Ultra Wideband (UWB) communication has recently drawn considerable attention from academia and industry. This is mainly owing to the ultra high speeds and cognitive features it could offer. The employability of UWB in numerous areas including but not limited to Wireless Personal Area Networks, WPAN's, Body Area Networks, BAN's, radar and medical imaging etc. has opened several avenues of research and development. However, still there is a disagreement on the standardization of UWB. Two contesting radios for UWB are Multiband Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (MB-OFDM) and DS-UWB (Direct Sequence Ultra Wideband). As nearly all of the reported research on UWB hasbeen about a very narrow/specific area of the communication system, this thesis looks at the end-to-end performance of an MB-OFDM approach. The overall aim of this project has been to first focus on three different aspects i.e. interference, antenna and propagation aspects of an MB-OFDM system individually and then present a holistic or an end-to-end system analysis finally. In the first phase of the project the author investigated the performance of MB-OFDM system under the effect of his proposed generic or technology non-specific interference. Avoiding the conventional Gaussian approximation, the author has employed an advanced stochastic method. A total of two approaches have been presented in this phase of the project. The first approach is an indirect one which involves the Moment Generating Functions (MGF's) of the Signal-to-Interference-plus-Noise-Ratio (SINR) and the Probability Density Function (pdf) of the SINR to calculate the Average Probabilities of Error of an MB-OFDM system under the influence of proposed generic interference. This approach assumed a specific two-dimensional Poisson spatial/geometric placement of interferers around the victim MB-OFDM receiver. The second approach is a direct approach and extends the first approach by employing a wider class of generic interference. In the second phase of the work the author designed, simulated, prototyped and tested novel compact monopole planar antennas for UWB application. In this phase of the research, compact antennas for the UWB application are presented. These designs employ low-loss Rogers duroid substrates and are fed by Copla-nar Waveguides. The antennas have a proposed feed-line to the main radiating element transition region. This transition region is formed by a special step-generating function-set called the "Inverse Parabolic Step Sequence" or IPSS. These IPSS-based antennas are simulated, prototyped and then tested in the ane-choic chamber. An empirical approach, aimed to further miniaturize IPSS-based antennas, was also derived in this phase of the project. The empirical approach has been applied to derive the design of a further miniaturized antenna. More-over, an electrical miniaturization limit has been concluded for the IPSS-based antennas. The third phase of the project has investigated the effect of the indoor furnishing on the distribution of the elevation Angle-of-Arrival (AOA) of the rays at the receiver. Previously, constant distributions for the AOA of the rays in the elevation direction had been reported. This phase of the research has proposed that the AOA distribution is not fixed. It is established by the author that the indoor elevation AOA distributions depend on the discrete levels of furnishing. A joint time-angle-furnishing channel model is presented in this research phase. In addition, this phase of the thesis proposes two vectorial or any direction AOA distributions for the UWB indoor environments. Finally, the last phase of this thesis is presented. As stated earlier, the overall aim of the project has been to look at three individual aspects of an MB-OFDM system, initially, and then look at the holistic system, finally. Therefore, this final phase of the research presents an end-to-end MB-OFDM system analysis. The interference analysis of the first phase of the project is revisited to re-calculate the probability of bit error with realistic/measured path loss exponents which have been reported in the existing literature. In this method, Gaussian Quadrature Rule based approximations are computed for the average probability of bit error. Last but not the least, an end-to-end or comprehensive system equation/impulse response is presented. The proposed system equation covers more aspects of an indoor UWB system than reported in the existing literature.

