No / A new approach for implementing QO-STBC and DHSTBC over OFDM for four, eight and sixteen transmitter antennas is presented, which eliminates interference from the detection matrix and improves performance by increasing the diversity order on the transmitter side. The proposed code promotes diversity gain in comparison with the STBC scheme, and also reduces Inter Symbol Interference.

No / An investigation into the wavelet packet transform (WPT) modulation scheme for Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) band-limited systems is presented. The implementation involves using the WPT as the base multiplexing technology at baseband, instead of the traditional Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) common in Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) systems. An investigation for a WPT-MIMO multicarrier system, using the Alamouti diversity technique, is presented. Results are consistent with those in the original Alamouti work. The scheme is then implemented for WPT-MIMO and FFTMIMO cases with extended receiver diversity, namely 2 ×Nr MIMO systems, where Nr is the number of receiver elements. It is found that the diversity gain decreases with increasing receiver diversity and that WPT-MIMO systems can be more advantageous than FFT-based MIMO-OFDM systems.

Approved for public release, distribution is unlimited / This thesis investigates the simulation performance of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems utilizing Alamoutibased space-time block coding (STBC) technique. The MIMO communication systems using STBC technique employing both single- carrier modulation and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) are simulated in Matlab. The physical layer part of the IEEE 802.16a standard is used in constructing the simulated OFDM schemes. Stanford University Interim (SUI) channel models are selected for the wireless channel in the simulation process. The performance results of the simulated MIMO systems are compared to those of conventional single antenna systems. / Lieutenant Junior Grade, Turkish Navy

This work concentrates on the application of diversity techniques and space time block coding for future mobile wireless communications. The initial system analysis employs a space-time coded OFDM transmitter over a multipath Rayleigh channel, and a receiver which uses a selection combining diversity technique. The performance of this combined scenario is characterised in terms of the bit error rate and throughput. A novel four element QOSTBC scheme is introduced, it is created by reforming the detection matrix of the original QOSTBC scheme, for which an orthogonal channel matrix is derived. This results in a computationally less complex linear decoding scheme as compared with the original QOSTBC. Space time coding schemes for three, four and eight transmitters were also derived using a Hadamard matrix. The practical optimization of multi-antenna networks is studied for realistic indoor and mixed propagation scenarios. The starting point is a detailed analysis of the throughput and field strength distributions for a commercial dual band 802.11n MIMO radio operating indoors in a variety of line of sight and non-line of sight scenarios. The physical model of the space is based on architectural schematics, and realistic propagation data for the construction materials. The modelling is then extended and generalized to a multi-storey indoor environment, and a large mixed site for indoor and outdoor channels based on the Bradford University campus. The implications for the physical layer are also explored through the specification of antenna envelope correlation coefficients. Initially this is for an antenna module configuration with two independent antennas in close proximity. An operational method is proposed using the scattering parameters of the system and which incorporates the intrinsic power losses of the radiating elements. The method is extended to estimate the envelope correlation coefficient for any two elements in a general (N,N) MIMO antenna array. Three examples are presented to validate this technique, and very close agreement is shown to exist between this method and the full electromagnetic analysis using the far field antenna radiation patterns.

Selected mapping (SLM) schemes are commonly employed to reduce the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. It has been shown that the computational complexity of the traditional SLM scheme can be substantially reduced by adopting conversion vectors obtained by using the inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) of the phase rotation vectors in place of the conventional IFFT operations. To ensure that the elements of these phase rotation vectors have an equal magnitude, conversion vectors should have the form of a perfect sequence. This study firstly presents three novel classes of perfect sequence, each of which comprises certain base vectors and their cyclically shifted versions. Three novel low-complexity SLM schemes are then proposed based upon the unique structures of these perfect sequences. It is shown that while the PAPR reduction performances of the proposed schemes are marginally poorer than that of the traditional SLM scheme, the three schemes achieve a substantially lower computational complexity. Since the three proposed PAPR reduction schemes cannot be utilized in the orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) system. A low-complexity scheme for PAPR reduction in OFDMA uplink systems using either an interleaved or a sub-band sub-carrier assignment strategy is also proposed in the second part of this study. The proposed scheme requires just one IFFT operation. The PAPR reduction performance of the proposed scheme is only marginally poorer than that of the traditional SLM scheme. However, the proposed schemes have significantly lower computational complexities. Besides, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) OFDM systems with space-frequency block coding (SFBC) are well-known for their robust performance in time selective fading channels. However, SFBC MIMO-OFDM systems have a high computational complexity since the number of IFFTs required scales in direct proportion to the number of antennas at the transmitter. Furthermore, SFBC MIMO-OFDM systems have a high PAPR. Accordingly, a low-complexity PAPR reduction scheme for SFBC MIMO OFDM systems with the Alamouti encoding scheme is proposed in this study. Extending this scheme obtains two low-complexity transmitter architectures for SFBC MIMO-OFDM systems with a general encoding matrix and an arbitrary number of transmitter antennas. The proposed schemes achieve a significant reduction in computational complexity by fully exploiting the time-domain signal properties of the transmitted signal. In addition, a PAPR reduction scheme is presented based on the proposed transmitter schemes. It is shown that the PAPR reduction performance of the proposed scheme is almost as good as that of the traditional SLM scheme, but is achieved with a substantially lower computational complexity.

