Cooperative wireless networks

In the last few years, there have been a lot of interests in wireless ad-hoc networks as they have remarkable commercial and military applications. Such wireless networks have the benefit of avoiding a wired infrastructure. However, signal fading is a severe problem for wireless communications particularly for the multi-hop transmissions in the ad-hoc networks. Cooperative communication has been proposed as an effective way to improve the quality of wireless links. The key idea is to have multiple wireless devices at different locations cooperatively share their antenna resources and aid each other’s transmission. In this thesis, we develop effective algorithms for cooperative wireless ad-hoc networks, and the performance of cooperative communication is measured based on various criteria, such as cooperative region, power ratio and end-to-end performance. For example, the proposed interference subtraction and supplementary cooperation algorithms can significantly improve network throughput of a multi-hop routing. Comprehensive simulations are carried out for all the proposed algorithms and performance analysis, providing quantitative evidence and comparison over other schemes. In our view, the new cooperative communication algorithms proposed in this research enable wireless ad-hoc networks to improve radio unreliability and meet future application requirements of high-speed and high-quality services with high energy efficiency. The acquired new insights on the network performance of the proposed algorithms can also provide precise guidelines for efficient designs of practical and reliable communications systems. Hence these results will potentially have a broad impact across a range of related areas, including wireless communications, network protocols, radio transceiver design and information theory

Design of Network Coding Schemes and RF Energy Transfer in Wireless Communication Networks

This thesis focuses on the design of network coding schemes and radio frequency (RF) energy transfer in wireless communication networks. During the past few years, network coding has attracted significant attention because of its capability to transmit maximum possible information in a network from multiple sources to multiple destinations via a relay. Normally, the destinations are only able to decode the information with sufficient prior knowledge. To enable the destinations to decode the information in the cases with less/no prior knowledge, a pattern of nested codes with multiple interpretations using binary convolutional codes is constructed in a multi-source multi-destination wireless relay network. Then, I reconstruct nested codes with convolutional codes and lattice codes in multi-way relay channels to improve the spectrum efficiency. Moreover, to reduce the high decoding complexity caused by the adopted convolutional codes, a network coded non-binary low-density generator matrix (LDGM) code structure is proposed for a multi-access relay system. Another focus of this thesis is on the design of RF-enabled wireless energy transfer (WET) schemes. Much attention has been attracted by RF-enabled WET technology because of its capability enabling wireless devices to harvest energy from wireless signals for their intended applications. I first configure a power beacon (PB)-assisted wireless-powered communication network (PB-WPCN), which consists of a set of hybrid access point (AP)-source pairs and a PB. Both cooperative and non-cooperative scenarios are considered, based on whether the PB is cooperative with the APs or not. Besides, I develop a new distributed power control scheme for a power splitting-based interference channel (IFC) with simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT), where the considered IFC consists of multiple source-destination pairs

