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The accurate simulation of wireless channels is important since it permits the realistic and repeatable performance measurement of wireless systems. While software simulation is a flexible method for testing hardware models, its long-running simulation time can be prohibitive in many scenarios. Prior to the availability of accurate and standardized channel models, wireless products needed to be verified using extensive and expensive field testing. A far less costly approach is to model the behavior of radio channels on a hardware simulator. Different channel characteristics should be considered to ensure the faithful simulation of wireless propagation. Among the most important characteristics are the path-loss behavior, Doppler frequency, delay distribution, fading distribution, and time, frequency, and space correlation between fading samples across different antennas. Various fading channel models have been proposed for propagation modeling in different scenarios. A good homogeneous field programmable gate array (FPGA) fading simulator needs to accurately reproduce the propagation effects, yet it also needs to be compact and fast to be effectively used for rapid hardware prototyping and simulation. In this thesis, new channel models are proposed for the compact FPGA implementation of fading channel simulators with accurate statistics. Compact hardware implementations for physical and analytical fading channel models are proposed that can simulate fading channels with more than one thousand paths on a single FPGA. We also propose design techniques for accurate and compact statistical fading channel simulation of isotropic and non-isotropic scattering in Rayleigh, Rician, Nakagami-m, and Weibull fading channels. Compact FPGA implementations are presented for multiple-antenna fading simulators for geometric one-ring models, two-ring models, elliptical models, and analytical models including the i.i.d. model, and Kronecker, Weichselberger, and VCR channel models. Finally, a fading simulation and bit error performance evaluation platform is proposed for the rapid baseband prototyping and verification of single- and multiple-antenna wireless systems.

Pilot Symbol Assisted Modulation (PSAM) is a good method to compensate for the channel fading effect in wireless mobile communications. In PSAM, known pilot symbols are periodically inserted into the transmitted data symbol stream and the receiver uses these symbols to derive amplitude and phase reference. <p> One aspect of this procedure, which has not received much attention yet, is the frame synchronization, i.e. the method used by the receiver to locate the time position of the pilot symbols. In this study, two novel non-coherent frame synchronization methods are introduced in which only the magnitude of received signal is used to obtain the timing of the pilot symbol. The methods are evaluated for both AWGN and frequency non-selective slow Rayleigh fading channels. <p> One synchronization technique is derived by standard maximum likelihood (ML) estimation formulation, and the other is obtained by using maximum a Posteriori probability (MAP) with a threshold test. Signal processing in the receiver uses simplifying approximations that rely on relatively high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) as consistent with the reception of 16-QAM. Computer simulation has been used to test the acquisition time performance and the probability of false acquisition. Several lengths and patterns of pilot symbol sequences were tested where every 10th symbol was a pilot symbol and all other symbols were randomly selected data symbols. When compared with the other published synchronizers, results from this study show better performance in both AWGN and fading channels. Significantly better performance is observed in the presence of receiver frequency offsets.

Pilot Symbol Assisted Modulation (PSAM) is a good method to compensate for the channel fading effect in wireless mobile communications. In PSAM, known pilot symbols are periodically inserted into the transmitted data symbol stream and the receiver uses these symbols to derive amplitude and phase reference. <p> One aspect of this procedure, which has not received much attention yet, is the frame synchronization, i.e. the method used by the receiver to locate the time position of the pilot symbols. In this study, two novel non-coherent frame synchronization methods are introduced in which only the magnitude of received signal is used to obtain the timing of the pilot symbol. The methods are evaluated for both AWGN and frequency non-selective slow Rayleigh fading channels. <p> One synchronization technique is derived by standard maximum likelihood (ML) estimation formulation, and the other is obtained by using maximum a Posteriori probability (MAP) with a threshold test. Signal processing in the receiver uses simplifying approximations that rely on relatively high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) as consistent with the reception of 16-QAM. Computer simulation has been used to test the acquisition time performance and the probability of false acquisition. Several lengths and patterns of pilot symbol sequences were tested where every 10th symbol was a pilot symbol and all other symbols were randomly selected data symbols. When compared with the other published synchronizers, results from this study show better performance in both AWGN and fading channels. Significantly better performance is observed in the presence of receiver frequency offsets.

