Semi-blind interference alignment in frequency selective channels

High speed transmission of information suffers inevitably by intersymbol interference (ISI) induced by multipath propagation over frequency selective channels. ISI has been a major obstacle preventing the successful implementation of physical layer network coding (PLNC) systems in these environments. Another major obstacle is the high computational complexity of existing algorithms dealing with ISI, which is a determining factor in the design of relay nodes. In this paper, we propose a novel and computationally efficient decision feedback equalizer structure that is utilized at the end node and in conjunction with a simple amplify and forward (AF) technique employed at the relay. We derive the optimal equations for the decision feedback equalizer (DFE) coefficients and evaluate the end-to-end bit error rate performance in frequency selective channels, and provide both analytical and numerical simulation results that demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach under realistic channel conditions. The obtained results show that E2E performance is dominated by the channel with most severe frequency selectivity.

This paper compares diversity combining schemes for the downlink of spread spectrum orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (SS-OFDM) systems in frequency selective fading channels. In particular, symbol-level combining after despreading is compared to chip-level combining under maximal ratio combining (MRC) of signals from different diversity branches and minimum mean-square error (MMSE) equalization of spreading sequences. Symbol-level combining takes place after the operations of MMSE equalization and despreading, whereas the operations of equalization and despreading occur after MRC if chip-level combining is used. Chip-level combining combines diversity samples in an efficient manner while reducing inter-code interference (self-interference) that results from the loss of orthogonality of spreading sequences due to a frequency selective channel. This method is shown to be superior to symbol-level combining when the diversity branches are uncorrelated, and when the branches differ only due to subcarrier interleaving. Novel expressions for the bit error rate (BER) of the two methods, as well as the extension of the analysis to partially loaded systems are presented. The results are relevant to antenna diversity as well as temporal diversity achieved though re-transmission within an ARQ scheme.

Diversity is an integral technique in the advancement of wireless communications. Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology continues to occupy a pivotal position in the fourth-generation (4G) standards and beyond. With the advent of full-dimension (FD) MIMO and massive MIMO, new paradigms are being targeted in the disruptive technology. Third-generation partnership project (3GPP) has also emphasized the advanced MIMO technology for achieving its vision of International Mobile Telephony (IMT) 2020. However, implementing multiple antennas can be cumbersome due to limiting factors such as size, cost, and hardware limitations. In such a scenario, where implementing many antennas is not feasible, the benefits of diversity can be reaped by employing cooperative communication. Single antenna mobiles can share their mobile stations giving rise to a virtual MIMO system. In this paper, the authors have analyzed the performance of cooperative mobile stations in a frequency selective channel. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), known for its robustness against multipath fading, is the modulation technique employed to circumvent the hazardous effects of intersymbol interference (ISI). MIMO is the key technology for achieving capacity advantage and improving link reliability. The blend of these two cutting edge technologies in a cooperative relay system presents encouraging results and inferences. Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC) is employed at the relay and the receiver to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Decode and forward (DF) protocol is used at the relay node owing to its regenerative nature and adaptability. The closed-form expressions for bit error rate (BER) and outage probability (Pout) are derived and compared with the experimental results. The effect of power decay factor is analyzed and simulation is done for 2 × 2, 2 × 3, and 2 × 4 transmit and receive antennas. The number of antennas at the relay is kept as 2. The analytical results agree with the simulation results.

Power line communication (PLC) uses the highly developed infrastructure of the electrical energy distribution network for data transmission. Measurements are showing that a broadband use of PLC channels is possible. So, PLC is of interest to future broadband communication systems. Such systems will be heterogeneous in several respects, for example relative to the used transmission channel but also relative to the complexity of the participant nodes. Wittneben and Kuhn (see block VTC 2002 - Spring) presented a new class of space-time block codes for radio channels. These codes meet the requirements of future communication systems. They are highly flexible and can be adapted to the particular requests of the transmission. In this paper a PLC application of these codes is investigated. They are used as a basis for a scalable and efficient PLC channel coding scheme. This shows that this class of codes can be used as a generic coding scheme for heterogeneous networks. Alternatively, the PLC application can be considered as an example of the usage of the codes on a frequency selective channel with coloured noise. The applied linear block code optimally uses the diversity of the frequency selective channels in combination with OFDM. This leads to significant gains in performance in case of very frequency selective channels; for barely frequency selective channels or for an AWGN channel the performance is slightly better or not affected respectively. These performance results are presented for measured PLC channels.

