Over the past decade, wireless data communication has experienced a phenomenal growth, which is driven by the popularity of wireless devices and the growing number of bandwidth hungry applications. During the same period, various advanced communication technologies have emerged to improve network throughput. Some examples include multi-input multi-output (MIMO), full duplex, cognitive radio, mmWave, among others. An important research direction is to understand the impacts of these new technologies on network throughput performance. Such investigation is critical not only for theoretical understanding, but also can be used as a guideline to design algorithms and network protocols in the field. The goal of this dissertation is to understand the impact of some advanced technologies on network throughput performance. More specifically, we investigate the following three technologies: MIMO, full duplex, and mmWave communication. For each technology, we explore the performance envelope of wireless networks by studying a throughput maximization problem. / Ph. D.

Le medium sans fil est une ressource partagée et limitée. Les normes sans fil actuelles partagent toujours le principe de partage du medium Half-Duplex: la transmission et la réception de signaux sont effectuées dans deux intervalles de temps distincts ou deux bandes de fréquences différentes. En outre, l'émetteur-récepteur ne peut émettre et recevoir qu’un signal à la fois. Cette thèse suit une autre approche: au lieu de partager le support avec le principe de Half-Duplex, toute la bande de fréquence autorisée est partagé pour la transmission et la réception simultanée, approche qui est appelée Full-Duplex. Dès lors, on peut concevoir une architecture d'un émetteur-récepteur radio flexible à large bande pour traiter deux types de signaux différents à la fois. Pour approcher cet objectif, nous utilisons une méthode de suppression active analogique de l’auto-interférence (AARFSIC) et l'annulation active numérique d'auto interférence dans le domaine temporel (ADSICT) pour annuler la forte auto-interférence (SI) induite par le principe Full-Duplex. Basé sur la radio Full-Duplex, nous proposons un système flexible Dual-Band (FDDB) émetteur-récepteur radio OFDM-Full Duplex en la combinant avec un front-end RF double bande. S'appuyant sur ces principes, nous exposons trois contributions principales: Nous présentons une technique d’annulation analogique de l’auto-interférence (ASIC), qui peut annuler complètement l’auto-interférence à trajet direct ou multi-trajets, basée sur la combinaison des méthodes AARFSIC et DSICT. Ensuite, nous présentons la conception et l'évaluation d'une radio OFDM Full-Duplex, y compris l'analyse et la qualification de l'impact du bruit thermique et du bruit de phase sur les performances du système. Enfin, nous développons une radio dual-bande FDDB OFDM qui peut fonctionner sur deux fragments de spectre séparés. Afin d'éliminer l'impact du déséquilibre I/Q sur la radio FDDB, une méthode d’estimation des déséquilibres I/Q et de compensation, simple mais efficace, est présentée. La simulation au niveau système menée avec ADS et Matlab montre que cette méthode peut effectivement compenser des déséquilibres I/Q aussi bien élevés que faibles. / The wireless medium is a shared and limited resource. Current wireless standards always share the medium with Half-Duplex principle: the transmission and reception of signals are done in two separate time slots or two different frequency bands. Besides, the transceiver can only transmit and receive one signal at a time. This dissertation takes an alternate approach: Instead of sharing the medium with Half-Duplex principle, the entire licensed frequency band is shared for simultaneous transmission and reception, which we call Full-Duplex. Besides, the design concept for a wideband flexible radio transceiver can process two different types of signals at a time. To approach this goal, we use an active analog radio frequency self-interference cancellation (AARFSIC) method or a combination scheme of the AARFSIC and active digital self interference cancellation in time domain (ADSICT) to cancel the strong self-interference (SI) induced by the Full-Duplex principle. Based on the Full-Duplex radio, we propose a flexible Full-Duplex Dual-Band (FDDB) OFDM radio transceiver by combining it with a Dual-Band RF front-end. Building on these, we make three main contributions: We present an active self-interference cancellation (ASIC) scheme, which can cancel both the strong one-path and multi-path SI completely, based on the combination of the AARFSIC and DSICT. Next, we introduce the design and evaluation of a Full-Duplex OFDM radio, including the analysis and qualification of the impact of the thermal noise and phase noise on the system performance. Finally, we develop a FDDB OFDM radio that can work on two separate spectrum fragments. In order to eliminate the impact of the I/Q imbalance on the FDDB radio, a simple but practical digital I/Q imbalance estimation and compensation method is presented. The system level simulation conducted with ADS and Matlab software shows that this method can effectively compensate both high and low I/Q imbalance.