This work concentrates on the application of diversity techniques and space time block coding for future high speed mobile wireless communications on multicarrier systems. At first, alternative multicarrier kernels robust for high speed doubly-selective fading channel are sought. They include the comparisons of discrete Fourier transform (DFT), fractional Fourier transform (FrFT) and wavelet transform (WT) multicarrier kernels. Different wavelet types, including the raised-cosine spectrum wavelets are implemented, evaluated and compared. From different wavelet families, orthogonal wavelets are isolated from detailed evaluations and comparisons as suitable for multicarrier applications. The three transforms are compared over a doubly-selective channel with the WT significantly outperforming all for high speed conditions up to 300 km/hr. Then, a new wavelet is constructed from an ideal filter approximation using established wavelet design algorithms to match any signal of interest; in this case under bandlimited criteria. The new wavelet showed better performance than other traditional orthogonal wavelets. To achieve MIMO communication, orthogonal space-time block coding, OSTBC, is evaluated next. First, the OSTBC is extended to assess the performance of the scheme over extended receiver diversity order. Again, with the extended diversity conditions, the OSTBC is implemented for a multicarrier system over a doubly-selective fading channel. The MIMO-OFDM systems (implemented using DFT and WT kernels) are evaluated for different operating frequencies, typical of LTE standard, with Doppler effects. It was found that, during high mobile speed, it is better to transmit OFDM signals using lower operating frequencies. The information theory for the 2-transmit antenna OSTBC does not support higher order implementation of multi-antenna systems, which is required for the future generation wireless communications systems. Instead of the OSTBC, the QO-STBC is usually deployed to support the design of higher order multi-antenna systems other than the 2-transmit antenna scheme. The performances of traditional QO-STBC methods are diminished by some off-diagonal (interference) terms such that the resulting system does not attain full diversity. Some methods for eliminating the interference terms have earlier been discussed. This work follows the construction of cyclic matrices with Hadamard matrix to derive QO-STBC codes construction which are N-times better than interference free QO-STBC, where N is the number of transmit antenna branches.

Since the mid 1990’s, the wireless communications industry has witnessed explosive growth. The worldwide cellular and personal communication subscriber base surpassed 600 million users by late 2001, and the number of individual subscribers surpassed 2 billion at the end of 2006 [1, 2]. In order to attract and accommodate these subscribers, modern communication systems, like the Third Generation (3G) and Fourth Generation (4G) cellular networks, will have to provide attractive new features such as increased data throughput rates, greater system capacity, and better speech quality. These modern communication systems promise to have advantages such as wireless access in ways that have never been possible before, providing, amongst others services such as live television (TV) broadcasting to Mobile Stations (MS)s, multi-megabit Internet access, communication using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), unparalleled network capacity, seamless accessibility and many more. With specific, but not exclusive reference to the cellular environment, there are numerous ways to increase the data throughput rate and system capacity. From an economical perspective, it would be more efficient to add equipment to the Base Station (BS) rather than the MSs. To achieve these improvements the motivation to utilise transmit diversity’s capabilities have been identified as a key research issue in this study. Alamouti [3] proposed a transmit diversity technique using two transmit antennas and one receive antenna, providing the same diversity order than using one transmit antenna and two receive antennas. Since Alamouti’s publication in 1998, many papers in the field of Space-Time (ST) coding have been published. Current research in the field of ST coding consists of finding methods to extend the number of transmit antennas to more than four, while still achieving full rate, as well as full diversity which is the main motivation for this study. This study proposes a novel idea of breaching the limitations with ST coding theory by combining ST coding with Spread Spectrum (SS) modulation techniques in order to extend the number of transmit antennas to more than four and still achieve full rate as well as full diversity. An advantage of the proposed scheme, called Direct Sequence Space-Time Spreading (DSSTS) has over current Space-Time Spreading (STS) techniques is that it uses 50% less spreading codes. A performance evaluation platform for the DSSTS scheme was developed to simulate the performance of the scheme in a realistic mobile communication environment. A mobile communication channel that has the ability to simulate time-varying multipath fading was developed and used to evaluate the performance of the DSSTS scheme. From the simulation results obtained, it is evident that Walsh sequences that exhibit particularly good cross-correlation characteristics, cannot overcome the effect of the antenna self-noise in order to exploit the diversity gain by adding extra antennas, i.e. diversity extension. The research also showed that an optimal trade-off exists between antenna diversity and antenna created self-noise. Performance results of the DSSTS scheme in slow and fast fading channels for a different number of transmit antennas are also presented in this study. With the capacity analysis of the DSSTS scheme, it was shown that the addition of extra transmit antennas to the system indeed increased the system capacity. A further addition to this study is the investigation into the assumption that the channel should be quasi-static over the frame length of the ST code. A Space Sequence Transmit Diversity (SSTD) technique is consequently proposed that allows the transmission of the Alamouti symbols during one time interval instead of two. This relieves the ST code from the assumption that the channel should be quasi-static, allowing it to be used in a more realistic multi-user environment. A performance evaluation platform for the SSTD scheme was developed and used to obtain simulation results in a multipath fading channel. It was also shown that the proposed SSTD scheme is successful in combating the effects of multipath fading for small Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) user loads. However, as a rule of thumb, the square root of the spreading sequence length divided by two depicts the user load at which the SSTD scheme was not capable of overcoming the combined effects of Multi-User Interference (MUI) and multipath fading. / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / unrestricted

