The long-term evolution (LTE) network has been proposed to provide better network capacity than the earlier 3G network. Driven by the market, the conventional LTE (3G) network standard could not achieve the expectations of the international mobile telecommunications advanced (IMT-Advanced) standard. To satisfy this gap, the LTE-Advanced was introduced with additional network functionalities to meet up with the IMT-Advanced Standard. In addition, due to the need to minimize operational expenditure (OPEX) and reduce human interventions, the wireless cellular networks are required to be self-aware, self-reconfigurable, self-adaptive and smart. An example of such network involves transceiver base stations (BTSs) within a self-organizing network (SON). Besides these great breakthroughs, the conventional LTE and LTE-Advanced networks have not been designed with the intelligence of scalable capacity output especially in sudden demographic changes, namely during events of football, malls, worship centres or during religious and cultural festivals. Since most of these events cannot be predicted, modern cellular networks must be scalable in terms of capacity and coverage in such unpredictable demographic surge. Thus, the use of dynamic BTSs is proposed to be used in modern and future cellular networks for crowd and demographic change managements. Dynamic BTSs are complements of the capability of SONs to search, determine and deploy less crowded/idle BTSs to densely crowded cells for scalable capacity management. The mobile BTSs will discover areas of dark coverages and fill-up the gap in terms of providing cellular services. The proposed network relieves the LTE network from overloading thus reducing packet loss, delay and improves fair load sharing. In order to trail the best (least) path, a bio-inspired optimization algorithm based on swarm-particle optimization is proposed over the dynamic BTS network. It uses the ant-colony optimization algorithm (ACOA) to find the least path. A comparison between an optimized path and the un-optimized path showed huge gain in terms of delay, fair load sharing and the percentage of packet loss.

Device-to-device (D2D) communication is a promising new feature in LTE-Advanced networks. It is brought up to enable efficient discovery and communication between proximate devices. With D2D capability, devices in physical proximity could be able to discover each other using LTE radio technology and to communicate with each other via a direct data path. This thesis is concerned with the design, coordination and testing of a hybrid D2D and cellular network. Design requirements and choices in physical and MAC layer functions to support D2D discovery and communication underlaying LTE networks are analyzed. In addition, a centralized scheduling strategy in base station is proposed to coordinate D2D data communication operating in LTE spectrum. The scheduling strategy combines multiple techniques, including mode selection, resource and power allocation, to jointly achieve an overall user performance improvement in a cell. Finally the performances of D2D data communication underlaying LTE system are calibrated in a multi-link scenario via system-level simulation.

Le réseau mobile d’Orange France comprend plus de 100 000 antennes 2G, 3G et 4G sur plusieurs bandes de fréquences sans compter les nombreuses femto-cells fournies aux clients pour résoudre les problèmes de couverture. Ces chiffres ne feront que s’accroître pour répondre à la demande sans cesse croissante des clients pour les données mobiles. Cela illustre le défi énorme que rencontrent les opérateurs de téléphonie mobile en général à savoir gérer un réseau aussi complexe tout en limitant les coûts d’opération pour rester compétitifs. Cette thèse s’attache à utiliser le concept SON (réseaux auto-organisants) pour réduire cette complexité en automatisant les tâches répétitives ou complexes. Plus spécifiquement, nous proposons des algorithmes d’optimisation automatique pour des scénarios liés à la densification par les small cells ou les antennes actives. Nous abordons les problèmes classiques d’équilibrage de charge mais avec un lien backhaul à capacité limitée et de coordination d’interférence que ce soit dans le domaine temporel (notamment avec le eICIC) ou le domaine fréquentiel. Nous proposons aussi des algorithmes d’activation optimale de certaines fonctionnalités lorsque cette activation n’est pas toujours bénéfique. Pour la formulation mathématique et la résolution de tous ces algorithmes, nous nous appuyons sur les résultats de l’approximation stochastique et de l’optimisation convexe. Nous proposons aussi une méthodologie systématique pour la coordination de multiples fonctionnalités SON qui seraient exécutées en parallèle. Cette méthodologie est basée sur les jeux concaves et l’optimisation convexe avec comme contraintes des inégalités matricielles linéaires. / The mobile network of Orange in France comprises more than 100 000 2G, 3G and 4G antennas with severalfrequency bands, not to mention many femto-cells for deep-indoor coverage. These numbers will continue toincrease in order to address the customers’ exponentially increasing need for mobile data. This is an illustrationof the challenge faced by the mobile operators for operating such a complex network with low OperationalExpenditures (OPEX) in order to stay competitive. This thesis is about leveraging the Self-Organizing Network(SON) concept to reduce this complexity by automating repetitive or complex tasks. We specifically proposeautomatic optimization algorithms for scenarios related to network densification using either small cells orActive Antenna Systems (AASs) used for Vertical Sectorization (VeSn), Virtual Sectorization (ViSn) and multilevelbeamforming. Problems such as load balancing with limited-capacity backhaul and interference coordination eitherin time-domain (eICIC) or in frequency-domain are tackled. We also propose optimal activation algorithms forVeSn and ViSn when their activation is not always beneficial. We make use of results from stochastic approximationand convex optimization for the mathematical formulation of the problems and their solutions. We also proposea generic methodology for the coordination of multiple SON algorithms running in parallel using results fromconcave game theory and Linear Matrix Inequality (LMI)-constrained optimization.

