In this paper, we use frequency-domain equalization (FDE) to create coherent optical single-carrier (CO-SC) transmission systems that are very tolerant of chromatic dispersion (CD) and polarization mode dispersion (PMD). The efficient transmission of a 25-Gb/s NRZ-QPSK signal by using the proposed FDE is demonstrated under severe CD and PMD conditions. We also discuss the principle of FDE and some techniques suitable for implementing CO-SC-FDE. The results show that a CO-SC-FDE system is very tolerant of CD and PMD and can achieve high transmission rates over single mode fiber without optical dispersion compensation.

Multi-user multiple input multiple output (MU-MIMO) systems have attracted much attention as a technology that enhances the total system capacity by generating a virtual MIMO channel between a base station and multiple terminal stations. Extensive evaluations are still needed because there are many more system parameters in MU-MIMO than in single user (SU)-MIMO and the MU-MIMO performance in actual environments is still not well understood. This paper describes the features and effectiveness of a 1616 MU-MIMO testbed in an actual indoor environment. Moreover, we propose a simple adaptive modulation scheme for MU-MIMO-OFDM transmission that employs a bit interleaver in the frequency and space domains. We evaluate the frequency efficiency by obtaining the bit error rate of this testbed in an actual indoor environment. We show that 1644-user MU-MIMO transmission using the proposed modulation scheme achieves the frequency utilization of 870 Mbps and 1 Gbps (respective SNRs: 31 and 36 dB) with a 20-MHz bandwidth.

This paper proposes an antenna selection method for terminal antennas employing orthogonal polarizations and patterns, which is suitable for outdoor MultiUser Multi-Input Multi-Output (MU-MIMO) systems. In addition, this paper introduces and verifies two other antenna selection methods for comparison. For the sake of simplicity, three orthogonal dipoles are considered, and this antenna configuration using the proposed selection method is compared to an antenna configuration with three vertical or horizontal dipoles. In the proposed antenna selection method, we always choose the vertical dipole, and choose one of two horizontal dipoles, which are orthogonal to each other, based on the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR). We measured the MU-MIMO transmission properties and found that the proposed selection method employing the antenna with orthogonal polarizations and patterns can offer fairly high channel capacity in a multiuser scenario.

To achieve a very high data rate within a limited frequency band in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, multi-input multi-output (MIMO) techniques are very promising. Moreover, if a transmitter has the channel state information (CSI), the achievable spectrum efficiency can be maximized using the eigenbeam-space division multiplexing (E-SDM). However, this scheme demands accurate channel estimation. Therefore, in a closed-loop transmission scheme, an increase in the amount of feedback is absolutely necessary for the E-SDM. This paper describes a downlink beamforming method that significantly reduces the amount of feedback needed by using the common transmission weight vectors in all sub-carriers, compared to the amount required for E-SDM. The proposed method also applies transmission diversity to compensate for the quality. The effectiveness of the proposed method was confirmed using computer simulations in both Ricean and Rayleigh fading environments.

This paper proposes a channel capacity maximization method for Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) antennas with parasitic elements. Reactive terminations are connected to the parasitic elements, and the reactance values are determined to achieve stochastically high channel capacity for the environment targeted. This method treats the S-parameter and propagation channel of the antenna, including the parasitic elements, as a combined circuit. The idea of the 'parasitic channel,' which is observed at the parasitic antenna, is introduced to simplify the optimization procedure. This method can significantly reduce the number of necessary measurements of the channel for designing the antenna. As a design example, a bidirectional Yagi-Uda array, which has two driven antennas at both ends of the linear array, is measured in an indoor environment. The resulting design offers enhanced channel capacity mainly due to its improved signal-to-noise ratio compared to the antenna without the parasitic antennas.

As the demand for high-throughput communications in wireless LANs (WLAN) increases, the need for expanding channel bandwidth also increases. However, the use of wider band channels results in a decrease in the number of available channels because the total available bandwidth for WLAN is limited. Therefore, if multiple access points (APs) are in proximity and the cells overlap, it is difficult for each AP to use an orthogonal channel and competition increases between APs using the same channel. Coordination of APs is one promising approach; however, it is impractical to control all APs in WLAN systems. To cope with this problem, we proposed to analyze throughput performances of a multibandwidth channel selection by the coordinating APs at Nash equilibria, which can be considered as operating points for independent channel selection by APs. To clarify the effect of coordinating APs, we assume a simple scenario where the cells of three or more APs overlap, and each AP can select multibandwidth channels to maximize their own throughput. Through game-theoretic analysis, we find that the coordinated APs are able to select channels more effectively than if each AP independently selects channels. Consequently, the total throughput of the coordinated APs at Nash equilibria is significantly improved.

