Statistical mechanics of broadcast channels using low-density parity-check codes

We investigate the use of Gallager's low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes in a degraded broadcast channel, one of the fundamental models in network information theory. Combining linear codes is a standard technique in practical network communication schemes and is known to provide better performance than simple time sharing methods when algebraic codes are used. The statistical physics based analysis shows that the practical performance of the suggested method, achieved by employing the belief propagation algorithm, is superior to that of LDPC based time sharing codes while the best performance, when received transmissions are optimally decoded, is bounded by the time sharing limit.

Packet voice/data in local broadcast networks

A local area network that can support both voice and data packets offers economic advantages due to the use of only a single network for both types of traffic, greater flexibility to changing user demands, and it also enables efficient use to be made of the transmission capacity. The latter aspect is very important in local broadcast networks where the capacity is a scarce resource, for example mobile radio. This research has examined two types of local broadcast network, these being the Ethernet-type bus local area network and a mobile radio network with a central base station. With such contention networks, medium access control (MAC) protocols are required to gain access to the channel. MAC protocols must provide efficient scheduling on the channel between the distributed population of stations who want to transmit. No access scheme can exceed the performance of a single server queue, due to the spatial distribution of the stations. Stations cannot in general form a queue without using part of the channel capacity to exchange protocol information. In this research, several medium access protocols have been examined and developed in order to increase the channel throughput compared to existing protocols. However, the established performance measures of average packet time delay and throughput cannot adequately characterise protocol performance for packet voice. Rather, the percentage of bits delivered within a given time bound becomes the relevant performance measure. Performance evaluation of the protocols has been examined using discrete event simulation and in some cases also by mathematical modelling. All the protocols use either implicit or explicit reservation schemes, with their efficiency dependent on the fact that many voice packets are generated periodically within a talkspurt. Two of the protocols are based on the existing 'Reservation Virtual Time CSMA/CD' protocol, which forms a distributed queue through implicit reservations. This protocol has been improved firstly by utilising two channels, a packet transmission channel and a packet contention channel. Packet contention is then performed in parallel with a packet transmission to increase throughput. The second protocol uses variable length packets to reduce the contention time between transmissions on a single channel. A third protocol developed, is based on contention for explicit reservations. Once a station has achieved a reservation, it maintains this effective queue position for the remainder of the talkspurt and transmits after it has sensed the transmission from the preceeding station within the queue. In the mobile radio environment, adaptions to the protocols were necessary in order that their operation was robust to signal fading. This was achieved through centralised control at a base station, unlike the local area network versions where the control was distributed at the stations. The results show an improvement in throughput compared to some previous protocols. Further work includes subjective testing to validate the protocols' effectiveness.

An accurate and scalable analytical model for IEEE 802.15.4 slotted CSMA/CA networks

In this paper a Markov chain based analytical model is proposed to evaluate the slotted CSMA/CA algorithm specified in the MAC layer of IEEE 802.15.4 standard. The analytical model consists of two two-dimensional Markov chains, used to model the state transition of an 802.15.4 device, during the periods of a transmission and between two consecutive frame transmissions, respectively. By introducing the two Markov chains a small number of Markov states are required and the scalability of the analytical model is improved. The analytical model is used to investigate the impact of the CSMA/CA parameters, the number of contending devices, and the data frame size on the network performance in terms of throughput and energy efficiency. It is shown by simulations that the proposed analytical model can accurately predict the performance of slotted CSMA/CA algorithm for uplink, downlink and bi-direction traffic, with both acknowledgement and non-acknowledgement modes.

Noise characterization and transmission evaluation of unrepeated Raman amplified DP-16QAM link

Impairments characterization and performance evaluation of Raman amplified unrepeated DP-16QAM transmissions are conducted. Experimental results indicate that small gain in forward direction enhance the system signal-to-noise ratio for longer reach without introducing noticeable penalty.

