The need for reliable, high-throughput, mobile wireless communication technologies has never been greater as increases in the demand for on-the-go access to information, entertainment, and other electronic services continues. Two such technologies, which are at the forefront of current research efforts, are orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, their union being known simply as MIMO-OFDM. The successful performance of these technologies depends upon the availability of accurate information concerning the wireless communication channel. In this dissertation, several issues related to quality of this channel state information (CSI) are studied. Specifically, the first part of this dissertation considers the design of optimal pilot signals for OFDM systems. The optimization is addressed via lower bounds on the estimation error variance, which bounds are given by formulations of the Cram'{e}r-Rao bound (CRB). The second part of this dissertation uses the CRB once again, this time as a tool for evaluating the potential performance of MIMO-OFDM channel estimation and prediction. Bounds are found for several parametric time-varying wideband MIMO-OFDM channel models, and numerical evaluations of these bounds are used to illuminate several interesting features regarding the estimation and prediction of MIMO-OFDM channels. The final part of this dissertation considers the problem of MIMO multiplexing using SVD-based methods when only imperfect CSI is available. For this purpose, general per-MIMO-subchannel signal and interference-plus-noise power expressions are derived to quantify the effects of CSI imperfections, and these expressions are then used to find robust MIMO-SVD power and bit allocations which maintain good overall performance in spite of imperfect CSI.

This thesis examines the benefits of using adaptive modulation and coding in terms of spectral efficiency and probability of bit error. Specifically, we examine the performance enhancement made possible by using linear prediction along with channel estimation in conjunction with adaptive modulation. We begin this manuscript with basic fundamentals of our study, followed by a detailed view of simulations, their results, and our conclusions from them. The study includes simulations in slow and moderately fast flat fading Rayleigh channels. We present our findings regarding the advantages of using predictive measures to foresee the state of the channel and make adjustments to transmissions accordingly. In addition to finding the general advantages of channel prediction in adaptive modulation, we explore various ways to adjust the prediction algorithm when we are faced with high Doppler rates and fast fading. By the end of this work, we should have a better understanding of when channel prediction is most valuable to adaptive modulation and when it is weakest, and how we can alleviate the problems that prediction will have in harsh environments. / Master of Science

In telecommunications, distributed cooperative communications refer to techniques which allow different users in a wireless network to share or combine their information in order to increase diversity gain or power gain. Unlike conventional point-to-point communications maximizing the performance of the individual link, distributed cooperative communications enable multiple users to collaborate with each other to achieve an overall improvement in performance, e.g., improved range and data rates. The first part of this dissertation focuses the problem of jointly decoding binary messages from a single distant transmitter to a cooperative receive cluster. The outage probability of distributed reception with binary hard decision exchanges is compared with the outage probability of ideal receive beamforming with unquantized observation exchanges. Low- dimensional analysis and numerical results show, via two simple but surprisingly good approximations, that the outage probability performance of distributed reception with hard decision exchanges is well-predicted by the SNR of ideal receive beamforming after subtracting a hard decision penalty of slightly less than 2 dB. These results, developed in non-asymptotic regimes, are consistent with prior asymptotic results (for a large number of nodes and low per-node SNR) on hard decisions in binary communication systems. We next consider the problem of estimating and tracking channels in a distributed transmission system with multiple transmitters and multiple receivers. In order to track and predict the effective channel between each transmit node and each receive node to facilitate coherent transmission, a linear time-invariant state- space model is developed and is shown to be observable but nonstabilizable. To quantify the steady-state performance of a Kalman filter channel tracker, two methods are developed to efficiently compute the steady-state prediction covariance. An asymptotic analysis is also presented for the homogenous oscillator case for systems with a large number of transmit and receive nodes with closed-form results for all of the elements in the asymptotic prediction covariance as a function of the carrier frequency, oscillator parameters, and channel measurement period. Numeric results confirm the analysis and demonstrate the effect of the oscillator parameters on the ability of the distributed transmission system to achieve coherent transmission. In recent years, the development of efficient radio frequency (RF) radiation wireless power transfer (WPT) systems has become an active research area, motivated by the widespread use of low-power devices that can be charged wirelessly. In this dissertation, we next consider a time division multiple access scenario where a wireless access point transmits to a group of users which harvest the energy and then use this energy to transmit back to the access point. Past approaches have found the optimal time allocation to maximize sum throughput under the assumption that the users must use all of their harvested power in each block of the "harvest-then-transmit" protocol. This dissertation considers optimal time and energy allocation to maximize the sum throughput for the case when the nodes can save energy for later blocks. To maximize the sum throughput over a finite horizon, the initial optimization problem is separated into two sub-problems and finally can be formulated into a standard box- constrained optimization problem, which can be solved efficiently. A tight upper bound is derived by relaxing the energy harvesting causality. A disadvantage of RF-radiation based WPT is that path loss effects can significantly reduce the amount of power received by energy harvesting devices. To overcome this problem, recent investigations have considered the use of distributed transmit beamforming (DTB) in wireless communication systems where two or more individual transmit nodes pool their antenna resources to emulate a virtual antenna array. In order to take the advantages of the DTB in the WPT, in this dissertation, we study the optimization of the feedback rate to maximize the energy efficiency in the WPT system. Since periodic feedback improves the beamforming gain but requires the receivers to expend energy, there is a fundamental tradeoff between the feedback period and the efficiency of the WPT system. We develop a new model to combine WPT and DTB and explicitly account for independent oscillator dynamics and the cost of feedback energy from the receive nodes. We then formulate a "Normalized Weighted Mean Energy Harvesting Rate" (NWMEHR) maximization problem to select the feedback period to maximize the weighted averaged amount of net energy harvested by the receive nodes per unit of time as a function of the oscillator parameters. We develop an explicit method to numerically calculate the globally optimal feedback period.