The implementation and experimental evaluations of distributed zero-forcing beamforming (DZFBF) for downlink multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (DL MU-MIMO) systems are presented. In DZFBF, multiple access points (APs) transmit to own desired stations (STAs) at the same time and using the same frequency channel while mitigating inter-cell interference. To clarify the performance and feasibility of DZFBF, we develop a real-time transmission testbed that includes two APs and four STAs; all are implemented using field programmable gate array. For real-time transmission, we also implement a simple weight generation process based on ZF weight using channel state information which is fed back from STAs; it is an extension of the weight generation approach used in DL MU-MIMO systems. By using our testbed, we demonstrate the real-time transmission performance in actual indoor multi-cell environments. These results indicate that DL DZFBF is more effective than DL MU-MIMO with time division multiple access.

Multiuser multiple input multiple output (MU-MIMO) systems are attracting attention due to their frequency efficiency. However, in uplink MU-MIMO systems, different frequency offsets among multiple mobile stations (MSs) significantly degrade the transmission quality, especially when orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is used. In this paper, the influence of these frequency offsets is first analyzed in a frequency selective fading environment. Numerical analysis shows that an error floor occurs in the bit error rate and the influence of the frequency offset becomes larger in short delay spread environments. To overcome this problem, a new beamforming method is proposed to compensate for the frequency offset by introducing an auto frequency controller after frequency-space equalization in each data stream. The effect of the proposed method is evaluated in a frequency selective fading environment by computer simulations and measured results.

Multiuser -- Multiple Input Multiple Output (MU-MIMO) techniques were proposed to increase spectrum efficiency; a key assumption was that the Mobile Terminals (MTs) were simple with only a few antennas. This paper focuses on the Block Diagonalization algorithm (BD) based on the equal power allocation strategy as a practical MU-MIMO technique. When there are many MTs inside the service area of the access point (AP), the AP must determine, at each time slot, the subset of the MTs to be spatially multiplexed. Since the transmission performance depends on the subsets of MTs, the user selection method needs to use the Channel State Information (CSI) obtained in the physical layer to maximize the Achievable Transmission Rate (ATR). In this paper, we clarify the relationship between ATR with SU-MIMO and that with MU-MIMO in a high eigenvalue channel. Based on the derived relationship, we propose a new measure for user selection. The new measure, the eigenvalue decay factor, represents the degradation of the eigenvalues in null space compared to those in SU-MIMO; it is obtained from the signal space vectors of the MTs. A user selection method based on the proposed measure identifies the combination of MTs that yields the highest ATR; our approach also reduces the computational load of user selection. We evaluate the effectiveness of user selection with the new measure using numerical formulations and computer simulations.

In this paper, we propose demodulators for the Golden and Alamouti codes in amplify-and-forward (AF) cooperative communication with one relay. The proposed demodulators output exact log likelihood ratios (LLRs) with recursion based on the Jacobian logarithm. The cooperative system with the proposed demodulator for the Golden code has the benefit of efficient data transmission, while the system for the Alamouti code has low demodulation complexity. Quantitative analyses of computational complexity of the proposed demodulators are conducted. The transmission performance for various relay location and power settings is evaluated on cooperative orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)-based wireless local area network (LAN) systems. In evaluations, the optimal relay location and power settings are found. The cooperative system with the proposed demodulators for the Golden and Alamouti codes offers 1.5 and 1.9 times larger areas where 10.8 and 5.4Mbit/s can be obtained than a non-cooperative (direct) system in a typical office environment, respectively.

As wireless LAN systems become more widespread, the number of access points (APs) is increasing. A large number of APs cause overlapping cells where nearby cells utilize the same frequency channel. In the overlapping cells, inter-cell interference (ICI) degrades the throughput. This paper proposes an interference-aware multi-cell beamforming (IMB) technique to reduce the throughput degradation in the overlapping cells. The IMB technique improves transmission performance better than conventional multi-cell beamforming based on a decentralized control scheme. The conventional technique mitigates ICI by nullifying all the interference signal space (ISS) by beamforming, but the signal spaces to the user terminal (UT) is also limited because the degree of freedom (DoF) at the AP is limited. On the other hand, the IMB technique increases the signal space to the UT because the DoF at the AP is increased by selecting the ISS by allowing a small amount of ICI. In addition, we introduce a method of selecting the ISS in a decentralized control scheme. In our work, we analyze the interference channel state information (CSI) and evaluate the transmission performance of the IMB technique by using a measured CSI in an actual indoor environment. As a result, we find that the IMB technique becomes more effective as the number of UT antennas in nearby cells increases.

Combining heterogeneous wireless networks that cross licensed and unlicensed spectra is a promising way of supporting the surge in mobile traffic. The unlicensed band is mostly used by wireless LAN (WLAN) nodes which employ carrier sense multiple access/collision avoidance (CSMA/CA). Since the number of WLAN devices and their traffic are increasing, the wireless resource of the unlicensed band is expected be more depleted in 2020s. In such a wireless environment, the throughput could be extremely low and unstable due to the hidden terminal problem and exposed terminal problem despite of the large resources of the allocated frequency band and high peak PHY rate. In this paper, we propose user equipment (UE) centric access in the unlicensed band, with support by licensed band access in the mobile network. The proposed access enables robust downlink transmission from the access point (AP) to the UEs by mitigating the hidden terminal problem. The licensed spectrum access passes information on the user data waiting at the AP to the UEs and triggers UE reception opportunity (RXOP) acquisition. Furthermore, the adaptive use of UE centric downlink access is presented by using the channel utilization measured at the AP. Computer simulations confirm that licensed access assistance enhances the robustness of the unlicensed band access against the hidden terminal problem.

