Downlink multiple access schemes for transmitted reference pulse cluster UWB systems

Transmitted reference pulse cluster (TRPC) signaling was recently proposed for low data rate ultra‐wideband communications. Compared with the conventional transmitted reference (TR), TRPC has a more compact and uniform spacing for the reference and data pulses and therefore solves the implementation problem posed by the long delay line requirement in the conventional TR. In this paper, downlink multiple access issue is further investigated for TRPC systems. According to the TRPC signaling structure, both code division multiple access (CDMA) and time division multiple access (TDMA) methods are discussed. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that TDMA outperforms CDMA in both bit error rate performance and throughput. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Optimal and suboptimal receivers for code‐multiplexed transmitted‐reference ultra‐wideband systems

In this study, optimal and suboptimal receivers are investigated for code‐multiplexed transmitted‐reference (CM‐TR) ultra‐wideband systems. First, a single‐user scenario is considered, and a CM‐TR system is modeled as a generalized noncoherent pulse‐position modulated system. Based on that model, the optimal receiver that minimizes the bit error probability is derived. Then, it is shown that the conventional CM‐TR receiver converges to the optimal receiver under certain conditions and achieves close‐to‐optimal performance in practical cases. Next, multi‐user systems are considered, and the conventional receiver, blinking receiver, and chip discriminator are investigated. Also, the linear minimum mean‐squared error (MMSE) receiver is derived for the downlink of a multi‐user CM‐TR system. In addition, the maximum likelihood receiver is obtained as a performance benchmark. The practicality and the computational complexity of the receivers are discussed, and their performance is evaluated via simulations. The linear MMSE receiver is observed to provide the best trade‐off between performance and complexity/practicality. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Transmit-reference UWB system based on m-sequence codes

In this article,a novel transmit-reference(TR) signaling scheme is proposed for ultra-wideband(UWB) system,where by invoking m-sequence codes the reference and data pulses can be transmitted side by side to increase the data rate.This structure enables demodulation with a simple and practical autocorrelation receiver despite existence of severe inter-pulse interference(IPI).To evaluate detection performance of the new designs,closed-form expression for bit error probability(BRP) is theoretically derived and...     

Performance analysis of transmitted‐reference UWB systems with narrowband interference suppression

In this paper, we propose a receiver structure for transmitted‐reference ultra‐wideband (TR‐‐UWB) systems with both narrowband interference (NBI) and inter‐pulse interference (IPI) mitigation capabilities. The effects of additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and the IEEE 802.15.4a fading channel are also taken into consideration. We adopt band‐stop filtering to suppress the NBI. For IPI, it is statistically removed by a sum‐and‐average process. Theoretical analysis is carried out to study the lower bound of the bit‐error rate (BER) performance of the proposed receiver. Numerical results show that the proposed receiver is able to provide satisfactory performance and is robust to variations in the system design parameters. It is also observed that the proposed receiver is able to deliver good performance even when there is zero delay between the reference and data pulses, which can effectively double the system throughput. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Chaos-Based transmitted-reference ultra-wideband communications

Transmitted-reference (TR) ultra-wideband (UWB) communication systems have gained increasing popularity for the usage in the low data rate application, due to its non-coherent receiver structure. In conventional TR system, non-coherency at the receiver is achieved by sending reference pulses prior to the data-bearing pulses. Then, at the receiver side, reference pulses are used as template signals for correlation with data-bearing pulses. Therefore, the orthogonality between reference and data pulses is obtained in time division multiple access (TDMA) fashion. However, the implementation of a wideband delay line is very difficult in the current low power integrated circuits. In this paper, a TR method called Chaos-Based TR (CB-TR) is proposed. In the proposed method, chaotic sequences are used to separate the reference and data pulses. Such approach exploits the benefits of chaotic signals, such as non-periodicity, easy-to-generate, impulse-like autocorrelation value and low cross-correlation value. Furthermore, in order to decrease the influence of some negative properties of conventional chaotic maps, a modified chaotic generator (MCS) is proposed. Simulation results over the IEEE 802.15.4a channel model show comparable bit error rate performance to other TR methods.     

