Generalized Area Spectral Efficiency: An Effective Performance Metric for Green Wireless Communications

Area spectral efficiency (ASE) was introduced as a metric to quantify the spectral utilization efficiency of cellular systems. Unlike other performance metrics, ASE takes into account the spatial property of cellular systems. In this paper, we generalize the concept of ASE to study arbitrary wireless transmissions. Specifically, we introduce the notion of affected area to characterize the spatial property of arbitrary wireless transmissions. Based on the definition of affected area, we define the performance metric, generalized area spectral efficiency (GASE), to quantify the spatial spectral utilization efficiency as well as the greenness of wireless transmissions. After illustrating its evaluation for point-to-point transmission, we analyze the GASE performance of several different transmission scenarios, including dual-hop relay transmission, three-node cooperative relay transmission and underlay cognitive radio transmission. We derive closed-form expressions for the GASE metric of each transmission scenario under Rayleigh fading environment whenever possible. Through mathematical analysis and numerical examples, we show that the GASE metric provides a new perspective on the design and optimization of wireless transmissions, especially on the transmitting power selection. We also show that introducing relay nodes can greatly improve the spatial utilization efficiency of wireless systems. We illustrate that the GASE metric can help optimize the deployment of underlay cognitive radio systems.Comment: 11 pages, 8 figures, accepted by TCo

Improving Bandwidth Efficiency in E-band Communication Systems

The allocation of a large amount of bandwidth by regulating bodies in the 70/80 GHz band, i.e., the E-band, has opened up new potentials and challenges for providing affordable and reliable Gigabit per second wireless point-to-point links. This article first reviews the available bandwidth and licensing regulations in the E-band. Subsequently, different propagation models, e.g., the ITU-R and Cane models, are compared against measurement results and it is concluded that to meet specific availability requirements, E-band wireless systems may need to be designed with larger fade margins compared to microwave systems. A similar comparison is carried out between measurements and models for oscillator phase noise. It is confirmed that phase noise characteristics, that are neglected by the models used for narrowband systems, need to be taken into account for the wideband systems deployed in the E-band. Next, a new multi-input multi-output (MIMO) transceiver design, termed continuous aperture phased (CAP)-MIMO, is presented. Simulations show that CAP-MIMO enables E-band systems to achieve fiber-optic like throughputs. Finally, it is argued that full-duplex relaying can be used to greatly enhance the coverage of E-band systems without sacrificing throughput, thus, facilitating their application in establishing the backhaul of heterogeneous networks.Comment: 16 pages, 6 Figures, Journal paper. IEEE Communication Magazine 201

Fundamental Limits of Spectrum Sharing for NOMA-based Cooperative Relaying

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and spectrum sharing (SS) are two emerging multiple access technologies for efficient spectrum utilization in the fifth-generation (5G) wireless communications standard. In this paper, we present a closed-form analysis of the average achievable sum-rate and outage probability for a NOMA-based cooperative relaying system (CRS) in an underlay spectrum sharing scenario. We consider a peak interference constraint, where the interference inflicted by the secondary (unlicensed) network on the primary-user (licensed) receiver (PU-Rx) should be less than a predetermined threshold. We show that the CRS-NOMA outperforms the CRS with conventional orthogonal multiple access (OMA) for large values of peak interference power at the PU-Rx.Comment: 3 figures, Accepted for presentation in GLOBECOM-NOMAT5G workshop, Abu Dhabi, 201

Opportunistic Relaying in Time Division Broadcast Protocol with Incremental Relaying

In this paper, we investigate the performance of time division broadcast protocol (TDBC) with incremental relaying (IR) when there are multiple available relays. Opportunistic relaying (OR), i.e., the “best” relay is select for transmission to minimize the system’s outage probability, is proposed. Two OR schemes are presented. The first scheme, termed TDBC-OIR-I, selects the “best” relay from the set of relays that can decode both flows of signal from the two sources successfully. The second one, termed TDBC-OIR-II, selects two “best” relays from two respective sets of relays that can decode successfully each flow of signal. The performance, in terms of outage probability, expected rate (ER), and diversity-multiplexing tradeoff (DMT), of the two schemes are analyzed and compared with two TDBC schemes that have no IR but OR (termed TDBC-OR-I and TDBC-OR-II accordingly) and two other benchmark OR schemes that have no direct link transmission between the two sources

Full-duplex wireless communications: challenges, solutions and future research directions

The family of conventional half-duplex (HD) wireless systems relied on transmitting and receiving in different time-slots or frequency sub-bands. Hence the wireless research community aspires to conceive full-duplex (FD) operation for supporting concurrent transmission and reception in a single time/frequency channel, which would improve the attainable spectral efficiency by a factor of two. The main challenge encountered in implementing an FD wireless device is the large power difference between the self-interference (SI) imposed by the device’s own transmissions and the signal of interest received from a remote source. In this survey, we present a comprehensive list of the potential FD techniques and highlight their pros and cons. We classify the SI cancellation techniques into three categories, namely passive suppression, analog cancellation and digital cancellation, with the advantages and disadvantages of each technique compared. Specifically, we analyse the main impairments (e.g. phase noise, power amplifier nonlinearity as well as in-phase and quadrature-phase (I/Q) imbalance, etc.) that degrading the SI cancellation. We then discuss the FD based Media Access Control (MAC)-layer protocol design for the sake of addressing some of the critical issues, such as the problem of hidden terminals, the resultant end-to-end delay and the high packet loss ratio (PLR) due to network congestion. After elaborating on a variety of physical/MAC-layer techniques, we discuss potential solutions conceived for meeting the challenges imposed by the aforementioned techniques. Furthermore, we also discuss a range of critical issues related to the implementation, performance enhancement and optimization of FD systems, including important topics such as hybrid FD/HD scheme, optimal relay selection and optimal power allocation, etc. Finally, a variety of new directions and open problems associated with FD technology are pointed out. Our hope is that this treatise will stimulate future research efforts in the emerging field of FD communication