Characteristics of vector propagation channels in dynamic mobilescenarios

In wireless communications, the performance of a smart antenna system depends heavily upon vector channels describing channel propagation between an antenna array and a mobile subscriber. The smart antennas perform quite well in stationary mobile environments in which channel propagation characteristics are stable. However, in dynamic wireless environments where the mobile user is in motion, knowledge of how vector channels are affected is necessary for the proper operation of smart antennas. Here, we experimentally investigate the variation of vector channel parameters such as spatial signatures, directions-of-arrival (DOAs), and complex path attenuations with small movement (2λ) of the mobile under typical line-of-sight (LOS), line-of-sight with local scatterer (LOSLS), and nonline-of-sight (NLOS) propagation scenarios. The experiments are conducted using a 1.8-GHz smart antenna testbed developed at The University of Texas at Austin and a mobile transmitter. The results show that with small displacements, DOAs remain approximately unchanged and spatial signatures change due primarily to complex attenuations. Spatial signatures are very susceptible to the movement in the NLOS scenario, reaching up to 90% relative angle change within 2λ displacement. However, in the LOS scenario, they exhibit small and periodic fluctuations with a period of 0.6λ     

一种基于随机森林的LOS/NLOS基站识别方法

蜂窝移动通信环境复杂多变,在基站和移动台之间不可避免会出现电波的非视距（Non-Line-of-Sight,NLOS）传播,使基站和移动台之间的距离测量误差显著增大,导致定位性能急剧下降。为了准确识别出视距（Line-of-Sight,LOS）与非视距传播的基站信号,提出了一种基于随机森林的LOS/NLOS基站识别方法,通过分析移动台与各基站接收机测量距离与定位误差之间的相关性,选择LOS/NLOS测量距离作为特征进行分类器训练,再将分类器用于LOS/NLOS基站的识别。仿真结果表明,该方法对NLOS基站的正确识别率达到90%以上,能取得较好的定位性能。     

Delay spread reduction effect of beam antenna and adaptively controlled beam facing access system in urban line-of-sight street microcells

The paper presents theoretical and experimental investigation results of the delay spread reduction effect of beam antennas in urban line-of-sight (LOS) street microcells. The 95% delay spread cumulative probability in a 600 m LOS cell length is reduced to 70% when the 3 dB beamwidth of the base station (BS) antenna is in the range from 80/spl deg/ to 140/spl deg/, compared with that (420 ns) in omnidirectional antennas. An adaptively controlled beam facing access (ABFA) system in which the beam antennas are used in both the base and mobile stations is further proposed. The beam direction of the BS antenna is fixed along the street, but that of the mobile station (MS) antenna is adaptively controlled as the maximum received power is obtained. Using ABFA, the 95% delay spread cumulative probability in the 300 m LOS microcell is reduced to less than 70 ns, when the antenna beam-width lies in the range from 20/spl deg/ to 140/spl deg/ in the BS and about 80/spl deg/ in the MS.     

Robust Mobile Location Estimator with NLOS Mitigation using Interacting Multiple Model Algorithm

A Kalman-based interacting multiple model (IMM) smoother is proposed for mobile location estimation with the time of arrival (TOA) measurement data in cellular networks to meet the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requirement for phase 2. In this study, the line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) conditions in cellular networks are considered as a Markov process with two interactive modes. Then we propose a Kalman-based IMM smoother to accurately estimate smooth range between the corresponding base station (BS) and mobile station (MS) in cellular networks. It is shown that the proposed mobile location estimator can efficiently mitigate the NLOS effects of the measurement range error even when the corresponding BS changes the condition between LOS and NLOS. Simulation results demonstrate that the performance of the proposed Kalman-based IMM smoother is improved significantly over the FCC target in both fixed LOS/NLOS and LOS/NLOS transition conditions     

Mean Effective Gain of Mobile Antennas in Line-of-Sight Street Microcells With Low Base Station Antennas

A method for evaluating the mean effective gain (MEG) of mobile antennas in line-of-sight (LOS) street microcells with low base station antennas is investigated. The received power patterns of incident radio waves along typical streets measured in actual street microcells in urban areas of Tokyo are presented to clarify the proper distribution model for the incident radio waves. A two-dimensional statistical distribution model is proposed based on the measured received power patterns for the incident radio waves that follow a Gaussian distribution in the azimuth angle, but are concentrated in the horizontal plane in the elevation angle. The two-dimensional theoretical expression of the MEG that consists of the incident distribution model function and the radiation patterns in the horizontal plane of the mobile antennas is derived to evaluate easily the MEG. We show that the MEG values in street microcells are not defined as only one value and form the MEG pattern because the MEG values are changed by the relative direction of the radio waves arriving at the mobile station antennas. The measured and calculated MEG values (MEG patterns) of the whip antennas used in the experiments are in good agreement. The average error between the measured and calculated MEG values is within approximately 4.5 dB at maximum. The results show that the MEG degradation of the mobile station antennas due to the effect of the human body is properly evaluated by the proposed distribution model. The proposed statistical distribution model is valid and effective in both estimating the MEG values of mobile antennas and designing the LOS street microcell systems with low base station antennas.      