Estimation of the error performance objectives for satellite communication systems

We consider the physical layer error performance parameters and design criteria for digital satellite systems established by ITU‐R Recommendation S.1062, where the performance objectives are given in terms of the bit error rate (BER) divided by the average number of errors within a cluster. It is well known that errors on satellite links employing forward error correction (FEC) schemes tend to occur in clusters. The resulting block error rate is the same as if it was caused by randomly occurring bit errors with an error‐event ratio of BER/α, where α is the average number of errors within a cluster. The factor, α, accounts for the burstiness of the errors and also represents the ratio between the BER and the error‐event ratio. This paper proposes theoretical methods to estimate the factor, α. Using the weight distributions of the FEC codes, we derive a set of expressions for the factor, α, as well as their compact lower bounds. We present lower bounds for various FEC schemes including binary BCH codes, block turbo codes, convolutional codes, and turbo codes. The simulation results show that the proposed lower bounds are good estimates in the high signal‐to‐noise ratio region. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Single Input-Multiple Output Time Reversal UWB Communication System

Time reversal is a promising technique for the improvement of UWB communication systems. Intersymbol interference (ISI) limits the system performance in such wireless systems. This paper presents a general ISI analysis for time reversal UWB communication systems. The time reversal UWB system gives good performance for rates below the coherence bandwidth but at higher data rates the performance of the system is limited by intersymbol interference and bit error rate saturates even for high signal-to-noise ratio. To mitigate the ISI effects, a single input/multiple output (SIMO) time reversal UWB system is used and its performance is analyzed. It is shown that by using a SIMO TR transceiver, ISI reduces and the system capacity increases. Transmitted signal power at SIMO time reversal decreases, therefore in low data rate SISO performance is better than SIMO, But in high rate scenario, SIMO TR suppresses the ISI better than the SISO TR and its performance is better than SISO TR. It is possible to compensate the reduced power by using a receiver with more sensitivity.     

Performance of DS‐UWB in MB‐OFDM and multi‐user interference over Nakagami‐m fading channels

The mutual interference between the two ultra wideband (UWB) technologies, which use the same frequency spectrum, will be a matter of concern in the near future. In this context, we present a performance analysis of direct‐sequence (DS) UWB communication in the presence of multiband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MB‐OFDM) UWB interfering transmissions. The channel fading is modeled according to Nakagami‐m distribution, and multi‐user interference is taken into account. The DS‐UWB system performance is evaluated in terms of bit error rate (BER). Specifically, using the characteristic function approach, an analytical expression for the average BER is derived conditioned on the channel impulse response. Numerical and simulation results are provided and compared for different coexistence scenarios. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

An algorithm for the selection of effective error correction coding in wireless networks based on a lookup table structure

In this paper, we propose an adaptive Forward Error Correction (FEC) coding algorithm at the Medium Access Control (MAC) layer used in wireless networks. Our algorithm is based on the lookup table architecture, including a distance lookup table and a bit error rate lookup table. These tables will store the best value of the FEC codes based on different distances and bit error rates. Because radio channels change over time, the bit error rate is always changing, or in the case of mobile nodes, when the transmission distance changes, the bit error rate also changes, so previously proposed algorithms take longer to find the optimal value of the FEC code for data transmission. Our proposed algorithm, however, is based on 2 lookup tables, and thus, it can always quickly select an optimal FEC code during early data transmissions and achieve high performance. We compare our algorithm with other methods based on performance metrics such as the recovery overhead of FEC codes, energy efficiency, and peak‐signal‐to‐noise ratio values in the case of image transmission. Our simulation indicates that the proposed algorithm achieves better performances and proves the correctness of the proposed lookup table architecture.     

Improvement of Ultra‐wideband Link Performance over Bands Requiring Interference Mitigation in Korea

Ultra‐wideband (UWB) systems have witnessed a debate over whether they may cause interference to other existing and future narrowband systems sharing their band of operation. The detect and avoid (DAA) mechanism was developed as a solution to reduce interference to narrowband systems in order to ease regulatory concerns. It works by adaptively reducing the transmitted power at the overlapping bands upon detecting an active narrowband link. However, employing DAA degrades the performance of UWB transmissions. In this paper, we present the Korean UWB regulations as an example of regulations that require DAA in certain bands. We investigate DAA's impact on performance and propose a method to mitigate it, which provides UWB with the more efficient support of the DAA mechanism and enables it to avoid a larger number of narrowband users while sustaining the data rate. Results show significant improvement in performance with the application of our technique compared to conventional performance.     

Performance of UWB Receivers with Partial CSI Using a Simple Body Area Network Channel Model

Ultra wideband (UWB) communication is a very promising candidate for the use in wireless body area networks (BAN). The high UWB peak data rate allows for medium average data rates in combination with a very low duty cycle, which is the key for a very low power consumption. Devices in a wireless BAN require low complexity. Hence, mainly non-coherent receivers such as energy detector and transmitted-reference receiver are suited. In this paper, the symbol-wise maximum-likelihood (ML) detectors for pulse position modulation (PPM) and transmitted reference pulse amplitude modulation (TR PAM) are derived assuming partial channel state information (CSI) at the receiver. Additionally, also the ML detectors for a combination of PPM and TR PAM are presented. The performance of the derived receiver structures is evaluated using a novel BAN channel model not distinguishing line-of-sight and non line-of-sight situations. This simple channel model is based on 1100 channel measurements in the frequency range between 2 and 8 GHz, which were measured in an anechoic chamber. Using the BAN channel model, performance of the derived receiver structures is evaluated showing that the knowledge of the average power delay profile (APDP) at the receiver improves performance substantially. Requiring only slightly more complexity such receivers are a well suited alternative to non-coherent receivers for the use in a BAN.     

