Distributed Self-Concatenated Coding for Cooperative Communication

In this paper, we propose a power-efficient distributed binary self-concatenated coding scheme using iterative decoding (DSECCC-ID) for cooperative communications. The DSECCC-ID scheme is designed with the aid of binary extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) charts. The source node transmits self-concatenated convolutional coded (SECCC) symbols to both the relay and destination nodes during the first transmission period. The relay performs SECCC-ID decoding, where it mayor may not encounter decoding errors. It then reencodes the information bits using a recursive systematic convolutional (RSC) code during the second transmission period. The resultant symbols transmitted from the source and relay nodes can be viewed as the coded symbols of a three-component parallel concatenated encoder. At the destination node, three-component DSECCC-ID decoding is performed. The EXIT chart gives us an insight into operation of the distributed coding scheme, which enables us to significantly reduce the transmit power by about 3.3 dB in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) terms, as compared with a noncooperative SECCC-ID scheme at a bit error rate (BER) of 10-5. Finally, the proposed system is capable of performing within about 1.5 dB from the two-hop relay-aided network’s capacity at a BER of 10-5 , even if there may be decoding errors at the relay

Coherent and Non-coherent Techniques for Cooperative Communications

Future wireless network may consist of a cluster of low-complexity battery-powered nodes or mobile stations (MS). Information is propagated from one location in the network to another by cooperation and relaying. Due to the channel fading or node failure, one or more relaying links could become unreliable during multiple-hop relaying. Inspired by conventional multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques exploiting multiple co-located transmit antennas to introduce temporal and spatial diversity, the error performance and robustness against channel fading of a multiple-hop cooperative network could be significantly improved by creating a virtual antenna array (VAA) with various distributed MIMO techniques. In this thesis, we concentrate on the low-complexity distributed MIMO designed for both coherent and non-coherent diversity signal reception at the destination node. Further improvement on the network throughput as well as spectral efficiency could be achieved by extending the concept of unidirectional relaying to bidirectional cooperative communication. Physical-layer network coding (PLNC) assisted distributed space-time block coding (STBC) scheme as well as non-coherent PLNC aided distributed differential STBC system are proposed. It is confirmed by the theoretical analysis that both approaches have the potential for offering full spatial diversity gain. 　　 Furthermore, differential encoding and non-coherent detection techniques are generally associated with performance degradation due to the doubled noise variance. More importantly, conventional differential schemes suffer from the incapability of recovering the source information in time-varying channels owing to the assumption of static channel model used in the derivation of non-coherent detection algorithm. Several low-complexity solutions are proposed and studied in this thesis, which are able to compensate the performance loss caused by non-coherent detection and guarantee the reliable recovery of information in applications with high mobility. A substantial amount of iteration gain is achieved by combining the differential encoding with error-correction code and sufficient interleaving, which allows iterative possessing at the receiver

Self-concatenated coding for wireless communication systems

In this thesis, we have explored self-concatenated coding schemes that are designed for transmission over Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) and uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channels. We designed both the symbol-based Self-ConcatenatedCodes considered using Trellis Coded Modulation (SECTCM) and bit-based Self- Concatenated Convolutional Codes (SECCC) using a Recursive Systematic Convolutional (RSC) encoder as constituent codes, respectively. The design of these codes was carried out with the aid of Extrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) charts. The EXIT chart based design has been found an efficient tool in finding the decoding convergence threshold of the constituent codes. Additionally, in order to recover the information loss imposed by employing binary rather than non-binary schemes, a soft decision demapper was introduced in order to exchange extrinsic information withthe SECCC decoder. To analyse this information exchange 3D-EXIT chart analysis was invoked for visualizing the extrinsic information exchange between the proposed Iteratively Decoding aided SECCC and soft-decision demapper (SECCC-ID). Some of the proposed SECTCM, SECCC and SECCC-ID schemes perform within about 1 dB from the AWGN and Rayleigh fading channels’ capacity. A union bound analysis of SECCC codes was carried out to find the corresponding Bit Error Ratio (BER) floors. The union bound of SECCCs was derived for communications over both AWGN and uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channels, based on a novel interleaver concept.Application of SECCCs in both UltraWideBand (UWB) and state-of-the-art video-telephone schemes demonstrated its practical benefits.In order to further exploit the benefits of the low complexity design offered by SECCCs we explored their application in a distributed coding scheme designed for cooperative communications, where iterative detection is employed by exchanging extrinsic information between the decoders of SECCC and RSC at the destination. In the first transmission period of cooperation, the relay receives the potentially erroneous data and attempts to recover the information. The recovered information is then re-encoded at the relay using an RSC encoder. In the second transmission period this information is then retransmitted to the destination. The resultant symbols transmitted from the source and relay nodes can be viewed as the coded symbols of a three-component parallel-concatenated encoder. At the destination a Distributed Binary Self-Concatenated Coding scheme using Iterative Decoding (DSECCC-ID) was employed, where the two decoders (SECCC and RSC) exchange their extrinsic information. It was shown that the DSECCC-ID is a low-complexity scheme, yet capable of approaching the Discrete-input Continuous-output Memoryless Channels’s (DCMC) capacity.Finally, we considered coding schemes designed for two nodes communicating with each other with the aid of a relay node, where the relay receives information from the two nodes in the first transmission period. At the relay node we combine a powerful Superposition Coding (SPC) scheme with SECCC. It is assumed that decoding errors may be encountered at the relay node. The relay node then broadcasts this information in the second transmission period after re-encoding it, again, using a SECCC encoder. At the destination, the amalgamated block of Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC) scheme combined with SECCC then detects and decodes the signal either with or without the aid of a priori information. Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme is capable of reliably operating at a low BER for transmission over both AWGN and uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channels. We compare the proposed scheme’s performance to a direct transmission link between the two sources having the same throughput

