Francisco Lazaro Blasco

LT Code Design for Inactivation Decoding

We present a simple model of inactivation decoding for LT codes which can be used to estimate the decoding complexity as a function of the LT code degree distribution. The model is shown to be accurate in variety of settings of practical importance. The proposed method allows to perform a numerical optimization on the degree distribution of a LT code aiming at minimizing the number of inactivations required for decoding.

Time Interference Alignment via Delay Offset for Long Delay Networks

Time Interference Alignment is a flavor of Interference Alignment that increases the network capacity by suitably staggering the transmission delays of the senders. In this work the analysis of the existing literature is generalized and the focus is on the computation of the dof for networks with randomly placed users in a n-dimensional Euclidean space. In the basic case without coordination among the transmitters analytical expressions of the sum dof can be derived. If the transmit delays are coordinated, in 20% of the cases time Interference Alignment yields additional dof with respect to orthogonal access schemes. The potential capacity improvements for satellite networks are also investigated.

On the characterization of AIS traffic at the satellite

Satellite-aided Automatic Identification System (AIS) has drawn the attention from the maritime community for worldwide vessel tracking and monitoring. The satellite reception of AIS packets is viable, although the standard has been designed for inter-vessel communication and vessel collision avoidance. A model and an extensive analysis of the Medium Access (MAC) protocol performance of AIS can on the one hand shed light on possible protocol improvements and on the other hand help satellite operators to design satellite-aided AIS reception systems. The objective of the paper is to analytically model the AIS Self-Organized Time Division Multiple Access (SOTDMA) traffic pattern at the satellite and to investigate the realistic behavior of SOTDMA via simulations. In the paper we demonstrate that SOTDMA can be seen as a slotted random access protocol at the satellite which noteworthy simplifies the analysis of the protocol performance. Exploiting this connection, an optimization on the frequency of AIS packets generation is derived here, which maximizes the vessel tracking frequency.

On the Concatenation of Non-Binary Random Linear Fountain Codes with Maximum Distance Separable Codes

The performance of a novel fountain coding scheme based on maximum distance separable (MDS) codes constructed over Galois fields of order q>=2 is investigated. Upper and lower bounds on the decoding failure probability under maximum likelihood decoding are developed. Differently from Raptor codes (which are based on a serial concatenation of a high-rate outer block code, and an inner Luby-transform code), the proposed coding scheme can be seen as a parallel concatenation of an outer MDS code and an inner random linear fountain code, both operating on the same Galois field. A performance assessment is performed on the gain provided by MDS based fountain coding over linear random fountain coding in terms of decoding failure probability vs. overhead. It is shown how, for example, the concatenation of a (15,10) Reed-Solomon code and a linear random fountain code over F16 brings to a decoding failure probability 4 orders of magnitude lower than the linear random fountain code for the same overhead in a channel with a packet loss probability of epsilon=0.05. Moreover, it is illustrated how the performance of the concatenated fountain code approaches that of an idealized fountain code for higher-order Galois fields and moderate packet loss probabilities. The scheme introduced is of special interest for the distribution of data using small block sizes.

On the Derivation of Optimal Partial Successive Interference Cancellation

The necessity of accurate channel estimation for Successive and Parallel Interference Cancellation is well known. Iterative channel estimation and channel decoding (for instance by means of the Expectation-Maximization algorithm) is particularly important for these multiuser detection schemes in the presence of time varying channels, where a high density of pilots is necessary to track the channel. This paper designs a method to analytically derive a weighting factor a, necessary to improve the efficiency of interference cancellation in the presence of poor channel estimates. Moreover, this weighting factor effectively mitigates the presence of incorrect decisions at the output of the channel decoder. The analysis provides insight into the properties of such interference cancellation scheme and the proposed approach significantly increases the effectiveness of Successive Interference Cancellation under the presence of channel estimation errors, which leads to gains of up to 3 dB.

On the Application of the Baum-Welch Algorithm for Modeling the Land Mobile Satellite Channel

Accurate channel models are of high importance for the design of upcoming mobile satellite systems. Nowadays most of the models for the land mobile satellite channel (LMSC) are based on Markov chains and rely on measurement data, rather than on pure theoretical considerations. A key problem lies in the determination of the model parameters out of the observed data. In this work we face the issue of state identification of the underlying Markov model whose model parameters are a priori unknown. This can be seen as a hiddem Markov model (HMM) problem. For finding the maximum likelihood (ML) estimates of such model parameters the Baum-Welch (BW) algorithm is adapted} to the context of channel modeling. Numerical results on test data sequences reveal the capabilities of the proposed algorithm. Results on real measurement data are finally presented.

Parallel Concatenation of Non-Binary Linear Random Fountain Codes with Maximum Distance Separable Codes

The performance and the decoding complexity of a novel coding scheme based on the concatenation of maximum distance separable (MDS) codes and linear random fountain codes are investigated. Differently from Raptor codes (which are based on a serial concatenation of a high-rate outer block code and an inner Luby-transform code), the proposed coding scheme can be seen as a parallel concatenation of a MDS code and a linear random fountain code, both operating on the same finite field. Upper and lower bounds on the decoding failure probability under maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding are developed. It is shown how, for example, the concatenation of a (15,10) Reed-Solomon (RS) code and a linear random fountain code over a finite field of order 16, {F}_{16}, brings to a decoding failure probability 4 orders of magnitude lower than the one of a linear random fountain code for the same receiver overhead in a channel with a erasure probability of ε=5\cdot10^{-2}. It is illustrated how the performance of the novel scheme approaches that of an idealized fountain code for higher-order fields and moderate erasure probabilities. An efficient decoding algorithm is developed for the case of a (generalized) RS code.