Bit error rate estimation in WiMAX communications at vehicular speeds using Nakagami-m fading model

The wireless communication industry has experienced a rapid technological evolution from its basic first generation (1G) wireless systems to the latest fourth generation (4G) wireless broadband systems. Wireless broadband systems are becoming increasingly popular with consumers and the technological strength of 4G has played a major role behind the success of wireless broadband systems. The IEEE 802.16m standard of the Worldwide Interoperability for Microwave Access (WiMAX) has been accepted as a 4G standard by the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers in 2011. The IEEE 802.16m is fully optimised for wireless communications in fixed environments and can deliver very high throughput and excellent quality of service. In mobile communication environments however, WiMAX consumers experience a graceful degradation of service as a direct function of vehicular speeds. At high vehicular speeds, the throughput drops in WiMAX systems and unless proactive measures such as forward error control and packet size optimisation are adopted and properly adjusted, many applications cannot be facilitated at high vehicular speeds in WiMAX communications. For any proactive measure, bit error rate estimation as a function of vehicular speed, serves as a useful tool. In this thesis, we present an analytical model for bit error rate estimation in WiMAX communications using the Nakagami-m fading model. We also show, through an analysis of the data collected from a practical WiMAX system, that the Nakagami-m model can be made adaptive as a function of speed, to represent fading in fixed environments as well as mobile environments

Cooperative control of relay based cellular networks

PhDThe increasing popularity of wireless communications and the higher data requirements of new types of service lead to higher demands on wireless networks. Relay based cellular networks have been seen as an effective way to meet users’ increased data rate requirements while still retaining the benefits of a cellular structure. However, maximizing the probability of providing service and spectrum efficiency are still major challenges for network operators and engineers because of the heterogeneous traffic demands, hard-to-predict user movements and complex traffic models. In a mobile network, load balancing is recognised as an efficient way to increase the utilization of limited frequency spectrum at reasonable costs. Cooperative control based on geographic load balancing is employed to provide flexibility for relay based cellular networks and to respond to changes in the environment. According to the potential capability of existing antenna systems, adaptive radio frequency domain control in the physical layer is explored to provide coverage at the right place at the right time. This thesis proposes several effective and efficient approaches to improve spectrum efficiency using network wide optimization to coordinate the coverage offered by different network components according to the antenna models and relay station capability. The approaches include tilting of antenna sectors, changing the power of omni-directional antennas, and changing the assignment of relay stations to different base stations. Experiments show that the proposed approaches offer significant improvements and robustness in heterogeneous traffic scenarios and when the propagation environment changes. The issue of predicting the consequence of cooperative decisions regarding antenna configurations when applied in a realistic environment is described, and a coverage prediction model is proposed. The consequences of applying changes to the antenna configuration on handovers are analysed in detail. The performance evaluations are based on a system level simulator in the context of Mobile WiMAX technology, but the concepts apply more generally

