Ces dernières années, la technologie des courants porteurs en ligne (CPL) a fait son apparition dans les réseaux domestiques afin de répondre au besoin grandissant de bande passante. Comme pour les solutions sans-fil, cette technologie présente l’avantage de ne pas nécessiter le déploiement de nouveaux câbles à l’intérieur de la maison, en utilisant directement le réseau électrique comme milieu de transmission. Offrant une zone de couverture plus importante que les réseaux Wi-Fi, les débits offerts par les équipements actuels ne sont néanmoins pas suffisants pour supporter simultanément des applications gourmandes en bande passante. Cette thèse vise donc à explorer différentes solutions pour les futurs réseaux domestiques basés sur cette technologie. L’étude a d’abord été menée au niveau de la couche Physique des systèmes, où deux solutions de transmission ont été comparées. D’un côté, la modulation windowed OFDM, déployée dans la grande majorité des réseaux actuels, est étudiée afin de mettre en avant ses limites dans le contexte particulier des réseaux sur courant porteur. Dans cette partie, nous montrons concrètement le gain en capacité que pourrait apporter une modulation alternative, l’OFDM/OQAM, présentant des degrés de liberté supplémentaires vis-à-vis de l’OFDM classique, et dont l’exploitation s’avère particulièrement intéressante pour cette étude. Dans un second temps, la problématique de la couche MAC a été abordée dans le contexte d’une utilisation multi-usager du réseau. L’objectif de cette seconde partie a été de proposer des solutions nouvelles pour l’allocation et le partage de la ressource entre les différents utilisateurs du réseau. Premièrement, nous étudions la possibilité de définir un nouveau mode d’accès, basé sur l’OFDMA, permettant de tirer efficacement parti de la diversité entre différents canaux de transmission, afin d’augmenter significativement les débits pour les transmissions point-à- multipoint. Enfin, le dernier chapitre aborde le problème de la transmission multicast inhérent aux réseaux PLC actuels, en proposant une méthode d’agrégation des utilisateurs résultant en une augmentation significative des débits. / During the past few years, Power Line Communications (PLC) have become a popular connectivity solution to answer the growing need of home networks for bandwidth. As wireless technologies, this solution spares the user from cabling its Local Area Network (LAN), by directly using the home power grid as a transmission medium. While PLC generally offer a larger coverage than Wireless Local Area Networks (WLAN), the capacity offered by current systems is not sufficient to simultaneously support bandwidth intensive streams. In this thesis, we aim at exploring various solutions for future PLC networks. Firstly, we aim at improving the spectral efficiency of the current systems’ Physical (PHY) layer, where two modulation schemes are compared. On the one hand, we study the modulation deployed in current PLC networks, called windowed Orthogonal requency Division Multiplexing (OFDM), and we highlight the main limitation of this solution in the particular context of PLC. On the other hand, we show that and alternative solution, called OFDM/Offset Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (OQAM), offers some degrees of freedom which could highly benefit to PLC networks. Secondly, the study is oriented toward the Media Access Control (MAC) layer of PLC systems, considering a multiuser utilization of the network. In this second part, we aim at proposing allocation solutions that will allow a more efficient utilization of the limited and shared transmission resource. We firstly study the opportunity of defining an Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiple Access (OFDMA) transmission scheme for point-to-multipoint transmissions, in order to increase data rates by taking advantage of the diversity between users’ channels. Finally, the last Chapter is dedicated to the study of broadcast and multicast communications in PLC networks, where we show that a smart aggregation of the set of users to reach could greatly improve efficiency of multicast transmissions.

Wireless devices in wireless networks are powered typically by small batteries that are not replaceable nor recharged in a convenient way. To prolong the operating lifetime of networks, energy efficiency is indicated as a critical issue and energy-efficient resource allocation designs have been extensively developed. We investigated energy-efficient schemes that prolong network operating lifetime in wireless sensor networks and in wireless relay networks. In Chapter 2, the energy-efficient resource allocation that minimizes a general cost function of average user powers for small- or medium-scale wireless sensor networks, where the simple time-division multiple-access (TDMA) is adopted as the multiple access scheme. A class of Ç-fair cost-functions is derived to balance the tradeoff between efficiency and fairness in energy-efficient designs. Based on such cost functions, optimal channel-adaptive resource allocation schemes are developed for both single-hop and multi-hop TDMA sensor networks. In Chapter 3, optimal power control methods to balance the tradeoff between energy efficiency and fairness for wireless cooperative networks are developed. It is important to maximize power efficiency by minimizing power consumption for a given quality of service, such as the data rate; it is also equally important to evenly or fairly distribute power consumption to all nodes to maximize the network life. The optimal power control policy proposed is derived in a quasi-closed form by solving a convex optimization problem with a properly chosen cost-function. To further optimize a wireless relay network performance, an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based multi-user wireless relay network is considered in Chapter 4. / In the OFDM approach, each subcarrier is dynamically assigned to a source- destination link, and several relays assist communication between pairs of source-destination over their assigned subcarriers. Using a class of Ç-fair cost-functions to balance the tradeoff between energy efficiency and fairness, jointly with optimal subcarrier and power allocation schemes at the relays. Relevant algorithms are derived in quasi-closed form. Lastly, the proposed energy-efficient schemes are summarized and future work is discussed in Chapter 5. / by Di Wang. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2011. / Includes bibliography. / Electronic reproduction. Boca Raton, Fla., 2011. Mode of access: World Wide Web.

