Modern devices provide a multitude of services that use radio frequencies in continual smaller packages. This size leads to an antenna used to transmit and receive information being usually very inefficient and a lot of power is wasted just to be able to transmit a signal. To mitigate this problem a new antenna was introduced by Dr. Manteghi that is capable of working efficiently across a large band. The antenna achieves this large band by doing quick frequency hopping across multiple channels. In order to test the performance of this antenna against more common antennas, a software radio was needed, such that tested antennas can be analyzed using multiple modulations. This paper presents a software defined radio system that was designed for the purpose of testing the bit-error rate of digital modulations schemes using described and other antennas. The designed system consists of a DSP, an FPGA, and commercially available modules. The combination allows the system to be flexible with high performance, while being affordable. Commercial modules are available for multiple frequency bands and capable of fast frequency switching required to test the antenna. The DSP board contains additional peripherals that allows for more complex projects in the future. The block structure of the system is also very educational as each stage of transmission and reception can be tested and observed. The full system has been constructed and tested using simulated and real signals. A code was developed for communication between commercial modules and the DSP, bit error rate testing, data transmission, signal generation, and signal reception. A graphical user interface (GUI) was developed to help user with information display and system control. This thesis describes the software-defined-radio design in detail and shows test results at the end. / Master of Science

The DIRECT (DIviding RECTangles) algorithm JONESJOTi, a variant of Lipschitzian methods for bound constrained global optimization, has been applied to the optimal transmitter placement for indoor wireless systems. Power coverage and BER (bit error rate) are considered as two criteria for optimizing locations of a specified number of transmitters across the feasible region of the design space. The performance of a DIRECT implementation in such applications depends on the characteristics of the objective function, the problem dimension, and the desired solution accuracy. Implementations with static data structures often fail in practice because of unpredictable memory requirements. This is especially critical in S⁴W (Site-Specific System Simulator for Wireless communication systems), where the DIRECT optimization is just one small component connected to a parallel 3D propagation ray tracing modeler running on a 200-node Beowulf cluster of Linux workstations, and surrogate functions for a WCDMA (wideband code division multiple access) simulator are also used to estimate the channel performance. Any component failure of this large computation would abort the entire design process. To make the DIRECT global optimization algorithm efficient and robust, a set of dynamic data structures is proposed here to balance the memory requirements with execution time, while simultaneously adapting to arbitrary problem size. The focus is on design issues of the dynamic data structures, related memory management strategies, and application issues of the DIRECT algorithm to the transmitter placement optimization for wireless communication systems. Results for two indoor systems are presented to demonstrate the effectiveness of the present work. / Master of Science

The Motorola Inc. paging protocol FLEX is discussed. The design and construction of a FLEX paging protocol decoder is discussed in detail. It proposes a decoding solution that includes a radio frequency (RF) receiver and a decoder board. The RF receiver will be briefly discussed. The decoder design is the main focus of this thesis as it transforms the RF frequency modulated (FM) data from the receiver and converts it to FLEX data words. The decoder is designed to handle bit sampling, bit clock synchronization, FLEX packet detection, and FLEX data word collection. The FLEX data words are then sent by the decoder to an external computer through a serial link for bit processing and storage. A FLEX transmitter will send randomly generated data so that a bit error rate (BER) calculation can be made at a PC. Each receiver'9s noise power and noise bandwidth will be measured so that noise spectral density may be calculated. A complete measurement set-up will be shown on how these noise measurements are made. The BER at a known power level is recorded. This enables Eb/No curves to be generated so that results of the decoding algorithm may be compared. This is performed on two different receivers. / Master of Science

