Evaluation of 3GPP Technology Candidate Towards Fourth Generation Mobile

[ES] LTE-Advanced es una de las tecnologías candidatas para convertirse en la próxima generación de comunicaciones móviles (4G). Es responsabilidad de la Unión Internacional de las Telecomunicaciones (UIT) evaluar esta tecnología a través de los Grupos de Evaluación Externos (GEE), entre los cuales se encuentra el consorcio WINNER+ (Wireless World Initiative New Radio +). El Grupo de Comunicaciones Móviles (GCM) del Instituto de Telecomunicaciones y Aplicaciones Multimedia, como socio de WINNER+, está analizando diferentes técnicas para optimizar la red de acceso radio LTEAdvanced. Esta tesina de máster se enmarca dentro de este trabajo, y especialmente, en la comparación de los turbo-códigos (TC) y Low Density Partity Check (LDPC) para anchos de banda de hasta 100 MHz. Los resultados obtenidos muestran que tanto los TC como los LDPC son buenos codificadores para esos tamaños de bloque. Los códigos LDPC representan una mejora de 0.5 dB como máximo respecto a los TC. Además, se ha realizado un estudio de prestaciones de la capa física de LTE en el enlace ascendente y descendente, junto con una propuesta de calibración de este tipo de simulaciones de enlace.[EN] LTE-Advanced is one promising candidate technology to become part of the next generation mobile (4G). It is up to the International Telecommunication Union (ITU) standardization body to assess this technology through the External Evaluation Groups (EEG), being one of them the WINNER+ project (Wireless World Initiative New Radio +). The Mobile Communications Group (MCG) of the Institute of Telecommunications and Multimedia Applications, as a partner of WINNER+, is currently analyzing and proposing different techniques with the aim of optimizing the LTE-Advanced radio access network. This Master Thesis is part of this activity and, especially, on the comparison of Turbo (TC) and Low Density Parity Check (LDPC) codes for bandwidths up to 100 MHz. Results prove that both TC and LDPC codes are good encoders for those block sizes. The LDPC codes only entail a maximum 0.5 dB improvement as compared with TC. In addition to this assessment, a performance study of LTE downlink/uplink (DL/ UL) physical layer together with a calibration proposal for link level simulations has been carried out.Cabrejas Peñuelas, J. (2009). Evaluation of 3GPP Technology Candidate Towards Fourth Generation Mobile. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/27347.Archivo delegad

Estudio de la capacidad predictiva de redes neuronales profundas sobre la cotización de criptomonedas

Con la reciente aparición de las criptomonedas como activo de inversión, método de pago e intercambio de valor entre individuos, y su reciente y creciente adopción, indudablemente se han vuelto un instrumento financiero de peso de creciente importancia que día tras día tiene mayor relevancia dentro la vida de las personas. Numerosas plataformas donde comprar, vender e intercambiar las distintas criptomonedas surgen día a día, así como nuevas maneras que facilitan el acceso a gente con pocos conocimientos sobre ellas. A su vez, cada día más empresas invierten en la creación de sistemas que usan las mismas tecnologías que estas criptomonedas, creando un nuevo abanico de posibilidades en cuanto a innovación, permitiendo la formación de un mundo descentralizado donde la aparición de terceros es innecesaria para su manejo. Esto abre la puerta a la pregunta de si realmente es posible predecir cual va a ser el precio de las mismas en el futuro, hecho que es de especial relevancia en el mundo de la informática y las matemáticas aplicadas, surgiendo la duda de si las diferentes técnicas y modelos usados en otros problemas similares, como la bolsa de valores, son aplicables en este ámbito. Con esta premisa, este proyecto busca analizar distintos grupos de criptomonedas para posteriormente aplicar diferentes métodos pertenecientes al Machine Learning y el Deep Learning a las mismas, a efectos de determinar si alguna de estas posee unas características concretas que faciliten el proceso predictivo que se aplicará sobre las mismas.With the recent growth of cryptocurrencies as an investment, way of payment and value exchange method and theirs increasingly adoption, they have undoubtedly become an important financial tool that each and every day has more and more importance in the life of people. Several different platforms where to buy, sell and exchange numerous cryptocurrencies are born every day, as many ways for people to improve their knowledge about them. Also, everyday new companies invest in the creation of systems based on the same technologies as these cryptocurrencies, creating a new range of possibilities in matters of innovation, making it possible for a decentralized world where third-parties are unnecessary for its management to be born. This opens the door to the question: is it really possible to predict what their price is going to be in the future? This is notably relevant in the world of Computer Science and Applied Mathematics, making us think if the different techniques and models used in other similar problems, as the stock market, are applicable in this field. With this premise, this project looks forward to analyze different groups of cryptocurrencies to afterwards apply different methods from Machine Learning and Deep Learning to them, with the purpose of determining if any of them possess some specific characteristics which ease the predictive labour that will be applied to them.Grado en Ingeniería Informátic

