In the last decade, wireless applications have witnessed a tremendous growth. This can be envisioned in the surge of smart devices which became almost in everyone's possession, demand for high speed connection and the internet of things (IoT) along with its enabling technologies. Hence, the multiuser interference became the main limiting factor in wireless communications. Moreover, just like diamonds and emeralds, the electromagnetic spectrum is limited and precious. Therefore, the high data rate application may not be satisfied by our current technologies. In order to solve this spectrum scarcity problem, researchers have steered their focus to develop new techniques such as cognitive radio (CR) and in-band full-duplex (FD). However, these systems suffer from the interference problem that can dramatically impede their quality-of-service (QoS). Therefore, investigating communication techniques/systems that can relieve the interference adverse signature becomes imperative. Improper Gaussian signaling (IGS) has been recently shown to outperform the traditional proper Gaussian signaling (PGS) in several interference-limited systems. In this thesis, we use IGS in order to mitigate the interference issue in three different communication settings. IGS has the ability to control the interference signal dimension, and hence, it can be considered as one form of interference alignment. In the first part, we investigate an underlay CR system with in-band FD primary users (PUs) and one-way communication for the secondary user (SU). IGS is employed to alleviate the interference introduced by the SU on the PUs. First, we derive a closed form expression and an upper bound for the SU and PUs outage probabilities, respectively. Second, we optimize the SU signal parameters, represented in its power and the circularity coefficient, to achieve the design objectives of the SU while satisfying certain QoS constraints for the PU under instantaneous, average and partial channel state information (CSI). Finally, we provide some numerical results that demonstrate the advantages that can be reaped by using IGS to access the spectrum of the FD PUs. Specifically, with the existence of week PU direct channels and/or strong SU interference channels, PGS tends to use less transmit power while IGS uses more power along with increasing the signal impropriety. Part 2 studies the potential employment of IGS in FD cooperative settings with non-negligible residual self-interference (RSI). In this part, IGS is used in an attempt to alleviate the RSI adverse effect in full-duplex relaying (FDR). To this end, we derive a tight upper bound expression for the end-to-end outage probability in terms of the relay signal parameters. We further show that the derived upper bound is either monotonic or unimodal in the relay's circularity coefficient. This result allows for easily locating the global optimal point using known numerical methods. Based on the analysis, IGS allows FDR systems to operate even with high RSI. It is shown that, while the communication totally fails with PGS as the RSI increases, the IGS outage probability approaches a fixed value that depends on the channel statistics and target rate. The obtained results show that IGS can leverage higher relay power budgets than PGS to improve the performance, meanwhile it relieves its RSI impact via tuning the signal impropriety. In part 3, we investigate the potential benefits of adopting IGS in a two-hop alternate relaying (AR) system. Given the known benefits of using IGS in interference-limited networks, we propose to use IGS to relieve the inter-relay interference (IRI) impact on the AR system assuming no CSI is available at the source. In this regard, we assume that the two relays use IGS and the source uses PGS. Then, we optimize the degree of impropriety of the relays signal, measured by the circularity coefficient, to maximize the total achievable rate. Simulation results show that using IGS yields a significant performance improvement over PGS, especially when the first hop is a bottleneck due to weak source-relay channel gains and/or strong IRI.

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.

