Virginia Tech, Utah State University, and the University of Washington were teamed to form the Ionospheric Observation Nanosat Formation to investigate formation-flying requirements for multiple spacecraft missions. A communication subsystem for the mission will comprise an uplink, downlink and a satellite-to-satellite crosslink. A linearly polarized resonant loop antenna mounted above the bottom surface of the spacecraft was selected for a possible satellite uplink receive antenna. The resonant loop was chosen to satisfy the physical requirements of the spacecraft whild still achieving efficient operation for a UHF signal. A full-scale prototype was fabricated to measure frequency dependent characteristics of the antenna. A gamma match and a quarter-wave sleeve balun transformer were integrated to the system to minimize the power reflected at the antenna input and to isolate the antenna from the feed line. The uplink antenna demonstrated sufficient performance; however, the final bandwidth of less than one percent will require additional tuning as other subsystems are integrated into the final flight-ready prototype. / Master of Science

This master thesis analyzes the effect of Carrier Frequency Offsets (CFO) on LTEuplink transmission, which is the main cause of ICI (Inter Carrier Interference) andMAI (Multiuser Access Interference). A model of the LTE uplink is required toconduct the study and is implemented in MATLAB, in compliance with 3GPPspecifications. The model can generate uplink signal as generated by the UE, (UserEquipment) and it supports multiple channel bandwidths described by the 3GPP.The channel estimation is done with the help of block type pilots. The model is usedto simulate the experimental conditions. The presence of CFO results in poor systemperformance. Therefore, many algorithms have been proposed for the CFOcancellation such as Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC), Parallel InterferenceCancellation (PIC) and Inverse Interference Matrix Cancellation. As the topic is verybroad, I investigate the performance of Inverse Interference Matrix Cancellationalgorithm. Compared with the other CFO cancellation algorithms this algorithm candirectly estimate the interference components from the inverse pilot matrix, thusthere is no need for CFO estimation. Simulation results show that the algorithm isvery effective in the presence of CFO. The channel estimation technique used is theLeast Square (LS) method and frequency selective channel is used for simulation.Performance graphs are plotted in terms of BER (Bit Error Rate) against differentvalues of SNR (Signal to Noise Ratio).

Nürnberg, University, Diss., 2003--Erlangen. / Erscheinungsjahr an der Haupttitelstelle: 2002.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 18-21, 2004 / Town & Country Resort, San Diego, California / Flight Test instrumentation control units have traditionally been low-technology units with mechanical switches, readouts, and perhaps an RS232 interface. As the complexity of Flight Test Instrumentation systems and operational requirements increase, and as cockpit space becomes scarce, these control units are no longer sufficient. These control units need to provide capabilities commensurate with the complexity of the instrumentation systems they control. This paper describes an instrumentation control system that uses a Boeing Integrated Defense Systems (IDS) Flight Test Instrumentation designed Instrumentation Control Unit (ICU). The ICU communicates with the avionics system to allow pilot control via existing aircraft displays. By taking advantage of a relatively simple protocol to interface with the avionics system, the substantial cost of reprogramming the avionics software is avoided, and software control is shifted to the Flight Test group, thus allowing a tremendous increase in system flexibility at reasonable cost. Functions of the unit can be changed relatively quickly and inexpensively. This promises a wide range of future applications, such as in-flight monitoring of flight-critical instrumentation parameters by the pilot, control of the instrumentation system via uplink (with pilot override), and real-time in-flight selection of telemetered data streams and parameters. This paper describes the baseline instrumentation control system and requirements to be used on the EA-18G Flight Test Program, plus additional future capabilities.

International Telemetering Conference Proceedings / October 23-26, 2000 / Town & Country Hotel and Conference Center, San Diego, California / After a slow start, the CCSDS Telecommand Recommendation is finally being embraced by a large number of NASA, ESA and NASDA space missions. Even some commercial satellites are exploring the possibility of using this advanced protocol. The CCSDS Telecommand is a closed-loop space communication protocol that offers its users a guaranteed data delivery service, which is essential for the satellite control operations. This paper describes a commercial product that supports the CCSDS Telecommand protocol. This product provides Telecommand uplink segmentation, transfer, coding and physical layer services and Command Operations Procedures (COP). Optionally, it provides corresponding functions at the receiving end for command link verification.

Zugl.: Aachen, Techn. Hochsch., Diss., 2007.

