Cooperative Techniques for Next Generation HF Communication Systems

The high frequency (HF) band lies within 2-30 MHz of the electromagnetic spectrum. For decades, the HF band has been recognized as the primary means of long-range wireless communications. When satellite communication first emerged in 1960s, HF technology was considered to be obsolete. However, with its enduring qualities, HF communication survived through this competition and positioned itself as a powerful complementary and/or alternative technology to satellite communications. HF systems have been traditionally associated with low-rate data transmission. With the shift from analog to digital in voice communication, and increasing demands for high-rate data transmission (e.g., e-mail, Internet, FTP), HF communication has been going through a renaissance. Innovative techniques are required to push the capacity limits of the HF band. In this dissertation, we consider cooperative communication as an enabling technology to meet the challenging expectations of future generation HF communication systems. Cooperative communication exploits the broadcast nature of wireless transmission and relies on the cooperation of users relaying the information to one another. We address the design, analysis, and optimization of cooperative HF communication systems considering both multi-carrier and single-carrier architectures. As the multi-carrier HF system, we consider the combination of the orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) with the bit interleaved coded modulation (BICM) as the underlying physical layer platform. It is assumed that cooperating nodes may use different HF propagation mechanisms, such as near-vertical-incidence sky wave (NVIS) and surface wave, to relay their received signals to the destination in different environmental scenarios. Diversity gain analysis, optimum relay selection strategy and power allocation between the source and relays are investigated for the proposed cooperative HF system. For single-carrier HF systems, we first derive a matched-filer-bound (MFB) on the error rate performance of the non-regenerative cooperative systems. The results from the MFB analysis are also used for relay selection and power allocation in the multi-relay cooperative systems. To overcome the intersymbol interference impairment induced by frequency-selectivity of the HF channel, equalization is inevitable at the destination in a single-carrier system. In this work, we investigate the minimum-mean-square-error (MMSE) based linear/decision-feedback frequency domain equalizers (FDEs). Both symbol-spaced and fractionally-spaced implementations of the proposed FDEs are considered and their performance is compared under different channel conditions and sampling phase errors at the relay and destination nodes.1 yea

Adaptive relay techniques for OFDM-based cooperative communication systems

Cooperative communication has been considered as a cost-effective manner to exploit the spatial diversity, improve the quality-of-service and extend transmission coverage. However, there are many challenges faced by cooperative systems which use relays to forward signals to the destination, such as the accumulation of multipath channels, complex resource allocation with the bidirectional asymmetric traffic and reduction of transmission efficiency caused by additional relay overhead. In this thesis, we aim to address the above challenges of cooperative communications, and design the efficient relay systems. Starting with the channel accumulation problem in the amplify-and-forward relay system, we proposed two adaptive schemes for single/multiple-relay networks respectively. These schemes exploit an adaptive guard interval (GI) technique to cover the accumulated delay spread and enhance the transmission efficiency by limiting the overhead. The proposed GI scheme can be implemented without any extra control signal. Extending the adaptive GI scheme to multiple-relay systems, we propose a relay selection strategy which achieves the trade-off between the transmission reliability and overhead by considering both the channel gain and the accumulated delay spread. We then consider resource allocation problem in the two-way decode-and-forward relay system with asymmetric traffic loads. Two allocation algorithms are respectively investigated for time-division and frequency-division relay systems to maximize the end-to-end capacity of the two-way system under a capacity ratio constraint. For the frequency-division systems, a balanced end-to-end capacity is defined as the objective function which combines the requirements of maximizing the end-to-end capacity and achieving the capacity ratio. A suboptimal algorithm is proposed for the frequency-division systems which separates subcarrier allocation and time/power allocation. It can achieve the similar performance with the optimal one with reduced complexity. In order to further enhance the transmission reliability and maintaining low processing delay, we propose an equalize-and-forward (EF) relay scheme. The EF relay equalizes the channel between source and relay to eliminate the channel accumulation without signal regeneration. To reduce the processing time, an efficient parallel structure is applied in the EF relay. Numerical results show that the EF relay exhibits low outage probability at the same data rate as compared to AF and DF schemes

Distributed Quasi-Orthogonal Space-Time coding in wireless cooperative relay networks

