Khaled Ben Letaief

A robust timing and frequency synchronization for OFDM systems

A robust symbol-timing and carrier-frequency synchronization scheme applicable to orthogonal frequency-division-multiplexing systems is presented. The proposed method is based on a training symbol specifically designed to have a steep rolloff timing metric. The proposed timing metric also provides a robust sync detection capability. Both time domain training and frequency domain (FD) training are investigated. For FD training, maintaining a low peak-to-average power ratio of the training symbol was taken into consideration. The channel estimation scheme based on the designed training symbol was also incorporated in the system in order to give both fine-timing and frequency-offset estimates. For fine frequency estimation, two approaches are presented. The first one is based on the suppression of the interference introduced in the frequency estimation process by the training symbol pattern in the context of multipath dispersive channels. The second one is based on the maximum likelihood principle and does not suffer from any interference. A new performance measure is introduced for timing estimation, which is based on the plot of signal to timing-error-induced average interference power ratio against the timing estimate shift. A simple approach for finding the optimal setting of the timing estimator is presented. Finally, the sync detection, timing estimation, frequency estimation, and bit-error-rate performance of the proposed method are presented in a multipath Rayleigh fading channel.

Optimization of cooperative spectrum sensing with energy detection in cognitive radio networks

We consider cooperative spectrum sensing in which multiple cognitive radios collaboratively detect the spectrum holes through energy detection and investigate the optimality of cooperative spectrum sensing with an aim to optimize the detection performance in an efficient and implementable way. We derive the optimal voting rule for any detector applied to cooperative spectrum sensing. We also optimize the detection threshold when energy detection is employed. Finally, we propose a fast spectrum sensing algorithm for a large network which requires fewer than the total number of cognitive radios in cooperative spectrum sensing while satisfying a given error bound.

Channel estimation for OFDM transmission in multipath fading channels based on parametric channel modeling

We present an improved channel estimation algorithm for orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing mobile communication systems using pilot subcarriers. This algorithm is based on a parametric channel model where the channel frequency response is estimated using an L-path channel model. In the algorithm, we employ the ESPRIT (estimation of signal parameters by rotational invariance techniques) method to do the initial multipath time delays acquisition and propose an interpath interference cancellation delay locked loop to track the channel multipath time delays. With the multipath time delays information, a minimum mean square error estimator is derived to estimate the channel frequency response. It is demonstrated that the use of the parametric channel model can effectively reduce the signal subspace dimension of the channel correlation matrix for the sparse multipath fading channels and, consequently, improve the channel estimation performance.

Cooperative Spectrum Sensing for Cognitive Radios under Bandwidth Constraints

In cognitive radio systems, cooperative spectrum sensing is conducted among the cognitive users so as to detect the primary user accurately. However, when the number of cognitive users tends to be very large, the bandwidth for reporting their sensing results to the common receiver will be very huge. In this paper, the authors employ a censoring method with quantization to decrease the average number of sensing bits to the common receiver. By censoring the collected local observations, only the users with enough information will send their local one bit decisions (0 or 1) to the common receiver. The performance of spectrum sensing is investigated for both perfect and imperfect reporting channels. Numerical results show that the average number of sensing bits decreases greatly at the expense of a little sensing performance loss.

Multiuser adaptive subcarrier-and-bit allocation with adaptive cell selection for OFDM systems

Adaptive resource allocation has been identified as one of the key technologies for providing efficient utilization of the limited power and spectrum in future wireless systems. In this paper, an adaptive resource allocation methodology is proposed for cellular orthogonal frequency division multiplexing systems in a multiuser environment. The proposed method is featured as a low-complexity algorithm that involves not only adaptive modulation, but also adaptive multiple-access control and cell selection. Specifically, a multiuser subcarrier-and-bit loading scheme is developed to maximize the spectral efficiency. Besides, a dynamic cell selection scheme is proposed to deal with the problem of overloading and nonuniform traffic density. Numerical results show that the presented algorithm offers significant improvement in spectral efficiency due to the successful exploitation of channel variation, multiuser diversity, and inter-cell diversity.

Cooperative spectrum sensing with transmit and relay diversity in cognitive radio networks - [transaction letters]

In the letter the problem of cooperative spectrum sensing is investigated in cognitive radio (CR) networks over Rayleigh fading channels. By taking into account the error effect on the decision reporting, a general performance analysis of cooperative spectrum sensing is given. The analytical detection results show that the performance of cooperative spectrum sensing is limited by the probability of reporting errors. To deal with this limitation, we propose a transmit diversity based cooperative spectrum sensing method. By regarding multiple CRs as a virtual antenna array, space-time coding and space-frequency coding are applied into CR networks over flat-fading and frequency-selective fading channels, respectively. Moreover, we propose a relay diversity based cooperative spectrum sensing approach to increase the diversity of detection when some CRs are in heavy shadowing. It is then shown that, when combined with algebraic coding, relay diversity can further improve the cooperative spectrum sensing performance.

M-PSK and M-QAM BER computation using signal-space concepts

In this paper, we introduce a simple geometric approach that is based on signal-space concepts to efficiently evaluate the performance of M-ary phase-shift keying (M-PSK) and M-ary quadrature amplitude modulation (M-QAM) schemes over an additive white Gaussian noise channel. In particular, new bit error rate approximations are derived and shown to be in excellent agreement with Monte Carlo simulation results.

Timing recovery for OFDM transmission

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is an effective modulation technique for high-rate and high-speed transmission over frequency selective fading channels. However, OFDM systems can be extremely sensitive and vulnerable to synchronization errors. In this paper, we present a scheme for performing timing recovery that includes symbol synchronization and sampling clock synchronization in OFDM systems. The scheme is based on pilot subcarriers. In the scheme, we use a path time delay estimation method to improve the accuracy of the correlation-based symbol synchronization methods, and use a delay-locked loop (DLL) to do the sampling clock synchronization. It is shown that by using this scheme, the mean square values of the symbol timing estimation error can be decreased by several orders of magnitude compared to the common correlation methods in both the AWGN and multipath fading channels. In addition, the scheme can track the symbol timing drift caused by the sampling clock frequency offsets.

Antenna systems for broadband wireless access

Broadband wireless access along with evolving mobile Internet and multimedia services are driving the surge of research and development activities for future wireless communication systems. We provide an overview of antenna systems for broadband wireless communications and introduce some of the important issues surrounding them. The approach we use is to first provide a general framework of how antenna systems may be utilized in wireless communication systems and then describe the antenna systems themselves. In particular, we consider antenna systems for the base station, mobile station, and then finally multiple-input multiple-output antenna systems where antenna systems are utilized at both the base and mobile stations.

Adaptive antennas at the mobile and base stations in an OFDM/TDMA system

Several smart antenna systems have been proposed and demonstrated at the base station (BS) of wireless communications systems, and these have shown that significant system performance improvement is possible. We consider the use of adaptive antennas at the BS and mobile stations (MS), operating jointly, in combination with orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing. The advantages of the proposed system includes reductions in average error probability and increases in capacity compared to conventional systems. Multiuser access, in space, time, and through subcarriers, is also possible and expressions for the exact joint optimal antenna weights at the BS and MS under cochannel interference conditions for fading channels are derived. To demonstrate the potential of our proposed system, analytical along with Monte Carlo simulation results are provided.