Adaptive Communications for Next Generation Broadband Wireless Access Systems

Un dels aspectes claus en el disseny i gestió de les xarxes sense fils d'accés de banda ampla és l'ús eficient dels recursos radio. Des del punt de vista de l'operador, l'ample de banda és un bé escàs i preuat que s´ha d'explotar i gestionar de la forma més eficient possible tot garantint la qualitat del servei que es vol proporcionar. Per altra banda, des del punt de vista del usuari, la qualitat del servei ofert ha de ser comparable al de les xarxes fixes, requerint així un baix retard i una baixa pèrdua de paquets per cadascun dels fluxos de dades entre la xarxa i l'usuari. Durant els darrers anys s´han desenvolupat nombroses tècniques i algoritmes amb l'objectiu d'incrementar l'eficiència espectral. Entre aquestes tècniques destaca l'ús de múltiples antenes al transmissor i al receptor amb l'objectiu de transmetre diferents fluxos de dades simultaneament sense necessitat d'augmentar l'ample de banda. Per altra banda, la optimizació conjunta de la capa d'accés al medi i la capa física (fent ús de l'estat del canal per tal de gestionar de manera optima els recursos) també permet incrementar sensiblement l'eficiència espectral del sistema.L'objectiu d'aquesta tesi és l'estudi i desenvolupament de noves tècniques d'adaptació de l'enllaç i gestió dels recursos ràdio aplicades sobre sistemes d'accés ràdio de propera generació (Beyond 3G). Els estudis realitzats parteixen de la premissa que el transmisor coneix (parcialment) l'estat del canal i que la transmissió es realitza fent servir un esquema multiportadora amb múltiples antenes al transmisor i al receptor. En aquesta tesi es presenten dues línies d'investigació, la primera per casos d'una sola antenna a cada banda de l'enllaç, i la segona en cas de múltiples antenes. En el cas d'una sola antena al transmissor i al receptor, un nou esquema d'assignació de recursos ràdio i priorització dels paquets (scheduling) és proposat i analitzat integrant totes dues funcions sobre una mateixa entitat (cross-layer). L'esquema proposat té com a principal característica la seva baixa complexitat i que permet operar amb transmissions multimedia. Alhora, posteriors millores realitzades per l'autor sobre l'esquema proposat han permès també reduir els requeriments de senyalització i combinar de forma óptima usuaris d'alta i baixa mobilitat sobre el mateix accés ràdio, millorant encara més l'eficiència espectral del sistema. En cas d'enllaços amb múltiples antenes es proposa un nou esquema que combina la selecció del conjunt optim d'antenes transmissores amb la selecció de la codificació espai- (frequència-) temps. Finalment es donen una sèrie de recomanacions per tal de combinar totes dues línies d'investigació, així con un estat de l'art de les tècniques proposades per altres autors que combinen en part la gestió dels recursos ràdio i els esquemes de transmissió amb múltiples antenes.Uno de los aspectos claves en el diseño y gestión de las redes inalámbricas de banda ancha es el uso eficiente de los recursos radio. Desde el punto de vista del operador, el ancho de banda es un bien escaso y valioso que se debe explotar y gestionar de la forma más eficiente posible sin afectar a la calidad del servicio ofrecido. Por otro lado, desde el punto de vista del usuario, la calidad del servicio ha de ser comparable al ofrecido por las redes fijas, requiriendo así un bajo retardo y una baja tasa de perdida de paquetes para cada uno de los flujos de datos entre la red y el usuario. Durante los últimos años el número de técnicas y algoritmos que tratan de incrementar la eficiencia espectral en dichas redes es bastante amplio. Entre estas técnicas destaca el uso de múltiples antenas en el transmisor y en el receptor con el objetivo de poder transmitir simultáneamente diferentes flujos de datos sin necesidad de incrementar el ancho de banda. Por otro lado, la optimización conjunta de la capa de acceso al medio y la capa física (utilizando información de estado del canal para gestionar de manera óptima los recursos) también permite incrementar sensiblemente la eficiencia espectral del sistema.El objetivo de esta tesis es el estudio y desarrollo de nuevas técnicas de adaptación del enlace y la gestión de los recursos radio, y su posterior aplicación sobre los sistemas de acceso radio de próxima generación (Beyond 3G). Los estudios realizados parten de la premisa de que el transmisor conoce (parcialmente) el estado del canal a la vez que se considera que la transmisión se realiza sobre un sistema de transmisión multiportadora con múltiple antenas en el transmisor y el receptor. La tesis se centra sobre dos líneas de investigación, la primera para casos de una única antena en cada lado del enlace, y la segunda en caso de múltiples antenas en cada lado. Para el caso de una única antena en el transmisor y en el receptor, se ha desarrollado un nuevo esquema de asignación de los recursos radio así como de priorización de los paquetes de datos (scheduling) integrando ambas funciones sobre una misma entidad (cross-layer). El esquema propuesto tiene como principal característica su bajo coste computacional a la vez que se puede aplicar en caso de transmisiones multimedia. Posteriores mejoras realizadas por el autor sobre el esquema propuesto han permitido también reducir los requisitos de señalización así como combinar de forma óptima usuarios de alta y baja movilidad. Por otro lado, en caso de enlaces con múltiples antenas en transmisión y recepción, se presenta un nuevo esquema de adaptación en el cual se combina la selección de la(s) antena(s) transmisora(s) con la selección del esquema de codificación espacio-(frecuencia-) tiempo. Para finalizar, se dan una serie de recomendaciones con el objetivo de combinar ambas líneas de investigación, así como un estado del arte de las técnicas propuestas por otros autores que combinan en parte la gestión de los recursos radio y los esquemas de transmisión con múltiples antenas.In Broadband Wireless Access systems the efficient use of the resources is crucial from many points of views. From the operator point of view, the bandwidth is a scarce, valuable, and expensive resource which must be exploited in an efficient manner while the Quality of Service (QoS) provided to the users is guaranteed. On the other hand, a tight delay and link quality constraints are imposed on each data flow hence the user experiences the same quality as in fixed networks. During the last few years many techniques have been developed in order to increase the spectral efficiency and the throughput. Among them, the use of multiple antennas at the transmitter and the receiver (exploiting spatial multiplexing) with the joint optimization of the medium access control layer and the physical layer parameters.In this Ph.D. thesis, different adaptive techniques for B3G multicarrier wireless systems are developed and proposed focusing on the SS-MC-MA and the OFDM(A) (IEEE 802.16a/e/m standards) communication schemes. The research lines emphasize into the adaptation of the transmission having (Partial) knowledge of the Channel State Information for both; single antenna and multiple antenna links. For single antenna links, the implementation of a joint resource allocation and scheduling strategy by including adaptive modulation and coding is investigated. A low complexity resource allocation and scheduling algorithm is proposed with the objective to cope with real- and/or non-real- time requirements and constraints. A special attention is also devoted in reducing the required signalling. However, for multiple antenna links, the performance of a proposed adaptive transmit antenna selection scheme jointly with space-time block coding selection is investigated and compared with conventional structures. In this research line, mainly two optimizations criteria are proposed for spatial link adaptation, one based on the minimum error rate for fixed throughput, and the second focused on the maximisation of the rate for fixed error rate. Finally, some indications are given on how to include the spatial adaptation into the investigated and proposed resource allocation and scheduling process developed for single antenna transmission