Les systèmes de communications par satellite sont utilisés dans le contexte de la radiodiffusion, de la navigation, du sauvetage et du secours aux sinistrés, car ils permettent de fournir des services sur une large zone de couverture. Cependant, cette zone de couverture est limitée par l'effet de masquage provoqué par des obstacles qui bloquent la liaison directe entre le satellite et un utilisateur terrestre. L'effet de masquage devient plus sévère en cas de satellites à faibles angles d'élévation ou lorsque l'utilisateur est à l'intérieur. Pour résoudre ce problème, les Systèmes Coopératifs Hybride Satellite-Terrestre (HSTCS) ont été proposés. Dans un système HSTCS, l'utilisateur mobile peut profiter de la diversité spatiale en recevant des signaux à la fois du satellite et des relais terrestres. Les gap-fillers fixes ou mobiles sont utilisés pour relayer le signal satellite. La plupart des systèmes de diffusion par satellite utilisent les gap-fillers fixes alors que les gap-fillers mobiles sont nécessaires en cas de communications d'urgence lorsque l'infrastructure fixe n'est pas disponible. Dans les scénarios d'urgence (incendie, tremblement de terre, inondations, explosion) l'infrastructure terrestre existante est endommagée, donc les HSTCSs sont appropriés pour mettre à jour des informations qui permettent aux sauveteurs d'intervenir efficacement et en toute sécurité. En particulier, une mise en œuvre rapide et souple est nécessaire, ce qui pourrait être fourni par le déploiement de gap-fillers mobiles (véhicule ou portable). Plusieurs scénarios coopératifs et techniques de transmission ont déjà été proposés et étudiés. Cependant, la plupart des méthodes proposées ne fournissent qu'une analyse de performance fondée sur la simulation alors que les expressions analytiques de la probabilité de coupure et de la Probabilité d'Erreur Symbole (SEP) n'ont pas encore été établies. Cette thèse se focalise sur l'analyse de performances des systèmes HSTCS. La probabilité de coupure et SEP du système utilisant le schéma de transmission Selective Decode-and-Forward (SDF), avec ou sans sélection de relais, est évaluée dans le cas des modulations MPSK et MQAM. Cette expression analytique permet de concevoir le système HSTCS. Ces résultats sont applicables aux cas des relais fixes ou mobiles. La seconde partie de cette thèse est consacrée à des problèmes de synchronisation (décalage en temps et en fréquence ainsi que l'étalement Doppler). La mobilité des utilisateurs crée l'étalement Doppler qui détruit l'orthogonalité des sous-porteuses dans les signaux de type Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM). Cette perte d'orthogonalité engendre de l'interférence entre sous-porteuses (ICI) et donc une dégradation des performances du système en termes de SEP. Dans ce cas, on présente les conditions dans lesquelles cette dégradation peut être compensée par une augmentation du Rapport Signal sur Bruit (SNR) du côté de l'émetteur. Le résultat dépend du schéma de modulation et aussi de la vitesse des utilisateurs. / Satellite communication systems are used in the context of broadcasting, navigation, rescue, and disaster relief since they allow the provision of services over a wide coverage area. However, this coverage area is limited by the masking effect caused by obstacles that block the Line-Of-Sight (LOS) link between the satellite and a terrestrial user. The masking effect becomes more severe in case of low satellite elevation angles or when the user is indoor. To address this issue, Hybrid Satellite-Terrestrial Cooperative Systems (HSTCSs) have been proposed. In an HSTCS, the mobile user can exploit the diversity advantages by receiving signals from both satellite and terrestrial components. Fixed or mobile gap-fillers are used to relay the satellite signal. Most of satellites broadcasting systems have been implemented using fixed gap-fillers while mobile gap-fillers are needed in emergency cases when the fixed infrastructure is not available. In emergency scenarios (e.g., fire, earthquake, flood and explosion), the existing terrestrial infrastructure has been destroyed. So, an HSTCS is appropriate for transmitting the information between the rescuers and the central office. This allows the rescuers to operate efficiently. In particular, a fast and flexible implementation is needed and this could be provided by deploying mobile gap fillers (vehicle or mobile handheld). Recently, the topic of HSTCSs has gain interest in the research community. Several cooperative scenarios and transmission techniques have been proposed and studied. However, most of existing approaches only provide a performance analysis based on simulation results and the analytical expression of the exact Symbol Error Probability (SEP) is generally not provided. This dissertation focuses on the performance analysis of HSTCSs. The exact closed-form outage probability and SEP of Selective Decode-and-Forward (SDF) transmission scheme with and without relay selection are derived for both M-ary phase shift keying (MPSK) and M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (MQAM) schemes. This analytical SEP helps in designing and dimensioning HSTCSs. Our results are applicable to both fixed and mobile relaying techniques. Another part of the dissertation is dedicated to synchronization issues (time, frequency shifting/spreading). The mobility of users induces a Doppler spread in the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) signal that destroys the orthogonality of subcarriers. The loss of orthogonality produces Inter-subCarrier Interference (ICI) and hence a degradation of the system performance in terms of SEP. In this case, we present the conditions in which this degradation can be compensated for by an increase in the Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR) at the transmitter side. The result depends on both the modulation scheme and the speed of the mobile users.

