In this thesis a new approach for characterisation of digital mobile radio channels is investigated. The new approach is based on recognition of the fact that while the fading which is characteristic of the mobile radio channel is very rapid, the processes underlying this fading may vary much more slowly. The comparative stability of these underlying processes has not been exploited in system designs to date. Channel models are proposed which take account of the stability of the channel. Estimators for the parameters of the models are proposed, and their performance is analysed theoretically and by simulation and measurement. Bounds are derived for the extent to which the mobile channel can be predicted, and the critical factors which define these bounds are identified. Two main applications arise for these channel models. The first is the possibility of prediction of the overall system performance. This may be used to avoid channel fading (for instance by change of frequency), or compensate for it (by change of the signal rate or by power control). The second application is in channel equalisation. An equaliser based on a model which has parameters varying only very slowly can offer improved performance especially in the case of channels which appear to be varying so rapidly that the convergence rate of an equaliser based on the conventional model is not adequate. The first of these applications is explored, and a relationship is derived between the channel impulse response and the performance of a broadband system.

In this thesis, symbol timing recovery based on matched filtering in Gaussian Minimum Shift Keying (GMSK) with bandwidth-bit period product (BT) of 0.3 is investigated. GMSK is the standard modulation type for GSM. Although GMSK modulation is non-linear, it is approximated to Offset Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (OQAM), which is a linear modulation, so that Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation (MLSE) method is possible in the receiver part. In this study Typical Urban (TU) channel model developed in COST 207 is used. Two methods are developed on the construction of the matched filter. In order to obtain timing recovery for GMSK signals, these methods are investigated. The fractional time delays are acquired by using interpolation and an iterative maximum search process. The performance of the proposed symbol timing recovery (STR) scheme is assessed by using computer simulations. It is observed that the STR tracks the variations of the frequency selective multipath fading channels almost the same as the Mazo criterion.

PN code tracking plays a very important role in CDMA communication systems. In literature, the influences of multipath fading and of multiuser interference on PN code tracking are studied separately. The multipath fading influence is mitigated by combining a rake receiver and a channel estimator in the Delay-Locked Loop (DLL). The multiuser interference is overcome by incorporating a data estimator into the DLL. In the downlink, PN code tracking may suffer from the multipath fading influence. However, the multipath fading and the multiuser interference influences exist in the uplink. Unfortunately, sole use of the aforementioned methods cannot solve out both influences simultaneously. In this thesis, two new Coherent Decision-Directed Delay-Locked Loop (CDD-DLL) PN-Code tracking schemes are developed and either can overcome both influences. First, a channel and a data estimators are incorporated into the DLL inherent with a rake receiver. This new scheme works properly in an environment with multipath fading and multiuser interference. Second, the original CDD-DLL is combined with a multipath interference canceller (MPI) to reduce both influences. Analytical results are derived for the two schemes proposed and are validated with numerical simulations. Simulation results show that the conventional DLLs working in a multipath fading and multiuser interference environment can be significantly improved using the new schemes. Moreover, the latter outperforms the former because the multipath interference is cancelled completely.

