IEC 61850 standards are the global standard for communication in substations. It is gaining popularity in power substation automation and will dominate the future substation automation and protection system design. The standards provide new approaches for protection, control and metering function via communication. The secondary circuits in substation are simplified significantly and the massive hardwired cables are replaced by the high-speed process bus which transmit analogue and binary signals with Ethernet messages. However, the conformity of a device with the standards does not necessarily guarantee the interoperability with devices from different manufacturers. The use of devices compatible with IEC 61850 standards presents a challenge to many system integrators, especially due to lack of familiarity with features such as Generic Object Oriented Substation Event (GOOSE), reporting, Sampled Values and the need for system redundancy. To facilitate a smooth implementation, all the features and the data exchanges between devices need to be tested to ensure the system operates correctly. This project was carried out to study the protection performance of secondary schemes with IEC 61850 process bus architecture in substation. The tests were performed including current differential protection and distance protection on a transmission substation of the type used in the UK on the transmission network. The protection schemes were tested under IEC 61850 environment with multi-vendor IEDs like Alstom MiCOM IEDs, NARI IEDs with the OMICRON test set. More tests were carried out to verify the interoperability and the performance of time-critical messages were evaluated under different network architectures. The impact of the background traffic on these two messages was investigated and the response of the IEDs when the Sampled Values packets were lost or overwritten was recorded and provided to utility as a reference. This project also presented a technique to assess the performance of Merging Units from different manufacturers, when operating with Intelligent Electronic Devices (IEDs) performing a distance protection function. The performance of the process bus with parallel redundancy protocol is evaluated using a closed loop approach involving a Real Time Digital Simulator. The results indicate that protection using process bus communication is feasible, and meets grid code requirements when implemented with commercially available products. It was found that process bus operation is robust, even with network traffic conditions far beyond what would be experienced in an active substation.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) recently enabled a myriad of new applications spanning domains from personal entertainment and industrial inspection, to criminal surveillance and forest monitoring. A combination of sensor collection, wireless communication and path planning between multiple distributed agents is the natural way to support applications. Several small UAVs working collaboratively can rapidly provide extended reach, at low cost, and efficiently stream sensor information to operators on a ground station. A significant amount of previous work has addressed each of these topics independently, but in this dissertation we propose a holistic approach for joint coordination of networking and topology (placement of mobile nodes). Our thesis is that this approach improves user-interactive control of UAVs for live-streaming applications in terms of throughput, delay and reliability. In order to defend these claims, this dissertation begins by experimentally evaluating and modeling the wireless link between two UAVs, under different conditions. Due to limited link range, and the need for wide-area operation, the model is extended to encompass a multi-hop topology. We show that the performance of such networks using COTS devices is typically poor, and solutions must rely on coordination of network protocol and topology, simultaneously. At the network layer, we introduce a novel Time-division Multiple Access (TDMA) scheme called Distributed Variable Slot Protocol that relies on adaptive slot-length. We prove its convergence as well as its meliorated performance experimentally validated, namely 50% higher packet delivery. In terms of network topology, we show that without node placement control overall performance of the network is severely penalized, due to natural link asymmetries. We propose a novel protocol, named Dynamic Relay Placement, that is able to do both online link quality model-estimation and in a distributed fashion decide the best location for each network node, increasing throughput by 300%. Finally, we demonstrate the end-to-end system in a multi-vehicle monitoring mission. We show that coordination of multiple UAVs increases the sensor sampling rate up to 7 times in wide areas when compared to a naive approach. This work considers environmental constraints such as wind, as well as the intrinsic limitations of the vehicles such as maximum acceleration.

