Performance bound and trellis-code design criterion for discretememoryless channels and finite-delay symbol-by-symbol decoding

A new tight analytical upper bound is presented for the performance of finite-delay symbol-by-symbol (SBS) Abend-Fritchman-like decoding of trellis-encoded data crossing arbitrary (eventually time-varying) discrete memoryless channels (DMCs). On the basis of this bound, a related criterion for the optimal design of trellis codes with SBS decoding is then proposed. It gives rise to an effective procedure for the construction of good trellis codes (generally time varying and nonlinear) with assigned decoding complexity     

Combined channel estimation and data detection using softstatistics for frequency-selective fast-fading digital links

A novel adaptive nonlinear equalizer for fast time-varying multipath channels that combines the channel estimation and data detection tasks is presented. The a posteriori probabilities (APPs) of the states of the intersymbol interference (ISI) channel are recursively computed from the received data by a symbol-by-symbol (SbS) detector and are then employed by a Kalman-type nonlinear channel estimator. Robust channel tracking and good data-detection performance are obtained, with a reasonable receiver complexity     

A novel adaptive receiver with enhanced channel tracking capabilityfor TDMA-based mobile radio communications

The paper presents a novel fast-adaptive nonlinear receiver which exploits soft statistics for tracking the random fluctuations experienced by time division multiple access (TDMA) mobile radio links impaired by frequency-selective time-variant multipath phenomena. The detection task is accomplished by an Abend-Fritchman-like symbol-by-symbol maximum likelihood (SbS-ML) detector which delivers both hard decisions and soft statistics in form of a posteriori probabilities (APPs) of the states of the intersymbol interference (ISI) channel. In the proposed adaptive receiver, these APPs are employed in place of the conventional hard-detected data to feed an ad hoc developed nonlinear recursive Kalman-type channel estimator. Extensive computer simulations show that the exploitation of soft statistics enhances the tracking capability of the channel estimator so that the proposed receiver generally outperforms the usual ones based on adaptive maximum likelihood sequence estimators (MLSEs) for signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) values over 12-13 dB. Furthermore, the experienced performance gap with respect to more complex per-survivor processing (PSP)-based multi-estimator detectors appears generally small on slowly and moderately fast time-varying channels characterized by values of the product Doppler bandwidth × signaling period B_DT_S below 5×10^-3     

Maximum-Rate Node Selection for Power-Limited Multiantenna Relay Backbones

Wireless mesh networks (WMNs) are envisioned for extending the coverage of WLANs by interconnecting the underlying access points (APs) via high-capacity wireless backbones. Since the ultimate goal of a WMN is to provide Internet connectivity to residential clients, WMN traffic is mainly routed over the backbone either toward the Internet gateways (IGWs) or from the IGWs to the APs. In principle, the transport capacity of a WMN can further be upgraded by equipping the underlying backbone routers with multiantenna (MA) radio modules. Motivated by the above consideration, in this paper, we focus on the optimized node selection (e.g., path-routing) over MA mesh backbones when the target is to maximize the end-to-end routed information rate subject to a constraint on the total power available for the relays. Under the assumption of Rayleigh-distributed block fading, we assume that point-to-point capacity-achieving space-time codes (STCs) are used for the single-hop link. At first, we tackle the routing problem when neither interference mitigation (IM) nor transmit beamforming (TB) is performed at the relay nodes, and then, we extend the analysis to the cases when IM and/or TB are also carried out. The effects of channel-state-information (CSI) possibly available at the relay nodes are also investigated. So doing, we are able to gain insight about the combined effect of spatial multiplexing and IM capabilities of the overall MA architecture on both end-to-end capacity and access medium performance of the considered WMN.     

Effects of leaky-wave propagation in metamaterial grounded slabs excited by a dipole source

In this paper, dispersive propagation and radiation properties of leaky waves on metamaterial grounded slabs are investigated. The proper or improper nature of leaky modes supported by such structures is shown to be related to the metamaterial being /spl epsi/-negative, /spl mu/-negative, or double-negative, and to field polarization, giving rise to backward or forward radiation depending on the frequency range of operation. These spectral features and the associated frequency scan of the radiated beam are illustrated by considering the field excited by a dipole source in the presence of an infinite metamaterial grounded slab. The possibility to achieve nearly equal values for the phase constants of a TE and a TM leaky mode on a large frequency range is shown; this allows us to obtain a conical radiation pattern and, also, for suitable values of the attenuation constants, the radiation of a pencil beam at broadside. Conditions for achieving maximum power density at broadside are derived, when one constitutive parameter is much smaller than the other. In order to illustrate these novel features, numerical results based on experimentally tested dispersion models for permittivity and permeability of the metamaterial media are provided, concerning leaky-wave modal properties and near and far fields excited by a dipole source.     

Performance bounds and cutoff rates for data channels affected bycorrelated randomly time-variant multipath fading

The symmetric cutoff rate is derived for quadrature-amplitude-modulated (QAM) block-coded data transmissions over noisy links affected by time-correlated multipath-phenomena which introduce intersymbol interference (ISI) in the received signal. Maximum likelihood (ML) decoding supported by perfect channel-state information (CSI) is assumed. Due to the presence of time-correlated ISI phenomena, the resulting transmission link constitutes an example of a continuous-state channel with memory     

A new approach based on “soft statistics” to thenonlinear blind-deconvolution of unknown data channels

In this paper, we present a new nonlinear receiver for the blind deconvolution of intersymbol interference (ISI) impaired data. The proposed receiver achieves fast identification of an unknown transmission channel using only one channel estimator and requiring the computation of only the second-order conditional statistics of the baud-rate sampled received signal and the knowledge of the transmitted constellation. The main novelty of the proposed approach is that the receiver accomplishes fast channel-identification by using soft-statistics. In particular, the receiver consists of a symbol-by-symbol maximum a posteriori (SbS-MAP) detector that feeds a nonlinear Kalman-like channel estimator with the soft statistics constituted by the a posteriori probabilities (APPs) of the state sequence of the ISI channel. Several numerical results confirm that the proposed blind detector achieves the identification of nonminimum phase channels with deep spectral notches within 300 symbols, even at low signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). Furthermore, an attractive feature of the proposed blind channel estimator is that it directly estimates the discrete-time impulse response of the unknown channel so that, in principle, any equalization technique for known channels may be performed after channel identification has been achieved     

A New Brillouin Dispersion Diagram for 1-D Periodic Printed Structures

Dispersion and radiation properties for bound and leaky modes supported by 1-D printed periodic structures are investigated. A new type of Brillouin diagram is presented that accounts for different types of physical leakage, namely, leakage into one or more surface waves or also simultaneously into space. This new Brillouin diagram not only provides a physical insight into the dispersive behavior of such periodic structures, but it also provides a simple and convenient way to correctly choose the integration paths that arise from a spectral-domain moment-method analysis. Numerical results illustrate the usefulness of this new Brillouin diagram in explaining the leakage and stopband behavior for these types of periodic structures.     

Asymptotically tight bounds on the capacity and outage probabilityfor QAM transmissions over Rayleigh-faded data channels with CSI

In this article, novel quickly computable analytical upper and lower bounds are presented on the symmetric capacity for flat-faded Rayleigh channels with finite-size quadrature amplitude modulation constellations when perfect channel-state information at the receiving site is available; the proposed bounds are asymptotically tight both for high and low signal-to-noise ratios. Furthermore, an easily computable expression is also provided for a reasonably tight evaluation of the resulting outage probability