Physical layer security in 5G and beyond wireless networks enabling technologies

Information security has always been a critical concern for wireless communications due to the broadcast nature of the open wireless medium. Commonly, security relies on cryptographic encryption techniques at higher layers to ensure information security. However, traditional cryptographic methods may be inadequate or inappropriate due to novel improvements in the computational power of devices and optimization approaches. Therefore, supplementary techniques are required to secure the transmission data. Physical layer security (PLS) can improve the security of wireless communications by exploiting the characteristics of wireless channels. Therefore, we study the PLS performance in the fifth generation (5G) and beyond wireless networks enabling technologies in this thesis. The thesis consists of three main parts. In the first part, the PLS design and analysis for Device-to-Device (D2D) communication is carried out for several scenarios. More specifically, in this part, we study the underlay relay-aided D2D communications to improve the PLS of the cellular network. We propose a cooperative scheme, whereby the D2D pair, in return for being allowed to share the spectrum band of the cellular network, serves as a friendly jammer using full-duplex (FD) and half-duplex (HD) transmissions and relay selection to degrade the wiretapped signal at an eavesdropper. This part aims to show that spectrum sharing is advantageous for both D2D communications and cellular networks concerning reliability and robustness for the former and PLS enhancement for the latter. Closed-form expressions for the D2D outage probability, the secrecy outage probability (SOP), and the probability of non-zero secrecy capacity (PNSC) are derived to assess the proposed cooperative system model. The results show enhancing the robustness and reliability of D2D communication while simultaneously improving the cellular network’s PLS by generating jamming signals towards the eavesdropper. Furthermore, intensive Monte-Carlo simulations and numerical results are provided to verify the efficiency of the proposed schemes and validate the derived expressions’ accuracy. In the second part, we consider a secure underlay cognitive radio (CR) network in the presence of a primary passive eavesdropper. Herein, a secondary multi-antenna full-duplex destination node acts as a jammer to the primary eavesdropper to improve the PLS of the primary network. In return for this favor, the energy-constrained secondary source gets access to the primary network to transmit its information so long as the interference to the latter is below a certain level. As revealed in our analysis and simulation, the reliability and robustness of the CR network are improved, while the security level of the primary network is enhanced concurrently. Finally, we investigate the PLS design and analysis of reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided wireless communication systems in an inband underlay D2D communication and the CR network. An RIS is used to adjust its reflecting elements to enhance the data transmission while improving the PLS concurrently. Furthermore, we investigate the design of active elements in RIS to overcome the double-fading problem introduced in the RISaided link in a wireless communications system. Towards this end, each active RIS element amplifies the reflected incident signal rather than only reflecting it as done in passive RIS modules. As revealed in our analysis and simulation, the use of active elements leads to a drastic reduction in the size of RIS to achieve a given performance level. Furthermore, a practical design for active RIS is proposed

Radio Communications

In the last decades the restless evolution of information and communication technologies (ICT) brought to a deep transformation of our habits. The growth of the Internet and the advances in hardware and software implementations modified our way to communicate and to share information. In this book, an overview of the major issues faced today by researchers in the field of radio communications is given through 35 high quality chapters written by specialists working in universities and research centers all over the world. Various aspects will be deeply discussed: channel modeling, beamforming, multiple antennas, cooperative networks, opportunistic scheduling, advanced admission control, handover management, systems performance assessment, routing issues in mobility conditions, localization, web security. Advanced techniques for the radio resource management will be discussed both in single and multiple radio technologies; either in infrastructure, mesh or ad hoc networks

Advances in Multi-User Scheduling and Turbo Equalization for Wireless MIMO Systems