This work concentrates on the application of diversity techniques and space time block coding for future high speed mobile wireless communications on multicarrier systems. At first, alternative multicarrier kernels robust for high speed doubly-selective fading channel are sought. They include the comparisons of discrete Fourier transform (DFT), fractional Fourier transform (FrFT) and wavelet transform (WT) multicarrier kernels. Different wavelet types, including the raised-cosine spectrum wavelets are implemented, evaluated and compared. From different wavelet families, orthogonal wavelets are isolated from detailed evaluations and comparisons as suitable for multicarrier applications. The three transforms are compared over a doubly-selective channel with the WT significantly outperforming all for high speed conditions up to 300 km/hr. Then, a new wavelet is constructed from an ideal filter approximation using established wavelet design algorithms to match any signal of interest; in this case under bandlimited criteria. The new wavelet showed better performance than other traditional orthogonal wavelets. To achieve MIMO communication, orthogonal space-time block coding, OSTBC, is evaluated next. First, the OSTBC is extended to assess the performance of the scheme over extended receiver diversity order. Again, with the extended diversity conditions, the OSTBC is implemented for a multicarrier system over a doubly-selective fading channel. The MIMO-OFDM systems (implemented using DFT and WT kernels) are evaluated for different operating frequencies, typical of LTE standard, with Doppler effects. It was found that, during high mobile speed, it is better to transmit OFDM signals using lower operating frequencies. The information theory for the 2-transmit antenna OSTBC does not support higher order implementation of multi-antenna systems, which is required for the future generation wireless communications systems. Instead of the OSTBC, the QO-STBC is usually deployed to support the design of higher order multi-antenna systems other than the 2-transmit antenna scheme. The performances of traditional QO-STBC methods are diminished by some off-diagonal (interference) terms such that the resulting system does not attain full diversity. Some methods for eliminating the interference terms have earlier been discussed. This work follows the construction of cyclic matrices with Hadamard matrix to derive QO-STBC codes construction which are N-times better than interference free QO-STBC, where N is the number of transmit antenna branches.

This work concentrates on the application of diversity techniques and space time block coding for future mobile wireless communications. The initial system analysis employs a space-time coded OFDM transmitter over a multipath Rayleigh channel, and a receiver which uses a selection combining diversity technique. The performance of this combined scenario is characterised in terms of the bit error rate and throughput. A novel four element QOSTBC scheme is introduced, it is created by reforming the detection matrix of the original QOSTBC scheme, for which an orthogonal channel matrix is derived. This results in a computationally less complex linear decoding scheme as compared with the original QOSTBC. Space time coding schemes for three, four and eight transmitters were also derived using a Hadamard matrix. The practical optimization of multi-antenna networks is studied for realistic indoor and mixed propagation scenarios. The starting point is a detailed analysis of the throughput and field strength distributions for a commercial dual band 802.11n MIMO radio operating indoors in a variety of line of sight and non-line of sight scenarios. The physical model of the space is based on architectural schematics, and realistic propagation data for the construction materials. The modelling is then extended and generalized to a multi-storey indoor environment, and a large mixed site for indoor and outdoor channels based on the Bradford University campus. The implications for the physical layer are also explored through the specification of antenna envelope correlation coefficients. Initially this is for an antenna module configuration with two independent antennas in close proximity. An operational method is proposed using the scattering parameters of the system and which incorporates the intrinsic power losses of the radiating elements. The method is extended to estimate the envelope correlation coefficient for any two elements in a general (N,N) MIMO antenna array. Three examples are presented to validate this technique, and very close agreement is shown to exist between this method and the full electromagnetic analysis using the far field antenna radiation patterns.

