Generalized decorrelating discrete-time rake receiver

In this paper, we introduce the generalized decorrelating discrete-time RAKE receiver (GD-DTR) for single antenna systems and extend it to multi-antenna (e.g. MIMO) systems. The GD-DTR benefits from the correlated nature of multiple access interference while being robust against channel estimation errors. It is a combination of two other advanced RAKE reception methods namely, the discrete-time version of the generalized RAKE (G-RAKE) receiver and the decorrelating discrete-time RAKE receiver (D-DTR). The G-RAKE was proposed for correlated interference mitigation. The D-DTR improves performance in the presence of channel estimation errors in diffuse channels. Our results show that the performance of the discrete-time G-RAKE (G-DTR) could be worse than a conventional discrete-time RAKE receiver (C-DTR) when there are channel estimation errors in the system. Unlike G-DTR, our proposed GD-DTR provides gains up to 0.7 dB at a raw bit error rate of 10^-2 in the presence of channel estimation errors compared to C-DTR. For the MIMO case, the gain of the MIMO GD-DTR compared to MIMO C-DTR are 1 dB and 1.1 dB at a raw bit error rate of 10^-2 in 2 transmit 2 receive antenna (2times2) and 3times3 systems respectively, if there is no correlation between the antennas. For a highly correlated receive antenna case, the gain increases to 4 dB.     

Single carrier transmission for multi-gigabit 60-GHz WPAN systems

This paper proposes a new channel model for millimeter wave (60 GHz) for indoor applications, power amplifier and phase noise models at 60 GHz, an optimal global channelization over 9 GHz bandwidth, common mode signaling to bridge SC (single carrier) and OFDM (orthogonal frequency division multiplex) camps, and a robust payload as well as a header and preamble design for single carrier for practical applications. The computer simulations have validated these new proposals for WPAN (wireless personal are network) design and significantly contributed a lot to global (IEEE802.15.3c) standardization which will be closed in the near future by issuing system specifications.     

Error performance and throughput evaluation of a multi-Gbps millimeter-wave WPAN system in the presence of adjacent and co-channel interference

This paper investigates the impact of adjacent channel interference (ACI) and co-channel interference (CCI) on error performance and throughput of a multi-Gbps millimeterwave wireless personal area network (WPAN) system in a realistic residential line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) multipath environment. The main contribution of this paper is providing a multi-Gbps WPAN system design in the challenging multipath environment in the presence of ACI/CCI. Based on the investigation results, we have provided ACI/CCI rejection as a reference for victim receiver protection design. In the NLOS environment, the ACI rejection (i.e. ACI that causes 0.5 dB degradation in the required signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) to achieve bit error rate (BER) of 10^-6) for pi/2-BPSK, QPSK, 8 PSK and 16 QAM are 13, 7, 0 and -6dB respectively. And the CCI rejection for similar modulation schemes are -18, -20, -26 and -29 respectively. Secondly, we have clarified the LOS-NLOS relationship of the ACI/CCI impact to system performance. ACI in multipath NLOS environment causes an additional 5 dB degradation to error performance as compared to ACI in the LOS environment. CCI on the other hand, has similar impact on error performance in both LOS and NLOS environment. Thirdly, we have clarified the relationship between modulation spectral efficiency and robustness against ACI/CCI. In an environment with no or low ACI/CCI, the maximum achievable throughput for pi/2-BPSK, QPSK, 8 PSK and 16 QAM in LOS environment are 1.2, 2.5, 3.8 and 5 Gbps respectively. In NLOS environment, the achievable throughput decreases to 1, 1.9, 2.8 and 3.8 Gbps respectively. As ACI/CCI increases, the throughput of higherorder modulation schemes such as 16 QAM decreases the most rapidly, followed by 8 PSK and QPSK. The throughput for pi/2-BPSK has the highest tolerance against increasing ACI/CCI, at the expense of lower maximum achievable throughput.     

