Erik G. Ström

Propagation delay estimation in asynchronous direct-sequence code-division multiple access systems

In an asynchronous direct-sequence code-division multiple access (DS-CDMA) communication system, the parameter estimation problem, i.e., estimating the propagation delay, attenuation and phase shift of each users transmitted signal, may be complicated by the so-called near-far problem. The near-far problem occurs when the amplitudes of the users received signals are very dissimilar, as the case might be in many important applications. In particular, the standard method for estimating the propagation delays will fail in a near-far situation. Several new estimators, the maximum likelihood, an approximative maximum likelihood and a subspace-based estimator, are therefore proposed and are shown to be robust against the near-far problem. No knowledge of the transmitted bits is assumed, and the proposed estimators can thus be used for both acquisition and tracking. In addition, the Cramer-Rao bound is derived for the parameter estimation problem.

Evaluation of the IEEE 802.11p MAC Method for Vehicle-to-Vehicle Communication

In this paper the medium access control (MAC) method of the upcoming vehicular communication standard IEEE 802.11p has been simulated in a highway scenario with periodic broadcast of time-critical packets (so-called heartbeat messages) in a vehicle-to-vehicle situation. The 802.11p MAC method is based on carrier sense multiple access (CSMA) where nodes listen to the wireless channel before sending. If the channel is busy, the node must defer its access and during high utilization periods this could lead to unbounded delays. This well-known property of CSMA is undesirable for time-critical communications. The simulation results reveal that a specific node/vehicle is forced to drop over 80% of its heartbeat messages because no channel access was possible before the next message was generated. To overcome this problem, we propose to use self-organizing time division multiple access (STDMA) for real-time data traffic between vehicles. This MAC method is already successfully applied in commercial surveillance applications for ships (AIS) and airplanes (VDL mode 4). Our initial results indicate that STDMA outperforms CSMA for time-critical traffic safety applications in ad hoc vehicular networks.

On the optimality of the binary reflected Gray code

This paper concerns the problem of selecting a binary labeling for the signal constellation in M-PSK, M-PAM, and M-QAM communication systems. Gray labelings are discussed and the original work by Frank Gray is analyzed. As is noted, the number of distinct Gray labelings that result in different bit-error probability grows rapidly with increasing constellation size. By introducing a recursive Gray labeling construction method called expansion, the paper answers the natural question of what labeling, among all possible constellation labelings, will give the lowest possible average probability of bit errors for the considered constellations. Under certain assumptions on the channel, the answer is that the labeling proposed by Gray, the binary reflected Gray code, is the optimal labeling for all three constellations, which has, surprisingly, never been proved before.

An efficient code-timing estimator for DS-CDMA signals

We present an efficient algorithm for estimating the code timing of a known training sequence in an asynchronous direct-sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) system. The algorithm is a large sample maximum likelihood (LSML) estimator that is derived by modeling the known training sequence as the desired signal and all other signals including the interfering signals and thermal noise as unknown colored Gaussian noise that is uncorrelated with the desired signal. The LSML estimator is shown to be robust against the near-far problem and is also compared with several other code timing estimators via numerical examples. It is found that the LSML approach can offer noticeable performance improvement, especially when the loading of the system is heavy.

Cooperative Received Signal Strength-Based Sensor Localization With Unknown Transmit Powers

Cooperative localization (also known as sensor network localization) using received signal strength (RSS) measurements when the source transmit powers are different and unknown is investigated. Previous studies were based on the assumption that the transmit powers of source nodes are the same and perfectly known which is not practical. In this paper, the source transmit powers are considered as nuisance parameters and estimated along with the source locations. The corresponding Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRLB) of the problem is derived. To find the maximum likelihood (ML) estimator, it is necessary to solve a nonlinear and nonconvex optimization problem, which is computationally complex. To avoid the difficulty in solving the ML estimator, we derive a novel semidefinite programming (SDP) relaxation technique by converting the ML minimization problem into a convex problem which can be solved efficiently. The algorithm requires only an estimate of the path loss exponent (PLE). We initially assume that perfect knowledge of the PLE is available, but we then examine the effect of imperfect knowledge of the PLE on the proposed SDP algorithm. The complexity analyses of the proposed algorithms are also studied in detail. Computer simulations showing the remarkable performance of the proposed SDP algorithm are presented.

Computation of the exact bit-error rate of coherent M-ary PSK with Gray code bit mapping

The problem of calculating the average bit-error probability (BEP) of coherent M-ary phase-shift keying (PSK) over a Gaussian channel has been studied previously in the literature. A solution to the problem for systems using a binary reflected Gray code (BRGC) to map bits to symbols was first presented by P.J. Lee (see ibid., vol.COM-34, p.488-91, 1986). We show that the results obtained by Lee are incorrect for M/spl ges/16. We show that the reason for this is an invalid assumption that the bit-error rate (BER) is independent of the transmitted symbols, an assumption which has also propagated to textbooks. We give a new expression for the BER of M-PSK systems using the BRGC and compare this with Lees results.

Time-frequency localized CDMA for downlink multi-carrier systems

An OFDM-CDMA system that utilizes the channel-correlation in both time and frequency to reduce multiple access interference is proposed. The mutually orthogonal Walsh-Hadamard codes are used for spreading, and in order for the codewords to stay orthogonal at the receiver the channel must be flat in both time and frequency. A frequency-selective fading channel will, however, distort the codewords and thus introduce correlation. The proposed system, time-frequency localized CDMA (TFL-CDMA), places the codewords in blocks on the time-frequency-grid in a such a way that the difference in scaling of the codeword chips is reduced. The proposed system is found to outperform competing schemes, such as multi-carrier (MC) and multi-carrier direct-sequence CDMA (MCDS), in terms of bit error rate. The MC- and MCDS-CDMA systems are shown to be special cases of the proposed scheme.

DS-CDMA synchronization in time-varying fading channels

The problem of estimating propagation delays of the transmitted signals in a direct-sequence code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) system operating over fading channels is considered. Even though this study is limited to the case when the propagation delays are fixed during the observation interval, the channel gain and phase are allowed to vary in time. Special attention is given to the near-far problem which is catastrophic for the standard acquisition algorithm. An estimator based on subspace identification techniques is proposed, and the Cramer-Rao bound, which serves as an optimality criterion, is derived. The Cramer-Rao bound is shown to be independent of the near-far problem, which implies that there is no fundamental reason for propagation delay estimators to be near-far limited. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm is experimentally shown to be robust against the near-far problem.

The impact of timing errors on the performance of linear DS-CDMA receivers

In this paper, an asynchronous direct-sequence code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) communication system operating over an additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel is considered. In many applications, the near-far problem can be the limiting factor for the capacity of a DS-CDMA system. Several near-far resistant receivers have, therefore, been proposed (e.g., the decorrelating receiver). These receivers assume perfect knowledge of the propagation delay from all users to the receiver. In practice, the delays are estimated and therefore subject to errors. The performance degradation these errors impose on linear detectors, especially the decorrelating detector, is the topic of this paper.

A maximum likelihood approach for estimating DS-CDMA multipath fading channels

We propose a maximum likelihood approach for near-far robust synchronization of asynchronous direct sequence code division multiple access (DS-CDMA) systems operating over multipath channels. The algorithm is suitable for use in, for instance, a slotted system where each user transmits a short data burst with an embedded training sequence. The algorithm is shown to outperform the standard sliding correlator estimator. The Cramer-Rao bound is derived and is used to indicate the best performance that can be achieved by an unbiased estimator.