A network coding based interference cancelation scheme for wireless ad hoc networks

The performance of wireless networks is limited by multiple access interference (MAI) in the traditional communication approach where the interfered signals of the concurrent transmissions are treated as noise. In this paper, we treat the interfered signals from a new perspective on the basis of additive electromagnetic (EM) waves and propose a network coding based interference cancelation (NCIC) scheme. In the proposed scheme, adjacent nodes can transmit simultaneously with careful scheduling; therefore, network performance will not be limited by the MAI. Additionally we design a space segmentation method for general wireless ad hoc networks, which organizes network into clusters with regular shapes (e.g., square and hexagon) to reduce the number of relay nodes. The segmentation methodworks with the scheduling scheme and can help achieve better scalability and reduced complexity. We derive accurate analytic models for the probability of connectivity between two adjacent cluster heads which is important for successful information relay. We proved that with the proposed NCIC scheme, the transmission efficiency can be improved by at least 50% for general wireless networks as compared to the traditional interference avoidance schemes. Numeric results also show the space segmentation is feasible and effective. Finally we propose and discuss a method to implement the NCIC scheme in a practical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) communications networks. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Free water in fuel sensor using fiber long period grating

A fiber optic free water in fuel (WIF) sensor is proposed by utilizing a long period fiber grating (LPFG). The existence of free water in fuel is indicated by the appearance of a characteristic loss band. The free water level in fuel can be determined by measuring the transmissions of two characteristic loss bands.

Demonstrating doubly-differential quadrature phase shift keying in the optical domain

We report for the first time the experimental demonstration of doubly differential quadrature phase shift keying (DDQPSK) using optical coherent detection. This method is more robust against high frequency offsets (FO) than conventional single differential quadrature phase shift keying (SDQPSK) with offset compensation. DDQPSK is shown to be able to compensate large FOs (up to the baud rate) and has lower computational requirements than other FO compensation methods. DDQPSK is a simple algorithm to implement in a real-time decoder for optical burst switched network scenarios. Simulation results are also provided, which show good agreement with the experimental results for both SDQPSK and DDQPSK transmissions. © 1989-2012 IEEE.

Power pre-emphasis for suppression of FWM in coherent optical OFDM transmission

Four-wave-mixing (FWM) due to the fiber nonlinearity is a major limiting factor in coherent optical OFDM transmission. We propose to apply power pre-emphasis, i.e. to allocate the transmitted power nonuniformly among subcarriers in order to suppress the FWM impairment. The proposed technique was numerically investigated for both single channel 15.6 Gbs CO-OFDM transmissions and 7-channel WDM transmissions, showing that up to 1 dB improvement in the system's Qfactor can be achieved without considering sophisticated power loading algorithms developed for wireless communications. © 2014 Optical Society of America.

Performance comparison of SSMF and ultra wave fibers for ultra-long-haul 40-Gb/s WDM transmission

We experimentally compare the performance of standard single-mode fiber (SSMF) and UltraWave fiber (UWF) for ultra-long-haul (ULH) 40-Gb/s wavelength- division- multiplexing transmissions. We used the carrier-suppressed return-to-zero amplitude-shift-keying (CSRZ-ASK) and the carrier-suppressed return-to-zero differential-phase-shift-keying (CSRZ-DPSK) formats, which are particularly well-adapted to 40-Gb/s pulse-overlapped propagation. We demonstrate that transmission distance well beyond 2000 km can be reached on UWF with both the CSRZ-ASK and CSRZ-DPSK formats, or on SSMF with the CSRZ-DPSK format only, thus indicating that SSMF-based infrastructure of incumbent carriers can be upgraded at 40-Gb/s channel rates to ULH distances. © 2007 IEEE.

Energy hole mitigation through cooperative transmission in wireless sensor networks

The energy balancing capability of cooperative communication is utilized to solve the energy hole problem in wireless sensor networks. We first propose a cooperative transmission strategy, where intermediate nodes participate in two cooperative multi-input single-output (MISO) transmissions with the node at the previous hop and a selected node at the next hop, respectively. Then, we study the optimization problems for power allocation of the cooperative transmission strategy by examining two different approaches: network lifetime maximization (NLM) and energy consumption minimization (ECM). For NLM, the numerical optimal solution is derived and a searching algorithm for suboptimal solution is provided when the optimal solution does not exist. For ECM, a closed-form solution is obtained. Numerical and simulation results show that both the approaches have much longer network lifetime than SISO transmission strategies and other cooperative communication schemes. Moreover, NLM which features energy balancing outperforms ECM which focuses on energy efficiency, in the network lifetime sense.