The demand for wireless data services has been dramatically growing over the last decade. This growth has been accompanied by a significant increase in the number of users sharing the same wireless medium, and as a result, interference management has become a hot topic of research in recent years. In this dissertation, we investigate feedback and transmitter cooperation as two closely related tools to manage the interference and achieve high data rates in several wireless networks, focusing on additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) interference, X, and broadcast channels. We start by a one-to-many network, namely, the three-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) Gaussian broadcast channel, where we assume that the transmitter obtains the channel state information (CSI) through feedback links after a finite delay. We also assume that the feedback delay is greater than the channel coherence time, and thus, the CSI expires prior to being exploited by the transmitter for its current transmission. Nevertheless, we show that this delayed CSI at the transmitter (delayed CSIT) can help the transmitter to achieve significantly higher data rates compared to having no CSI. We indeed show that delayed CSIT increases the channel degrees of freedom (DoF), which is translated to an unbounded increase in capacity with increasing signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR). For the symmetric case, i.e. with the same number of antennas at each receiver, we propose different transmission schemes whose achievable DoFs meet the upper bound for a wide range of transmit-receive antenna ratios. Also, for the general non-symmetric case, we propose transmission schemes that characterize the DoF region for certain classes of antenna configurations. Subsequently, we investigate channels with distributed transmitters, namely, Gaussian single-input single-output (SISO) K-user interference channel and 2×K X channel under the delayed CSIT assumption. In these channels, in major contrast to the broadcast channel, each transmitter has access only to its own messages. We propose novel multiphase transmission schemes wherein the transmitters collaboratively align the past interference at appropriate receivers using the knowledge of past CSI. Our achievable DoFs are greater than one (which is the channel DoF without CSIT), and strictly increasing in K. Our results are yet the best available reported DoFs for these channels with delayed CSIT. Furthermore, we consider the K-user r-cyclic interference channel, where each transmitter causes interference on only r receivers in a cyclic manner. By developing a new upper bound, we show that this channel has K/r DoF with no CSIT. Moreover, by generalizing our multiphase transmission ideas, we show that, for r=3, this channel can achieve strictly greater than K/3 DoF with delayed CSIT. Next, we add the capability of simultaneous transmission and reception, i.e. full-duplex operation, to the transmitters, and investigate its impact on the DoF of the SISO Gaussian K-user interference and M×K X channel under the delayed CSIT assumption. By proposing new cooperation/alignment techniques, we show that the full-duplex transmitter cooperation can potentially yield DoF gains in both channels with delayed CSIT. This is in sharp contrast to the previous results on these channels indicating the inability of full-duplex transmitter cooperation to increase the channel DoF with either perfect instantaneous CSIT or no CSIT. With the recent technological advances in implementation of full-duplex communication, it is expected to play a crucial role in the future wireless systems. Finally, we consider the Gaussian K-user interference and K×K X channel with output feedback, wherein each transmitter causally accesses the output of its paired receiver. First, using the output feedback and under no CSIT assumption, we show that both channels can achieve DoF values greater than one, strictly increasing in K, and approaching the limiting value of 2 as K→∞. Then, we develop transmission schemes for the same channels with both output feedback and delayed CSIT, known as Shannon feedback. Our achievable DoFs with Shannon feedback are greater than those with the output feedback for almost all values of K.

ARINC 664/AFDX (Avionics Full Duplex Switched Ethernet) protocol is a leading onboard communication technology in civil aviation. As AFDX is a new technology, unit cost of the hardware devices are high and protocol is open to changes. This thesis discusses the design of an AFDX End System application for test environment with a software based solution with cheap COTS (Commercial offthe shelf) equipment, explains the implementation of the software and analysis the performance.

