Linearity enhancement, especially within the front end of a wireless receiver IC design, is highly desirable since it allows the front-end to withstand strong interferers from co-existing communication standards or other wireless radiators. We propose an interferer suppression method based on feed-forward cancellation that uses an injectionlocked oscillator (ILO) to extract the interferer from the incident spectrum. The technique is expected to be useful in environments where a strong narrowband interferer appears along with a wideband desired signal, such as ultra-wideband (UWB) and emerging cognitive-radio applications. The ILO is further embedded within a phase-locked loop which provides several advantages including ILO center frequency self tuning and automatic phase alignment between the main signal path and the auxiliary path. An IC that uses this approach is implemented in a UMC 0.18[mu]m RFCMOS process. In measurement, the chip demonstrates 20dB suppression for phase and frequency modulated interferers while maintaining around 18dB power gain and noise figure below 5dB, measured with an off-chip balun for the desired signal. Techniques for canceling amplitude modulated interferers, though not included in the integrated circuit, were also demonstrated with an off chip amplitude control loop. Over 20dB rejection was obtained with AM interferers with properly scaled envelop signal applied to the ILO bias port. A second LNA was connected in cascade with the system to emulate the input stage of a down-conversion mixer and the cascaded P1dB was improved over 16dB with cancellation on. Gain compression above 13dB was also observed when auxiliary path was disabled, at the same input level as the P1dB with cancellation applied. / text

Data dissemination among wireless devices is an essential application in wireless networks. In contrast to its wired counterparts which have more stable network settings, wireless networks are subject to network dynamics, such as variable network topology, channel availability and capacity, which are due to user mobility, signal collision, random channel fading and scattering, etc. Network dynamics complicate the protocol design for optimal data disseminations. Although the topic has been intensively discussed for many years, existing solutions are still not completely satisfactory, especially for stochastic or arbitrary networks. In this thesis, we address optimal data dissemination in both stochastic and arbitrary wireless networks, using techniques of Lyapunov optimization, graph theory, network coding, multi-resolution coding and successive interference cancellation. We first discuss the maximization of time-averaged throughput utility over a long run for unicast and multirate multicast, respectively, in stochastic wireless networks without probing into the future. For multi-session unicast communications, a utility-maximizing cross-layer design, composed of joint end-to-end rate control, routing, and channel allocation, is proposed for cognitive radio networks with stochastic primary user occupations. Then, we study optimal multirate multicast to receivers with non-uniform receiving rates, also making dynamic cross-layer decisions, in a general wireless network with both a timevarying topology and random channel capacities, by utilizing random linear network coding and multi-resolution coding. In both solutions, we assume users are selfish and prefer only to relay data for others with strong social ties. Such social selfishness of users is a new constraint in network protocol design. Its impact on efficient data dissemination in wireless networks is largely unstudied, especially under stochastic settings. Lyapunov optimization is applied in our protocol design achieving close-to-optimal utilities. Next, we turn to latency-minimizing data aggregation in wireless sensor networks having arbitrary network topologies under the physical interference model. Different from our effort for stochastic networks where we target at time-averaged optimality over a long run, the objective here is to minimize the time-span to accomplish one round of aggregation scheduling for all sensors in an arbitrary topology. This problem is NP-hard, involving both aggregation tree construction and collision-free link scheduling. The current literature mostly considers the protocol interference model, which has been shown to be less practical than the physical interference model in characterizing the interference relations in the real world. A distributed solution under the physical interference model is challenging since cumulative interferences from all concurrently transmitting devices need to be well measured. In this thesis, we present a distributed aggregation protocol with an improved approximation ratio as compared with previous work. We then discuss the tradeoff between aggregation latency and energy consumption for arbitrary topologies when the successive interference cancellation technique is in force. Another distributed algorithm is introduced with asymptotic optimality in both aggregation latency and latency-energy tradeoff. Through theoretical analysis and empirical study, we rigorously examine the optimality of our protocols comparing with both the theoretical optima and existing solutions. / published_or_final_version / Computer Science / Doctoral / Doctor of Philosophy

No description available.

Copies of author's previously published articles inserted. / Bibliography: leaves 118-126. / 160 leaves : ill. ; 30 cm. / Title page, contents and abstract only. The complete thesis in print form is available from the University Library. / The subject of this thesis is the improvement of the design of High fidelity (HF) Radio modems by interpreting the high fidelity radio channel from a signal design perspective. / Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Adelaide, Dept. of Electrical and Electronic Engineering, 1996?

No description available.

