Optimization Framework and Graph-Based Approach for Relay-Assisted Bidirectional OFDMA Cellular Networks

This paper considers a relay-assisted bidirectional cellular network where the base station (BS) communicates with each mobile station (MS) using OFDMA for both uplink and downlink. The goal is to improve the overall system performance by exploring the full potential of the network in various dimensions including user, subcarrier, relay, and bidirectional traffic. In this work, we first introduce a novel three-time-slot time-division duplexing (TDD) transmission protocol. This protocol unifies direct transmission, one-way relaying and network-coded two-way relaying between the BS and each MS. Using the proposed three-time-slot TDD protocol, we then propose an optimization framework for resource allocation to achieve the following gains: cooperative diversity (via relay selection), network coding gain (via bidirectional transmission mode selection), and multiuser diversity (via subcarrier assignment). We formulate the problem as a combinatorial optimization problem, which is NP-complete. To make it more tractable, we adopt a graph-based approach. We first establish the equivalence between the original problem and a maximum weighted clique problem in graph theory. A metaheuristic algorithm based on any colony optimization (ACO) is then employed to find the solution in polynomial time. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed protocol together with the ACO algorithm significantly enhances the system total throughput.Comment: 27 pages, 8 figures, 2 table

Analysis and Design of Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) Techniques for Next Generation Wireless Communication Systems

The current surge in wireless connectivity, anticipated to amplify significantly in future wireless technologies, brings a new wave of users. Given the impracticality of an endlessly expanding bandwidth, there’s a pressing need for communication techniques that efficiently serve this burgeoning user base with limited resources. Multiple Access (MA) techniques, notably Orthogonal Multiple Access (OMA), have long addressed bandwidth constraints. However, with escalating user numbers, OMA’s orthogonality becomes limiting for emerging wireless technologies. Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA), employing superposition coding, serves more users within the same bandwidth as OMA by allocating different power levels to users whose signals can then be detected using the gap between them, thus offering superior spectral efficiency and massive connectivity. This thesis examines the integration of NOMA techniques with cooperative relaying, EXtrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) chart analysis, and deep learning for enhancing 6G and beyond communication systems. The adopted methodology aims to optimize the systems’ performance, spanning from bit-error rate (BER) versus signal to noise ratio (SNR) to overall system efficiency and data rates. The primary focus of this thesis is the investigation of the integration of NOMA with cooperative relaying, EXIT chart analysis, and deep learning techniques. In the cooperative relaying context, NOMA notably improved diversity gains, thereby proving the superiority of combining NOMA with cooperative relaying over just NOMA. With EXIT chart analysis, NOMA achieved low BER at mid-range SNR as well as achieved optimal user fairness in the power allocation stage. Additionally, employing a trained neural network enhanced signal detection for NOMA in the deep learning scenario, thereby producing a simpler signal detection for NOMA which addresses NOMAs’ complex receiver problem

Nonorthogonal Multiple Access for 5G and Beyond

This work was supported in part by the U.K. Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC) under Grant EP/N029720/1 and Grant EP/N029720/2. The work of L. Hanzo was supported by the ERC Advanced Fellow Grant Beam-me-up

Non-orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) with Asynchronous Interference Cancellation

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) allows allocating one carrier to more than one user at the same time in one cell. It is a promising technology to provide high throughput due to carrier reuse within a cell. In this thesis, a novel interference cancellation (IC) technique is proposed for asynchronous NOMA systems, which uses multiple symbols from each interfering user to carry out IC. With the multiple symbol information from each interfering user the IC performance can be improved substantially. The proposed technique creates and processes so called "IC Triangles". That is, the order of symbol detection is based on detecting all the overlapping symbols of a stonger user before detecting a symbol of a weak user. Also, successive IC (SIC) is employed in the proposed technique. Employing IC Triangles together with the SIC suppresses co-channel interference from strong (earlier detected) signals for relatively weak (yet to be detected) signals and make it possible to achieve low bit error rate (BER) for all users. Further, iterative signal processing is used to improve the system performance. Employing multiple iterations of symbol detection which is based on exploiting a priori estimate obtained from the previous iteration can improve the detection and IC performances. The BER and capacity performance analyses of an uplink NOMA system with the proposed IC technique are presented, along with the comparison to orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems. Performance analyses validate the requirement for a novel IC technique that addresses asynchronism at NOMA uplink transmissions. Also, numerical and simulation results show that NOMA with the proposed IC technique outperforms OFDMA for uplink transmissions. It is also concluded from the research that, in the NOMA system, users are required to have large received power ratio to satisfy BER requirements and the required received power ratio increases with increasing the modulation level. Also, employing iterative IC provides significant performance gain in NOMA and the number of required iterations depend on the modulation level and detection method. Further, at uplink transmissions, users' BER and capacity performances strongly depend on the relative time offset between interfering users, besides the received power ratio