In past and recent literature, random access protocols have been investigated with growing interest. In particular, the Slotted ALOHA protocol has been extensively used in satellite communications, and has also attracted considerable attention in many areas of wireless communication systems, especially in the cellular mobile environment. In this thesis, we investigate the performance of Slotted ALOHA, an effective random access protocol, in a Weibull fading environment. We study the performance metrics based on the signal-to-interference-and-noise ratio (SINR) model, in a cellular network system, assuming two captures models. The capture effect, also called co-channel interference tolerance, is the ability to correctly receive a strong signal from one transmitter despite significant interference from other transmitters. We derive closed-formed expressions and numerical evaluations for both the capture probability and the system throughput. he analytical results will be validated with computer simulations. Finally, to mitigate the effects of Weibull fading channel we also consider the effect of dual selection diversity that will increase the capture probability and the system throughput. / by Jean N. Rene. / Thesis (M.S.C.S.)--Florida Atlantic University, 2013. / Includes bibliography. / Mode of access: World Wide Web. / System requirements: Adobe Reader.

Une communication est impulsive chaque fois que le signal portant des informations est intermittent dans le temps et que la transmission se produit à rafales. Des exemples du concept impulsife sont : les signaux radio impulsifs, c’est-à-dire des signaux très courts dans le temps; les signaux optiques utilisé dans les systèmes de télécommunications; certains signaux acoustiques et, en particulier, les impulsions produites par le système glottale; les signaux électriques modulés en position d’impulsions; une séquence d’événements dans une file d’attente; les trains de potentiels neuronaux dans le système neuronal. Ce paradigme de transmission est différent des communications continues traditionnelles et la compréhension des communications impulsives est donc essentielle. Afin d’affronter le problème des communications impulsives, le cadre de la recherche doit inclure les aspects suivants : la statistique d’interférence qui suit directement la structure des signaux impulsifs; l’interaction du signal impulsif avec le milieu physique; la possibilité pour les communications impulsives de coder l’information dans la structure temporelle. Cette thèse adresse une partie des questions précédentes et trace des lignes indicatives pour de futures recherches. En particulier, nous avons étudié: un système d'accès multiple où les utilisateurs adoptent des signaux avec étalement de spectre par saut temporel (time-hopping spread spectrum) pour communiquer vers un récepteur commun; un système avec un préfiltre à l'émetteur, et plus précisément un transmit matched filter, également connu comme time reversal dans la littérature de systèmes à bande ultra large; un modèle d'interférence pour des signaux impulsifs. / A communication is impulsive whenever the information-bearing signal is burst-like in time. Examples of the impulsive concept are: impulse-radio signals, that is, wireless signals occurring within short intervals of time; optical signals conveyed by photons; speech signals represented by sound pressure variations; pulse-position modulated electrical signals; a sequence of arrival/departure events in a queue; neural spike trains in the brain. Understanding impulsive communications requires to identify what is peculiar to this transmission paradigm, that is, different from traditional continuous communications.In order to address the problem of understanding impulsive vs. non-impulsive communications, the framework of investigation must include the following aspects: the different interference statistics directly following from the impulsive signal structure; the different interaction of the impulsive signal with the physical medium; the actual possibility for impulsive communications of coding information into the time structure, relaxing the implicit assumption made in continuous transmissions that time is a mere support. This thesis partially addresses a few of the above issues, and draws future lines of investigation. In particular, we studied: multiple access channels where each user adopts time-hopping spread-spectrum; systems using a specific prefilter at the transmitter side, namely the transmit matched filter (also known as time reversal), particularly suited for ultrawide bandwidhts; the distribution function of interference for impulsive systems in several different settings.