On the Integration of Grassmannian Constellations into LTE Networks: a Link-level Performance Study

This paper presents Grassmannian signaling as a transmission scheme that can be integrated in Long Term Evolution (LTE) to support higher user speeds and to increase the throughput achievable in the high Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) regime. This signaling is compared, under realistic channel assumptions, with the diversity transmission modes standardized in LTE, in particular, Space-Frequency Block Coding and Frequency-Switched Transmit Diversity for two and four transmit antennas, respectively. In high-speed scenarios, and even with high antenna correlation, Grassmannian signaling outperforms the LTE diversity transmission modes starting from four transmit antennas. Furthermore, in the high SNR regime, Grassmannian signaling can increase the link data rate up to 10% and 15% for two and four antennas, respectively

Multi-user non-coherent detection for downlink MIMO communication

© 2014 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.[EN] Current cellular technologies are based on the concept of coherent communication, in which the channel matrix used for demodulation is estimated via reference or pilot signals. Coherent systems, however, involve a significant increase of the signalling overhead, especially when the number of transmission points is increased or when the mobile channel changes rapidly, which motivates the use of non-coherent techniques. This letter extends the use of non-coherent communications to a multi-user (MU) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) framework by combining superposition coding with a reduced-complexity detection method. Numerical results confirm that our scheme achieves higher user rates than non-coherent MU transmission based on time multiplexing. In addition to the well-known sum-rate gain of MU systems, an extra performance gain given by downlink non-coherent MU communication is shown and qualitatively justified.This work was performed in the framework of the FP7 project ICT-317669 METIS, supported in part by the European Union. The authors would like to acknowledge the contributions of their colleagues in METIS, although the views expressed are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the project. The associate editor coordinating the review of this manuscript and approving it for publication was Prof. Chandra Ramabhadra Murthy.Roger Varea, S.; Calabuig Soler, D.; Cabrejas Peñuelas, J.; Monserrat Del Río, JF. (2014). Multi-user non-coherent detection for downlink MIMO communication. IEEE Signal Processing Letters. 21(10):1225-1229. https://doi.org/10.1109/LSP.2014.2330854S12251229211

Time-frequency Grassmannian signalling for MIMO multi-channel-frequency-flat systems

In this paper, we consider the application of non-coherent Grassmannian signalling in practical multi-channel-frequency-flat multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless communication systems. In these systems, Grassmannian signalling, originally developed for single-channel block-fading systems, is not readily applicable. In particular, in such systems, the channel coefficients are constant across time and frequency, which implies that spectrally-efficient signalling ought to be jointly structured over these domains. To approach this goal, we develop a concatenation technique that yields a spectrally-efficient time-frequency Grassmannian signalling scheme, which enables the channel coherence bandwidth to be regarded as an additional coherence time. This scheme is shown to achieve the high signal-to-noise ratio non-coherent capacity of MIMO channels when the fading coefficients are constant over a time-frequency block. This scheme is also applicable in fast fading systems with coherence bandwidth exceeding that of one subchannel. The proposed scheme is independent of the symbol duration, i.e., the channel use duration, and is thus compatible with the transmit filter designs in current systems.The work of the first and second authors is supported, in part, by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada (NSERC). This work is also supported, in part, by Huawei Canada Co., Ltd., in part, by the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation's ORF-RE (Ontario Research Fund-Research Excellence) program, and, in part, by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (project number TEC2011-27723-C02-02). The associate editor coordinating the review of this paper and approving it for publication was Z. Wang.Fouad, YMM.; Gohary, RH.; Cabrejas Peñuelas, J.; Yanikomeroglu, H.; Calabuig Soler, D.; Roger Varea, S.; Monserrat Del Río, JF. (2015). Time-frequency Grassmannian signalling for MIMO multi-channel-frequency-flat systems. IEEE Communications Letters. 19(3):475-478. https://doi.org/10.1109/LCOMM.2014.2386873S47547819