Recently, cooperative relay networks have emerged as an attractive communications technique that can generate a new form of spatial diversity which is known as cooperative diversity, that can enhance system reliability without sacrificing the scarce bandwidth resource or consuming more transmit power. To achieve cooperative diversity single-antenna terminals in a wireless relay network typically share their antennas to form a virtual antenna array on the basis of their distributed locations. As such, the same diversity gains as in multi-input multi-output systems can be achieved without requiring multiple-antenna terminals. However, there remain technical challenges to maximize the benefit of cooperative communications, e.g. data rate, asynchronous transmission, interference and outage. Therefore, the focus of this thesis is to exploit cooperative relay networks within two-way transmission schemes. Such schemes have the potential to double the data rate as compared to one-way transmission schemes. Firstly, a new approach to two-way cooperative communications via extended distributed orthogonal space-time block coding (E-DOSTBC) based on phase rotation feedback is proposed with four relay nodes. This scheme can achieve full cooperative diversity and full transmission rate in addition to array gain. Then, distributed orthogonal space-time block coding (DOSTBC) is applied within an asynchronous two-way cooperative wireless relay network using two relay nodes. A parallel interference cancelation (PIC) detection scheme with low structural and computational complexity is applied at the terminal nodes in order to overcome the effect of imperfect synchronization among the cooperative relay nodes. Next, a DOSTBC scheme based on cooperative orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) type transmission is proposed for flat fading channels which can overcome imperfect synchronization in the network. As such, this technique can effectively cope with the effects of fading and timing errors. Moreover, to increase the end-to-end data rate, a closed-loop EDOSTBC approach using through a three-time slot framework is proposed. A full interference cancelation scheme with OFDM and cyclic prefix type transmission is used in a two-hop cooperative four relay network with asynchronism in the both hops to achieve full data rate and completely cancel the timing error. The topic of outage probability analysis in the context of multi-relay selection for one-way cooperative amplify and forward networks is then considered. Local measurements of the instantaneous channel conditions are used to select the best single and best two relays from a number of available relays. Asymptotical conventional polices are provided to select the best single and two relays from a number of available relays. Finally, the outage probability of a two-way amplify and forward relay network with best and Mth relay selection is analyzed. The relay selection is performed either on the basis of a max-min strategy or one based on maximizing exact end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio. MATLAB and Maple software based simulations are employed throughout the thesis to support the analytical results and assess the performance of new algorithms and methods.

