Multicarrier modulation is a transmission technique that is quite convenient for high data rates in wireless communication. Information symbols are partitioned and parallelly sent over multiple narrowband subchannels. Pulse shaping filters are critically important in multicarrier modulation for determining the characteristics of signal in time and frequency domains. In this thesis, we propose a new pulse shaping approach for multicarrier schemes to increase spectral efficiency in multi-user scenarios. Conventionally, the time-frequency lattice and the prototype filter are designed considering the worst-case of time-varying multipath channel. However, this approach ignores to make use of multi-user diversity and leads to excessive spacings between successive symbols in time and frequency. Unlike the prevalent methods, we investigate user-based filter utilization considering the wireless channel of each user individually to prevent over-design and improve spectral efficiency. Also, this approach is implemented in a denser time-frequency lattice design. Symbols are allowed to be overlapped (depending on time-frequency dispersion of their individual channels) as long as the signal-to-interference ratios (SIRs) observed by all users are kept above a certain level. Employing user-specific filters to enhance SIR of the user exposed to the most interference provides more overlapping flexibility. Therefore, further improvement in spectral efficiency is achieved in our wireless communication system design.

High Altitude Platforms (HAP) has been evolving to make a new history in wireless communications infrastructure. A number of applications and services have been proposed for HAP based communications which advance HAP over terrestrial and satellite infrastructure for future communications. Providing high speed multimedia mobile communications through HAPs to the users of Third Generation (3G) holds strong position using one of the proposed band, 2GHz. In this study we investigated how to improve the performance of 3G serving from HAP over a territory having suburban characteristics. Two proposed channel models, free space loss and shadowing loss, has been used to analyze the performance of HAP systems at 2GHz frequency band for suburban regions. Three different parameters namely antenna bore point, HAP antenna roll off factor and user antenna roll off factor have proposed to improve the performance of HAP systems while considering suburban regions. A scenario has introduced consisting of an ideal suburban and rural region to serve 3G services while emphasizing on suburban region. The number of HAPs required to serve the defined suburban region is restricted to at least three due to elevation dependent losses in the scenario. The three proposed parameters have been used to improve the performance of 3G services over the selected suburban region. Application of the parameters over suburban region gives different performances which can be categorized in different ways. Some of the parameters are more elastic than others for a certain coverage area. We conclude with adaptive application of the parameters for 3G services over suburban area to have improved performance of HAP. / +46720459586