This thesis can be viewed as two parts. The first part focuses on performance analysis of millimeter wave (mmWave) communications. We investigate how the interference behaves in the outdoor mesh network operating at 60-GHz when block age and shadowing are present using the probability of collision as a metric, under both the protocol model and the physical model. In contrast with results reported in mmWave mesh networks at 60-GHz that advocates that interference has only a marginal effect, our results show that for a short-range link of 100 m, the collision probability gets considerably larger (beyond 0.1) at the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) of interest (for example, the reference value is chosen as 15 dB for uncoded quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK)). Compensation or compromise should be made in order to maintain a low probability of collision, either by reducing transmitter node density which is to the detriment of the network connectivity, or by switching to a compact linear antenna array with more at-top elements, which places more stringent requirements in device integration techniques. The second part of this thesis focuses on finding the optimal unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) deployment in the sense that it can maximize over specific network connectivity. We have introduced a connectivity measure based on the commonly used network connectivity metric, which is refered to as global soft connectivity. This measure can be easily extended to account for different propagation models, such as Rayleigh fading and Nakagami fading. It can also be modified to incorporate the link state probability and beam alignment errors in highly directional networks. As can be shown, under the line-of-sight (LOS) and Rayleigh fading assumptions, the optimization regarding the global soft connectivity can be expressed as a weighted sum of the square of link distances between the nodes within the network, namely the ground-to-ground links, the UAV-to-UAV links and the ground-to-UAV links. This can be shown to be a quadratically constrained quadratic program (QCQP) problem with non-convex constraints. We have also extended our global connectivity to other types of connectivity criteria: network k-section connectivity and k-connectivity. In all the three cases, we have proposed a heuristic and straightforward way of finding the suboptimal UAV locations. The simulation results have shown that all these methods can improve our network connectivity considerably, which can achieve a gain of up to 30% for a five UAV scenario.

Millimetre-wave technology is used for applications such as telecommunications and imaging. For both applications, the bandwidth of existing systems has to be increased to support higher data rates and finer imaging resolutions. Millimetrewave circuits with very large bandwidths are developed in this thesis. The focus is put on amplifiers and the on-chip integration of the amplifiers with antennas. Circuit prototypes, fabricated in a commercially available 130nm Silicon-Germanium (SiGe) Bipolar Complementary Metal-Oxide-Semiconductor (BiCMOS) process, validated the developed techniques. Cutting-edge performances have been achieved in the field of distributed and resonant-matched amplifiers, as well as in that of the antenna-amplifier co-integration. Examples are as follows: - A novel cascode gain-cell with three transistors was conceived. By means of transconductance peaking towards high frequencies, the losses of the synthetic line can be compensated up to higher frequencies. The properties were analytically derived and explained. Experimental demonstration validated the technique by a Traveling-Wave Amplifier (TWA) able to produce 10 dB of gain over a frequency band of 170GHz.# - Two Cascaded Single-Stage Distributed Amplifiers (CSSDAs) have been demonstrated. The first CSSDA, optimized for low power consumption, requires less than 20mW to provide 10 dB of gain over a frequency band of 130 GHz. The second amplifier was designed for high-frequency operation and works up to 250 GHz leading to a record bandwidth for distributed amplifiers in SiGe technology. - The first complete CSSDA circuit analysis as function of all key parameters was presented. The typical degradation of the CSSDA output matching towards high frequencies was analytically quantified. A balanced architecture was then introduced to retain the frequency-response advantages of CSSDAs and yet ensure matching over the frequency band of interested. A circuit prototype validated experimentally the technique. - The first traveling-wave power combiner and divider capable of operation from the MHz range up to 200 GHz were demonstrated. The circuits improved the state of the art of the maximum frequency of operation and the bandwidth by a factor of five. - A resonant-matched balanced amplifier was demonstrated with a centre frequency of 185 GHz, 10 dB of gain and a 55GHz wide –3 dB-bandwidth. The power consumption of the amplifier is 16.8mW, one of the lowest for this circuit class, while the bandwidth is the broadest reported in literature for resonant-matched amplifiers in SiGe technology.

