Massive multiple-input multiple-output is a promising technique for the next generation of wireless communication systems which addresses most of the critical challenges associated with concurrent relaying systems, such as digital signal processing complexity, long processing delay, and low latency wireless communications. However, the deployment of conventional fully digital beamforming methods, dedicates one radio frequency (RF) chain to each antenna, is not viable enough due to the high fabrication/implementation cost and power consumption. In this thesis, we envision to address this critical issue by reducing the number of RF chains in a viable analog/digital configuration paradigm which is usually referred to hybrid structure. From another viewpoint, the development of fifth generation enabling technologies brings new challenges to the design of power amplifiers (PAs). In particular, there is a strong demand for low-cost, nonlinear PAs which, however, introduce nonlinear distortions. On the other hand, contemporary expensive PAs show great power efficiency in their nonlinear region. Inspired by this trade-off between nonlinearity distortions and efficiency, finding an optimal operating point is highly desirable, and this is the second key contribution of this thesis.

[pt] Com um número crescente de antenas em sistemas MIMO, o consumo de energia e os custos das interfaces de rádio correspondentes tornam-se relevantes. Nesse contexto, uma abordagem promissora é a utilização de conversores de dados de baixa resolução. Neste estudo, propomos dois novos pré-codificadores ótimos para a sinais de envelope constante e quantização de fase. O primeiro maximiza a distância mínima para o limite de decisão (MMDDT) nos receptores, enquanto o segundo minimiza o erro médio quadrático entre os símbolos dos usuários e o sinal de recepção. O design MMDDT apresetado nesse estudo é uma generalização de designs anteriores que baseiam-se em quantização de 1-bit. Além disso, ao contrário do projeto MMSE anterior que se baseia na resolução de 1-bit, a abordagem proposta emprega quantização de fase uniforme e a etapa de limite no método branch-and-bound é diferente em termos de considerar o relaxamento mais restritivo do problema não convexo, que é então utilizado para um design sub ótimo também. Além disso, três métodos diferentes de detecção suave e um esquema iterativo de detecção e decodificação que permite a utilização de codificação de canal em conjunto com pré-codificação de baixa resolução são propostos. Além de uma abordagem exata para calcular a informação extrínseca, duas aproximações com reduzida complexidade computacional são propostas. Os algoritmos propostos de pré-codificação branch-and-bound são superiores aos métodos existentes em termos de taxa de erro de bit. Resultados numéricos mostram que as abordagens propostas têm complexidade significativamente menor do que a busca exaustiva. Finalmente, os resultados baseados em um código de bloco LDPC indicam que os esquemas de processamento de recepção geram uma taxa de erro de bit menor em comparação com o projeto convencional. / [en] With an increasing number of antennas in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, the energy consumption and costs of the corresponding front ends become relevant. In this context, a promising approach is the consideration of low-resolution data converters. In this study two novel optimal precoding branch-and-bound algorithms constrained to constant envelope signals and phase quantization are proposed. The first maximizes the minimum distance to the decision threshold (MMDDT) at the receivers, while the second minimizes the MSE between the users data symbols and the receive signal. This MMDDT design presented in this study is a generalization of prior designs that rely on 1-bit quantization. Moreover, unlike the prior MMSE design that relies on 1-bit resolution, the proposed MMSE approach employs uniform phase quantization and the bounding step in the branch-and-bound method is different in terms of considering the most restrictive relaxation of the nonconvex problem, which is then utilized for a suboptimal design also. Moreover, three different soft detection methods and an iterative detection and decoding scheme that allow the utilization of channel coding in conjunction with low-resolution precoding are proposed. Besides an exact approach for computing the extrinsic information, two approximations with reduced computational complexity are devised. The proposed branch-and-bound precoding algorithms are superior to the existing methods in terms of bit error rate. Numerical results show that the proposed approaches have significantly lower complexity than exhaustive search. Finally, results based on an LDPC block code indicate that the proposed receive processing schemes yield a lower bit-error-rate compared to the conventional design.

L’objectif de cette thèse est d’étudier d’une part le problème de sonification d’image et de le solutionner à travers de nouveaux modèles de correspondance entre domaines visuel et sonore. D’autre part d’étudier le problème de la classification de son et de le résoudre avec des méthodes ayant fait leurs preuves dans le domaine de la reconnaissance d’image. La sonification d’image est la traduction de données d’image (forme, couleur, texture, objet) en sons. Il est utilisé dans les domaines de l’assistance visuelle et de l’accessibilité des images pour les personnes malvoyantes. En raison de sa complexité, un système de sonification d’image qui traduit correctement les données d’image en son de manière intuitive n’est pas facile à concevoir. Notre première contribution est de proposer un nouveau système de sonification d’image de bas-niveau qui utilise une approche hiérarchique basée sur les caractéristiques visuelles. Il traduit, à l’aide de notes musicales, la plupart des propriétés d’une image (couleur, gradient, contour, texture, région) vers le domaine audio, de manière très prévisible et donc est facilement ensuite décodable par l’être humain. Notre deuxième contribution est une application Android de sonification de haut niveau qui est complémentaire à notre première contribution car elle implémente la traduction des objets et du contenu sémantique de l’image. Il propose également une base de données pour la sonification d’image. Finalement dans le domaine de l’audio, notre dernière contribution généralise le motif binaire local (LBP) à 1D et le combine avec des descripteurs audio pour faire de la classification de sons environnementaux. La méthode proposée surpasse les résultats des méthodes qui utilisent des algorithmes d’apprentissage automatique classiques et est plus rapide que toutes les méthodes de réseau neuronal convolutif. Il représente un meilleur choix lorsqu’il y a une rareté des données ou une puissance de calcul minimale. / The objective of this thesis is to study on the one hand the problem of image sonification and to solve it through new models of mapping between visual and sound domains. On the other hand, to study the problem of sound classification and to solve it with methods which have proven track record in the field of image recognition. Image sonification is the translation of image data (shape, color, texture, objects) into sounds. It is used in vision assistance and image accessibility domains for visual impaired people. Due to its complexity, an image sonification system that properly conveys the image data to sound in an intuitive way is not easy to design. Our first contribution is to propose a new low-level image sonification system which uses an hierarchical visual feature-based approach to translate, usingmusical notes, most of the properties of an image (color, gradient, edge, texture, region) to the audio domain, in a very predictable way in which is then easily decodable by the human being. Our second contribution is a high-level sonification Android application which is complementary to our first contribution because it implements the translation to the audio domain of the objects and the semantic content of an image. It also proposes a dataset for an image sonification. Finally, in the audio domain, our third contribution generalizes the Local Binary Pattern (LBP) to 1D and combines it with audio features for an environmental sound classification task. The proposed method outperforms the results of methods that uses handcrafted features with classical machine learning algorithms and is faster than any convolutional neural network methods. It represents a better choice when there is data scarcity or minimal computing power.