Wireless Body Area Network (WBAN) facilitates efficient and cost-effective e-health care and well-being applications. The WBAN has unique challenges and features compared to other Wireless Sensor Networks (WSN). In addition to battery power consumption, the vulnerability and the unpredicted channel behavior of the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer make channel access a serious problem. MAC protocols based on Time Division Multiple Access (TDMA) can improve the reliability and efficiency of WBAN. However, conventional static TDMA techniques adopted by IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.15.6 do not sufficiently consider the channel status or the buffer requirements of the nodes within heterogeneous contexts. Although there are some solutions that have been proposed to alleviate the effect of the deep fade in WBAN channel by adopting dynamic slot allocation, these solutions still suffer from some reliability and energy efficiency issues and they do not avoid channel deep fading. This thesis presents novel and generic TDMA based techniques to improve WBAN reliability and energy efficiency. The proposed techniques synchronise nodes adaptively whilst tackling their channel and buffer status in normal and emergency contexts. Extensive simulation experiments using various traffic rates and time slot lengths demonstrate that the proposed techniques improve the reliability and the energy efficiency compared to the de-facto standards of WBAN, i.e. the IEEE 802.15.4 and the IEEE 802.15.6. In normal situations, the proposed techniques reduce packet loss up to 61% and 68% compared to the IEEE 802.15.4 and IEEE 802.15.6 respectively. They also reduce energy consumption up to 7.3%. In emergencies, however, the proposed techniques reduce packets loss up to 63.4% and 90% with respect to their counterparts in IEEE 802.15.4 and 802.15.6. The achieved results confirm the significant enhancements made by the developed scheduling techniques to promote the reliability and energy efficiency of WBAN, opening up promising doors towards new horizons and applications.

Une communication est impulsive chaque fois que le signal portant des informations est intermittent dans le temps et que la transmission se produit à rafales. Des exemples du concept impulsife sont : les signaux radio impulsifs, c’est-à-dire des signaux très courts dans le temps; les signaux optiques utilisé dans les systèmes de télécommunications; certains signaux acoustiques et, en particulier, les impulsions produites par le système glottale; les signaux électriques modulés en position d’impulsions; une séquence d’événements dans une file d’attente; les trains de potentiels neuronaux dans le système neuronal. Ce paradigme de transmission est différent des communications continues traditionnelles et la compréhension des communications impulsives est donc essentielle. Afin d’affronter le problème des communications impulsives, le cadre de la recherche doit inclure les aspects suivants : la statistique d’interférence qui suit directement la structure des signaux impulsifs; l’interaction du signal impulsif avec le milieu physique; la possibilité pour les communications impulsives de coder l’information dans la structure temporelle. Cette thèse adresse une partie des questions précédentes et trace des lignes indicatives pour de futures recherches. En particulier, nous avons étudié: un système d'accès multiple où les utilisateurs adoptent des signaux avec étalement de spectre par saut temporel (time-hopping spread spectrum) pour communiquer vers un récepteur commun; un système avec un préfiltre à l'émetteur, et plus précisément un transmit matched filter, également connu comme time reversal dans la littérature de systèmes à bande ultra large; un modèle d'interférence pour des signaux impulsifs. / A communication is impulsive whenever the information-bearing signal is burst-like in time. Examples of the impulsive concept are: impulse-radio signals, that is, wireless signals occurring within short intervals of time; optical signals conveyed by photons; speech signals represented by sound pressure variations; pulse-position modulated electrical signals; a sequence of arrival/departure events in a queue; neural spike trains in the brain. Understanding impulsive communications requires to identify what is peculiar to this transmission paradigm, that is, different from traditional continuous communications.In order to address the problem of understanding impulsive vs. non-impulsive communications, the framework of investigation must include the following aspects: the different interference statistics directly following from the impulsive signal structure; the different interaction of the impulsive signal with the physical medium; the actual possibility for impulsive communications of coding information into the time structure, relaxing the implicit assumption made in continuous transmissions that time is a mere support. This thesis partially addresses a few of the above issues, and draws future lines of investigation. In particular, we studied: multiple access channels where each user adopts time-hopping spread-spectrum; systems using a specific prefilter at the transmitter side, namely the transmit matched filter (also known as time reversal), particularly suited for ultrawide bandwidhts; the distribution function of interference for impulsive systems in several different settings.

