Maximum likelihood receivers for space-time coded MIMO systems with gaussian estimation errors

Maximum likelihood (ML) receivers for space-time coded multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems with Gaussian channel estimation errors are proposed. Two different cases are considered. In the first case, the conditional probability density function (PDF) of the channel estimate is assumed Gaussian and known. In the second case, the joint PDF of the channel estimate and the true channel gain is assumed Gaussian and known. In addition to ML signal detection for space-time coded MIMO with ML and minimum mean-squared-error channel estimation, ML signal detection without channel estimation is also studied. Two suboptimal structures are derived. The Alamouti space-time codes are used to examine the performances of the new receivers. Simulation results show that the new receivers can reduce the gap between the conventional receiver with channel estimation errors and the receiver with perfect channel knowledge at least by half in some cases

Antenna selection and performance analysis of MIMO spatial multiplexing systems

Multiple-input multiple-output spatial multiplexing (MIMO-SM) systems offer an essential benefit referred to as spatial multiplexing gain. Two important signal reception techniques for MIMO-SM systems are the zero-forcing (ZF) and ordered successive interference cancellation (OSIC) as, for example, in the case of the decision-feedback detector (DFD). This thesis studies the communication and signal processing aspects of MIMO-SM. We first investigate the bit error rate (BER) performance of the ZF receiver over transmit correlated Ricean flat-fading channels. In particular, for a MIMO channel with M transmit and N receive antennas, we derive an approximation for the average BER of each sub-stream. A closed-form expression for the optimal transmit correlation coefficient, which achieves the maximum capacity (i.e., uncorrelated case) of two-input two-output spatial multiplexing (TITO-SM) systems, is presented. We further propose an antenna selection (AS) approach for the DFD over independent Rayleigh flat-fading channels. The selected transmit antennas are those that maximize both the post-processing signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the receiver end, and the system capacity. An upper bound on the outage probability for the AS approach is derived. It is shown that the AS approach achieves a performance comparable to optimal capacity-based selection based on exhaustive search, but at a lower complexity. Finally, we investigate a cross-layer transmit AS approach for the DFD over spatially correlated Ricean flat-fading channels. The selected transmit antennas are those that maximize the link layer throughput of correlated MIMO channels. A closed-form expression for the system throughput with perfect channel estimation is first derived. We further analyze the system performance with pilot-aided channel estimation. In that, we derive a closed-form expression for the post-detection signal-to-noise-plus-interference ratio (SNIR) of each transmitted substream, conditioned on the estimated channels. The derived SNIR is then used to evaluate the overall system throughput. It is observed that the cross-layer AS approach always assigns the transmission to the antenna combination which sees better channel conditions, resulting in a substantial improvement over the optimal capacity-based AS approach. Considering a training-based channel estimation technique, we compare the performance of the proposed cross-layer AS with that of optimal capacity-based AS when employed with a training-based channel estimation. Our results show that the latter is more robust to imperfect channel estimation. However, in all cases, the cross-layer AS delivers higher throughput gains than the capacity-based A

Diversity receiver design and channel statistic estimation in fading channels

The main goal of this thesis is to provide an in-depth study of two important techniques that are effective in improving the performance, data rate, or bandwidth-efficiency in wireless communication systems. The two techniques are, first, diversity combining equipped with quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), and second, the estimation of fading channel statistical properties;To effectively combat the adverse effect of fading and to improve the error rate performance in wireless communications, one of the major approaches is to employ diversity combining techniques. In the first part of this thesis, we focus on the equal gain combining (EGC) and hybrid-selection equal gain combining (HS/EGC) for bandwidth-efficient wireless systems (i.e. QAM systems). For EGC QAM systems, we propose the receiver structure and the corresponding decision variables, and then study the effects of imperfect channel estimation (ICE) and quantify the loss of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) gain caused by ICE. For HS/EGC QAM system, we develop a general approach to derive unified error rate and outage probability formulas over various types of fading channels based on the proposed HS/EGC receiver. The main contribution of this work lies in that it provides effective hybrid diversity schemes and new analytical approaches to enable thorough analysis and effective design of bandwidth efficient wireless communication systems which suffer from ICE and operate in realistic multipath channels;Channel statistic information is proven to be critical in determining the systems design, achievable data rate, and achievable performance. In the second part of this thesis, we study the estimation of the fading channel Statistics and Probability; We propose several iterative algorithms to estimate the first- and second-order statistics of general fading or composite fading-shadowing channels and derive the Cramer-Rao bounds (CRBs) for all the cases. We demonstrate that these iterative methods are efficient in the sense that they achieve their corresponding CRBs. The main contribution of this work is that it bridges the gap between the broad utilization of fading channel statistical properties and the lack of systematic study that makes such statistical properties available

Design and performance analysis of MIMO space-time block coding systems over general fading channels

Ph.DDOCTOR OF PHILOSOPH

Wireless multiuser communication systems: diversity receiver performance analysis, GSMuD design, and fading channel simulator

