Design and analysis of space-time block and trellis coding schemes for single-band UWB communications systems

Ultra Wide-Band (UWB) technology has recently attracted much research interest due to its appealing features in short-range mobile communications. These features include high-data rates, low power consumption, multiple-access communications and precise positioning capabilities. Space-Time Coding (STC) techniques, such as block coding and trellis coding, are known to be simple and practical ways to increase both the spectral efficiency and the capacity in wireless communications. The the- sis aims at designing robust and efficient space-time coding schemes well adapted to single-band UWB signalling. Thus, this work incorporates a fine analysis of a stan- dard Single Input Single Output (SISO) single-band UWB system, scrutinising every important aspect of this system including transceiver structure, channel modelling, multiple-access techniques and detection process. Research also leads to the deriva- tion of a novel closed-form approximation for the average probability of bit-error for single-band UWB systems. This in-depth study highlights drawbacks inherent to UWB systems such as time-jitter effects or rake-receiver complexity and proposes schemes that benefit from spatial diversity to mitigate these problems. Thus, the thesis concentrates on the design of new multiple-antenna space-time coding systems tailored for UWB communications. As a result, this work derives and generates gen- eralised full-rate space-time block codes based on orthogonal pulses to capture both spatial and multipath diversities. Space-time trellis coded modulation is then revis- ited to further improve the spectral efficiency limit and to deliver the high-data rates promised by UWB technology. A new version of space-time trellis coding is developed for the peculiar UWB signalling structure. Finally, thanks to a novel closed-form ap- proximation, a theoretical comparison is undertaken between any SISO-UWB system and the multiple antenna UWB systems proposed in this thesis. The results clearly underline the impact of STC on a single-band UWB system in terms of enhanced robustness against timing-jitter effects, higher spectral efficiency and capacity im- provement. These advantages are finally confirmed through the numerical evaluation of the error-rate performance.EThOS - Electronic Theses Online ServiceGBUnited Kingdo

NS2 Protein of Hepatitis C Virus Interacts with Structural and Non-Structural Proteins towards Virus Assembly

Growing experimental evidence indicates that, in addition to the physical virion components, the non-structural proteins of hepatitis C virus (HCV) are intimately involved in orchestrating morphogenesis. Since it is dispensable for HCV RNA replication, the non-structural viral protein NS2 is suggested to play a central role in HCV particle assembly. However, despite genetic evidences, we have almost no understanding about NS2 protein-protein interactions and their role in the production of infectious particles. Here, we used co-immunoprecipitation and/or fluorescence resonance energy transfer with fluorescence lifetime imaging microscopy analyses to study the interactions between NS2 and the viroporin p7 and the HCV glycoprotein E2. In addition, we used alanine scanning insertion mutagenesis as well as other mutations in the context of an infectious virus to investigate the functional role of NS2 in HCV assembly. Finally, the subcellular localization of NS2 and several mutants was analyzed by confocal microscopy. Our data demonstrate molecular interactions between NS2 and p7 and E2. Furthermore, we show that, in the context of an infectious virus, NS2 accumulates over time in endoplasmic reticulum-derived dotted structures and colocalizes with both the envelope glycoproteins and components of the replication complex in close proximity to the HCV core protein and lipid droplets, a location that has been shown to be essential for virus assembly. We show that NS2 transmembrane region is crucial for both E2 interaction and subcellular localization. Moreover, specific mutations in core, envelope proteins, p7 and NS5A reported to abolish viral assembly changed the subcellular localization of NS2 protein. Together, these observations indicate that NS2 protein attracts the envelope proteins at the assembly site and it crosstalks with non-structural proteins for virus assembly

Design and analysis of space-time block and trellis coding schemes for single-band UWB communications systems

