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IEEE 1588, built on the classical two-way message exchange scheme, is a popular clock synchronization protocol for packet-switched networks. Due to the presence of random queuing delays in a packet-switched network, the joint recovery of the clock skew and offset from the timestamps of the exchanged synchronization packets can be treated as a statistical estimation problem. In this paper, we address the problem of clock skew and offset estimation for IEEE 1588 in the presence of possible unknown asymmetries between the deterministic path delays of the forward master-to-slave path and reverse slave-to-master path, which can result from incorrect modeling or cyber-attacks. First, we develop lower bounds on the mean square estimation error for a clock skew and offset estimation scheme for IEEE 1588 assuming the availability of multiple master-slave communication paths and complete knowledge of the probability density functions (pdf) describing the random queuing delays. Approximating the pdf of the random queuing delays by a mixture of Gaussian random variables, we then present a robust iterative clock skew and offset estimation scheme that employs the space alternating generalized expectation-maximization (SAGE) algorithm for learning all the unknown parameters. Numerical results indicate that the developed robust scheme exhibits a mean square estimation error close to the lower bounds. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A natural basis for the detection of a wireless random reactive jammer (RRJ) is the perceived violation by the detector [typically located at the access point (AP)] of the carrier sensing protocol underpinning many wireless random access protocols (e.g., Wi-Fi). Specifically, when the wireless medium is perceived by a station to be busy, a carrier sensing compliant station will avoid transmission, while an RRJ station will often initiate transmission. However, hidden terminals (HTs), i.e., activity detected by the AP but not by the sensing station, complicate the use of carrier sensing as the basis for RRJ detection since they provide plausible deniability to a station suspected of being an RRJ. The RRJ has the dual objectives of avoiding detection and effectively disrupting communication, but there is an inherent performance tradeoff between these two objectives. In this paper, we capture the behavior of both the RRJ and the compliant stations via a parsimonious Markov chain model and pose the detection problem using the framework of the Markov chain hypothesis testing. Our analysis yields the receiver operating characteristic (ROC) of the detector and the optimized behavior of the RRJ. While there has been extensive work in the literature on jamming detection, our innovation lies in leveraging carrier sensing as a natural and effective basis for detection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A secret-key agreement for in-band full-duplex (FD) technology can be regarded as a valuable method for establishing security at the physical layer level. In this paper, we study an FD system model in conjunction with a secret-key agreement. The legitimate users interact through two-way channel probing and one-way reconciliation. We first introduce two complementary key generation models for FD and half-duplex (HD) settings, and compare their performances by introducing the key-reconciliation function. Furthermore, we study the impact of probing-reconciliation tradeoff and the role of a strong eavesdropper, and analyze the system performance in the high-signal-to-noise ratio regime. We show that under certain conditions, the FD mode negatively affects the capabilities of the eavesdropper and offers several advantages in terms of secret-key rate over the conventional HD setups. Our analysis reveals that the perfect self-interference cancelation is not necessary to obtain performance gains over the HD mode. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent physical-layer designs capable of decoding multi-packet collisions demonstrate great potential for improving the network performance. Current network protocols, however, tailor the traditional physical layer to avoid collisions and thus cannot fully exploit the benefits of concurrent transmission techniques. In this paper, we propose an innovative generic concurrent transmission aware routing design called mShare. The mShare design exploits the benefits of these techniques by scheduling concurrent senders to utilize co-owned receiver(s) in parallel. This design significantly increases the available number of routing choices and thus improves the network performance. To illustrate the versatility of our design, we test mShare in three settings: unicast, opportunistic routing, and data collection (convergecast). The performance of mShare is evaluated with physical testbed experiments running on USRP and simulations. The experimental results show that compared to conventional designs, mShare: 1) improves 277% of the throughput in unicast; 2) saves 78% of transmissions in opportunistic routing; and 3) reduces 70% of the delivery delay in data collection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) can improve the spectral efficiency by exploiting the power domain and successive interference cancellation, and in order to improve the throughput, it can be applied to random access that plays a crucial role in the Internet of Things to support connectivity for a number of devices with sparse activity. In this paper, we formulate a game when NOMA is applied to ALOHA to decide users’ access or transmission probabilities. We consider a payoff function based on an energy-efficiency metric and drive the mixed strategy Nash equilibrium (NE). Once the NOMA-ALOHA game is successfully formulated, we generalize it to take into account users’ different fading and multiple orthogonal channels, which might be necessary for NOMA-ALOHA to support a number of users in a realistic environment. A distributed algorithm based on gradient play is derived to find the mixed strategy NE (or transmission probabilities) of multichannel NOMA-ALOHA with fading. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We propose a Context-aware Smallworld routing protocol for wireless ad-hoc networks which finds efficient routes to the destination nodes often through a very short chain of intermediate nodes, without using any routing table. This protocol exploits the “small-world” phenomenon of social networks where source-destination pairs typically get connected through few intermediate friends and the individuals can collectively discover such short paths. The key idea behind our routing protocol is that for forwarding an incoming packet to the destination, a node picks the next hop from among the one-hop neighbor from its one-hop neighborhood that is closest to the destination, and multiple randomly selected long-distance neighbor(s), i.e., from outside of its one-hop neighborhood, based on which of these neighbors is closest to the destination. The long-distance neighbors are selected by using their contextual information through a probabilistic mapping. We provide the theoretical foundations behind our protocol. This simple but effective algorithm can meet performance objectives for most scenarios by reducing loss and