Cooperative diversity provides a new paradigm in robust wireless re- lay networks that leverages Space-Time (ST) processing techniques to combat the effects of fading. Distributing the encoding over multiple relays that potentially observe uncorrelated channels to a destination terminal has demonstrated promising results in extending range, data- rates and transmit power utilization. Specifically, Space Time Block Codes (STBCs) based on orthogonal designs have proven extremely popular at exploiting spatial diversity through simple distributed pro- cessing without channel knowledge at the relaying terminals. This thesis aims at extending further the extensive design and analysis in relay networks based on orthogonal designs in the context of Quasi- Orthogonal Space Time Block Codes (QOSTBCs). The characterization of Quasi-Orthogonal MIMO channels for cooper- ative networks is performed under Ergodic and Non-Ergodic channel conditions. Specific to cooperative diversity, the sub-channels are as- sumed to observe different shadowing conditions as opposed to the traditional co-located communication system. Under Ergodic chan- nel assumptions novel closed-form solutions for cooperative channel capacity under the constraint of distributed-QOSTBC processing are presented. This analysis is extended to yield closed-form approx- imate expressions and their utility is verified through simulations. The effective use of partial feedback to orthogonalize the QOSTBC is examined and significant gains under specific channel conditions are demonstrated. Distributed systems cooperating over the network introduce chal- lenges in synchronization. Without extensive network management it is difficult to synchronize all the nodes participating in the relaying between source and destination terminals. Based on QOSTBC tech- niques simple encoding strategies are introduced that provide compa- rable throughput to schemes under synchronous conditions with neg- ligible overhead in processing throughout the protocol. Both mutli- carrier and single-carrier schemes are developed to enable the flexi- bility to limit Peak-to-Average-Power-Ratio (PAPR) and reduce the Radio Frequency (RF) requirements of the relaying terminals. The insights gained in asynchronous design in flat-fading cooperative channels are then extended to broadband networks over frequency- selective channels where the novel application of QOSTBCs are used in distributed-Space-Time-Frequency (STF) coding. Specifically, cod- ing schemes are presented that extract both spatial and mutli-path diversity offered by the cooperative Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) channel. To provide maximum flexibility the proposed schemes are adapted to facilitate both Decode-and-Forward (DF) and Amplify- and-Forward (AF) relaying. In-depth Pairwise-Error-Probability (PEP) analysis provides distinct design specifications which tailor the distributed- STF code to maximize the diversity and coding gain offered under the DF and AF protocols. Numerical simulation are used extensively to confirm the validity of the proposed cooperative schemes. The analytical and numerical re- sults demonstrate the effective use of QOSTBC over orthogonal tech- niques in a wide range of channel conditions

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

OFDM Communication with Cooperative Relays

Signal fading due to multi-path propagation is one of the major impairments to meet the demands of next generation wireless networks for high data rate services. To mitigate the fading effects, time, frequency, and spatial diversity techniques or their hybrid can be used. Among different types of diversity techniques, spatial diversity is of special interest as is does not incur system losses in terms of delay and bandwidth efficiency.TelecommunicationsElectrical Engineering, Mathematics and Computer Scienc

Advanced DSP Algorithms For Modern Wireless Communication Transceivers

A higher network throughput, a minimized delay and reliable communications are some of many goals that wireless communication standards, such as the fifthgeneration (5G) standard and beyond, intend to guarantee for its customers. Hence, many key innovations are currently being proposed and investigated by researchers in the academic and industry circles to fulfill these goals. This dissertation investigates some of the proposed techniques that aim at increasing the spectral efficiency, enhancing the energy efficiency, and enabling low latency wireless communications systems. The contributions lay in the evaluation of the performance of several proposed receiver architectures as well as proposing novel digital signal processing (DSP) algorithms to enhance the performance of radio transceivers. Particularly, the effects of several radio frequency (RF) impairments on the functionality of a new class of wireless transceivers, the full-duplex transceivers, are thoroughly investigated. These transceivers are then designed to operate in a relaying scenario, where relay selection and beamforming are applied in a relaying network to increase its spectral efficiency. The dissertation then investigates the use of greedy algorithms in recovering orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals by using sparse equalizers, which carry out the equalization in a more efficient manner when the low-complexity single tap OFDM equalizer can no longer recover the received signal due to severe interferences. The proposed sparse equalizers are shown to perform close to conventional optimal and dense equalizers when the OFDM signals are impaired by interferences caused by the insertion of an insufficient cyclic prefix and RF impairments