Submitted by Lucelia Lucena (lucelia.lucena@ufpe.br) on 2015-03-09T19:50:50Z No. of bitstreams: 2 DISSERTAÇÃO Marcos Graciano Santos.pdf: 3653832 bytes, checksum: 63b7958428e143779e52059edac458d4 (MD5) license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2015-03-09T19:50:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 DISSERTAÇÃO Marcos Graciano Santos.pdf: 3653832 bytes, checksum: 63b7958428e143779e52059edac458d4 (MD5) license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2014-08-11 / Atualmente, mais de 200 milhões de usuários utilizam as redes 3G/LTE (Long Term Evolution). Com este aumento crescente de usuários com acesso sem fio, muitas pesquisas se concentram no esforço de desenvolvimento de soluções que permitam atender às demandas de redes com alta disponibilidade e altas taxas de transmissão sem considerar, em geral, as limitações de bateria dos dispositivos. Como requisito do LTE Advanced (especificações para a Quarta Geração de comunicações móveis) incluem-se os Serviços de Proximidade, comunicação denominada de dispositivo a dispositivo (D2D, do inglês: device-to-device) para atender ao desenvolvimento de novas demandas de serviços, como jogos e vídeos on-line ou transferência de conteúdos, aplicações que, a cada dia, requerem maiores consumos de energia. Neste trabalho, realizamos medições que avaliam o consumo da comunicação dispositivo-estação base e propomos primeiramente um algoritmo de identificação de pares de dispositivos e definição de limiares de referência, diferentemente de outros trabalhos, com base nas características de consumo dos dispositivos, que viabilize comunicação direta D2D energeticamente mais eficiente que a comunicação convencional via estação rádio base. Em seguida, para cenários de grande aglomeração de pessoas, uma alternativa de serviço de disponibilização de conteúdos ou transferência de arquivos através de um novo padrão de alocação de recursos, utilizando o modo duplex por divisão no tempo (TDD – Time Duplex Division). Foram considerados cinco modelos de propagação distintos para comparação do desempenho, tomando como base uma situação real num parque do Recife considerando a transmissão de um vídeo em alta definição. Por fim, tratamos a questão da segurança com uma criptografia específica entre os dispositivos próximos. Os resultados são avaliados via simulação utilizando-se o Matlab, demonstrando a eficácia da solução com reduções de até 43% no consumo de energia da bateria do dispositivo.