The uplink load for the scheduling of Enhanced-Uplink (E-UL) channels determine the achievable data rate for Wideband Code Division Multiple Access (WCDMA) systems, therefore its accurate measurement carries a prime significance. The uplink load also known as Rise-over-Thermal (RoT), which is the quotient of the Received Total Wideband Power (RTWP) and the Thermal Noise Power floor. It is a major parameter which is calculated at each Transmission Time Interval (TTI) for maintaining cell coverage and stability. The RoT algorithm for evaluation of uplink load is considered as a complex and resource demanding among several Radio Resource Management (RRM) algorithms running in a radio system. The main focus of this thesis is to study RoT algorithm presently deployed in radio units and its possible optimization by reducing complexity of the algorithm in terms of memory usage and processing power. The calculation of RoT comprises three main blocks a Kalman filter, a noise floor estimator and the RoT computation. After analyzing the complexity of each block it has been established that the noise floor estimator block is consuming most of the processing power producing peak processor load since it involves many complex floating point calculations. However, the other blocks do not affect the processing load significantly. It was also observed that some block updates can be reduced in order to decrease the average load on the processor. Three techniques are proposed for reducing the complexity of the RoT algorithm, two for the reduction of peak load and one for the reduction of average load. For reducing the peak load, an interpolation approach is used instead of performing transcendental mathematical calculations. Also, the calculations involving noise floor estimation are extended over several TTIs by keeping in view that the estimation is not time critical. For the reduction of average load, the update rate for the Kalman Filter block is reduced. Based on these optimization steps, a modified algorithm for RoT computation with reduced complexity is proposed. The proposed changes are tested by means of MATLAB simulations demonstrating the improved performance with consistency in the output results. Finally, an arithmetic operation count is done using the hardware manual of Power PC (PPC405) used in Platform 4, which gives a rough estimate of decrease in the percentage of calculations after optimization. / saabairshad@gmail.com

In order to support the new paradigm shift in fifth generation (5G) mobile communication, radically different network architectures, associated technologies and network operation algorithms, need to be developed compared to existing fourth generation (4G) cellular solutions. The evolution toward 5G mobile networks will be characterized by an increasing number of wireless devices, increasing device and service complexity, and the requirement to access mobile services ubiquitously. To realise the dramatic increase in data rates in particular, research is focused on improving the capacity of current, Long Term Evolution (LTE)-based, 4G network standards, before radical changes are exploited which could include acquiring additional spectrum. The LTE network has a reuse factor of one; hence neighbouring cells/sectors use the same spectrum, therefore making the cell-edge users vulnerable to heavy inter cell interference in addition to the other factors such as fading and path-loss. In this direction, this thesis focuses on improving the performance of cell-edge users in LTE and LTE-Advanced networks by initially implementing a new Coordinated Multi-Point (CoMP) technique to support future 5G networks using smart antennas to mitigate cell-edge user interference in uplink. Successively a novel cooperative uplink inter-cell interference mitigation algorithm based on joint reception at the base station using receiver adaptive beamforming is investigated. Subsequently interference mitigation in a heterogeneous environment for inter Device-to-Device (D2D) communication underlaying cellular network is investigated as the enabling technology for maximising resource block (RB) utilisation in emerging 5G networks. The proximity of users in a network, achieving higher data rates with maximum RB utilisation (as the technology reuses the cellular RB simultaneously), while taking some load off the evolved Node B (eNodeB) i.e. by direct communication between User Equipment (UE), has been explored. Simulation results show that the proximity and transmission power of D2D transmission yields high performance gains for D2D receivers, which was demonstrated to be better than that of cellular UEs with better channel conditions or in close proximity to the eNodeB in the network. It is finally demonstrated that the application, as an extension to the above, of a novel receiver beamforming technique to reduce interference from D2D users, can further enhance network performance. To be able to develop the aforementioned technologies and evaluate the performance of new algorithms in emerging network scenarios, a beyond the-state-of-the-art LTE system-level-simulator (SLS) was implemented. The new simulator includes Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) antenna functionalities, comprehensive channel models (such as Wireless World initiative New Radio II i.e. WINNER II) and adaptive modulation and coding schemes to accurately emulate the LTE and LTE-A network standards.

The coding and transmission of the massive datasets captured by Earth Observation (EO) satellites is a critical issue in current missions. The conventional approach is to use compression on board the satellite to reduce the size of the captured images. This strategy exploits spatial and/or spectral redundancy to achieve compression. Another type of redundancy found in such data is the temporal redundancy between images of the same area that are captured at different instants of time. This type of redundancy is commonly not exploited because the required data and computing power are not available on board the satellite. This paper introduces a coding scheme for EO satellites able to exploit this redundancy. Contrary to traditional approaches, the proposed scheme employs both the downlink and the uplink of the satellite. Its main insight is to compute and code the temporal redundancy on the ground and transmit it to the satellite via the uplink. The satellite then uses this information to compress more efficiently the captured image. Experimental results for Landsat 8 images indicate that the proposed dual link image coding scheme can achieve higher coding performance than traditional systems for both lossless and lossy regimes.