latency. Simulation results, using synthetic network topologies, have demonstrated that the routing performance of context-aware Smallworld is better than geographical (distance-based) Smallworld and other standard proactive routing protocols (e.g., OLSRv2) when metrics, such as packet losses, end-to-end delays, hop-counts, connectivity drops, and control traffic generated, are used as the key performance indicators. We also show that the proposed protocol is resilient to dynamic topology changes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider multichannel ALOHA for a wireless sensor network (WSN), where sensors’ signals are correlated. The impact of the number of channels on the length of information that an access point (AP) can collect is investigated. Under a certain distributed signal source model, in order for the AP to have a sufficiently long length of information, we show that the number of channels is to be larger than the square of the average number of active nodes. Thus, when the number of channels is limited, we need to use re-transmissions. To this end, we propose an adaptive transmission approach that can effectively exploit the correlation between the collected signals at the AP and nodes’ signals using Slepian–Wolf coding to shorten the total transmission time, which results in a more energy efficient WSN. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we study simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) in relay interference channels (ICs), where energy-constrained relays harvest energy from sources’ radio-frequency signals and use the harvested energy to forward the information to destinations. We adopt the power splitting (PS) relay protocol and the interference alignment (IA) technique to jointly realize energy transfer and interference management. We propose two novel transmission schemes for the SWIPT in relay IC networks, namely, one-stage PS IA scheme and two-stage PS IA scheme. For both schemes, we investigate the optimal PS ratios that maximize the network sum rate. We obtain the closed-form optimal PS ratios for the two-stage PS IA scheme and develop a distributed and iterative algorithm to derive the optimal PS ratios for the one-stage PS IA scheme. We further study the optimal design of the IA precoding and decoding matrices. Based on the Grassmann manifold approach, we present an algorithm to obtain the optimal IA matrices for both schemes. The optimality of the designs of both the PS ratios and the IA matrices is then verified by simulations. Our results show that the proposed schemes effectively improve the performance of the network and significantly outperform benchmark schemes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We consider the secrecy rate for the multiple-input single-output optical wireless scattering communication, where the detected signal can be characterized by discrete photoelectrons. Assuming a legitimate receiver and an eavesdropper, we propose two secure communication protocols, the non-jamming protocol, and the cooperative jamming protocol, where for the former the transmitter does not send jamming signals but for the latter the transmitter sends jamming signals. We formulate the corresponding power and duty cycle optimization problems for both protocols. We also analyze the properties on the optimal solution, and adopt the alternating optimization to obtain a tractable solution. Moreover, we analyze the condition on the positive secrecy rate for the case where all the sub-channels to the receiver are weaker than their counterparts to the eavesdropper, where the secrecy transmission cannot be realized via a non-jamming protocol. The performance of the proposed two protocols is evaluated by numerical results. It is seen that for the iterative optimization solution, two to three iterations suffice for the convergence of the secrecy rate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is a promising technique for the fifth generation mobile communication due to its high spectral efficiency. By applying superposition coding and successive interference cancellation techniques at the receiver, multiple users can be multiplexed on the same subchannel in NOMA systems. Previous works focus on subchannel assignment and power allocation to achieve the maximization of sum rate; however, the energy-efficient resource allocation problem has not been well studied for NOMA systems. In this paper, we aim to optimize subchannel assignment and power allocation to maximize the energy efficiency for the downlink NOMA network. Assuming perfect knowledge of the channel state information at base station, we propose a low-complexity suboptimal algorithm, which includes energy-efficient subchannel assignment and power proportional factors determination for subchannel multiplexed users. We also propose a novel power allocation across subchannels to further maximize energy efficiency. Since both optimization problems are non-convex, difference of convex programming is used to transform and approximate the original non-convex problems to convex optimization problems. Solutions to the resulting optimization problems can be obtained by solving the convex sub-problems iteratively. Simulation results show that the NOMA system equipped with the proposed algorithms yields much better sum rate and energy efficiency performance than the conventional orthogonal frequency division multiple access scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) can exploit the power difference between the users to achieve a higher spectral efficiency. Thus, the power allocation plays a crucial role in NOMA. In this paper, we study the power allocation for hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) in NOMA with two users. For the power allocation, we consider the error exponents of the outage probabilities in HARQ with incremental redundancy (IR) and derive them based on large deviations. While a closed-form expression for the error exponent (or rate function) without interference is available, there is no closed-form expression for the error exponent with interference. Thus, we focus on the derivation of a lower bound on the error exponent in this paper. Based on the error exponents, we formulate a power allocation problem for HARQ-IR in NOMA to guarantee a certain low outage probability for a given maximum number of retransmissions. From the simulation results, we can confirm that it is possible to guarantee a certain outage probability by the proposed power allocation method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider the wireless broadcasting scenario with a source node sending some common information to a group of closely located users, where each link is subject to certain packet erasures. To ensure reliable information reception by all users, the conventional approach generally requires repeated transmission by the source until all the users are able to decode the information, which is inefficient in many practical scenarios. In this paper, by exploiting the close proximity among the users, we propose a novel two-phase wireless broadcasting protocol with user cooperations based on an efficient batched network code, known as batched sparse (BATS) code. In the first phase, the information packets are encoded into batches with BATS encoder and sequentially broadcasted by the source node until certain terminating criterion is met. In the second phase, the users cooperate with each other by exchanging the network-coded information via peer-to-peer (P2P) communications based on their respective received packets. A fully distributed and light-weight scheduling algorithm is proposed to improve the efficiency of the P2P communication in the second phase. The performance of the proposed two-phase protocol is analyzed and the channel rank distribution at the instance of decoding is derived, based on which the optimal BATS code is designed. Simulation results show that the proposed protocol outperforms most existing cooperative packet exchange schemes, especially when the inter-user links are not reliable. Lastly, the performance of the proposed scheme is further verified via testbed experiments. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this work, various channel coding schemes that can be used in hybrid automatic repeat request (HARQ) transmission protocols are investigated from an energy efficiency point of view. Conventional HARQ, where only one bit is used to inform the transmitter about the decoding success or failure, is compared to adaptive HARQ where the transmitter adapts either the length or the transmit power of the codewords using outdated channel state information (i.e., experienced by the receiver during the past transmissions). Describing the problems within a Markov decision process framework, we find optimal adaptation policies for both persistent (unlimited number of transmission) and truncated HARQ protocols. Numerical examples obtained in a Rayleigh block fading channel show that, in terms of energy efficiency, the adaptation of the codewords length provides notable gains over power adaptation and conventional HARQ. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Erasure codes, such as LT and Raptor codes, are designed for the purpose of erasure-resilient distribution of data over computer networks. To achieve a small reception overhead, however, LT and Raptor codes must be used with a large design length $k$, making these codes unsuitable for real-time applications. In this paper, we propose a new class of erasure codes based on Reed–Solomon codes that unlike other Reed–Solomon-based erasure codes are rateless and also, unlike other rateless codes, guarantee zero overhead even for small $k$. Moreover, they have a reasonable computational complexity of coding when $k$ is not too large. In fact, a practical implementation of subfield subcodes of Reed-Solomon codes with arbitrarily large block lengths is presented. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes an improved spectrum-sharing protocol for multiuser cooperation in cognitive radio (CR) networks. In CR networks, a secondary user (SU) can access the licensed bands of a primary user (PU) as compensation for cooperative transmission. During cooperative transmission, the SU concurrently transmits its own signal and network-coded signal from the PUs. However, detection errors at the SU cause error propagation which degrades the performance of the PU and SU. To address this problem, we develop a cooperative maximal-ratio combining scheme that mitigates the error propagation and achieves diversity gain. To evaluate the combining scheme, we derive a diversity order and closed-form bit error rate (BER) expression for arbitrary $M$-QAM at high SNR. The analysis results show that the diversity order and BER depend on the fraction of the transmit power at the SU. Based on the dependency of the fraction factor, we propose an optimization problem to minimize the BER of the SU while guaranteeing the PU's BER. Further, we apply the BER-constrained optimization problem to the adaptive modulation system. Simulation results show that the proposed cooperation provides full diversity gain to the PU and thus improves its spectral efficiency by using the optimized fraction factor. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We develop a unified framework for the performance analysis of arbitrary-loaded downlink heterogeneous networks (HetNets) in which interfering sources are inherently spatially-correlated. Considering a randomly-deployed multi-tier cellular network comprised of a diverse set of large-and small-cells, we incorporate the notion of load-awareness and spatial-correlations in characterizing the activities of base stations (BSs) using binary decision variables. A stochastic geometry-based approach is accordingly employed to systematically develop a bounded expression of ergodic rate with different cellular association and load-balancing strategies. Employing the proposed unified framework hence allows for relaxation of several major limitations in the existing state-of-the-art models, in particular the always-transmitting-BSs, uncorrelated interferers, and Rayleigh fading assumptions. We elaborate on the usefulness of adopting this methodology by providing detailed analysis of the aggregate network interference generated by interdependent load-proportional sources over Nakagami-m fading interfering channels. The analytical formulations are validated through Monte-Carlo (MC) simulations for various scenarios and system settings of interest. We observe that the heavily-adopted fully-loaded model as well as the more recent interference-thinning-based approximations are significantly limited in capturing the actual performance curve. The proposed bounded load-aware model and MC trials reveal several important trends and design guidelines for the practical deployment of HetNets. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Reliable and energy-efficient reading of Radio Frequency IDentification (RFID) tags is of utmost importance, especially in mobile and dense tag settings. We identify tag collisions as a main source of inefficiency in terms of wasting both medium access control (MAC) frame slots and reader's energy. We propose modulation silencing (MS), a reader-tag interaction framework to limit the effect of tag collisions. Utilizing relatively simple circuitry at the tag, MS enhances the performance of existing anti-collision protocols by allowing readers to terminate collision slots once a decoding violation is detected. With shorter collision slots, we revisit the performance metrics and introduce a new generalized time efficiency metric and an optimal frame selection formula that takes into consideration the MS effects. Through analytical solutions and extensive simulations, we show that the use of MS results in significant performance gains under various scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The diversity–multiplexing tradeoff (DMT) of a general two-hop asynchronous cooperative network is examined for orthogonal and nonorthogonal selection decode-and-forward relaying protocols. The transmitter nodes send pulse amplitude modulation signals, in which information symbols are linearly modulated by a shaping waveform to be sent to the destination. We consider two different cases of band-limited and time-limited shaping waveforms. In each case, the DMT performance of the asynchronous and synchronous networks is compared. It is proved that in the band-limited system scenario, the asynchronism does not incur any performance loss, and the same DMT as that of the corresponding synchronous network is obtained for both protocols. In the time-limited-system scenario, the bandwidth is expanded for high values of signal-to-noise ratio. In this scenario, it is observed that only asynchronous signaling is able to exploit the extra degrees of freedom of the channel. The asynchronous network in this scenario provides better DMT performances for both protocols throughout the range of the multiplexing gain. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we provide a mathematical framework for the analysis, design, and optimization of network-coded cooperative diversity (NCCD) protocols. The analysis is applicable to relay-aided protocols based on the error propagation model, which rely on appropriately designed diversity-combining demodulators at the destination. Wireless networks with an arbitrary number of sources and relays are considered. Arbitrary multilevel modulation schemes and network codes constructed over a non-binary Galois field (GF) are analyzed. NCCD protocols based on repetition-based and relay selection cooperation are investigated. Two takeaway messages emerge from our analysis: 1) repetition-based NCCD protocols are capable of achieving full-diversity, e.g., if the GF size is sufficiently large and the network code satisfies the maximum distance separable (MDS) property; and 2) NCCD protocols based on relay selection are capable of achieving full-diversity under more restrictive assumptions than repetition-based protocols, e.g., if the number of active relays is no fewer than the number of sources and an MDS network code is used. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We develop an analytical framework for the end-to-end (e2e) average symbol error probability (ASEP) of dual-hop relaying networks with pilot-symbol assisted M-ary phase-shift keying (M-PSK) modulation. The relays use the selective decode-and-forward protocol and are equipped with multiple receive antennas. The channels are estimated per antenna branch based on the least-squares estimation (LSE) technique by means of pilot symbols. Also, maximal-ratio combining and coherent detection are performed per receiving end. Exact e2e analytical ASEP expressions are derived for binary and quadrature phase-shift keying (BPSK and QPSK), while simple approximate expressions and bounds are obtained for high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) when M ≥ 2. Our analysis is generic enough to account for any frequency-flat, time-selective, and/or arbitrarily correlated fading channel model per hop. As a case study, we further provide e2e ASEP expressions considering arbitrarily correlated Nakagami fading channels. For high SNR, closed-form expressions are derived, while the cooperation-gain and diversity-order are also extracted. In addition, two power allocation strategies are investigated and analytical solutions are provided. Comparisons between numerical and computer simulation results are finally presented to verify the validity of the proposed approach and the accuracy of the high-SNR approximate expressions. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Opportunistic Spectrum Access (OSA) in distributed cognitive radio networks (CRNs) has been well studied in the literature from a theoretical perspective. However, such theoretically-optimized distributed OSA approaches are challenged by several practical implementation issues. In this paper, we design a custom cross-layer framework that enables the: (i) clean-slate implementation of a wide variety of OSA mechanisms; (ii) experimental evaluation of the individual practical OSA components of the Rate-Adaptive Probabilistic (RAP) framework; and (iii) detailed comparison of the performance of such a practical OSA approach against theoretical OSA approaches developed for fully-capable CRNs. Our evaluation reveals the multi-fold goodput improvement and remarkable fairness characteristics of the practical RAP OSA approach compared to the OSA approaches that overlook the OSA and CR practical limitations. However, the superior performance of practical OSA comes at the expense of more outages to the primary licensed networks but within the permissible bounds. Another key finding is that the wide family of existing theoretically-optimized OSA protocols can benefit from the gains available to the individual components of the practical RAP approach, namely, the random spectrum sensing and the probabilistic non-greedy access. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we describe a framework for designing a discrete-bandwidth nonblocking network. The theoretical foundation of the framework combines theories from both networking and switching. While the conventional Clos theory must assume a particular topology, the new theory allows us to design a nonblocking network with an arbitrary topology. Thus it can be considered as a generalization of the Clos theory. In addition to the design of WDM or SONET networks, applications such as grid computing and supercomputing can also benefit from the results developed in the paper. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider an erasure multi-way relay channel (EMWRC) in which several users share their data through a relay over erasure links. Assuming no feedback channel between the users and the relay, we first identify the challenges for designing a data sharing scheme over an EMWRC. Then, to overcome these challenges, we propose practical low-latency and low-complexity data sharing schemes based on fountain coding. Later, we introduce the notion of end-to-end erasure rate (EEER) and analytically derive it for the proposed schemes. EEER is then used to calculate the achievable rate and transmission overhead of the proposed schemes. Using EEER and computer simulations, the achievable rates and transmission overhead of our proposed schemes are compared with the ones of one-way relaying. This comparison implies that when the number of users and the channel erasure rates are not large, our proposed schemes outperform one-way relaying. We also find an upper bound on the achievable rates of EMWRC and observe that depending on the number of users and channel erasure rates, our proposed solutions can perform very close to this bound. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We analyze the performance of the CSMA protocol under propagation delays that are comparable with packet transmission times. We propose a semi-Markov model for the 2-node CSMA channel. For the 2-node case, the capacity reduces to 40% of the zero-delay capacity when the one-way propagation delay is 10% of the packet transmission time. We then extend this model and obtain the optimum symmetric probing rate that achieves the maximum network throughput as a function of the average propagation delay, \bard, and the number of nodes sharing the channel, N. The proposed model predicts that the total capacity decreases with \bard^-1 as N goes to infinity when all nodes probe the channel at the optimum rate. The optimum probing rate for each node decreases with 1/N and the total optimum probing rate decreases faster than \bard^-1 as N goes to infinity. We investigate how the short-term unfairness problem in CSMA worsens as the propagation delay increases and propose a back-off mechanism to mitigate this issue. The theoretical results presented in this paper can be used as a