On the Performance of Millimeter Wave-based RF-FSO Multi-hop and Mesh Networks

This paper studies the performance of multi-hop and mesh networks composed of millimeter wave (MMW)-based radio frequency (RF) and free-space optical (FSO) links. The results are obtained in cases with and without hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ). Taking the MMW characteristics of the RF links into account, we derive closed-form expressions for the networks' outage probability and ergodic achievable rates. We also evaluate the effect of various parameters such as power amplifiers efficiency, number of antennas as well as different coherence times of the RF and the FSO links on the system performance. Finally, we determine the minimum number of the transmit antennas in the RF link such that the same rate is supported in the RF- and the FSO-based hops. The results show the efficiency of the RF-FSO setups in different conditions. Moreover, HARQ can effectively improve the outage probability/energy efficiency, and compensate for the effect of hardware impairments in RF-FSO networks. For common parameter settings of the RF-FSO dual-hop networks, outage probability of 10^{-4} and code rate of 3 nats-per-channel-use, the implementation of HARQ with a maximum of 2 and 3 retransmissions reduces the required power, compared to cases with open-loop communication, by 13 and 17 dB, respectively.Comment: Submitted to IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communication

5G-PPP Technology Board:Delivery of 5G Services Indoors - the wireless wire challenge and solutions

The 5G Public Private Partnership (5G PPP) has focused its research and innovation activities mainly on outdoor use cases and supporting the user and its applications while on the move. However, many use cases inherently apply in indoor environments whereas their requirements are not always properly reflected by the requirements eminent for outdoor applications. The best example for indoor applications can be found is the Industry 4.0 vertical, in which most described use cases are occurring in a manufacturing hall. Other environments exhibit similar characteristics such as commercial spaces in offices, shopping malls and commercial buildings. We can find further similar environments in the media & entertainment sector, culture sector with museums and the transportation sector with metro tunnels. Finally in the residential space we can observe a strong trend for wireless connectivity of appliances and devices in the home. Some of these spaces are exhibiting very high requirements among others in terms of device density, high-accuracy localisation, reliability, latency, time sensitivity, coverage and service continuity. The delivery of 5G services to these spaces has to consider the specificities of the indoor environments, in which the radio propagation characteristics are different and in the case of deep indoor scenarios, external radio signals cannot penetrate building construction materials. Furthermore, these spaces are usually “polluted” by existing wireless technologies, causing a multitude of interreference issues with 5G radio technologies. Nevertheless, there exist cases in which the co-existence of 5G new radio and other radio technologies may be sensible, such as for offloading local traffic. In any case the deployment of networks indoors is advised to consider and be planned along existing infrastructure, like powerlines and available shafts for other utilities. Finally indoor environments expose administrative cross-domain issues, and in some cases so called non-public networks, foreseen by 3GPP, could be an attractive deployment model for the owner/tenant of a private space and for the mobile network operators serving the area. Technology-wise there exist a number of solutions for indoor RAN deployment, ranging from small cell architectures, optical wireless/visual light communication, and THz communication utilising reconfigurable intelligent surfaces. For service delivery the concept of multi-access edge computing is well tailored to host virtual network functions needed in the indoor environment, including but not limited to functions supporting localisation, security, load balancing, video optimisation and multi-source streaming. Measurements of key performance indicators in indoor environments indicate that with proper planning and consideration of the environment characteristics, available solutions can deliver on the expectations. Measurements have been conducted regarding throughput and reliability in the mmWave and optical wireless communication cases, electric and magnetic field measurements, round trip latency measurements, as well as high-accuracy positioning in laboratory environment. Overall, the results so far are encouraging and indicate that 5G and beyond networks must advance further in order to meet the demands of future emerging intelligent automation systems in the next 10 years. Highly advanced industrial environments present challenges for 5G specifications, spanning congestion, interference, security and safety concerns, high power consumption, restricted propagation and poor location accuracy within the radio and core backbone communication networks for the massive IoT use cases, especially inside buildings. 6G and beyond 5G deployments for industrial networks will be increasingly denser, heterogeneous and dynamic, posing stricter performance requirements on the network. The large volume of data generated by future connected devices will put a strain on networks. It is therefore fundamental to discriminate the value of information to maximize the utility for the end users with limited network resources

High speed train communications systems using free space optics

In this work, we propose a broad-band free space optical (FSO) wireless communications system for high-speed trains. The system consists of optical transceivers positioned outside the train and along the railway track. The train receivers are in the coverage area of base stations positioned along the railway track to ensure continuous link availability. In this paper, we present modelling of two cases for over-ground and underground train systems before embarking to practically implement the system in our research laboratory. Also discussed is the protocol for the data distribution along the track as well as the initial experimental demonstration of the proposed link

Bit error performance of diffuse indoor optical wireless channel pulse position modulation system employing artificial neural networks for channel equalisation

The bit-error rate (BER) performance of a pulse position modulation (PPM) scheme for non-line-of-sight indoor optical links employing channel equalisation based on the artificial neural network (ANN) is reported. Channel equalisation is achieved by training a multilayer perceptrons ANN. A comparative study of the unequalised `soft' decision decoding and the `hard' decision decoding along with the neural equalised `soft' decision decoding is presented for different bit resolutions for optical channels with different delay spread. We show that the unequalised `hard' decision decoding performs the worst for all values of normalised delayed spread, becoming impractical beyond a normalised delayed spread of 0.6. However, `soft' decision decoding with/without equalisation displays relatively improved performance for all values of the delay spread. The study shows that for a highly diffuse channel, the signal-to-noise ratio requirement to achieve a BER of 10−5 for the ANN-based equaliser is ~10 dB lower compared with the unequalised `soft' decoding for 16-PPM at a data rate of 155 Mbps. Our results indicate that for all range of delay spread, neural network equalisation is an effective tool of mitigating the inter-symbol interference