Physical-Layer Cooperation in Coded OFDM Relaying Systems

Mobile communication systems nowadays require ever-increasing data rate and coverage of wide areas. One promising approach to achieve this goal is the application of cooperative communications enabled by introducing intermediate nodes known as relays to support the transmission between terminals. By processing and forwarding the receive message at the relays, the path-loss effect between the source and the destination is mitigated. One major limit factor for relay assisted communications is that a relay cannot transmit and receive using the same physical resources. Therefore, a half-duplex constraint is commonly assumed resulting in halved spectral efficiency. To combat this drawback, two-way relaying is introduced, where two sources exchange information with each. On the other hand, due to the physical limitation of the relays, e.g., wireless sensor nodes, it's not possible to implement multiple antennas at one relay, which prohibits the application of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) techniques. However, when treating multiple relays as a cluster, a virtual antenna array is formed to perform MIMO techniques in a distributed manner. %This thesis aims at designing efficient one-way and two-way relaying schemes. Specifically, existing schemes from the literature are improved and new schemes are developed with the emphasis on coded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmissions. Of special interest is the application of physical-layer network coding (PLNC) for two-phase two-way relaying. In this case, a network coded message is estimated from the superimposed receive signal at the relay using PLNC schemes. The schemes are investigated based on a mutual information analysis and their performance are improved by a newly proposed phase control strategy. Furthermore, performance degradation due to system asynchrony is mitigated depending on different PLNC schemes. When multiple relays are available, novel cooperation schemes allowing information exchange within the relay cluster are proposed that facilitate distributed MIMO reception and transmission. Additionally, smart signaling approaches are presented to enable the cooperation at different levels with the cooperation overhead taken into account adequately in system performance evaluation

Optimisation of relay placement in wireless butterfly networks

As a typical model of multicast network, wireless butterfly networks (WBNs) have been studied for modelling the scenario when two source nodes wish to convey data to two destination nodes via an intermediary node namely relay node. In the context of wireless communications, when receiving two data packets from the two source nodes, the relay node can employ either physical-layer network coding or analogue network coding on the combined packet prior to forwarding to the two destination nodes. Evaluating the energy efficiency of these combination approaches, energy-delay trade-off (EDT) is worth to be investigated and the relay placement should be taken into account in the practical network design. This chapter will first investigate the EDT of network coding in the WBNs. Based on the derived EDT, algorithms that optimize the relay position will be developed to either minimize the transmission delay or minimize the energy consumption subject to constraints on power allocation and location of nodes. Furthermore, considering an extended model of the WBN, the relay placement will be studied for a general wireless multicast network with multiple source, relay and destination nodes

Network-coded MIMO-NOMA systems with FEC codes in two-way relay networks

This paper assumes two users and a two‐way relay network with the combination of 2×2 multi‐input multi‐output (MIMO) and nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA). To achieve network reliability without sacrificing network throughput, network‐coded MIMO‐NOMA schemes with convolutional, Reed‐Solomon (RS), and turbo codes are applied. Messages from two users at the relay node are network‐coded and combined in NOMA scheme. Interleaved differential encoding with redundancy (R‐RIDE) scheme is proposed together with MIMO‐NOMA system. Quadrature phase‐shift keying (QPSK) modulation technique is used. Bit error rate (BER) versus signal‐to‐noise ratio (SNR) (dB) and average mutual information (AMI) (bps/Hz) versus SNR (dB) in NOMA and MIMO‐NOMA schemes are evaluated and presented. From the simulated results, the combination of MIMO‐NOMA system with the proposed R‐RIDE‐Turbo network‐coded scheme in two‐way relay networks has better BER and higher AMI performance than conventional coded NOMA system. Furthermore, R‐RIDE‐Turbo scheme in MIMO‐NOMA system outperforms the other coded schemes in both MIMO‐NOMA and NOMA systems

