Kaiserslautern - Fachbereich Elektrotechnik und Informationstechnik
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The present thesis deals with multi-user mobile radio systems, and more specifically, the downlinks (DL) of such systems. As a key demand on future mobile radio systems, they should enable highest possible spectrum and energy efficiency. It is well known that, in principle, the utilization of multi-antennas in the form of MIMO systems, offers considerable potential to meet this demand. Concerning the energy issue, the DL is more critical than the uplink. This is due to the growing importance of wireless Internet applications, in which the DL data rates and, consequently, the radiated DL energies tend to be substantially higher than the corresponding uplink quantities. In this thesis, precoding schemes for MIMO multi-user mobile radio DLs are considered, where, in order to keep the complexity of the mobile terminals as low as possible, the rationale receiver orientation (RO) is adopted, with the main focus to further reduce the required transmit energy in such systems. Unfortunately, besides the mentioned low receiver complexity, conventional RO schemes, such as Transmit Zero Forcing (TxZF), do not offer any transmit energy reductions as compared to conventional transmitter oriented schemes. Therefore, the main goal of this thesis is the design and analysis of precoding schemes in which such transmit energy reductions become feasible - under virtually maintaining the low receiver complexity - by means of replacing the conventional unique mappings by the selectable representations of the data. Concerning the channel access scheme, Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplex (OFDM) is presently being favored as the most promising candidate in the standardization process of the enhanced 3G and forthcoming 4G systems, because it allows a very flexible resource allocation and low receiver complexity. Receiver oriented MIMO OFDM multi-user downlink transmission, in which channel equalization is already performed in the transmitter of the access point, further contributes to low receiver complexity in the mobile terminals. For these reasons, OFDM is adopted in the target system of the considered receiver oriented precoding schemes. In the precoding schemes considered the knowledge of channel state information (CSI) in the access point in the form of the channel matrix is essential. Independently of the applied duplexing schemes FDD or TDD, the provision of this information to the access point is always erroneous. However, it is shown that the impact of such deviations not only scales with the variance of the channel estimation errors, but also with the required transmit energies. Accordingly, the reduced transmit energies of the precoding schemes with selectable data representation also have the advantage of a reduced sensitivity to imperfect knowledge of CSI. In fact, these two advantages are coupled with each other.
In the thesis the task of channel estimation in beyond 3G service area based mobile radio air interfaces is considered. A system concept named Joint Transmission and Detection Integrated Network (JOINT) forms the target platform for the investigations. A single service area of JOINT is considered, in which a number of mobile terminals is supported by a number of radio access points, which are connected to a central unit responsible for the signal processing. The modulation scheme of JOINT is OFDM. Pilot-aided channel estimation is considered, which has to be performed only in the uplink of JOINT, because the duplexing scheme TDD is applied. In this way, the complexity of the mobile terminals is reduced, because they do not need a channel estimator. Based on the signals received by the access points, the central unit estimates the channel transfer functions jointly for all mobile terminals. This is done by resorting to the a priori knowledge of the radiated pilot signals and by applying the technique of joint channel estimation, which is developed in the thesis. The quality of the gained estimates is judged by the degradation of their signal-to-noise ratio as compared to the signal-to-noise ratio of the respective estimates gained in the case of a single mobile terminal radiating its pilots. In the case of single-element receive antennas at the access points, said degradation depends solely on the structure of the applied pilots. In the thesis it is shown how by a proper design of the pilots the SNR degradation can be minimized. Besides using appropriate pilots, the performance of joint channel estimation can be further improved by the inclusion of additional a-priori information in the estimation process. An example of such additional information would be the knowledge of the directional properties of the radio channels. This knowledge can be gained if multi-element antennas are applied at the access points. Further, a-priori channel state information in the form of the power delay profiles of the radio channels can be included in the estimation process by the application of the minimum mean square error estimation principle for joint channel estimation. After having intensively studied the problem of joint channel estimation in JOINT, the thesis rounds itself by considering the impact of the unavoidable channel estimation errors on the performance of data estimation in JOINT. For the case of small channel estimation errors occurring due to the presence of noise at the access points, the performance of joint detection in the uplink and of joint transmission in the downlink of JOINT are investigated based on simulations. For the uplink, which utilizes joint detection, it is shown to which degree the bit error probability increases due to channel estimation errors. For the downlink, which utilizes joint transmission, channel estimation errors lead to an increase of the required transmit power, which can be quantified by the simulation results.