Multipath fading phenomenon is central to the design and analysis of wireless communication systems including multiuser systems. If untreated, the fading will corrupt the transmitted signal and often cause performance degradations such as increased communication error and decreased data rate, as compared to wireline channels with little or no multipath fading. On the other hand, this multipath fading phenomenon, if fully utilized, can actually lead to system designs that provide additional gains in system performance as compared to systems that experience non-fading channels.;The central question this thesis tries to answer is how to design and analyze a wireless multiuser system that takes advantage of the benefits the diversity multipath fading channel provides. Two particular techniques are discussed and analyzed in the first part of the thesis: quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) and diversity receivers, including maximal ratio combining (MRC) and generalized selection combining (GSC). We consider the practical case of imperfect channel estimation (ICE) and develop a new decision variable (DV) of MRC receiver output for M-QAM. By deriving its moment generating function (MGF), we obtain the exact bit error rate (BER) performance under arbitrary correlated Rayleigh and Rician channels, with ICE. GSC provides a tradeoff between receiver complexity and performance. We study the effect of ICE on the GSC output effective SNR under generalized fading channels and obtain the exact BER results for M-QAM systems. The significance of this part lies in that these results provide system designers means to evaluate how different practical channel estimators and their parameters can affect the system\u27s performance and help them distribute system resources that can most effectively improve performance.;In the second part of the thesis, we look at a new diversity technique unique to multiuser systems under multipath fading channels: the multiuser diversity. We devise a generalized selection multiuser diversity (GSMuD) scheme for the practical CDMA downlink systems, where users are selected for transmission based on their respective channel qualities. We include the effect of ICE in the design and analysis of GSMuD. Based on the marginal distribution of the ranked user signal-noise ratios (SNRs), we develop a practical adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) scheme and equal power allocation scheme and statistical optimal 1-D and 2-D power allocation schemes, to fully exploit the available multiuser diversity. We use the convex optimization procedures to obtain the 1-D and 2-D power allocation algorithms, which distribute the total system power in the waterfilling fashion alone the user (1-D) or both user and time (2-D) for the power-limited and energy-limited system respectively. We also propose a normalized SNR based GSMuD scheme where user access fairness issues are explicitly addressed. We address various fairness-related performance metrics such as the user\u27s average access probability (AAP), average access time (AAT), and average wait time (AWT) in the absolute- and normalized-SNR based GSMuD. These metrics are useful for system designers to determine parameters such as optimal packet size and delay constraints.;We observe that Nakakagami-m fading channel model is widely applied to model the real world multipath fading channels of different severity. In the last part of the thesis, we propose a Nakagami-m channel simulator that can generate accurate channel coefficients that follow the Nakagami-m model, with independent quadrature parts, accurate phase distribution and arbitrary auto-correlation property. We demonstrate that the proposed simulator can be extremely useful in simulations involving Nakagami-m fading channel models, evident from the numerous simulation results obtained in earlier parts of the thesis where the fading channel coefficients are generated using this proposed simulator

Finite Random Matrix Theory Analysis of Multiple Antenna Communication Systems

Multiple-antenna systems are capable of providing substantial improvement to wireless communication networks, in terms of data rate and reliability. Without utilizing extra spectrum or power resources, multiple-antenna technology has already been supported in several wireless communication standards, such as LTE, WiFi and WiMax. The surging popularity and enormous prospect of multiple-antenna technology require a better understanding to its fundamental performance over practical environments. Motivated by this, this thesis provides analytical characterizations of several seminal performance measures in advanced multiple-antenna systems. The analytical derivations are mainly based on finite dimension random matrix theory and a collection of novel random matrix theory results are derived. The closed-form probability density function of the output of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) block-fading channels is studied. In contrast to the existing results, the proposed expressions are very general, applying for arbitrary number of antennas, arbitrary signal-to-noise ratio and multiple classical fading models. Results are presented assuming two input structures in the system: the independent identical distributed (i.i.d.) Gaussian input and a product form input. When the channel is fed by the i.i.d. Gaussian input, analysis is focused on the channel matrices whose Gramian is unitarily invariant. When the channel is fed by a product form input, analysis is conducted with respect to two capacity-achieving input structures that are dependent upon the relationship between the coherence length and the number of antennas. The mutual information of the systems can be computed numerically from the pdf expression of the output. The computation is relatively easy to handle, avoiding the need of the straight Monte-Carlo computation which is not feasible in large-dimensional networks. The analytical characterization of the output pdf of a single-user MIMO block-fading channels with imperfect channel state information at the receiver is provided. The analysis is carried out under the assumption of a product structure for the input. The model can be thought of as a perturbation of the case where the statistics of the channel are perfectly known. Specifically, the average singular values of the channel are given, while the channel singular vectors are assumed to be isotropically distributed on the unitary groups of dimensions given by the number of transmit and receive antennas. The channel estimate is affected by a Gaussian distributed error, which is modeled as a matrix with i.i.d. Gaussian entries of known covariance. The ergodic capacity of an amplify-and-forward (AF) MIMO relay network over asymmetric channels is investigated. In particular, the source-relay and relay-destination channels undergo Rayleigh and Rician fading, respectively. Considering arbitrary-rank means for the relay-destination channel, the marginal distribution of an unordered eigenvalue of the cascaded AF channel is presented, thus the analytical expression of the ergodic capacity of the system is obtained. The results indicate the impact of the signal-to-noise ratio and of the Line-of-Sight component on such asymmetric relay network