全向高增益天线阵技术的研究进展

全向天线因其具有水平全向辐射特性,有利于高速运动的移动平台以及中继站接收各个方向的电磁波而受到广泛关注。综述了高增益全向天线的需求背景、典型结构和关键技术,依次介绍了共线折合振子阵、富兰克林全向共线振子阵、缝隙耦合串馈共线全向天线阵、同轴共线天线阵和印刷全向共线天线阵的结构特点,对比总结了它们各自的优缺点。最后还分析了高增益全向天线的宽带化、小型化、组阵等关键技术。为满足未来实际应用需求,高增益全向天线阵的宽带化、小型化技术将成为今后的研究重点。     

多天线NLOS定位误差抑制算法

为抑制非视距传播造成的定位误差,提出一种基于对各基站TOA测量结果进行NLOS判别的误差抑制算法。与传统基于TOA统计信息的NLOS抑制不同,算法直接利用移动台多天线接收数据判别基站视距状态,然后融合LOS和NLOS基站测量结果解算移动台位置。NLOS判别机制采用多天线接收数据估计信道莱斯K因子,利用K因子在LOS/NLOS下服从的不同概率分布在信号处理层面对NLOS基站进行判别。算法最后采用约束最优化方法融合识别后的LOS和NLOS基站的TOA测量结果解算移动台位置。仿真结果表明,所提融合NLOS基站TOA解算算法可有效提高NLOS存在时的定位精度。      

Research on circularly polarized conical-beam antennas

This antenna is intended for communication between a stationary satellite and mobile stations, and is designed to possess circularly polarized conical beams. It generates a beam in the desired direction, by means of changing the inclination angle of the linear-antenna elements, and the spacing between the antenna elements, without phase shifters. The antenna inclination angle (α), the antenna length (e), the distance between antenna elements (d), and the radius of the circular reflector (R), are adopted as parameters, and optimum values for the directivity of the research objective are obtained by calculation. Four elements of the antenna are fed by in-phase signals, the distances between elements are set to appropriate lengths, and by providing spatial phase differences of 90°, circularly polarized waves are obtained. The antenna elements are fundamentally monopole radiators. Ultimately, the antenna parameters were determined as follows: ℒ=0.64λ (120 mm), R=0.43λ (80 mm), α=45°, and d=0.48λ (90 mm). In the calculation, the frequency was set to 1.6 GHz. It was seen that the beam radiation intensity took the maximum value in the angular range of &thetas;=30° to 60°, and that the &thetas; and φ components of the electric field were approximately equal. In other words, the radiated waves were circularly polarized. An experiment for measuring the directivity of the circularly polarized conical-beam antenna was carried out by using four monopole antennas, and the effectiveness of the theoretical analysis was confirmed. Experiments were carried out for the impedance and directivity     

Dynamic Self-Optimization of the Antenna Tilt for Best Trade-off Between Coverage and Capacity in Mobile Networks

One major factor influencing the coverage and capacity in mobile networks is related to the configuration of the antennas and especially the antenna tilt angle. By utilizing antenna tilt, signal reception within a cell can be improved and interference radiation towards other cells can be effectively reduced, which leads to a higher signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio received by the users and increased sum data rate in the network. In this work, a method for capacity and coverage optimization using base station antenna electrical tilt in mobile networks is proposed. It has the potential to improve network performance while reducing operational costs and complexity, and to offer better quality of experience for the mobile users. Our solution is based on the application of reinforcement learning and the simulation results show that the algorithm improves significantly the overall data rate of the network, as compared to no antenna tilt optimization. The analysis in this paper focuses on the downlink of the cellular system. For the simulation experiments a multicellular and sectorized mobile network in an urban environment and randomly distributed user terminals are considered. The main contribution in this work is related to the development of a learning algorithm for automated antenna tilting.     

