En la presente tesis doctoral se ha realizado una serie de aportaciones para contribuir al desarrollo de los sistemas de comunicaciones móviles de tercera generación. Esta nueva generación de sistemas utilizará una técnica de acceso del tipo CDMA y pretende poder garantizar una cierta calidad de transmisión en las comunicaciones. En este sentido, esta tesis presenta nuevas propuestas tanto para el protocolo de acceso al medio (MAC) como para los algoritmos de gestión de los recursos radio (RRM).Las propuestas han sido presentadas, estudiadas y analizadas en diferentes entornos representativos de trabajo y se ha demostrado su validez para su utilización en un sistema real de comunicaciones. Además, por su sencillez de implementación y alta eficiencia en la utilización de los recursos, se ha comprobado que todas ellas son candidatas muy adecuadas para poder formar parte de los estándares en formación para los citados sistemas.Glosando los aspectos desarrollados en la presente tesis doctoral, cabe destacar los siguientes puntos:? Se han estudiado en profundidad las necesidades y requerimientos del interfaz radio en los sistemas de comunicaciones móviles de tercera generación, centrando el estudio en las transmisiones en modo paquete para entornos con acceso CDMA.? Se ha propuesto un nuevo protocolo MAC para trabajar en este entorno de operación. Asimismo, se ha realizado un modelo teórico del protocolo para el análisis de su rendimiento en sistemas genéricos con tráfico homogéneo. Se ha analizado con detalle el modelo para demostrar las propiedades cuasi-óptimas del protocolo, tanto en retardo como en throughput y estabilidad. El protocolo además introduce un concepto nuevo de control distribuido que minimiza la información de control necesaria, mejorando con ello las prestaciones del sistema.? Se han realizado simulaciones por ordenador de un sistema de comunicaciones cuyo MAC es el nuevo protocolo propuesto para verificar la validez del modelo teórico. Se ha comprobado que se minimiza el retardo de propagación, se alcanza la máxima eficiencia en la utilización del canal radio y se mantiene la estabilidad para cualquier carga de tráfico.? Se ha propuesto una estructura de receptor físico para la detección de las secuencias de peticiones de acceso. Se ha analizado el rendimiento del receptor y se han derivado las probabilidades de error en la detección de las secuencias para entornos reales móviles. En esta situación, se ha realizado el estudio de estabilidad del protocolo y se han introducido las modificaciones necesarias para mantener la robustez del mismo, alcanzando el objetivo buscado.? Se ha realizado un trabajo de optimización del protocolo de acceso para mantener sus propiedades para cualquier entorno de tráfico de entrada, haciendo especial hincapié en el peor escenario posible. Este escenario es aquel en el que los usuarios generan mensajes muy racheados de longitud mínima. Se han introducido nuevas mejoras en el protocolo para mantener su rendimiento cuasi-óptimo en este escenario límite.? Se han realizado nuevas simulaciones de sistema por ordenador de cara a demostrar la capacidad inherente del protocolo para manejar situaciones de tráfico heterogéneo donde es posible adaptar las velocidades de transmisión de forma dinámica para mejorar el rendimiento del sistema. Para este cometido se han definido unos modelos de tráfico basados en las aplicaciones más usuales.? Se ha estudiado el comportamiento de un sistema celular de comunicaciones móviles donde el protocolo MAC es el nuevo protocolo propuesto. Se han realizado simulaciones en las que se demuestra que es posible mejorar el rendimiento general del sistema gracias al uso de la información de control que ofrece el propio protocolo en los criterios para la gestión de los handovers y el control de potencia.? Se han propuesto y analizado nuevas estrategias de gestión de los recursos radio, tanto para el subsistema de transmisión como para el subsistema de resolución de