Eficiência energética avançada para sistema OFDMA CoMP coordenação multiponto

Doutoramento em Engenharia EletrotécnicaThe ever-growing energy consumption in mobile networks stimulated by the expected growth in data tra ffic has provided the impetus for mobile operators to refocus network design, planning and deployment towards reducing the cost per bit, whilst at the same time providing a signifi cant step towards reducing their operational expenditure. As a step towards incorporating cost-eff ective mobile system, 3GPP LTE-Advanced has adopted the coordinated multi-point (CoMP) transmission technique due to its ability to mitigate and manage inter-cell interference (ICI). Using CoMP the cell average and cell edge throughput are boosted. However, there is room for reducing energy consumption further by exploiting the inherent exibility of dynamic resource allocation protocols. To this end packet scheduler plays the central role in determining the overall performance of the 3GPP longterm evolution (LTE) based on packet-switching operation and provide a potential research playground for optimizing energy consumption in future networks. In this thesis we investigate the baseline performance for down link CoMP using traditional scheduling approaches, and subsequently go beyond and propose novel energy e fficient scheduling (EES) strategies that can achieve power-e fficient transmission to the UEs whilst enabling both system energy effi ciency gain and fairness improvement. However, ICI can still be prominent when multiple nodes use common resources with di fferent power levels inside the cell, as in the so called heterogeneous networks (Het- Net) environment. HetNets are comprised of two or more tiers of cells. The rst, or higher tier, is a traditional deployment of cell sites, often referred to in this context as macrocells. The lower tiers are termed small cells, and can appear as microcell, picocells or femtocells. The HetNet has attracted signiffi cant interest by key manufacturers as one of the enablers for high speed data at low cost. Research until now has revealed several key hurdles that must be overcome before HetNets can achieve their full potential: bottlenecks in the backhaul must be alleviated, as well as their seamless interworking with CoMP. In this thesis we explore exactly the latter hurdle, and present innovative ideas on advancing CoMP to work in synergy with HetNet deployment, complemented by a novel resource allocation policy for HetNet tighter interference management. As system level simulator has been used to analyze the proposed algorithm/protocols, and results have concluded that up to 20% energy gain can be observed.O aumento do consumo de energia nas TICs e em particular nas redes de comunicação móveis, estimulado por um crescimento esperado do tráfego de dados, tem servido de impulso aos operadores m oveis para reorientarem os seus projectos de rede, planeamento e implementa ção no sentido de reduzir o custo por bit, o que ao mesmo tempo possibilita um passo signicativo no sentido de reduzir as despesas operacionais. Como um passo no sentido de uma incorporação eficaz em termos destes custos, o sistema móvel 3GPP LTE-Advanced adoptou a técnica de transmissão Coordenação Multi-Ponto (identificada na literatura com a sigla CoMP) devido à sua capacidade de mitigar e gerir Interferência entre Células (sigla ICI na literatura). No entanto a ICI pode ainda ser mais proeminente quando v arios n os no interior da célula utilizam recursos comuns com diferentes níveis de energia, como acontece nos chamados ambientes de redes heterogéneas (sigla Het- Net na literatura). As HetNets são constituídas por duas ou mais camadas de células. A primeira, ou camada superiora, constitui uma implantação tradicional de sítios de célula, muitas vezes referidas neste contexto como macrocells. Os níveis mais baixos são designados por células pequenas, e podem aparecer como microcells, picocells ou femtocells. A HetNet tem atra do grande interesse por parte dos principais fabricantes como sendo facilitador para transmissões de dados de alta velocidade a baixo custo. A investigação tem revelado at e a data, vários dos principais obstáculos que devem ser superados para que as HetNets possam atingir todo o seu potencial: (i) os estrangulamentos no backhaul devem ser aliviados; (ii) bem como sua perfeita interoperabilidade com CoMP. Nesta tese exploramos este ultimo constrangimento e apresentamos ideias inovadoras em como a t ecnica CoMP poder a ser aperfeiçoada por forma a trabalhar em sinergia com a implementação da HetNet, complementado ainda com uma nova perspectiva na alocação de recursos rádio para um controlo e gestão mais apertado de interferência nas HetNets. Com recurso a simulação a níível de sistema para analisar o desempenho dos algoritmos e protocolos propostos, os resultados obtidos concluíram que ganhos at e a ordem dos 20% poderão ser atingidos em termos de eficiência energética

