Wireless communication has enjoyed explosive growth over the past decade. As demands for increased capacity and quality grow, improved methods for harnessing the multipath wireless channel must be developed. The use of adaptive antenna arrays is one area that shows promise for improving capacity of wireless systems and providing improved safety through position location capabilities. These arrays can be used for interference rejection through spatial filtering, position location through direction finding measurements, and developing improved channel models through angle of arrival channel sounding measurements. This thesis provides an overview of the technical challenges involved in position location of wireless users and details the hardware development of a multi-sensor testbed at the Mobile and Portable Radio Research Group at Virginia Tech. This testbed is to be used for position location experiments as well as a host of other adaptive signal processing applications. / Master of Science

The spatially distributed adaptive array is defined and analyzed. It is applied to both time division multiple access (TDMA) and code division multiple access (CDMA) cellular networks to improve the outage probability at either the base station or mobiles. In a TDMA network, the distributed array consists of three sub-arrays at alternate corners of a hexagonal cell. It is shown analytically that the SINR of combined beamforming of the distributed sub-arrays is greater than or equal to the SIR or independent beamforming of the sub-arrays. Closed form solutions are derived for estimating the BER performance of Rayleigh fading mobile signals received at a distributed adaptive array with combined beamforming of the sub-arrays. The simulated TDMA uplink outage probability of multiple same-cell co-channel users in a fading environment is compared between conventional, spatially distributed arrays with independent beamforming of the sub-arrays and combined beamforming of the sub-arrays. The effect of the antenna element spacing, number of elements and angular spread is also investigated. Spatially distributed arrays are formed in a CDMA network on the downlink with arrays in multi-way soft handoff with the mobiles. The outage probability performance of combined beamforming of the arrays in handoff is compared to independent beamforming of the arrays as well as to conventional sectorized antennas. The range between mobiles and distributed sub-arrays in the case of a spatially distribu-ted array can be larger than between conventional center cell arrays and mobiles. Therefore, the effect of interference on the range increase relative to an omni antenna of adaptive and phased arrays in a multipath environment for both narrowband and wideband spread spectrum systems is investigated. An analytical model for predicting the asymptotic range limitation of phased arrays when the angular spread exceeds the array beamwidth is derived. / Thesis (PhD (Electronic Engineering))--University of Pretoria, 2006. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / unrestricted

Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) are vital tools for accurate navigation and timing for both civil and military use. Due to the low power of the GNSS signals, these systems are sensitive to interference attacks. For wideband GNSS jamming, adaptive antenna arrays are commonly used to suppress interference.  This thesis focuses on how distortions induced by adaptive antenna arrays can affect the performance of a GNSS receiver and how prone different beamforming algorithms are to suffer from such distortions. To investigate this, simulations in software have been performed for static scenarios with two different beamforming algorithms and four different antenna arrays. The results show that the method for interference suppression that uses constraints in direction and frequency achieves a higher signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio, more stable acquisition over the hemisphere, and less fluctuating code delay error than the method that only minimizes the power of the output signal.

There is increasing interest in the exploitation of multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) channels to enhance the capacity of wireless systems. In this study, we develop and evaluate a channel model, evaluate the corresponding channel capacity, and design and analyze a simple orthogonal transmit waveform for MIMO channels in mobile radio environments. We also evaluate the system performance of various interference cancellation techniques when employing multiple-receive antenna in interference-limited systems. The first part of this dissertation presents two major contributions to MIMO systems. The analytical expression for space-time MIMO channel correlation is derived for a Rayleigh fading channel. The information-theoretic channel capacity based on this correlation is also evaluated for a wide variety of mobile radio channels. The second part of this dissertation presents two major contributions to the area of orthogonal waveform design. We analyze the bit-error-rate (BER) performance of a proposed space-time orthogonal waveform for MIMO mobile radio communications. The application of the proposed space-time orthogonal waveform to a conventional cellular system is also evaluated and briefly discussed. Finally, this dissertation investigates a number of interference cancellation techniques for multiple-receive antenna systems. Both adaptive beamforming and multiuser detection are evaluated for various signal waveforms over a variety of mobile radio channels. / Ph. D.