In this thesis a new approach for characterisation of digital mobile radio channels is investigated. The new approach is based on recognition of the fact that while the fading which is characteristic of the mobile radio channel is very rapid, the processes underlying this fading may vary much more slowly. The comparative stability of these underlying processes has not been exploited in system designs to date. Channel models are proposed which take account of the stability of the channel. Estimators for the parameters of the models are proposed, and their performance is analysed theoretically and by simulation and measurement. Bounds are derived for the extent to which the mobile channel can be predicted, and the critical factors which define these bounds are identified. Two main applications arise for these channel models. The first is the possibility of prediction of the overall system performance. This may be used to avoid channel fading (for instance by change of frequency), or compensate for it (by change of the signal rate or by power control). The second application is in channel equalisation. An equaliser based on a model which has parameters varying only very slowly can offer improved performance especially in the case of channels which appear to be varying so rapidly that the convergence rate of an equaliser based on the conventional model is not adequate. The first of these applications is explored, and a relationship is derived between the channel impulse response and the performance of a broadband system.

In this dissertation, channel estimation and channel prediction are studied for wireless communication systems. Wireless communication for time-variant channels becomes more important by the fast development of intelligent transportation systems which motivates us to propose a reduced rank channel estimator for time-variant frequency-selective high-speed railway (HSR) systems and a reduced rank channel predictor for fast time-variant flat fading channels. Moreover, the potential availability of large bandwidth channels at mm-wave frequencies and the small wavelength of the mm-waves, offer the mm-wave massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication as a promising technology for 5G cellular networks. The high fabrication cost and power consumption of the radio frequency (RF) units at mm-wave frequencies motivates us to propose a low-power hybrid channel estimator for mm-wave MIMO orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. The work on HSR channel estimation takes advantage of the channel's restriction to low dimensional subspaces due to the time, frequency and spatial correlation of the channel and presents a low complexity linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) estimator for MIMO-OFDM HSR channels. The channel estimator utilizes a four-dimensional (4D) basis expansion channel model obtained from band-limited generalized discrete prolate spheroidal (GDPS) sequences. Exploiting the channel's band-limitation property, the proposed channel estimator outperforms the conventional interpolation based least square (LS) and MMSE estimators in terms of estimation accuracy and computational complexity, respectively. Simulation results demonstrate the robust performance of the proposed estimator for different delay, Doppler and angular spreads. Channel state information (CSI) is required at the transmitter for improving the performance gain of the spatial multiplexing MIMO systems through linear precoding. In order to avoid the high data rate feedback lines, which are required in fast time-variant channels for updating the transmitter with the rapidly changing CSI, a subframe-wise channel tracking scheme is presented. The proposed channel predictor is based on an assumed DPS basis expansion model (DPS-BEM) for exploiting the variation of the channel coefficients inside each sub-frame and an autoregressive (AR) model of the basis coefficients over each transmitted frame. The proposed predictor properly exploits the channel's restriction to low dimensional subspaces for reducing the prediction error and the computational complexity. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed channel predictor out-performs the DPS based minimum energy (ME) predictor for different ranges of normalized Doppler frequencies and has better performance than the conventional Wiener predictor for slower time-variant channels and almost the similar performance to it for very fast time-variant channels with the reduced amount of computational complexity. The work on the hybrid mm-wave channel estimator considers the sparse nature of the mm-wave channel in angular domain and leverages the compressed sensing (CS) tools for recovering the angular support of the MIMO-OFDM mm-wave channel. The angular channel is treated in a continuous framework which resolves the limited angular resolution of the discrete sparse channel models used in the previous CS based channel estimators. The power leakage problem is also addressed by modeling the continuous angular channel as a multi-band signal with the bandwidth of each sub-band being proportional to the amount of power leakage. The RF combiner is designed to be implemented using a network of low-power switches for antenna subset selection based on a multi-coset sampling pattern. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed hybrid channel estimator both in terms of the estimation accuracy and the RF power consumption. / Graduate