This paper deals with low-complexity joint channel estimation and decoding for faster-than-Nyquist (FTN) signaling over frequency selective fading channels. The inter-symbol interference (ISI) imposed by FTN signaling and the frequency selective channel are intentionally separated to fully exploit the known structure of the FTN-induced ISI. Colored noise due to the faster sampling rate than that of the Nyquist signaling system is approximated by autoregressive process. A Forney style factor graph representation of the FTN system is developed and Gaussian message passing is performed on the graph. Expectation propagation (EP) is employed to approximate the message from channel decoder to Gaussian distribution. Since the inner product between FTN symbols and channel coefficients is infeasible by belief propagation (BP), we propose to perform variational message passing (VMP) on an equivalent soft node in factor graph to tackle this problem. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed low-complexity hybrid BP-EP-VMP algorithm outperforms the existing methods in FTN system. Compared with the Nyquist counterpart, FTN signaling with the proposed algorithm is able to increase the transmission rate by over 40%, with only negligible BER performance loss.

The frequency selectivity of the P, NP I, and NP II channels of the four-channel model of mechanoreception for glabrous skin was measured psychophysically by an adaptation tuning curve procedure. The results substantially extend the frequency range over which the frequency selectivity of these channels is known and further confirm the hypothesis that the input stage of each of these channels consists of specific sensory nerve fibers and associated receptors. Specifically, the frequency characteristics of Pacinian nerve fibers, rapidly adapting (RA) nerve fibers, and slowly adapting Type II (SA II) nerve fibers were found to be the peripheral neurophysiological correlates of the P, NP I, and NP II channels, respectively. The finding that the tuning characteristic for a test stimulus of 250 Hz delivered through a small (0.008 cm2) contactor depended dramatically on the duration of the test stimulus whereas the detection threshold did not, provides new evidence in support of the hypothesis that separate NP II and P channels exist.

In this paper, a transmission of JPEG2000 images using an Unequal Power Allocation (UPA) scheme and Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) technique over a block fading — frequency selective channel is presented. Using instantaneous and average channel state information, power is assigned to each bit in the JPEG2000 bitstream based on its contribution to the decoded image quality. Moreover, the actual total power consumed for transmission is measured and compared with the total power initially assigned. Simulation results show an improvement of up to 10.5 dB in the decoded image quality when the UPA scheme is used. In addition, the simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed UPA algorithm in frequency selective block fading channels.

In recent years, several experimental studies have come out to validate the theoretical findings of interference alignment (IA), but only a handful of studies have focused on blind interference alignment. Unlike IA and other interference mitigation techniques, blind IA does not require channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT). The key insight is that the transmitter uses the knowledge of channel coherence intervals and receivers utilize reconfigurable antennas to create channel fluctuations exploited by the transmitter. In this work, we present a novel experimental evaluation of a reconfigurable antenna system for achieving blind IA. We present a blind IA technique based on reconfigurable antennas for a 2-user multipleinput single-output (MISO) broadcast channel implemented on a software defined radio platform where each of the receivers is equipped with a reconfigurable antenna. We further compare this blind IA implementation with traditional TDMA scheme for benchmarking purposes. We show that the achievable rates for blind IA can be realized in practice using measured channels under practical channel conditions. Additionally, the average error vector magnitude and bit error rate (BER) performances are evaluated.

