Adaptive Signaling Based on Statistical Characterizations of Outdated Feedback in Wireless Communications

Wireless links form a critical component of communication systems that aim to provide ubiquitous access to information. However, the time-varying characteristics (or "state") of wireless channels caused by the mobility of transmitters, receivers, and objects in the environment make it difficult to achieve reliable communication. Adaptive signaling exploits any channel state information (CSI) available at the transmitter to provide the potential to significantly increase the throughput of wireless links and/or greatly reduce the receiver complexity. As such, adaptive signaling has attracted significant research interest in the last decade and has found application in numerous commercial wireless systems, ranging from cellular data systems to wireless local area networks (WLANs). However, one of the great challenges of wireless communications is that it is difficult to obtain perfect CSI due to the inherently noisy and outdated nature of CSI available at the transmitter. Over the last decade, we have championed the idea of choosing the appropriate transmitted signal based on statistical models for the current channel state conditioned on the channel measurements. In this semi-tutorial paper, we first review how this class of methods has been developed for single-antenna systems, and then present novel recent designs for multiple-antenna systems. Key to the development in each case is the development of the error characterization given the outdated estimates and the use of such to allocate data rate and power over time and possibly space. In general, the focus is on rate allocation, while power allocation is done through a pruning method. Numerical results will demonstrate in both the single-antenna and multiple-antenna cases that such an approach provides a robust method for improving system data rate versus the standard practice of employing link margin to compensate for such uncertainties.     

Adaptive-modulation schemes for minimum outage probability in wireless systems

Adaptive-modulation schemes are designed that yield the minimum outage probability for wireless systems with strict delay constraints, under the assumption of perfect causal channel state information at the transmitter and receiver. Numerical results indicate that the proposed schemes significantly outperform adaptive schemes designed to maximize the average rate.     

Optimal diversity allocation in multiuser communication systems. I.System model

A class of multiuser multicarrier communication systems is introduced to study the influence of resource allocation on the performance of multiuser communication systems operating over fading channels. This class of systems includes both systems that employ exclusive allocation schemes, where users are allotted time-bandwidth slots without interference from other users, and systems that employ shared allocation schemes, where users are allotted time-bandwidth slots that are also employed by other users. The optimal weighting factors used in the combining of the received signals from the slots of a single user for the conventional receiver is derived, and the performance of systems in the class is characterized. For each of a number of popular multiuser architectures, it is shown that there exists a system in the class with nearly identical performance. Based on these relations, it is concluded that a class of systems has been introduced that allows the study of the merits of different types of time-bandwidth allocation under a single framework     

Rapid Hybrid Acquisition of Ultra-Wideband Signals

Impulsive ultra-wideband (UWB) radio provides many promising features for wireless communications in a dense multipath environment. However, these features are largely the result of the enormous effective processing gain, which can make acquisition difficult at the receiver. In this paper, a recently developed theory of minimum complexity sequential detection is applied to the hybrid acquisition problem. As in previous hybrid schemes, a number of potential timing phases are checked as a group; however, a phase is disregarded as soon as it appears unlikely rather than waiting for a “winner” to be chosen from the group. Another phase then replaces the disregarded one. Analysis and simulation results indicate that the proposed scheme can improve average acquisition times for highly spread systems operating over either additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) or multipath fading channels. This paper is based in part upon work supported by the Army Research Office under Contract DAAD10-01-1-0477 and employed equipment obtained under National Science Foundation Grant EIA-0080119.     

On the minimax robustness of the uniform transmission power strategy in MIMO systems

In this paper, it is shown that the uniform power allocation across transmit antennas is optimal in the sense that this strategy maximizes the minimum average mutual information of a multiple-input multiple-output system across the class of any arbitrary correlated fading channels, with constraints on the the total fixed transmit power (P/sub Q/), total power of the fades at the transmitter side (P/sub T/), and total power of the fades at the receiver side (P/sub R/), if the channel state information is perfectly known at the receiver side only.     

A fast-acquiring blind predictive DFE

This article presents a blind predictive decision-feedback equalization (DFE) scheme motivated by the work of Labat et al. (see idid., vol.46, p.921-30, July 1998). The proposed scheme outperforms another previously proposed blind predictive DFE scheme, and also eliminates the filter interchange required in the scheme of Labat et al.     