[EN] In today's information society, there is a growing need to access data communication services ubiquitously, with mobility and increasingly higher data rates. This society's demand has motivated the development of the fourth generation of mobile communications (4G) and its evolution towards the fifth generation (5G). This development has required a revolution on the radio interface of the mobile communications systems, and, consequently, has significantly modified their capabilities and their radio resource management. This is the case of the technology known as Long Term Evolution (LTE) and its 4G version called LTE-Advanced. This Doctoral Thesis addresses the modelling, the radio resource management analysis, and the performance evaluation of the downlink of LTE and LTE-Advanced where, among the different features of LTE-Advanced, the focus is on the Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) transmission. The Thesis provides a detailed description of the main characteristics of LTE and LTE-Advanced. The high complexity of these systems, has prompted the use of computer simulations as the primary research methodology. The Thesis makes a detailed description of the simulation methodology and the system modelling required, including some contributions of the author in this field. Among them, it is of significant relevance the link-level simulation results used in the European project WINNER + for the LTE evaluation. With regard to the analysis of the radio resource management in LTE, the fundamentals of link adaptation and scheduling are explained in the first place. In relation to the scheduling, the Thesis includes a thorough study of the proportional fairness concept and the suboptimal implementation typically used in LTE to maximize this metric. This study has resulted in a series of ideas embodied in a modification of the typical implementation, which has proved to be capable of increasing the proportional fairness of the resource allocations. Moreover, the link adaptation analysis has revealed the "flash-light" effect problem, which is characterized by a high interference variability due to rapid changes in the scheduling decisions. The Thesis demonstrates that a particular implementation that stabilizes the scheduling decisions can improve the system performance. The radio resource management analysis of this Thesis is completed with the study of CoMP. Specifically, the CoMP scheme studied in this Thesis is a solution with coordinated scheduling and beamforming (CS/CB), that takes into account realistic and robust assumptions concerning the knowledge that the coordinated points have about the channel state. The Thesis proposes this solution for its simplicity and its ability to improve high data rates coverage and capacity even with incomplete channel knowledge. Concerning LTE and LTE-Advanced evaluation, it is performed in two different types of scenarios. On the one hand, the scenarios defined in the process of evaluation of IMT-Advanced. In this framework, it is evaluated the importance of different multi-antenna techniques, including CoMP, considering full-buffer traffic models. The most important conclusions in these scenarios are the significant performance improvement achieved with spatial multiplexing of users and the fact that CoMP mechanisms provide a reduced benefit. The second group of scenarios are those defined by the European project METIS for the evaluation of 5G technologies. Specifically, an indoor office scenario and an outdoor sports stadium have been selected. In these scenarios, a realistic traffic model is used, and it has been demonstrated the utility of CoMP to satisfy the first 5G requirement definitions with feasible frequency bandwidths. In these scenarios with less homogeneous deployments, or with a limited number of transmitters originating the major part of interference, is where this Thesis has found CoMP to be more useful and where the Thesis promotes its use. / [ES] En la actual sociedad, hay una creciente necesidad de acceso a servicios de comunicación de datos de forma ubicua, móvil y a velocidades cada vez más altas. Esta demanda ha motivado el desarrollo de la cuarta generación de comunicaciones móviles (4G) y su evolución hacia la quinta generación (5G). Este desarrollo ha requerido una revolución en la interfaz radio de los sistemas de comunicaciones móviles modificando en gran medida sus capacidades y la forma en la que se gestionan sus recursos. Este es el caso de la tecnología conocida como Long Term Evolution (LTE) y su versión 4G llamada LTE-Advanced. En concreto, esta Tesis Doctoral aborda el modelado, análisis de la gestión de recursos radio y evaluación de prestaciones del enlace descendente de LTE y LTE-Advanced, donde, de entre las características de LTE-Advanced, se ha puesto el foco de atención en la transmisión multipunto coordinada (CoMP). La Tesis proporciona una descripción detallada de las principales características de LTE y LTE-Advanced. La gran complejidad del sistema descrito ha motivado que la metodología de estudio haya sido la simulación mediante ordenador. La Tesis realiza una descripción detallada de dicha metodología y del modelado del sistema empleado, incluyendo algunas