There is an increasing interest in the deployment of wireless communication systems in vehicles. The motivation for this work is to provide a fundamental characterisation of the in-vehicle Electromagnetic (EM) wave propagation environment, and to demonstrate how this can be used to aid the deployment of wireless communication systems in vehicles. The fundamental characterisation of the in-vehicle EM wave propagation environment presented in this dissertation yields a number of useful outcomes. The instantaneous impulse response of the in-vehicle channel is characterised, which is presented in the form of a statistical model for arriving rays. Noticing that it is impractical to undertake a full statistical characterisation of the time-varying impulse response, the time variation of the in-vehicle channel is instead characterised as a Doppler spread. This approach provides parameters which are sufficient to perform an information theoretic analysis to lower bound the capacity of the in-vehicle channel. For typical operating conditions, it is found that the channel capacity is approximately equal to that of the same channel with perfect channel state information available at the receiver. Having established the fundamental EM wave propagation characteristics for a single in-vehicle wireless channel, the EM properties of the cavity itself are characterised. This is achieved through a thorough investigation into the analogy between vehicle cavities and reverberation chambers, specifically considering the quality factor (and hence time constant), EM isolation, and electric field uniformity of typical vehicle cavities. This approach yields the important insight that the root mean square delay spread is approximately the same for all wireless links in a typical vehicle cavity. Also, that the angular spread of energy received at any given location (away from the cavity boundaries) is approximately uniform, and that over short distances the coherence distance is well defined, and hence Multiple Input Multiple Output antenna arrays should work well in vehicles. To what extent a typical wireless system can exploit this characterisation depends on how well the parameters can be estimated by a typical wireless communication system. This is also addressed, specifically investigating the estimation of the cavity time constant, and channel time variation. It is found that both of these can be estimated well using a typical wireless sensor network system.

Over the last few years, wireless cellular communications has experienced rapid growth in the demand for provision of high data rate wireless multimedia services. This fact motivates the need to find ways to improve the spectrum efficiency of wireless communication systems. Smart or adaptive antennas have emerged as a promising technology to enhance the spectrum efficiency of present and future wireless communications systems by exploiting the spatial domain. The aim of this thesis is to investigate smart antenna applications for Direct Sequence Code Division Multiple Access (DS-CDMA) systems. CDMA is chosen as the platform for this thesis work since it has been adopted as the air-interface technology by the Third Generation (3G) wireless communication systems. The main role of smart antennas is to mitigate Multiple Access Interference (MAI) by beamforming (i.e. spatial filtering) operation. Therefore, irrespective of a particular wireless communication system, it is important to consider whether a chosen array configuration will enable optimal performance. In this thesis an initial assessment is carried out considering linear and circular array of dipoles, that can be part of a base station antenna system. A unified and systematic approach is proposed to analyse and compare the interference rejection capabilities of the two array configurations in terms of the Signal to Interference Ratio (SIR) at the array output. The theoretical framework is then extended to include the effect of mutual coupling, which is modelled using both analytical and simulation methods. Results show that when the performance is averaged over all angles of arrival and mutual coupling is negligible, linear arrays show similar performance as circular arrays. Thus in the remaining part of this thesis, only linear arrays are considered. In order to properly evaluate the performance of smart antenna systems, a realistic channel model is required that takes into account both temporal and spatial propagation characteristics of the wireless channel. In this regard, a novel parameterized physical channel model is proposed in this thesis. The new model incorporates parameters such as user mobility, azimuth angle of arrival, angle spread and Doppler frequency, which have critical influence on the performance of smart antennas. A mathematical formulation of the channel model is presented and the proposed model is implemented in software using Matlab. The statistics of the simulated channels are analysed and compared with theory to confirm that the proposed model can accurately simulate Rayleigh and Rician fading characteristics. To assist system planners in the design and deployment of smart antennas, it is important to develop robust analytical tools to assess the impact of smart antennas on cellular systems. In this thesis an analytical model is presented for evaluating the Bit Error Rate (BER) of a DS-CDMA system employing an array antenna operating in Rayleigh and Rician fading environments. The DS-CDMA system is assumed to employ noncoherent M-ary orthogonal modulation, which is relevant to IS-95 CDMA and cdma2000. Using the analytical model, an expression of the Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) at the output of the smart antenna receiver is derived, which allows the BER to be evaluated using a closed-form expression. The proposed model is shown to provide good agreement with the (computationally intensive) Monte Carlo simulation results and can be used to rapidly calculate the system performance for suburban and urban fading environments. In addition to MAI, the performance of CDMA systems is limited by fast fading. In this context, a hybrid scheme of beamforming and diversity called Hierarchical Beamforming (HBF) is investigated in this thesis to jointly combat MAI and fading. The main idea behind HBF is to divide the antenna elements into widely separated groups to form subbeamforming arrays. The performance of a hierarchical beamforming receiver, applied to an IS-95 CDMA system, is compared with smart antenna (conventional beamforming) receiver and the effect of varying the system and channel parameters is studied. The simulation results show that the performance of hierarchical beamforming is sensitive to the operating conditions, especially the value of the azimuth angle spread. The work presented in this thesis has been published in part in several journals and refereed conference papers, which reflects the originality and significance of the thesis contributions.