This thesis investigates channel-coded physical layer network coding, in which the relay directly transforms the noisy superimposed channel-coded packets received from the two end nodes, to the network-coded combination of the source packets. This is in contrast to the traditional multiple-access problem, in which the goal is to obtain each message explicitly at the relay. Here, the end nodes $A$ and $B$ choose their symbols, $S_A$ and $S_B$, from a small non-binary field, $\mathbb{F}$, and use non-binary PSK constellation mapper during the transmission phase. The relay then directly decodes the network-coded combination ${aS_A+bS_B}$ over $\mathbb{F}$ from the noisy superimposed channel-coded packets received from two end nodes. Trying to obtain $S_A$ and $S_B$ explicitly at the relay is overly ambitious when the relay only needs $aS_B+bS_B$. For the binary case, the only possible network-coded combination, ${S_A+S_B}$ over the binary field, does not offer the best performance in several channel conditions. The advantage of working over non-binary fields is that it offers the opportunity to decode according to multiple decoding coefficients $(a,b)$. As only one of the network-coded combinations needs to be successfully decoded, a key advantage is then a reduction in error probability by attempting to decode against all choices of decoding coefficients. In this thesis, we compare different constellation mappers and prove that not all of them have distinct performance in terms of frame error rate. Moreover, we derive a lower bound on the frame error rate performance of decoding the network-coded combinations at the relay. Simulation results show that if we adopt concatenated Reed-Solomon and convolutional coding or low density parity check codes at the two end nodes, our non-binary constellations can outperform the binary case significantly in the sense of minimizing the frame error rate and, in particular, the ternary constellation has the best frame error rate performance among all considered cases.

En la última década, la cooperación entre usuarios ha generado un gran interés por la posibilidad de mejorar la velocidad de transmisión en las redes de comunicaciones inalámbricas. El objetivo es formar un array con las antenas de todos los dispositivos y, de esta forma, aplicar técnicas de procesado espacio-temporal. El esquema de cooperación más sencillo es el canal con relays: todos los terminales que escuchen una comunicación entre dos puntos pueden ayudar a la fuente retransmitiendo lo que hayan recibido.En un sistema realista, los relays no disponen de información sobre el canal en trasmisión. En este escenario, los códigos espacio-temporales (STC, del inglés space-time coding) son la alternativa más eficiente para aprovechar la diversidad introducida por los relays. Sin embargo, los STC clásicos están diseñados para un número limitado y fijo de antenas transmisoras y no se adaptan bien a sistemas cooperativos donde el número de relays puede ser elevado y, sobretodo, puede variar en el tiempo, según los usuarios entren o salgan de la red. El problema principal es la necesidad de usar un código nuevo cada vez que cambie la configuración de la red, generando un importante tráfico de señalización.Esta tesis analiza un código espacio-temporal a bloques de dispersión lineal (LD-STBC, del inglés linear-dispersion space-time block coding), aleatorio y distribuido: a cada relay se le asigna una matriz aleatoria que aplica una transformación lineal al vector que contiene los símbolos de la fuente. Cada matriz se genera de forma independiente y sin ninguna relación con el número de usuarios involucrados. De esta manera, el número de nodos puede variar sin necesidad de modificar los códigos existentes.La forma más intuitiva de construir matrices de dispersión lineal independientes es que sus elementos sean variables aleatorias independientes e idénticamente distribuidas (i.i.d.). Por esta razón, se estudia primero la eficiencia espectral obtenida por este tipo de LD-STBC. Es importante remarcar que la eficiencia espectral es una cantidad aleatoria, ya que es una función de los códigos aleatorios anteriormente descritos. Sin embargo, cuando las dimensiones de las matrices crecen infinitamente pero manteniendo constante la tasa del código (relación entre número de símbolos de la fuente sobre el número de símbolos de los relays), la eficiencia espectral converge rápidamente hacia una cantidad determinista. Este resultado se demuestra usando la teoría de las matrices aleatorias. Por esta razón, el sistema se analiza aproximando la eficiencia espectral con su limite. Por ejemplo, la comparación con el canal directo entre fuente y destino permite definir unas condiciones suficientes en donde el sistema con relays es superior a la comunicación punto a punto.Posteriormente se debe analizar la probabilidad de outage, es decir la probabilidad de que, debido a la baja calidad del canal, la eficiencia espectral sea menor que la velocidad de transmisión solicitada por el sistema. Como ya se ha mencionado anteriormente, los relays se introducen para aumentar la diversidad del canal y, con ella, el número de caminos independientes entre