Mobile Location Estimator in a Rough Wireless Environment Using Extended Kalman-Based IMM and Data Fusion

An extended Kalman-based interacting multiple model (EK-IMM) smoother is proposed for mobile location estimation with the data fusion of the time of arrival (TOA) and the received signal strength (RSS) measurements in a rough wireless environment. The extended Kalman filter is used for nonlinear estimation. The IMM is employed as a switch between the line-of-sight (LOS) and non-LOS (NLOS) states, which are considered to be a Markov process with two interactive modes. Combining extended Kalman filtering with the IMM scheme for accurately smooth range estimation between the corresponding base station (BS) and mobile station (MS) in the rough wireless environment, the proposed robust mobile location estimator, in association with data fusion, can efficiently mitigate the NLOS effects on the measurement range error. Simulation results illustrate that the performance of the proposed method has been significantly improved in the LOS/NLOS transition case. Moreover, the performance of the EK-IMM smoother with data fusion is also better than that with a single measurement used alone.      

Analysis for mean effective gain of mobile antennas in land mobileradio environments

A method is described for analyzing the mean effective gain (MEG) of antennas moving in a mobile communication environment. The MEG characteristics of a mobile antenna are determined by the mutual relation between the antenna patterns and the statistical distribution of incident waves in an environment. To analyze this relation theoretically, a general expression for the MEG using a statistical model of incident waves is derived, and a novel statistical model, whose distribution is uniform in azimuth and Gaussian in elevation, is proposed. The validity of the statistical model is confirmed through 900-MHz-band measurements carried out in a Tokyo urban area, and the empirical parameters for the statistical distribution are described. The MEG characteristics of a half-wavelength dipole antenna are investigated using the proposed method, and it is shown that the theoretical curves calculated using the empirical parameters are in excellent agreement with experimental results. This analysis is extremely applicable for evaluating the MEG characteristics of arbitrary mobile antennas in various mobile communication environments     

Experimental investigations of 60 GHz WLAN systems in office environment

This paper presents the results of an experimental investigation of 60 GHz wireless local area network (WLAN) systems in an office environment. The measurement setup with highly directional mechanically steerable antennas and 800 MHz bandwidth was developed and experiments were performed for conference room and cubicle environments. Measurement results demonstrate that the 60 GHz propagation channel is quasioptical in nature and received signal power is obtained through line of sight (LOS) and reflected signal paths of the first and second orders. The 60 GHz WLAN system prototype using steerable directional antennas with 18 dB gain was able to achieve about 30 dB baseband SNR for LOS transmission, about 15-20 dB for communications through the first-order reflected path, and 2-6 dB SNR when using second-order reflection for the office environments. The intra cluster statistical parameters of the propagation channel were evaluated and a statistical model for reflected clusters is proposed. Experimental results demonstrating strong polarization impact on the characteristics of the propagation channel are presented. Cross-polarization discrimination (XPD) of the propagation channel was estimated as approximately 20 dB for LOS transmission and 10-20 dB for NLOS reflected paths.     

A cluster-based analysis of propagation characteristics in MIMO relay channels based on wideband measurement

In this paper,the characteristics of clusters induced by a variety of propagation mechanisms in the link from the relay station(RS) to the mobile station(MS) are presented.Based on the results of high resolution channel parameter estimation,an automatic framework integrated with the manual intervention is utilized to perform the cluster identification and tracking.The power proportion and angular spread of clusters are investigated in both the line-of-sight(LOS) and non-line-of-sight(NLOS) scenarios.The measurement results indicate that the channel characteristics of clusters are different from the link from the base station to the MS due to the lower height of the RS antennas.     

Mobile Tracking in Mixed Line-of-Sight/Non-Line-of-Sight Conditions: Algorithm and Theoretical Lower Bound

The paper investigates the problem of mobile tracking in mixed line-of-sight (LOS)/non-line-of-sight (NLOS) conditions. The motion of mobile station is modeled by a dynamic white noise acceleration model, while the measurements are time of arrival (TOA). A first-order Markov model is employed to describe the dynamic transition of LOS/NLOS conditions. An improved Rao-Blackwellized particle filter (RBPF) is proposed, in which the LOS/NLOS sight conditions are estimated by particle filtering using the optimal trial distribution, and the mobile state is computed by applying approximated analytical methods. The theoretical error lower bound is further studied in the described problem. A new method is presented to compute the posterior Cramer-Rao lower bound (CRLB): the mobile state is first estimated by decentralized extended Kalman filter (EKF) method, then sigma point set and unscented transformation are applied to calculate Fisher information matrix (FIM). Simulation results show that the improved RBPF is more accurate than current methods, and its performance approaches to the theoretical bound.     