Nach einer Einleitung behandelt Teil 2 Mehrbenutzer-Scheduling für die Abwärtsstrecke von drahtlosen MIMO Systemen mit einer Sendestation und kanaladaptivem precoding: In jeder Zeit- oder Frequenzressource kann eine andere Nutzergruppe gleichzeitig bedient werden, räumlich getrennt durch unterschiedliche Antennengewichte. Nutzer mit korrelierten Kanälen sollten nicht gleichzeitig bedient werden, da dies die räumliche Trennbarkeit erschwert. Die Summenrate einer Nutzermenge hängt von den Antennengewichten ab, die wiederum von der Nutzerauswahl abhängen. Zur Entkopplung des Problems schlägt diese Arbeit Metriken vor basierend auf einer geschätzten Rate mit ZF precoding. Diese lässt sich mit Hilfe von wiederholten orthogonalen Projektionen abschätzen, wodurch die Berechnung von Antennengewichten beim Scheduling entfällt. Die Ratenschätzung kann basierend auf momentanen Kanalmessungen oder auf gemittelter Kanalkenntnis berechnet werden und es können Datenraten- und Fairness-Kriterien berücksichtig werden. Effiziente Suchalgorithmen werden vorgestellt, die die gesamte Systembandbreite auf einmal bearbeiten können und zur Komplexitätsreduktion die Lösung in Zeit- und Frequenz nachführen können. Teil 3 zeigt wie mehrere Sendestationen koordiniertes Scheduling und kooperative Signalverarbeitung einsetzen können. Mittels orthogonalen Projektionen ist es möglich, Inter-Site Interferenz zu schätzen, ohne Antennengewichte berechnen zu müssen. Durch ein Konzept virtueller Nutzer kann der obige Scheduling-Ansatz auf mehrere Sendestationen und sogar Relays mit SDMA erweitert werden. Auf den benötigten Signalisierungsaufwand wird kurz eingegangen und eine Methode zur Schätzung der Summenrate eines Systems ohne Koordination besprochen. Teil4 entwickelt Optimierungen für Turbo Entzerrer. Diese Nutzen Signalkorrelation als Quelle von Redundanz. Trotzdem kann eine Kombination mit MIMO precoding sinnvoll sein, da bei Annahme realistischer Fehler in der Kanalkenntnis am Sender keine optimale Interferenzunterdrückung möglich ist. Mit Hilfe von EXIT Charts wird eine neuartige Methode zur adaptiven Nutzung von a-priori-Information zwischen Iterationen entwickelt, die die Konvergenz verbessert. Dabei wird gezeigt, wie man semi-blinde Kanalschätzung im EXIT chart berücksichtigen kann. In Computersimulationen werden alle Verfahren basierend auf 4G-Systemparametern überprüft.After an introduction, part 2 of this thesis deals with downlink multi-user scheduling for wireless MIMO systems with one transmitting station performing channel adaptive precoding:Different user subsets can be served in each time or frequency resource by separating them in space with different antenna weight vectors. Users with correlated channel matrices should not be served jointly since correlation impairs the spatial separability.The resulting sum rate for each user subset depends on the precoding weights, which in turn depend on the user subset. This thesis manages to decouple this problem by proposing a scheduling metric based on the rate with ZF precoding such as BD, written with the help of orthogonal projection matrices. It allows estimating rates without computing any antenna weights by using a repeated projection approximation.This rate estimate allows considering user rate requirements and fairness criteria and can work with either instantaneous or long term averaged channel knowledge.Search algorithms are presented to efficiently solve user grouping or selection problems jointly for the entire system bandwidth while being able to track the solution in time and frequency for complexity reduction. Part 3 shows how multiple transmitting stations can benefit from cooperative scheduling or joint signal processing. An orthogonal projection based estimate of the inter-site interference power, again without computing any antenna weights, and a virtual user concept extends the scheduling approach to cooperative base stations and finally included SDMA half-duplex relays in the scheduling.Signalling overhead is discussed and a method to estimate the sum rate without coordination. Part 4 presents optimizations for Turbo Equalizers. There, correlation between user signals can be exploited as a source of redundancy. Nevertheless a combination with transmit precoding which aims at reducing correlation can be beneficial when the channel knowledge at the transmitter contains a realistic error, leading to increased correlation. A novel method for adaptive re-use of a-priori information between is developed to increase convergence by tracking the iterations online with EXIT charts.A method is proposed to model semi-blind channel estimation updates in an EXIT chart. Computer simulations with 4G system parameters illustrate the methods using realistic channel models.Im Buchhandel erhältlich: Advances in Multi-User Scheduling and Turbo Equalization for Wireless MIMO Systems / Fuchs-Lautensack,Martin Ilmenau: ISLE, 2009,116 S. ISBN 978-3-938843-43-

Energy and computationally efficient resource allocation methods for cellular relay-aided networks with system stability consideration