The demand for wireless data services has been dramatically growing over the last decade. This growth has been accompanied by a significant increase in the number of users sharing the same wireless medium, and as a result, interference management has become a hot topic of research in recent years. In this dissertation, we investigate feedback and transmitter cooperation as two closely related tools to manage the interference and achieve high data rates in several wireless networks, focusing on additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) interference, X, and broadcast channels. We start by a one-to-many network, namely, the three-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) Gaussian broadcast channel, where we assume that the transmitter obtains the channel state information (CSI) through feedback links after a finite delay. We also assume that the feedback delay is greater than the channel coherence time, and thus, the CSI expires prior to being exploited by the transmitter for its current transmission. Nevertheless, we show that this delayed CSI at the transmitter (delayed CSIT) can help the transmitter to achieve significantly higher data rates compared to having no CSI. We indeed show that delayed CSIT increases the channel degrees of freedom (DoF), which is translated to an unbounded increase in capacity with increasing signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR). For the symmetric case, i.e. with the same number of antennas at each receiver, we propose different transmission schemes whose achievable DoFs meet the upper bound for a wide range of transmit-receive antenna ratios. Also, for the general non-symmetric case, we propose transmission schemes that characterize the DoF region for certain classes of antenna configurations. Subsequently, we investigate channels with distributed transmitters, namely, Gaussian single-input single-output (SISO) K-user interference channel and 2×K X channel under the delayed CSIT assumption. In these channels, in major contrast to the broadcast channel, each transmitter has access only to its own messages. We propose novel multiphase transmission schemes wherein the transmitters collaboratively align the past interference at appropriate receivers using the knowledge of past CSI. Our achievable DoFs are greater than one (which is the channel DoF without CSIT), and strictly increasing in K. Our results are yet the best available reported DoFs for these channels with delayed CSIT. Furthermore, we consider the K-user r-cyclic interference channel, where each transmitter causes interference on only r receivers in a cyclic manner. By developing a new upper bound, we show that this channel has K/r DoF with no CSIT. Moreover, by generalizing our multiphase transmission ideas, we show that, for r=3, this channel can achieve strictly greater than K/3 DoF with delayed CSIT. Next, we add the capability of simultaneous transmission and reception, i.e. full-duplex operation, to the transmitters, and investigate its impact on the DoF of the SISO Gaussian K-user interference and M×K X channel under the delayed CSIT assumption. By proposing new cooperation/alignment techniques, we show that the full-duplex transmitter cooperation can potentially yield DoF gains in both channels with delayed CSIT. This is in sharp contrast to the previous results on these channels indicating the inability of full-duplex transmitter cooperation to increase the channel DoF with either perfect instantaneous CSIT or no CSIT. With the recent technological advances in implementation of full-duplex communication, it is expected to play a crucial role in the future wireless systems. Finally, we consider the Gaussian K-user interference and K×K X channel with output feedback, wherein each transmitter causally accesses the output of its paired receiver. First, using the output feedback and under no CSIT assumption, we show that both channels can achieve DoF values greater than one, strictly increasing in K, and approaching the limiting value of 2 as K→∞. Then, we develop transmission schemes for the same channels with both output feedback and delayed CSIT, known as Shannon feedback. Our achievable DoFs with Shannon feedback are greater than those with the output feedback for almost all values of K.

