Application of Space-Time Diversity/Coding For Power Line Channels

The purpose of the present work is to evaluate the application of space-time block codes to the transmission of digital data over the power-line communication channel (PLC). Data transmitted over the power-line channel is usually corrupted by impulsive noise. In this work we analyse the performance of space-time block codes in this type of environment and show that a significant performance gain can be achieved at almost no processing expense

Cooperative Diversity for Fading Channels in the Presence of Impulsive Noise

Although there already exists a rich literature on cooperative diversity, current results are mainly restricted to the conventional assumption of additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). AWGN model realistically represents the thermal noise at the receiver, but ignores the impulsive nature of atmospheric noise, electromagnetic interference, or man-made noise which might be dominant in many practical applications. In this thesis, we investigate the performance of cooperative communication over Rayleigh fading channels in the presence of impulsive noise modeled by Middleton Class A noise. We consider a multi-relay network with amplify-and-forward relaying and orthogonal cooperation protocol. As for the coding across the relays, we employ either space-time coding or repetition coding. For each scheme, we assume various scenarios based on relays’ location and quantify the diversity advantages through the derivation of the pairwise error probability. Based on the minimization of a union bound on the error rate performance, we further propose optimal power allocation schemes and demonstrate significant performance gains over their counterparts with equal power allocation. We finally present an extensive Monte Carlo simulation to confirm our analytical results and corroborate on our results

Orthogonal Codes for Robust Low-Cost Communication

Orthogonal coding schemes, known to asymptotically achieve the capacity per unit cost (CPUC) for single-user ergodic memoryless channels with a zero-cost input symbol, are investigated for single-user compound memoryless channels, which exhibit uncertainties in their input-output statistical relationships. A minimax formulation is adopted to attain robustness. First, a class of achievable rates per unit cost (ARPUC) is derived, and its utility is demonstrated through several representative case studies. Second, when the uncertainty set of channel transition statistics satisfies a convexity property, optimization is performed over the class of ARPUC through utilizing results of minimax robustness. The resulting CPUC lower bound indicates the ultimate performance of the orthogonal coding scheme, and coincides with the CPUC under certain restrictive conditions. Finally, still under the convexity property, it is shown that the CPUC can generally be achieved, through utilizing a so-called mixed strategy in which an orthogonal code contains an appropriate composition of different nonzero-cost input symbols.Comment: 2nd revision, accepted for publicatio