Semi-blind adaptive beamforming for high-throughput quadrature amplitude modulation systems

A semi-blind adaptive beamforming scheme is proposed for wireless systems that employ high-throughput quadrature amplitude modulation signalling. A minimum number of training symbols, equal to the number of receiver antenna arrays elements, are first utilised to provide a rough initial least squares estimate of the beamformer's weight vector. A concurrent constant modulus algorithm and soft decision-directed scheme is then applied to adapt the beamformer. This semi-blind adaptive beamforming scheme is capable of converging fast to the minimum mean-square-error beamforming solution, as demonstrated in our simulation study

Recursive least squares semi-blind beamforming for MIMO using decision directed adaptation and constant modulus criterion

A new semi-blind adaptive beamforming scheme is proposed for multi-input multi-output (MIMO) induced and space- division multiple-access based wireless systems that employ high order phase shift keying signaling. A minimum number of training symbols, very close to the number of receiver antenna elements, are used to provide a rough initial least squares estimate of the beamformer0s weight vector. A novel cost function combining the constant modulus criterion with decision-directed adaptation is adopted to adapt the beamformer weight vector. This cost function can be approximated as a quadratic form with a closed-form solution, based on which we then derive the recursive least squares (RLS) semi-blind adaptive beamforming algorithm. This semi-blind adaptive beamforming scheme is capable of converging fast to the minimum mean-square-error beamforming solution, as demonstrated in our simulation study. Our proposed semi-blind RLS beamforming algorithm therefore provides an e±cient detection scheme for the future generation of MIMO aided mobile communication systems

Multiband Spectrum Access: Great Promises for Future Cognitive Radio Networks

Cognitive radio has been widely considered as one of the prominent solutions to tackle the spectrum scarcity. While the majority of existing research has focused on single-band cognitive radio, multiband cognitive radio represents great promises towards implementing efficient cognitive networks compared to single-based networks. Multiband cognitive radio networks (MB-CRNs) are expected to significantly enhance the network's throughput and provide better channel maintenance by reducing handoff frequency. Nevertheless, the wideband front-end and the multiband spectrum access impose a number of challenges yet to overcome. This paper provides an in-depth analysis on the recent advancements in multiband spectrum sensing techniques, their limitations, and possible future directions to improve them. We study cooperative communications for MB-CRNs to tackle a fundamental limit on diversity and sampling. We also investigate several limits and tradeoffs of various design parameters for MB-CRNs. In addition, we explore the key MB-CRNs performance metrics that differ from the conventional metrics used for single-band based networks.Comment: 22 pages, 13 figures; published in the Proceedings of the IEEE Journal, Special Issue on Future Radio Spectrum Access, March 201

Neural Networks for improved signal source enumeration and localization with unsteered antenna arrays

Direction of Arrival estimation using unsteered antenna arrays, unlike mechanically scanned or phased arrays, requires complex algorithms which perform poorly with small aperture arrays or without a large number of observations, or snapshots. In general, these algorithms compute a sample covriance matrix to obtain the direction of arrival and some require a prior estimate of the number of signal sources. Herein, artificial neural network architectures are proposed which demonstrate improved estimation of the number of signal sources, the true signal covariance matrix, and the direction of arrival. The proposed number of source estimation network demonstrates robust performance in the case of coherent signals where conventional methods fail. For covariance matrix estimation, four different network architectures are assessed and the best performing architecture achieves a 20 times improvement in performance over the sample covariance matrix. Additionally, this network can achieve comparable performance to the sample covariance matrix with 1/8-th the amount of snapshots. For direction of arrival estimation, preliminary results are provided comparing six architectures which all demonstrate high levels of accuracy and demonstrate the benefits of progressively training artificial neural networks by training on a sequence of sub- problems and extending to the network to encapsulate the entire process