abstract: Full-duplex communication has attracted significant attention as it promises to increase the spectral efficiency compared to half-duplex. Multi-hop full-duplex networks add new dimensions and capabilities to cooperative networks by facilitating simultaneous transmission and reception and improving data rates. When a relay in a multi-hop full-duplex system amplifies and forwards its received signals, due to the presence of self-interference, the input-output relationship is determined by recursive equations. This thesis introduces a signal flow graph approach to solve the problem of finding the input-output relationship of a multi-hop amplify-and-forward full-duplex relaying system using Mason's gain formula. Even when all links have flat fading channels, the residual self-interference component due to imperfect self-interference cancellation at the relays results in an end-to-end effective channel that is an all-pole frequency-selective channel. Also, by assuming the relay channels undergo frequency-selective fading, the outage probability analysis is performed and the performance is compared with the case when the relay channels undergo frequency-flat fading. The outage performance of this system is performed assuming that the destination employs an equalizer or a matched filter. For the case of a two-hop (single relay) full-duplex amplify-and-forward relaying system, the bounds on the outage probability are derived by assuming that the destination employs a matched filter or a minimum mean squared error decision feedback equalizer. For the case of a three-hop (two-relay) system with frequency-flat relay channels, the outage probability analysis is performed by considering the output SNR of different types of equalizers and matched filter at the destination. Also, the closed-form upper bounds on the output SNR are derived when the destination employs a minimum mean squared error decision feedback equalizer which is used in outage probability analysis. It is seen that for sufficiently high target rates, full-duplex relaying with equalizers is always better than half-duplex relaying in terms of achieving lower outage probability, despite the higher RSI. In contrast, since full-duplex relaying with MF is sensitive to RSI, it is outperformed by half-duplex relaying under strong RSI. / Dissertation/Thesis / Masters Thesis Electrical Engineering 2016

Abstract Lattice codes achieve AWGN capacity and naturally fit in many multi-terminal networks because of their inherited structure. Although extensive information theoretic research has been done to prove the importance of lattice codes for these networks, the progress in finding practical low-complexity lattice schemes is limited. Hence, the motivation of this thesis is to develop several methods to make lattice codes practical for communication networks. First, we propose an efficient lattice coding scheme for real-valued, full-duplex one- and two-way relay channels. Lattice decomposition, superposition, and block Markov encoding are used to propose a simple, yet near capacity achieving encoding/decoding schemes for these relay channels. By using information theoretic tools, we prove the achievable rates of these schemes, which are equal to the best known rates. Then, we construct practical, low-complexity implementations of the proposed relay schemes using low-density lattice codes. Numerical evaluation is presented and they show that our schemes achieve performance as close as 2.5dB away from theoretical limits. The effect of shaping/coding loss on the performance of relay channels is studied. Then, we propose a low complexity lattice code construction that provides high shaping and coding gains. First, integer information is encoded to shaped integers. Two methods are proposed for this task: ''Voronoi integers'' and ''non uniform integers''. These shaped integers have shaping gains over the integer lattice. Then for the second step, we present a general framework to systematically encode these integers, using any high dimensional lattice with lower-triangular generator or parity check matrices, retaining the same shaping gain. The proposed scheme can be used to shape high dimensional lattices such as low density lattice codes, LDA-lattice, etc. Comprehensive analysis is presented using low density lattice codes. By using E8 and BW16 as shaping lattices, we numerically show the Voronoi integers result in the shaping gain of these lattices, that is, as much as 0.65dB and 0.86dB. It is numerically observed that non-uniform integers have shaping gains of up to 1.25dB. These shaping operations can be implemented with less complexity than previous low density lattice codes shaping approaches and shaping gains are higher than in previously reported cases, which are in the order of 0.4dB. Lastly, we propose a low complexity practical