It is well known that communication using multiple antennas provides high data rate and reliability. Coding across space and time is necessary to fully exploit the gains offered by multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems. One such popular method of coding for MIMO systems is space-time block coding. In applications where the terminals do not have enough physical space to mount multiple antennas, relaying or cooperation between multiple single antenna terminals can help achieve spatial diversity in such scenarios as well. Relaying techniques can also help improve the range and reliability of communication. Recently it has been shown that certain space-time block codes (STBCs) can be employed in a distributed fashion in single antenna relay networks to extract the same benefits as in point to point MIMO systems. Such STBCs are called distributed STBCs. However an important practical issue with STBCs and DSTBCs is its associated high maximum likelihood (ML) decoding complexity. The central theme of this thesis is to systematically construct STBCs and DSTBCs applicable for various scenarios such that are amenable for low decoding complexity. The first part of this thesis provides constructions of high rate STBCs from crossed product algebras that are minimum mean squared error (MMSE) optimal, i.e., achieves the least symbol error rate under MMSE reception. Moreover several previous constructions of MMSE optimal STBCs are found to be special cases of the constructions in this thesis. It is well known that STBCs from orthogonal designs offer single symbol ML decoding along with full diversity but the rate of orthogonal designs fall exponentially with the number of transmit antennas. Thus it is evident that there exists a tradeoff between rate and ML decoding complexity of full diversity STBCs. In the second part of the thesis, a definition of rate of a STBC is proposed and the problem of optimal tradeoff between rate and ML decoding complexity is posed. An algebraic framework based on extended Clifford algebras is introduced to study the optimal tradeoff for a class of multi-symbol ML decodable STBCs called ‘Clifford unitary weight (CUW) STBCs’ which include orthogonal designs as a special case. Code constructions optimally meeting this tradeoff are also obtained using extended Clifford algebras. All CUW-STBCs achieve full diversity as well. The third part of this thesis focusses on constructing DSTBCs with low ML decoding complexity for two hop, amplify and forward based relay networks under various scenarios. The symbol synchronous, coherent case is first considered and conditions for a DSTBC to be multi-group ML decodable are first obtained. Then three new classes of four-group ML decodable full diversity DSTBCs are systematically constructed for arbitrary number of relays. Next the symbol synchronous non-coherent case is considered and full diversity, four group decodable distributed differential STBCs (DDSTBCs) are constructed for power of two number of relays. These DDSTBCs have the best error performance compared to all previous works along with low ML decoding complexity. For the symbol asynchronous, coherent case, a transmission scheme based on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is proposed to mitigate the effects of timing errors at the relay nodes and sufficient conditions for a DSTBC to be applicable in this new transmission scheme are given. Many of the existing DSTBCs including the ones in this thesis are found to satisfy these sufficient conditions. As a further extension, differential encoding is combined with the proposed transmission scheme to arrive at a new transmission scheme that can achieve full diversity in symbol asynchronous, non-coherent relay networks with no knowledge of the timing errors at the relay nodes. The DDSTBCs in this thesis are proposed for application in the proposed transmission scheme for symbol asynchronous, non-coherent relay networks. As a parallel to the non-coherent schemes based on differential encoding, we also propose non-coherent schemes for symbol synchronous and symbol asynchronous relay networks that are based on training. This training based transmission scheme leverages existing coherent DSTBCs for non-coherent communication in relay networks. Simulations show that this training scheme when used along with the coherent DSTBCs in this thesis outperform the best known DDSTBCs in the literature. Finally, in the last part of the thesis, connections between multi-group ML decodable unitary weight (UW) STBCs and groups with real elements are established for the first time. Using this connection, we translate the necessary and sufficient conditions for multi-group ML decoding of UW-STBCs entirely in group theoretic terms. We discuss various examples of multi-group decodable UW-STBCs together with their associated groups and list the real elements involved. These examples include orthogonal designs, quasi-orthogonal designs among many others.