Reliable wireless networks for high speed trains require a significant amount of data communications for enabling safety features such as train collision avoidance and railway management. Cognitive radio integrates heterogeneous wireless networks that will be deployed in order to achieve intelligent communications in future railway systems. One of the primary technical challenges in achieving reliable communications for railways is the handling of high mobility environments involving trains, which includes significant Doppler shifts in the transmission as well as severe fading scenarios that makes it difficult to estimate wireless spectrum utilization. This thesis has two primary contributions: (1) The creation of a Heterogeneous Cooperative Spectrum Sensing (CSS) prototype system, and (2) the derivation of a Long Term Evolution for Railways (LTE-R) system performance analysis. The Heterogeneous CSS prototype system was implemented using Software-Defined Radios (SDRs) possessing different radio configurations. Both soft and hard-data fusion schemes were used in order to compare the signal source detection performance in real-time fading scenarios. For future smart railways, one proposed solution for enabling greater connectivity is to access underutilized spectrum as a secondary user via the dynamic spectrum access (DSA) paradigm. Since it will be challenging to obtain an accurate estimate of incumbent users via a single-sensor system within a real-world fading environment, the proposed cooperative spectrum sensing approach is employed instead since it can mitigate the effects of multipath and shadowing by utilizing the spatial and temporal diversity of a multiple radio network. Regarding the LTE-R contribution of this thesis, the performance analysis of high speed trains (HSTs) in tunnel environments would provide valuable insights with respect to the smart railway systems operating in high mobility scenarios in drastically impaired channels.

For a long time, ships have relied on navigators that could figure out their course andlocation based on seeing objects around them. However, this approach is limited to thenavigators’ ability, and with the increasing number of ships, this job becomes harder andharder. With these aspects in mind, the new system, the Automatic identification system(AIS), was created as a tool to help navigators to navigate and increase safety on the sea.AIS is an automatic identification system and is designed to send out information aboutthe vessel and its location. This thesis looks at the state of the art of Automatic identifica-tion systems and Digital selective calling systems to evaluate the security aspects of thesesystems. The thesis aims to investigate if these two systems are susceptible to spoofingattacks and what resources are required for creating successful attacks. Two experimentswere used to achieve this aim and answer the research questions. The first one was to eval-uate the Automatic identification system and test different spoofing attacks on that system.The second experiment was to test different spoofing attacks on the Digital selective callingsystem. Both of these experiments used two software-defined radios for the experiments.The experiment results show that some of the attacks tested on the systems were success-ful, and the attacks tested were successfully executed against the created system. Theseattacks were created and performed using two software-defined radios to send and receivemessages. To conclude, the two systems are susceptible to spoofing attacks. However, anattacker can gain the necessary information to create spoofing attacks on the systems, withvarying consequences and some limitations.

Spectrum sharing is possible, but lacks R & D support for practical solutions that satisfy both the incumbent and secondary or opportunistic users. The author found a lack of an openly available framework supporting experimental research on the performance of a Spectrum Access System (SAS) and propose to build an open-source Software Defined Radio (SDR) based framework. This framework will test different dynamic spectrum scenarios in a wireless testbed. This thesis presents our Spectrum Access System prototype, discusses the design choices and trade-offs and provides a proof of concept implementation. We show that an Internet-accessible CORNET test bed provides the ideal platform for developing and testing the SAS functionality and its building blocks and offerss the hardware and software as a community resource for research and education. This design provides the necessary interfaces for researchers to develop and test their SAS-related modules, waveforms and scenarios. / Master of Science / In this information age, the number of wireless devices is growing faster than the infrastructure required to make wireless communication possible. This creates a possibility of not having enough radio spectrum to keep up with this growing demand. To alleviate this issue, there is a need to research and find more ways of efficiently utilizing the current spectrum resources available. Dynamic spectrum allocation is one way forward to archiving this goal. Frequency channels are assigned to devices based on prevailing conditions like device location and availability of channels that would cause low interference to other devices. Spectrum utilization is based on time, frequency and space with devices having the ability to hop to the best channel available. In this thesis, an open-source Spectrum Access System (SAS) was created as a platform through which dynamic spectrum allocation research can be done. The SAS is centralized management system that logs information about the prevailing spectrum usage, and in turn uses this information to dynamically allocate spectrum to devices and networks. This thesis shows how it was implemented, its current performance, and the steps that different researchers can take to add their own functionalities.