An Ordered Successive Interference Cancellation Scheme in UWB MIMO Systems

In this letter, an ordered successive interference cancellation (OSIC) scheme is applied for multiple‐input multiple‐output (MIMO) detection in ultra‐wideband (UWB) communication systems. The error rate expression of an OSIC receiver on a log‐normal multipath fading channel is theoretically derived in a closed form solution. Its bit error rate performance is analytically compared with that of a zero forcing receiver in the UWB MIMO detection scheme followed by RAKE combining.     

Sliding‐window forward error correction using Reed‐Solomon code and unequal error protection for real‐time streaming video

Forward error correction (FEC) techniques are widely used to recover packet losses over unreliable networks in real‐time video streaming applications. Traditional frame‐level FEC encodes 1 video frame in each FEC coding window. By contrast, in the expanding‐window FEC scheme, high‐priority frames are included in the FEC processing of the following frames, so as to construct a larger coding window. In general, expanding‐window FEC improves the recovery performance of FEC, because the high‐priority frame can be protected by multiple windows and the use of a larger coding window increases the efficiency. However, the larger window size also increases the complexity of the coding and the memory space requirements. Consequently, expanding‐window FEC is limited in terms of practical applications. Sliding‐window FEC adopts a fixed window size in order to approximate the performance of the expanding‐window FEC method, but with a reduced complexity. Previous studies on sliding‐window FEC have generally adopted an equal error protection (EEP) mechanism to simplify the analysis. This paper considers the more practical case of an unequal error protection (UEP) strategy. An analytical model is derived for estimating the playable frame rate (PFR) of the proposed sliding‐window FEC scheme with a Reed‐Solomon erasure code for real‐time non‐scalable streaming applications. The analytical model is used to determine the optimal FEC configuration which maximizes the PFR value under given transmission rate constraints. The simulation results show that the proposed sliding‐window scheme achieves almost the same performance as the expanding‐window scheme, but with a significantly lower computational complexity.     

Characterization of indoor time reversal UWB communication systems: Spatial,temporal and frequency properties

In this paper, an indoor UWB communications system that applies time reversal (TR) for transmitting the desired signal is proposed. First we define equivalent channel model of TR‐UWB, which is the convolution of channel impulse response and its complex conjugate time‐reversed version. Then spatial, temporal and frequency characteristics of equivalent channel are analyzed and the analytical or semi‐analytical results are validated by comparing measurements with simulation. (Semi) analytical expression of equivalent channel transfer function, TR UWB power delay profile (PDP), focusing gain, spatial correlation and power azimuth spectrum (PAS) is performed. Also probability density function (PDF) of TR‐UWB amplitude and path‐gain is derived. Analysis and simulation results of different distributions, such as uniform, Laplacian and Gaussian for PAS, are considered and presented. It is shown that uniform and truncated Laplacian distributions are appropriate fits to the measurement results for power azimuth spectrum of TR‐UWB. It is seen that for distances greater than λ/2 from the authorized receiver, received signal decreases 10 dB, where λ is the wavelength of the central frequency. Finally, PDF of TR‐UWB path‐gain is described. Measurement results show that for small time windows, the densities of the path‐gain are highly non‐Gaussian. But for starting time of 10T_w or more, and window size of 2T_w or more the densities are nearly Gaussian, where T_w is the transmitted pulse duration. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Equivalent system model and equalization of differential impulse radio UWB systems

A discrete-time equivalent system model is derived for differential and transmitted reference (TR) ultra-wideband (UWB) impulse radio (IR) systems, operating under heavy intersymbol-interference (ISI) caused by multipath propagation. In the systems discussed, data is transmitted using differential modulation on a frame-level, i.e., among UWB pulses. Multiple pulses (frames) are used to convey a single bit. Time hopping and amplitude codes are applied for multi user communications, employing a receiver front-end that consists of a bank of pulse-pair correlators. It is shown that these UWB systems are accurately modeled by second-order discrete-time Volterra systems. This proposed nonlinear equivalent system model is the basis for developing optimal and suboptimal receivers for differential UWB communications systems under ISI. As an example, we describe a maximum likelihood sequence detector with decision feedback, to be applied at the output of the receiver front-end sampled at symbol rate, and an adaptive inverse modeling equalizer. Both methods significantly increase the robustness in presence of multipath interference at tractable complexity.     