One of the fundamental limitations of mobile radio communications is their time-varying fading channel. This thesis addresses the efficient use of channel state information to improve the communication systems, with a particular emphasis on practical issues such as compatibility with the existing wireless systems and low complexity implementation. The closed-loop transmit diversity technique is used to improve the performance of the downlink channel in MIMO communication systems. For example, the WCDMA standard endorsed by 3GPP adopts a mode of downlink closed-loop scheme based on partial channel state information known as mode 1 of 3GPP. Channel state information is fed back from the mobile unit to the base station through a low-rate uncoded feedback bit stream. In these closed-loop systems, feedback error and feedback delay, as well as the sub-optimum reconstruction of the quantized feedback data, are the usual sources of deficiency. In this thesis, we address the efficient reconstruction of the beamforming weights in the presence of the feedback imperfections, by exploiting the residual redundancies in the feedback stream. We propose a number of algorithms for reconstruction of beamforming weights at the base-station, with the constraint of a constant transmit power. The issue of the decoding at the receiver is also addressed. In one of the proposed algorithms, channel fading prediction is utilized to combat the feedback delay. We introduce the concept of Blind Antenna Verification which can substitute the conventional Antenna Weight Verification process without the need for any training data. The closed-loop mode 1 of 3GPP is used as a benchmark, and the performance is examined within a WCDMA simulation framework. It is demonstrated that the proposed algorithms have substantial gain over the conventional method at all mobile speeds, and are suitable for the implementation in practice. The proposed approach is applicable to other closed-loop schemes as well. The problem of (long-range) prediction of the fading channel is also considered, which is a key element for many fading-compensation techniques. A linear approach, usually used to model the time evolution of the fading process, does not perform well for long-range prediction applications. We propose an adaptive algorithm using a state-space approach for the fading process based on the sum-sinusoidal model. Also to enhance the widely-used linear approach, we propose a tracking method for a multi-step linear predictor. Comparing the two methods in our simulations shows that the proposed algorithm significantly outperforms the linear method, for both stationary and non-stationary fading processes, especially for long-range predictions. The robust structure, as well as the reasonable computational complexity, makes the proposed algorithm appealing for practical applications.

One of the fundamental limitations of mobile radio communications is their time-varying fading channel. This thesis addresses the efficient use of channel state information to improve the communication systems, with a particular emphasis on practical issues such as compatibility with the existing wireless systems and low complexity implementation. The closed-loop transmit diversity technique is used to improve the performance of the downlink channel in MIMO communication systems. For example, the WCDMA standard endorsed by 3GPP adopts a mode of downlink closed-loop scheme based on partial channel state information known as mode 1 of 3GPP. Channel state information is fed back from the mobile unit to the base station through a low-rate uncoded feedback bit stream. In these closed-loop systems, feedback error and feedback delay, as well as the sub-optimum reconstruction of the quantized feedback data, are the usual sources of deficiency. In this thesis, we address the efficient reconstruction of the beamforming weights in the presence of the feedback imperfections, by exploiting the residual redundancies in the feedback stream. We propose a number of algorithms for reconstruction of beamforming weights at the base-station, with the constraint of a constant transmit power. The issue of the decoding at the receiver is also addressed. In one of the proposed algorithms, channel fading prediction is utilized to combat the feedback delay. We introduce the concept of Blind Antenna Verification which can substitute the conventional Antenna Weight Verification process without the need for any training data. The closed-loop mode 1 of 3GPP is used as a benchmark, and the performance is examined within a WCDMA simulation framework. It is demonstrated that the proposed algorithms have substantial gain over the conventional method at all mobile speeds, and are suitable for the implementation in practice. The proposed approach is applicable to other closed-loop schemes as well. The problem of (long-range) prediction of the fading channel is also considered, which is a key element for many fading-compensation techniques. A linear approach, usually used to model the time evolution of the fading process, does not perform well for long-range prediction applications. We propose an adaptive algorithm using a state-space approach for the fading process based on the sum-sinusoidal model. Also to enhance the widely-used linear approach, we propose a tracking method for a multi-step linear predictor. Comparing the two methods in our simulations shows that the proposed algorithm significantly outperforms the linear method, for both stationary and non-stationary fading processes, especially for long-range predictions. The robust structure, as well as the reasonable computational complexity, makes the proposed algorithm appealing for practical applications.