colisiones, de cara a dotar al sistema de la capacidad de garantizar una cierta calidad de servicio en las comunicaciones. Estas estrategias mantienen la idea de la gestión distribuida, lo que minimiza la información de señalización necesaria en el sistema. Se han definido unas clases de servicio de comprobación, con sus correspondientes parámetros de calidad y se ha demostrado el correcto funcionamiento del sistema en presencia de tráfico heterogéneo proveniente de todas estas clases. Se ha verificado que se cumplen los requisitos exigidos al sistema, cumpliéndose los criterios de prioridad y garantizando la calidad de las transmisiones.Por tanto, podemos concluir que la presente tesis doctoral se enmarca dentro de los estudios de investigación orientados a ofrecer nuevas aportaciones para ser incluidas en el nivel 2 del modelo OSI de los futuros sistemas de comunicaciones móviles de tercera generación. / This thesis provides some new contributions for the development of the future third generation mobile communication systems. This new generation will use a CDMA multiple access technique and pretends to guarantee a certain quality of service in the transmissions. In this sense, this thesis presents new proposals of Medium Access Control Protocols (MAC) and radio resource management algorithms (RRM).These proposals have been presented, studied and analysed in different representative scenarios and it has been proved their suitability for a real communication system. They are also simple to implement and they have a very high efficiency in the use of the transmission resources. Therefore, all of them are promising in order to became part of the future standards.Summarising the main aspects of the thesis, they are:? The requirements of the radio interface of the future third generation mobile communication systems have been studied in detail, focusing in packet switched mode and CDMA access.? A new MAC protocol has been proposed to work in this scenario. A theoretical model has been developed in order to obtain its performance in a generic traffic situation. The near-optimum properties of the protocol have been demonstrated. These properties affect delay, throughput and stability. The protocol also introduces a new concept of distributed control, which minimises control information, improving the overall performance.? Some computer simulations have been carried out to verify the analytic model. It has been proved that the packet delay is minimised and the channel efficiency is almost the maximum theoretical one. Also, the stability is kept for any traffic load.? A receiver structure for the detection of the access requests has been proposed. This scheme has been studied and analysed, and all the misdetection probabilities have been derived in the presence of a real radio channel with fast fading. The required modifications in the MAC protocol needed to maintain the stability have been introduced and analysed. ? The MAC protocol parameters have been optimised in order to keep the same performance properties whichever the traffic load pattern could be. In particular, the worst case scenario of very frequent short messages has been studied in detail. Some modifications have been proposed and introduced in order to reach this objective.? Some computer simulations have been carried out to demonstrate the inherent capacity of the MAC protocol to operate in heterogeneous traffic situations. Also, a dynamic rate adaptation algorithm has been proposed and analysed to improve the overall performance.? A cellular mobile communications system based on the MAC protocol has been designed and simulated. It has been proved that the control information of the protocol can be used to improve the mobility mechanisms of the system: power control and handover decisions.? New Radio Resource Management strategies have been proposed and analysed, in order to provide the system the capacity to guarantee a certain quality of service in the transmissions.