The design of linear precoders or decoders for multiuser (MU) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) filterbank multicarrier (FBMC) modulations in the case of strong channel frequency selectivity is presented. The users and the base station (BS) communicate using space division multiple access (SDMA). The low complexity proposed solution is based on a single tap per-subcarrier precoding/decoding matrix at the base station (BS) in the downlink/uplink. As opposed to classical approaches that assume flat channel frequency selectivity at the subcarrier level, the BS does not make this assumption and takes into account the distortion caused by channel frequency selectivity. The expression of the FBMC asymptotic mean squared error (MSE) in the case of strong channel selectivity derived in earlier works is developed and extended. The linear precoders and decoders are found by optimizing the MSE formula under two design criteria, namely zero forcing (ZF) or minimum mean squared error (MMSE). Finally, simulation results demonstrate the performance of the optimized design. As long as the number of BS antennas is larger than the number of users, it is shown that those extra degrees of freedom can be used to compensate for the channel frequency selectivity.

In wireless interference networks, orthogonal medium access techniques like time division multiple access (TDMA) and frequency division multiple access (FDMA) achieve merely one degree of freedom (DoF). However, by using interference alignment (IA) the achievable DoF can be linearly scaled up with the number of users. Nevertheless, this outperformance of IA heavily depends on the availability of perfect channel state information (CSI), which is not a realistic assumption in practice. Since under imperfect CSI, the performance of IA may become severely degraded, design of enhanced IA algorithms by relying on the availability of merely imperfect CSI is of particular interest. In this paper, we propose a least squares (LS)-based IA algorithm which adaptively designs the beamformers based on the knowledge of the channel estimation error variance, which is possible to be known in advance. Then, we compare the performance of the proposed scheme with interference leakage minimization algorithms. It is shown that under both perfect and imperfect CSI, the proposed LS-based IA outperforms interference leakage minimization algorithms.

We show that the three-user M <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">T</sub> × M <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">R</sub> Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) interference channel where each transmitter is equipped with M <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">T</sub> antennas and each receiver is equipped with M <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">R</sub> antennas has (M) d(M, N) = <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Δ</sup> min (M/2-1/κ, N/2+1/κ) degrees of freedom (DoF) normalized by time, frequency, and space dimensions, where = <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Δ</sup> min(M <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">T</sub> , M <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">R</sub> ), N = <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Δ</sup> max(M <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">T</sub> , M <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">R</sub> ), κ = <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">Δ</sup> ⌈M/N-M⌉. While the DoF outer bound of d(M, N) is established for every M <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">T</sub> , M <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">R</sub> value, the achievability of d(M, N) DoF is established in general subject to a normalization with respect to spatial extensions, i.e., the scaling of the number of antennas at all nodes. In particular, we show that qd(M, N) DoF are achievable for the three-user qMT × qMR MIMO interference channel, for some positive integer q, which may be seen as a spatial extension factor. q is the scaling factor needed to make the value qd(M, N) an integer. Given spatial extensions, the achievability relies only on linear beamforming based interference alignment schemes and requires neither channel extensions nor channel variations in time or frequency. In the absence of spatial extensions, it is shown through examples how essentially the same interference alignment scheme may be applied over time-extensions over either constant or time-varying channels. The central new insight to emerge from this paper is the notion of subspace alignment chains as the DoF bottlenecks. The subspace alignment chains are instrumental both in identifying the extra dimensions to be provided by a genie to a receiver for the DoF outer bound, as well as in the construction of the optimal interference alignment schemes. The DoF value d(M, N) is a piecewise linear function of M, N, with either M or N being the bottleneck within each linear segment, whereas the other value contains some redundancy, i.e., it can be reduced without reducing the DoF. The corner points of these piecewise linear segments correspond to two sets, A={1/2, 2/3, 3/4, ...}and B={1/3, 3/5, 5/7, ...}. The set A contains all those values of M/N and only those values of M/N for which there is redundancy in both M and N, i.e., either can be reduced without reducing the DoF. The set B contains all those values of M/N and only those values of M/N for which there is no redundancy in either M or N, i.e., neither can be reduced without reducing the DoF. Because A and B represent settings with maximum and minimum redundancy, essentially they are the basis for the DoF outer bounds and inner bounds, respectively. Our results settle the question of feasibility of linear interference alignment, introduced previously by Cenk et al., for the three-user M <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">T</sub> × M <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">R</sub> MIMO interference channel, completely for all values of M <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">T</sub> , M <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">R</sub> . In particular, we show that the linear interference alignment problem (M <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">T</sub> × M <sub xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">R</sub> , d) <sup xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">3</sup> (as defined in previous paper by Cenk et al.) is feasible if and only if d ≤ d(M, N). With the exception of the values M/N ∈ B, and only with that exception, we show that for every M/N value there are proper systems (as defined by Cenk et al.) that are not feasible. Evidently the redundancy contained in all other values of M/N manifests itself as superfluous variables that are not discounted in the definition of proper systems, thus creating a discrepancy between proper and feasible systems. Our results show that M/N ∈ A are the only values for which there is no DoF benefit of joint processing among co-located antennas at the transmitters or receivers. This may also be seen as a consequence of the maximum redundancy in the M/N ∈ A settings.