aportaciones del autor en este campo. De entre éstas, destaca la provisión de resultados de simulación de nivel de enlace que se usaron en el proyecto europeo WINNER+ para la evaluación de LTE. En cuanto al análisis de la gestión de recursos radio en LTE, en primer lugar, se explican los fundamentos de la adaptación al enlace y el scheduling. En relación con el scheduling, se realiza un estudio del concepto de proportional fairness y de la implementación subóptima típicamente usada en LTE para maximizar esta métrica. Este estudio ha dado como resultado una modificación de la implementación típica que ha demostrado ser capaz de aumentar la proportional fairness en la asignación de recursos con un bajo incremento de complejidad. Además, el análisis de la adaptación al enlace ha revelado el problema del efecto de "luz de flash" consistente en la alta variabilidad de la interferencia debida a rápidos cambios en las decisiones del scheduler. La Tesis demuestra que se pueden mejorar las prestaciones del sistema estabilizando dichas decisiones mediante una implementación concreta. El bloque de análisis de la gestión de recursos se completa con el estudio de CoMP. Específicamente, se estudia una solución con coordinación de scheduling y conformación de haz (CS/CB) que tiene en cuenta suposiciones reales y robustas en cuanto al conocimiento que los puntos coordinados tienen de los canales radio. La Tesis propone esta solución por su sencillez y capacidad de mejorar la eficiencia de los sistemas de comunicaciones móviles, tanto en cobertura de velocidades altas de transmisión como en capacidad, aun teniendo un conocimiento incompleto del canal. En cuanto a la evaluación de LTE y LTE-Advanced, ésta se realiza en dos tipos de escenarios. Por un lado, los escenarios definidos en el proceso de evaluación de IMT-Advanced. En este marco, se evalúa la importancia de diferentes técnicas de transmisión multiantena, incluyendo CoMP, y considerando tráfico de tipo full-buffer. Se ha obtenido una gran mejora de prestaciones por la multiplexación espacial de usuarios y mejoras discretas por el uso de CoMP. El segundo grupo de escenarios son los definidos por el proyecto europeo METIS para evaluación de tecnologías 5G, concretamente se han elegido un escenario de interiores con una oficina, y uno de exteriores con un estadio deportivo. En estos escenarios se utiliza un tráfico realista y se ha demostrado la utilidad de CoMP para mejorar las prestaciones del sistema. En estos escenarios con despliegues menos uniformes, o con un número limitado de transmisores provocando la mayor parte de la interferencia, es donde esta Tesis ha encontrado la mayor u / [CAT] En l'actual societat de la informació, hi ha una creixent necessitat d'accés a serveis de comunicació de dades de forma ubiqua, mòbil i a velocitats cada vegada més altes. Aquesta demanda de la societat, ha motivat el desenrotllament de la quarta generació de comunicacions mòbils (4G) i la seua evolució cap a la quinta generació (5G). Aquest desenrotllament ha requerit una revolució en la interfície ràdio dels sistemes de comunicacions mòbils i ha modificat en gran manera les seues capacitats i la forma en què es gestionen els seus recursos. Aquest és el cas de la tecnologia coneguda com a Long Term Evolution (LTE) i la seua versió 4G anomenada LTE-Advanced. En concret, aquesta Tesi Doctoral aborda el modelatge, anàlisi de la gestió de recursos ràdio i avaluació de prestacions de l'enllaç descendent de LTE i LTE-Advanced, on, d'entre les característiques de LTE-Advanced, s'ha posat el centre d'atenció en la transmissió multipunt coordinada (CoMP). La Tesi proporciona una descripció detallada de les principals característiques de LTE i LTE-Advanced. La gran complexitat del sistema descrit ha motivat que la metodologia d'estudi s'haja basat en simulació per mitjà d'ordinador. La Tesi realitza una descripció detallada de la metodologia de simulació i del modelatge del sistema empleat, incloent-hi algunes aportacions de l'autor en aquest camp. D'entre aquestes, destaca la provisió de resultats de simulació de nivell d'enllaç que es van usar en el projecte europeu WINNER+ per a l'avaluació de LTE. Pel que fa a l'anàlisi de la gestió de recursos ràdio en LTE, en primer lloc, s'expliquen els fonaments de l'adaptació a l'enllaç i el scheduling. En relació amb el scheduling, es realitza un estudi del concepte de proportional fairness i de la implementació subòptima típicament usada en LTE per a maximitzar aquesta mètrica. L'estudi ha donat com a resultat una modificació de la implementació típica que ha demostrat ser capaç d'augmentar la proportional fairness en l'assignació de recursos amb un baix increment de complexitat. A més, l'anàlisi de l'adaptació a l'enllaç ha desvetllat el problema de l'efecte de "llum de flaix" consistent en la alta variabilitat de la interferència deguda a una ràpida variació de les assignacions de recursos. La Tesi demostra que es poden millorar les prestacions del sistema estabilitzant les decisions del scheduler mitjançant una implementació concreta. En el bloc d'anàlisi de la gestió de recursos d'aquesta Tesi es completa amb l'estudi de CoMP. Específicament, s'estudia una solució amb coordinació de scheduling