Over the last few years, wireless cellular communications has experienced rapid growth in the demand for provision of high data rate wireless multimedia services. This fact motivates the need to find ways to improve the spectrum efficiency of wireless communication systems. Smart or adaptive antennas have emerged as a promising technology to enhance the spectrum efficiency of present and future wireless communications systems by exploiting the spatial domain. The aim of this thesis is to investigate smart antenna applications for Direct Sequence Code Division Multiple Access (DS-CDMA) systems. CDMA is chosen as the platform for this thesis work since it has been adopted as the air-interface technology by the Third Generation (3G) wireless communication systems. The main role of smart antennas is to mitigate Multiple Access Interference (MAI) by beamforming (i.e. spatial filtering) operation. Therefore, irrespective of a particular wireless communication system, it is important to consider whether a chosen array configuration will enable optimal performance. In this thesis an initial assessment is carried out considering linear and circular array of dipoles, that can be part of a base station antenna system. A unified and systematic approach is proposed to analyse and compare the interference rejection capabilities of the two array configurations in terms of the Signal to Interference Ratio (SIR) at the array output. The theoretical framework is then extended to include the effect of mutual coupling, which is modelled using both analytical and simulation methods. Results show that when the performance is averaged over all angles of arrival and mutual coupling is negligible, linear arrays show similar performance as circular arrays. Thus in the remaining part of this thesis, only linear arrays are considered. In order to properly evaluate the performance of smart antenna systems, a realistic channel model is required that takes into account both temporal and spatial propagation characteristics of the wireless channel. In this regard, a novel parameterized physical channel model is proposed in this thesis. The new model incorporates parameters such as user mobility, azimuth angle of arrival, angle spread and Doppler frequency, which have critical influence on the performance of smart antennas. A mathematical formulation of the channel model is presented and the proposed model is implemented in software using Matlab. The statistics of the simulated channels are analysed and compared with theory to confirm that the proposed model can accurately simulate Rayleigh and Rician fading characteristics. To assist system planners in the design and deployment of smart antennas, it is important to develop robust analytical tools to assess the impact of smart antennas on cellular systems. In this thesis an analytical model is presented for evaluating the Bit Error Rate (BER) of a DS-CDMA system employing an array antenna operating in Rayleigh and Rician fading environments. The DS-CDMA system is assumed to employ noncoherent M-ary orthogonal modulation, which is relevant to IS-95 CDMA and cdma2000. Using the analytical model, an expression of the Signal to Interference plus Noise Ratio (SINR) at the output of the smart antenna receiver is derived, which allows the BER to be evaluated using a closed-form expression. The proposed model is shown to provide good agreement with the (computationally intensive) Monte Carlo simulation results and can be used to rapidly calculate the system performance for suburban and urban fading environments. In addition to MAI, the performance of CDMA systems is limited by fast fading. In this context, a hybrid scheme of beamforming and diversity called Hierarchical Beamforming (HBF) is investigated in this thesis to jointly combat MAI and fading. The main idea behind HBF is to divide the antenna elements into widely separated groups to form subbeamforming arrays. The performance of a hierarchical beamforming receiver, applied to an IS-95 CDMA system, is compared with smart antenna (conventional beamforming) receiver and the effect of varying the system and channel parameters is studied. The simulation results show that the performance of hierarchical beamforming is sensitive to the operating conditions, especially the value of the azimuth angle spread. The work presented in this thesis has been published in part in several journals and refereed conference papers, which reflects the originality and significance of the thesis contributions.

