschiedenen drahtlosen Anwendungen widerzuspiegeln. Diese werden dann zur Evaluierung der die in dieser Arbeit vorgestellte Implementierung herangezogen. Drittens wird durch die Einführung einer generischen Testinfrastruktur die Einbeziehung externer Partner aus der Ferne ermöglicht. Das Testfeld kann hier für verschiedenste Experimente flexibel auf die Anforderungen drahtloser Technologien zugeschnitten werden. Mit Hilfe der Testinfrastruktur wird die Leistung des vorgestellten Transceivers hinsichtlich Latenz, erreichbarem Durchsatz und Paketfehlerraten bewertet. Die öffentliche Demonstration eines taktilen Internet-Prototypen, unter Verwendung von Roboterarmen in einer Mehrbenutzerumgebung, konnte erfolgreich durchgeführt und bei mehreren Gelegenheiten präsentiert werden.:List of figures List of tables Abbreviations Notations 1 Introduction 1.1 Wireless applications 1.2 Motivation 1.3 Software-Defined Radio 1.4 State of the art 1.5 Testbed 1.6 Summary 2 Background 2.1 System Model 2.2 PHY Layer Structure 2.3 Generalized Frequency Division Multiplexing 2.4 Wireless Standards 2.4.1 IEEE 802.15.4 2.4.2 802.11 WLAN 2.4.3 LTE 2.4.4 Low Latency Industrial Wireless Communications 2.4.5 Summary 3 Wireless Prototyping 3.1 Testbed Examples 3.1.1 PHY - focused Testbeds 3.1.2 MAC - focused Testbeds 3.1.3 Network - focused testbeds 3.1.4 Generic testbeds 3.2 Considerations 3.3 Use cases and Scenarios 3.4 Requirements 3.5 Methodology 3.6 Hardware Platform 3.6.1 Host 3.6.2 FPGA 3.6.3 Hybrid 3.6.4 ASIC 3.7 Software Platform 3.7.1 Testbed Management Frameworks 3.7.2 Development Frameworks 3.7.3 Software Implementations 3.8 Deployment 3.9 Discussion 3.10 Conclusion 4 Flexible Transceiver 4.1 Signal Processing Modules 4.1.1 MAC interface 4.1.2 Encoding and Mapping 4.1.3 Modem 4.1.4 Post modem processing 4.1.5 Synchronization 4.1.6 Channel Estimation and Equalization 4.1.7 Demapping 4.1.8 Flexible Configuration 4.2 Analysis 4.2.1 Numerical Precision 4.2.2 Spectral analysis 4.2.3 Latency 4.2.4 Resource Consumption 4.3 Discussion 4.3.1 Extension to MIMO 4.4 Summary 5 Testbed 5.1 Infrastructure 5.2 Automation 5.3 Software Defined Radio Platform 5.4 Radio Frequency Front-end 5.4.1 Sub 6 GHz front-end 5.4.2 26 GHz mmWave front-end 5.5 Performance evaluation 5.6 Summary 6 Experiments 6.1 Single Link 6.1.1 Infrastructure 6.1.2 Single Link Experiments 6.1.3 End-to-End 6.2 Multi-User 6.3 26 GHz mmWave experimentation 6.4 Summary 7 Key lessons 7.1 Limitations Experienced During Development 7.2 Prototyping Future 7.3 Open points 7.4 Workflow 7.5 Summary 8 Conclusions 8.1 Future Work 8.1.1 Prototyping Workflow 8.1.2 Flexible Transceiver Core 8.1.3 Experimental Data-sets 8.1.4 Evolved Access Point Prototype For Industrial Networks 8.1.5 Testbed Standardization A Additional Resources A.1 Fourier Transform Blocks A.2 Resource Consumption A.3 Channel Sounding using Chirp sequences A.3.1 SNR Estimation A.3.2 Channel Estimation A.4 Hardware part listThe demand to achieve higher data rates for the Enhanced Mobile Broadband scenario and novel fifth generation use cases like Ultra-Reliable Low-Latency and Massive Machine-type Communications drive researchers and engineers to consider new concepts and technologies for future wireless communication systems. The goal is to identify promising candidate