Topographic maps of the earth are essential to geographic and earth science studies. In particular, mapping and estimating physical parameters of the earth’s water and ice cover are critical to global climate studies. Among these, snow, ocean and fresh water topography, snow wetness and water equivalent are of immediate interest to the scientific community. Challenges in the instrument development and deployment posed by these required measurements are twofold. Firstly, these measurements are required to have global coverage, yet maintain stringent spatial resolution and accuracy margins. Secondly, snow topography measurement requires minimal electromagnetic wave penetration through snow, hence requiring the use of millimeter-wave frequency radars. While having the advantage of smaller and lighter structures, instruments at millimeter-wave frequencies are difficult to design, evaluate and deploy due to their mechanical and electric precision requirements. This thesis presents the design, development, detailed evaluation and first deployment of a Ka-band interferometer. An overview of the theory of interferometric mapping is presented including a discussion on instrument sensitivity and accuracy. Based in this theory, a geometric and hardware configuration for a rooftop deployment is arrived at. Detailed design and evaluation of the radar receiver is documented. Lastly first results from a rooftop and ground-based deployment are presented.

The evolution to 5G and its use cases is driven by data-intensive applications requiring higher data rates over wireless channels. This has led to research in massive multiple input multiple output (MIMO) techniques and the use of the millimeter wave (mm wave) band. Because of the higher path loss at mm wave frequencies and the poor scattering nature of the mm wave channel (fewer paths exist), this thesis first proposes the use of the sphere decoding (SD) algorithm, and the semidefinite relaxation (SDR) detector to improve the performance of a uniform planar array (UPA) hybrid beamforming technique with large antenna arrays. The second contributions of this thesis consist of a low-complexity algorithm using the gradient descent for hybrid precoding and combining designs in mm wave systems. Also, in this thesis we present a low-complexity algorithm for hybrid precoding and combining designs that uses momentum gradient descent and Newton’s Method for mm wave systems which makes the objective function converge faster compared to other iterative methods in the literature; the two proposed low-complexity algorithms for hybrid precoding and combining do not depend on the antenna array geometry, unlike the orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) hybrid precoding/combining approach. Moreover, these algorithms allow hybrid precoders/combiners to yield a performance very close to that of the optimal unconstrained digital precoders and combiners with a small number of iterations. Simulation results verify that the proposed hybrid precoding/combining scheme that uses momentum gradient descent and Newton’s Method outperforms previous methods that appear in the literature in terms of bit error rate (BER) and achievable spectral efficiency with lower complexity. Finally, an iterative algorithm that directly converts the hybrid precoding/combining in the full array (FA) architecture to subarray (SA) architecture is proposed and examined in this thesis. It is called direct conversion of iterative hybrid precoding/combining from FA to SA (DCIFS) hybrid precoding/combining. The proposed DCIFS design takes into consideration the matrix structure of the analog and baseband precoding and combining in the design derivation. Moreover, it does not depend on the antenna array geometry, unlike other techniques, such as the orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) hybrid precoding/combining approach, nor does it assume any other constraints. Simulation results show that the proposed DCIFS hybrid design, when compared to the FA hybrid designs counterpart, can provide a spectral efficiency that is close to optimum while maintaining a very low complexity and better spectral efficiency than the conventional SA hybrid design with the same hardware complexity.

This work uses the photonic filtering properties of Fabry-Perot etalons to show improvements in the electrical signals created upon photodetection of the optical signal. First, a method of delay measurement is described which uses multi-heterodyne detection to find correlations in white light signals at 20 km of delay to sub millimeter resolution. By filtering incoming white light with a Fabry-Perot etalon, the pseudo periodic signal is suitable for measurement by combining and photodetecting it with an optical frequency comb. In this way, optical data from a large bandwidth can be downconverted and sampled on low frequency electronics. Second, a high finesse etalon is used as a photonic filter inside an optoelectronic oscillator (OEO). The etalon's narrow filter function allows the OEO loop length to be extremely long for a high oscillator quality factor while still suppressing unwanted modes below the noise floor. The periodic nature of the etalon allows it to be used to generate a wide range of microwave and millimeter wave tones without degradation of the RF signal.

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