[pt] Nesta dissertação é investigada, por meio de simulações computacionais, a utilização do conceito de rádio cognitivo considerando a técnica de sensoriamento espectral aplicada às femtocélulas do sistema móvel LTE Release 10 para reduzir os problemas de interferência entre camadas (cross-tier) existentes em um cenário de coexistências das redes heterogêneas (femtocélulas e macrocélulas). Além disso, é investigada a interferência gerada por parte das femtocélulas LTE Release 10 em receptores de TV Digital operando em bandas de frequência adjacentes. Neste caso, além da simulação computacional foram realizadas medições em cenários de coexistência da femtocélula LTE e do Sistema Brasileiro de TV Digital na banda de frequência de 700 MHz. / [en] This dissertation investigates, using computer simulation, the use of spectrum sensing Cognitive Radio concept applied in femtocells of the LTE Release 10 mobile system in order to reduce the interference cross-tier problems that exists in the coexistence scenario of a heterogeneous network (femto-macrocells). Furthermore, the interference produced by LTE Release 10 femtocells in TV Digital receivers operating in adjacent frequency bands was investigated. In this case, besides the computer simulations measurements were performed in an experimental setup implementing coexistence scenarios of the LTE femtocell and the Brazilian Digital TV System at the 700 MHz frequency band.

This thesis has sought to provide another look at RF interference at the fundamental level. While previous interference control and regulation methods have existed in the literature, they were more focused on preventing the interference from happening. On the contrary, we have taken a different approach of correcting the interference once it has happened. This allows the transmitters to be more nonlinear, passive filter design to be eased, and receivers to be aware of interference problems. Under this unifying theme of building intelligent radios where receivers are more cognizant of the transmission environment, we have presented a number of architectures.

Thesis (MEng)--Stellenbosch University, 2014. / ENGLISH ABSTRACT: Technical advances in electromagnetics, signal processing and processing power have led to a significant increase in sensitivity and accuracy in radio telescopes. With this increase in sensitivity, radio frequency interference (RFI) has become a much larger problem. The notable growth in wireless communication as well as self generated RFI has further escalated this problem. In order to utilise the full capabilities of modern radio telescopes, RFI mitigation is required on the captured signals. With the enormous data rates of modern radio telescopes, managing RFI has become increasingly difficult, and in order to utilise the full captured radio spectrum, more accurate RFI mitigation strategies will be necessary. The use of different RFI mitigation strategies is studied in the form of online and offline techniques. This includes Spectral Kurtosis, Spectral Flatness and the Var/SumThreshold method. The special case for RFI mitigation in timing pulsars will also be studied. These techniques are well known in the radio astronomy community; here, spectral kurtosis and spectral flatness will be implemented on the raw data as well as the post correlated data. System speed and accuracy will be the deciding factors when testing these methods as possible solutions to this problem. / AFRIKAANSE OPSOMMING: ‘n Toename in die sensitiwiteit van hedendagse radioteleskope kan toegedra word aan die tegniese bevordering in elktromagnetika en seinverwerking. Die toename in sensitiwiteit het egter tot die gevolg dat radiofrekwensiesteuring ‘n groter rol speel in hedendaagse radioteleskope. Die groei in die gebruik van radioverbindings asook die gevolge van self gei¨nduseerde radiofrekwensiesteuring dra ook verder by tot hierdie probleem. Radiofrekwensiesteuring matiging word toegepas op die opgevangde seine, om sodoende gebruik te maak van die volle kapasiteit van moderne radioteleskope. Die bestuur van radiofrekwensiesteuring word bemoeilik deur die groot hoeveelheid intydse data van die radioteleskope. Meer akurate radiofrekwensiesteuring matigingstegnieke word vereis om die bandwydte ten volle te hanteer. Daar word op ‘n aantal verskillende matingstegnieke gefokus. Hierdie tegenieke kan in twee kategorieë verdeel word, naamlik aanlyn- en aflyntegenieke. Onderafdelings van hierdie kategorieë sluit in: spektrale kurtose, spektrale matheid en “Var/SumThreshold”. Daar word ook na ‘n spesiale geval van radiofrekwensiesteuring matiging gekyk, in die opmeeting van tydsberekening-pulsars. Alhoewel hierdie tegnieke bekend is in die radioastronomie gemeenskap, word spektrale kurtose en spektrale matheid egter toegepas op die rou data sowel as postgekorreleerde data. Daar sal op stelsel spoed en akuratheid gefokus word, om vas te stel of hierdie metodes wel moontlike oplossings bied tot die probleem bespreek.

