Friedrich K. Jondral

Spectrum pooling: an innovative strategy for the enhancement of spectrum efficiency

This article describes the technical challenges that have to be met when implementing the interesting new technology of spectrum pooling. This notion represents the coexistence of two mobile radio systems within the same frequency range. It enables the secondary utilization of already licensed frequency bands as aimed at by several regulatory authorities worldwide. The goal of spectrum pooling is to enhance spectral efficiency by overlaying a new mobile radio system on an existing one without requiring any changes to the actual licensed system. Several demanding tasks originate from this idea. Some of them have been solved in recent research projects. Others are subject to ongoing investigations. Here, the state of the art in spectrum pooling is presented.

Mutual interference in OFDM-based spectrum pooling systems

The public mobile radio spectrum has become a scarce resource while wide spectral ranges are only rarely used. Here, the new strategy called spectrum pooling is considered. It aims at enabling public access to these spectral ranges without sacrificing the transmission quality of the actual license owners. Unfortunately, using OFDM modulation in a spectrum pooling system has some drawbacks. There is an interaction between the licensed system and the OFDM based rental system due to the non-orthogonality of their respective transmit signals. This interaction is described mathematically, providing a quantitative evaluation of the mutual interference that leads to an SNR loss in both systems. However, this interference can be mitigated by windowing the OFDM signal in the time domain or by the adaptive deactivation of adjacent subcarriers providing flexible guard bands between licensed and rental system. It is obvious that both approaches sacrifice bandwidth of the rental system. A quantitative comparison of both approaches is given as a tradeoff between interference reduction and throughput in the rental system.

Calculation of detection and false alarm probabilities in spectrum pooling systems

The innovative new strategy of spectrum pooling enables public access to spectral ranges of already licensed yet rarely used frequency bands by overlaying a secondary mobile radio system (the rental system, RS) to an existing one (the licensed system, LS). Coexistence of both systems is realized by filling the idle time-frequency gaps of the LS. A key issue in spectrum pooling is the reliable and efficient detection of those spectral ranges that are currently accessed by the LS as those ranges have to be spared from the RSs transmission power. In this letter, formulas for the calculation of the detection and false alarm probability are derived for the general case of an arbitrary measurement covariance matrix, allowing for a maximum exploitation of the proposed distributed detection approach.

On the extraction of the channel allocation information in spectrum pooling systems

The spectrum pooling strategy allows a license owner to share a part of his licensed spectrum with a secondary wireless system (the rental system, RS) during its idle times. The coexistence of two mobile systems on the same frequency band poses many new challenges, one of which is the reliable extraction of the channel allocation information (CAI), i.e. the channel occupation of the licensed system (LS). This paper presents a strategy for the extraction of the CAI based on exploiting the distinct cyclostationary characteristics of the LS and RS signals and demonstrates, via simulations, its application on a specific spectrum pooling scenario, where the LS is a GSM network and the RS is an OFDM based WLAN system

Low complexity CDMA downlink receiver based on frequency domain equalization

This paper proposes a new approach to apply frequency domain equalization (FDE) in the downlink of broadband CDMA cellular systems. Equalization has been recognized as a better receiving method than the RAKE receiver for CDMA downlink systems, especially in cells with a high number of users. By performing the equalization in the frequency domain, the complexity of the equalization algorithm can be significantly reduced with the help of the FFT operation. Three methods of implementing FDE in the CDMA downlink are described: the cyclic prefix method, the zero padding method, and the overlap-cut method. In addition to its simplicity and good performance, the FDE also offers the possibility to build a multimode receiver for singlecarrier and multicarrier signals. Simulation results are presented in a TD-CDMA system with parameters taken from the UTRA-TDD standard.

