Interferometric technique for measuring terahertz antenna phase patterns

A quasi-optical interferometric technique capable of measuring antenna phase patterns without the need for a heterodyne receiver is presented. It is particularly suited to the characterization of terahertz antennas feeding power detectors or mixers employing quasi-optical local oscillator injection. Examples of recorded antenna phase patterns at frequencies of 1.4 and 2.5 THz using homodyne detectors are presented. To our knowledge, these are the highest frequency antenna phase patterns ever recovered. Knowledge of both the amplitude and phase patterns in the far field enable a Gauss-Hermite or Gauss-Laguerre beam-mode analysis to be carried out for the antenna, of importance in performance optimization calculations, such as antenna gain and beam efficiency parameters at the design and prototype stage of antenna development. A full description of the beam would also be required if the antenna is to be used to feed a quasi-optical system in the near-field to far-field transition region. This situation could often arise when the device is fitted directly at the back of telescopes in flying observatories. A further benefit of the proposed technique is simplicity for characterizing systems in situ, an advantage of considerable importance as in many situations, the components may not be removable for further characterization once assembled. The proposed methodology is generic and should be useful across the wider sensing community, e.g., in single detector acoustic imaging or in adaptive imaging array applications. Furthermore, it is applicable across other frequencies of the EM spectrum, provided adequate spatial and temporal phase stability of the source can be maintained throughout the measurement process. Phase information retrieval is also of importance to emergent research areas, such as band-gap structure characterization, meta-materials research, electromagnetic cloaking, slow light, super-lens design as well as near-field and virtual imaging applications.

Design of delay-tolerant linear dispersion codes

In cooperative communication networks, owing to the nodes' arbitrary geographical locations and individual oscillators, the system is fundamentally asynchronous. This will damage some of the key properties of the space-time codes and can lead to substantial performance degradation. In this paper, we study the design of linear dispersion codes (LDCs) for such asynchronous cooperative communication networks. Firstly, the concept of conventional LDCs is extended to the delay-tolerant version and new design criteria are discussed. Then we propose a new design method to yield delay-tolerant LDCs that reach the optimal Jensen's upper bound on ergodic capacity as well as minimum average pairwise error probability. The proposed design employs stochastic gradient algorithm to approach a local optimum. Moreover, it is improved by using simulated annealing type optimization to increase the likelihood of the global optimum. The proposed method allows for flexible number of nodes, receive antennas, modulated symbols and flexible length of codewords. Simulation results confirm the performance of the newly-proposed delay-tolerant LDCs.

Maximin SNR beamforming strategies for two-way relay channels

In this letter, we consider beamforming strategies in amplified-and-forward (AF) two-way relay channels, where two terminals and the relay are equipped with multiple antennas. Our aim is to optimize the worse end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio of the two links so that the reliability of both terminals can be guaranteed. We show that the optimization problem can be recast as a generalized fractional programing and be solved by using the Dinkelbach-type procedure combined with semidefinite programming. Simulation results confirm the efficiency of the proposed strategies.

On the power amplifier nonlinearity in MIMO transmit beamforming systems

In this paper, single-carrier multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmit beamforming (TB) systems in the presence of high-power amplifier (HPA) nonlinearity are investigated. Specifically, due to the suboptimality of the conventional maximal ratio transmission/maximal ratio combining (MRT/MRC) under HPA nonlinearity, we propose the optimal TB scheme with the optimal beamforming weight vector and combining vector, for MIMO systems with nonlinear HPAs. Moreover, an alternative suboptimal but much simpler TB scheme, namely, quantized equal gain transmission (QEGT), is proposed. The latter profits from the property that the elements of the beamforming weight vector have the same constant modulus. The performance of the proposed optimal TB scheme and QEGT/MRC technique in the presence of the HPA nonlinearity is evaluated in terms of the average symbol error probability and mutual information with the Gaussian input, considering the transmission over uncorrelated quasi-static frequency-flat Rayleigh fading channels. Numerical results are provided and show the effects on the performance of several system parameters, namely, the HPA parameters, numbers of antennas, quadrature amplitude modulation modulation order, number of pilot symbols, and cardinality of the beamforming weight vector codebook for QEGT.

