Alexandre Graell i Amat

Distributed Serially Concatenated Codes for Multi-Source Cooperative Relay Networks

In this paper, we propose a distributed turbo-like coding scheme for a multi-source relay scenario where multiple sources communicate with a destination with the help of a common relay, which uses the decode-and-forward strategy and operates in half-duplex mode. The proposed distributed code can be viewed as a serially concatenated code (SCC). Thus, at the destination decoding is performed in an iterative fashion which resembles the decoding of a classic SCC. We consider the two scenarios where the sources transmit over orthogonal channels and where they do not. For the latter, interleave-division multiple-access is used for multiuser detection. For both scenarios we optimize the transmission time allocated to the sources and to the relay and compute the achievable rates. The proposed scheme achieves very low error rates and offers significant performance gains with respect to non-cooperation, even for a very large number of sources. Furthermore, it provides a high flexibility in terms of code rate, number of sources, overall system rate and error protection.

Green Communication via Power-Optimized HARQ Protocols

Recently, the efficient use of energy has become an essential research topic for green communication. This paper studies the effect of optimal power controllers on the performance of delay-sensitive communication setups that utilize hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ). The results are obtained for repetition time diversity (RTD) and incremental redundancy (INR) HARQ protocols. In all cases, the optimal power allocation, minimizing the outage-limited average transmission power, is obtained under both continuous and bursting communication models. Also, we investigate the system throughput in different conditions. The results indicate that the power efficiency is substantially increased if adaptive power allocation is utilized. For example, assume a Rayleigh fading channel with a maximum of two (re)transmission rounds with rates {1, [1/2]} nats-per-channel-use and an outage probability constraint 10-3. Then, compared with uniform power allocation, optimal power allocation in RTD reduces the average power by 9 and 11 dB in the bursting and continuous communication models, respectively. In INR, these values are obtained to be 8 and 9 dB, respectively.

Linear Massive MIMO Precoders in the Presence of Phase Noise—A Large-Scale Analysis

We study the impact of phase noise on the downlink performance of a multiuser multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) system, where the base station (BS) employs a large number of transmit antennas M. We consider a setup where the BS employs Mosc free-running oscillators, and M/Mosc antennas are connected to each oscillator. For this configuration, we analyze the impact of phase noise on the performance of zero forcing (ZF), regularized ZF, and matched filter precoders when M and the number of users K are asymptotically large, whereas the ratio M/K = β is fixed. We analytically show that the impact of phase noise on the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) can be quantified as an effective reduction in the quality of the channel state information (CSI) available at the BS when compared with a system without phase noise. As a consequence, we observe that as Mosc increases, the SINR performance of all considered precoders degrades. On the other hand, the variance of the random phase variations caused by the BS oscillators reduces with increasing Mosc. Through Monte Carlo simulations, we verify our analytical results and compare the performance of the precoders for different phase noise and channel noise variances. For all considered precoders, we show that when β is small, the performance of the setup where all BS antennas are connected to a single oscillator is superior to that of the setup where each BS antenna has its own oscillator. However, the opposite is true when β is large and the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the users is low.

Error Floor Analysis of Coded Slotted ALOHA Over Packet Erasure Channels

We present a framework for the analysis of the error floor of coded slotted ALOHA (CSA) for finite frame lengths over the packet erasure channel. The error floor is caused by stopping sets in the corresponding bipartite graph, whose enumeration is, in general, not a trivial problem. We therefore identify the most dominant stopping sets for the distributions of practical interest. The derived analytical expressions allow us to accurately predict the error floor at low to moderate channel loads and characterize the unequal error protection inherent in CSA.

Design of APSK Constellations for Coherent Optical Channels with Nonlinear Phase Noise

We study the design of amplitude phase-shift keying (APSK) constellations for a coherent fiber-optical communication system where nonlinear phase noise (NLPN) is the main system impairment. APSK constellations can be regarded as a union of phase-shift keying (PSK) signal sets with different amplitude levels. A practical two-stage (TS) detection scheme is analyzed, which performs close to optimal detection for high enough input power. We optimize APSK constellations with 4, 8, and 16 points in terms of symbol error probability (SEP) under TS detection for several combinations of input power and fiber length. For 16 points, performance gains of 3.2 dB can be achieved at a SEP of 10-2 compared to 16-QAM by choosing an optimized APSK constellation. We also demonstrate that in the presence of severe nonlinear distortions, it may become beneficial to sacrifice a constellation point or an entire constellation ring to reduce the average SEP. Finally, we discuss the problem of selecting a good binary labeling for the found constellations.