benchmark for the performance improvements provided by algorithms that have already been developed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper introduces a communication model inspired by two practical scenarios. The first scenario is related to the concept of protocol coding, where information is encoded in the actions taken by an existing communication protocol. We investigate strategies for protocol coding via combinatorial reordering of the labelled user resources (packets, channels) in an existing, primary system. However, the degrees of freedom of the reordering are constrained by the operation of the primary system. The second scenario is related to communication systems with energy harvesting, where the transmitted signals are constrained by the energy that is available through the harvesting process. We have introduced a communication model that covers both scenarios and elicits their key feature, namely the constraints of the primary system or the harvesting process. We have shown how to compute the capacity of the channels pertaining to the communication model when the resources that can be reordered have binary values. The capacity result is valid under arbitrary error model in which errors in each resource (packet) occur independently. Inspired by the information—theoretic analysis, we have shown how to design practical error—correcting codes suited for the communication model. It turns out that the information—theoretic insights are instrumental for devising superior design of error—control codes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper analyzes performance of RFID networks that are based on passive tags using EPC Gen2 Class1 communication protocol. For the first time, all the main factors impacting tag read efficiency and read latency are considered - inclusive of MAC layer collision, link layer packet loss and the impact of the use of energy harvesting in passive tags. Specifically, the impact of tag duty cycling due to limited harvested energy is considered - a first in the analysis of RFID systems, to the best of our knowledge. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We consider the use of spatial diversity to improve the performance of analog joint source-channel coding in wireless fading channels. The communication system analyzed in this paper consists of discrete-time all-analog-processing joint source-channel coding where Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Minimum Mean Square Error (MMSE) detection are employed. By assuming a fast-fading Rayleigh channel, we show that MMSE performs much better than ML at high Channel Signal-to-Noise Ratios (CSNR) in single-antenna wireless systems. However, such performance gap can be significantly reduced by using multiple receive antennas, thus making low complexity ML decoding very attractive in the case of receive diversity. Moreover, we show that the analog scheme can be considerably robust to imperfect channel estimation. In addition, as an alternative to multiple antennas, we also consider spatial diversity through cooperative communications, and show that the application of the Amplify-and-Forward (AF) protocol with single antenna nodes leads to similar results than when two antennas are available at the receiver and Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC) is applied. Finally, we show that the MMSE implementation of the analog scheme performs very close to the unconstrained capacity of digital schemes using scalar quantization, while its complexity is much lower than that of capacity-approaching digital systems. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The constantly increasing demand for capacity in modern communication systems such as wireless backhaul has led to the employment of frequencies above 10 GHz where the dominant fading mechanism is rain attenuation which is usually modelled as a lognormal random variable (when expressed in dB - log-lognormal in linear scale). In addition, in the context of green communications the use of cooperative diversity techniques can be considered as an important tool which improves the performance, reliability and efficiency of such systems. In this paper, the outage performance analysis of a cooperative system operating at frequencies above 10 GHz is presented, where the propagation medium consists of spatially correlated fading channels. In addition, the energy and spectral efficiency of various multiple-access protocols as well as different relay retransmission and receiver combining techniques are investigated. Moreover, it is proposed that the high correlation coefficient between various rain fading channels can be exploited by the relay to estimate the rain fading of the next hop. Extended numerical results present the impact of various system parameters on the end-to-end performance. Finally, comparison with an energy- and bandwidth- equivalent direct link highlights the system parameter regions where cooperative diversity offers gains over non-cooperation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses multi-user quantum key distribution networks, in which any two users can mutually exchange a secret key without trusting any other nodes. The same network also supports conventional classical communications by assigning two different wavelength bands to quantum and classical signals. Time and code division multiple access (CDMA) techniques, within a passive star network, are considered. In the case of CDMA, it turns out that the optimal performance is achieved at a unity code weight. A listen-before-send protocol is then proposed to improve secret key generation rates in this case. Finally, a hybrid setup with wavelength routers and passive optical networks, which can support a large number of users, is considered and analyzed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Cooperative techniques have been shown to significantly improve the performance of wireless networks. Despite being a mature technology in single communication link scenarios, their implementation in wider, and practical, networks poses several challenges which have not been fully identified and understood so far. In this paper, the implementation of cooperative communications in non-centralized ad hoc networks with sensing-based channel access is extensively discussed. Both analysis and simulation are employed to provide a clear understanding of the mutual influence between the link layer contention mechanism and relaying protocols. Results show that sensing-based channel access significantly hampers the effectiveness of cooperation by biasing the spatial distribution of available relays, and by inducing a level of spatial and temporal correlation of interference that diminishes the diversity improvement on which cooperative gains are founded. Moreover, the efficiency reduction entailed by several practical protocol issues related to carrier sense multiple access which are typically neglected in the literature is thoroughly investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We consider spectrum sharing in a cognitive radio network where a secondary system co-exists with an automatic repeat-request (ARQ)-based primary system. A cooperate-and-access spectrum sharing protocol is proposed where the secondary system alternates between cooperation and access modes. In the cooperation mode, the secondary system serves as a relay to assist the primary transmission, and in return accumulates credits. The credits allow the secondary system to gain spectrum access by exploiting the ARQ retransmissions of the primary system. We show analytically that through the proposed credit system, as long as the credits accumulated in cooperation mode compensate for the degradation in primary performance during access mode, an equal or higher average throughput is achieved for the primary system than in the case without spectrum sharing, while providing spectrum access opportunities for the secondary system. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In communication systems where users share common resources, selfish behavior usually results in suboptimal resource utilization. There have been extensive works that model communication systems with selfish users as one-shot games and propose incentive schemes to achieve Pareto-optimal outcomes. However, in many communication systems, due to strong negative externalities among users, the sets of feasible payoffs in one-shot games are nonconvex. Thus, it is possible to expand the set of feasible payoffs by having users choose different action profiles in an alternating manner. In this paper, we formulate a model of repeated games with intervention. First, by using repeated games we can convexify the set of feasible payoffs in one-shot games. Second, by using intervention in repeated games we can achieve a larger set of equilibrium payoffs and loosen requirements for users' patience to achieve a target payoff. We study the problem of maximizing a welfare function defined on users' payoffs. We characterize the limit set of equilibrium payoffs. Given the optimal equilibrium payoff, we derive the sufficient condition on the discount factor and the intervention capability to achieve it, and design corresponding equilibrium strategies. We illustrate our analytical results with power control and flow control. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

In this paper, we propose a new automatic repeat request (ARQ) scheme, named Go-Back-i-symbol (GBi) ARQ scheme, suitable to Meteor Burst Communications (MBC). The scheme realizes symbol-wise ARQ by using the Viterbi decoding algorithm for convolutional codes. We also propose a practical transmission protocol for applying the GBi-ARQ scheme to packet communications over time varying short burst channels such as meteor burst channels. Fundamental performances of the GBi-ARQ scheme in MBC are evaluated by computer simulations. Effectiveness of the GBi-ARQ scheme is shown by comparing the performance with that of a conventional block-wise ARQ scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In many communication standards, several variable length frames generated by some source coder may be aggregated at a given layer of the protocol stack in the same burst to be transmitted. This decreases the signalization overhead and increases the throughput. However, after a transmission over a noisy channel, Frame Synchronization (FS), i.e., recovery of the aggregated frames, may become difficult due to errors affecting the bursts. This paper proposes several robust FS methods making use of the redundancy present in the protocol stack combined with channel soft information. A trellis-based FS algorithm is proposed first. Its efficiency is obtained at the cost of a large delay, since the whole burst must be available before beginning the processing, which might not be possible in some applications. Thus, a low-delay and reduced-complexity Sliding Window-based variant is introduced. Second, an improved version of an on-the-fly three-state automaton for FS is proposed. Bayesian hypothesis testing is performed to retrieve the correct FS. These methods are compared in the context of the WiMAX MAC layer when bursts are transmitted over Rayleigh fading channels. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Diversity Combining (DC) and Multipacket Detection (MPD) are efficient techniques that cope with packet errors due to severe propagation conditions and/or collisions. To evaluate their network performance on a network simulator, an accurate characterization of the Bit Error Rate (BER) and Packet Error Rate (PER) can successfully replace the behavior of the PHY layer. This choice is better in terms of computational time than implementing a full PHY layer to be jointly simulated with the upper layers. In this paper, an analytical model is proposed to compute the BER and PER of DC, MPD and hybrid techniques, considering a Single-Carrier with Frequency-Domain Equalization (SC-FDE) scenario. The paper also considers two frequency-domain detection methods: a simple linear receiver and a powerful iterative receiver. The proposed model is simple and versatile, since it can support nonhomogeneous transmitting powers, and different channel conditions concerning retransmissions and channel randomization techniques. Several simulations show that the proposed model provides accurate BER and PER results for a wide range of scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A stable and efficient anti-collision protocol is very important for tags identification in many radio frequency identification (RFID) system such as flow productions and automatic controls. In this paper, we introduce an efficient anti-collision protocol named collision tree protocol (CT) and analyze the stability of it in detail. Both theoretical results and experimental results indicate that the performance of CT is only dependent on the number of tags to be identified and not influenced by the distribution of tag IDs and other factors, and the average performance of CT for one-tag identification converges to a constant. According to the definition of the stability of an anti-collision protocol, CT is a stable anti-collision protocol for RFID tag identification. The stability proposed in this paper provides a new performance metric for evaluating the performance of different anti-collision protocols for RFID tag identification. As a stable protocol, the time delay and the power consumption for one-tag identification of CT tend to be constant. Therefore, CT can be applied to various tags identification systems and especially suited to the RFID systems in which both the time delay and the power consumption for tags (or objects) identification are required to be limited and stable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Phase ambiguities affect any joint decoding and channel estimation algorithm over fading channels, making codes that mitigate this problem of considerable interest. This work presents a design that transforms a Space-Time Trellis Code (STTC), prone to carrier phase ambiguities, into a Phase Ambiguity Diminishing STTC (PAD-STTC) that is robust to such impairment. A PAD-STTC can be considered as a Multiple STTC (MSTTC) with special constellation mappings. The design criteria for these mappings are developed in this work by trading among the PAD property, diversity, and coding gain. Two PAD-STTC structures termed PAD1-STTC and PAD2-STTC are proposed, where PAD2-STTC increases the number of states over the constituent STTC. Computer simulation results indicate that PAD-STTCs can solve the phase ambiguity problem and provide a larger diversity