code construction for compute-and-forward. A novel code construction called ''mixed nested lattice code construction'' is developed. This code construction uses a pair of distinct nested lattices to encode the integers where shaping is provided by a small dimensional lattice with high shaping gain and coding is performed using a high coding gain and a high dimensional lattice. This construction keeps the shaping and the coding gains of respective shaping and coding lattices. Further, we prove an existence of an isomorphism in this construction such that linear combination of lattice codes can be mapped to a linear combination of integers over a finite field. Hence, this construction can be readily used for any compute-and-forward applications. A modified LDLC decoder is proposed to estimate a linear combination of messages. Performance is numerically evaluated. / Tiivistelmä Hilakoodit saavuttavat AWGN kapasiteetin ja sopivat luonnollisesti moniin monen päätelaitteen verkkoihin niihin sisältyvän rakenteen vuoksi. Vaikka lukuisat informaatioteoreettiset tutkimustyöt todistavat hilakoodien tärkeyden näille verkoille, käytännössä alhaisen kompleksisuuden hilajärjestelmiä on vielä vähän. Näin ollen tämän tutkielman tarkoitus on kehittää useita metodeja, jotta hilakoodeista saadaan käytännöllisiä viestintäverkkoihin. Aluksi, ehdotamme tehokkaan hilakoodausjärjestelmän reaaliarvoisille, full duplexisille yksi- ja kaksisuuntaisille välittäjäkanaville. Käytämme hilan hajottamista, superpositiota ja lohko-Markov -koodausta ehdottaessamme yksinkertaiset ja siltikin kapasiteetin saavuttavat koodaus- ja dekoodausjärjestelmät näihin välityskanaviin. Käyttämällä informaatioteoreettisia työkaluja, osoitamme näiden järjestelmien saavutettavat nopeudet, jotka ovat yhtä suuret kuin parhaimmat tunnetut nopeudet. Sitten rakennamme käytännölliset ja alhaisen monimutkaisuuden toteutukset ehdotetuille välitysjärjestelmille käyttäen alhaisen tiheyden hilakoodeja. Esitämme näille järjestelmille numeeriset arvioinnit, jotka näyttävät että nämä toteutukset saavuttavat tehokkuuden, joka on 2.5dB:n päässä teoreettisista rajoista. Tutkimme muotoilu- ja koodaushäviön vaikutusta välityskanavien tehokkuuteen. Sitten, ehdotamme alhaisen monimutkaisuuden hilakoodirakenteen, joka tarjoaa korkean muotoilu- ja koodausvahvistuksen. Ensin, kokonaislukuinformaatio on koodattu muotoiltuihin kokonaislukuihin. Esitämme kaksi metodia tähän tehtävään; 'Voronoi kokonaisluvut' ja 'ei yhtenäiset kokonaisluvut'. Näillä muotoilluilla kokonaisluvuilla on muotoiluvahvistusta kokonaislukuhilalle. Toisena askeleena, esitämme yleiset puitteet systemaattiseen kokonaislukujen koodaukseen käyttäen korkeaulotteisia hiloja alhaisen kolmiogeneraattori- tai pariteettivarmistusmatriiseja, jotka säilyttävät samalla muotoiluvahvistuksen. Ehdotettua järjestelmää voidaan käyttää muotoilemaan korkeaulotteisia hiloja kuten alhaisen tiheyden hilakoodeja, LDA-hiloja, jne. Esitämme kattavan analyysin käyttäen alhaisen tiheyden hilakoodeja. Käyttämällä muotoiluhiloina E8aa ja BW16a, näytämme numeerisesti 'Voronoi kokonaislukujen' käyttämisen seurauksena saavutettavat hilojen muotoiluvahvistukset, jotka ovat jopa 0.65dB ja 0.86dB. Näytämme myös numeerisesti että 'ei yhtenäisillä kokonaisluvuilla' on muotoiluvahvistusta jopa 1.25dB. Nämä muotoiluoperaatiot voidaan toteuttaa alhaisemmalla monimutkaisuudella kuin aikaisemmat 'alhaisen tiheyden hilakoodien muotoilumenetelmät' ja muotoiluvahvistukset ovat suuremmat kuin aikaisemmin raportoidut tapaukset, jotka ovat suuruusluokaltaan 0.4dB. Viimeiseksi, ehdotamme käytännöllisen koodikonstruktion alhaisella monimutkaisuudella 'laske ja lähetä' -menetelmään. Kehitämme uuden koodikonstruktion, jota kutsumme 'sekoitetuksi sisäkkäiseksi hilakoodikonstruktioksi'. Tämä koodikonstruktio käyttää kahta eroteltavissa olevaa sisäkkäistä hilaa koodaamaan kokonaisluvut siellä, missä muotoilu tehdään pienen ulottuvuuden hiloilla korkean muotoiluvahvistuksella ja koodaus toteutetaan käyttäen korkean koodausvahvistuksen omaavaa korkeaulottuvuuksista hilaa. Tämä konstruktio säilyttää muotoilu- ja koodausvahvistukset kullekin muotoilu- ja koodaushilalle. Lisäksi, todistamme isomorfismin olemassaolon tässä konstruktiossa siten, että lineaarisen hilakoodien kombinaatio voidaan kuvata lineaarisena kokonaislukujen kombinaationa äärellisessä kunnassa. Näin ollen tätä konstruktiota voidaan helposti käyttää missä tahansa 'laske ja lähetä' -sovelluksessa. Esitämme muokatun LDLC dekooderin lineaarisen viestikombinaation estimointiin. Arvioimme tehon numeerisesti.