In conventional radio communication systems, the system design generally starts from the transmitter (Tx), i.e. the signal processing algorithm in the transmitter is a priori selected, and then the signal processing algorithm in the receiver is a posteriori determined to obtain the corresponding data estimate. Therefore, in these conventional communication systems, the transmitter can be considered the master and the receiver can be considered the slave. Consequently, such systems can be termed transmitter (Tx) oriented. In the case of Tx orientation, the a priori selected transmitter algorithm can be chosen with a view to arrive at particularly simple transmitter implementations. This advantage has to be countervailed by a higher implementation complexity of the a posteriori determined receiver algorithm. Opposed to the conventional scheme of Tx orientation, the design of communication systems can alternatively start from the receiver (Rx). Then, the signal processing algorithm in the receiver is a priori determined, and the transmitter algorithm results a posteriori. Such an unconventional approach to system design can be termed receiver (Rx) oriented. In the case of Rx orientation, the receiver algorithm can be a priori selected in such a way that the receiver complexity is minimum, and the a posteriori determined transmitter has to tolerate more implementation complexity. In practical communication systems the implementation complexity corresponds to the weight, volume, cost etc of the equipment. Therefore, the complexity is an important aspect which should be taken into account, when building practical communication systems. In mobile radio communication systems, the complexity of the mobile terminals (MTs) should be as low as possible, whereas more complicated implementations can be tolerated in the base station (BS). Having in mind the above mentioned complexity features of the rationales Tx orientation and Rx orientation, this means that in the uplink (UL), i.e. in the radio link from the MT to the BS, the quasi natural choice would be Tx orientation, which leads to low cost transmitters at the MTs, whereas in the downlink (DL), i.e. in the radio link from the BS to the MTs, the rationale Rx orientation would be the favorite alternative, because this results in simple receivers at the MTs. Mobile radio downlinks with the rationale Rx orientation are considered in the thesis. Modern mobile radio communication systems are cellular systems, in which both the intracell and intercell interferences exist. These interferences are the limiting factors for the performance of mobile radio systems. The intracell interference can be eliminated or at least reduced by joint signal processing with consideration of all the signals in the considered cell. However such joint signal processing is not feasible for the elimination of intercell interference in practical systems. Knowing that the detrimental effect of intercell interference grows with its average energy, the transmit energy radiated from the transmitter should be as low as possible to keep the intercell interference low. Low transmit energy is required also with respect to the growing electro-phobia of the public. The transmit energy reduction for multi-user mobile radio downlinks by the rationale Rx orientation is dealt with in the thesis. Among the questions still open in this research area, two questions of major importance are considered here. MIMO is an important feature with respect to the transmit power reduction of mobile radio systems. Therefore, first questionconcerns the linear Rx oriented transmission schemes combined with MIMO antenna structures. The investigations of the MIMO benefit on the linear Rx oriented transmission schemes are studied in the thesis. Utilization of unconventional multiply connected quantization schemes at the receiver has also great potential to reduce the transmit energy. Therefore, the second question considers the designing of non-linear Rx oriented transmission schemes combined with multiply connected quantization schemes.