gain than the constituent STTC over high Doppler fading channels. Moreover, with the same constituent STTC, the PAD2-STTC outperforms the PAD1-STTC at the expense of increased complexity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we propose a general phase rotated conjugate cancellation (PRCC) scheme for intercarrier interference (ICI) cancellation in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. We also derive the optimal phase rotation for this general scheme such that the carrier-to-interference ratio would be maximized. It is shown that the previous conjugate cancellation (CC) scheme is equivalent to a special case of our proposed scheme. The general PRCC scheme not only inherits advantages of the conventional CC scheme, such as backward compatibility with the existing OFDM systems, low receiver complexity, and two-path diversity, but also provides better performance, especially at high frequency offset situations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a strategy for the design of bandwidth-efficient LDPC codes with unequal error protection. Bandwidth efficiency is obtained by appropriately designing the codes for higher order constellations, assuming an AWGN channel. The irregularities of the LDPC code are designed, using the Gaussian approximation of the density evolution, to enhance the unequal error protection property of the code as well as account for the different bit error probabilities given by the higher order constellation. The proposed code design algorithm is flexible in terms of the number and proportions of protection classes. It also allows arbitrary modulation schemes. Our method combines the design of unequal error protection LDPC codes for the binary input AWGN channel with the code design for higher order constellations by dividing the variable node degree distribution into sub-degree distributions for each protection class and each level of protection from the modulation. The results show that appropriate code design for higher order constellations reduces the overall bit-error rate significantly. Furthermore, the unequal error protection capability of the code is increased, especially for high SNR. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an enhanced permeable layer mechanism useful for highly robust packetized multimedia transmission. Packet header recovery at various protocol layers using MAP estimation is the cornerstone of the proposed solution. The inherently available intra-layer and inter-layer header correlation proves to be very effective in selecting a reduced set of possible header configurations for further processing. The best candidate is then obtained through soft decoding of CRC protected data and CRC redundancy information itself. Simulation results for WiFi transmission using DBPSK modulated signals over AWGN channels show a substantial (4 to 12 dB) link budget improvement over classical hard decision procedures. We also introduce a sub-optimal and hardware realizable version of the proposed algorithm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compute the throughput capacity of random dense wireless ad hoc networks for multi-pair unicast traffic in which nodes are endowed with multi-packet reception (MPR) capabilities. We show that ϴ(...) and ϴ(R(n)) bits per second constitute tight bounds for the throughput capacity under the physical and protocol model assumptions, respectively, where n is the total number of nodes in the network, α > 2 is the path-loss parameter in the physical model, and R(n) is the MPR communication range. In so doing, we close the gap between the lower and upper bounds of throughput capacity in the physical model. Compared to the capacity of point-topoint communication reported by Gupta and Kumar [1], MPR increases the order capacity of random wireless ad hoc networks under both protocol and physical models by at least ϴ(log n) and ϴ(...), respectively. We address the cost incurred in increasing the throughput capacity of wireless ad hoc networks over what can be attained when sources and destinations communicate over multi-hop paths under the physical model assumption. We define the power efficiency η(n) as the bits of information transferred per unit time (second) in the network for each unit power, and compute such power efficiency for different techniques. We show that a lower power efficiency is attained in order to achieve higher throughput capacity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The centralized medium access control (centralized MAC) protocol, which utilizes an Access Point (AP) to coordinate stations in wireless networks, guarantees the quality of service (QoS) for transmission, and provides good throughput in the highly congested network. However, the centralized MAC protocol cannot be adopted in ad hoc networks, because it provides only single-hop transmission. This paper proposes a multihop mechanism for centralized MAC protocols to operate on various network topologies. The proposed mechanism provides excellent throughput for both inter-subnet and intra-subnet links, and alleviates the hidden terminal problem. Experimental results reveal that the optimal configuration on the proposed mechanism and the comparison between our mechanism and other multihop forwarding mechanisms. The results demonstrate that the proposed mechanism outperforms other multihop forwarding mechanisms in terms of throughput. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, differential modulation and demodulation in a multiple relay system using either the decode-and-forward (DF) protocol or the selection relaying (SR) protocol, are investigated. For the DF protocol, the detectors at the destination take the average bit error probabilities (REPs) of all the source-relay transmissions into account. For a DF single relay system, the exact BEP and its approximation at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) are obtained. The approximation of the BEP at high SNR shows explicitly the diversity order and the different effects of the source-relay link and the relay-destination link on the end-to-end error performance. For a DF multiple relay system, a Chernoff upper bound on the BEP and a high SNR approximation for the BEP are obtained. For the SR protocol, some computational complexity is shifted from the destination to all the relays. Each relay computes the instantaneous BEPs of the source-relay transmissions, and uses the instantaneous BEPs to decide whether to transmit or remain silent. The destination performs simple maximal ratio combining (MRC) reception whose error performance is analyzed at high SNR. It shows from an error probability perspective that the SR protocol offers a space diversity order equal to the number of all the potential cooperating nodes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this letter, the outage probabilities of selection relaying protocols are analyzed and compared for cooperative wireless networks. It is assumed that both source and relay use equal allocated time in transmission. Depending on the quality of the source-relay channel, the relay may choose either Decode-and-Forward (DF), Amplify-and-Forward (AF), or Direct-Transmission (DT) to forward signals. It turns out that in terms of outage probability, two selection relaying schemes are better than others: selecting