The increasing demand for coverage extension and power gain, along with the need for decreasing implementation costs, raised the idea of relaying cellular systems. Developing relay stations as a coverage extension and low cost mechanism has also brought up the challenge of utilizing the available network resources cooperatively between base stations and relays. The topic of resource allocation in the downlink of a relaying cellular system is studied in the current dissertation with the objective of maximizing transmission rate, encompassing system stability and managing the interference as it has not been investigated as a comprehensive allocation problem in the previous literature. We begin our study by modeling a single cell downlink transmission system with the objective to enhance the throughput of cell-edge users by employing decode-and-forward relay stations. We study the queue length evolution at each hop and propose a rate control mechanism to stabilize the considered queues. Accordingly, we propose a novel allocation model which maximizes user throughput with respect to the channel condition and the stability requirements. To solve the proposed allocation problem, we introduced optimization algorithm as well as heuristic approaches which offer low computation complexity. Next, we enhance the initial allocation method by considering a multi-cell system that accounts for more general and practical cellular networks. The multi-cell model embodies extra constraints for controlling the interference to the users of neighboring cells. We propose a different set of stability constraints which do not enquire a priori knowledge of the statistics of the arriving traffic. In an approach to improve the energy efficiency while respecting the stability and interference criteria, we also suggest an energy-conservative allocation scheme. We solve the defined allocation problems in a central controlling system. As our final contribution, we enhance the proposed multi-cell allocation model with a low overhead and distributed approach. The proposed method is based on the idea of dividing the resource allocation task between each base station and its connected relay stations. In addition, the messaging overhead for controlling inter-cell interference is minimized using the reference-station method. This distributed approach offers high degree of energy efficiency as well as more scalability in comparison to centralized schemes, when the system consists of larger number of cells and users. Since the defined problems embody multiple variables and constraints, we develop a framework to cast the joint design in the optimization form which gives rise to nonlinear and nonconvex problems. In this regard, we employ time-sharing technique to tackle the combinatorial format of the allocation problem. In addition, it is important to consider the situation that the time-shared approach is not beneficial when subcarriers are not allowed to be shared during one time-slot. To overcome this obstacle, we apply heuristic algorithms as well as convex optimization techniques to obtain exclusive subcarrier allocation schemes. To evaluate the performance of the proposed solutions, we compare them in terms of the achieved throughput, transmitted power, queue stability, feedback overhead, and computation complexity. By the means of extensive simulation scenarios as well as numerical analysis, we demonstrate the remarkable advantages of the suggested approaches. The results of the present dissertation are appealing for designing of future HetNet systems specifically when the communication latency and the energy consumption are required to be minimized

Radio Resource Management for Wireless Mesh Networks Supporting Heterogeneous Traffic

Wireless mesh networking has emerged as a promising technology for future broadband wireless access, providing a viable and economical solution for both peer-to-peer applications and Internet access. The success of wireless mesh networks (WMNs) is highly contingent on effective radio resource management. In conventional wireless networks, system throughput is usually a common performance metric. However, next-generation broadband wireless access networks including WMNs are anticipated to support multimedia traffic (e.g., voice, video, and data traffic). With heterogeneous traffic, quality-of-service (QoS) provisioning and fairness support are also imperative. Recently, wireless mesh networking for suburban/rural residential areas has been attracting a plethora of attentions from industry and academia. With austere suburban and rural networking environments, multi-hop communications with decentralized resource allocation are preferred. In WMNs without powerful centralized control, simple yet effective resource allocation approaches are desired for the sake of system performance melioration. In this dissertation, we conduct a comprehensive research study on the topic of radio resource management for WMNs supporting multimedia traffic. In specific, this dissertation is intended to shed light on how to effectively and efficiently manage a WMN for suburban/rural residential areas, provide users with high-speed wireless access, support the QoS of multimedia applications, and improve spectrum utilization by means of novel radio resource allocation. As such, five important resource allocation problems for WMNs are addressed, and our research accomplishments are briefly outlined as follows: Firstly, we propose a novel node clustering algorithm with effective subcarrier allocation for WMNs. The proposed node clustering algorithm is QoS-aware, and the subcarrier allocation is optimality-driven and can be performed in a decentralized manner. Simulation results show that, compared to a conventional conflict-graph approach, our proposed approach effectively fosters frequency reuse, thereby improving system performance; Secondly, we propose three approaches for joint power-frequency-time resource allocation. Simulation results show that all of the proposed approaches are effective in provisioning packet-level QoS over their conventional resource allocation counterparts. Our proposed approaches are of low complexity, leading to preferred candidates for practical implementation; Thirdly, to further enhance system performance, we propose two low-complexity node cooperative resource allocation approaches for WMNs with partner selection/allocation. Simulation results show that, with beneficial node cooperation, both proposed approaches are promising in supporting QoS and elevating system throughput over their non-cooperative counterparts; Fourthly, to further utilize the temporarily available radio spectrum, we propose a simple channel sensing order for unlicensed secondary users. By sensing the channels according to the descending order of their achievable rates, we prove that a secondary user should stop at the first sensed free channel for the sake of optimality; and Lastly, we derive a unified optimization framework to effectively attain different degrees of performance tradeoff between throughput and fairness with QoS support. By introducing a bargaining floor, the optimal tradeoff curve between system throughput and fairness can be obtained by solving the proposed optimization problem iteratively