Resource allocation software algorithms for AMC-OFDM systems

PhD ThesisIn recent years, adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) technologies, resource allocation strategies and user scheduling for single-cell downlink orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems have been widely researched in order to ensure that capacity and throughput are maximised. In terms of AMC technologies, the correlation between the channel coefficients corresponding to the transmitted sub-carriers has not been considered yet. In the literature of resource allocation and user scheduling, either channel coding is not considered or only a fixed code rate is specified. Consequently, with a fixed number of data sub-carriers for each user, all these criteria restrict the flexibility of exploiting the available channel capacity, which reflects negatively on system throughput. At the same time, the presented scheduling algorithms so far managed the data of each user regardless the fair services of all users. The philosophy of this thesis is to maximise the average system throughput by proposing novel AMC, resource allocation and user scheduling strategies for OFDM and OFDMA systems based on developed software engineering life cycle models. These models have been designed to guarantee the scalability, extendibility and portability of the proposed strategies. This thesis presents an AMC strategy that divides the transmitted frame into sub-channels with an equal number of sub-carriers and selects different modulation and coding schemes (MCSs) amongst them rather than considering the same MCS for the entire frame. This strategy has been combined with a pilot adjustment scheme that reduces the pilots used for channel estimation in each sub-channel depending on the measured coherence bandwidth, signal to noise ratio (SNR), and SNR fluctuation values. The reduced pilots are replaced with additional data sub-carriers in order to improve the throughput. Additionally, a novel resource allocation strategy has been introduced in order to maximise the system throughput by distributing the users, transmission power and information bit streams over the employed sub-channels. The introduced method utilises the proposed AMC strategy in combination with pilot adjustment scheme to tackle the problem of channel capacity exploiting efficiently. It presents the throughput as a new cost function in terms of spectral efficiency and bit-error rate (BER), in which both convolutional coding rates and modulation order can be varied. The investigated throughput maximisation problem has been solved by producing two approaches. Firstly, optimised approach that solves the adopted problem optimally using the well known Lagrange multipliers method. This approach requires a huge search processes to achieve the optimal allocation of the resources, which yields a high computational complexity. To overcome the complexity issue, the second approach decouples the considered maximisation problem into two sub-problems based on the decomposition method on the cost of performance particularly for low SNR values. The proposed resource allocation strategy has been developed to work with multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) based AMC-OFDMA systems. In this project, two MIMO transmission criteria are considered, i.e. traditional and eigen-mode. In contrast, a user scheduling algorithm combined with the proposed resource allocation and AMC strategies is presented. The user scheduling algorithm aims to maximize the average system throughput by arranging the users in distinct queues according to their priorities and selecting the best user of each queue individually in order to guarantee a fair user service amongst different priority levels. When the involved users are scheduled, the scheduled users have been passed to the resource allocation to implement the distribution of the available resources. The proposed strategies have been tested over different international telecommunication union (ITU) channel profiles. The obtained simulation results show the superior performance of the introduced approaches in comparison with the related conventional methods. Furthermore, the gradually improvement in the throughput performance of the AMC-OFDM/ODMA system throughout the combination of the proposed strategies is clearly explained.Ministry of Higher Education and Scientific Research/IRAQ