i conformació de feix (CS/CB), que té en compte suposicions reals i robustes quant al coneixement que els punts coordinats tenen dels canals ràdio dels usuaris servits. La Tesi proposa aquesta solució per la seua senzillesa i capacitat de millorar l'eficiència dels sistemes de comunicacions mòbils, tant en cobertura de velocitats altes de transmissió com en capacitat, encara tenint un coneixement incomplet del canal. Quant a l'avaluació de LTE i LTE-Advanced, aquesta es realitza en dos tipus d'escenaris diferents. D'una banda, els escenaris definits dins del procés d'avaluació de tecnologies IMT-Advanced. Dins d'aquest marc, s'avalua la importància de diferents tècniques de transmissió multi-antena, incloent-hi CoMP, i considerant tràfic de tipus full-buffer. S'ha obtingut una gran millora de prestacions amb la multiplexació espacial d'usuaris i una discreta millora amb CoMP. El segon grup d'escenaris són els definits pel projecte europeu METIS per a l'avaluació de tecnologies 5G, concretament s'han triat un escenari d'interiors amb una oficina, i un d'exteriors amb un estadi esportiu, on s'ha utilitzat un tràfic realista. En aquests escenaris amb desplegaments menys uniformes, o amb un nombre limitat de transmissors provocant la major part de la interferència, és on aquesta Tesi ha trobat la utilitat més gran de / Martín-Sacristán Gandía, D. (2016). 3GPP Long Term Evolution: Performance Analysis and Evolution towards 4G with Coordinated Multi-Point Transmission [Tesis doctoral no publicada]. Universitat Politècnica de València. https://doi.org/10.4995/Thesis/10251/63261 / TESIS

Thesis concerns with mobile communications theory with focus on data transfer. In the introduction the history, the origin and individual mobile systems generations are described. It is followed by detailed description of second, third and fourth generation mobile systems. Frequency band allocation, signal processing, the system architecture itself, security management and basic features are also discussed. The GSM system is described together with individual data transmission types based on circuit switching – CSD and HSCSD and packet switching – GPRS and EDGE. For UMTS, FDD and TDD modes are listed as well as changes in individual releases, corresponding technologies and provided services. Next, there is the description of LTE and WiMAX systems, together with their improvements whose are part of the fourth generation of mobile systems. Last of the described systems is the still work in progress HAPS, also known as the system of stratospheric platforms. In the end important parameters are summarized and systems are compared with each other.

The architecture of mobile networks has dramatically evolved in order to fulfill the growing demands on wireless services and data. The radio resources, which are used by the current mobile networks, are limited while the users demands are substantially increasing. In the future, tremendous Internet applications are expected to be served by mobile networks. Therefore, increasing the capacity of mobile networks has become a vital issue. Heterogeneous networks (HetNets) have been considered as a promising paradigm for future mobile networks. Accordingly, the concept of small cell has been introduced in order to increase the capacity of the mobile networks. A femtocell network is a kind of small cell networks. Femtocells are deployed within macrocells coverage. Femtocells cover small areas and operate with low transmission power while providing high capacity. Also, UEs can be offloaded from macrocells to femtocells. Thus, the capacity can be increased. However, this will introduce different technical challenges. The interference has become one of the key challenges for deploying femtocells within a certain macrocells coverage. Undesirable impact of the interference can degrade the performance of the mobile networks. Therefore, radio resource management mechanisms are needed in order to address key challenges of deploying femtocells. The objective of this work is to introduce radio resource control approaches, which are used to increase mobile networks' capacity and alleviate undesirable impact of the interference. In addition, proposed radio resource control approaches ensure the coexistence between macrocell and femtocells based on LTE-Advanced environment. Firstly, a novel mechanism is proposed in order to address the interference challenge. The proposed approach mitigates the impact of interference based on controlling radio sub-channels' assignment and dynamically adjusting the transmission power. Secondly, a dynamic strategy is proposed for the FFR mechanism. In the FFR mechanism, the whole spectrum is divided into four fixed sub-channels and each sub-channel is assigned for a different sub-area after splitting the macrocell coverage area into four sub-areas. The objective of the proposed scheme is to divide the spectrum dynamically based on the QoS indicators for each sub-area. Lastly, a novel packet scheduling scheme is proposed to improve the performance of femtocell networks. The proposed scheduling strategy assigns radio resources based on two objectives: increasing the network capacity and achieving better fairness among attached UEs.

