In this paper, we investigate a multi-packet transmitting and receiving wireless mesh network that uses a multi-antenna set on each node in the network. In wireless mesh networks for accessing the Internet, the target of all traffic generated from distributed nodes is a gateway (GW). Therefore, many packets are concentrated around the GW and the communication channel around the GW is crowded. To prevent packet congestion around the GW, we propose setting an adaptive array antenna on the GW and the relay nodes. We also calculate an appropriate number of antenna elements considering the fair traffic over the whole region, to prevent packet congestion at each node.

This paper proposes a new overlay transmission system for wireless LAN with RTS/CTS exchange. Conventional timing synchronization schemes may fail in the presence of inter-system interference, because they have not been designed for overlay transmission. In the proposed system, a transmitter estimates the transmission timing of the next wireless LAN DATA frame, and then sends its DATA frame at almost the same time as the estimated transmission timing to easily establish timing synchronization at the receiver. Moreover, we employ a tapped delay line adaptive array antenna at both transmitter and receiver to effectively suppress interference due to overlay transmission in a rich multipath propagation environment. The frame error rate performances of the proposed system and the IEEE 802.11a wireless LAN are evaluated through computer simulations that assume an exponentially decaying 8-path non-line-of-sight fading channel and include a timing synchronization process. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed system can achieve overlay transmission while avoiding interference in a rich multipath propagation environment.

This paper introduces our proposed pre-FFT type MMSE-AAA for an OFDM packet transmission system to suppress sporadic interference. The AAA scheme controls an antenna weight to minimize the mean square error between its output signals of two periods with identical transmitted waveform and iterates the weight updating process in an OFDM symbol to rapidly converge the weight. The average PER performance of the proposed AAA with the presence of a sporadic inter-system/intra-system interference signal is evaluated through computer simulations that assume an exponentially decaying 12-path LOS fading channel and IEEE 802.11a data frame transmission. Simulation results show that the proposed AAA can effectively suppress sporadic inter-system interference that is irrelevant to its arrival timing. Sporadic intra-system interference can also be suppressed by the proposed AAA more efficiently than inter-system interference as long as the interference arrives between 13% and 90% of the OFDM symbol duration after the beginning of an OFDM symbol of the desired signal.

Wireless ad hoc communications such as ad hoc networks have been attracting researchers' attention. They are expected to become a key technology for "ubiquitous" networking because of the ability to configure wireless links by nodes autonomously, without any centralized control facilities. Adaptive array antennas (AAA) have been expected to improve the network efficiency by taking advantage of its adaptive beamforming capability. However, it should be noted that AAA is not almighty. Its interference cancellation capability is limited by the degree-of-freedom (DOF) and the angular resolution as a function of the number of element antennas. Application of AAA without attending to these problems can degrade the efficiency of the network. Let us consider wireless ad hoc communication as a target application for AAA, taking advantage of AAA's interference cancellation capability. The low DOF and insufficient resolution will be crucial problems compared to other wireless systems, since there is no centralized facility to control the nodes to avoid interferences in such systems. A number of interferences might impinge on a node from any direction of arrival (DOA) without any timing control. In this paper, focusing on such limitations of AAA applied in ad hoc communications, we propose a new scheme, Forward Interference Avoidance (FIA), using AAA for ad hoc communications in order to avoid problems caused by the limitation of the AAA capability. It enables nodes to avoid interfering with other nodes so that it increases the number of co-existent wireless links. The performance improvement of ad hoc communications in terms of the number of co-existent links is investigated through computer simulations.

In block transmission systems, performance degrades due to inter-block interference (IBI) when there are multipaths with delays exceeding cyclic prefix (CP) length. An interesting technique to overcome this problem is an array antenna proposed by Hori et al., which restores the CP property by minimizing a cost function. However, its performance has not been theoretically cleared. In this letter, the performance of a method which minimizes the cost function under a unit norm constraint is analyzed. It is shown that the method can suppress IBI and its interference suppression capability depends on a certain parameter. The analytical result is verified through computer simulation.

M-ary/SS is a version of Direct Sequence/Spread Spectrum (DS/SS) aiming to improve the spectral efficiency employing orthogonal codes. However, due to the auto-correlation property of the orthogonal codes, it is impossible to detect the symbol timing by observing correlator outputs. Therefore, conventionally, a preamble has been inserted in M-ary/SS signals. In this paper, we propose a new blind adaptive array antenna for M-ary/SS systems that combines signals over the space axis without any preambles. It is surely an innovative approach for M-ary/SS. The performance is investigated through computer simulations.