Virginia Tech researchers have developed a broadband channel sounder that can measure channel quality while a wireless network is in operation. Channel measurements from the broadband sounder hold the promise of improving TCP/IP performance by trigging configuration changes in an adaptive data link layer protocol. We present an adaptive data link layer protocol that can use different levels of forward error correction (FEC) codes and link layer automatic retransmission request (ARQ) to improve network and transport layer performance. Using a simulation model developed in OPNET, we determine the effects of different data link layer protocol configurations on TCP/IP throughput and end-to-end delay using a Rayleigh fading channel model. Switching to higher levels of FEC encoding improves TCP/IP throughput for high bit error rates, but increases end-to-end delay of TCP/IP segments. Overall TCP/IP connections with link layer ARQ showed approximately 150 Kbps greater throughput than without ARQ, but lead to the highest end-to-end delay for high bit error rate channels. Based on the simulation results, we propose algorithms to maximize TCP/IP throughput and minimize end-to-end delay using the current bit error rate of the channel. We propose a metric, carrier-to-interference ratio (CIR) that is calculated from data retrieved from the broadband channel sounder. We propose algorithms using the carrier-to-interference ratio to control TCP/IP throughput and end-to-end delay. The thesis also describes a monitor program to use in the broadband wireless system. The monitor program displays data collected from the broadband sounder and controls the settings for the data link layer protocol and broadband sounder while the network is in operation. / Master of Science

This dissertation thesis deals with new progressive channel coding methods for data transmission using satellite transponder. The design of the system for SMS transmission, in which novel turbo coding methods are applied, is discussed too. An achievement of the lowest output power and the smallest user aperture is the principal aim of the new method applications. Design of system that would be able to the error free SMS transmission by very low signal to noise ratio is analyzed in this dissertation thesis. The work is focused on energy budget, modification and implementation of new turbo code types and using unique properties, development of new bit error rate estimation methods and methods for determination of final SMS form. The main contribution is the new type of turbo code development that have optimal properties for this usage, development of new bit error rate estimation method and development of method that is able to determine final form of SMS on the basis SMS frame structure and turbo decoding theory when the bit error rate is not zero.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 26-29, 1998 / Town & Country Resort Hotel and Convention Center, San Diego, California / There are well-known advantages in using pseudo-random sequences for testing of data communication links. The sequences, also called pseudo-noise (PN) sequences, approximate random data very well, especially for sequences thousands of bits long. They are easy to generate and are widely used for bit error rate testing because it is easy to synchronize a slave pattern generator to a received PN stream for bit-by-bit comparison. There are other aspects of PN sequences, however, that are not as widely known or applied. This paper points out how some of the less familiar characteristics of PN sequences can be put to practical use in the design of a Digital Test Set and other specialbuilt test equipment used for checkout of the EOS AM-1 Space Data Receiver. The paper also shows how knowledge of these PN sequence characteristics can simplify troubleshooting the digital sections in the Space Data Receiver. Finally, the paper addresses the sufficiency of PN data testing in characterizing the performance of a receiver/data recovery system.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 23-26, 2000 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / Bit error rate (BER) and bandwidth efficiency of several variations of enhanced Feher patented quadrature phase shift keying (FQPSK) [1] are described. An enhanced FQPSK increases the channel packing density of that of the IRIG 106-00 standardized FQPSK-B by approximately 50% in adjacent channel interference (ACI) environment. As the bandwidth efficiency of FQPSK-B DOUBLES (2×) that of pulse code modulation/Frequency modulation (PCM/FM) [5], the enhanced FQPSK, with a simpler transceiver than FQPSK-B, has a channel packing density of TRIPLE (3×) that of PCM/FM. One of the other enhanced FQPSK prototypes has an end to end system loss of only 0.4 dB at BER=1x10^(-3) and 0.5 dB at BER=1x10^(-4) from ideal linearly amplified QPSK theory. The enhanced FQPSK has a simple architecture, thus is inexpensive and has small size, for ultra high bit rate implementation. With low redundancy forward error correction (FEC) coding which expands the spectrum by approximately 10%, further improvement of about 3-4.5dB E N b o is attained with NLA FQPSK-B and enhanced FQPSK at BER=1x10^(-5) .