One of the enabling technologies for Long Term Evolution (LTE) deployments is the femtocell technology. By having femtocells deployed indoors and closer to the user, high data rate services can be provided efficiently. These femtocells are expected to be depolyed in large numbers which raises many technical challenges including the handover management. In fact, managing handovers in femtocell environments, with the conventional manual adjustment techniques, is almost impossible to keep pace with in such a rapidly growing femtocell environment. Therefore, doing this automatically by implementing Self Organizing Network (SON) use cases becomes a necessity rather than an option. However, having multiple SON use cases operating simultaneously with a shared objective could cause them to interact either negatively or positively. In both cases, designing a suitable coordination policy is critical in solving negative conflicts and building upon positive benefits. In this work, we focus on studying the interactions between three self optimization use cases aiming at improving the overall handover procedure in LTE femtocell networks. These self optimization use cases are handover, Call Admission Control (CAC) and load balancing. We develop a comprehensive, unified LTE compliant evaluation environment. This environment is extendable to other radio access technologies including LTE-Advanced (LTE-A), and can also be used to study other SON use cases. Various recommendations made by main bodies in the area of femtocells are considered including the Small Cell Forum, the Next Generation Mobile Networks (NGMN) alliance and the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP). Additionally, traffic sources are simulated in compliance with these recommendations and evaluation methodologies. We study the interaction between three representative handover related self optimization schemes. We start by testing these schemes separately, in order to make sure that they meet their individual goals, and then their mutual interactions when operating simultaneously. Based on these experiments, we recommend several guidelines that can help mobile network operators and researchers in designing better coordination policies. / Thesis (Master, Electrical & Computer Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2012-12-05 22:35:27.538

The next generation wireless networks i.e. 5G aim to provide multi-Gbps data traffic, in order to satisfy the increasing demand for high-definition video, among other high data rate services, as well as the exponential growth in mobile subscribers. To achieve this dramatic increase in data rates, current research is focused on improving the capacity of current 4G network standards, based on Long Term Evolution (LTE), before radical changes are exploited which could include acquiring additional/new spectrum. The LTE network has a reuse factor of one; hence neighbouring cells/sectors use the same spectrum, therefore making the cell edge users vulnerable to inter-cell interference. In addition, wireless transmission is commonly hindered by fading and pathloss. In this direction, this thesis focuses on improving the performance of cell edge users in LTE and LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) networks by initially implementing a new Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) algorithm to mitigate cell edge user interference. Subsequently Device-to-Device (D2D) communication is investigated as the enabling technology for maximising Resource Block (RB) utilisation in current 4G and emerging 5G networks. It is demonstrated that the application, as an extension to the above, of novel power control algorithms, to reduce the required D2D TX power, and multihop transmission for relaying D2D traffic, can further enhance network performance. To be able to develop the aforementioned technologies and evaluate the performance of new algorithms in emerging network scenarios, a beyond-the-state-of-the-art LTE system-level simulator (SLS) was implemented. The new simulator includes Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) antenna functionalities, comprehensive channel models (such as Wireless World initiative New Radio II i.e. WINNER II) and adaptive modulation and coding schemes to accurately emulate the LTE and LTE-A network standards. Additionally, a novel interference modelling scheme using the 'wrap around' technique was proposed and implemented that maintained the topology of flat surfaced maps, allowing for use with cell planning tools while obtaining accurate and timely results in the SLS compared to the few existing platforms. For the proposed CoMP algorithm, the adaptive beamforming technique was employed to reduce interference on the cell edge UEs by applying Coordinated Scheduling (CoSH) between cooperating cells. Simulation results show up to 2-fold improvement in terms of throughput, and also shows