Chemical reactions involving small number of reacting molecules are noisy processes. They are simulated using stochastic simulation algorithms like the Gillespie SSA, which are valid when the reaction environment is well-mixed. This is not the case in reactions occuring on biological media like cell membranes, where alternative simulation methods have to be used to account for the crowded nature of the reacting environment. Ion channels, which are membrane proteins controlling the flow of ions into and out of the cell, offer excellent single molecule conditions to test stochastic simulation schemes in crowded biological media. Single molecule reactions are of great importance in determining the functions of biological molecules. Access to their experimental data have increased the scope of com-putational modeling of biological processes. Recently, single molecule experiments have revealed the non-Markovian nature of chemical reactions, due to a phenomenon called `dynamic disorder', which makes the rate constants a deterministic function of time or a random process. This happens when there are additional slow scale conformational transitions, giving the molecule a memory of its previous states. In a previous work, the hTREK1 two pore domain potassium channel was revealed to have long term memory in its kinetics, prompting alternate non-Markovian schemes to analyze its gating. Traditionally, ion channel gating is modeled as Markovian transitions between fixed states. In this work, we have used single channel data from hTREK1 ion channel and have provided a simple diffusion model for its gating. The main assumption of this model is that the ion channel diffuses through a continuum of states on its potential energy landscape, which is derived from the steady state probability distribution of ionic current recorded from patch clamp experiments. A stochastic differential equation (SDE) driven by Gaussian white noise is proposed to model this motion in an asymmetric double well potential. The method is computationally very simple and efficient and reproduces the amplitude histogram very well. For the case when ligands are added, leading to incorporation of long term memory in the kinetics, the SDE is modified to run on coloured noise. This has been done by introducing an auxiliary variable into the equation. It has been shown that increasing the noise correlation with ligand concentration improves the fits to the experimental data. This has been validated for several datasets. These methods are more advantageous for simulation than the Markovian models as they are true to the physical picture of gating and also computationally very efficient. Reproducing the whole raw data trace takes no more than a few seconds with our scheme, with the only input being the amplitude histogram and four parameters. Finally a quantitative model based on a modified version of the Chemical Langevin equation is given, which works on random rate parameters. This model is computationally simple to implement and reproduces the catalytic activity of the channel as a function of time. From the computational analysis undertaken in this work, we can infer that ion channel activity can be modeled using the framework of non-Markovian processes, lending credence to the recent understanding that single molecule reactions are basically processes with long-term memory. Since the ion channel is basically a protein, we can also hypothesize that the some of the properties that make proteins so vital to living organ-isms could be attributed to long-term memory in their folding kinetics, giving them the ability to sample specific regions of their conformation space, which are of interest to biological functions.