la fuente y el receptor, reduciendo la probabilidad de outage. Para los LD-STBC i.i.d. las prestaciones en términos de outage dependen del tipo de relay (amplify and forward o decode and forward) y son función de la tasa del código, que debe ser cuidadosamente elegida para maximizar el orden de diversidad sin desperdiciar demasiados recursos.Finalmente, en el último capítulo de la tesis se considera otro tipo de LD-STBC, distinto del i.i.d. analizado hasta ahora. En este caso, las matrices de dispersión lineal siguen siendo independientes la una de la otra pero se añade la restricción de que cada una tenga columnas (o filas, según la tasa del código) ortogonales. Así, se consigue que el código siga siendo flexible con respecto a las variaciones en el número de usuarios, pero su estructura permite reducir la interferencia generada por cada relay, como se puede notar comparando su eficiencia espectral con la eficiencia espectral obtenida por el código i.i.d. Cabe destacar que el análisis asintótico de estos códigos (llamados isométricos) se basa en herramientas matemáticas más sofisticadas que las anteriores y, por lo tanto, es necesario un estudio más profundo para poder entender cómo se comporta en términos de outage. / In the last decade, cooperation among multiple terminals has been seen as one of the more promising strategies to improve transmission speed in wireless communications networks. Basically, the idea is to mimic an antenna array and apply distributed versions of well-known space-diversity techniques. In this context, the simplest cooperative scheme is the relay channel: all the terminals (relays) that overhear a point-to-point communication between a source and a destination may decide to aid the source by forwarding (relaying) its message.In a mobile system, it is common to assume that the relays do not have any information about the channel between them and the destination. Under this hypothesis, the best solution to exploit the diversity offered by multiple transmitting antennas is to use space-time coding (STC). However, classical STC's are designed for systems with a fixed and usually low number of antennas. Thus, they are not suitable for relaying in most mobile communications systems where the number of terminals is potentially large and may vary as users join or leave the network. For each new configuration, a new code has to be chosen and notified to the relays, introducing a set-up overhead of signaling traffic.In this dissertation we will propose and analyze a randomized distributed linear-dispersion space-time block code (LD-STBC): each relay is assigned a specific matrix which linearly transforms (left-multiplies) the column vector of source symbols. Each matrix is independently generated and does not depend on the total number of transmitters, which can thus change without interrupting data transmission for a new code--relay assignment.The more intuitive way to build independent linear-dispersion matrices is to fill them with independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) random variables. Therefore, we will first consider these i.i.d. codes and characterize the resulting spectral efficiency. In order to analyze the performance achieved by the system, we consider a large-system analysis based on random matrix theory. We will show that the random spectral efficiency (function of the random linear-dispersion matrices) converges almost surely to a deterministic quantity when the dimensions of the code grow indefinitely while keeping constant the coding rate. Since convergence is very fast, the random spectral efficiency will be approximated by the deterministic limit in the subsequent analysis. By comparison with the direct link, sufficient conditions are derived for the superiority of relaying.Next, we will analyze the outage probability of the system, that is the probability that the spectral efficiency falls below a given target rate due to channel fading. The main purpose of diversity techniques is to introduce alternative paths from the source to the destination, so that data transmission does not fail when the direct link undergoes deep fading. We will show that the diversity behavior of LD-STBC relaying mainly depends on both the coding rate and the relaying strategy (amplify and forward or decode and forward). It is then important to choose the coding rate that maximizes the diversity order without wasting too many resources.To conclude the dissertation, we will consider a different code based on independent isometric Haar-distributed random linear-dispersion matrices. Thenew code maintains the flexibility of the previous one with respect to variations in the number of relays. However, the more complex structure of the codes allows a noticeable reduction of the interference generated by the relays. Unfortunately, isometric codes also require more sophisticated mathematical tools for their asymptotic analysis. For this reason, we simply introduce the problem by showing that it is possible to have some spectral-efficiency gain with respect to i.i.d. codes. The outage-probability analysis requires a more thorough understanding and will be the subject of future work.

