Fulvio Babich

Statistical analysis and characterization of the indoor propagation channel

This paper presents statistical analysis of data obtained by measuring narrowband path loss at DECT (digital enhanced cordless telecommunications) frequency (1.89 GHz) in an indoor environment. Specific goodness-of-fit tests are applied to the data. The tests assess whether the data generating source belongs to a known family of random variables. Results obtained support that local path-loss distribution can be represented as Weibull or Nakagami in most environments. The close resemblance between such distributions and Rice distribution (with Rayleigh as a special case) confirms that Rice/Rayleigh description of fading can be applied to indoor environments. That similarity leads to a general, simple, approximate expression for the cumulative distribution function of the signal-to-interference ratio. The expression can be used without limitations to the number and the parameters of the Rice interferers.

A Markov model for the mobile propagation channel

A finite-state Markov model is fitted to the mobile propagation channel by the use of contingency tables. Narrow-band Rayleigh and Ricean fading are considered in detail, but the techniques extend to other types of fading. Several criteria may indicate that a first-order finite-state Markov model sufficiently characterizes the channel behavior. The parameters of the model are obtained both from theoretical analysis and simulation. Functional dependence between the transition probabilities and the steady-state probabilities is found in the slow fading case.

Generalized Markov modeling for flat fading

This paper investigates the properties of a method for obtaining Markov models of unspecified order to be applied to narrow-band fading channels with additive white Gaussian noise. The models are obtained by applying the context tree pruning algorithm to experimental or simulated sequences. Fading environments are identified in which the extension from first-order to higher order models is justified. The paper presents, as examples, the evaluation of the covariance function and the packet error distribution.

Throughput and Delay Analysis of 802.11-Based Wireless Networks Using Smart and Directional Antennas

This paper proposes a mathematical framework for comparing the performance of wireless networks based on the IEEE 802.11 standard, employing switched-beam, directional and adaptive antennas. The analysis adopts detailed models for the antenna system behavior and the propagation environment, taking into account multipath and interference. The purpose of this study is to determine the number of simultaneous communications that may be sustained by adopting advanced antenna systems, and to investigate, by analysis and simulation, the resulting performance improvements, in terms of throughput and packet delay. Both saturated and non-saturated traffic conditions are treated. Suitable 802.11 Medium Access Control (MAC) layer parameter settings, able to exploit smart and directional antenna capabilities for maximizing the throughput, are also discussed.

Theoretical analysis of asynchronous multi-packet reception in 802.11 networks

This paper proposes a mathematical framework for evaluating the throughput of an 802.11 distributed wireless network when the system allows multi-packet reception in asynchronous operating mode. Differently from previous studies on multi-packet reception, which assume a certain synchronization between the different sources at the beginning of the respective transmissions, this work theoretically analyzes a fully distributed scenario, where each node can access to the medium in a completely asynchronous way. More precisely, a new transmission can begin in a channel where other nodes are already communicating as long as the current channel load is within a given threshold. The proposed framework consists of a single source, 802.11 specific model, which generalizes a previously presented analytical model, and a novel network model, which is adopted to evaluate the theoretical performance in terms of throughput. The novel model, which includes the synchronous scenario as a particular case, is employed to investigate the influence of the number of allowed communications, of the load threshold, and of the minimum contention window on the network performance. Furthermore, the theoretical analysis is used to evaluate the throughput in presence of Rayleigh fading and noise when error correcting codes are adopted.

On the performance of efficient coding techniques over fading channels

The authors propose an analytical method, based on the sphere-packing bound, which can be used to assess the achievable performance of transmission techniques, adopting efficient block codes, over nonideally interleaved fading channels. The proposed method, which is not subject to the union bound drawbacks, represents a suitable tool for gaining insights into the effects of fading impairments on system performance. The method is used to investigate the performance of codes on block and correlated fading channels, to assess the benefits of channel interleaver, to study the effects of transmission diversity, and to evaluate some hybrid automatic repeat request schemes.

A context-tree based model for quantized fading

Fading is modeled by applying context tree pruning (CTP) to the sequence of fading states that results from quantizing a sequence of real-valued fading measurements. There results a family of finite state Markov chains of increasing order that represent the channel with increasing fidelity. A fading state may be the union of chain states. A particular model may be chosen from that family according to an application-specific criterion. The resulting models facilitate analysis and simulation of wireless systems that exploit channel memory. An example criterion compares each models fading state sojourn time statistics with those of the original sequence.

Interference Mitigation on WLANs Using Smart Antennas

This paper investigates the performance of a fixed Wireless LAN in which nodes are equipped with fully adaptive smart antennas. The considered smart antenna system is a uniform circular array of microstrip patch elements in which the weights are updated using the unconstrained LMS algorithm. The behavior of a new directional MAC protocol for spatial multiplexing is analyzed and compared with IEEE 802.11 DCF. The paper purpose is the evaluation of interference and multipath effects on SDMA, using realistic models for the channel and for the smart antenna system. The link model takes into account path loss, cochannel interference and multipath, using a modified Jakes model. Results show that the performance of the WLAN are strictly dependent on the interferer characteristics and on the angular spread of the channel.

Performance of hybrid ARQ schemes for the fading channel

We define and adopt a theoretical method, based on the sphere-packing bound, for evaluating and comparing the achievable performance of different hybrid automatic repeat request schemes for the fading channel. The channel state evolution is assumed to be represented by a finite-state Markov chain. To assess the correctness and the accuracy of the analysis, some simulation results, based on the use of turbo codes, are also presented.

Design Criteria and Genetic Algorithm Aided Optimization of Three-Stage-Concatenated Space-Time Shift Keying Systems

The Space-Time Shift Keying (STSK) framework subsumes diverse Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) schemes, offering a near-capacity performance at a reduced complexity. The STSK systems performance crucially depends on the dispersion matrix (DM) set used for encoding the transmitted symbols. We introduce a novel criterion, based on EXtrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) chart analysis, for selecting capacity-approaching sets from candidate DMs, and a novel Genetic Algorithm (GA) for efficiently exploring the search space formed by the candidate DM sets. Our proposed GA allows obtaining DM sets that enhance the systems performance compared to a random selection, while simultaneously reducing the search algorithms complexity.