Clearing the Rf Smog: Making 802.11 Robust to Cross-Technology Interference

Recent studies show that high-power cross-technology interference is becoming a major problem in today’s 802.11 networks. Devices like baby monitors and cordless phones can cause a wireless LAN to lose connectivity. The existing approach for dealing with such high-power interferers makes the 802.11 network switch to a different channel; yet the ISM band is becoming increasingly crowded with diverse technologies, and hence many 802.11 access points may not find an interference-free channel. This paper presents TIMO, a MIMO design that enables 802.11n to communicate in the presence of high-power cross-technology interference. Unlike existing MIMO designs, however, which require all concurrent transmissions to belong to the same technology, TIMO can exploit MIMO capabilities to decode in the presence of a signal from a different technology, hence enabling diverse technologies to share the same frequency band. We implement a prototype of TIMO in GNURadio-USRP2 and show that it enables 802.11n to communicate in the presence of interference from baby monitors, cordless phones, and microwave ovens, transforming scenarios with a complete loss of connectivity to operational networks.National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF grant CNS-0831660)National Science Foundation (U.S.) (NSF grant CNS- 0721857)United States. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA ITMANET

Recent Advances in Wireless Communications and Networks

This book focuses on the current hottest issues from the lowest layers to the upper layers of wireless communication networks and provides "real-time" research progress on these issues. The authors have made every effort to systematically organize the information on these topics to make it easily accessible to readers of any level. This book also maintains the balance between current research results and their theoretical support. In this book, a variety of novel techniques in wireless communications and networks are investigated. The authors attempt to present these topics in detail. Insightful and reader-friendly descriptions are presented to nourish readers of any level, from practicing and knowledgeable communication engineers to beginning or professional researchers. All interested readers can easily find noteworthy materials in much greater detail than in previous publications and in the references cited in these chapters

Smoothed Airtime Linear Tuning and Optimized REACT with Multi-hop Extensions

abstract: Medium access control (MAC) is a fundamental problem in wireless networks. In ad-hoc wireless networks especially, many of the performance and scaling issues these networks face can be attributed to their use of the core IEEE 802.11 MAC protocol: distributed coordination function (DCF). Smoothed Airtime Linear Tuning (SALT) is a new contention window tuning algorithm proposed to address some of the deficiencies of DCF in 802.11 ad-hoc networks. SALT works alongside a new user level and optimized implementation of REACT, a distributed resource allocation protocol, to ensure that each node secures the amount of airtime allocated to it by REACT. The algorithm accomplishes that by tuning the contention window size parameter that is part of the 802.11 backoff process. SALT converges more tightly on airtime allocations than a contention window tuning algorithm from previous work and this increases fairness in transmission opportunities and reduces jitter more than either 802.11 DCF or the other tuning algorithm. REACT and SALT were also extended to the multi-hop flow scenario with the introduction of a new airtime reservation algorithm. With a reservation in place multi-hop TCP throughput actually increased when running SALT and REACT as compared to 802.11 DCF, and the combination of protocols still managed to maintain its fairness and jitter advantages. All experiments were performed on a wireless testbed, not in simulation.Dissertation/ThesisMasters Thesis Computer Science 201

Performance evaluation of detection algorithms for MOMI OFDM systems

Includes abstract.Includes bibliographical references (leaves 79-86).Introduction of Multi Input Multi Output (MIMO) Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) as the base air interface method for Next Generation Network (NGN) will face a number of challenges from hostile channel conditions to interference from other users. This would result in an increase of detection complexity required for mobile systems. Complex detection will reduce the battery life of mobile devices because of the many calculations that have to be done to decode the signal. Very powerful detection algorithms exist but they introduce high detection complexity. NGN will employ different MIMO systems, but this research will consider spatially multiplexed MIMO which is used to improve the data rate and network capacity. In NGN different multi access modulation schemes will be used for uplink and downlink but they both have OFDM as the basic building block. In this work performance of MIMO OFDM is investigated in different channels models and detection algorithms. A low complexity detection scheme is proposed in this research to improve performance of MIMO OFDM. The proposed detection scheme is investigated for different channel characteristics. Realistic channels conditions are introduced to evaluate the performance of the proposed detection scheme. We analyze weaknesses of existing linear detectors and the enhancements that can be done to improve their performance in different channel conditions. Performance of the detectors is evaluated by comparison of Bit Error Rate (BER) and Symbol Error Rate (SER) against signal to noise ratio (SNR). This thesis proposes a detector which shows a higher complexity than linear detectors but less than Maximum Likelihood Detector (MLD). The proposed detector shows significant BER improvement in all channel conditions. For better performance evaluation this work also investigates performance of MIMO OFDM detectors in realistic channels like Kronecker and Weichselberger channel models

Pattern Diversity Characterization of Reconfigurable Antenna Arrays for Next Generation Wireless Systems

The use of multi-antenna technology in wireless radio communications has attracted tremendous attention due to its potential to increase data rates without requiring additional bandwidth and transmission power. This has been driven by the burgeoning demand for high data rates and the need for instantaneous and ubiquitous access to information. It is therefore no surprise that current and future generation wireless standards such as LTE and WiMAX have adopted the use of adaptive multi-antenna systems also known as adaptive Multiple Input and Multiple Output (MIMO) as their de facto transmission technology. In this thesis work, we focus on the design of a smart wireless antenna system, and the study of relevant techniques that enable us to reap the benefits of their deployment in small wireless devices with MIMO capability. Specifically, we employ a new class of adaptive antenna systems known as Reconfigurable Antenna Systems (RAS) for portable devices. These antennas are capable of dynamically changing their electrical and radiation characteristics to suit the conditions of the wireless channel. The changing radiation patterns lead to pattern diversity gains that improve system performance. This is in contrast to conventional non-reconfigurable arrays which depend on signal processing techniques such as antenna grouping and beamforming to achieve performance gains. However, despite the demonstrable system-level performance benefits of RAS in adaptive MIMO, few of these antennas have been adopted and integrated in state-of-the-art wireless standards. Their usage has been partly inhibited by the prohibitive costs of implementation and operation in a real wireless infrastructure. As part of this thesis research effort we attempt to integrate these new antennas into a cost-effective real wireless MIMO testbed for use in current generation technologies. The solution integration is carried-out through the use of readily available software-defined radio frameworks. We first design, analyze and characterize the pattern diversity in RAS antenna arrays that resonate at frequencies suitable for 4G applications. We then study the benefits of pattern diversity obtained from RAS arrays over conventional space diversity approaches such as antenna grouping and beamforming. This dissertation also presents low-complexity adaptive physical layer models and algorithms to exploit the benefits of RAS array integration in MIMO wireless systems. We implement these algorithms in software-defined radio frameworks, experimentally test, and benchmark them against other established approaches in literature. And finally, integrate and test these RAS array design prototypes as part of the MIMO wireless system that leverages a state-of-the-art wireless base station and mobile terminals.Ph.D., Electrical Engineering -- Drexel University, 201