TOA数据处理对NLOS环境下定位精度的改善

基于移动通信环境中非视距(NLOS)传播时延服从指数分布的特性,提出了一种改善移动台定位精度的波达时间(TOA)数据处理方法.NLOS传播时延是TOA测量误差的一部分,是基站与移动台距离的指数函数,具有正偏置的特性,因此TOA测量值越大其误差越大.对所有的TOA测量数据进行分析,仅保留误差最小的3个,然后再采用最小二乘(LS)法估计移动台的坐标.仿真结果表明,该TOA数据处理方法能够明显改善NLOS传播环境下的定位精度,在系统测量误差较小时对LOS传播条件下的定位精度几乎没有影响.     

基于地理信息系统的GSM小区天线下倾角计算软件的开发

为了在GSM系统基站规划工作中确定小区的天线下倾角,应用地理信息系统开发了GSM小区天线下倾角计算软件。软件在开发中采用OLE自动化方法和MapInfo的回调功能,集成了地理信息系统强大的地理化显示和操作功能。软件包含了从数据准备、地图生成、下倾角计算到结果保存等各个过程,实现了下倾角数据的自动维护。应用表明,该软件较好地支撑了工程中的GSM基站规划工作。     

Selective Mobile Communication in Socially Sensitive Environments

In certain environments, the use of mobile phones must be curtailed for the sake of security or out of respect for others. We present a novel method for selectively controlling mobile phone services in such areas using a base station controller and a sequence of detection steps to identify when the mobile device is within the coverage area. A prototype for the method has been developed using commercial off-the-shelf and custom designed hardware and software subsystems. Key components in the prototype system are two directional antennas located at the entry to the controlled area with one antenna facing outwards and the other inwards. By using the proposed detection method, the base station controller is able to detect when a mobile station enters or leaves the controlled area. Experiments using a variety of detection sequences by the two directional antennas and associated white- and blacklists of allowable and disallowed devices, respectively, confirm that the prototype system is able to effectively control the use of mobile devices within the coverage area.     

基于CFR虚拟阵列天线的AOA室内定位

准确地估计信号的到达角（Angle Of Arrival,AOA）为实现在室内高精度定位提供了可能,为了能够准确地估计室内多径信号的AOA,并提取出直射路径的AOA信息进行定位,本文提出一种利用信道频率响应信息（Channel Frequency Response,CFR）扩展阵列天线的亚米级室内定位系统.首先,采集CFR信息进行AOA和信号到达时间（Time Of Arrival,TOA）的联合估计;其次,提出了一种基于AOA和TOA二维聚类信息的直射路径识别算法;另外,还提出了可视环境（Line Of Sight,LOS）以及非可视环境（Non Line Of Sight,NLOS）的识别算法,可以准确的判断出当前接收机相对发射机是处于LOS还是NLOS环境;最后,利用现有的三天线Wi-Fi设备在室内进行了测角以及定位测试,实验结果表明本文提出的定位系统在室内LOS和NLOS环境下分别可以达到中值误差为0.8m,1.3m的定位精度,可用于室内高精度定位.     

超宽带脉冲波形的收发特性分析

采用时域电场积分方程和互易原理相结合的方法,探讨了已知接收信号的情况下,脉冲发送信号的波形,并研究了视距和非视距两种传播路径对脉冲收发信号的影响.在分析中,脉冲波形和天线几何形状可以任意.分别以蝴蝶形天线和超宽带槽式天线为例,并将计算结果与已知接收脉冲信号进行了比较.它们之间良好的一致性说明了所提方法的正确性和有效性.     

Geolocation in mines with an impulse response fingerprinting technique and neural networks

The location of people, mobile terminals and equipment is highly desirable for operational enhancements in the mining industry. In an indoor environment such as a mine, the multipath caused by reflection, diffraction and diffusion on the rough sidewall surfaces, and the non-line of sight (NLOS) due to the blockage of the shortest direct path between transmitter and receiver are the main sources of range measurement errors. Unreliable measurements of location metrics such as received signal strengths (RSS), angles of arrival (AOA) and times of arrival (TOA) or time differences of arrival (TDOA), result in the deterioration of the positioning performance. Hence, alternatives to the traditional parametric geolocation techniques have to be considered. In this paper, we present a novel method for mobile station location using wideband channel measurement results applied to an artificial neural network (ANN). The proposed system, the wide band neural network-locate (WBNN-locate), learns off-line the location 'signatures' from the extracted location-dependent features of the measured channel impulse responses for line of sight (LOS) and non-line of sight (NLOS) situations. It then matches on-line the observation received from a mobile station against the learned set of 'signatures' to accurately locate its position. The location accuracy of the proposed system, applied in an underground mine, has been found to be 2 meters for 90% and 80% of trained and untrained data, respectively. Moreover, the proposed system may also be applicable to any other indoor situation and particularly in confined environments with characteristics similar to those of a mine (e.g. rough sidewalls surface).