Over the past few decades, wireless local area networks (WLANs) have been widely deployed for data communication in indoor environments such as offices, houses, and airports. In order to fairly and efficiently use the unlicensed frequency band that Wi-Fi devices share, the devices follow a set of channel access rules, which is called a wireless medium access control (MAC) protocol. It is known that wireless devices following the 802.11 standard MAC protocol, i.e. the distributed coordination function (DCF), suffer from packet collisions when multiple nodes simultaneously transmit. This significantly degrades the throughput performance. Recently, several studies have reported access techniques to reduce the number of packet collisions and to achieve a collision free WLAN. Although these studies have shown that the number of collisions can be reduced to zero in a simple way, there have been a couple of remaining issues to solve, such as dynamic parameter adjustment and fairness to legacy DCF nodes in terms of channel access opportunity. Recently, In-Band Full Duplex (IBFD) communication has received much attention, because it has significant potential to improve the communication capacity of a radio band. IBFD means that a node can simultaneously transmit one signal and receive another signal in the same band at the same time. In order to maximize the performance of IBFD communication capability and to fairly share access to the wireless medium among distributed devices in WLANs, a number of IBFD MAC protocols have been proposed. However, little attention has been paid to fairness issues between half duplex nodes (i.e. nodes that can either transmit or receive but not both simultaneously in one time-frequency resource block) and IBFD capable nodes in the presence of the hidden node problem.

Tese de mestrado. Mestrado integrado em Engenharia Electrotécnica e de Computadores. Faculdade de Engenharia. Universidade do Porto. 2012

The low-voltage power distribution network is considered today as a serious candidate to provide residential customers with a high-speed access to communication services such as Internet. Outdoor Power-Line Communications (PLC) systems represent an alternative to the other classical 'last-mile solutions' such as ADSL, cable modems, or wireless access systems. We developed an accurate powerline channel simulation tool based on the Multiconductor Transmission Line theory. This tool is able to predict the end-to-end channel responses on the basis of the multiconductor cable structure and the network topology. Then the issue of optimal resource allocation in a multiuser environment was addressed in the light of the Multiuser Information Theory. Simultaneously active users are in competition for the limited resources that are the power (constrained by electro-magnetic compatibility restrictions) and the bandwidth (in the range of 1 to 10 MHz for outdoor PLC). The concept of multiuser balanced capacity was introduced to characterize the optimal resource allocation providing the maximum data rates with fairness constraints among the subscribers. The optimal PLC system was shown to require the shaping of the signal spectrum in the transmitters, and successive decoding in the receiver. A generic multiple access scheme based on Filter Banks (FB) was proposed, which offers the required spectral shaping with limited degrees of freedom. Classical multiple-access techniques (TDMA, CDMA, OFDMA) can be obtained by selecting the appropriate FB. The Minimum-Mean-Square-Error Decision-Feedback Joint Detector was shown to approach the performance of the optimal successive decoding receiver. Finally, the robustness of the proposed system against channel estimation and timing synchronization errors was addressed. The problem of multiuser timing synchronization was introduced, and practical multiuser timing error detectors were proposed.

Providing access to telecommunication services in rural areas is of paramount importance for the development of any country. Since the cost is the main inhibiting factor, any technical solution for access in sparsely populated rural areas has to be reliable, efficient, and deployable at low-cost. This thesis studies the utilization of Multihop Wireless Networks (MWN) as an appealing alternative for rural communication. MWN are designed with a self-configuring capability and can adapt to the addition or removal of network radio units (nodes). This makes them simple to install, allowing unskilled users to set up the network quickly. To increase the performance and cost-efficiency, this thesis focuses on the use of Advanced Antenna Systems (AAS) in rural access networks. AAS promise to increase the overall capacity in MWN, improving the link quality while suppressing or reducing the multiple access interference. To effectively exploit the capabilities of AAS, a proper design of Medium Access Control (MAC) protocols is needed. Hence, the results of system level studies into MAC protocols and AAS are presented in this thesis. Two different MAC protocols are examined: Spatial Time Division Multiple Access (STDMA) and Carrier Sense Multiple Access Collision Avoidance (CSMA/CA) with handshaking. The effects of utilizing advanced antennas on the end-to-end network throughput and packet delay are analyzed with routing, power control and adaptive transmission data rate control separately and in combination. Many of the STDMA-related research questions addressed in this thesis are posed as nonlinear optimization problems that are solved by the technique called "column generation" to create the transmission schedule using AAS. However, as finding the optimal solution is computationally expensive, we also introduce low-complexity algorithms that, while simpler, yield reasonable results close to the optimal solution. Although STDMA has been found to be very efficient and fair, one potential drawback is that it may adapt slower than a distributed approach like CSMA/CA to network changes produced e.g. by traffic variations and time-variant channel conditions. In CSMA/CA, nodes make their own decisions based on partial network information and the handshaking procedure allows the use of AAS at the transmitter and the receiver. How to effectively use AAS in CSMA/CA with handshaking is addressed in this thesis. Different beam selection policies using switched beam antenna systems are investigated. Finally, we demonstrate how the proposed techniques can be applied in a rural access scenario in Nicaragua. The result of a user-deployed MWN for Internet access shows that the supported aggregated end-to-end rate is higher than an Asymmetric Digital Subscriber Line (ADSL) connection. / QC 20100908