Lunds universitet/Institutionen för elektro- och informationsteknik
Abstract
In modern day society the increase of data generation and transfer has been an issue that researchers are working on. This generated and shared data might have a different purpose but one thing is certain, the reception. This communication can cover continents, countries, cities or even just a few meters. For the purpose of the later, personal area networks (PAN) have been created with a main focus to lower the energy consumption. The protocol that is created under IEEE is 802.15.4 and it has multiple applications in the context of next generation sensor networks. This thesis investigates the performance IEEE 802.15.4 UWB PHY for high data rates over IEEE multipath fading channels and introduces receivers aiming to diversity and to mitigate the intersymbol interference (ISI) that might appear. We simulate the protocols highest mandatory data rate over slow, block faded, realistic IEEE channel models such as, residential, office, outdoor and industrial. The simulation includes Reed Solomon (RS) channel coding, optimal successive erasure decoding (SED), and coherent RAKE receivers. We verify that the selective RAKE (sRAKE) perform better than the nonselective RAKE (n-sRAKE) in all environments and also the increase of fingers is mandatory in order to improve performance. In cases with low number of fingers the ISI mitigation techniques like Maximum-Likehood Sequence Estimator (MLSE) & RAKE combination or Maximum Ration Combining (MRC) ISI cancellation receivers, can provide some gain in large delay spread environments. In cases with high number of ingers the MRC received employs its full diversity since the received power is arger than before. Overall the apply of optimal errors and erasures decoding can urther improve the system performance by adding a small gain, lowering existing it Error Probability (BEP) even more.A huge percentage of data has been generated in the last two years and it will grow more, as every one of us is constantly producing and releasing data. The latest years has been an extensive research on capacity maximization, bit rate increment and power optimization. That research lead to the development of various protocols for cellular and personal area networks (PAN), where they each utilizes the frequency spectrum differently. Even if cellular networks have the ability to cover large area, development of multiple personal area networks can be developed for the purpose to offload data from the cellular network. Keeping in mind the research needs, 802.15.4 UWH PHY is a solid candidate when it comes to data transfer in a small area. This protocol offers various mandatory transmission modes that can be selected depending the channel parameters and various data rate needs. Time hopping and spreading sequence offers the existence of multiuser environment where multiple transceivers can co-exist. Overall the complexity, cost and energy consumption for transmission and reception can be kept low, matching the research needs. The main issues regarding 802.15.4 UWH PHY and high speed data rates is first, the energy dispersion of the transmitted symbol to multiple bins and second, the appearance of Inter Symbol Interference (ISI) in high delay profile environments. The solution in the former problem is the necessary implementation of a RAKE receiver. Regarding the latter, literature offers multiple ways to mitigate the ISI but the aim should be to keep the lowest complexity possible regarding the implementation. In this thesis we evaluate the performance of 802.15.4 UWB PHY for high speed data rates under IEEE channel models. Various receivers has been build for the purpose of this thesis, Maximum Ratio Combining (MRC), MRC with Inter Symbol Interference and MLSE & RAKE combination receiver. The MRC is a simple RAKE receiver with maximum diversity, MRC with ISI cancellation is based on the MRC receiver with the ability to mitigate ISI, and MLSE & RAKE combination is an optimum ISI mitigation receiver without the diversity of the MRC
