Critique of proposed limit to space--time measurement, based on Wigner's clocks and mirrors

Based on a relation between inertial time intervals and the Riemannian curvature, we show that space--time uncertainty derived by Ng and van Dam implies absurd uncertainties of the Riemannian curvature.Comment: 5 pages, LaTex, field "Author:" correcte

Variable Length Space Time Coded Modulation

A Variable Length Space Time Coded Modulation (VL-STCM) scheme capable of simultaneously providing coding, multiplexing and diversity gains is proposed. The scheme advocated achieves its best performance for correlated sources, where the source symbols exhibit a nonuniform probability of occurrence. The source symbols are encoded using an optimal trellis encoder into variablelength modulated signals and mapped to both the spatial and time domains. More explicitly, the proposed VL-STCM arrangement is a jointly designed source coding, channel coding, modulation and spatial diversity/multiplexing scheme. It is shown that the higher the source correlation, the higher the achievable performance gain of the scheme. Furthermore, the performance of the VL-STCM scheme is about 6 dB better than that of the Fixed Length STCM (FL-STCM) benchmarker at a source symbol error ratio of 10?4

On the Computation of EXIT Characteristics for Symbol-Based Iterative Decoding

In this paper we propose an efficient method for computing index-based extrinsic information transfer (EXIT) charts, which are useful for estimating the convergence properties of non-binary iterative decoding. A standard method is to apply <i>a priori</i> reliability information to the <i>a posteriori</i> probability (APP) constituent decoder and compute the resulting average extrinsic information at the decoder output via multidimensional histogram measurements. However, this technique is only reasonable for very small index lengths as the complexity of this approach grows exponentially with the index length. We show that by averaging over a function of the extrinsic APPs for a long block the extrinsic information can be estimated with very low complexity. In contrast to using histogram measurements this method allows to generate EXIT charts even for larger index alphabets. Examples for a non-binary serial concatenated code and for turbo trellis-coded modulation, resp., demonstrate the capabilities of the proposed approach

Jointly optimised iterative source-coding, channel-coding and modulation for transmission over wireless channels

Joint source-coding, channel-coding and modulation schemes based on Variable Length Codes (VLCs), Trellis Coded Modulation (TCM), Turbo TCM (TTCM), Bit-Interleaved Coded Modulation (BICM) and iteratively decoded BICM (BICM-ID) schemes are proposed. A significant coding gain is achieved without bandwidth expansion, when exchanging information between the VLC and the coded modulation decoders with the advent of iterative decoding. With the aid of using independent interleavers for the In-phase and Quadrature phase components of the complex-valued constellation, further diversity gain may be achieved. The performance of the proposed schemes is evaluated over both AWGN and Rayleigh fading channels. Explicitly, at BER = 10-5 most of the proposed schemes have BER curves less than one-dB away from the channel capacity limit

Iterative Near-Maximum-Likelihood Detection in Rank-Deficient Downlink SDMA Systems

Abstract—In this paper, a precoded and iteratively detected downlink multiuser system is proposed, which is capable of operating in rankdeficient scenarios, when the number of transmitters exceeds the number of receivers. The literature of uplink space division multiple access (SDMA) systems is rich, but at the time of writing there is a paucity of information on the employment of SDMA techniques in the downlink. Hence, we propose a novel precoded downlink SDMA (DL-SDMA) multiuser communication system, which invokes a low-complexity nearmaximum-likelihood sphere decoder and is particularly suitable for the aforementioned rank-deficient scenario. Powerful iterative decoding is carried out by exchanging extrinsic information between the precoder’s decoder and the outer channel decoder. Furthermore, we demonstrate with the aid of extrinsic information transfer charts that our proposed precoded DL-SDMA system has a better convergence behavior than its nonprecoded DL-SDMA counterpart. Quantitatively, the proposed system having a normalized system load of Ls = 1.333, i.e., 1.333 times higher effective throughput facilitated by having 1.333 times more DL-SDMA transmitters than receivers, exhibits a “turbo cliff” at an Eb/N0 of 5 dB and hence results in an infinitesimally low bit error rate (BER). By contrast, at Eb/N0 = 5 dB, the equivalent system dispensing with precoding exhibits a BER in excess of 10%. Index Terms—Iterative decoding, maximum likelihood detection, space division multiple access (SDMA) downlink, sphere decoding

Integrated Wireless Multimedia Turbo-Transceiver Design Approaching the Rayleigh Channel's Capacity: Interpreting Shannon's Lessons in the Turbo-Era