Abstract In this doctoral thesis, initial code synchronization (i.e., code acquisition) of a direct sequence spread spectrum (DS/SS) system is studied when a smart antenna is used in a receiver. Code synchronization means time synchronization of the used spreading code in the receiver. After an introduction to the topic, a literature review of code acquisition is presented. In addition, a review of the results in the literature under fading, data modulation, Doppler, intentional interference, multiple-access interference, other system interference, and multiple antennas is given. After that, an overview of the smart antennas, especially focusing on digital beamforming and direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation algorithms is presented. The end part of the thesis concentrates on the author’s own research of the topic. Original articles of this article dissertation have been classified according to their contents into two groups. The first group covers DS/SS code acquisition performance in intentional interference by exploiting how well different beamforming algorithms can eliminate narrowband and wideband interfering signals in the case, where the DOA of the desired signal is known. The obtained results show that most spatial beamforming algorithms are capable of cancelling multiple different types of interfering signals if they are not arriving from the same direction as the desired signal. If angle separation between desired and interfering signals is not sufficient, then more complex methods have to be used. The second group of articles focuses on a theoretical analysis of synchronization probabilities and mean acquisition times. If the DOA of the desired signal is unknown, the whole angular uncertainty region can be divided into small angular cells using beamforming techniques, as is proposed in the literature. Then there is a two-dimensional (delay-angle) acquisition problem. In this thesis, the research work of that area is expanded to cover also advanced beamforming techniques, since they offer increased interference suppression capability. It is shown that the code acquisition performance of the delay-angle method can be improved in some cases by adding a DOA estimator into the system, because it may reduce the number of required angular cells. In addition, such a minimum mean square error (MMSE) beamforming structure is proposed, where only one period of the known pseudo noise spreading code is used as a reference signal. The method was shown to have better acquisition performance than the delay-angle method has, since MMSE beamforming does not need DOA information. However, in this thesis, such a method was not found which outperforms the rest of the methods in all scenarios. / Tiivistelmä Tässä väitöstyössä tutkitaan suorahajotushajaspektrijärjestelmän (DS/SS, direct sequence spread spectrum) koodisynkronoinnin etsintävaihetta, kun vastaanottimessa käytetään älyantennia. Koodisynkronoinnilla tarkoitetaan järjestelmän käyttämän hajotuskoodin ajastuksen synkronointia vastaanottimessa. Johdannon jälkeen esitetään kirjallisuuskatsaus koodisynkronointiin sekä tuodaan esille kirjallisuudesta löytyviä tutkimustuloksia aihepiiristä seuraavissa tilanteissa: häipyvä kanava, Doppler-ilmiö, tahallinen häirintä, monikäyttöhäiriö, muiden järjestelmien aiheuttama häiriö sekä moniantennijärjestelmät. Tämän jälkeen esitetään yleiskatsaus älyantenneihin kohdistuen erityisesti digitaalisiin keilanmuodostus- sekä suuntaestimointialgoritmeihin. Työn loppuosa keskittyy kirjoittajan omaan tutkimukseen aiheesta. Tämän nippuväitöskirjan alkuperäiset artikkelit on luokiteltu kahteen ryhmään niiden sisältöön perustuen. Ensimmäinen ryhmä käsittelee DS/SS-järjestelmän koodisynkronoinnin etsintävaiheen suorituskykyä tahallisessa häirinnässä tutkimalla, miten hyvin erilaiset keilanmuodostusalgoritmit kykenevät poistamaan kapea- ja leveäkaistaisia häirintäsignaaleja tilanteessa, jossa hyötysignaalin tulosuunta tiedetään. Tutkimustulokset osoittavat, että monet tilatason keilanmuodostusalgoritmit kykenevät poistamaan useita erityyppisiä häirintäsignaaleita, jos ne eivät saavu hyötysignaalin kanssa samasta suunnasta. Mikäli kulmaero hyöty- ja häirintäsignaalien välillä ei ole riittävä, joudutaan käyttämään rakenteeltaan monimutkaisempia menetelmiä. Toinen ryhmä artikkeleita keskittyy synkronointiin liittyvien todennäköisyyksien ja keskimääräisen etsintäajan teoreettiseen analyysiin. Jos hyötysignaalin tulosuunta on tuntematon, voidaan kulmaepävarmuusalue jakaa pieniin kulmasoluihin käyttäen keilanmuodostustekniikoita, kuten kirjallisuudessa esitetään. Tällöin kyseessä on kaksiulotteinen (viive-kulma) etsintäongelma. Tässä työssä kyseistä tutkimusaihetta laajennetaan koskemaan myös edistyneet keilanmuodostusmenetelmät, koska ne tarjoavat parantuneen häiriönvaimennuskyvyn. Työssä osoitetaan, että viive-kulma menetelmän suorituskykyä voidaan parantaa joissakin tilanteissa lisäämällä järjestelmään suuntaestimaattori, koska se saattaa vähentää tarvittavien kulmasolujen lukumäärää. Lisäksi tutkitaan sellaista pienimmän keskineliövirheen (MMSE, minimum mean square error) keilanmuodostusmenetelmää, jossa ainoastaan yhtä hajotuskoodin koodijaksoa käytetään opetukseen. Kyseisellä menetelmällä todettiin olevan parempi suorituskyky kuin viive-kulma etsinnällä, koska MMSE-menetelmä ei tarvitse suuntainformaatiota. Tässä työssä ei kuitenkaan löydetty yhtä sellaista menetelmää, jonka suorituskyky on muita parempi kaikissa tilanteissa.