This work considers a Broadcast Channel (BC) system, where the transmitter is equipped with multiple antennas and each user at the receiver side could have one or more antennas. Depending on the number of antennas at the receiver side, such a system is known as Multiple-User Multiple-Input Single-Output (MU-MISO), for single antenna users, or Multiple-UserMultiple-InputMultiple-Output (MU-MIMO), for several antenna users. This model is suitable for current wireless communication systems. Regarding the direction of the data flow, we differentiate between downlink channel or BC, and uplink channel or Multiple Access Channel (MAC). In the BC the signals are sent from the Base Station (BS) to the users, whereas the information from the users is sent to the BS in the MAC. In this work we focus on the BC where the BS applies linear precoding taking advantage of multiple antennas. The ...

When the transmitter of a communication system disposes of some Channel State Information (CSI), it is possible to design linear precoders that optimally allocate the power inducing high gains either in terms of capacity or in terms of reliable communications. In practical scenarios, this channel knowledge is not perfect and thus the transmitted signal suffers from the mismatch between the CSI at the transmitter and the real channel. In that context, this thesis deals with two different, but related, topics: the design of a feasible transmitter channel tracker for time varying channels, and the design of optimal linear precoders robust to imperfect channel estimates. The first part of the thesis proposes the design of a channel tracker that provides an accurate CSI at the transmitter by means of a low capacity feedback link. Historically, those schemes have been criticized because ...

Multiple-input multiple output (MIMO) systems deploy multiple antennas at either end of a communication link and can provide significant benefits compared to traditional single antenna systems, such as increased data rates through spatial multiplexing gain, and/or improved link reliability through diversity techniques. Recently, the natural extension of utilising multiple antennas in relay networks, known as MIMO relaying, has attracted significant research attention due to the fact that the benefits of MIMO can be coupled with extended network coverage through the use of relaying devices. This thesis concentrates on the design and analysis of different aspects of MIMO relay systems communicating over frequency selective channels with the use of orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). The first focus of this thesis is on the development of training based channel estimation algorithms for two-hop MIMO OFDM relaying. In the first phase of channel ...

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems will be applied in wireless communications in order to increase the performance, spectral efficiency, and reliability. Theoretically, the channel capacity of those systems grows linearly with the number of transmit and receive antennas. An important performance metric beneath capacity is the normalised mean square error (MSE) under the assumption of optimal linear reception. Clearly, both performance measures depend on the properties of the MIMO channel as well as on the considered system approach, e.g. on the type of channel state information which is available at the transmitter. It has been shown that even partial CSI at the transmitter can increase the performance. In this thesis, we analyse the performance and design optimal transmit strategies of singleand multiuser MIMO systems with respect to the statistical properties of the fading channel and under different types of CSI at ...

Code division multiple access (CDMA) techniques have been widely employed by different wireless systems with many advantages. However, the performance of these systems is limited by interference. A number of different interference suppression techniques have been proposed, including multiuser detection, beamforming, adaptive supervised and blind algorithms, and transmit processing techniques requiring a limited feedback channel. Recently, CDMA techniques have also been combined with multicarrier and multiantenna schemes to further increase the system capacity and performance. This thesis investigates the existing algorithms and structures and proposes novel interference suppression algorithms for spread spectrum systems. Firstly we investigate blind constrained constant modulus (CCM) stochastic gradient (SG) receivers with a low-complexity variable step-size mechanism for downlink direct sequence CDMA (DS-CDMA) systems. This algorithm provides better performance than existing blind schemes in non-stationary scenarios. Convergence and tracking analyses of the proposed adaptation techniques are ...

Feedback in wireless communications is tied to a long-standing and successful history, facilitating robust and spectrally efficient transmission over the uncertain wireless medium. Since the application of multiple antennas at both ends of the communication link, enabling multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission, the importance of feedback information to achieve the highest performance is even more pronounced. Especially when multiple antennas are employed by the transmitter to handle the interference between multiple users, channel state information (CSI) is a fundamental prerequisite. The corresponding multi-user MIMO, interference alignment and coordination techniques are considered as a central part of future cellular networks to cope with the growing inter-cell-interference, caused by the unavoidable densification of base stations to support the exponentially increasing demand on network capacities. However, this vision can only be implemented with efficient feedback algorithms that provide accurate CSI at the transmitter without ...

Code-division multiple-access (CDMA) systems with random spreading and channel uncertainty at the receiver are studied. Frequency selective single antenna, as well as, narrowband multiple antenna channels are considered. Rayleigh fading is assumed in all cases. General Bayesian approach is used to derive both iterative and non-iterative estimators whose performance is obtained in the large system limit via the replica method from statistical physics. The effect of spatial correlation on the performance of a multiple antenna CDMA system operating in a flat-fading channel is studied. Per-antenna spreading (PAS) with random signature sequences and spatial multiplexing is used at the transmitter. Non-iterative multiuser detectors (MUDs) using imperfect channel state information (CSI) are derived. Training symbol based channel estimators having mismatched a priori knowledge about the antenna correlation are considered. Both the channel estimator and the MUD are shown to admit a simple ...