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Dynamic Spectrum Access (DSA), also known as Dynamic Spectrum Management, is the method of utilizing a set of spectrum techniques in real time to provide the ability to share wireless channels between Primary (or licensed) users (PUs) and Secondary (or unlicensed) users (SUs). The system is so designed that under normal circumstances, the PUs always get priority, but DSA enables the SUs to use the licensed bands as long as they do not create any interference on the PUs. Hence, the goal of utilizing the spectrum more efficiently can be achieved. Though DSA has been researched extensively as a new concept, it is still under development and several challenges remain unsolved. DSA is recognized as a vital component in 5G-and-beyond network deployment scenarios. Although 5G networks can work in sub-6GHz bands, higher frequency bands (like 28 GHz and 60 GHz) are particularly of interest as they offer much larger bandwidth and regulatory agencies have been announcing licensing plans for these emerging bands. These higher frequency bands could enable extremely high-speed wireless communication by leveraging the gains of highly directional antennas. Smart devices used worldwide has already surpassed 22 billion and is only going to increase in the coming years. Channel allocation and high-speed communication will be the backbone to drive this enormous network of devices, and DSA and directional antenna communication mechanisms will be the key factors governing the future communication infrastructure. In this dissertation, we show how omnidirectional DSA techniques can be applied towards directional cases, i.e., replacing the omnidirectional antennas with directional antennas working in the millimeter wave (mmWave) bands. MmWave enables ultra-high speed transmission and reception, but with some caveats; these antennas should be deployed in line-of-sight (LOS) and a lot of transmission and reception properties depend on how the antennas are aligned, their steering angle, beamwidth and field-of-view (FOV). It is a challenge to take into consideration all of these factors and come up with a solution of ideal signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) combination between a set of transmitters and receivers. This dissertation sets a guideline on how small cell mmWave transmitters and receivers can be deployed in a densely populated area by working in a coalition (such as by smartly allocating channels to coalitions with more users). Mobility and varying orientations of mmWave as part of dynamic coalitions present new challenges we undertake. Hence, an area where this research can be very apt is vehicular networks, leveraging the high-speed communication provided by mmWave networks. Since the nodes in this case, the vehicles, will be primarily in motion, our research can be applied especially, because we are investigating the antenna designs by considering their beamwidths, steering angles power budgeting.

The onset of quantum computing threatens commonly used schemes for information secrecy across wireless communication channels, particularly key-based data-level encryption. This calls for secrecy schemes that can provide everlasting secrecy resistant to increased computational power of an adversary. One novel physical layer scheme proposes that an intended receiver capable of performing analog cancellation of a known key-based interference would hold a significant advantage in recovering small underlying messages versus an eavesdropper performing cancellation after analog-to-digital conversion. This advantage holds even in the event that an eavesdropper can recover and use the original key in their digital cancellation. Inspired by this scheme, a flexible software-defined radio receiver design capable of maintaining analog cancellation ratios consistently over 40 dB, reaching up to and over 50 dB, is implemented in this thesis. Maintaining this analog cancellation requires very precise time-frequency synchronization along with accurate modeling and simulation of the channel effects on the interference. The key sources of synchronization error preventing this test bed from achieving and maintaining perfect interference cancellation, sub-sample period timing errors and limited radio frequency stability, are explored for possible improvements. To further prove robustness of the implemented secrecy scheme, the testbed is shown to operate with both phase-shift keying and frequency-modulated waveforms. Differences in the synchronization algorithm used for the two waveforms are highlighted. Interference cancellation performance is measured for increasing interference bandwidth and shown to decrease with such. The implications this testbed has on security approaches based on intentional interference employed to confuse eavesdroppers is approached from the framework proposed in the motivating everlasting secrecy scheme. Using analog cancellation levels from the hardware testbed, it is calculated that secrecy rates up to 2.3 bits/symbol are gained by receivers (intended or not) performing interference cancellation in analog rather than on a digital signal processor. Inspired by the positive gains in secrecy over systems not performing analog cancellation prior to signal reception, a novel secrecy scheme that focuses on the advantage an analog canceller holds in receiver amplifier compression is proposed here. The adversary amplifier is assumed to perform linear cancellation after the interference has passed through their nonlinear amplifier. This is accomplished by deriving the distribution of the interference residual after undergoing an inverse tangent transfer function and perfect linear cancellation. Parameters of this scheme are fit for the radios and cancellation ratios observed in the testbed, resulting in a secrecy gain of 0.95 bits/symbol. The model shows that larger message powers can still be kept secure for the achieved levels of cancellation, thus providing an even greater secrecy gain with increased message transmission power.