Relay with deflection routing for effective throughput improvement in Gbps millimeter-wave WPAN systems

In this paper, we propose a deflection routing scheme that improves effective throughput (defined as the successfully transmitted bits over the duration between two available sequential time slots) of millimeter-wave wireless personal area network (mmWave WPAN) systems. The upcoming mmWave WPAN is based on dynamic time division multiple access (TDMA) and designed to guarantee Gbps-order transmission capability for high definition TV (HDTV) transmission, high speed wireless docking and gaming, etc. The decode-and-forward (DF) type of relay offers a simple solution to the issues of mmWave WPAN systems, such as limited coverage range and unexpected blockage. However, due to the required extra time, DF relay on the other hand decreases the effective throughput, and may not be sufficient to satisfy the requirement of the above data-rate-greedy applications. Inspired by the fact that the significant path loss of a millimeter-wave environment can provide good space isolation, we propose a deflection routing scheme to improve the effective throughput by sharing time slots for direct path with relay path. Based on the sub-exhaustive search, a routing algorithm, named as best fit deflection routing (BFDR), has been developed to find the relay path with the least interference that maximizes the system throughput. To reduce the computational complexity of the BFDR, we have also developed a sub-optimal algorithm named as random fit deflection routing (RFDR). The RFDR algorithm finds the sub-optimized relay path, where the interference may not be the least but is sufficiently low to guarantee the concurrent transmissions. Computer simulations show that, in realistic 60 GHz environments, the effective system throughput can be improved up to 28% under grid topology and 35% under random topology. RFDR achieves almost the same order of throughput improvement with only 10% of the computational complexity of BFDR.     

Virtual time-slot allocation scheme for throughput enhancement in a millimeter-wave multi-Gbps WPAN system

This paper proposes a virtual time-slot allocation (VTSA) scheme for throughput enhancement to realize a multi-Gbps time division multiple access (TDMA) wireless personal area network (WPAN) system in a realistic millimeter-wave residential multipath environment. TDMA system without time-slot-reuse mechanism conventionally allocates one TDMA time-slot to only one communication link at a time. In the proposed VTSA scheme, taking advantage on the large path loss in the millimeterwave band, a single TDMA time-slot can be reallocated and reused by multiple communication links simultaneously (hence the name virtual), thus significantly increasing system throughput. On the other hand, allowing multiple communication links to occupy the same time-slot causes the generation of co-channel interference (CCI). The cross layer VTSA scheme is therefore designed to be able to maximize the throughput improvement by adaptively scheduling the sharing of time-slots, and at the same time monitor the potential performance degradation due to CCI. As a result, it is found that the VTSA scheme is capable of improving system throughput as much as 30% in both AWGN and multipath channels (line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS) environment). Additionally, by coupling with higher-order modulation schemes, the system is able to achieve up to a maximum throughput of 3.8 Gbps. It is also observed that higher-order modulations although have higher maximum achievable throughput in low CCI environment, the tolerance against increasing CCI is considerably lower than that of the lower-order modulations.     

Beam codebook based beamforming protocol for multi-Gbps millimeter-wave WPAN systems

In order to realize high speed, long range, reliable transmission in millimeter-wave 60 GHz wireless personal area networks (60 GHz WPANs), we propose a beamforming (BF) protocol realized in media access control (MAC) layer on top of multiple physical layer (PHY) designs. The proposed BF protocol targets to minimize the BF set-up time and to mitigate the high path loss of 60 GHz WPAN systems. It consists of 3 stages, namely the device (DEV) to DEV linking, sector-level searching and beam-level searching. The division of the stages facilitates significant reduction in setup time as compared to BF protocols with exhaustive searching mechanisms. The proposed BF protocol employs discrete phase-shifters, which significantly simplifies the structure of DEVs as compared to the conventional BF with phase-and-amplitude adjustment, at the expense of a gain degradation of less than 1 dB. The proposed BF protocol is a complete design and PHY-independent, it is applicable to different antenna configurations. Simulation results show that the setup time of the proposed BF protocol is as small as 2% when compared to the exhaustive searching protocol. Furthermore, based on the codebooks with four phases per element, around 15.1 dB gain is achieved by using eight antenna elements at both transmitter and receiver, thereby enabling 1.6 Gbps-data-streaming over a range of three meters. Due to the flexibility in supporting multiple PHY layer designs, the proposed protocol has been adopted by the IEEE 802.15.3c as an optional functionality to realize Gbps communication systems.