Bandwidth expansion in Long Term Evolution (LTE)-Advanced is supported via carrier aggregation (CA), which aggregates multiple component carriers (CCs) to accomplish very high data rate communications. Heterogeneous networks (HetNets), which set pico-base stations in macrocells are also a key feature of LTE-Advanced to achieve substantial gains in coverage and capacity compared to macro-only cells. When CA is applied in HetNets, transmission on all CCs may not always be the best solution due to the extremely high levels of inter-cell interference experienced by HetNets. Activated CCs that are used for transmission should be selected depending on inter-cell interference conditions and the traffic offered in the cells. This paper presents a scheme to select CCs through centralized control assuming a centralized baseband unit (C-BBU) configuration. A C-BBU involves pooling tens or hundreds of baseband resources where one baseband resource can be connected to any CC installed in remote radio heads (RRHs) via optical fibers. Fewer baseband resources can be prepared in a C-BBU than those of CCs in RRHs to reduce the cost of equipment. Our proposed scheme selects the activated CCs by considering the user equipment (UE) assigned to CCs under the criterion of maximizing the proportional fairness (PF) utility function. Convex optimization using the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions is applied to solve the resource allocation ratio that enables user throughput to be estimated. We present results from system level simulations of the downlink to demonstrate that the proposed algorithm to select CCs can outperform the conventional one that selects activated CCs based on the received signal strength. We also demonstrate that our proposed algorithm to select CCs can provide a good balance in traffic load between CCs and achieve better user throughput with fewer baseband resources.

This paper evaluates the downlink performance of an LTE-Advanced (LTE-A) heterogeneous network that uses carrier aggregation (CA) between macro and small cells. The concept of utilizing the CA functionalities in LTE-A is effective in increasing the network capacity in a congested area through raising of the base station density using small cells overlaid onto an existing macro cell network. This concept is also effective in maintaining the mobility performance of user equipment (UE) because handover operation is not applied when entering/leaving a small cell, but component carrier addition/removal is only performed through CA while maintaining the connection to a macro cell. In order to present comprehensive performance evaluations in an LTE-A heterogeneous network with CA, this paper evaluates various performance criteria, e.g., downlink cell throughput and downlink user throughput. According to the obtained simulation results, the total downlink cell throughput achieved in an LTE-A heterogeneous network deployment with CA (four small cells overlaid onto a macro cell sector) exhibits a 3.9-fold improvement compared to a conventional-macro-cell-only network deployment using two frequency bands.

The effects of fluorine implantation on flicker noise and reliability of NMOSFET and PMOSFETs were concurrently investigated. The flicker noise of an NMOSFET was decreased about 66% by fluorine implantation, and that of a PMOSET was decreased about 76%. As indicated by the results, fluorine implantation is one of the methods that can be used to improve the noise characteristics of MOSFET devices. However, hot-carrier degradation was enhanced by fluorine implantation in NMOSFETs, which can be related to the difference of molecular binding within the gate oxide. On the contrary, in case of PMOSFETs, NBTI life time was increased by fluorine implantation. Therefore, concurrent investigation of hot-carrier and NBTI reliability and flicker noise is necessary in developing MOSFETs for analog/digital mixed signal applications.

In this letter, we present a joint blind adaptive scheme to suppress inter-block interference and estimate a carrier frequency offset (CFO) in downlink OFDMA systems. The proposed scheme is a combination of a channel shortening method and a CFO estimator, both based on the carrier nulling criterion. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

In this paper, a direct/cooperative relay switched single carrier-frequency division multiple access (SC-FDMA) using amplify-and-forward (AF) protocol and spectrum division/adaptive subcarrier allocation (SDASA) is proposed. Using SDASA, the transmit SC signal spectrum is divided into sub-blocks, to each of which a different set of subcarriers (resource block) is adaptively allocated according to the channel conditions of mobile terminal (MT)-relay station (RS) link, RS-base station (BS) link, and MT-BS link. Cooperative relay does not always provide higher capacity than the direct communication. Switching between direct communication and cooperative relay is done depending on the channel conditions of MT-RS, RS-BS, and MT-BS links. We evaluate the achievable channel capacity by the Monte-Carlo numerical computation method. It is shown that the proposed scheme can reduce the transmit power by about 6.0 (2.0) dB compared to the direct communication (the cooperative AF relay) for a 1%-outage capacity of 3.0 bps/Hz.

This letter proposes a low-complexity soft-detection algorithm for modified dual-carrier modulation (MDCM) in WiMedia ultra-wideband (UWB) systems. In order to reduce the complexity of soft-output maximum-likelihood detection (soft-MLD), which gives the optimal performance for MDCM symbols, the proposed algorithm utilizes the following three methods: real/imaginary separation, multiplierless distance calculation, and candidate set reduction. Through these methods, the proposed algorithm reduces the complexity of soft-MLD by 97%, while preventing the deterioration of its optimality. The performance of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated by simulations of 640–1024 Mbps transmission modes of the latest Release 1.5 standard of the WiMedia UWB.