Spread Spectrum (SS) has been widely used for various wireless systems such as cellular systems, wireless local area network (LAN) and so on. Using multiple antennas at the receiver, two-dimensional (2D) RAKE is realized over the time- and the space-domain. However, it should be noted that the 2D-RAKE receiver must detect the bit timing prior to the RAKE combining. In case of deep fading, it is often difficult to detect it due to low signal-to-noise power ratio (SNR). To solve this problem, we propose a new blind 2D-RAKE receiver based on the constant modulus algorithm (CMA). Since it does not need a priori bit timing detection, it is possible to compensate frequency selective fading even in very low SNR environments. The proposed method is particularly suitable for the software defined radio (SDR) architecture. The performance of the proposed method is investigated through computer simulations.

In our application targeted here, four on-glass antenna elements are set in an automobile to improve the reception quality of mobile ISDB-T receiver. With regard to the directional characteristics of each antenna, we propose and implement a joint Pre-FFT adaptive array antenna and Post-FFT space diversity combining (AAA-SDC) scheme for mobile ISDB-T receiver. By applying a joint hardware and software approach, a flexible platform is realized in which several system configuration schemes can be supported; the receiver can be reconfigured on the fly. Simulation results show that the AAA-SDC scheme drastically improves the performance of mobile ISDB-T receiver, especially in the region of large Doppler shift. The experimental results from a field test also confirm that the proposed AAA-SDC scheme successfully achieves an outstanding reception rate up to 100% while moving at the speed of 80 km/h.

This paper proposes a novel pre-FFT type OFDM adaptive array antenna called "Eigenvector Combining." The eigenvector combining array antenna is a realization of a post-FFT type OFDM adaptive array antenna through a pre-FFT signal processing, so it can achieve excellent performance with less computational complexity and shorter training symbols. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed eigenvector combining array antenna shows excellent bit error rate performance close to the lower bound just with 2 OFDM symbol-long training symbols.

Feedback-type Adaptive Array Antenna has been proposed for frequency division duplexed (FDD) system, where the mobile station (MS) measures channel characteristics and sends those back to the base station (BS). Using a higher number of feed-back bits provides better performance. However it wastes channel capacity of the up-link. On the other hand, error in feedback signals transmission causes significant performance degradation. To solve these problems, this paper proposes a method that the MS sends back the difference between the optimum weights calculated at the MS and weights which are currently used at the BS. Bit error rate performance of the system is shown under a realistic propagation condition.

Post-FFT type orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) adaptive array antennas can reduce the co-channel interference with a few antenna elements under multi-path fading environments. However, the Post-FFT type OFDM adaptive array antennas require a lot of pilot symbols in order to determine the optimal weights in each subcarrier. In packet communication systems, since the data are transmitted burst by burst, the ratio of the effective data in a channel decreases when the long pilot symbols are used. Recursive least squares (RLS) algorithm is one of the weight optimization algorithm with fast convergence based on minimum mean square errors (MMSE). However, the optimal weight determination with a few pilot symbols is difficult. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a novel multi-stage RLS OFDM adaptive array antenna for realizing weight determination with a few pilot symbols. In the proposed method, the weights are optimized by using a multiple stage structure with the stored pilot symbols. Here, the initial weights and the initial inverse matrix of correlation matrix are decided by the results of the weight determination in the adjacent subcarriers of the previous stage. As a result, the weight determination with a few pilot symbols can be achieved.

An RF adaptive array antenna (RF-AAA) configured with variable capacitors is proposed. This antenna system can control the power combining ratio and phase value of received signals. In this paper, we focus on the diversity effects of RF-AAA. First, we show the design methodology of the combiner circuit to realize the effective combining. Second, the perturbation method and the steepest gradient method are compared for the optimization algorithms to provide fast convergence and suboptimum solutions among the variable circuit constants. Finally, in simulation, we show the RF-AAA can achieve diversity antenna gains of 7.7 dB, 10.9 dB and 12.6 dB for 2-branch, 3-branch and 4-branch configuration, respectively, which have higher performance than the selection combining.

The performance of a feedback-type adaptive array antenna (AAA) system placed only at a base station (BS) in an FDD/DS-CDMA system remains insufficiently clear. We evaluate the performance of this system by considering the effect of a rake receiver, spacing distance between antennas, the maximum Doppler frequency (fd), and control delay time (Td) on BER performance. In this system, the mobile station (MS) determines optimum weights of antenna elements and sends them back to BS as feedback information. We assume that the optimum weights are not quantized. Thereby, we estimate the performance degradation of 3GPP transmit diversity system, where the feedback information is quantized using a few bits. Computer simulation results show that the rake receiver achieves better BER performance because of the time diversity effect with rake receiver. The AAA with a wide antenna spacing gives high diversity gain for the received signals. For a high value of fd Td, BER performance becomes worse because weighting factors cannot follow the changing speed of channel characteristics. The degradation in performance of a 3GPP system is clarified.

The purpose of this paper is to improve a feedback-type adaptive array antenna (AAA) with feedback information quantized by one bit which was presented recently on TDMA system by an author of this paper. The improvement is made by using adaptive, instead of constant, update size of adaptive antenna weights control. Computer simulation results show that the performance of this system is improved to be almost equivalent to the performance of a system without quantization of the feedback information for wide range of fading speed. The results include the effect of control delay time and the maximum Doppler frequency under flat fading and frequency-selective fading.