The reliability and data rate of wireless communication have traditionally been limited by the presence of multipath fading in wireless channels. However, dramatic performance improvements can be obtained by the use of multiple transmit and receive antennas. Specifically, multiple antennas increase reliability by providing diversity gain, namely greater immunity to deep channel fades. They also increase data rates by providing multiplexing gain, i.e., the ability to multiplex multiple symbols in one signaling interval. Harvesting the potential benefits of multiple antennas requires the use of specially designed space-time codes at the transmitter front-end. Space-time codes introduce redundancy in the transmitted signal across two dimensions, namely multiple transmit antennas and multiple signaling intervals. In this work, we focus on linear space-time codes, which linearly combine the real and imaginary parts of their complex inputs to obtain transmit vectors for multiple signaling intervals. We aim to design optimum linear space-time codes. Optimality metrics and design principles for space-time codes are shown to depend strongly on the codes' function in the overall transmitter architecture. We consider two cases, depending on whether or not the space-time code is complemented by a powerful outer error-control code. In the absence of an outer code, the multiplexing gain of a space-time code is measured by its rate, while its diversity gain is measured by its raw diversity order. To maximize multiplexing and diversity gains, the space-time code must have maximum possible rate and raw diversity order. We show that there is an infinite set of maximum-rate codes, almost all of which also have maximum raw diversity order. However, different codes in this set have different error rate for a given input alphabet and SNR. Therefore, we develop analytical and numerical optimization techniques to find the code in this set which has the minimum union bound on error rate. Simulation results indicate that optimized codes yield significantly lower error rates than unoptimized codes, at the same data rate and SNR. In a concatenated architecture, a powerful outer code introduces redundancy in the space-time code inputs, obtaining additional diversity. Thus, the raw diversity order of the space-time inner code is only a lower limit to the total diversity order of the concatenated transmitter. On the other hand, we show that the rate of the space-time code places an upper limit on the multiplexing ability of the concatenated architecture. We conclude that space-time inner codes should have maximum possible rate but need not have high raw diversity order. In particular, the serial-to-parallel converter, which introduces no redundancy at all, is a near-optimum space-time inner code. This claim is supported by simulation results. On the receiver side, we generalize the well known sphere decoder to develop new detection algorithms for stand-alone space-time codes. These new algorithms are extended to obtain efficient soft-output decoding algorithms for space-time inner codes.

This thesis investigates channel-coded physical layer network coding, in which the relay directly transforms the noisy superimposed channel-coded packets received from the two end nodes, to the network-coded combination of the source packets. This is in contrast to the traditional multiple-access problem, in which the goal is to obtain each message explicitly at the relay. Here, the end nodes $A$ and $B$ choose their symbols, $S_A$ and $S_B$, from a small non-binary field, $\mathbb{F}$, and use non-binary PSK constellation mapper during the transmission phase. The relay then directly decodes the network-coded combination ${aS_A+bS_B}$ over $\mathbb{F}$ from the noisy superimposed channel-coded packets received from two end nodes. Trying to obtain $S_A$ and $S_B$ explicitly at the relay is overly ambitious when the relay only needs $aS_B+bS_B$. For the binary case, the only possible network-coded combination, ${S_A+S_B}$ over the binary field, does not offer the best performance in several channel conditions. The advantage of working over non-binary fields is that it offers the opportunity to decode according to multiple decoding coefficients $(a,b)$. As only one of the network-coded combinations needs to be successfully decoded, a key advantage is then a reduction in error probability by attempting to decode against all choices of decoding coefficients. In this thesis, we compare different constellation mappers and prove that not all of them have distinct performance in terms of frame error rate. Moreover, we derive a lower bound on the frame error rate performance of decoding the network-coded combinations at the relay. Simulation results show that if we adopt concatenated Reed-Solomon and convolutional coding or low density parity check codes at the two end nodes, our non-binary constellations can outperform the binary case significantly in the sense of minimizing the frame error rate and, in particular, the ternary constellation has the best frame error rate performance among all considered cases.