Este trabalho concentra-se no aumento da robustez à taxa de erros em redes de sensores sem fio industriais (RSSFI). Para alcançar tal objetivo, é preciso, de algum modo, contornar os problemas intrínsecos da comunicação sem fio, que são, o ruído ambiental, interferências e desvanecimento por multipercurso. O multipercurso pode ser considerado um dos principais fatores que tornam as comunicações nas redes de sensores sem fio (RSSF) um verdadeiro desafio quando comparadas com outros meios, como a transmissão em fibra óptica, cabo ou mesmo transmissões de rádio ponto-a-ponto. Nesse sentido, propõe-se a diversidade de antenas como uma solução para minimizar os efeitos do multicaminho, com o objetivo de melhorar a confiabilidade do enlace de rádio para permitir o emprego de RSSF densas. O potencial da diversidade de antenas em RSSF não está totalmente explorado em aplicações industriais. Esta dissertação apresenta ainda, a técnica “Combinação de seleção” para RSSFI através de um algoritmo que seleciona a porta do receptor que apresenta o melhor indicador de qualidade de enlace e realiza a comutação das antenas nos módulos de rádio. Os resultados são analisados para dois tipos de enlaces, isto é, com e sem diversidade de antenas na recepção, e discute-se opções para melhorar o PER (“Packet Error Rate”) com as atuais técnicas de diversidade. / This work concentrates on the increase of reliability and robustness in Industrial Wireless Sensor Networks (IWSNs), decreasing the Packet Error Rate (PER). To achieve this objective, is need to somehow circumvent and reduce the underlying problems of wireless communication, which are: environmental noise, interference, and multipath fading. The multipath can be seen as the main factor which becomes the communications in the Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) a real challenge when compared to other types of means such as a transmission in fiber, cable or even point-to-point radio transmissions. In this sense, it is proposed antenna diversity as solution to reduce these effects, with the aim to improve the reliability of the radio link to allow the use of dense WSNs. The potential of antenna diversity in WSN is not fully exploited in industrial applications. In this sense, this dissertation presents the "Combination of selection" technique for IWSNs through an internal algorithm that selects the receiver port that has the highest LQI ("Link Quality Indicator") and performs an antenna switching in the radio modules. Also, options to improve PER using diversity techniques are discussed.

This dissertation explores the role of polarization, combining, and equalization operating over frequency-selective channels to improve the reliability of wireless communications systems in terms of BER for two applications: 5G mobile networks (operating in the mmWave band and NR FR1), and aeronautical mobile telemetry systems (operating in L band). The equivalent discrete-time models for a variety of spatial combining techniques at 5G mmWave bands were derived to investigate the performance of co-located cross-polarized antenna elements when polarization diversity is used and also when a combination of spatial and cross-polarized antennas is exploited. In both cases, ML combining has the lowest BER and EPC produced the worst results. The use of co-located cross-polarized antenna elements also is examined in 5G FR1 assuming post-FFT processing of the two antenna element outputs in a mobile-to-mobile setting. The optimum strategy, in the ML sense, for incorporating the two antenna outputs is developed. The optimum combining strategy together with a FDE is compared to the traditional combining techniques: MRC, EGC, and SC, where the last two also require a FDE. Computer simulations performed over a stochastic channel model with polarization state information show that the difference between ML detection and MRC (the best performing methods) and SC with FDE (the worst performing method) is 2 dB. The similar results were observed with pilot based channel estimators, however the difference in this case was the presence of a BER floor at low values of $N_0$ and caused by channel estimation errors. In aeronautical mobile telemetry applications, the ML combiner is derived and shown to be equivalent to the summing the outputs of two filters matched to the channels in the horizontal and vertical polarization states. For historical reasons, current systems combine right-hand and left-hand circularly polarized antenna feed outputs using a MRC. To compare the two combining approaches, the aeronautical telemetry multipath channel was extended to include polarization state information. The simulation results for SOQPSK-TG with a CMA equalizer show that the post-equalizer BER for the two approaches is the same.

Opportunistic use of unused spectrum could efficiently be carried out using the paradigm of Cognitive Radio (CR). A spectrum remains idle when the primary user (licensee) is not using it. The secondary nodes detect this spectral hole quickly and make use of it for data transmission during this interval and stop transmitting once the primary starts transmitting. Detection of spectral holes by the secondary is called spectrum sensing in the CR scenario. Spectrum Sensing is formulated as a hypothesis testing problem wherein under H0 the spectrum is free and under H1, occupied. The samples will have different probability distributions, P0 and P1, under H0 and H1 respectively. In the first part of the thesis, a new algorithm - entropy test is presented, which performs better than the available algorithms when P0 is known but not P1. This is extended to a distributed setting as well, in which different secondary nodes collect samples independently and send their decisions to a Fusion Centre (FC) over a noisy MAC which then makes the final decision. The asymptotic optimality of the algorithm is also shown. In the second part, the spectrum sensing problem under impediments such as fading, electromagnetic interference and outliers is tackled. Here the detector does not possess full knowledge of either P0 or P1. This is a more general and practically relevant setting. It is found that a recently developed algorithm (which we call random walk test) under suitable modifications works well. The performance of the algorithm theoretically and via simulations is shown. The same algorithm is extended to the distributed setting as above.

