We introduce the notion of diversity order as a performance measure for distributed radar systems. We define the diversity order of a radar network as the slope of the probability of detection (PD) versus SNR evaluated at PD =0.5. We prove that the communication bandwidth between the sensors and the fusion center does not affect the growth in diversity order. We also prove that the OR rule leads to the best performance and its diversity order grows as (log K). We then introduce the notion of a random radar network to study the effect of geometry on overall system performance. We approximate the distribution of the SINR at each sensor by an exponential distribution, and we derive the moments for a specific system model. We then analyze multistatic systems and prove that each sensor should be large enough to cancel the interference in order to exploit the available spatial diversity.

Space-time coding techniques are widely used in multiple-input multiple-output communication systems to mitigate the effect of multipath fading in wireless channels. An important subset of space-time codes are linear dispersion (LD) codes, which are used for quasi-static Rayleigh flat fading channels when the channel state information (CSI) is only available at the receiver side. In this thesis, we propose a new receiver structure for LD codes. We suggest to use widely-linear minimum-mean-squared-error (WL-MMSE) estimates of the transmitted symbols in lieu of the sufficient statistics for maximum likelihood (ML) detection of these symbols. This structure offers both optimal and suboptimal operation modes. The structures of the proposed receivers in both modes are derived for general LD codes. As special cases, we study two important subsets of LD codes, namely orthogonal and quasi-orthogonal codes, and examine the performance of the proposed receivers for these codes.

We introduce the notion of diversity order as a performance measure for distributed radar systems. We define the diversity order of a radar network as the slope of the probability of detection (PD) versus SNR evaluated at PD =0.5. We prove that the communication bandwidth between the sensors and the fusion center does not affect the growth in diversity order. We also prove that the OR rule leads to the best performance and its diversity order grows as (log K). We then introduce the notion of a random radar network to study the effect of geometry on overall system performance. We approximate the distribution of the SINR at each sensor by an exponential distribution, and we derive the moments for a specific system model. We then analyze multistatic systems and prove that each sensor should be large enough to cancel the interference in order to exploit the available spatial diversity.

Space-time coding techniques are widely used in multiple-input multiple-output communication systems to mitigate the effect of multipath fading in wireless channels. An important subset of space-time codes are linear dispersion (LD) codes, which are used for quasi-static Rayleigh flat fading channels when the channel state information (CSI) is only available at the receiver side. In this thesis, we propose a new receiver structure for LD codes. We suggest to use widely-linear minimum-mean-squared-error (WL-MMSE) estimates of the transmitted symbols in lieu of the sufficient statistics for maximum likelihood (ML) detection of these symbols. This structure offers both optimal and suboptimal operation modes. The structures of the proposed receivers in both modes are derived for general LD codes. As special cases, we study two important subsets of LD codes, namely orthogonal and quasi-orthogonal codes, and examine the performance of the proposed receivers for these codes.

The thesis focuses on special space--time computational techniquesintroduced recently for computational aerodynamics modeling of flapping wings of an actual locust. These techniques complement the Deforming-Spatial-Domain/Stabilized Space--Time (DSD/SST) formulation, which is the core computational technique. The DSD/SST formulation was developed for flows with moving interfaces, and the version used in the computations is "DST/SST-VMST," which is the space--time version of the residual-based variational multiscale (VMS) method. The special space--time techniques are based on using NURBS basis functions for the temporal representation of the motion of the locust wings. The motion data is extracted from the high-speed video recordings of a locust in a wind tunnel. In addition, temporal NURBS basis functions are used in representation of the motion of the volume meshes computed and also in remeshing. These ingredients provide an accurate and e fficient way of dealing with the wind tunnel data and the mesh. The thesis includes a detailed study on how the spatial and temporal resolutions influence the quality of the numerical solution.

Although there already exists a rich literature on cooperative diversity, current results are mainly restricted to the conventional assumption of additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). AWGN model realistically represents the thermal noise at the receiver, but ignores the impulsive nature of atmospheric noise, electromagnetic interference, or man-made noise which might be dominant in many practical applications. In this thesis, we investigate the performance of cooperative communication over Rayleigh fading channels in the presence of impulsive noise modeled by Middleton Class A noise. We consider a multi-relay network with amplify-and-forward relaying and orthogonal cooperation protocol. As for the coding across the relays, we employ either space-time coding or repetition coding. For each scheme, we assume various scenarios based on relays’ location and quantify the diversity advantages through the derivation of the pairwise error probability. Based on the minimization of a union bound on the error rate performance, we further propose optimal power allocation schemes and demonstrate significant performance gains over their counterparts with equal power allocation. We finally present an extensive Monte Carlo simulation to confirm our analytical results and corroborate on our results.