Slightly Frequency-Shifted Reference Ultra-Wideband (UWB) Radio

A promising ultra-wideband (UWB) radio technique being widely considered for low-data-rate applications, such as those often encountered in sensor networks, is the transmitted reference (TR) UWB scheme. However, the standard TR-UWB scheme, while often motivated by the simplicity of its receiver, is still dogged by implementation concerns. In particular, the receiver requires an extremely wideband delay element, which is difficult to incorporate into low-power integrated systems. In this paper, a TR scheme is proposed in which the separation between the data and reference signals, rather than being a time delay, is a slow rotation over the symbol interval. This provides a (slightly) frequency-shifted reference that, while orthogonal to the data-bearing pulse, still goes through a nearly equal channel. A detailed analysis of the proposed scheme is provided. Simulation results demonstrate the expected result that frequency shifting of the reference in the proposed manner is not effective for high-data-rate systems that experience appreciable intersymbol interference. However, for the targeted low-to-moderate data-rate applications, numerical results demonstrate that the proposed system not only achieves the primary goal of providing a much simpler receiver architecture, but also that it outperforms the standard TR-UWB system     

Adaptive bit-interleaved coded modulation

Adaptive coded modulation is a powerful method for achieving a high spectral efficiency over fading channels. Previously proposed adaptive schemes have employed set-partitioned trellis-coded modulation (TCM) and have adapted the number of uncoded bits on a given symbol based on the corresponding channel estimate. However, these adaptive TCM schemes do not perform well in systems where channel estimates are unreliable, since uncoded bits are not protected from unexpected finding. In this paper, adaptive bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM) is introduced. Adaptive BICM schemes remove the need for parallel branches in the trellis-even when adapting the constellation size, thus making these schemes robust to errors made in the estimation of the current channel fading value. This motivates the design of adaptive BICM schemes, which will lead to adaptive systems that can support users with higher mobility than those considered in previous work. In such systems, numerical results demonstrate that the proposed schemes achieve a moderate bandwidth efficiency gain over previously proposed adaptive schemes and conventional (nonadaptive) schemes of similar complexity     

Optimal diversity allocation in multiuser communication systems.II. Optimization

For pt.I see ibid., vol.47, no.1828-36 (1999). In Part I, a class of multicarrier systems was proposed to study the effect of the method of diversity allocation on the performance of coherent multiuser communication systems operating over fading channels. In this paper, optimization over the proposed class of systems is considered for a fixed number of users per unit bandwidth. The first case studied is a system where the only noise not attributable to users in the system is additive white Gaussian noise. It is observed that either a system employing exclusive allocation, where users are allocated time-bandwidth resources that are not simultaneously shared with other users, or a system employing maximum resource sharing, where all users simultaneously share time-bandwidth resources, is optimal. Next, the preferable of these two extreme forms of resource allocation is determined. For any reasonable signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and user density, it is shown that the system employing exclusive resource allocation is optimal in a single-cell environment with perfect subchannel separation at the receiver. Finally, the optimization is repeated in the presence of partial-band interference (PBI). Once again, either a system employing exclusive resource allocation or a system employing a maximum resource sharing scheme is observed to be optimal. The presence of the PBI increases the range of user densities and SNRs where a system employing a maximum resource sharing scheme is optimal, particularly when the probability of a particular time-bandwidth slot experiencing interference is high     

A reconfigurable, power-efficient adaptive Viterbi decoder

Error-correcting convolutional codes provide a proven mechanism to limit the effects of noise in digital data transmission. Although hardware implementations of decoding algorithms, such as the Viterbi algorithm, have shown good noise tolerance for error-correcting codes, these implementations require an exponential increase in very large scale integration area and power consumption to achieve increased decoding accuracy. To achieve reduced decoder power consumption, we have examined and implemented decoders based on the reduced-complexity adaptive Viterbi algorithm (AVA). Run-time dynamic reconfiguration is performed in response to varying communication channel-noise conditions to match minimized power consumption to required error-correction capabilities. Experimental calculations indicate that the use of dynamic reconfiguration leads to a 69% reduction in decoder power consumption over a nonreconfigurable field-programmable gate array implementation with no loss of decode accuracy.