This paper proposes an alternate time-switched transmission technique for single carrier modulation system with frequency domain equalization. Additional maximal ratio combining diversity gain is obtained by adding a transmit antenna and a switch. Alternating transmit symbols result in zeros which make maximal ratio receive combining possible in the receiver. Simulation results show that it has better performance than the traditional algorithm at the expense of one additional antenna.

Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) is very sensitive to the frequency errors caused by phase noise and Doppler shift. These errors will disturb the orthogonality among subcarriers and cause intercarrier interference (ICI). A simple method to combat ICI is proposed in this letter. The main idea is to map each data symbol onto a couple of subcarriers rather to a single subcarrier. Different from the conventional adjacent coupling and symmetric coupling methods, the frequency diversity can be utilized more efficiently by the proposed adaptive coupling method based on optimal subcarrier spacing. Numerical results show that our proposed method provides a robust signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) improvement over the conventional coupling methods.

In OFDM systems, residual inter-block interference can be suppressed by a time-domain equalizer that blindly shortens the effective length of a channel impulse response. To further improve the performance of blind equalizers, we propose a channel shortening method that attempts to maximize the minimum FFT output power over data subcarriers. Simulation results indicate that the max-min strategy has performance improvement over a conventional channel shortening method.

An ultra-wideband (UWB) system usually occupies a large frequency band, which may overlap with the spectrum of a narrow band system. The latter is referred to as a victim system. To effectively use frequency, a UWB system may create a notch in its spectrum to accommodate the victim signal for interference avoidance. Parameters of the notch such as the depth and the width of a notch need to be decided in accordance to victim systems. In this paper, we investigate the effective UWB avoidance by examining the suitable notch based on experimental evaluation. In the experiments, 3GPP LTE, Mobile WiMAX, as well as an IMT Advanced Test-bed are respectively employed to represent different types of victim systems. The UWB system is set up based on WiMedia specifications and operates at the UWB low band of 3.1–4.8 GHz. A notch is fabricated by nullifying the related subcarriers of the UWB signal. In addition, a filter or a window function is formed and employed to further smooth the notch. Bit error rate (BER) or packet error rate (PER) performances of victim systems are measured and used to evaluate the UWB interference. Our results show that when a notch is properly formed, the interference level introduced by UWB can be below the permitted level by regulations.

This paper presents comprehensive comparisons based on the block error rate (BLER) of open-loop (OL) transmit diversity schemes considering a cubic metric (CM) for single-carrier (SC)-Frequency Division Multiple Access (FDMA) using discrete Fourier transform (DFT)-precoded OFDMA in uplink frequency-selective fading channels. The OL transmit diversity schemes assumed in the paper are space-time block code (STBC), space-frequency block code (SFBC), single-carrier (SC) - SFBC, cyclic delay diversity (CDD), and frequency switched transmit diversity (FSTD) for two antennas and a combination of STBC, SFBC, SC-SFBC and selection transmit diversity including time switched transmit diversity (TSTD) or FSTD for four antennas. We derive the most appropriate OL transmit diversity scheme for SC-FDMA using a frequency domain equalizer (FDE) with QPSK and 16QAM modulations and with various channel coding rates employing turbo coding. We investigate the best OL transmit diversity scheme under various propagation channel conditions including the fading maximum Doppler frequency and root mean square (r.m.s.) delay spread, and the fading correlation between transmitter/receiver antennas.

This letter presents a flexible signal structure supporting localization service for time domain synchronous OFDM (TDS-OFDM) in multi-service transmission applications. Localization is treated as one specific service and the corresponding data is allocated within the physical layer pipe (PLP) of the first subframe. The concept of variable sub-carrier spacing to combat Doppler spread is also introduced for the localization service. Simulation results indicate that the proposed scheme outperforms the conventional scheme and at the same time achieves high positioning accuracy.

The single carrier block transmission (SCBT) system has become one of the most popular modulation systems because of its low peak to average power ratio (PAPR). This work proposes precoding design on the transmitter side to retain low PAPR, improve performance, and reduce computational complexity on the receiver side. The system is designed according to the following procedure. First, upper-triangular dirty paper coding (UDPC) is utilized to pre-cancel the interference among multiple streams and provide a one-tap time-domain equalizer for the SCBT system. Next, to solve the problem of the high PAPR of the UDPC precoding system, Tomlinson-Harashima precoding (THP) is developed. Finally, since the UDPC-THP system is degraded by the deep fading channels, the dynamic channel on/off assignment by the maximum capacity algorithm (MCA) and minimum BER algorithm (MBA) is proposed to enhance the bit error rate (BER) performance. Simulation results reveal that the proposed precoding transceiver can provide excellent BER and low PAPR performances for the SCBT system over a multipath fading channel.