SINR gain for the cell edge UEs in the cooperating cells. Furthermore, D2D communication underlaying the LTE network (and future generation of wireless networks) was investigated. The technology exploits the proximity of users in a network to achieve higher data rates with maximum RB utilisation (as the technology reuses the cellular RB simultaneously), while taking some load off the Evolved Node B (eNB) i.e. by direct communication between User Equipment (UE). Simulation results show that the proximity and transmission power of D2D transmission yields high performance gains for a D2D receiver, which was demonstrated to be better than that of cellular UEs with better channel conditions or in close proximity to the eNB in the network. The impact of interference from the simultaneous transmission however impedes the achievable data rates of cellular UEs in the network, especially at the cell edge. Thus, a power control algorithm was proposed to mitigate the impact of interference in the hybrid network (network consisting of both cellular and D2D UEs). It was implemented by setting a minimum SINR threshold so that the cellular UEs achieve a minimum performance, and equally a maximum SINR threshold to establish fairness for the D2D transmission as well. Simulation results show an increase in the cell edge throughput and notable improvement in the overall SINR distribution of UEs in the hybrid network. Additionally, multihop transmission for D2D UEs was investigated in the hybrid network: traditionally, the scheme is implemented to relay cellular traffic in a homogenous network. Contrary to most current studies where D2D UEs are employed to relay cellular traffic, the use of idle nodes to relay D2D traffic was implemented uniquely in this thesis. Simulation results show improvement in D2D receiver throughput with multihop transmission, which was significantly better than that of the same UEs performance with equivalent distance between the D2D pair when using single hop transmission.

Given the ever increasing reliance of today’s society on ubiquitous wireless access, the paradigm of dynamic spectrum access (DSA) as been proposed and implemented for utilizing the limited wireless spectrum more efficiently. Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is growing in popularity for adoption into wireless services employing DSA frame- work, due to its high bandwidth efficiency and resiliency to multipath fading. While these advantages have been proven for many wireless applications, including LTE-Advanced and numerous IEEE wireless standards, one potential drawback of OFDM or its non-contiguous variant, NC-OFDM, is that it exhibits high peak-to-average power ratios (PAPR), which can induce in-band and out-of-band (OOB) distortions when the peaks of the waveform enter the compression region of the transmitter power amplifier (PA). Such OOB emissions can interfere with existing neighboring transmissions, and thereby severely deteriorate the reliability of the DSA network. A performance-enhancing digital pre-distortion (DPD) technique compensating for PA and in-phase/quadrature (I/Q) modulator distortions is proposed in this dissertation. Al- though substantial research efforts into designing DPD schemes have already been presented in the open literature, there still exists numerous opportunities to further improve upon the performance of OOB suppression for NC-OFDM transmission in the presence of RF front-end impairments. A set of orthogonal polynomial basis functions is proposed in this dissertation together with a simplified joint DPD structure. A performance analysis is presented to show that the OOB emissions is reduced to approximately 50 dBc with proposed algorithms employed during NC-OFDM transmission. Furthermore, a novel and intuitive DPD solution that can minimize the power regrowth at any pre-specified frequency in the spurious domain is proposed in this dissertation. Conventional DPD methods have been proven to be able to effectively reduce the OOB emissions that fall on top of adjacent channels. However more spectral emissions in more distant frequency ranges are generated by employing such DPD solutions, which are potentially in violation of the spurious emission limit. At the same time, the emissions in adjacent channel must be kept under the OOB limit. To the best of the author’s knowledge, there has not been extensive research conducted on this topic. Mathematical derivation procedures of the proposed algorithm are provided for both memoryless nonlinear model and memory-based nonlinear model. Simulation results show that the proposed method is able to provide a good balance of OOB emissions and emissions in the far out spurious domain, by reducing the spurious emissions by 4-5 dB while maintaining the adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) improvement by at least 10 dB, comparing to the PA output spectrum without any DPD.