Claude Shannon's pioneering work quantified the performance limits of communications systems operating over classic wireline Gaussian channels. However, his source and channel coding theorems were derived for a range of idealistic conditions, which may not hold in low-delay, interactive wireless multimedia communications. Firstly, Shannon's ideal lossless source encoder, namely the entropy encoder may have an excessive codeword length, hence exhibiting a high delay and a high error sensitivity. However, in practice most multimedia source signals are capable of tolerating lossy, rather than lossless delivery to the human eye, ear and other human sensors. The corresponding lossy and preferably low-delay multimedia source codecs however exhibit unequal error sensitivity, which is not the case for Shannon's ideal entropy codec. There are further numerous differences between the Shannonian lessons originally outlined for Gaussian channels and their ramifications for routinely encountered dispersive wireless channels, where typically bursty, rather than random errors are encountered. This paper elaborates on these intriguiging lessons in the context of a few turbo-transceiver design examples, using a jointly optimised turbo transceiver capable of providing unequal error protection in the context of MPEG-4 aided wireless video telephony. The transceiver investigated consists of Space-Time Trellis Coding (STTC) invoked for the sake of mitigating the effects of fading, Trellis Coded Modulation (TCM) or Bit-Interleaved Coded Modulation (BICM) as well as two different-rate Non-Systematic Convolutional codes (NSCs) or Recursive Systematic Convolutional codes (RSCs). A single-class protection based benchmarker scheme combining STTC and NSC is used for comparison with the unequal-protection scheme advocated. The video performance of the various schemes is evaluated when communicating over uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channels. It was found that the achievable performance of the proposed scheme is within 0.99~dB of the corresponding capacity of the Rayleigh fading channel

Turbo-Detected Unequal Protection MPEG-4 Wireless Video Telephony using Multi-Level Coding, Trellis Coded Modulation and Space-Time Trellis Coding

Most multimedia source signals are capable of tolerating lossy, rather than lossless delivery to the human eye, ear and other human sensors. The corresponding lossy and preferably low-delay multimedia source codecs however exhibit unequal error sensitivity, which is not the case for Shannon’s ideal entropy codec. This paper proposes a jointly optimised turbo transceiver design capable of providing unequal error protection for MPEG-4 coding aided wireless video telephony. The transceiver investigated consists of space-time trellis coding (STTC) invoked for the sake of mitigating the effects of fading, in addition to bandwidth efficient trellis coded modulation or bit-interleaved coded modulation, combined with a multi-level coding scheme employing either two different-rate non-systematic convolutional codes (NSCs) or two recursive systematic convolutional codes for yielding a twin-class unequal-protection. A single-class protection based benchmark scheme combining STTC and NSC is used for comparison with the unequal-protection scheme advocated. The video performance of the various schemes is evaluated when communicating over uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channels. It was found that the proposed scheme requires about 2.8 dBs lower transmit power than the benchmark scheme in the context of the MPEG-4 videophone transceiver at a similar decoding complexity

Performance Analysis of Iteratively Decoded Variable-Length Space-Time Coded Modulation

It is demonstrated that iteratively Decoded Variable Length Space Time Coded Modulation (VL-STCM-ID) schemes are capable of simultaneously providing both coding gain as well as multiplexing and diversity gain. The VL-STCM-ID arrangement is a jointly designed iteratively decoded scheme combining source coding, channel coding, modulation as well as spatial diversity/multiplexing. In this contribution, we analyse the iterative decoding convergence of the VL-STCM-ID scheme using symbol-based three-dimensional EXIT charts. The performance of the VL-STCM-ID scheme is shown to be about 14.6 dB better than that of the Fixed Length STCM (FL-STCM) benchmarker at a source symbol error ratio of 10?4, when communicating over uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channels. The performance of the VL-STCM-ID scheme when communicating over correlated Rayleigh fading channels using imperfect channel state information is also studied

Burst-by-Burst Adaptive Decision Feedback Equalised TCM, TTCM and BICM for H.263-Assisted Wireless Video Telephony

Decision Feedback Equaliser (DFE) aided wideband Burst-by-Burst (BbB) Adaptive Trellis Coded Modulation (TCM), Turbo Trellis Coded Modulation (TTCM) and Bit-Interleaved Coded Modulation (BICM) assisted H.263-based video transceivers are proposed and characterised in performance terms when communicating over the COST 207 Typical Urban wideband fading channel. Specifically, four different modulation modes, namely 4QAM, 8PSK, 16QAM and 64QAM are invoked and protected by the above-mentioned coded modulation schemes. The TTCM assisted scheme was found to provide the best video performance, although at the cost of the highest complexity. A range of lower-complexity arrangements will also be characterised. Finally, in order to confirm these findings in an important practical environment, we have also investigated the adaptive TTCM scheme in the CDMA-based Universal Mobile Telecommunications System's (UMTS) Terrestrial Radio Access (UTRA) scenario and the good performance of adaptive TTCM scheme recorded when communicating over the COST 207 channels was retained in the UTRA environment