Ioannis Krikidis

Green radio: radio techniques to enable energy-efficient wireless networks

Recent analysis by manufacturers and network operators has shown that current wireless networks are not very energy efficient, particularly the base stations by which terminals access services from the network. In response to this observation the Mobile Virtual Centre of Excellence (VCE) Green Radio project was established in 2009 to establish how significant energy savings may be obtained in future wireless systems. This article discusses the technical background to the project and discusses models of current energy consumption in base station devices. It also describes some of the most promising research directions in reducing the energy consumption of future base stations.

Relay selection for secure cooperative networks with jamming

This paper deals with relay selection in cooperative networks with secrecy constraints. The proposed scheme enables an opportunistic selection of two relay nodes to increase security against eavesdroppers. The first relay operates as a conventional mode and assists a source to deliver its data to a destination via a decode-and-forward strategy. The second relay is used in order to create intentional interference at the eavesdropper nodes. The proposed selection technique jointly protects the primary destination against interference and eavesdropping and jams the reception of the eavesdropper. The new approach is analyzed for different complexity requirements based on instantaneous and average knowledge of the eavesdropper channels. In addition an investigation of an hybrid security scheme which switches between jamming and non-jamming protection is discussed in the paper. It is proven that an appropriate application of these two modes further improves security. The enhancements of the proposed selection techniques are demonstrated analytically and with simulation results.

Amplify-and-forward with partial relay selection

This letter offers a statistical analysis of the basic two-hop Amplify-and-Forward link, where the relay node is selected based on instantaneous and partial knowledge of the channel. In contrast with previously reported work, where relay selection requires global knowledge (2 hops) of the relaying link, the problem considered is interesting in practical ad-hoc systems, where only neighboring (1 hop) channel information is available to the nodes. The probability density function of the received signal-to-noise ratio for the considered relaying link is approximated in closed form, and an asymptotic exponential expression is proposed to simplify performance estimation.

Simultaneous wireless information and power transfer in modern communication systems

Energy harvesting for wireless communication networks is a new paradigm that allows terminals to recharge their batteries from external energy sources in the surrounding environment. A promising energy harvesting technology is wireless power transfer where terminals harvest energy from electromagnetic radiation. Thereby, the energy may be harvested opportunistically from ambient electromagnetic sources or from sources that intentionally transmit electromagnetic energy for energy harvesting purposes. A particularly interesting and challenging scenario arises when sources perform simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT), as strong signals not only increase power transfer but also interference. This article provides an overview of SWIPT systems with a particular focus on the hardware realization of rectenna circuits and practical techniques that achieve SWIPT in the domains of time, power, antennas, and space. The article also discusses the benefits of a potential integration of SWIPT technologies in modern communication networks in the context of resource allocation and cooperative cognitive radio networks.

Max-min relay selection for legacy amplify-and-forward systems with interference

In this paper, an amplify-and-forward (AF) cooperative strategy for interference limited networks is considered. In contrast to previously reported work, where the effect of interference is ignored, the effect of multi-user interference in AF schemes is analyzed. It is shown that the interference changes the statistical description of the conventional AF protocol and a statistical expression is subsequently derived. Asymptotic analysis of the expression shows that interference limits the diversity gain of the system and the related channel capacity is bounded by a stationary point. In addition, it is proven that previously proposed relay selection criteria for multi-relay scenarios become inefficient in the presence of interference. Based on consideration of the interference term, two extensions to the conventional max-min selection scheme suitable for different system setups are proposed. The extensions investigated are appropriate for legacy architectures with limitations on their flexibility where the max-min operation is pre-designed. A theoretical framework for selecting when to apply the proposed selection criteria is also presented. The algorithm investigated is based on some welldefined capacity approximations and incorporates the outage probabilities averaged over the fading statistics. Analytical results and simulation studies reveal enhancements of the proposed algorithm.

Fairness for Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access in 5G Systems

In non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) downlink, multiple data flows are superimposed in the power domain and user decoding is based on successive interference cancellation. NOMAs performance highly depends on the power split among the data flows and the associated power allocation (PA) problem. In this letter, we study NOMA from a fairness standpoint and we investigate PA techniques that ensure fairness for the downlink users under i) instantaneous channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter, and ii) average CSI. Although the formulated problems are non-convex, we have developed low-complexity polynomial algorithms that yield the optimal solution in both cases considered.

Full-Duplex Relay Selection for Amplify-and-Forward Cooperative Networks

This paper focuses on the relay selection problem in amplify-and-forward (AF) cooperative communication with full-duplex (FD) operation. Different relay selection schemes assuming the availability of different instantaneous information are studied. We consider optimal relay selection that maximizes the instantaneous FD channel capacity and requires global channel state information (CSI) as well as several sub-optimal relay selection policies that utilize partial CSI knowledge such as a) source-relay and relay-destination links b) loop interference c) source-relay links and loop interference. To facilitate comparison, exact outage probability expressions and asymptotic approximations of these policies that show a zero diversity order are derived. In addition, an optimal relay selection procedure that incorporates a hybrid relaying strategy, which dynamically switches between FD and half-duplex relaying according to the instantaneous CSI, is also investigated.

Wireless Information and Power Transfer in Cooperative Networks With Spatially Random Relays

In this paper, the application of wireless information and power transfer to cooperative networks is investigated, where the relays in the network are randomly located and based on the decode-forward strategy. For the scenario with one source-destination pair, three different strategies for using the available relays are studied, and their impact on the outage probability and diversity gain is characterized by applying stochastic geometry. By using the assumptions that the path loss exponent is two and that the relay-destination distances are much larger than the source-relay distances, closed form analytical results can be developed to demonstrate that the use of energy harvesting relays can achieve the same diversity gain as the case with conventional self-powered relays. For the scenario with multiple sources, the relays can be viewed as a type of scarce resource, where the sources compete with each other to get help from the relays. Such a competition is modeled as a coalition formation game, and two distributed game theoretic algorithms are developed based on different payoff functions. Simulation results are provided to confirm the accuracy of the developed analytical results and facilitate a better performance comparison.

RF Energy Transfer for Cooperative Networks: Data Relaying or Energy Harvesting?

This letter deals with a three-node cooperative network where the relay node harvests energy from radio frequency (RF) radiation. The source node is the only available RF generator and introduces a fundamental switching between energy harvesting and data relaying. A greedy switching (GS) policy where the relay node transmits when its residual energy ensures decoding at the destination is investigated. The GS policy is modeled as a Markov chain for a discretized battery; the stationary distribution and the outage probability of the system are derived in closed form expressions. In addition, an optimal switching policy that incorporates a-priori knowledge of the channel coefficients is proposed and solved by a mixed-integer linear programming formulation.

Buffer-Aided Relay Selection for Cooperative Diversity Systems without Delay Constraints

In this paper, we study the relay selection problem for a finite buffer-aided decode-and-forward cooperative wireless network. A relay selection policy that fully exploits the flexibility offered by the buffering ability of the relay nodes in order to maximize the achieved diversity gain is investigated. This new scheme incorporates the instantaneous strength of the wireless links as well as the status of the finite relay buffers and adapts the relay selection decision on the strongest available link by dynamically switching between relay reception and transmission. In order to analyse the new relay selection policy in terms of outage probability and diversity gain, a theoretical framework that models the evolution of the relay buffers as a Markov chain (MC) is introduced. The construction of the state transition matrix and the related steady state of the MC are studied and their impact on the derivation of the outage probability is investigated. We show that the proposed relay selection scheme significantly outperforms conventional relay selection policies for all cases and ensures a diversity gain equal to two times the number of relays for large buffer sizes.