Antenna Selection Techniques in Single- and Multi-user Systems: A Cross-layer Approach

Over the last decade, the massive demand for high data-rate wireless applications has motivated the study and design of new communication technologies. Among all of them, multi-antenna schemes have been shown to provide remarkable benefits in terms of spectral efficiency. In order to achieve channel capacity bounds, some sort of pre-processing on the transmit side must be encompassed. Unless reciprocity between the forward and reverse links can be assumed, a feedback channel is required to convey channel state information. In such a context, transmit antenna selection emerges as an effective alternative requiring a low amount of information in the feedback channel. Antenna selection algorithms are usually designed in order to maximize physical layer performance but, recently, optimization criteria based on cross-layer designs are gaining popularity. This is mainly motivated by the inefficiency observed in the direct application of the Open Systems Interconnection (OSI) protocol stack in wireless networks. Basically, these new cross-layer criteria are based on the combination of functionalities and information between different layers of the protocol stack in order to attain the highest end-to-end performance. In this PhD dissertation, we address the study of antenna selection algorithms in single- and multi-users systems from a cross-layer perspective. In particular, we focus on the lowest two layers of the OSI protocol stack (physical and data link layer) and our designs are devoted to maximize data link layer performance.