Computer simulation is now increasingly being used for design and performance evaluation of communication systems. When simulating a mobile wireless channel for communication systems, it is usually assumed that the fading process is a random variate with Rayleigh distribution. The random variates of the fading process should also have other properties, like autocorrelation, spectrum, etc. At present, there are a number of methods to generate the Rayleigh fading process, some of them quite recently proposed. Due to the use of different Rayleigh fading generators, different simulations of the same communication system yield different results. Three methods, viz., the Jakes method, the IDFT method and the filtering WGN method, have been studied, simulated and compared based on the Rayleigh fading process' properties. Various communication systems have been simulated using the Rayleigh fading generators and the difference in the results, if any, have been analyzed. The research studies the different Rayleigh fading generators and compares them using the properties of the Rayleigh fading channel. It is found that the IDFT method and the filtering WGN method generate processes that have properties very close to the ideal Rayleigh fading process.

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This thesis aims to investigate the incorporation of cooperative techniques in cognitive radio networks over Nakagami-m fading channels. These last years, spectrum sharing mechanisms has gained a lot of interest in the wireless communication domain. Using cooperation in a cognitive set up make the use of spectrum much more efficient. Moreover, it helps to extend the coverage area of the cognitive network and also to reduce the transmitting power and, thus, the generated interference. In this work, we consider two particular scenarios for cooperative cognitive radio systems. The first scenario consider multihop regenerative relaying in an underlay cognitive set up. The cooperation is performed in the secondary system, in the presence of multiple primary users. Both interference power and peak power constraints are taking into account. Closed-form expressions for the statistical characteristics and multiple end- to-end performance metrics are derived. Different scenarios are presented to illustrate the obtained results and Monte Carlo simulations confirm the accuracy of our analytical derivations. In the second part of this work, we consider an overlay cognitive network with the spectrally efficient two-phase two-way relaying protocol. Two relay selection techniques, optimizing both the primary and the secondary communication, are presented. The overall outage performance is investigated and an optimal power allocation scheme, that ameliorate the outage performance of the system, is proposed. Numerical simulations are presented to illustrate and compare the obtained results.

Space Time Trellis Coding (STTC) is a unique technique that combines the use of multiple transmit antennas with channel coding. This scheme provides capacity benefits in fading channels, and helps in improving the data rate and reliability of wireless communication. STTC schemes have been primarily designed assuming perfect channel estimates to be available at the receiver. However, in practical wireless systems, this is never the case. The noisy wireless channel precludes an exact characterization of channel coefficients. Even near-perfect channel estimates can necessitate huge overhead in terms of processing or spectral efficiency. This practical concern motivates the study of the impact of channel estimation errors on the design and performance of STTC. The design criteria for STTC are validated in the absence of perfect channel estimates at the receiver. Analytical results are presented that model the performance of STTC systems in the presence of channel estimation errors. Training based channel estimation schemes are the most popular choice for STTC systems. The amount of training however, increases with the number of transmit antennas used, the number of multi-path components in the channel and a decrease in the channel coherence time. This dependence is shown to decrease the performance gain obtained when increasing the number of transmit antennas in STTC systems, especially in channels with a large Doppler spread (low channel coherence time). In frequency selective channels, the training overhead associated with increasing the number of antennas can be so large that no benefit is shown to be obtained by using STTC. The amount of performance degradation due to channel estimation errors is shown to be influenced by system parameters such as the specific STTC code employed and the number of transmit and receive antennas in the system in addition to the magnitude of the estimation error. Hence inappropriate choice of system parameters is shown to significantly alter the performance pattern of STTC. The viability of STTC in practical wireless systems is thus addressed and it is shown that that channel estimation could offset benefits derived from this scheme. / Master of Science