Spatial-spectral flexible optical networking:enabling switching solutions for a simplified and efficient SDM network platform

The traffic carried by core optical networks grows at a steady but remarkable pace of 30-40% year-over-year. Optical transmissions and networking advancements continue to satisfy the traffic requirements by delivering the content over the network infrastructure in a cost and energy efficient manner. Such core optical networks serve the information traffic demands in a dynamic way, in response to requirements for shifting of traffics demands, both temporally (day/night) and spatially (business district/residential). However as we are approaching fundamental spectral efficiency limits of singlemode fibers, the scientific community is pursuing recently the development of an innovative, all-optical network architecture introducing the spatial degree of freedom when designing/operating future transport networks. Spacedivision- multiplexing through the use of bundled single mode fibers, and/or multi-core fibers and/or few-mode fibers can offer up to 100-fold capacity increase in future optical networks. The EU INSPACE project is working on the development of a complete spatial-spectral flexible optical networking solution, offering the network ultra-high capacity, flexibility and energy efficiency required to meet the challenges of delivering exponentially growing traffic demands in the internet over the next twenty years. In this paper we will present the motivation and main research activities of the INSPACE consortium towards the realization of the overall project solution. © 2014 Copyright SPIE.

Experimental full duplex simultaneous transmission of LTE over a DWDM directly modulated RoF system

In this paper, we experimentally demonstrate the seamless integration of full duplex system frequency division duplex (FDD) long-term evolution (LTE) technology with radio over fiber (RoF) for eNodeB (eNB) coverage extension. LTE is composed of quadrature phase-shift keying (QPSK), 16-quadrature amplitude modulation (16-QAM) and 64-QAM, modulated onto orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and single-carrier-frequency division multiplexing for downlink (DL) and uplink (UL) transmissions, respectively. The RoF system is composed of dedicated directly modulated lasers for DL and UL with dense wavelength division multiplexing (DWDM) for instantaneous connections and for Rayleigh backscattering and nonlinear interference mitigation. DL and UL signals have varying carrier frequencies and are categorized as broad frequency spacing (BFS), intermediate frequency spacing (IFS), and narrow frequency spacing (NFS). The adjacent channel leakage ratio (ACLR) for DL and UL with 64-QAM are similar for all frequency spacings while cross talk is observed for NFS. For the best case scenario for DL and UL transmissions we achieve error vector magnitude (EVM) values of ~2.30%, ~2.33%, and ~2.39% for QPSK, 16-QAM, and 64-QAM, respectively, while for the worst case scenario with a NFS EVM is increased by 0.40% for all schemes. © 2009-2012 OSA.

Free water in fuel sensor using fiber long period grating

A fiber optic free water in fuel (WIF) sensor is proposed by utilizing a long period fiber grating (LPFG). The existence of free water in fuel is indicated by the appearance of a characteristic loss band. The free water level in fuel can be determined by measuring the transmissions of two characteristic loss bands.

Characterization of distributed Raman amplification-induced amplitude and phase impairments on unrepeated coherent transmission links

We experimentally characterize the distributed Raman amplification induced amplitude and phase impairments and evaluate the performance dependence of unrepeated 28 Gbaud 16QAM coherent transmissions over standard single mode fiber.

Comparison of cost- and energy-efficient signal modulations for next generation passive optical networks

Extensive numerical investigations are undertaken to analyze and compare, for the first time, the performance, techno-economy, and power consumption of three-level electrical Duobinary, optical Duobinary, and PAM-4 modulation formats as candidates for high-speed next-generation PONs supporting downstream 40 Gb/s per wavelength signal transmission over standard SMFs in C-band. Optimization of transceiver bandwidths are undertaken to show the feasibility of utilizing low-cost and band-limited components to support next-generation PON transmissions. The effect of electro-absorption modulator chirp is examined for electrical Duobinary and PAM-4. Electrical Duobinary and optical Duobinary are powerefficient schemes for smaller transmission distances of 10 km SMFs and optical Duobinary offers the best receiver sensitivity albeit with a relatively high transceiver cost. PAM-4 shows the best power budget and costefficiency for larger distances of around 20 km, although it consumes more power. Electrical Duobinary shows the best trade-off between performance, cost and power dissipation.