Olga Muñoz

Non-regenerative MIMO relaying with channel state information [cellular example]

This paper deals with the design of non-regenerative relays in cooperative transmission schemes. The conventional nonregenerative approach is the amplify and forward (AF) approach, where the signal received at the relay is simply amplified and retransmitted. In this paper, we propose an alternative design which maximizes the capacity for nonregenerative cooperative transmission, when channel state information is available at the relay station. Therefore, the relay units are not simple amplify and forward units, but still they are not required to demodulate or remodulate the symbols transmitted by the base station as in regenerative relaying schemes. We compare the performance so obtained with the performance for the conventional AF approach, and also with the performance of regenerative relays and direct noncooperative transmission.

Optimization of Radio and Computational Resources for Energy Efficiency in Latency-Constrained Application Offloading

Providing femto access points (FAPs) with computational capabilities will allow (either total or partial) off-loading of highly demanding applications from smartphones to the so-called femto-cloud. Such off-loading promises to be beneficial in terms of battery savings at the mobile terminal (MT) and/or in latency reduction in the execution of applications. However, for this promise to become a reality, the energy and/or the time required for the communication process must be compensated by the energy and/or the time savings that result from the remote computation at the FAPs. For this problem, we provide in this paper a framework for the joint optimization of the radio and computational resource usage exploiting the tradeoff between energy consumption and latency. Multiple antennas are assumed to be available at the MT and the serving FAP. As a result of the optimization, the optimal communication strategy (e.g., transmission power, rate, and precoder) is obtained, as well as the optimal distribution of the computational load between the handset and the serving FAP. This paper also establishes the conditions under which total or no off-loading is optimal, determines which is the minimum affordable latency in the execution of the application, and analyzes, as a particular case, the minimization of the total consumed energy without latency constraints.

Cellular capacity gains of cooperative MIMO transmission in the downlink

In this paper cooperation among users at the physical layer level is studied for the downlink. Distributed space time linear dispersion codes are proposed for the cooperative strategies amplify and forward (AF) and decode forward (DF), assuming no channel state knowledge at the transmitter. Both AF and DF strategies are evaluated in a cellular multiuser realistic scenario based on TDMA access, considering cellular reuse of the relay slot. Different configurations regarding the number of antennas at the relay and destination nodes are considered. The maximum achievable rate of cooperative schemes implemented by means of space time linear dispersion codes is compared with the theoretical capacity of the cooperative channel. Finally an analysis in terms of BER is given for different schemes.

Protocols and Resource Allocation for the Two-Way Relay Channel with Half-Duplex Terminals

The two-way relay channel (TWRC) describes the communication between two terminals sharing a common relay. In this work we compare different protocols for the TWRC with a half-duplex relay (forwarding and protocol I) and transmission schemes (Network Coding Relaying with random binning and XOR precoding), when the relay works in decode-and-forward and without channel state information at the transmitters. We provide the optimal resource allocation (in terms of phase duration, data rate and power allocation) when there is an individual or sum-average power constraint over the terminals. Closed-form solutions are derived whenever it is possible, while for others cases we show that the resource allocation can be formulated as a convex problem, which means that the solution can be obtained by low-complexity interior point methods.

Achievable Rates of Compress-and-Forward Cooperative Relaying on Gaussian Vector Channels

The compress-and-forward (C&F) cooperative relaying strategy is known to outperform decode-and-forward (D&F) when the relay is close to the destination. In this paper, we derive achievable rates on Gaussian vector channels with cooperative C&F relaying. In order to extend previous information-theoretic results from the scalar to the vector Gaussian channel, we exploit recent results in distributed source coding. Like in source coding with side information at the decoder, the relay applies a conditional Karhunen Loeve transform (CKLT) to its observed signal, followed by a separate Wyner-Ziv encoding of each output stream with a different rate and under a sum-rate constraint. However, these Wyner-Ziv coding rates are such that the total mutual information between the source and destination is maximized. This differs from the conventional source coding approach in which the rates are selected to minimize the total squared distortion, leading to the well-known reverse-waterfilling algorithm. We show that the maximization of the C&F mutual information is also a convex problem. The optimum Wyner-Ziv coding rates have a simple analytical expression, and can be obtained by a waterfilling algorithm. Finally, we illustrate these results by simulations of MIMO-OFDM relaying in a system similar to IEEE802.16.