Cette étude porte sur l’allocation de ressources radio dans les réseaux LTE à forte mobilité. En particulier, il s’agit de concevoir des stratégies d’allocation de ressources capables d’améliorer la qualité de service des flux multimédia dans un contexte de forte mobilité des terminaux. Pour atteindre ces objectifs, l’étude a été menée en deux étapes. Dans un premier temps les travaux se sont déroulés dans un contexte où l’aspect forte mobilité n’a pas été pris en compte. Cela a permis de bien maitriser tous les aspects liés à l’allocation de ressources dans le LTE tout en proposant de nouvelles méthodes meilleures que celles existantes. Une fois cette tâche accomplie, l’aspect forte mobilité a été ajouté au problème et des stratégies adaptées à ce contexte ont été proposées. Néanmoins, dû aux différences entre les liens montants et descendants, l’étude a été menée dans les deux directions. Comme première contribution, nous avons conçu deux stratégies pour améliorer l’allocation de ressources sur la liaison descendante dans un contexte où la forte mobilité n’a pas été prise en compte. La première méthode est un mécanisme qui améliore cette allocation en particulier dans les scénarios d’overbooking en faisant un compromis entre l’équité, le débit global du système et les exigences de qualité de service des applications. La seconde stratégie permet non seulement de satisfaire aux contraintes de délais mais également de garantir un très faible taux de perte de paquets aux services de type multimédias. Les performances des systèmes proposés ont été évaluées par des simulations en les comparant à d’autres mécanismes dans la littérature. Les analyses ont démontré leur efficacité et révélé qu’elles obtenaient les meilleures performances. Notre deuxième contribution a permis d’améliorer l’allocation de ressources toujours dans un contexte de non prise en compte de la forte mobilité, mais cette fois ci sur le lien montant et pour des flux de type vidéo téléphonie. Nous avons conçu un nouveau protocole qui réduit de façon considérable les retards causés par l’allocation dynamique des ressources. L’idée consiste à allouer des ressources à ces trafics en utilisant une stratégie semi-persistante associée à un processus de pré-allocation. Les performances de notre méthode ont été évaluées par simulations et les résultats ont montré qu’elle fournissait le meilleur support en qualité de service. La dernière partie de nos travaux s’est intéressée au problème d’allocation de ressources dans les scénarios de fortes mobilités des terminaux. Dans cette partie, nous avons élaboré deux stratégies efficaces convenant aux scénarios véhiculaires. La première méthode est une technique permettant de maintenir le niveau de qualité de service nécessaire pour le bon fonctionnement des applications vidéo des utilisateurs ayant les vitesses les plus élevées. Elle consiste à déterminer en fonction des différentes vitesses des utilisateurs, le taux minimum de rapports CQI à envoyer à la station de base. Quant à la seconde stratégie, c’est un procédé d’ordonnancement opportuniste qui améliore la qualité de service des applications vidéo des utilisateurs ayant les vitesses les plus élevées. Avec cette stratégie, ces utilisateurs obtiennent une plus grande priorité et acquièrent ainsi beaucoup plus de ressources. / Abstract Our thesis focuses on issues related to resources allocation in LTE Networks. In particular the purpose of this study is to design efficient scheduling algorithms to improve the QoS of real time flows in a context of high mobility of the users. To reach this goal, the study has been carried out in two steps. At first, in order to have an expert knowledge of the key facets of LTE scheduling, we conducted the study in a context where the high mobility aspect of the node was not taken into account. This helped not only to critically analyze the literature but also to propose new schemes to improve QoS of real time applications. After that, the high mobility parameter has been added and innovative methods dealing with this context have been designed. Nevertheless due to the existing differences between the downlink and the uplink, the issue was tackled in each of the aforementioned directions. We firstly addressed the problem of improving the scheduling of downlink communications in a context where the high mobility was not taken into account. Two major methods have been designed for this purpose. The first one is an innovative scheme which improves resources assignment in overbooking scenarios by doing a trade-off between fairness, overall system through put and QoS requirements. The second one is an enhanced scheduling scheme which provides strict delay bounds and guarantees very low packet loss rate to multimedia flows. The performance of the proposed schemes have been evaluated by simulations and compared to other schemes in the literature. The analyses demonstrated their effectiveness and showed that they outperformed the existing ones. The second contribution concerned the problem of improving the scheduling of uplink communications in a context where the high mobility was not taken into account. We designed a novel scheduling protocol which improves resources allocation for videotelephony flows and reduces the delay caused by dynamic scheduling. It consists in scheduling such traffics using a semi-persistent strategy associated with a provisioning process. The performance of our proposed method have been evaluated by simulations and results demonstrated its effectiveness by showing that it improved videotelephony flows performance and provided the best QoS support compared to the dynamic scheduling.The last contribution addressed the problem of resources allocation in high mobility scenarios. In this part, the high mobility aspect was taken into account for designing suitable schemes for vehicular scenarios. We proposed in this way two efficient strategies. The first one is a technique which maintains the required level of QoS for supporting video users at high velocities. It consists in identifying depending on the UEs velocity, the minimum CQI reports rate in order to maintain the required QoS. The second proposed strategy is an opportunistic method which improves the performance of high speed video users. With this strategy, more priority are given to the UEs having the highest velocity. Simulations results demonstrated its effectiveness and showed that it improved the QoS support of video users having the highest velocity.