Application of MIH for the lightweight deployment of LTE-advanced systems through mobile relaying

In a conventional cellular network end users connect directly to a Base Station (BS). Mobile relaying allows establishing an indirect two-hop link between the end user, called Mobile Node (MN), and the BS through a Mobile Relay (MR). This spreads out the cell coverage and increases the cell-edge throughput hence improving fairness among nodes. This article is focused on a Long Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A) cellular network where MNs and MRs are connected through a Wireless Fidelity (WiFi) ad-hoc connection. It is proposed the use of Media Independent Handover (MIH) signaling to define an efficient dynamic routing mechanism for MR in this framework. The proposed mechanism, called MIH-Driven Relay Selection Mechanism (MIDRES), detects which is the best direct or indirect link with the BS based on information collected using MIH messages. The MNs or MRs send MIH messages when experiencing bad channel conditions, that is detected thanks to predefined thresholds. Then, the BS starts a polling process, again supported by MIH signaling, and performs optimal route selection either through the LTE-A radio interface or through a WiFi ad-hoc interface. This article examines the implementation of this mechanism and obtains the optimal thresholds that maximize operational performance. Moreover, the potential benefit of this LTE-compliant mobile relaying solution is evaluated using a calibrated simulation tool. The results show significant savings in cost of network deployment.The work of David Martin-Sacristan was supported by a FPU grant of the Spanish Ministry of Education.Cabrejas Peñuelas, J.; Gualda Romero, P.; Monserrat Del Río, JF.; Martín-Sacristán Gandía, D. (2012). Application of MIH for the lightweight deployment of LTE-advanced systems through mobile relaying. EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking. 2012(117):1-12. https://doi.org/10.1186/1687-1499-2012-117S1122012117ITU World Telecommunication/ICT Indicators database, Global ICT developments, 2000-2010 ITU Statistics 2010. Accessed 20 March 2012 [ http://www.itu.int/ict/statistics ]Martín-Sacristán D, Monserrat JF, Cabrejas J, Calabuig D, Garrigas S, Cardona N: On the way towards fourth-generation mobile: 3GPP LTE and LTE-Advanced. EURASIP J Wirel Commun Netw 2009, 2009: 10.3GPP TR 36.913 V10.0.0, Requirements for further advancements for Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (E-UTRA) (LTE-Advanced) (Release 10) Technical Specification Group Radio Access Network 2011.IEEE 802.16j, IEEE Standard for Local and metropolitan area networks Part 16: Air Interface for Broadband Wireless Access Systems Amendment 1: Multi-hop Relay Specification 2009.Xiao L, Fuja TE, Costello DJ: Mobile relaying: coverage extension and throughput enhancement. IEEE Trans Commun 2010., 58:Vanganuru K, Puzio M, Sternberg G, Shah K, Kaur S: Uplink system capacity of a cellular network with cooperative mobile relay. Proceedings of the Wireless Telecommunications Symposium 2011, 1-7.Li Z, Shen H: Game theoretic analysis of cooperation incentive strategies in mobile ad-hoc networks. IEEE Trans Mobile Comput 2011. doi: 10.1109/TMC.2011.151IEEE 802.21, Draft standard for local and metropolitan area networks: media independent handover services. IEEE P802.21 (D9.0), 2008 IEEE P802.21 D9.0 2008Bae SJ, Chung MY, So J: Handover triggering mechanism based on IEEE 802.21 in heterogeneous networks with LTE and WLAN. Proceedings of the International Conference on Information Networking (ICOIN) 2011, 399-403.Seol J, Chung J: IEEE 802.21 MIH based Handover for Next Generation Mobile Communication Systems. 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Accessed 20 March 2012 [ http://projects.celtic-initiative.org/winner+/WINNER+%20Evaluation%20Group.html ]Green DB, Obaidat AS: AS Obaidat, An accurate line of sight propagation performance model for ad-hoc 802.11 wireless LAN (WLAN) devices. Proceedings of the IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC 2002) 2002, 5: 3424-3428.Johnson DB, Maltz DA, Imielinski T, Korth H: Dynamic source routing in ad hoc wireless networks, Chap. 5. In Mobile Computing. Kluwer Academic Publishers, The Netherlands; 1996:153-181.WiMAX Forum: A Comparative Analysis of Spectrum Alternatives for WiMAX Networks with Deployment Scenarios Based on the U.S. 700 MHz Band. Wimax Forum Website 2008.Forge S, Blackman C, Bohlin E: The demand for future mobile communications markets and services in Europe. 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Reaching Network Ubiquity through a New Concept of Mobile Terminal