Hybrid Turbo FEC/ARQ Systems and Distributed Space-Time Coding for Cooperative Transmission

Cooperative transmission can be seen as a “virtual” MIMO system, where the multiple transmit antennas are in fact implemented distributed by the antennas both at the source and the relay terminal. Depending on the system design, diversity/multiplexing gains are achievable. This design involves the definition of the type of retransmission (incremental redundancy, repetition coding), the design of the distributed space-time codes, the error correcting scheme, the operation of the relay (decode & forward or amplify & forward) and the number of antennas at each terminal. Proposed schemes are evaluated in different conditions in combination with forward error correcting codes (FEC), both for linear and near-optimum (sphere decoder) receivers, for its possible implementation in downlink high speed packet services of cellular networks. Results show the benefits of coded cooperation over direct transmission in terms of increased throughput. It is shown that multiplexing gains are observed even if the mobile station features a single antenna, provided that cell wide reuse of the relay radio resource is possible.

Compress-And-Forward Cooperative Relaying in MIMO-OFDM Systems

In this paper, we investigate the capacity of compress-and-forward (C&F) cooperative relaying scheme when the C&F relay operates in time division duplex (TDD). In our evaluation we consider MIMO-OFDM transmission. An achievable rate was previously derived in (A. Host-Madsen et al., 2005) assuming scalar channel. We extend this Wyner-Ziv bound to MIMO-OFDM, by applying results from Bayesian vector estimation and rate-distortion coding theory. Then we derive the mutual information of a sub-optimum relaying scheme in which the relay applies Karhunen-Loeve transform to the signal received from the source before quantizing it and forwarding it to the destination as a new codeword. Finally, we illustrate by simulations (in an environment similar to IEEE 802.16) the fact that for some scenarios, the C&F approach outperforms other known relaying techniques. This remains true even if the C&F sub-optimum scheme is considered

Cancellation of external and multiple access interference in CDMA systems using antenna arrays

This paper deals with the problem of multisensor-multiuser detection in CDMA systems in the presence of interferences external to the system. The paper presents a new method able to estimate the spatial signature of all active users projected onto the subspace orthogonal to the external interference. With this information a specific beamformer can be designed for each user in order to combat the external and multiple access interference. The method performs in frequency non-selective multipath scenarios as they arise from some CDMA satellite and indoor communications systems. The estimation process does not require any training signal nor any a priori spatial information. It exploits the temporal structure of CDMA signals and extract the required information directly from the received signals. In addition, the method is independent of the nature of the external interference and it can cope with narrow-band and wide-band interfering signals.This paper deals with the problem of multisensor-multiuser detection in CDMA systems in the presence of interferences external to the system. The paper presents a new method able to estimate the spatial signature of all active users projected onto the subspace orthogonal to the external interference. With this information a specific beamformer can be designed for each user in order to combat the external and multiple access interference. The method performs in frequency non-selective multipath scenarios as they arise from some CDMA satellite and indoor communications systems. The estimation process does not require any training signal nor any a priori spatial information. It exploits the temporal structure of CDMA signals and extract the required information directly from the received signals. In addition, the method is independent of the nature of the external interference and it can cope with narrow-band and wide-band interfering signals.

Joint scheduling of communication and computation resources in multiuser wireless application offloading

We consider a system where multiple users are connected to a small cell base station enhanced with computational capabilities. Instead of doing the computation locally at the handset, the users offload the computation of full applications or pieces of code to the small cell base station. In this scenario, this paper provides a strategy to allocate the uplink, downlink, and remote computational resources. The goal is to improve the quality of experience of the users, while achieving energy savings with respect to the case in which the applications run locally at the mobile terminals. More specifically, we focus on minimizing a cost function that depends on the latencies experienced by the users and provide an algorithm to minimize the latency experienced by the worst case user, under a target energy saving constraint per user.

Performance of Downlink Schedulers with Superposed or Orthogonal Transmissions

This work looks into the extension of the proportional fair (PF) scheduler to the multi-user case, where the source is transmitting several messages under the superposition coding (SC) strategy in a Gaussian Broadcast channel. Jointly with the weighted sum-rate (WSR) scheduling criterion, we derive guidelines for 2-user pairing, based both on SNR and user priority. We compare superposition coding access with frequency division multiple access, while time division is obtained naturally as a result of the user pairing. Results elucidate that the 2-user SC PF always improves the single-user PF in terms of average throughput and delay reduction, and we compare its performance with the 3-user SC PF. Finally, the WSR shows throughput gains similar to the 2-user SC PF for certain configuration of the scheduler