Cyclostationarity based air interface recognition for software radio systems

Reconfigurable software radio equipment is seen as the next evolutionary step in mobile communications. One of the most important properties of a software radio terminal is that it is capable of using a wide range of air interface standards, providing a seamless interoperability between different air interface standards and an enhanced roaming capability. This multimode operation has to be supported by a number of key functionalities, one of which is the air interface recognition. A software radio terminal has to be able to detect, recognize and monitor the air interfaces available in the frequency environment. In our work, we propose exploiting the distinct cyclostationary properties of signals from different air interfaces as features for air interface recognition.

A Tractable Model for Noncoherent Joint-Transmission Base Station Cooperation

This paper presents a tractable model for analyzing noncoherent joint-transmission base station (BS) cooperation, taking into account the irregular BS deployment typically encountered in practice. In addition to cellular-network specific aspects, such as BS density, channel fading, average path loss, and interference, the model also captures relevant cooperation mechanisms, including user-centric BS clustering and channel-dependent cooperation activation. The locations of all BSs are modeled by a Poisson point process. Using tools from stochastic geometry, the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) distribution with cooperation is precisely characterized in a generality-preserving form. The result is then applied to practical design problems of recent interest. We find that increasing the network-wide BS density improves the SINR, while the gains increase with the path loss exponent. For pilot-based channel estimation, the average spectral efficiency saturates at cluster sizes of around seven BSs for typical values, irrespective of backhaul quality. Finally, it is shown that intra-cluster frequency reuse is favorable in moderately loaded cells with generous cooperation activation, while intra-cluster coordinated scheduling may be better in lightly loaded cells with conservative cooperation activation.

Comparison of bandwidth utilization for controlled and uncontrolled channel assignment in a spectrum pooling system

Spectrum for mobile networks is becoming scarce and on the other hand plenty of sporadically used frequencies exist. The spectrum utilization of such spectra is very low, which is a reason to think about a way to make them available for commercial purpose without a drawback for the license owners. We recommend a strategy called spectrum pooling which is based on this idea. The notion spectrum pool was first mentioned by Mitola III (see Proc. IEEE International Workshop on Mobile Multimedia Communications, p.3-10, 1999). In a spectrum pooling system the license owner of the spectrum allows priorly specified candidate renters to use his spectrum until he needs his spectrum himself. The renters of the spectrum may be treated in two different ways. One way is that communication processes of spectrum renters can persist as long as there are channels for the processes of the license owners. The other way is that the owner has no knowledge whether the channels are occupied by renters or not and treat the channels used by renters like free channels. In both cases the renters have to measure the interference level in the channel after dedicated time intervals and have to leave the channel within the time interval T/sub p/ as soon as the interference exceeds a prior specified threshold. We compare the spectrum utilization, blocking probability and forced termination probability for these two different channel access schemes.

Cognitive Radio: A Communications Engineering View

Cognitive radio is an emerging technology that enables the flexible development, construction, production, shipping, and deployment of highly adaptive radios that are built upon software defined radio technology. This contribution starts with a brief section that underlines the paramount importance of the mobile radio communications channel. Then, spectrum issues are discussed to emphasize the reasons for spectrum scarcity as well as the importance of dynamic spectrum allocation. Some remarks about the development of software defined radio from digital radio lead to a discussion of the most important engineering aspects of CR, for example, location and spectrum awareness, transmission power control, and signal analysis. Because usually papers about CR are somewhat visionary, we first describe practical steps to an implementation of helpful CR properties into a mobile communication base station, as well as user terminal equipment. The article concludes with a short summary.

Air interface recognition for a software radio system exploiting cyclostationarity

Reconfigurable software radio equipment is seen as the key technology in the evolution of mobile communications. One of the most important properties of a software radio terminal is that it is capable of using a wide range of air interface standards, providing a seamless interoperability between different standards and an enhanced roaming capability. One of the key functions supporting this multimode operation is the air interface recognition. A Software radio terminal has to be capable of detecting, recognizing and monitoring the air interfaces available in the frequency environment. In our paper, we propose exploiting the distinct cyclostationary properties of different air interface signals as features for air interface recognition.