Submitted by Fabio Sobreira Campos da Costa (fabio.sobreira@ufpe.br) on 2017-03-08T12:29:03Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) JOAO VICTOR DE CARVALHO EVANGELISTA_DISSERTACAO_VERSAO_FINAL_2016.pdf: 4051425 bytes, checksum: c53a5039b8aa3054c77f2ee82a10849f (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-03-08T12:29:03Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 1232 bytes, checksum: 66e71c371cc565284e70f40736c94386 (MD5) JOAO VICTOR DE CARVALHO EVANGELISTA_DISSERTACAO_VERSAO_FINAL_2016.pdf: 4051425 bytes, checksum: c53a5039b8aa3054c77f2ee82a10849f (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-08-16 / Message authentication, which ensures that a received message comes from its acclaimed sender, is of fundamental importance for secure communication systems. We consider in this work a physical layer authentication system employing tag signals embedded in the message to provide a robust authentication method. This work diverges from previous work in the area when it comes to the tag generation method. While the previous works use methods based on cryptographic hash functions or on the channel side information our system employs unidimensional chaotic maps to generate these tags. Due to the loss of information about the initial condition of chaotic maps, we show that they are strong candidates for the tag generation process. We prove that chaotic tags provide a positive lower bound on the unconditional security of the system. Additionally, we calculate the probability of success for three possible attacks to the authentication system: impersonation, substitution and replay.Finally, we analyze how the system parameters affect these probabilities and some performance metrics (bit error rate, outage probability, probability of false negative) and explore the tradeoff between security and performance in order to provide guidelines to design the system. / A autenticação de mensagem, o que garante que uma mensagem recebida vem de seu aclamado remetente, é de fundamental importância para sistemas de comunicação seguros. Neste contexto, considera-se neste trabalho um sistema de autenticação em camada física empregando tags embutidos nas mensagens proporcionando um robusto método de autenticação. Este trabalho diverge de trabalhos anteriores na área no que se refere ao método de geração de tags. Enquanto os trabalhos anteriores utilizam métodos baseados em funções criptográficas de hash e na informação do estado do canal, nosso sistema emprega mapas caóticos unidimensionais para gerar os tags. Devido ao fato de que a informação sobre a condição inicial se perde ao longo de uma órbita caótica mostraremos que elas são fortes candidatas para o processo de geração de tags. Provamos que tags caóticos garantem um limitante inferior positivo na segurança incondicional do sistema. Adicionalmente, nós calculamos a probabilidade de sucesso de três tipos de ataque: de personificação, de substituição e de repetição. Para finalizar, analisamos como os parâmetros do sistema afetam essas probabilidades e algumas métricas de performance (taxa de erro por bit, probabilidade de interrupção e probabilidade de falso negativo) e os compromissos entre segurança e performance para prover um guia de projeto do sistema.