Abstract In this thesis we study Full-Duplex (FD) cooperative networks from different perspectives, using concepts of information theory, communication theory and applied statistics. We provide a comprehensive performance analysis of cooperative communications systems operating with FD relays. We demonstrate that FD relaying is feasible even when experiencing strong self-interference, and we show its application under different scenarios. More importantly, the results attained through this work serve as a benchmark for design as well as deployment of current and future wireless communications technologies. Our first contribution is a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art on FD communications, more specifically on FD relaying, and we revisit some of the main properties of cooperative schemes. Another contribution comes from an extensive analysis of outage probability, throughput and energy efficiency of FD relaying over Rayleigh fading channels. Besides the mathematical framework introduced herein, we also show that in some cases cooperative Half-Duplex (HD) schemes achieve better performance than FD relaying with self-interference. Therefore, we draw a discussion on the trade-offs between HD and FD schemes as well as between throughput and energy efficiency. Then, we investigate the performance of FD relaying protocols under general fading settings, namely Nakagami-m fading. Our findings allow a better understanding of effects of the residual self-interference and line-of-sight on a FD relaying setup. Our final contribution lies on the performance analysis of secure cooperative networks relying on information theoretical metrics to provide enhanced privacy and confidentiality to wireless networks. Thus, we provide a comprehensive mathematical framework for composite fading channels. Even though experiencing strong self-interference, we demonstrate that FD relaying is feasible also under secrecy constraints, thus perfect secrecy can be achieved. / Tiivistelmä Tässä työssä tutkitaan kaksisuuntaisia (Full-Duplex, FD) yhteistoiminnallisia verkkoja informaatioteorian, tietoliikenneteorian ja sovelletun tilastotieteen näkökulmista. Työssä suoritetaan kattava suorityskykyarviointi yhteistoiminnallisten FD-välittimien muodostamassa tietoliikenneverkossa. FD-releointi osoitetaan toimintakelpoiseksi useissa toimintaympäristöissä ja sovelluksissa jopa voimakkaan omahäiriön vallitessa. Mikä tärkeintä, työssä saavutetut tulokset muodostavat vertailukohdan sekä nykyisten että tulevien langattomien verkkoteknologioiden suunnitteluun ja toteutukseen. Aluksi esitetään perusteellinen katsaus uusimpiin FD-tiedonsiirtomenetelmiin, etenkin FD-välitykseen, sekä kerrataan yhteistoiminnallisten tekniikoiden pääpiirteet. Seuraavaksi analysoidaan laajasti FD-välitinyhteyden luotettavuutta sekä spektrinkäyttö- ja energiatehokkuutta Rayleigh-häipyvissä radiokanavissa. Matemaattisen viitekehyksen lisäksi osoitetaan myös, että joissain tapauksissa yhteistoiminnalliset vuorosuuntaiset (Half-Duplex, HD) menetelmät ovat parempia kuin FD-releointi omahäiriön vallitessa. Niinpä työssä käydään keskustelua kaupankäynnistä HD- ja FD -menetelmien kesken kuten myös spektrinkäyttö- ja energiatehokkuuden kesken. Seuraavaksi tutkitaan FD-releoinnin suorityskykyä yleistetymmässä häipymäympäristössä eli Nakagami-m -kanavassa. Saavutetut tulokset auttavat ymmärtämään paremmin jäljelle jäävän omahäiriön ja näköyhteyslinkkien vuorovaikutussuhteet FD-välitinjärjestelmän suunnittelussa. Lopuksi käsitellään tietoturvattuja yhteistoiminnallisia verkkoja informaatioteoreettisin mittarein, joilla pyritään tarjoamaan langattomien verkkojen käyttäjille parempaa yksityisyyden suojaa ja luottamuksellisuutta. Tätä varten työssä esitetään perusteelliset matemaattiset puitteet yhdistettyjen häipyvien kanavien tutkimiseen. Tuloksena osoitetaan, että myös salassapitokriteerien kannalta on mahdollista käyttää voimakkaan omahäiriön kokemaa FD-releointia vahvan salauksen saavuttamiseen.