Collaborative modulation multiple access for single hop and multihop networks

While the bandwidth available for wireless networks is limited, the world has seen an unprecedented growth in the number of mobile subscribers and an ever increasing demand for high data rates. Therefore efficient utilisation of bandwidth to maximise link spectral efficiency and number of users that can be served simultaneously are primary goals in the design of wireless systems. To achieve these goals, in this thesis, a new non-orthogonal uplink multiple access scheme which combines the functionalities of adaptive modulation and multiple access called collaborative modulation multiple access (CMMA) is proposed. CMMA enables multiple users to access the network simultaneously and share the same bandwidth even when only a single receive antenna is available and in the presence of high channel correlation. Instead of competing for resources, users in CMMA share resources collaboratively by employing unique modulation sets (UMS) that differ in phase, power, and/or mapping structure. These UMS are designed to insure that the received signal formed from the superposition of all users’ signals belongs to a composite QAM constellation (CC) with a rate equal to the sum rate of all users. The CC and its constituent UMSs are designed centrally at the BS to remove ambiguity, maximize the minimum Euclidian distance (dmin) of the CC and insure a minimum BER performance is maintained. Users collaboratively precode their transmitted signal by performing truncated channel inversion and phase rotation using channel state information (CSI ) obtained from a periodic common pilot to insure that their combined signal at the BS belongs to the CC known at the BS which in turn performs a simple joint maximum likelihood detection without the need for CSI. The coherent addition of users’ power enables CMMA to achieve high link spectral efficiency at any time without extra power or bandwidth but on the expense of graceful degradation in BER performance. To improve the BER performance of CMMA while preserving its precoding and detection structure and without the need for pilot-aided channel estimation, a new selective diversity combining scheme called SC-CMMA is proposed. SC-CMMA optimises the overall group performance providing fairness and diversity gain for various users with different transmit powers and channel conditions by selecting a single antenna out of a group of L available antennas that minimises the total transmit power required for precoding at any one time. A detailed study of capacity and BER performance of CMMA and SC-CMMA is carried out under different level of channel correlations which shows that both offer high capacity gain and resilience to channel correlation. SC-CMMA capacity even increase with high channel correlation between users’ channels. CMMA provides a practical solution for implementing the multiple access adder channel (MAAC) in fading environments hence a hybrid approach combining both collaborative coding and modulation referred to as H-CMMA is investigated. H-CMMA divides users into a number of subgroups where users within a subgroup are assigned the same modulation set and different multiple access codes. H-CMMA adjusts the dmin of the received CC by varying the number of subgroups which in turn varies the number of unique constellation points for the same number of users and average total power. Therefore H-CMMA can accommodate many users with different rates while flexibly managing the complexity, rate and BER performance depending on the SNR. Next a new scheme combining CMMA with opportunistic scheduling using only partial CSI at the receiver called CMMA-OS is proposed to combine both the power gain of CMMA and the multiuser diversity gain that arises from users’ channel independence. To avoid the complexity and excessive feedback associated with the dynamic update of the CC, the BS takes into account the independence of users’ channels in the design of the CC and its constituent UMSs but both remain unchanged thereafter. However UMS are no longer associated with users, instead channel gain’s probability density function is divided into regions with identical probability and each UMS is associated with a specific region. This will simplify scheduling as users can initially chose their UMS based on their CSI and the BS will only need to resolve any collision when the channels of two or more users are located at the same region. Finally a high rate cooperative communication scheme, called cooperative modulation (CM) is proposed for cooperative multiuser systems. CM combines the reliability of the cooperative diversity with the high spectral efficiency and multiple access capabilities of CMMA. CM maintains low feedback and high spectral efficiency by restricting relaying to a single route with the best overall channel. Two possible variations of CM are proposed depending on whether CSI available only at the users or just at the BS and the selected relay. The first is referred to Precode, Amplify, and Forward (PAF) while the second one is called Decode, Remap, and Forward (DMF). A new route selection algorithm for DMF based on maximising dmin of random CC is also proposed using a novel fast low-complexity multi-stage sphere based algorithm to calculate the dmin at the relay of random CC that is used for both relay selection and detection