Ultra Wide-Band (UWB) technology has recently attracted much research interest due to its appealing features in short-range mobile communications. These features include high-data rates, low power consumption, multiple-access communications and precise positioning capabilities. Space-Time Coding (STC) techniques, such as block coding and trellis coding, are known to be simple and practical ways to increase both the spectral efficiency and the capacity in wireless communications. The the- sis aims at designing robust and efficient space-time coding schemes well adapted to single-band UWB signalling. Thus, this work incorporates a fine analysis of a stan- dard Single Input Single Output (SISO) single-band UWB system, scrutinising every important aspect of this system including transceiver structure, channel modelling, multiple-access techniques and detection process. Research also leads to the deriva- tion of a novel closed-form approximation for the average probability of bit-error for single-band UWB systems. This in-depth study highlights drawbacks inherent to UWB systems such as time-jitter effects or rake-receiver complexity and proposes schemes that benefit from spatial diversity to mitigate these problems. Thus, the thesis concentrates on the design of new multiple-antenna space-time coding systems tailored for UWB communications. As a result, this work derives and generates gen- eralised full-rate space-time block codes based on orthogonal pulses to capture both spatial and multipath diversities. Space-time trellis coded modulation is then revis- ited to further improve the spectral efficiency limit and to deliver the high-data rates promised by UWB technology. A new version of space-time trellis coding is developed for the peculiar UWB signalling structure. Finally, thanks to a novel closed-form ap- proximation, a theoretical comparison is undertaken between any SISO-UWB system and the multiple-antenna UWB systems proposed in this thesis. The results clearly underline the impact of STC on a single-band UWB system in terms of enhanced robustness against timing-jitter effects, higher spectral efficiency and capacity im- provement. These advantages are finally confirmed through the numerical evaluation of the error-rate performance

Low-complexity energy-efficient joint resource allocation for two-hop MIMO-AF systems

Energy efficiency (EE) is becoming an important system design criterion to ensure that the next generation of communication networks is sustainable. Equally, cooperative communication and resource allocation are well-known techniques for improving the performance of communication systems. In this paper, we propose a low-complexity energy-efficient joint resource allocation method for the two-hop multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) amplify-and-forward (AF) system. We derive explicit formulations of the near-optimal energy-per-bit consumption, subchannels' power and rate for the unconstrained, total transmit power and sum-rate constrained EE optimization problems as well as detail how to solve these problems in a low-complexity manner. We then use our novel method for comparing the performances of two-hop MIMO-AF and MIMO systems in terms of EE. Our results indicate that the usage of a relay is only energy efficient when the quality of the direct link is very poor. We also show that the extra fixed power consumption induced by transmitting over two hops can seriously disadvantage MIMO-AF in terms of EE, but on the other hand, the usage of relay can be useful for downsizing the donor cell, which in turn provides EE gain. © 2002-2012 IEEE

Low-complexity energy-efficient joint resource allocation for two-hop MIMO-AF systems

Energy efficiency (EE) is becoming an important system design criterion to ensure that the next generation of communication networks is sustainable. Equally, cooperative communication and resource allocation are well-known techniques for improving the performance of communication systems. In this paper, we propose a low-complexity energy-efficient joint resource allocation method for the two-hop multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) amplify-and-forward (AF) system. We derive explicit formulations of the near-optimal energy-per-bit consumption, subchannels' power and rate for the unconstrained, total transmit power and sum-rate constrained EE optimization problems as well as detail how to solve these problems in a low-complexity manner. We then use our novel method for comparing the performances of two-hop MIMO-AF and MIMO systems in terms of EE. Our results indicate that the usage of a relay is only energy efficient when the quality of the direct link is very poor. We also show that the extra fixed power consumption induced by transmitting over two hops can seriously disadvantage MIMO-AF in terms of EE, but on the other hand, the usage of relay can be useful for downsizing the donor cell, which in turn provides EE gain. © 2002-2012 IEEE

A low-complexity precoding scheme for the downlink of multi-cell multi-user MIMO AF system

Because of its simplicity, amplify-and-forward (AF) is one of the most popular cooperative relaying technique. Relays are used in cooperative communication to improve reliability, coverage or spectral efficiency of cell-edge users. However, relays tend to increase the interferences seen by users of adjacent cells, particularly by the cell-edge users, when used in multi-cell systems. In this paper, we propose a low-complexity precoding scheme to mitigate the effect of other-cell interference (OCI) in cooperative communication. The scheme is designed by taking into account the interference plus noise covariance matrix of each user for mitigating the interference at each receiver by means of precoding at the relay node. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme, both in terms of sum-rate and computational complexity, when compared to other existing OCI-aware precoding algorithms for AF. © 2012 IEEE