Digital technology has made complex signal processing possible in communication systems and greatly improved the performance and quality of most modern telecommunication systems. The telecommunication industry and specifically mobile wireless telephone and computer networks have shown phenomenal growth in both the number of subscribers and emerging services, resulting in rapid consumption of common resources of which the electromagnetic spectrum is the most important. Technological advances and research in digital communication are necessary to satisfy the growing demand, to fuel the demand and to exploit all the possibilities and business opportunities. Efficient management and distribution of resources facilitated by state-of-the-art algorithms are indispensable in modern communication networks. The challenge in communication system design is to construct a system that can accurately reproduce the transmitted source message at the receiver. The channel connecting the transmitter and receiver introduces detrimental effects and limits the reliability and speed of information transfer between the source and destination. Typical channel effects encountered in mobile wireless communication systems include path loss between the transmitter and receiver, noise caused by the environment and electronics in the system, and fading caused by multiple paths and movement in the communication channel. In multiple access systems, different users cause interference in each other’s signals and adversely affect the system performance. To ensure reliable communication, methods to overcome channel effects must be devised and implemented in the system. Techniques used to improve system performance and capacity include temporal, frequency, polarisation and spatial diversity. This dissertation is concerned mainly with temporal or time diversity. Channel coding is a temporal diversity scheme and aims to improve the system error performance by adding structured redundancy to the transmitted message. The receiver exploits the redundancy to infer with greater accuracy which message was transmitted, compared with uncoded systems. Sparse graph codes are channel codes represented as sparse probabilistic graphical models which originated in artificial intelligence theory. These channel codes are described as factor graph structures with bit nodes, representing the transmitted codeword bits, and bit-constrained or check nodes. Each constraint involves only a small number of code bits, resulting in a sparse factor graph with far fewer connections between bit and check nodes than the maximum number of possible connections. Sparse graph codes are iteratively decoded using message passing or belief propagation algorithms. Three classes of iteratively decodable channel codes are considered in this study, including low-density parity-check (LDPC), Turbo and repeat-accumulate (RA) codes. The modulation platform presented in this dissertation is a spectrally efficient wideband system employing orthogonal complex spreading sequences (CSSs) to spread information sequences over a wider frequency band in multiple modulation dimensions. Special features of these spreading sequences include their constant envelopes and power output, providing communication range or device battery life advantages. This study shows that multiple layer modulation (MLM) can be used to transmit parallel data streams with improved spectral efficiency compared with single-layer modulation, providing data throughput rates proportional to the number of modulation layers at performances equivalent to single-layer modulation. Alternatively, multiple modulation layers can be used to transmit coded information to achieve improved error performance at throughput rates equivalent to a single layer system / Dissertation (MEng (Electronic Engineering))--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / unrestricted

Actuellement, la majorité des équipements électroniques prenant place dans nos véhicules s'interconnectent encore par des liens câblés. Or, l'établissement d'un réseau sans fil permet de remplacer ces liens existants. Afin de permettre cette connectivité et pour répondre aux exigences futures, une solution qui accepte suffisamment de débit doit être développée. Parmi les solutions actuelles possibles, l'Ultra-Large Bande est le candidat idéal. De manière générale, cette Thèse se consacre à l'étude de la propagation à l'intérieur d'une voiture. Afin d'évaluer les performances de ce type de système à l'intérieur d'un véhicule, un modèle de canal pouvant reproduire avec fidélité la propagation intra-véhiculaire est nécessaire. De par la similarité entre les environnements, le modèle de canal proposé est basé sur la théorie des chambres réverbérantes. Compte tenu des faibles dimensions de l'environnement et de la proximité des antennes par rapport aux passagers, l'idée est de réduire l'énergie absorbée par ces derniers tout en maximisant celle-ci à la position d'un récepteur visé. Parmi les solutions possibles, le retournement temporel apparait comme une technique idéale pour répondre à ces objectifs. Cette technique permet en effet de focaliser temporellement et spatialement le signal électromagnétique au