In radio frequency (RF), filtering is an essential part of RF transceivers. They are employed for different purposes of band selection, channel selection, interference cancellation, image rejection, etc. These are all translated in selecting the wanted signal while mitigating the rest. This can be performed by either selecting the desired frequency range by a band pass filter or rejecting the unwanted part by a band stop filter. Although there has been tremendous effort to design RF tunable filters, there is still lack of designs with frequency and bandwidth software-tuning capability at frequencies above 4 GHz. This prevents the implementation of Software Defined Radios (SDR) where software tuning is a critical part in supporting multiple standards and frequency bands. Designing a tunable integrated filter will not only assist in realization of SDR, but it also causes an enormous shrinkage in the size of the circuit by replacing the current bulky off-chip filters. The main purpose of this research is to design integrated band pass and band stop filters aimed to perform interference cancellation. In order to do so, two systems are proposed for this thesis. The first system is a band pass filter capable of frequency and band with tuning for C band frequency range (4-8 GHz) and is implemented in 0.13 µm BiCMOS technology. Frequency tunability is accomplished by using a variable capacitor (varactor) and bandwidth tuning is carried out by employing a negative transconductance cell to compensate for the loss of the elements. Additional circuitry is added to the band pass filter to enhance the selectivity of the filter. The second system is a band stop filter (notch) with the same capability as the band pass filter in terms of tuning. This system is implemented in C band, similar to its band stop counterpart and is capable of tuning its depth by using a negative transconductance in an LC tank. A negative feedback is added to the circuit to improve the bandwidth. While implemented in the same process as the band pass filter, it only employs CMOS transistors since it is generally more attractive due to its lower cost and scalability. Both of the systems mentioned use a varactor for changing the center frequency which is a nonlinear element. Therefore, the nonlinearity of it is modelled using two different methods of nonlinear feedback and Volterra series in order to gain further understanding of the nonlinear process taking place in the LC tank. After the validation of the models proposed using Cadence Virtuoso simulator, two methods of design and tuning are suggested to improve the linearity of the system. After post layout-extraction, the band pass filter is capable of Q tuning in the range of 3 to 270 and higher. With the noise figure of 10 to 14 dB and input 1-dB compression point as high as 2 dBm, the system shows a reasonably good performance along its operating frequency of 4 to 8 GHz. The band stop filter which is designed in the same frequency band can achieve better than 55 dB of rejection with the noise figure of 6.7 to 8.8 dB and 1-dB compression point of -4 dBm. With the power consumption of 39 to 70 mW, the band stop filter can be used in a low power receiver to suppress unwanted signals. The technique used in the band stop filter can be applied to higher frequency ranges if the circuit is implemented in a more advanced silicon technology. Implementing the mentioned filters in a receiver along with other elements of low noise amplifiers, mixers, etc. would be a major step toward full implementation of SDR systems. Studying the linearity theory of varactors would help future designers identify the sources of nonlinearity and suggest more efficient tuning techniques to improve the linearity of RF electronic systems. / Master of Science