Relay-assisted cooperative communication exploits spatial diversity to combat wireless fading, and is an appealing technology for next generation wireless systems. Several relay cooperation protocols have been proposed in the literature. In amplify-and-forward (AF)relaying, which is the focus of this thesis, the relay amplifies the signal it receives from the source and forwards it to the destination. AF has been extensively studied in the literature on account of its simplicity since the relay does not need to decode the received signal. We propose a novel optimal relaying policy for two-hop AF cooperative relay systems. In this, an average power-constrained relay adapts its gain and transmit power to minimize the fading-averaged symbol error probability (SEP) at the destination. Next, we consider a generalization of the above policy in which the relay operates as an underlay cognitive radio (CR). This mode of communication is relevant because it promises to address the spectrum shortage constraint. Here, the relay adapts its gain as a function of its local channel gain to the source and destination and also the primary such that the average interference it causes to the primary receiver is also constrained. For both the above policies, we also present near-optimal, simpler relay gain adaptation policies that are easy to implement and that provide insights about the optimal policies. The SEPs and diversity order of the policies are analyzed to quantify their performance. These policies generalize the conventional fixed-power and fixed-gain AF relaying policies considered in cooperative and CR literature, and outperform them by 2.0-7.7 dB. This translates into significant energy savings at the source and relay, and motivates their use in next generation wireless systems.

The future wireless communication systems are required to meet the growing demands of reliability, bandwidth capacity, and mobility. However, as corruptions such as fading effects, thermal noise, are present in the channel, the occurrence of errors is unavoidable. Motivated by this, the work in this dissertation attempts to improve the system performance by way of exploiting schemes which statistically reduce the error rate, and in turn boost the system throughput. The network can be studied using a simplified model, the two-way relay channel, where two parties exchange messages via the assistance of a relay in between. In such scenarios, this dissertation performs theoretical analysis of the system, and derives closed-form and upper bound expressions of the error probability. These theoretical measurements are potentially helpful references for the practical system design. Additionally, several novel transmission methods including block relaying, permutation modulations for the physical-layer network coding, are proposed and discussed. Numerical simulation results are presented to support the validity of the conclusions.

A bidirectional two-hop relay network with decode-and-forward strategy is implemented using GNU Radio (software) and several USRPs (hardware) on Ubuntu (operating system). The relay communication system is comprised of three nodes; Base Station A, Base Station B, and Relay Station (the intermediate node). During the first time slot, Base Station A and Base Station B will each transmit data, e.g., a JPEG file, to Relay Station using DBPSK modulation and FDMA. For the final time slot, Relay Station will perform a bitwise XOR of the data, and transmit the XORed data to Base Station A and Base Station B, where the received data is decoded by performing another XOR operation with the original data.

Given the exponentially increasing number of connected devices to the network which will lead to a larger number of installed celluar towers and base stations that are in closer proximity to one another when compared to the current cellular network setup, and the increasing demand of higher data rates by end users, it becomes essential to investigate new methods that will more effectively mitigate the larger interference introduced by the more packed celluar grid and that result in higher data rates. This paper investigates using Device-to-Device communication where neighboring users can cooperate to mitigate the correlated interference they both receive, where one user acts as a relay and the other as the intended destination of a broadcast message sent by the source base station. The setup studied utalizes a non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme and a combined decode-forward and compress-forward relaying scheme. We show that this combined scheme outperforms the individual schemes for some channels and network setups, or reduces to either scheme when the combination does not offer any achievable rate gains. The performance of each scheme is measured with respect to the locations of the base station and the two devices, and to the capacity of the digital link between the users.

Current CubeSat communication technology limits the amount of time, and number of accesses with ground stations. It has been proposed to use a constellation of CubeSats to improve relay performance and increase the number of accesses between a CubeSat and ground stations. By using the spatial and temporal analysis features of STK, coupled with the STK/Matlab interface a robust tool was created to analyze the performance of CubeSat constellations based on a store-and-forward communications model which is not currently supported by the STK Engine. Utilizing the Connect messaging format through a socket connection on the local machine, a Matlab graphical user interface, called SATCAT, was constructed in order to provide a user with the ability to control many aspects of the STK Engine externally. A function was created to use three Time Ordered Access (TOA) reports from STK to determine how long it would take for data to be relayed from a target to a ground station through a constellation of CubeSats. Three sample scenarios were created to demonstrate the use and performance analysis capabilities of SATCAT. The performance of a single CubeSat was analyzed and compared to the performance of a three CubeSat constellation and a thirty-seven CubeSat constellation. It was shown that a constellation of three CubeSats decreased the average relay time from 328 minutes to 149 minutes and a constellation of thirty-seven CubeSats further reduced the average relay time to only 3 minutes. While decreasing the average relay time, the constellation of three CubeSats also increased the number of accesses over a twenty-four hour period from 6 to 36, and the constellation of thirty-seven CubeSats allowed for 564 accesses.