The present thesis deals with a novel air interface concept for beyond 3G mobile radio systems. Signals received at a certain reference cell in a cellular system which originate in neighboring cells of the same cellular system are undesired and constitute the intercell interference. Due to intercell interference, the spectrum capacity of cellular systems is limited and therefore the reduction of intercell interference is an important goal in the design of future mobile radio systems. In the present thesis, a novel service area based air interface concept is investigated in which interference is combated by joint detection and joint transmission, providing an increased spectrum capacity as compared to state-of-the-art cellular systems. Various algorithms are studied, with the aid of which intra service area interference can be combated. In the uplink transmission, by optimum joint detection the probability of erroneous decision is minimized. Alternatively, suboptimum joint detection algorithms can be applied offering reduced complexity. By linear receive zero-forcing joint detection interference in a service area is eliminated, while by linear minimum mean square error joint detection a trade-off is performed between interference elimination and noise enhancement. Moreover, iterative joint detection is investigated and it is shown that convergence of the data estimates of iterative joint detection without data estimate refinement towards the data estimates of linear joint detection can be achieved. Iterative joint detection can be further enhanced by the refinement of the data estimates in each iteration. For the downlink transmission, the reciprocity of uplink and downlink channels is used by joint transmission eliminating the need for channel estimation and therefore allowing for simple mobile terminals. A novel algorithm for optimum joint transmission is presented and it is shown how transmit signals can be designed which result in the minimum possible average bit error probability at the mobile terminals. By linear transmit zero-forcing joint transmission interference in the downlink transmission is eliminated, whereas by iterative joint transmission transmit signals are constructed in an iterative manner. In a next step, the performance of joint detection and joint transmission in service area based systems is investigated. It is shown that the price to be paid for the interference suppression in service area based systems is the suboptimum use of the receive energy in the uplink transmission and of the transmit energy in the downlink transmission, with respect to the single user reference system. In the case of receive zero-forcing joint detection in the uplink and transmit zero-forcing joint transmission in the downlink, i.e., in the case of linear unbiased data transmission, it is shown that the same price, quantified by the energy efficiency, has to be paid for interference elimination in both uplink and downlink. Finally it is shown that if the system load is fixed, the number of active mobile terminals in a SA and hence the spectrum capacity can be increased without any significant reduction in the average energy efficiency of the data transmission.
Utilization of Correlation Matrices in Adaptive Array Processors for Time-Slotted CDMA Uplinks
(2002)
It is well known that the performance of mobile radio systems can be significantly enhanced by the application of adaptive antennas which consist of multi-element antenna arrays plus signal processing circuitry. In the thesis the utilization of such antennas as receive antennas in the uplink of mobile radio air interfaces of the type TD-CDMA is studied. Especially, the incorporation of covariance matrices of the received interference signals into the signal processing algorithms is investigated with a view to improve the system performance as compared to state of the art adaptive antenna technology. These covariance matrices implicitly contain information on the directions of incidence of the interference signals, and this information may be exploited to reduce the effective interference power when processing the signals received by the array elements. As a basis for the investigations, first directional models of the mobile radio channels and of the interference impinging at the receiver are developed, which can be implemented on the computer at low cost. These channel models cover both outdoor and indoor environments. They are partly based on measured channel impulse responses and, therefore, allow a description of the mobile radio channels which comes sufficiently close to reality. Concerning the interference models, two cases are considered. In the one case, the interference signals arriving from different directions are correlated, and in the other case these signals are uncorrelated. After a visualization of the potential of adaptive receive antennas, data detection and channel estimation schemes for the TD-CDMA uplink are presented, which rely on such antennas under the consideration of interference covariance matrices. Of special interest is the detection scheme MSJD (Multi Step Joint Detection), which is a novel iterative approach to multi-user detection. Concerning channel estimation, the incorporation of the knowledge of the interference covariance matrix and of the correlation matrix of the channel impulse responses is enabled by an MMSE (Minimum Mean Square Error) based channel estimator. The presented signal processing concepts using covariance matrices for channel estimation and data detection are merged in order to form entire receiver structures. Important tasks to be fulfilled in such receivers are the estimation of the interference covariance matrices and the reconstruction of the received desired signals. These reconstructions are required when applying MSJD in data detection. The considered receiver structures are implemented on the computer in order to enable system simulations. The obtained simulation results show that the developed schemes are very promising in cases, where the impinging interference is highly directional, whereas in cases with the interference directions being more homogeneously distributed over the azimuth the consideration of the interference covariance matrices is of only limited benefit. The thesis can serve as a basis for practical system implementations.