Signal processing techniques for multiple-antenna transmission can exploit the spatial dimension of the wireless channel to serve multiple users simultaneously, achieving high spectral efficiencies. Realizing such gains; however, is strongly dependent on the availability of highly accurate and up-to-date Channel State Information at the Transmitter (CSIT). This stems from the necessity to deal with multiuser interference through preprocessing; as receivers cannot coordinate in general. In wireless systems, CSIT is subject to uncertainty due to estimation and quantization errors, delays and mismatches. This thesis proposes optimized preprocessing techniques for broadcasting scenarios where a multi-antenna transmitter communicates with single-antenna receivers under CSIT uncertainties. First, we consider a scenario where the transmitter communicates an independent message to each receiver. The most popular preprocessing techniques in this setup are based on linear precoding (or beamforming). Despite their near-optimum rate performances when highly accurate CSIT ...

Base station cooperation is recognized as a key technology for future wireless cellular communication networks. Considering antennas of distributed base stations and those of multiple terminals within those cells as a distributed multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system, this technique has the potential to eliminate inter-cell interference by joint signal processing and to enhance spectral efficiency in this way. Although the theoretical gains are meanwhile well-understood, it still remains challenging to realize the full potential of such cooperative schemes in real-world systems. Among other factors, such as the limited overhead for pilot symbols and for the feedback and backhaul, these performance limitations are related to channel and synchronization impairments, such as channel estimation, feedback quantization and channel aging, as well as imperfect carrier and sampling synchronization among the base stations. Because of these impairments, joint data precoding results to be mismatched with ...

Joint precoding and equalisation can help to effectively exploit the advantages of multi-input multi-output (MIMO) wireless communications systems. For broadband MIMO channels with channel state information (CSI) such techniques to date rely on block transmission where guard intervals are applied to mitigate inter-block (IBI) and inter-symbol interference (ISI) but reduce spectral efficiency. Therefore, this thesis investigates novel MIMO transceiver designs to improve the transmission rate and error performance. Firstly, a broadband MIMO precoding and equalisation design is proposed which combines a recently proposed broadband singular value decomposition (BSVD) algorithm for MIMO decoupling with conventional block transmission techniques to address the remaining broadband SISO subchannels. It is demonstrated that the BSVD helps not only to remove co-channel interference within a MIMO channel, but also reduces ISI at a very small loss in channel energy, leading to an improved error performance and ...

MULTIPLE-INPUT MULTIPLE-OUTPUT (MIMO) CHANNELS constitute a unified way of modeling a wide range of different physical communication channels, which can then be handled with a compact and elegant vector-matrix notation. The two paradigmatic examples are wireless multi-antenna channels and wireline Digital Subscriber Line (DSL) channels. Research in antenna arrays (also known as smart antennas) dates back to the 1960s. However, the use of multiples antennas at both the transmitter and the receiver, which can be naturally modeled as a MIMO channel, has been recently shown to offer a significant potential increase in capacity. DSL has gained popularity as a broadband access technology capable of reliably delivering high data rates over telephone subscriber lines. A DSL system can be modeled as a communication through a MIMO channel by considering all the copper twisted pairs within a binder as a whole rather ...

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems have recently emerged as one of the most significant wireless techniques, as they can greatly improve the channel capacity and link reliability of wireless communications. These benefits have encouraged extensive research on a virtual MIMO system where the transmitter has multiple antennas and each of the receivers has a single antenna. Single-antenna receivers can work together to form a virtual antenna array and reap some performance benefits of MIMO systems. The idea of receiver-side local cooperation is attractive for wireless networks since a wireless receiver may not have multiple antennas due to size and cost limitations. In this thesis we investigate a virtual-MIMO wireless system using the receiver-side cooperation with the compress-and-forward (CF) protocol. Firstly, to perform CF at the relay, we propose to use standard source coding techniques, based on the analysis of its expected ...

During the last decade, there has been a steady increase in the demand of high data rates that are to be supported by wireless communication applications. Among the different solutions that have been proposed by the research community to cope with this new demand, the utilization of multiple antennas arises as one of the best candidates due to the fact that it provides both an increase in reliability and also in information transmission rate. Although the use of multiple antennas at the receiver side dates back from the sixties, the full potential of multiple antennas at both communication ends has been both theoretically and practically recognized in the last few years. The design of proper multi-antenna communication systems to satisfy the high data rates demand depends not only on the chosen figure of merit or performance metric, but also on ...

An important specificity of wireless communication channels are the rapid fluctuations of propagation coefficients. This effect is called fading and is caused by the motion of obstacles, scatterers and reflectors standing along the different paths of electromagnetic wave propagation between the transmitting and the receiving terminal. These changes in the geometry of the wireless channel prompt the attenuation coefficients and the relative phase shifts between the multiple propagation paths to vary. This suggests to model the channel coefficients (the transfer matrix) as random variables. The present thesis studies information rates for reliable transmission of information over fading channels under the realistic assumption that the receiver has only imperfect knowledge of the random fading state. While the over-idealized assumption of perfect channel-state information at the receiver (CSIR) gives rise to many simple expressions and is fairly well understood, the settings with ...

The emergence of very capable mobile terminals, e.g. smartphones or tablets, has dramatically increased the demand of wireless data traffic in recent years. Current growth forecasts elucidate that wireless communication standards will not be able to afford future traffic demands, thus many research efforts have been oriented towards increasing the efficiency of wireless networks. Wireless communications introduce many issues not present in wired systems, e.g. multipath effects or interference. Some of these issues may be tackled by the use of multiple antennas, i.e. MIMO technologies. This solution allows increasing not only the reliability and robustness of the communications, i.e. the diversity gain, but also its efficiency, i.e. the multiplexing gain or degrees of freedom (DoF). The DoF describe the slope of channel capacity at very high signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) regime. For a point-to-point (P2P) communication, assuming that the wireless channel response ...