technologies among a vast number of new ideas and to decide, which are suitable for implementation in future products. However, the challenges to achieve those demands are beyond the capabilities a single processing layer in a wireless network can offer. Therefore, several research domains have to collaboratively exploit research ideas. This thesis presents a platform to provide a base for future applied research on wireless networks. Firstly, by giving an overview of state-of-the-art prototypes and testbed solutions. Secondly by introducing a flexible, yet real-time physical layer signal processor running on a software defined radio platform. The processor enables reconfiguring important parameters of the physical layer during run-time in order to create a multitude of modern waveforms. Thirdly, by introducing a generic test infrastructure, which can be tailored to prototype diverse wireless technology and which is remotely accessible in order to invite new ideas by third parties. Using the test infrastructure, the performance of the flexible transceiver is evaluated regarding latency, achievable throughput and packet error rates.:List of figures List of tables Abbreviations Notations 1 Introduction 1.1 Wireless applications 1.2 Motivation 1.3 Software-Defined Radio 1.4 State of the art 1.5 Testbed 1.6 Summary 2 Background 2.1 System Model 2.2 PHY Layer Structure 2.3 Generalized Frequency Division Multiplexing 2.4 Wireless Standards 2.4.1 IEEE 802.15.4 2.4.2 802.11 WLAN 2.4.3 LTE 2.4.4 Low Latency Industrial Wireless Communications 2.4.5 Summary 3 Wireless Prototyping 3.1 Testbed Examples 3.1.1 PHY - focused Testbeds 3.1.2 MAC - focused Testbeds 3.1.3 Network - focused testbeds 3.1.4 Generic testbeds 3.2 Considerations 3.3 Use cases and Scenarios 3.4 Requirements 3.5 Methodology 3.6 Hardware Platform 3.6.1 Host 3.6.2 FPGA 3.6.3 Hybrid 3.6.4 ASIC 3.7 Software Platform 3.7.1 Testbed Management Frameworks 3.7.2 Development Frameworks 3.7.3 Software Implementations 3.8 Deployment 3.9 Discussion 3.10 Conclusion 4 Flexible Transceiver 4.1 Signal Processing Modules 4.1.1 MAC interface 4.1.2 Encoding and Mapping 4.1.3 Modem 4.1.4 Post modem processing 4.1.5 Synchronization 4.1.6 Channel Estimation and Equalization 4.1.7 Demapping 4.1.8 Flexible Configuration 4.2 Analysis 4.2.1 Numerical Precision 4.2.2 Spectral analysis 4.2.3 Latency 4.2.4 Resource Consumption 4.3 Discussion 4.3.1 Extension to MIMO 4.4 Summary 5 Testbed 5.1 Infrastructure 5.2 Automation 5.3 Software Defined Radio Platform 5.4 Radio Frequency Front-end 5.4.1 Sub 6 GHz front-end 5.4.2 26 GHz mmWave front-end 5.5 Performance evaluation 5.6 Summary 6 Experiments 6.1 Single Link 6.1.1 Infrastructure 6.1.2 Single Link Experiments 6.1.3 End-to-End 6.2 Multi-User 6.3 26 GHz mmWave experimentation 6.4 Summary 7 Key lessons 7.1 Limitations Experienced During Development 7.2 Prototyping Future 7.3 Open points 7.4 Workflow 7.5 Summary 8 Conclusions 8.1 Future Work 8.1.1 Prototyping Workflow 8.1.2 Flexible Transceiver Core 8.1.3 Experimental Data-sets 8.1.4 Evolved Access Point Prototype For Industrial Networks 8.1.5 Testbed Standardization A Additional Resources A.1 Fourier Transform Blocks A.2 Resource Consumption A.3 Channel Sounding using Chirp sequences A.3.1 SNR Estimation A.3.2 Channel Estimation A.4 Hardware part lis