Submitted by Geandra Rodrigues (geandrar@gmail.com) on 2018-03-23T12:51:48Z No. of bitstreams: 1 vinciuslagrotarodriguesdacosta.pdf: 1396401 bytes, checksum: cb024a49d0816c8df51709de3243f9be (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Adriana Oliveira (adriana.oliveira@ufjf.edu.br) on 2018-03-23T13:03:30Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 vinciuslagrotarodriguesdacosta.pdf: 1396401 bytes, checksum: cb024a49d0816c8df51709de3243f9be (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2018-03-23T13:03:30Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 vinciuslagrotarodriguesdacosta.pdf: 1396401 bytes, checksum: cb024a49d0816c8df51709de3243f9be (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-12-15 / Esta dissertação descreve o protótipo de um transceptor banda estreita (narrowband - NB) hybrid power line communication (PLC)/Wireless (NB hybrid PLC/Wireless), o qual utiliza a rede de energia elétrica e o ar, em paralelo, para transmissão de dados, visando aplicações de redes inteligentes (smart grid - SG) e Internet das Coisas (Internet of Things - IoT). Nesse protótipo é introduzida uma versão aprimorada e adaptada do padrão IEEE 1901.2, contemplando a subcamada de controle de acesso ao meio (medium access control - MAC) e da camada física (physical - PHY) para transmissão de dados por ambos os meios de comunicação. O aprimoramento é baseado no uso da transformada de Hilbert para a recuperação da informação em quadratura em ambos os canais, possibilitando a estimação do desvio de frequência entre os clocks do transmissor e do receptor. Uma das adaptações no padrão IEEE 1901.2 é a introdução do protocolo de roteamento, o qual possibilita o transceptor a se comunicar com nós a dois ou mais saltos de distância entre eles. A outra adaptação é a implementação de uma técnica de correção de pacotes com erro a nível de camada de enlace, a qual combina os pacotes com erros recebidos pelas interfaces PLC e/ou wireless e corrige-os, dentro de uma certa capacidade. Importante ressaltar que o transceptor NB hybrid PLC/Wireless é capaz de interoperar com o transceptor NB PLC baseados no padrão IEEE 1901.2. O protótipo do transceptor NB hybrid PLC/Wireless é implementado usando um dispositivo field-programmable gate array (FPGA) usando uma linguagem descritiva de hardware (hardware description language - HDL), buscando-se a economia de recursos de hardware. Os resultados numéricos discutem o tempo necessário para execução da técnica de correção de pacotes com erros, levando em consideração as restrições de tempo do padrão IEEE 1901.2. Além disso, uma análise de taxa de dados na camada PHY mostra que a implementação está de acordo com o padrão IEEE 1901.2 e pode perfeitamente satisfazer as necessidades de aplicações para SG e IoT. Ademais, a análise do uso de recursos de hardware e do consumo de energia mostram que o protótipo do transceptor NB hybrid PLC/Wireless demanda menos que uma vez e meia os recursos de hardware e o consumo de energia do protótipo do transceptor NB PLC. / This thesis focuses on a prototype of the so-called narrowband (NB) hybrid power line communication (PLC)/Wireless transceiver, which jointly uses power line and wireless channels, in parallel, for data communication related to smart grid (SG) and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. To build the prototype, it is introduced an enhanced and adapted version of the IEEE 1901.2 Standard to implement the medium access control (MAC) sublayer and the physical (PHY) layer to transmit data through both channels. The enhancement is based on the use of the Hilbert transform to recover the quadrature information from both channels, enabling to estimate the frequency deviation between the transmitter and receiver’s clocks. One adaptation in the IEEE 1901.2 Standard is the introduction of a routing protocol, which enables the transceivers to communication with nodes two hops or farther from each other. The other adaptation is the implementation of a packet error correction technique at the link layer level, which combines packets with errors received from PLC and wireless media and correct them, under certain constraint. Moreover, relevant is the fact that the NB hybrid PLC/Wireless transceiver is compatible with the NB PLC transceiver based on the IEEE 1901.2 Standard. The NB hybrid PLC/Wireless transceiver prototype is implemented in a field-programmable gate array (FPGA) device and details about the implementation, using a hardware description language (HDL), are provided, highlighting the pursuit of hardware resource savings. Numeric results discuss the time analysis of the packet error correction technique, calculating its maximum capacity of correction taking into account the IEEE 1901.2 Standard time constraints. Furthermore, a PHY layer data-rate analysis shows that the implementation agree with the IEEE 1901.2 Standard and can perfectly satisfy the needs of SG and IoT applications. In addition, the hardware resource usage and power consumption analysis show that the NB hybrid PLC/Wireless transceiver prototype demands less than one and a half times the hardware resource usage and power consumption of the NB PLC transceiver prototype.