In-band full-duplex (FD) communications have been optimistically promoted to improve the spectrum utilization and efficiency. However, the penetration of FD communications to the cellular networks domain is challenging due to the imposed uplink/downlink interference. This thesis presents a tractable framework, based on stochastic geometry, to study FD communications in multi-tier cellular networks. Particularly, we assess the FD communications effect on the network performance and quantify the associated gains. The study proves the vulnerability of the uplink to the downlink interference and shows that the improved FD rate gains harvested in the downlink (up to 97%) comes at the expense of a significant degradation in the uplink rate (up to 94%). Therefore, we propose a novel fine-grained duplexing scheme, denoted as α-duplex scheme, which allows a partial overlap between the uplink and the downlink frequency bands. We derive the required conditions to harvest rate gains from the α-duplex scheme and show its superiority to both the FD and half-duplex (HD) schemes. In particular, we show that the α-duplex scheme provides a simultaneous improvement of 28% for the downlink rate and 56% for the uplink rate. We also show that the amount of the overlap can be optimized based on the network design objective. Moreover, backward compatibility is an essential ingredient for the success of new technologies. In the context of in-band FD communication, FD base stations (BSs) should support HD users' equipment (UEs) without sacrificing the foreseen FD gains. The results show that FD-UEs are not necessarily required to harvest rate gains from FD-BSs. In particular, the results show that adding FD-UEs to FD-BSs offers a maximum of 5% rate gain over FD-BSs and HD-UEs case, which is a marginal gain compared to the burden required to implement FD transceivers at the UEs' side. To this end, we shed light on practical scenarios where HD-UEs operation with FD-BSs outperforms the operation when both the BSs and UEs are FD and we find a closed form expression for the critical value of the self-interference cancellation power required for the FD UEs to outperform HD UEs.

In the last decade, wireless applications have witnessed a tremendous growth. This can be envisioned in the surge of smart devices which became almost in everyone's possession, demand for high speed connection and the internet of things (IoT) along with its enabling technologies. Hence, the multiuser interference became the main limiting factor in wireless communications. Moreover, just like diamonds and emeralds, the electromagnetic spectrum is limited and precious. Therefore, the high data rate application may not be satisfied by our current technologies. In order to solve this spectrum scarcity problem, researchers have steered their focus to develop new techniques such as cognitive radio (CR) and in-band full-duplex (FD). However, these systems suffer from the interference problem that can dramatically impede their quality-of-service (QoS). Therefore, investigating communication techniques/systems that can relieve the interference adverse signature becomes imperative. Improper Gaussian signaling (IGS) has been recently shown to outperform the traditional proper Gaussian signaling (PGS) in several interference-limited systems. In this thesis, we use IGS in order to mitigate the interference issue in three different communication settings. IGS has the ability to control the interference signal dimension, and hence, it can be considered as one form of interference alignment. In the first part, we investigate an underlay CR system with in-band FD primary users (PUs) and one-way communication for the secondary user (SU). IGS is employed to alleviate the interference introduced by the SU on the PUs. First, we derive a closed form expression and an upper bound for the SU and PUs outage probabilities, respectively. Second, we optimize the SU signal parameters, represented in its power and the circularity coefficient, to achieve the design objectives of the SU while satisfying certain QoS constraints for the PU under instantaneous, average and partial channel state information (CSI). Finally, we provide some numerical results that demonstrate the advantages that can be reaped by using IGS to access the spectrum of the FD PUs. Specifically, with the existence of week PU direct channels and/or strong SU interference channels, PGS tends to use less transmit power while IGS uses more power along with increasing the signal impropriety. Part 2 studies the potential employment of IGS in FD cooperative settings with non-negligible residual self-interference (RSI). In this part, IGS is used in an attempt to alleviate the RSI adverse effect in full-duplex relaying (FDR). To this end, we derive a tight upper bound expression for the end-to-end outage probability in terms of the relay signal parameters. We further show that the derived upper bound is either monotonic or unimodal in the relay's circularity coefficient. This result allows for easily locating the global optimal point using known numerical methods. Based on the analysis, IGS allows FDR systems to operate even with high RSI. It is shown that, while the communication totally fails with PGS as the RSI increases, the IGS outage probability approaches a fixed value that depends on the channel statistics and target rate. The obtained results show that IGS can leverage higher relay power budgets than PGS to improve the performance, meanwhile it relieves its RSI impact via tuning the signal impropriety. In part 3, we investigate the potential benefits of adopting IGS in a two-hop alternate relaying (AR) system. Given the known benefits of using IGS in interference-limited networks, we propose to use IGS to relieve the inter-relay interference (IRI) impact on the AR system assuming no CSI is available at the source. In this regard, we assume that the two relays use IGS and the source uses PGS. Then, we optimize the degree of impropriety of the relays signal, measured by the circularity coefficient, to maximize the total achievable rate. Simulation results show that using IGS yields a significant performance improvement over PGS, especially when the first hop is a bottleneck due to weak source-relay channel gains and/or strong IRI.