Analysis and compensation of power amplifier nonlinearity in MIMO transmit diversity systems

The nonlinearity of high-power amplifiers (HPAs) has a crucial effect on the performance of multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems. In this paper, we investigate the performance of MIMO orthogonal space-time block coding (OSTBC) systems in the presence of nonlinear HPAs. Specifically, we propose a constellation-based compensation method for HPA nonlinearity in the case with knowledge of the HPA parameters at the transmitter and receiver, where the constellation and decision regions of the distorted transmitted signal are derived in advance. Furthermore, in the scenario without knowledge of the HPA parameters, a sequential Monte Carlo (SMC)-based compensation method for the HPA nonlinearity is proposed, which first estimates the channel-gain matrix by means of the SMC method and then uses the SMC-based algorithm to detect the desired signal. The performance of the MIMO-OSTBC system under study is evaluated in terms of average symbol error probability (SEP), total degradation (TD) and system capacity, in uncorrelated Nakagami-m fading channels. Numerical and simulation results are provided and show the effects on performance of several system parameters, such as the parameters of the HPA model, output back-off (OBO) of nonlinear HPA, numbers of transmit and receive antennas, modulation order of quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), and number of SMC samples. In particular, it is shown that the constellation-based compensation method can efficiently mitigate the effect of HPA nonlinearity with low complexity and that the SMC-based detection scheme is efficient to compensate for HPA nonlinearity in the case without knowledge of the HPA parameters.

Cross-layer design for multiuser MIMO MRC systems with feedback constraints

Cross-layer techniques represent efficient means to enhance throughput and increase the transmission reliability of wireless communication systems. In this paper, a cross-layer design of aggressive adaptive modulation and coding (A-AMC), truncated automatic repeat request (T-ARQ), and user scheduling is proposed for multiuser multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) maximal ratio combining (MRC) systems, where the impacts of feedback delay (FD) and limited feedback (LF) on channel state information (CSI) are also considered. The A-AMC and T-ARQ mechanism selects the appropriate modulation and coding schemes (MCSs) to achieve higher spectral efficiency while satisfying the service requirement on the packet loss rate (PLR), profiting from the feasibility of using different MCSs to retransmit a packet, which is destined to a scheduled user selected to exploit multiuser diversity and enhance the system's performance in terms of both transmission efficiency and fairness. The system's performance is evaluated in terms of the average PLR, average spectral efficiency (ASE), outage probability, and average packet delay, which are derived in closed form, considering transmissions over Rayleigh-fading channels. Numerical results and comparisons are provided and show that A-AMC combined with T-ARQ yields higher spectral efficiency than the conventional scheme based on adaptive modulation and coding (AMC), while keeping the achieved PLR closer to the system's requirement and reducing delay. Furthermore, the effects of the number of ARQ retransmissions, numbers of transmit and receive antennas, normalized FD, and cardinality of the beamforming weight vector codebook are studied and discussed.

Cross-layer design for MIMO systems over spatially correlated and keyhole Nakagami-m fading channels

Cross-layer design is a generic designation for a set of efficient adaptive transmission schemes, across multiple layers of the protocol stack, that are aimed at enhancing the spectral efficiency and increasing the transmission reliability of wireless communication systems. In this paper, one such cross-layer design scheme that combines physical layer adaptive modulation and coding (AMC) with link layer truncated automatic repeat request (T-ARQ) is proposed for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems employing orthogonal space--time block coding (OSTBC). The performance of the proposed cross-layer design is evaluated in terms of achievable average spectral efficiency (ASE), average packet loss rate (PLR) and outage probability, for which analytical expressions are derived, considering transmission over two types of MIMO fading channels, namely, spatially correlated Nakagami-m fading channels and keyhole Nakagami-m fading channels. Furthermore, the effects of the maximum number of ARQ retransmissions, numbers of transmit and receive antennas, Nakagami fading parameter and spatial correlation parameters, are studied and discussed based on numerical results and comparisons. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Joint compensation of multiple RF impairments in MIMO STBC systems

In this paper, we propose a compensation method for the joint effect of high-power amplifier (HPA) nonlinearity, in-phase/quadrature-phase (I/Q) imbalance and crosstalk in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal space-time block coding (OSTBC) systems. The performance of the MIMO OSTBC equipped with the proposed compensation mechanism is evaluated in terms of average symbol error probability and system capacity, in Rayleigh fading channels. Numerical results are provided and show the effects on performance of several system parameters, namely, the HPA parameters, image-leakage ratio, crosstalk, numbers of antennas, and phase-shift keying modulation order.