[EN] The concept of mobile system as we know it today is about to change. It is expected that by 2020 the networks become cooperative and users collaborate in the transmission of information to other devices. This new paradigm of mobile relaying implies a set of new challenges that the scientific community is currently addressing. This paper introduces this new paradigm for mobile ommunications as well as the main problems, possible solutions, the current state of technology and most appealing research trends.This work was supported by the Spanish Ministry of Science under the project TEC2011-27723-C02-02.Cabrejas Peñuelas, J.; Chaparro Valero, PA.; Monserrat Del Río, JF.; Cardona Marcet, N. (2012). Reaching Network Ubiquity through a New Concept of Mobile Terminal. Waves. 4:89-98. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/649788998

Non-coherent MIMO Communication for the 5th Generation Mobile: Overview and Practical Aspects

[EN] Current cellular technologies are based on the concept of coherent communication, in which the channel matrix used for demodulation is estimated via reference or pilot signals. Coherent systems involve a significant increase of the signaling overhead, either when the number of Transmission Points (TP) is increased, due to the use of Coordinated Multipoint transmission/reception (CoMP) with Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) processing, or when mobile channel changes rapidly. Another disadvantage of coherent communications is the performance degradation caused by channel estimation errors. Both drawbacks of coherent communication motivate the use of non-coherent techniques. Although there are many theoretical studies on the performance of non-coherent schemes in MIMO systems, their impact on real-world cellular systems is still unknown. This paper focuses on bringing non-coherent techniques into practical systems using CoMP and/or MIMO processing.This work was performed in the framework of the FP7project ICT-317669 METIS, which is partly funded by the European Union.Roger Varea, S.; Cabrejas Peñuelas, J.; Calabuig Soler, D.; Monserrat Del Río, JF.; Fouad, Y.; Gohary, RH.; Yanikomeroglu, H. (2014). Non-coherent MIMO Communication for the 5th Generation Mobile: Overview and Practical Aspects. Waves. 6:5-15. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/52904S515

Non-Coherent Open-Loop MIMO Communications Over Temporally-Correlated Channels

[EN] This paper investigates the use of non-coherent communication techniques for open-loop transmission over temporally-correlated Rayleigh-fading MIMO channels. These techniques perform data detection without knowing the instantaneous channel coefficients. Three non-coherent Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) schemes, namely, differential unitary space-time modulation, differential space-time block code, and Grassmannian signaling, are compared with several state-of-the-art training-based coherent schemes. This paper shows that the non-coherent schemes are meaningful alternatives to training-based communication, specially as the number of transmit antennas increases. In particular, for more than two transmit antennas, non-coherent communication provides a clear advantage in medium to high mobility scenarios.This work was supported in part by the Ministerio de Economia y Competitividad, Spain, under Grant TEC2014-60258-C2-1-R, in part by the European Regional Development Fund, in part by the European Union through the H2020 Project METIS-II under Grant 671680, in part by Huawei Canada Company, Ltd., and in part by the Ontario Ministry of Economic Development and Innovation's through the Ontario Research Fund-Research Excellence Program.Cabrejas Peñuelas, J.; Roger Varea, S.; Calabuig Soler, D.; Fouad, YMM.; Gohary, RH.; Monserrat Del Río, JF.; Yanikomeroglu, H. (2016). Non-Coherent Open-Loop MIMO Communications Over Temporally-Correlated Channels. IEEE Access. 4:6161-6170. https://doi.org/10.1109/ACCESS.2016.2580680S61616170