The scarcity of bandwidth in the radio spectrum has become more vital since the demand for wireless applications has increased. Most of the spectrum bands have been allocated although many studies have shown that these bands are significantly underutilized most of the time. The problem of unavailability of spectrum bands and the inefficiency in their utilization have been smartly addressed by the cognitive radio (CR) technology which is an opportunistic network that senses the environment, observes the network changes, and then uses knowledge gained from the prior interaction with the network to make intelligent decisions by dynamically adapting transmission characteristics. In this thesis, recent research and survey about the advances in theory and applications of cognitive radio technology has been reviewed. The thesis starts with the essential background on cognitive radio techniques and systems and discusses those characteristics of CR technology, such as standards, applications and challenges that all can help make software radio more personal. It then presents advanced level material by extensively reviewing the work done so far in the area of cognitive radio networks and more specifically in medium access control (MAC) protocol of CR. The list of references will be useful to both researchers and practitioners in this area. Also, it can be adopted as a graduate-level textbook for an advanced course on wireless communication networks. The development of new technologies such as Wi-Fi, cellular phones, Bluetooth, TV broadcasts and satellite has created immense demand for radio spectrum which is a limited natural resource ranging from 30KHz to 300GHz. For every wireless application, some portion of the radio spectrum needs to be purchased, and the Federal Communication Commission (FCC) allocates the spectrum for some fee for such services. This static allocation of the radio spectrum has led to various problems such as saturation in some bands, scarcity, and lack of radio resources to new wireless applications. Most of the frequencies in the radio spectrum have been allocated although many studies have shown that the allocated bands are not being used efficiently. The CR technology is one of the effective solutions to the shortage of spectrum and the inefficiency of its utilization. In this thesis, a detailed investigation on issues related to the protocol design for cognitive radio networks with particular emphasis on the MAC layer is presented. A novel Dynamic and Decentralized and Hybrid MAC (DDH-MAC) protocol that lies between the CR MAC protocol families of globally available common control channel (GCCC) and local control channel (non-GCCC). First, a multi-access channel MAC protocol, which integrates the best features of both GCCC and non-GCCC, is proposed. Second, an enhancement to the protocol is proposed by enabling it to access more than one control channel at the same time. The cognitive users/secondary users (SUs) always have access to one control channel and they can identify and exploit the vacant channels by dynamically switching across the different control channels. Third, rapid and efficient exchange of CR control information has been proposed to reduce delays due to the opportunistic nature of CR. We have calculated the pre-transmission time for CR and investigate how this time can have a significant effect on nodes holding a delay sensitive data. Fourth, an analytical model, including a Markov chain model, has been proposed. This analytical model will rigorously analyse the performance of our proposed DDH-MAC protocol in terms of aggregate throughput, access delay, and spectrum opportunities in both the saturated and non-saturated networks. Fifth, we develop a simulation model for the DDH-MAC protocol using OPNET Modeler and investigate its performance for queuing delays, bit error rates, backoff slots and throughput. It could be observed from both the numerical and simulation results that when compared with existing CR MAC protocols our proposed MAC protocol can significantly improve the spectrum utilization efficiency of wireless networks. Finally, we optimize the performance of our proposed MAC protocol by incorporating multi-level security and making it energy efficient.

Recent research has shown that several spectrum bands are mostly underutilised. To resolve the issue of underutilisation of spectrum bands across the networks, the concept of Cognitive Radio (CR) technology was envisaged. The CR technology allows Secondary Users (SUs) to acquire opportunistic access to large parts of the underutilised spectrum bands on wireless networks. In CR networks, SUs may scan and identify the vacant channels in the wireless spectrum bands and then dynamically tune their receivers to identify vacant channels and transmitters, and commence communication among themselves without causing interference to Primary/Licensed Users (PUs). Despite the developments in the eld of CR technology, recent research shows that still there are many challenges unaddressed in the eld. Thus, there is a need to reduce additional handshaking over control and data channels, to minimise large sized control frames and to introduce reliable channel selection process and maintenance of SUs' communication when PUs return to a licensed channel. A fundamental challenge a ecting this technology is the identi cation of reliable Data Channels (DCHs) for SUs communication among available channels and the continuation of communication when the PU returns. This doctoral research investigates in detail how to resolve issues related to the protocol design for Cognitive Radio Networks (CRNs) on Medium Access Layers (MAC) for Ad-Hoc networks. As a result, a novel Reliable and Energy e cient Cognitive Radio multi-channel MAC protocol (RECR-MAC) for Ad-Hoc networks is proposed to overcome the shortcomings mentioned. After discussing the background, operation and architecture of CR technology, this research proposes numerous platforms and testbeds for the deployment of personal and commercial applications of the CRNs. Side by side, optimised control frames and a reduced number of handshakes over the CCH are suggested to extend the transmitting time for data communication. In addition, the reliable channel selection process is introduced instead of random selection of DCHs for successful data communication among the SUs. In RECR-MAC, the objective of every SU is to select reliable DCHs, thereby ensuring high connectivity and exchanging the successful data frames across the cognitive network. Moreover, the selection criteria of the DCHs are based on multiple factors, such as an initial selection based on the maximum free time recorded by the SUs over the DCH channel ranking, which is proportional to the number of positive/negative acknowledgements, and the past history of DCHs. If more than two DCHs have an equal value during the second, third and following iterations, then the DCHs are selected based upon the maximum free time. The priorities of the DCHs are then assigned based on Reliable Data Channels, that is, RDCH 1, RDCH 2, RDCH 3, and RDCH 4 respectively (where RDCH 1 and RDCH 2 have the highest priority, DRCH 3 and RDCH 4 have the next priority, and so on). The impacts of channel selection process and Backup Data Channel (BDC) over the proposed RECR-MAC protocol are analysed in combination with comparative benchmark CR-MAC protocols based on the timing diagrams proposed. Finally, the RECR-MAC protocol is validated by using a MATLAB simulator with PU impact over the DCHs, both with and without BDC, and by comparing results, such as communication time, transmitting energy and throughput, with benchmark CR-MAC protocols.