Constellation Optimization in the Presence of Strong Phase Noise

In this paper, we address the problem of optimizing signal constellations for strong phase noise. The problem is investigated by considering three optimization formulations, which provide an analytical framework for constellation design. In the first formulation, we seek to design constellations that minimize the symbol error probability (SEP) for an approximate ML detector in the presence of phase noise. In the second formulation, we optimize constellations in terms of mutual information (MI) for the effective discrete channel consisting of phase noise, additive white Gaussian noise, and the approximate ML detector. To this end, we derive the MI of this discrete channel. Finally, we optimize constellations in terms of the MI for the phase noise channel. We give two analytical characterizations of the MI of this channel, which are shown to be accurate for a wide range of signal-to-noise ratios and phase noise variances. For each formulation, we present a detailed analysis of the optimal constellations and their performance in the presence of strong phase noise. We show that the optimal constellations significantly outperform conventional constellations and those proposed in the literature in terms of SEP, error floors, and MI.

Spatially coupled turbo codes

In this paper, we introduce the concept of spatially coupled turbo codes (SC-TCs), as the turbo codes counterpart of spatially coupled low-density parity-check codes. We describe spatial coupling for both Berrou et al. and Benedetto et al. parallel and serially concatenated codes. For the binary erasure channel, we derive the exact density evolution (DE) equations of SC-TCs by using the method proposed by Kurkoski et al. to compute the decoding erasure probability of convolutional encoders. Using DE, we then analyze the asymptotic behavior of SC-TCs. We observe that the belief propagation (BP) threshold of SC-TCs improves with respect to that of the uncoupled ensemble and approaches its maximum a posteriori threshold. This phenomenon is especially significant for serially concatenated codes, whose uncoupled ensemble suffers from a poor BP threshold.

On the design of rate-compatible serially concatenated convolutional codes

A powerful class of rate-compatible serially concatenated convolutional codes (SCCCs) has been proposed based on minimising analytical upper bounds on the eff or probability in the error floor region. In this paper, this class of codes is further investigated by combining analytical upper bounds with extrinsic information transfer chart analysis to improve performance in the waterfall region. Following this approach, we construct a family of rate-compatible SCCCs with low complexity and good performance in both the error floor and the waterfall regions over a broad range of code rates. The proposed codes outperform standard SCCCs and have a similar performance as more complex parallel concatenated convolutional codes (PCCCs). The proposed codes perform particularly well for high code rates. Copyright (C) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Improving soft FEC performance for higher-order modulations via optimized bit channel mappings.

Soft forward error correction with higher-order modulations is often implemented in practice via the pragmatic bit-interleaved coded modulation paradigm, where a single binary code is mapped to a nonbinary modulation. In this paper, we study the optimization of the mapping of the coded bits to the modulation bits for a polarization-multiplexed fiber-optical system without optical inline dispersion compensation. Our focus is on protograph-based low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes which allow for an efficient hardware implementation, suitable for high-speed optical communications. The optimization is applied to the AR4JA protograph family, and further extended to protograph-based spatially coupled LDPC codes assuming a windowed decoder. Full field simulations via the split-step Fourier method are used to verify the analysis. The results show performance gains of up to 0.25 dB, which translate into a possible extension of the transmission reach by roughly up to 8%, without significantly increasing the system complexity.

Optimized bit mappings for spatially coupled LDPC codes over parallel binary erasure channels

In many practical communication systems, one binary encoder/decoder pair is used to communicate over a set of parallel channels. Examples of this setup include multi-carrier transmission, rate-compatible puncturing of turbo-like codes, and bit-interleaved coded modulation (BICM). A bit mapper is commonly employed to determine how the coded bits are allocated to the channels. In this paper, we study spatially coupled low-density parity check codes over parallel channels and optimize the bit mapper using BICM as the driving example. For simplicity, the parallel bit channels that arise in BICM are replaced by independent binary erasure channels (BECs). For two parallel BECs modeled according to a 4-PAM constellation labeled by the binary reflected Gray code, the optimization results show that the decoding threshold can be improved over a uniform random bit mapper, or, alternatively, the spatial chain length of the code can be reduced for a given gap to capacity. It is also shown that for rate-loss free, circular (tail-biting) ensembles, a decoding wave effect can be initiated using only an optimized bit mapper.