To increase aerodynamic performance, the geometric porosity of a ringsail spacecraft parachute canopy is sometimes increased, beyond the "rings" and "sails" with hundreds of "ring gaps" and "sail slits." This creates extra computational challenges for fluid--structure interaction (FSI) modeling of clusters of such parachutes, beyond those created by the lightness of the canopy structure, geometric complexities of hundreds of gaps and slits, and the contact between the parachutes of the cluster. In FSI computation of parachutes with such "modified geometric porosity," the flow through the "windows" created by the removal of the panels and the wider gaps created by the removal of the sails cannot be accurately modeled with the Homogenized Modeling of Geometric Porosity (HMGP), which was introduced to deal with the hundreds of gaps and slits. The flow needs to be actually resolved. All these computational challenges need to be addressed simultaneously in FSI modeling of clusters of spacecraft parachutes with modified geometric porosity. The core numerical technology is the Stabilized Space--Time FSI (SSTFSI) technique, and the contact between the parachutes is handled with the Surface-Edge-Node Contact Tracking (SENCT) technique. In the computations reported here, in addition to the SSTFSI and SENCT techniques and HMGP, we use the special techniques we have developed for removing the numerical spinning component of the parachute motion and for restoring the mesh integrity without a remesh. We present results for 2- and 3-parachute clusters with two different payload models. We also present the FSI computations we carried out for a single, subscale modified-porosity parachute.

Although there already exists a rich literature on cooperative diversity, current results are mainly restricted to the conventional assumption of additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN). AWGN model realistically represents the thermal noise at the receiver, but ignores the impulsive nature of atmospheric noise, electromagnetic interference, or man-made noise which might be dominant in many practical applications. In this thesis, we investigate the performance of cooperative communication over Rayleigh fading channels in the presence of impulsive noise modeled by Middleton Class A noise. We consider a multi-relay network with amplify-and-forward relaying and orthogonal cooperation protocol. As for the coding across the relays, we employ either space-time coding or repetition coding. For each scheme, we assume various scenarios based on relays’ location and quantify the diversity advantages through the derivation of the pairwise error probability. Based on the minimization of a union bound on the error rate performance, we further propose optimal power allocation schemes and demonstrate significant performance gains over their counterparts with equal power allocation. We finally present an extensive Monte Carlo simulation to confirm our analytical results and corroborate on our results.

The concept of cooperation in communications has drawn a lot of research attention in recent years due to its potential to improve the efficiency of wireless networks. This new form of communications allows some users to act as relays and assist the transmission of other users' information signals. The aim of this thesis is to apply optimization techniques in the design of multi-relay wireless networks employing cooperative communications. In general, the thesis is organized into two parts: ``Distributed space-time coding' (DSTC) and ``Distributed beamforming', which cover two main approaches in cooperative communications over multi-relay networks. <br><br> In Part I of the thesis, various aspects of distributed implementation of space-time coding in a wireless relay network are treated. First, the thesis proposes a new fully-diverse distributed code which allows noncoherent reception at the destination. Second, the problem of coordinating the power allocation (PA) between source and relays to achieve the optimal performance of DSTC is studied and a novel PA scheme is developed. It is shown that the proposed PA scheme can obtain the maximum diversity order of DSTC and significantly outperform other suboptimal PA schemes. Third, the thesis presents the optimal PA scheme to minimize the mean-square error (MSE) in channel estimation during training phase of DSTC. The effect of imperfect channel estimation to the performance of DSTC is also thoroughly studied. <br><br> In Part II of the thesis, optimal distributed beamforming designs are developed for a wireless multiuser multi-relay network. Two design criteria for the optimal distributed beamforming at the relays are considered: (i) minimizing the total relay power subject to a guaranteed Quality of Service (QoS) measured in terms of signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) at the destinations, and (ii) jointly maximizing the SNR margin at the destinations subject to power constraints at the relays. Based on convex optimization techniques, it is shown that these problems can be formulated and solved via second-order conic programming (SOCP). In addition, this part also proposes simple and fast iterative algorithms to directly solve these optimization problems.

In this thesis, we present a new low-complexity receiver with the modified hybrid signature direct-sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) system framework that use the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antennas along with Alamouti¡¦s space-time block code (ST-BC). In the transceiver, the modified hybrid signature is exploited. It is not only used to counteract the inter-symbol interference (ISI) introduced by the channel fading duo to multipath propagation but also very useful for extracting the full channel information in the receiver. For reducing computational complexity, we propose a new modified partial adaptivity (MPA) filter. It is not only having the advantage of subspace-based PA-GSC filter to enhance the system performance but also avoid the computation requirement when the Eigen-decomposition approach was adopted. Next, with the modified transceiver framework, in the receiver, based on the linearly constrained constant modulus (LCCM) criterion, we propose a novel semi-blind multiple detector schemes for MIMO-CDMA systems, which is implementing with the adaptive RLS algorithm and framework in the modified partially adaptive (MPA) generalized sidelobe canceller (GSC) . Our proposed scheme is able to perform the two-branch filterbank of LCCM MIMO-CDMA receiver. Computer simulations demonstrate that the proposed receiver has better performance than the convention CM-GSC-RLS receiver with much lower computational load.