L'hétérogénéité et l’irrégularité croissante des déploiements des réseaux sans fil de nouvelles générations soulèvent des défis importants dans l’évaluation de performances de ces réseaux. Les modèles classiques s’appuyant sur des modèles hexagonaux pour décrire les emplacements géographiques des nœuds de transmission sont difficilement adaptables à ces réseaux. Dans ce contexte, il a été proposé un nouveau paradigme de modélisation des réseaux sans fil qui s’appuie sur les processus ponctuels de Poisson (PPP), et de manière générale sur la géométrie stochastique. L'analyse, au travers de ces outils mathématiques, présente une complexité indépendante de la taille du réseau, et permet d’estimer avec précision des quantités pratiques liées aux performances des réseaux cellulaires. Cette thèse a porté sur la faisabilité mathématique de l'approche fondée sur les PPP en proposant de nouvelles méthodes mathématiques d’approximations justes incorporant des modèles de propagation du canal radio. Dans un premier temps, un nouveau cadre mathématique, considéré comme une approche Equivalent-in-Distribution (EiD), a été proposée pour le calcul exact de la probabilité d'erreur dans les réseaux cellulaires. L'approche proposée, s’appuyant donc sur la géométrie aléatoire et des modèles spatiaux, montre une complexité faible en terme d’évaluation numérique et est applicable à un grand nombre de configurations MIMO pour lesquelles nous considérons différentes techniques de modulation et techniques de récupération du signal. Dans un deuxième temps, nous étudions les performances des réseaux cellulaires en présence de relais, où trois processus ponctuels de Poisson modélisent respectivement les nœuds relais, les stations de base, et les terminaux mobiles. Pour ce modèle, nous avons considéré des critères souples d'association. Le cadre mathématique proposé et les résultats associés ont montré que les performances dépendent fortement des exposants des fonctions d’atténuation sur les deux premiers sauts sans fil. Nous montrons aussi qu’une mauvaise configuration du réseau peut amener à des gains négligeables de l’utilisation de cette technique. Enfin, nous considérons la modélisation des réseaux cellulaires au travers d’un PPP et d’un modèle unifié d'atténuation de signal généralisée qui prend en compte deux types de liaisons physiques : line-of-sight (LOS) et non-line-of-sight (NLOS). Un modèle de complexité réduite décrivant les propriétés de la liaison radio a aussi été proposée et permet de prendre en compte dans nos calculs un grand nombre de modèle radio proposés dans la littérature. Les résultats montrent, entre autres, qu’une densité optimale pour le déploiement des BS existe lorsque les liens LOS/NLOS sont classés en fonction de leur charge. Nous comparons nos résultats, s’appuyant donc sur un PPP pour modéliser la position des stations de bases et notre modèle de canal radio, avec des simulations de Monte Carlo décrivant des déploiements réels de stations de bases et un modèle de type blocages de construction empiriques. Une bonne correspondance est observée. / The increasing heterogeneity and irregular deployment of the emerging wireless networks give enormous challenges to the conventional hexagonal model for abstracting the geographical locations of wireless transmission nodes. Against this backdrop, a new network paradigm by modeling the wireless nodes as a Poisson Point Process (PPP), leveraging on the mathematical tools of stochastic geometry for tractable mathematical analysis, has been proposed with the capability of fairly accurately estimating the performance of practical cellular networks. This dissertation investigated the mathematical tractability of the PPP-based approach by proposing new mathematical methodologies, fair approximations incorporating practical channel propagation models. First, a new mathematical framework, which is referred to as an Equivalent-in-Distribution (EiD)-based approach, has been proposed for computing exact error probability of cellular networks based on random spatial networks. The proposed approach is easy to compute and is shown to be applicable to a bunch of MIMO setups where the modulation techniques and signal recovery techniques are explicitly considered. Second, the performance of relay-aided cooperative cellular networks, where the relay nodes, the base stations, and the mobile terminals are modeled according to three independent PPPs, has been analyzed by assuming flexible cell association criteria. It is shown from the mathematical framework that the performance highly depends on the path-loss exponents of one-hop and two-hop links, and the relays provide negligible gains on the performance if the system is not adequately designed. Third, the PPP modeling of cellular networks with unified signal attenuation model is generalized by taking into account the effect of line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) channel propagation. A tractable yet accurate link state model has been proposed to estimate other models available in the literature. It is shown that an optimal density for the BSs deployment exists when the LOS/NLOS links are classified in saturate load cellular networks. In addition, the Monte Carlo simulation results of the real BSs deployments with empirical building blockages are compared with those with PPP distributed BSs with the proposed link state approximation at the end of this dissertation as supplementary material. In general, a good matching is observed.