Towards User-Centric Operation in 5G Networks

© 2016 Monserrat et al. Open Access This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.There are three pillars that characterize the new 5G revolution, namely, the use of heterogeneous wireless access technologies conforming an ultra-dense network, the software-driven flexibility of this network, and the simplified and user-centric operation and management of the system. This next-generation network operation and management shall be based on the usage of Big Data Analytics techniques to monitor the end-user quality of experience through direct measures of the network. This paper describes the Astellia approach towards this network revolution and presents some results on the performance of quality estimation techniques in current cellular networks. Thanks to the use of this approach, operators may fill the gap of knowledge between network key performance indicators and user experience. This way, they can operate in a proactive manner and have actual measurements of the users' experience, which leads to a fairer judgement of the users' complaints.The authors would like to thank the funding received from the Ministerio de Industria, Energia y Turismo TSI-100102-2013-106 funds.Monserrat Del Río, JF.; Alepuz Benaches, I.; Cabrejas Peñuelas, J.; Osa Ginés, V.; López Bayo, J.; García-Zarza, R.; Domenech-Benlloch, MJ.... (2016). Towards User-Centric Operation in 5G Networks. EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking. 2016(6):1-7. https://doi.org/10.1186/s13638-015-0506-zS1720166J Monserrat et al., Rethinking the mobile and wireless network architecture: the METIS research into 5G, in European Conference on Networks and Communications (EuCNC), 2014, pp. 1–55G-PPP, The 5G Infrastructure Public Private Partnership: the next generation of communication networks and services, 2015. Available at http://5g-ppp.eu/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/5G-Vision-Brochure-v1.pdfJF Monserrat, M Fallgren (eds.), Report on simulation results and evaluations, 2015. ICT-317669 METIS Deliverable 6.5Z Yingxiao, Z Ying Jun, User-centric virtual cell design for Cloud Radio Access Networks, in IEEE Signal Processing Advances in Wireless Communications (SPAWC), 2014, pp. 249–253JF Monserrat, G Mange, V Braun, H Tullberg, G Zimmermann, Ö Bulakci, METIS research advances towards the 5G mobile and wireless system definition. EURASIP. J. Wirel. Commun. Netw. 2015, 53 (2015)F Boccardi, RW Heath, A Lozano, TL Marzetta, P Popovski, Five disruptive technology directions for 5G. IEEE. Commun. Mag. 52(2), 74–80 (2014)P Agyapong, M Iwamura, D Staehle, W Kiess, A Benjebbour, Design considerations for a 5G network architecture. IEEE. Commun. Mag. 52(11), 65–75 (2014)Nokia Siemens Networks, Acquisition and retention white paper, 2013. http://networks.nokia.com/sites/default/files/document/acquisition___retention_white_paper.pdfDZ Yazti, S Krishnaswamy, Mobile big data analytics: research, practice, and opportunities, in IEEE 15th International Conference on Mobile Data Management (MDM), 2014R Kreher, UMTS performance measurement: a practical guide to KPIs for the UTRAN environment (Wiley, Chichester, 2006)S Mehrotra, On the implementation of a primal-dual interior point method. SIAM. J. Optim. 2, 575–601 (1992)V Osa, J Matamales, J Monserrat, J Lopez, Localization in wireless networks: the potential of triangulation techniques. Wirel. Pers. Commun. 68(4), 1525–1538 (2013