Time hopped transmitted reference with multiple autocorrelation sampling for ultra wideband radio

Transmitted reference (TR) schemes for ultra wideband (UWB) eliminate the need for channel estimation, reducing receiver complexity at the cost of reduced performance. This letter proposes a transmitted reference (TR) scheme with multiple autocorrelation sampling detection. The proposed receiver captures the energy in the received signal's autocorrelation side lobes, outperforming the traditional TR scheme for the operational range of signal to noise ratio (SNR) values. Time hoping, as well as the use of bandwidth efficient signaling with favorable spectral characteristics, facilitate significant improvement in system capacity in comparison to a similar scheme using orthogonal chirp signals in multipath spread channels.     

Mitigation of channel estimation error in TR–UWB system based on a novel MMSE equalizer

The time reversal (TR) technique combined with the ultra-wideband (UWB) system offers a new potential for decreasing the cost and complexity of the UWB receivers. In spite of TR–UWB's good performance in perfect channel state information (CSI), it is very sensitive to the channel estimation error. The effect of channel imperfection on the TR–UWB system is considered in this paper. At first, based on a minimum mean square error (MMSE) equalizer receiver, a prefilter is calculated in closed form to improve the performance of the TR–UWB system in an imperfect CSI scenario. Furthermore, for comparison purposes, a similar calculation for prefilter is carried out based on a simple matched filter (MF) receiver. Then, in order to improve the MF receiver performance, a two-stage iteration-based algorithm is developed. The initial value for this iteration-based improved algorithm is considered to be a prefilter which is calculated in the TR–UWB system with MMSE equalizer. This optimized algorithm causes the channel estimation error in the TR–UWB system to become zero in some steps. Finally, exhaustive simulations are done to demonstrate the performance advantage attained by the improved algorithm.     

Noncoherent Ultra-Wideband (De)Modulation

Ultra-wideband (UWB) radios have received increasing attention recently for their potential to overlay legacy systems, their low-power consumption and low-complexity implementation. Because of the pulsed or duty-cycled nature of the ultra-short transmitted waveforms, timing synchronization and channel estimation pose major, and often conflicting, challenges and requirements. In order to address (or in fact bypass) both tasks, we design and test noncoherent UWB (de)modulation schemes, which remain operational even without timing and channel information. Relying on integrate-and-dump operations of what we term "dirty templates," we first derive a maximum likelihood (ML) optimal noncoherent UWB demodulator. We further establish a conditional ML demodulator with lower complexity. Analysis and simulations show that both can also be applied after (possibly imperfect) timing acquisition. Under the assumption of perfect timing, our noncoherent UWB scheme reduces to a differential UWB system. Our approach can also be adapted to a transmitted reference (TR) UWB system. We show that the resultant robust-to-timing TR (RTTR) approach considerably improves performance of the original TR system in the presence of timing offsets or residual timing acquisition errors     

Multiple access interference and multipath interference analysis of orthogonal complementary code‐based ultra‐wideband systems over multipath channels

In order to alleviate multiple access interference and multipath interference of ultra‐wideband (UWB) system, we propose the orthogonal complementary code (OCC)‐based direct‐sequence UWB system and offset‐stacking (OS)‐UWB system. OCC has perfect partial autocorrelation and cross‐correlation characteristics. With the application of OCC in UWB system, we can obtain better performance in multiple access interference and multipath interference. The proposed OS‐UWB structure can also achieve variable data rate transmission because of its innovative OS spreading technique. Theoretical analysis and simulation results show that the proposed UWB system can achieve excellent performance and outperform the unitary code‐based direct‐sequence UWB system. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Application layer forward error correction for multicast streaming over LTE networks

The next step beyond third generation mobile networks is the Third Generation Partnership Project standard, named Long Term Evolution. A key feature of Long Term Evolution is the enhancement of multimedia broadcast and multicast services (MBMS), where the same content is transmitted to multiple users located in a specific service area. To support efficient download and streaming delivery, the Third Generation Partnership Project included an application layer forward error correction (AL‐FEC) technique based on the systematic fountain Raptor code, in the MBMS standard. To achieve protection against packet losses, Raptor codes introduce redundant packets to the transmission, that is, the forward error correction overhead. In this work, we investigate the application of AL‐FEC over MBMS streaming services. We consider the benefits of AL‐FEC for a continuous multimedia stream transmission to multiple users and we examine how the amount of forward error correction redundancy can be adjusted under different packet loss conditions. For this purpose, we present a variety of realistic simulation scenarios for the application of AL‐FEC and furthermore we provide an in‐depth analysis of Raptor codes performance introducing valuable suggestions to achieve efficient use of Raptor codes. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.