Over 100 Gbit/s/ch high-speed optical transmission is required to achieve the high capacity networks that can meet future demands. The coherent receiver, which is expected to yield high frequency utilization, is a promising means of achieving such high-speed transmission. However, it requires a high-speed Analog to Digital Converter (ADC) because the received signal bandwidth would be over several tens or hundreds of GHz. To solve this problem, we propose a band-divided receiver structure for wideband optical signals. In the receiver, received wideband signals are divided into a number of narrow band signals without any guard band. We develop a band-divided receiver prototype and evaluate it in an experiment. In addition, we develop a real-time OFDM demodulator on an FPGA board that implements 1.5 GS/s ADCs. We demonstrate that the band-divided receiver prototype with its real-time OFDM demodulator and 1.5 GS/s ADC can demodulate single polarization 12 Gbit/s OFDM signals in real-time.

Autonomous mobility machines, such as self-driving cars, transportation robots, and automated construction machines, are promising to support or enrich human lives. To further improve such machines, they will be connected to the network via wireless links to be managed, monitored, or remotely operated. The autonomous mobility machines must have self-status based on their positioning system to safely conduct their operations without colliding with other objects. The self-status is not only essential for machine operation but also it is valuable for wireless link quality management. This paper presents self-status-based wireless link quality prediction and evaluates its performance by using a prototype mobility robot combined with a wireless LAN system. The developed robot has functions to measure the throughput and receive signal strength indication and obtain self-status details such as location, direction, and odometry data. Prediction performance is evaluated in offline processing by using the dataset gathered in an indoor experiment. The experiments clarified that, in the 5.6 GHz band, link quality prediction using self-status of the robot forecasted the throughput several seconds into the future, and the prediction accuracies were investigated as dependent on time window size of the target throughput, bandwidth, and frequency gap.

Implicit feedback is an approach that utilizes uplink channel state information (CSI) for downlink transmit beamforming on multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, relying on over-the-air channel reciprocity. The implicit feedback improves throughput efficiency because overhead of CSI feedback for change of over-the-air channel responses is omitted. However, it is necessary for the implicit feedback to calibrate circuitry responses that uplink CSI includes, because actual downlink and uplink channel responses do not match due to different transmit and receive circuitry chains. This paper presents our proposed calibration scheme, weighted-combining calibration (WCC); it offers improved calibration accuracy. In WCC, an access point (AP) calculates multiple calibration coefficients from ratios of downlink and uplink CSI, and then combines coefficients with minimum mean square error (MMSE) weights. The weights are derived using a linear approximation in the high signal to noise power ratio (SNR) regime. Analytical mean square error (MSE) of calibration coefficients with WCC and calibration schemes for comparison is expressed based on the linear approximation. Computer simulations show that the analytical MSE matches simulated one if the linear approximation holds, and that WCC improves the MSE and signal to interference plus noise power ratio (SINR). Indoor experiments are performed on a multiuser MIMO system with implicit feedback based on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), built using measurement hardware. Experimental results verify that the channel reciprocity can be exploited on the developed multiuser MIMO-OFDM system and that WCC is also effective in indoor environments.

Multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems represent a very attractive candidate for future high data rate wireless access systems to increase the channel capacity. To obtain a further increase in the channel capacity, a distributed wireless communication system that has multiple access points (APs) and an access controller (AC), was proposed. This system increases not only the peak transmission rate but also the overall transmission rate in the service area. In this paper, we consider a cooperative multiple AP system where APs are synchronized in terms of time, but not in terms of phase. We propose a transmission method for the cooperative multiple AP system that enables the mobile station to obtain a high achievable bit rate regardless of decoding algorithms. The performance of the multiple AP systems is evaluated in comparison to the conventional single AP system. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed method in the cooperative multiple AP system, computer simulations are performed using the i.i.d. channel in Rayleigh and Ricean fading environments. Furthermore, we evaluate the performance of the cooperative multiple AP system using the channel measured in an actual indoor environment.

Recently, Multiple Input Multiple Output-Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) has attracted much attention as a technology achieving high-speed wireless transmission with a limited bandwidth. However, since bit loading and adaptive modulation per sub-carrier should be employed according to the transmission quality of each sub-carrier in MIMO-OFDM, it is very important to understand the frequency correlation characteristics in broadband MIMO channels. This paper investigates the frequency correlation characteristics based on the antenna configuration for actual indoor MIMO channels. The results show that the frequency correlation of the channel capacity for the array antenna configured in the horizontal plane is significantly different compared to that configured in the vertical plane. Moreover, we propose a new cluster model that considers the antenna configuration in both the horizontal and vertical planes to estimate the frequency correlation in broadband MIMO channels.