The growing traffic and global bandwidth shortage for broadband cellular communi-cation networks has motivated to explore the underutilized millimeter wave frequencyspectrum for future communications. Fifth generation (5G) is the key to empow-ering new services and use cases for people, businesses, and society at large. Withunprecedented speed and flexibility, 5G carries more data with greater reliability andresponsiveness than ever before. As 5G new radio (NR) begins to take full advantageof the high-band spectrum, i.e, the millimeter wave frequencies, new challenges arecreated. While millimeter waves offer broader bandwidth and high spatial resolution,the drawback is that the millimeter waves experience higher attenuation due to pathloss and are more prone to absorption, interference and weather conditions, thereforelimiting cell coverage.This thesis is an attempt to increase the 5G cell coverage by implementing ananalogue beamforming router in a cell. Beamforming router acts like a relay, whichextends the range of the 5G cell whenever needed, according to the position of theUser Equipment (UE) based on the information received from the gNodeB (gNB,logical 5G radio node). This thesis is investigating the downlink Signal-to-Noise Ratio(SNR) gain and thus possible increase in the data rate. Simulation and validation ofthe overall performance is done using MATLAB. The outcome of this study may beused to increase the 5G cell coverage if it is implemented in a real.

Demand for high data rates is increasing rapidly for future wireless systems.This trend is due to the increase in the number of mobile subscribers that need bandwidth hungry multimedia applications anywhere, anytime. Fourth generation cellular systems like IMT-advanced are being developed to meet these requirements. The unreliable nature of the wireless medium is one of the main hinderance in providing high data rates. Cooperative communication in cellular networks is emerging as a new paradigm to deal with the channel impairments. User cooperation via fixed relays in cellular systems form multiple access relay channels (MARCs) and provide an effective and cost efficient solution to achieve spatial diversity gains. Network resources can be utilized efficiently by using network coding at cooperating nodes. A lot of research work has focused on highlighting the gains achieved by using network coding in MARCs. However, there are certain areas that are not fully explored yet. For instance, the kind of the detection scheme used at the base station receiver and its impact on the link performance has not been addressed. In most cases, the outage probability has been used as a performance measure of MARCs. However, it is well known that the outage probability gives information about the signal availability, but it does not give the complete picture about the reliability of the link and the achieved quality of service. This thesis work looks at the link performance, in terms of symbol error probability, of multiple access relay channels that employ network coding at the relay node. Different types of detection schemes are considered and their performance is compared under different link conditions. Analytical expressions for the average symbol error probability of the cooperating users are derived. Focusing on the uplink of cellular systems, certain rules are devised on how to group users at relay node to ensure mutual benefit for the cooperating users. As a way of improving the link performance of multiple access relay channels and their robustness, the thesis considers constellation selection for the different branches. This method takes advantage of the redundancy between the transmitted symbols created by network coding and the augmented signal space obtained at the base station receiver. The obtained results show that, with a proper selection of the constellation sets, the link performance of MARCs can be improved. The thesis further looks at the interaction between the channel coding schemes of the cooperating users and network coding. It is shown that joint channel-network coding in MARCs can be seen as a product code. This new representation provides considerable flexibility in selecting efficient decoding algorithms at the base station receiver and gives the possibility to use more powerful network coding schemes for MARCs. / QC 20101118 / Sino-Swedish Cooperative Program: IMT-Advanced and Beyond