Analysis and compensation for the joint effects of HPA nonlinearity, I/Q imbalance and crosstalk in MIMO beamforming systems

In this paper, we investigate the joint effects of high-power amplifier (HPA) nonlinearity, in-phase/quadrature-phase (I/Q) imbalance and crosstalk, on the performance of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmit beamforming (TB) systems, and propose a compensation method for the three impairments together. The performance of the MIMO TB system equipped with the proposed compensation scheme is evaluated in terms of average symbol error probability and capacity when transmissions are performed over uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channels. Numerical results are provided and show the effects on performance of several system parameters, namely, the HPA parameters, image-leakage ratio, crosstalk, numbers of antennas, length of pilot symbols and phase-shift keying modulation order.

Compensation for HPA nonlinearity and I/Q imbalance in MIMO beamforming systems

In this paper, we investigate the effects of high-power amplifier (HPA) nonlinearity and in-phase and quadrature-phase (I/Q) imbalance on the performance of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmit beamforming (TB) systems. Specifically, we propose a compensation method for HPA nonlinearity and I/Q imbalance together in MIMO TB systems. The performance of the MIMO TB system under study is evaluated in terms of the average symbol error probability (SEP) and system capacity, considering transmission over uncorrelated frequency-flat Rayleigh fading channels. Numerical results are provided and show the effects of several system parameters, such as the HPA parameters, image-leakage ratio, numbers of transmit and receive antennas, length of pilot symbols, and modulation order of phase-shift keying (PSK), on performance.

Optimal beamforming in MIMO systems with HPA nonlinearity

In this paper, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmit beamforming (TB) systems under the consideration of nonlinear high-power amplifiers (HPAs) are investigated. The optimal beamforming scheme, with the optimal beamforming weight vector and combining vector, is proposed for MIMO systems with HPA nonlinearity. The performance of the proposed MIMO beamforming scheme in the presence of HPA nonlinearity is evaluated in terms of average symbol error probability (SEP), outage probability and system capacity, considering transmission over uncorrelated quasi-static frequency-flat Rayleigh fading channels. Numerical results are provided and show the effects of several system parameters, namely, parameters of nonlinear HPA, numbers of transmit and receive antennas, and modulation order of phase-shift keying (PSK), on performance.

On the effect of I/Q imbalance on MIMO transmit-receive diversity systems

In practice, all I/Q signal processing receivers face the problem of I/Q imbalance. In this paper, we investigate the effect of I/Q imbalance on the performance of MIMO maximal ratio combining (MRC) systems that perform the combining at the radio frequency (RF) level, thereby requiring only one RF chain. Based on a system modeling that takes the I/Q imbalance into account, we evaluate the performance in terms of average symbol error probability (SEP), outage probability and system capacity, which are derived considering transmission over uncorrelated Rayleigh fading channels. Numerical results are provided to illustrate the effects of system parameters, such as the image- leakage ratio, numbers of transmit and receive antennas, and modulation order of quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), on the system performance.

On the effect of power amplifier nonlinearity on MIMO transmit diversity systems

Nonlinearity of high-power amplifier (HPA) plays a crucial role in the performance of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. In this paper, we investigate the performance of MIMO orthogonal space-time block coding (STBC) systems in the presence of nonlinear HPA. Specifically, we assess the impact of HPA nonlinearity on the average symbol error probability (SEP), total degradation (TD), and system capacity of orthogonal STBC in uncorrelated Nakagami-m fading channels. Numerical results are provided and show the effects of several system parameters, such as the output back-off (OBO) of nonlinear HPA, numbers of transmit and receive antennas, and modulation order of quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), on performance.

Reliability comparison of transmit/receive diversity and error control coding in low-power medium access control protocols

Low-power medium access control (MAC) protocols used for communication of energy constraint wireless embedded devices do not cope well with situations where transmission channels are highly erroneous. Existing MAC protocols discard corrupted messages which lead to costly retransmissions. To improve transmission performance, it is possible to include an error correction scheme and transmit/receive diversity. It is possible to add redundant information to transmitted packets in order to recover data from corrupted packets. It is also possible to make use of transmit/receive diversity via multiple antennas to improve error resiliency of transmissions. Both schemes may be used in conjunction to further improve the performance. In this study, the authors show how an error correction scheme and transmit/receive diversity can be integrated in low-power MAC protocols. Furthermore, the authors investigate the achievable performance gains of both methods. This is important as both methods have associated costs (processing requirements; additional antennas and power) and for a given communication situation it must be decided which methods should be employed. The authors’ results show that, in many practical situations, error control coding outperforms transmission diversity; however, if very high reliability is required, it is useful to employ both schemes together.