Since the mid 1990’s, the wireless communications industry has witnessed explosive growth. The worldwide cellular and personal communication subscriber base surpassed 600 million users by late 2001, and the number of individual subscribers surpassed 2 billion at the end of 2006 [1, 2]. In order to attract and accommodate these subscribers, modern communication systems, like the Third Generation (3G) and Fourth Generation (4G) cellular networks, will have to provide attractive new features such as increased data throughput rates, greater system capacity, and better speech quality. These modern communication systems promise to have advantages such as wireless access in ways that have never been possible before, providing, amongst others services such as live television (TV) broadcasting to Mobile Stations (MS)s, multi-megabit Internet access, communication using Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP), unparalleled network capacity, seamless accessibility and many more. With specific, but not exclusive reference to the cellular environment, there are numerous ways to increase the data throughput rate and system capacity. From an economical perspective, it would be more efficient to add equipment to the Base Station (BS) rather than the MSs. To achieve these improvements the motivation to utilise transmit diversity’s capabilities have been identified as a key research issue in this study. Alamouti [3] proposed a transmit diversity technique using two transmit antennas and one receive antenna, providing the same diversity order than using one transmit antenna and two receive antennas. Since Alamouti’s publication in 1998, many papers in the field of Space-Time (ST) coding have been published. Current research in the field of ST coding consists of finding methods to extend the number of transmit antennas to more than four, while still achieving full rate, as well as full diversity which is the main motivation for this study. This study proposes a novel idea of breaching the limitations with ST coding theory by combining ST coding with Spread Spectrum (SS) modulation techniques in order to extend the number of transmit antennas to more than four and still achieve full rate as well as full diversity. An advantage of the proposed scheme, called Direct Sequence Space-Time Spreading (DSSTS) has over current Space-Time Spreading (STS) techniques is that it uses 50% less spreading codes. A performance evaluation platform for the DSSTS scheme was developed to simulate the performance of the scheme in a realistic mobile communication environment. A mobile communication channel that has the ability to simulate time-varying multipath fading was developed and used to evaluate the performance of the DSSTS scheme. From the simulation results obtained, it is evident that Walsh sequences that exhibit particularly good cross-correlation characteristics, cannot overcome the effect of the antenna self-noise in order to exploit the diversity gain by adding extra antennas, i.e. diversity extension. The research also showed that an optimal trade-off exists between antenna diversity and antenna created self-noise. Performance results of the DSSTS scheme in slow and fast fading channels for a different number of transmit antennas are also presented in this study. With the capacity analysis of the DSSTS scheme, it was shown that the addition of extra transmit antennas to the system indeed increased the system capacity. A further addition to this study is the investigation into the assumption that the channel should be quasi-static over the frame length of the ST code. A Space Sequence Transmit Diversity (SSTD) technique is consequently proposed that allows the transmission of the Alamouti symbols during one time interval instead of two. This relieves the ST code from the assumption that the channel should be quasi-static, allowing it to be used in a more realistic multi-user environment. A performance evaluation platform for the SSTD scheme was developed and used to obtain simulation results in a multipath fading channel. It was also shown that the proposed SSTD scheme is successful in combating the effects of multipath fading for small Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) user loads. However, as a rule of thumb, the square root of the spreading sequence length divided by two depicts the user load at which the SSTD scheme was not capable of overcoming the combined effects of Multi-User Interference (MUI) and multipath fading. / Dissertation (MEng)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Electrical, Electronic and Computer Engineering / unrestricted

No description available.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 23-26, 2000 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / Bit errors often occur in a wireless communications link when impairments alter the transmitted signal. It is advantageous to be able to predict how well a system will tolerate transmission problems. This paper details laboratory performance measurements and comparisons in terms of evaluating configurations of a digital receiver for Feher patented Quadrature Phase Shift Keying (FQPSK-B) demodulation. The transmitted signal is subjected to calibrated levels of impairments while the receiver performance is monitored in real-time.

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