niveau du récepteur. Dans cette Thèse, une évaluation des performances du RT à l'intérieure d'une voiture est proposée. Cette étude nous a amenés à porter notre attention sur les propriétés spatiales de l'énergie totale portée par un signal utilisant le retournement temporel et, de ce fait, nous proposons un nouveau formalisme de la distribution spatiale de cette énergie. / Current vehicles still use wired links to interconnect the embedded electronic equipment. However, advances in wireless technologies permit to replace these links with wireless personal area networks. To enable this connectivity and to meet the future requirements, a solution that provides sufficient data rate must be developed. One technological candidate that can be used to meet the data rate requirements is Ultra-Wide Band. This thesis investigates the ultra-wideband propagation environment in intra-vehicular environments. In order to evaluate the performances of UWB inside a vehicle, channel models that accurately reproduce the intra-vehicular propagation characteristics are required. Because of obvious similarities, the proposed model is based on reverberation chamber theory. Given the small size of the environment and the proximity of the antennas to the passengers, one goal of intra-vehicular communications is to reduce the energy absorbed by the passengers while maximizing the energy at the position of the intended receiver. Among the possible solutions, Time Reversal appears to be the ideal technique to meet this objective. Time Reversal permits to spatially and temporally focus the electromagnetic signal at the receiver. In this thesis, a performance evaluation of Time Reversal inside a car is proposed. Moreover, a model of the spatial properties of the total energy of a signal using Time Reversal is proposed. / Doctorat en Sciences de l'ingénieur / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

In this dissertation an in-depth study was conducted into the design, implementation and evaluation of a QPSK-based receiver structure for application in a UMTS WCDMA environment. The novelty of this work lies with the specific receiver architecture aimed to optimise the BER performance when possibly sparse data streams are transmitted. This scenario is a real possibility according to Verd´u et al [1] and Hagenauer et al [2–6]. A novel receiver structure was conceptualised, developed and evaluated in both narrowband and wideband scenarios, where it was found to outperform conventional receivers when a sparse data stream is transmitted. In order to reach the main conclusions of this study, it was necessary to develop a realistic simulation platform. The developed platform is capable of simulating a communication system meeting the physical layer requirements of the UMTS WCDMA standard. The platform can also perform narrowband simulations. A flexible channel emulator was developed that may be configured to simulate AWGN channel conditions, frequency non-selective fading (either Rayleigh or Rician with a configurable LOS component and Doppler spread), or a full multipath scenario where each path has a configurable LOS component, Doppler spread, path gain and path delay. It is therefore possible to even simulate a complex, yet realistic, COST207-TU channel model. The platform is also capable of simulating MUI. Each interfering user has a unique and independent multipath fading channel, while sharing the same bandwidth. Finally, the entire platform executes all simulations in baseband for improved simulation times. The research outputs of this work are summarised below: <ul> <li>A parameter, the sparseness measure, was defined in order to quantify the level by which a data stream differs from an equiprobable data stream.</li> <li>A novel source model was proposed and developed to simulate data streams with a specified amount of sparseness.</li> <li>An introductory investigation was undertaken to determine the effect of simple FEC techniques on the sparseness of an encoded data stream.</li> <li>Novel receiver structures for both narrowband and wideband systems were proposed, developed and evaluated for systems where possibly sparse data streams may be transmitted.</li> <li>Analytic expressions were derived to take the effect of sparseness into account in communication systems, including expressions for the joint PDF of a BPSK branch, the optimal decision region of a detector in AWGN conditions as well as the BER performance of a communication system employing the proposed optimal receiver in both AWGN channel conditions as well as in flat fading channel conditions.