Single-carrier frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) has been adopted as a possible air interface for future wireless networks. It combines most of the advantages of orthogonal frequency division multiple access and the low peak to average power ratio (PAPR) of single carrier (SC) transmission. Existing transmit antenna diversity techniques such as space-time block coding and space-frequency block coding are incompatible either with the system constraints or with the SC nature of SC-FDMA. We propose a novel space-frequency flexible coding scheme compatible with SC-FDMA and we prove its good performance both in terms of PAPR and bit error rate (BER) on frequency selective multiple input multiple output channels.

In this paper we propose an interleaved spread spectrum orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (ISS-OFDM) system and investigate its performance over frequency selective multipath fading channels. The purpose is to exploit frequency diversity capability, develop an e±cient spectrum spreading algorithm and improve the system performance over frequency selective multipath fading channels. At transmitter, a spectrum spread ISS-OFDM signal is generated by employing OFDM modulation and interleaving techniques. At the receiver, two solutions including serial demodulation and parallel demodulation for diversity combing are proposed, in which the received signals are combined by using a maximum ratio combining (MRC) technique. The simulation indicates that higher frequency diversity is achieved, and the Bit Error Rate (BER) and Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAR) performances of the proposed ISS-OFDM system over frequency selective multipath fading channels are improved signi¯cantly as compared with the conventional OFDM systems. Another unique characteristic is that the spectrum spreading factor and diversity order provided by the system are reconfigurable to achieve cognitive communications.

We consider a downlink heterogeneous network (HetNet), where several picocells coexist in the same spectrum as a macrocell. For a general framework of the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) network consisting of arbitrary number of picocells and macro users within the macrocell, designing a closed-form solution to achieve the degrees of freedom (DoF) of (C + K)d while guaranteeing the minimum overall antenna usage is an open problem, where C, K and d are the number of picocells, marco users within the macro cell and data streams per user, respectively. Therefore, by relaxing the minimum antenna utilization constraint, we present a zero-forcing based transceiver design at first, which outperforms the existing closed-form solution based on interference alignment (IA) in terms of antenna usage in most cases. That is to say, alignment processing is not necessary in most cases for the existing scheme because simple zero-forcing scheme with efficient antenna utilization can also attain the same DoF. Besides, we propose two IA schemes without any iterative computations, which have the same antenna configuration but different CSI feedback overhead. Also, our proposed IA schemes require lower usage of antennas compared to the zero-forcing scheme and existing IA scheme.

We propose a new SNR estimation method based on the preamble for OFDM systems in frequency selective channels. The OFDM training symbols in the preamble are equalized by the known data in frequency domain and employed to estimate the noise variance. The second order moments of the received symbols are used to estimate the signal plus noise power in the OFDM packets. The SNRs on the subchannels and the average SNR of the packets can all be estimated. Simulation results show that the proposed method is robust to frequency selectivity in wireless channels, and its performance is considerably improved compared with the available methods.