One would like to evaluate and compare complex digital communication systems based upon their overall bit error rate. Unfortunately, analytical expressions for bit error rate for even simple communication systems are notoriously difficult to evaluate accurately. Therefore, communication engineers often resort to simulation techniques to evaluate these error probabilities. In this thesis importance sampling techniques (variations of standard Monte Carlo methods) are studied in relation to both linear and non-linear detectors. Quick simulation, an importance sampling method based upon the asymptotics of the error estimator, is studied in detail. The simulated error probabilities are compared to values obtained by numerically inverting Laplace Transform expressions for these quantities.

For channel estimation without data-induced interference in data-dependent superimposed training (DDST) scheme, the data sequence is shifted by subtracting a data-dependent sequence before added to training sequence at transmitter. The distorted term causes the data identification problem (DIP) at the receiver. In this thesis, we propose two precoding schemes based on previous work. To maintain low peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR), the precoding matrix is restricted to a diagonal matrix. The first scheme is proposed to enlarge the minimum distance between the closest codewords, termed as efficient diagonal scheme. Conditions to make sure the precoding matrix is efficient for M-ary phase shift keying (MPSK) and M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (MQAM) modulation are listed in this paper. The second scheme pursues a lowest complexity at receiver which means the amount of searching set is reduced. It is a trade-off between the better bit error rate (BER) performance and a lower complexity at receiver. The simulation results show that PAPR have been improved and the DIP is solved in both schemes.

The main topic of this thesis is based on multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless communications, which is a novel technology that has attracted great interest in the last twenty years. Conventional MIMO systems using up to eight antennas play a vital role in the urban cellular network, where the deployment of multiple antennas have significantly enhanced the throughput without taking extra spectrum or power resources. The massive MIMO systems “scales” up the benefits that offered by the conventional MIMO systems. Using sixty four or more antennas at the BS not only improves the spectrum efficiency significantly, but also provides additional link robustness. It is considered as a key technology in the fifth generation of mobile communication technology standards network, and the design of new algorithms for these two systems is the basis of the research in this thesis. Firstly, at the receiver side of the conventional MIMO systems, a general framework of bit error rate (BER) approximation for the detection algorithms is proposed, which aims to support an adaptive modulation scheme. The main idea is to utilize a simplified BER approximation scheme, which is based on the union bound of the maximum-likelihood detector (MLD), whereby the bit error rate (BER) performance of the detector for the varying channel qualities can be efficiently predicted. The K-best detector is utilized in the thesis because its quasi- MLD performance and the parallel computational structure. The simulation results have clearly shown the adaptive K-best algorithm, by applying the simplified approximation method, has much reduced computational complexity while still maintaining a promising BER performance. Secondly, in terms of the uplink channel estimation for the massive MIMO systems with the time-division-duplex operation, the performance of the Grassmannian line packing (GLP) based uplink pilot codebook design is investigated. It aims to eliminate the pilot contamination effect in order to increase the downlink achievable rate. In the case of a limited channel coherence interval, the uplink codebook design can be treated as a line packing problem in a Grassmannian manifold. The closed-form analytical expressions of downlink achievable rate for both the single-cell and multi-cell systems are proposed, which are intended for performance analysis and optimization. The numerical results validate the proposed analytical expressions and the rate gains by using the GLP-based uplink codebook design. Finally, the study is extended to the energy efficiency (EE) of the massive MIMO system, as the reduction carbon emissions from the information and communication technology is a long-term target for the researchers. An effective framework of maximizing the EE for the massive MIMO systems is proposed in this thesis. The optimization starts from the maximization of the minimum user rate, which is aiming to increase the quality-of-service and provide a feasible constraint for the EE maximization problem. Secondly, the EE problem is a non-concave problem and can not be solved directly, so the combination of fractional programming and the successive concave approximation based algorithm are proposed to find a good suboptimal solution. It has been shown that the proposed optimization algorithm provides a significant EE improvement compared to a baseline case.