</li> <li>Numerous BER performance curves were obtained comparing the proposed receiver structure with conventional receivers in a variety of channel conditions, including AWGN, frequency non-selective fading and a multipath COST207-TU channel environment, as well as the effect of MUI</li></ul>. AFRIKAANS : In hierdie verhandeling word ’n in-diepte studie gedoen rakende die ontwerp, implementasie en evaluasie van ’n KPSK-gebaseerde ontvanger struktuur wat in ’n UMTS WKVVT omgewing gebruik kan word. Die bydrae van hierdie werk lˆe in die spesifieke ontvanger argitektuur wat daarop mik om die BFT werksverrigting te optimeer wanneer yl data strome versend word. Hierdie is ’n realistiese moontlikheid volgens Verd´u et al [1] en Hagenauer et al [2–6]. ’n Nuwe ontvanger struktuur is gekonsepsualiseer, ontwikkel en evalueer vir beide noueband en wyeband stelsels, waar dit gevind is dat dit beter werksverrigting lewer as tradisionele ontvangers wanneer yl data strome versend word. Dit was nodig om ’n realistiese simulasie platform te ontwikkel om die belangrikste gevolgtrekkings van hierdie studie te kan maak. Die ontwikkelde platform is in staat om ’n kommunikasie stelsel te simuleer wat aan die fisiese laag vereistes van die UMTS WKVVT standaard voldoen. Die platform kan ook noueband stelsels simuleer. ’n Aanpasbare kanaal simulator is ontwikkel wat opgestel kan word om SWGR kanaal toestande, plat duining (beide Rayleigh of Ricies met ’n verstelbare siglyn komponent en Doppler verspreiding), sowel as ’n veelvuldige pad omgewing (waar elke unieke pad ’n verstelbare siglyn komponent, Doppler verspreiding, pad wins en pad vertraging het) te emuleer. Dit is selfs moontlik om ’n komplekse, maar steeds realistiese COST207-TU kanaal model te simuleer. Die platform het ook die vermo¨e om VGS te simuleer. Elke steurende gebruiker het ’n unieke en onafhanklike veelvuldige pad deinende kanaal, terwyl dieselfde bandwydte gedeel word. Laastens, alle simulasies van die platvorm word in basisband uitgevoer wat verkorte simulasie periodes verseker. Die navorsingsuitsette van hierdie werk kan as volg opgesom word: <ul> <li>’n Parameter, die ylheidsmaatstaf, is gedefin¨ýeer om dit moontlik te maak om die vlak waarmee die ylheid van ’n datastroom verskil van ’n ewekansige stroom te versyfer.</li> <li>’n Nuwe bronmodel is voorgestel en ontwikkel om datastrome met ’n spesifieke ylheid te emuleer.</li> <li>’n Inleidende ondersoek is onderneem om vas te stel wat die effek van VFK tegnieke op die ylheid van ’n enkodeerde datastroom is.</li> <li>Nuwe ontvanger strukture is voorgestel, ontwikkel en evalueer vir beide noueband en wyeband stelsels waar yl datastrome moontlik versend kan word.</li> <li>Analitiese uitdrukkings is afgelei om die effek van ylheid in ag te neem in kommunikasie stelsels. Uitdrukkings vir onder andere die gedeelte WDF van ’n BFVK tak, die optimale beslissingspunt van ’n detektor in SWGR toestande, sowel as die BFT werksverrigting van ’n kommunikasie stelsel wat van die voorgestelde optimale ontvangers gebruik maak, hetsy in SWGR of in plat duinende kanaal toestande.</li> <li>Talryke BFT werksverrigting krommes is verkry wat die voorgestelde ontvanger struktuur vergelyk met die konvensionele ontvangers in ’n verskeidenheid kanaal toestande, insluitend SWGR, plat duinende kanale en ’n veelvuldige pad COST207-TU kanaal omgewing, sowel as in die teenwoordigheid van VGS.</li></ul></p Copyright / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / unrestricted

This thesis aims to contribute to the developments of wireless communication systems. The work generally consists of three parts: the first part is a discussion on general digital communication systems, the second part focuses on wireless channel modelling and fading mitigation techniques, and in the third part we discuss the possible application of advanced digital signal processing, especially time-frequency representation and blind source separation, to wireless communication systems. The first part considers general digital communication systems which will be incorporated in later parts. Today's wireless communication system is a subbranch of a general digital communication system that employs various techniques of A/D (Analog to Digital) conversion, source coding, error correction, coding, modulation, and synchronization, signal detection in noise, channel estimation, and equalization. We study and develop the digital communication algorithms to enhance the performance of wireless communication systems. In the Second Part we focus on wireless channel modelling and fading mitigation techniques. A modified Jakes' method is developed for Rayleigh fading channels. We investigate the level-crossing rate (LCR), the average duration of fades (ADF), the probability density function (PDF), the cumulative distribution function (CDF) and the autocorrelation functions (ACF) of this model. The simulated results are verified against the analytical Clarke's channel model. We also construct frequency-selective geometrical-based hyperbolically distributed scatterers (GBHDS) for a macro-cell mobile environment with the proper statistical characteristics. The modified Clarke's model and the GBHDS model may be readily expanded to a MIMO channel model thus we study the MIMO fading channel, specifically we model the MIMO channel in the angular domain. A detailed analysis of Gauss-Markov approximation of the fading channel is also given. Two fading mitigation techniques are investigated: Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) and spatial diversity. In the Third Part, we devote ourselves to the exciting fields of Time-Frequency Analysis and Blind Source Separation and investigate the application of these powerful Digital Signal Processing (DSP) tools to improve the performance of wireless communication systems.