Analysis and design of physical-layer network coding for relay networks

Physical-layer network coding (PNC) is a technique to make use of interference in wireless transmissions to boost the system throughput. In a PNC employed relay network, the relay node directly recovers and transmits a linear combination of its received messages in the physical layer. It has been shown that PNC can achieve near information-capacity rates. PNC is a new information exchange scheme introduced in wireless transmission. In practice, transmitters and receivers need to be designed and optimized, to achieve fast and reliable information exchange. Thus, we would like to ask: How to design the PNC schemes to achieve fast and reliable information exchange? In this thesis, we address this question from the following works: Firstly, we studied channel-uncoded PNC in two-way relay fading channels with QPSK modulation. The computation error probability for computing network coded messages at the relay is derived. We then optimized the network coding functions at the relay to improve the error rate performance. We then worked on channel coded PNC. The codes we studied include classical binary code, modern codes, and lattice codes. We analyzed the distance spectra of channel-coded PNC schemes with classical binary codes, to derive upper bounds for error rates of computing network coded messages at the relay. We designed and optimized irregular repeat-accumulate coded PNC. We modified the conventional extrinsic information transfer chart in the optimization process to suit the superimposed signal received at the relay. We analyzed and designed Eisenstein integer based lattice coded PNC in multi-way relay fading channels, to derive error rate performance bounds of computing network coded messages. Finally we extended our work to multi-way relay channels. We proposed a opportunistic transmission scheme for a pair-wise transmission PNC in a single-input single-output multi-way relay channel, to improve the sum-rate at the relay. The error performance of computing network coded messages at the relay is also improved. We optimized the uplink/downlink channel usage for multi-input multi-output multi-way relay channels with PNC to maximize the degrees of freedom capacity. We also showed that the system sum-rate can be further improved by a proposed iterative optimization algorithm

Two–Way Relaying Communications with OFDM and BICM/BICM-ID

Relay-aided communication methods have gained strong interests in academic community and been applied in various wireless communication scenarios. Among different techniques in relay-aided communication system, two-way relaying communication (TWRC) achieves the highest spectral efficiency due to its bi-directional transmission capability. Nevertheless, different from the conventional point-to-point communication system, TWRC suffers from detection quality degradation caused by the multiple-access interference (MAI). In addition, because of the propagation characteristics of wireless channels, fading and multipath dispersion also contribute strongly to detection errors. Therefore, this thesis is mainly concerned with designing transmission and detection schemes to provide good detection quality of TWRC while taking into account the negative impacts of fading, multipath dispersion and multiple-access interference. First, a TWRC system operating over multipath fading channels is considered and orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) is adopted to handle the inter-symbol interference (ISI) caused by the multipath dispersion. In particular, adaptive physical-layer network coding (PNC) is employed to address the MAI issue. By analyzing the detection error probability, various adaptive PNC schemes are discussed for using with OFDM and the scheme achieving the best trade-off among performance, overhead and complexity is suggested. In the second part of the thesis, the design of distributed precoding in TWRC using OFDM under multipath fading channels is studied. The objective is to design a distributed precoding scheme which can alleviate MAI and achieve multipath diversity to combat fading. Specifically, three types of errors are introduced when analyzing the error probability in the multiple access (MA) phase. Through analysis and simulation, the scheme that performs precoding in both time and frequency domains is demonstrated to achieve the maximum diversity gains under all types of errors. Finally, the last part of the thesis examines a communication system incorporating forward error correction (FEC) codes. Specifically, bit-interleaved code modulation (BICM) without and with iterative decoding (BICM-ID) are investigated in a TWRC system. Distributed linear constellation precoding (DLCP) is applied to handle MAI and the design of DLCP in a TWRC system using BICM/BICM-ID is discussed. Taking into account the multiple access channel from the terminal nodes to the relay node, decoding based on the quaternary code representation is introduced. Several error probability bounds are derived to aid in the design of DLCP. Based on these bounds, optimal parameters of DLCP are obtained through analysis and computer search. It is also found that, by combining XORbased network coding with successful iterative decoding, the MAI is eliminated and thus DLCP is not required in a BICM-ID system

Trellis- and network-coded modulation for decode-and-forward two-way relaying over time-varying channels

We present a bandwidth-efficient joint channel coding-modulation scheme conceived for the broadcast channel (BC) of Decode-and-forward Two-way Relaying (DF-TWR), where Trellis-coded modulation (TCM) is intrinsically amalgamated with network-coded modulation (NCM) for achieving both a channel coding gain and a high throughput. We conceive a low-complexity receiver algorithm for our joint Trellis- and Network-coded modulation (TC-NCM) scheme, which applies decoding and demodulation simultaneously, without the need to first demodulate the signal before decoding, as in the traditional solutions. As a further contribution, the TC-NCM scheme is intrinsically amalgamated with adaptive transceiver techniques. We then further investigate the performance of our near-instantaneously adaptive discrete-rate TC-NC-QAM/PSK scheme. Both simulation results and numerical analysis are presented, which are compared to the performance of traditional NCM schemes. The results show that our scheme not only increases the achievable transmission rate, but also improves the reliability, yet it is of modest complexity