Practical design of optimal wireless metropolitan area networks: model and algorithms for OFDMA networks

A thesis submitted to the University of Bedfordshire, in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Ph.D.This thesis contributes to the study of the planning and optimisation of wireless metropolitan area networks, in particular to the access network design of OFDMAbased systems, where different parameters like base station position, antenna tilt and azimuth need to be configured during the early stages of the network life. A practical view for the solution of this problem is presented by means of the development of a novel design framework and the use of multicriteria optimisation. A further consideration of relaying and cooperative communications in the context of the design of this kind of networks is done, an area little researched. With the emergence of new technologies and services, it is very important to accurately identify the factors that affect the design of the wireless access network and define how to take them into account to achieve optimally performing and cost-efficient networks. The new features and flexibility of OFDMA networks seem particularly suited to the provision of different broadband services to metropolitan areas. However, until now, most existing efforts have been focused on the basic access capability networks. This thesis presents a way to deal with the trade-offs generated during the OFDMA access network design, and presents a service-oriented optimization framework that offers a new perspective for this process with consideration of the technical and economic factors. The introduction of relay stations in wireless metropolitan area networks will bring numerous advantages such as coverage extension and capacity enhancement due to the deployment of new cells and the reduction of distance between transmitter and receiver. However, the network designers will also face new challenges with the use of relay stations, since they involve a new source of interference and a complicated air interface; and this need to be carefully evaluated during the network design process. Contrary to the well known procedure of cellular network design over regular or hexagonal scenarios, the wireless network planning and optimization process aims to deal with the non-uniform characteristics of realistic scenarios, where the existence of hotspots, different channel characteristics for the users, or different service requirements will determine the final design of the wireless network. This thesis is structured in three main blocks covering important gaps in the existing literature in planning (efficient simulation) and optimisation. The formulation and ideas proposed in the former case can still be evaluated over regular scenarios, for the sake of simplicity, while the study of latter case needs to be done over specific scenarios that will be described when appropriate. Nevertheless, comments and conclusions are extrapolated to more general cases throughout this work. After an introduction and a description of the related work, this thesis first focuses on the study of models and algorithms for classical point-to-multipoint networks on Chapter 3, where the optimisation framework is proposed. Based on the framework, this work: - Identifies the technology-specific physical factors that affect most importantly the network system level simulation, planning and optimization process. - It demonstrates how to simplify the problem and translate it into a formal optimization routine with consideration of economic factors. - It provides the network provider, a detailed and clear description of different scenarios during the design process so that the most suitable solution can be found. Existing works on this area do not provide such a comprehensive framework. In Chapter 4: - The impact of the relay configuration on the network planning process is analysed. - A new simple and flexible scheme to integrate multihop communications in the Mobile WiMAX frame structure is proposed and evaluated. - Efficient capacity calculations that allow intensive system level simulations in a multihop environment are introduced. In Chapter 5: - An analysis of the optimisation procedure with the addition of relay stations and the derived higher complexity of the process is done. - A frequency plan procedure not found in the existing literature is proposed, which combines it with the use of the necessary frame fragmentation of in-band relay communications and cooperative procedures. - A novel joint two-step process for network planning and optimisation is proposed. Finally, conclusions and open issues are exposed