between DF and AF protocols (DF-AF) or selecting between DF and DT protocols (DF-DT). It is shown that with an equal power allocation, both of the DF-AF and DF-DT selection relaying protocols have the same asymptotic outage probability. However, with an optimum power allocation strategy, the DF-AF selection scheme is in general better than the DF-DT selection scheme. Note that the optimum power allocations depend on channel variances, not on instantaneous channel gains. When the quality of the relay-destination link is much better than that of the source-relay link, observed from simulation, the outage probability of the DF-AF selection protocol with its optimum power allocation is 1.5dB better than that of the DF-DT selection with its own optimum power allocation. Extensive simulations are presented to validate the analytical results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this work, we consider the two-way relay network (TWRN) where two terminals exchange their information through a relay node in a bi-directional manner and study the training-based channel estimation under the amplify-and-forward (AF) relay scheme. We propose a two-phase training protocol for channel estimation: in the first phase, the two terminals send their training signals concurrently to the relay; and in the second phase, the relay amplifies the received signal and broadcasts it to both terminals. Each terminal then estimates the channel parameters required for data detection. First, we assume the channel parameters to be deterministic and derive the maximum-likelihood (ML)-based estimator. It is seen that the newly derived ML estimator is nonlinear and differs from the conventional least-square (LS) estimator. Due to the difficulty in obtaining a closed-form expression of the mean square error (MSE) for the ML estimator, we resort to the Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRLB) on the estimation MSE for design of optimal training sequence. Secondly, we consider stochastic channels and focus on the class of linear estimators. In contrast to the conventional linear minimum-mean-square-error (LMMSE) -based estimator, we introduce a new type of estimator that aims at maximizing the effective receive signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) after taking into consideration the channel estimation errors, thus referred to as the linear maximum SNR (LMSNR) estimator. Furthermore, we prove that orthogonal training design is optimal for both the CRLB- and the LMSNR-based design criteria. Finally, simulations are conducted to corroborate the proposed studies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This work considers two-way relay channels (TWRC), where two terminals transmit simultaneously to each other with the help of a relay node. For single antenna systems, we propose several new transmission schemes for both amplify-and-forward (AF) protocol and decode-and-forward (DF) protocol where the channel state information is not required. These new schemes are the counterpart of the traditional non- coherent detection or differential detection in point-to-point communications. Differential modulation design for TWRC is challenging because the received signal is a mixture of the signals from both source terminals. We derive maximum likelihood (ML) detectors for both AF and DF protocols, where the latter can be considered as performing differential network coding at the physical layer. As the exact ML detector is prohibitively complex, we propose several suboptimal alternatives including decision feedback detectors and prediction-based detectors. All these strategies work well as evidenced by the simulation results. The proposed protocols are especially useful when the required average data rate is high. In addition, we extend the protocols to the multiple-antenna case and provide the design criterion of the differential unitary space time modulation (DUSTM) for TWRC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper investigates the performance of IEEE 802.11 in multi-hop scenarios and shows how its aggressive. behavior can throttle the spatial reuse and reduce bandwidth efficiency. An adaptive, layer-2, distributed coordination scheme for 802.11 using explicit medium access control (MAC) feedback is then proposed to pace the transmissions on adjacent nodes, thereby assisting the MAC protocol to operate around its saturation state while minimizing resource contention. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the original 802.11 MAC. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Selection amplify-and-forward (SAF) relaying, which has been shown to be optimal under the constraints of localized channel information at the relays and a constant relay power allocation (PA) template, is shown to be globally strictly suboptimal. A necessary condition for the outage optimality of the SAF PA, and an exponentially vanishing upper bound on the probability of the SAF optimality are derived. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new class of multiple access algorithms for systems without feedback is introduced and analyzed. A finite population of users is assumed, where each user transmits a packet R times within the next N time slots (and all packets have an equal length of one slot). To improve the performance achieved by randomly selecting these R slots, user codes are invoked such that any two users will only transmit simultaneously in at most one slot, i.e., 2-(N, R, 1) designs. We argue that in most cases, the set of user codes can be generated easily using cyclic designs and provide a method to select T user codes from the set of user codes SN,R in case the user population consists of T < ∣ SN,R∣ users. We further demonstrate how larger populations, with T > ∣SN,R∣ can still benefit from these user codes in two different manners. Closed formulas that express the success probability of a packet are provided for all population setups. Finally, a comparison with the random selection strategy demonstrates the performance gain realized by the new multiple access algorithms and some engineering rules to optimize the performance are provided. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Time hopping is the strategy employed in impulse radio systems to increase the communication reliability by spreading the multiple access interference (MAI) over numerous time intervals. This results in a non-stationary interference that makes the error probability performance to be dominated by the worst-case. In this paper we employ a collision model analysis for this time-varying interference that is ruled by the system loading in term of the corresponding MAI collision probability. The model proves to be simple and accurate to characterize the decision variable conditioned to the collision events. This provides a reliable framework for evaluating the error probability in multipath faded channels with RAKE receiver either for coded and uncoded systems. In this paper we derive closed form approximations of the bit-error-rate for multipath channels with exponential power delay profile and Nakagami-m fading. Validations by numerical analysis show that the collision model provides an accurate framework to evaluate also performance of realistic channel models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]