This paper proposes a new channel allocation algorithm for satellite communication systems. The algorithm is based on a spectrum division transmission technique as well as a spectrum compression transmission technique that we have developed in separate pieces of work. Using these techniques, the algorithm optimizes the spectrum bandwidth and a MODCOD (modulation and FEC error coding rate) scheme to balance the usable amount of satellite transponder bandwidth and satellite transmission power. Moreover, it determines the center frequency and bandwidth of each divided subspectra depending on the unused bandwidth of the satellite transponder bandwidth. As a result, the proposed algorithm enables flexible and effective usage of satellite resources (bandwidth and power) in channel allocations and thus enhances satellite communication (SATCOM) system capacity.

For advanced mobile communication systems that adopt orthogonal frequency-division multiple access (OFDMA) technologies, intercarrier interference (ICI) significantly degrades performance when mobility is high. Standard specifications and concerns about complexity demand low-cost methods with deployment readiness and decent performance. In this paper, novel zero forcing (ZF) and minimum mean-square error (MMSE) equalizers based on per-subcarrier adaptive (PSA) processing and perturbation-based (PB) approximation are introduced. The proposed equalizers strike a good balance between implementation cost and performance; therefore they are especially suitable for OFDMA downlink receivers. Theoretical analysis and simulations are provided to verify our claims.

For effective use of the frequency band, carrier superposing (common band) technique has been introduced to satellite communication systems. On the other hand, satellite's TWTA (Traveling Wave Tube Amplifier) should be operated near its saturation level for power efficiency. However, the TWTA nonlinearity characteristics around that level causes interference in carrier superposing systems. Therefore in this paper, a post-compensation technique for TWTA nonlinear distortion is introduced and verified for practical use in a carrier superposed Point to Point satellite communication system which adopts interference canceller. Simulation results show that it is possible to reduce the bit error rate degradation over the entire range, especially at nonlinear operating point.

In time-varying frequency selective channels, to obtain high-rate joint time-frequency diversity, linear dispersion coded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (LDC-OFDM), has recently been proposed. Compared with OFDM systems, single-carrier systems may retain the advantages of lower PAPR and lower sensitivity to carrier frequency offset (CFO) effects, which motivates this paper to investigate how to achieve joint frequency and time diversity for high-rate single-carrier block transmission systems. Two systems are proposed: linear dispersion coded cyclic-prefix single-carrier modulation (LDC-CP-SCM) and linear dispersion coded zero-padded single-carrier modulation (LDC-ZP-SCM) across either multiple CP-SCM or ZP-SCM blocks, respectively. LDC-SCM may use a layered two-stage LDC decoding with lower complexity. This paper analyzes the diversity properties of LDC-CP-SCM, and provides a sufficient condition for LDC-CP-SCM to maximize all available joint frequency and time diversity gain and coding gain. This paper shows that LDC-ZP-SCM may be effectively equipped with low-complexity minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) equalizers. A lower complexity scheme, linear transformation coded SCM (LTC-SCM), is also proposed with good diversity performance.

In orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) based systems, intercarrier interference (ICI) created by the time varying property of wireless fading channels, degrades the data detection performance. This degradation strengthens especially when the mobile speed is relatively high or the number of subcarriers is large. Here, we interpret the time varying channel as the linear transformation of the time invariant channel impulse response. By using this new channel model, the time varying component can be reduced in the time domain by applying the inverse transformation to the received sequence. Then, the remaining time invariant channel component is removed by the equalization in the frequency domain. Some complexity reduction schemes are also proposed to make the proposed method feasible for practical implementation. The simulation results show that the new method offers a significant improvement in terms of bit error rate performance, especially when the number of subcarriers is larger than about 500.

In block transmissions, inter-block interference (IBI) due to delayed waves exceeding a cyclic prefix severely limits the performance. To suppress IBI in downlink MC-CDMA systems, this paper proposes a novel channel shortening method using a time-domain equalizer. The proposed method minimizes a cost function related to equalizer output autocorrelations without the transmission of training symbols. We prove that the method can shorten a channel and suppress IBI completely. Simulation results show that the proposed method can significantly suppress IBI using relatively less number of received blocks than a conventional method when the number of users is moderate.

For maximum-likelihood (ML) estimation to jointly track carrier frequency offset (CFO) and channel impulse response (CIR) in orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, we present a finite high order approximation method utilizing the MATLAB ‘roots' command on the log-likelihood function derived from the OFDM received signal, coupled with an adaptive iteration algorithm. The tracking performance of this high order approximation algorithm is found to be excellent, and as expected, the algorithm outperforms the other existing first order approximation algorithms.