Le protocole MAC du standard IEEE 802.11p dédié aux réseaux véhiculaires interdit les transmissions simultanées dans une même zone de détection afin d’éviter d’éventuelles interférences entre les véhicules voisins. Cette interdiction entraîne un blocage temporaire de réception de données, ce qui diminue le débit global du réseau. Pour résoudre ce problème, nous proposons dans cette thèse une architecture cross-layer PHY/MAC basée sur un algorithme de sélection d’antennes émettrices et un protocole MAC dédié afin de réduire le blocage. Ce cross-layer permet au récepteur de choisir la meilleure combinaison d’antennes émettrices pour améliorer le débit utile normalisé de chaque lien V2V. L’algorithme est présenté avec une méthode de détection multi-utilisateurs. Cette méthode annule les interférences entre voisins et permet à plusieurs véhicules d’émettre des données simultanément. Le protocole MAC associé assure la coordination entre les véhicules durant les communications. Les résultats de simulation montrent une amélioration du débit utile normalisé du réseau en comparaison au standard actuel. Néanmoins, ces bonnes performances diminuent avec l’augmentation de la densité véhiculaire. Pour pallier à cette baisse, nous proposons de joindre à la première solution une nouvelle architecture crosslayer PHY/MAC. Cette architecture est basée sur un algorithme d’adaptation de la puissance émise en fonction de la densité de voisinage du récepteur. Elle est également accompagnée par un protocole MAC dédié. Les résultats de simulation montrent que cette solution permet à plus de véhicules de communiquer simultanément et ainsi améliore significativement le débit utile normalisé notamment dans les réseaux véhiculaires denses. / The MAC protocol IEEE 802.11p, dedicated to vehicular ad-hoc networks VANETs, prohibits simultaneous transmissions in the same detection area, in order to avoid interference between neighboring vehicles. This prohibition causes a temporary data reception blocking, which reduces the network throughput. To reduce this adverse impact, we propose in this thesis a cross-layer design PHY/MAC based on a transmit antennas selection algorithm jointly with a dedicated MAC protocol. This design allows receivers to select the best combination of transmit antennas to improve the throughput of each V2V link. The algorithm is presented with a multi-user detection method, which cancels neighbor’s interference and allows vehicles to transmit data simultaneously. The associated MAC protocol ensures the coordination between vehicles during the simultaneous transmission period. The simulation results show a significant network throughput improvement compared to the conventional case. However, this improvement is less important in dense VANETs. For this purpose, we propose to join a cross-layer design PHY/MAC based on a transmit power adaptation algorithm. This design allows transmitters to choice the adequate power level based on corresponding receivers density. The simulation results show that this solution allows more vehicles to communicate simultaneously and thus improves the network throughput, in particular in dense VANETs.