In this letter, we present a space division multiple access (SDMA) approach for IEEE802.11a-based system employing pre-fast Fourier transform (FFT) adaptive array antenna (AAA) at base station (BS). As the core idea, we propose a preamble subcarrier assignment method to generate different preambles for different users using the same signal burst structure defined by IEEE802.11a, by which BS can effectively distinguish each user from other users and accurately estimate the channel impulse response (CIR) for each user. In this way, SDMA can be easily realized with no significant change in IEEE802.11a-based system. The performance of the proposed SDMA system is evaluated by computer simulation using a realistic spatio-temporal indoor wireless channel model.

We have proposed a novel spatial filtering technique named "VIrtual Subcarrier Assignment (VISA)" for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals, which enables the transceiver equipped with an adaptive array antenna (AAA) to selectively receive or reject OFDM signals through coloring them with different virtual subcarrier positions in their frequency spectra. In this paper, we develop the VISA to use multiple virtual subcarrier assignment, which assigns a different combination of multiple virtual subcarrier positions in the frequency spectrum to each OFDM signal. Furthermore, we present two kinds of recursive least square (RLS)-based array weight control methods to support the VISA with multiple subcarrier puncturing in an IEEE802.11a-based system and evaluate the link-level performance in typical indoor wireless environments by computer simulations.

In this paper, a new algorithm for MTMR adaptive array antenna (AAA) system combined with analog-type transmit power control (TPC) is proposed for DS-CDMA systems in order to employ high level modulation schemes like 64 QAM in wireless multimedia services. A conventional AAA system considering the strongest path as a target path cannot work effectively when angular dispersion between the strongest path and other delayed paths is large, that is, beam selectivity is so small due to severe frequency selective multipath fading. So, in order to solve such a beam selectivity problem, a beam directivity control scheme using a path manipulation technique is introduced for the BS and MS AAA combining in this paper, along with analog-type TPC. It utilizes virtual delay profiles which are modified from the measured complex delay profile and selects a desired path giving the maximum DUR with an optimized weight vector for BS and MS beamforming. We will show through computer simulation that the proposed scheme is very effective in enhancing the data throughput at the downlink of wideband DS-CDMA systems as compared with the conventional system.

For future high-speed wireless communications using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), two major system requirements will emerge: throughput improvement and rich interference elimination. Because of its broadband nature and limited frequency allocations worldwide, interference from co-located wireless LAN's operating in the same frequency band will become a serious deployment issue. Adaptive array antenna can enhance the performance by suppressing the co-channel interference even when interference may have a large amount of multipath and also have similar received power to the desired signal. There are typically two types of adaptive array architecture for OFDM systems, whose signal processing is carried out before or after FFT (Fast Fourier Transform). In general, the pre-FFT array processing has low complexity, but in rich multipath and interference environments, the performance will deteriorate drastically. In contrast, the post-FFT array processing can provide the optimum performance even in such severe environments at the cost of complexity. Therefore, complexity-reduction techniques combined with the achievement of high system performance will be a key issue for adaptive array antenna applications. This paper proposes novel adaptive array architecture, which is a complexity-reduction technique using subcarrier clustering for post-FFT adaptive array. In the proposed scheme, plural subcarriers can be clustered into a group with the same spatial weight. Simulation results show that the proposed architecture is a promising candidate for real implementation, since it can achieve high performance with much lower complexity even in a rich multipath environment with low signal to noise plus interference ratio (SNIR).

In this paper, a simple blind algorithm for a beamforming antenna is proposed. This algorithm exploits the property of cyclostationary signals whose cyclic autocorrelation function depends on delay as well as frequency. The cost function is the mean square error between the delay product of the beamformer output and a complex exponential. Exploiting the delay greatly reduces the possibility of capturing undesired signals. Through analysis of the minima of the non-quadratic cost function, conditions to extract a single signal are derived. Application of this algorithm to code-division multiple-access systems is considered, and it is shown through simulation that the desired signal can be extracted by appropriately choosing the delay as well as the frequency.

In this paper, as an important technology for the software-defined radio, a novel scheme of adaptive array antenna utilizing bandpass sampling technique is proposed. For adaptive signal processing, it is necessary to convert the radio frequency signal received by the antenna that is given by real number into baseband region, i.e., complex number region. Then, the method for dividing the bandpass sampled signal to in-phase and quadrature components is analyzed. The sampling scheme is called the IQ-division bandpass sampling. An adaptive array antenna based on the IQ-division bandpass sampling is characterized by the signal processing at the bandpass sampled signal stage, namely, intermediate frequency stage, not baseband. Finally, we will confirm the validity of the proposed scheme through an experiment in a radio anechoic chamber.