The Square Kilometre Array (SKA) Project is an international effort to build the world’s largest radio telescope. It will be 100 times more sensitive than any other radio telescope currently in existence and will consist of thousands of dishes placed at baselines up to 3000 km. In addition to its increased sensitivity it will operate over a very wide frequency range (current specification is 100 MHz - 22 GHz) and will use frequency bands not primarily allocated to radio astronomy. Because of this the telescope needs to be located at a site with low levels of radio frequency interference (RFI). This implies a site that is remote and away from human activity. In bidding to host the SKA, South Africa was required to conduct an RFI survey at its proposed site for a period of 12 months. Apart from this core site, where more than half the SKA dishes may potentially be deployed, the measurement of remote sites in Southern Africa was also required. To conduct measurements at these sites, three mobile measurement systems were designed and built by the South African SKA Project. The design considerations, implementation and RFI measurements recorded during this campaign will be the focus for this dissertation.

In this thesis, the process of optimizing Cooperative Spectrum Sensing in Cognitive Radio has been investigated in fast-fading environments where simulation results have shown that its performance is limited by the Probability of Reporting Errors. By proposing a transmit diversity scheme using Differential space-time block codes (D-STBC) where channel state information (CSI) is not required and regarding multiple pairs of Cognitive Radios (CR's) with single antennas as a virtual MIMO antenna arrays in multiple clusters, Differential space-time coding is applied for the purpose of decision reporting over Rayleigh channels. Both Hard and Soft combination schemes were investigated at the fusion center to reveal performance advantages for Hard combination schemes due to their minimal bandwidth requirements and simplistic implementation. The simulations results show that this optimization process achieves full transmit diversity, albeit with slight performance degradation in terms of power with improvements in performance when compared to conventional Cooperative Spectrum Sensing over non-ideal reporting channels. Further research carried out in this thesis shows performance deficits of Cooperative Spectrum Sensing due to interference on sensing channels of Cognitive Radio. Interference Alignment (IA) being a revolutionary wireless transmission strategy that reduces the impact of interference seems well suited as a strategy that can be used to optimize the performance of Cooperative Spectrum Sensing. The idea of IA is to coordinate multiple transmitters so that their mutual interference aligns at their receivers, facilitating simple interference cancellation techniques. Since its inception, research efforts have primarily been focused on verifying IA's ability to achieve the maximum degrees of freedom (an approximation of sum capacity), developing algorithms for determining alignment solutions and designing transmission strategies that relax the need for perfect alignment but yield better performance. With the increased deployment of wireless services, CR's ability to opportunistically sense and access the unused licensed frequency spectrum, without causing harmful interference to the licensed users becomes increasingly diminished, making the concept of introducing IA in CR a very attractive proposition. For a multiuser multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) overlay CR network, a space-time opportunistic IA (ST-OIA) technique has been proposed that allows spectrum sharing between a single primary user (PU) and multiple secondary users (SU) while ensuring zero interference to the PUs. With local CSI available at both the transmitters and receivers of SUs, the PU employs a space-time WF (STWF) algorithm to optimize its transmission and in the process, frees up unused eigenmodes that can be exploited by the SU. STWF achieves higher performance than other WF algorithms at low to moderate signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regimes, which makes it ideal for implementation in CR networks. The SUs align their transmitted signals in such a way their interference impairs only the PU's unused eigenmodes. For the multiple SUs to further exploit the benefits of Cooperative Spectrum Sensing, it was shown in this thesis that IA would only work when a set of conditions were met. The first condition ensures that the SUs satisfy a zero interference constraint at the PU's receiver by designing their post-processing matrices such that they are orthogonal to the received signal from the PU link. The second condition ensures a zero interference constraint at both the PU and SUs receivers i.e. the constraint ensures that no interference from the SU transmitters is present at the output of the post-processing matrices of its unintended receivers. The third condition caters for the multiple SUs scenario to ensure interference from multiple SUs are aligned along unused eigenmodes. The SU system is assumed to employ a time division multiple access (TDMA) system such that the Principle of Reciprocity is employed towards optimizing the SUs transmission rates. Since aligning multiple SU transmissions at the PU is always limited by availability of spatial dimensions as well as typical user loads, the third condition proposes a user selection algorithm by the fusion centre (FC), where the SUs are grouped into clusters based on their numbers (i.e. two SUs per cluster) and their proximity to the FC, so that they can be aligned at each PU-Rx. This converts the cognitive IA problem into an unconstrained standard IA problem for a general cognitive system. Given the fact that the optimal power allocation algorithms used to optimize the SUs transmission rates turns out to be an optimal beamformer with multiple eigenbeams, this work initially proposes combining the diversity gain property of STBC, the zero-forcing function of IA and beamforming to optimize the SUs transmission rates. However, this solution requires availability of CSI, and to eliminate the need for this, this work then combines the D-STBC scheme with optimal IA precoders (consisting of beamforming and zero-forcing) to maximize the SUs data rates.