Coding in 802.11 WLANs

Forward error correction (FEC) coding is widely used in communication systems to correct transmis- sion errors. In IEEE 802.11a/g transmitters, convolutional codes are used for FEC at the physical (PHY) layer. As is typical in wireless systems, only a limited choice of pre-speci¯ed coding rates is supported. These are implemented in hardware and thus di±cult to change, and the coding rates are selected with point to point operation in mind. This thesis is concerned with using FEC coding in 802.11 WLANs in more interesting ways that are better aligned with application requirements. For example, coding to support multicast tra±c rather than simple point to point tra±c; coding that is cognisant of the multiuser nature of the wireless channel; and coding which takes account of delay requirements as well as losses. We consider layering additional coding on top of the existing 802.11 PHY layer coding, and investigate the tradeo® between higher layer coding and PHY layer modulation and FEC coding as well as MAC layer scheduling. Firstly we consider the joint multicast performance of higher-layer fountain coding concatenated with 802.11a/g OFDM PHY modulation/coding. A study on the optimal choice of PHY rates with and without fountain coding is carried out for standard 802.11 WLANs. We ¯nd that, in contrast to studies in cellular networks, in 802.11a/g WLANs the PHY rate that optimizes uncoded multicast performance is also close to optimal for fountain-coded multicast tra±c. This indicates that in 802.11a/g WLANs cross-layer rate control for higher-layer fountain coding concatenated with physical layer modulation and FEC would bring few bene¯ts. Secondly, using experimental measurements taken in an outdoor environment, we model the chan- nel provided by outdoor 802.11 links as a hybrid binary symmetric/packet erasure channel. This hybrid channel o®ers capacity increases of more than 100% compared to a conventional packet erasure channel (PEC) over a wide range of RSSIs. Based upon the established channel model, we further consider the potential performance gains of adopting a binary symmetric channel (BSC) paradigm for multi-destination aggregations in 802.11 WLANs. We consider two BSC-based higher-layer coding approaches, i.e. superposition coding and a simpler time-sharing coding, for multi-destination aggre- gated packets. The performance results for both unicast and multicast tra±c, taking account of MAC layer overheads, demonstrate that increases in network throughput of more than 100% are possible over a wide range of channel conditions, and that the simpler time-sharing approach yields most of these gains and have minor loss of performance. Finally, we consider the proportional fair allocation of high-layer coding rates and airtimes in 802.11 WLANs, taking link losses and delay constraints into account. We ¯nd that a layered approach of separating MAC scheduling and higher-layer coding rate selection is optimal. The proportional fair coding rate and airtime allocation (i) assigns equal total airtime (i.e. airtime including both successful and failed transmissions) to every station in a WLAN, (ii) the station airtimes sum to unity (ensuring operation at the rate region boundary), and (iii) the optimal coding rate is selected to maximise goodput (treating packets decoded after the delay deadline as losses)

Principles of Physical Layer Security in Multiuser Wireless Networks: A Survey

This paper provides a comprehensive review of the domain of physical layer security in multiuser wireless networks. The essential premise of physical-layer security is to enable the exchange of confidential messages over a wireless medium in the presence of unauthorized eavesdroppers without relying on higher-layer encryption. This can be achieved primarily in two ways: without the need for a secret key by intelligently designing transmit coding strategies, or by exploiting the wireless communication medium to develop secret keys over public channels. The survey begins with an overview of the foundations dating back to the pioneering work of Shannon and Wyner on information-theoretic security. We then describe the evolution of secure transmission strategies from point-to-point channels to multiple-antenna systems, followed by generalizations to multiuser broadcast, multiple-access, interference, and relay networks. Secret-key generation and establishment protocols based on physical layer mechanisms are subsequently covered. Approaches for secrecy based on channel coding design are then examined, along with a description of inter-disciplinary approaches based on game theory and stochastic geometry. The associated problem of physical-layer message authentication is also introduced briefly. The survey concludes with observations on potential research directions in this area.Comment: 23 pages, 10 figures, 303 refs. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1303.1609 by other authors. IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials, 201