Wireless Communications

We consider a user communicating over a fading channel with perfect channel state information. Data are assumed to arrive from some higher layer application and are stored in a buffer until transmitted. We study adapting the user's transmission rate and power based on the channel state information as well as the buffer occupancy; the objectives are to regulate both the long-term average transmission power and the average buffer delay incurred by the traffic. Two models for this situation are discussed; one corresponding to fixed-length/variable-rate codewords and one corresponding to variable-length codewords. The tradeoff between the average delay and the average transmission power required for reliable communication is analyzed. A dynamic programming formulation is given to find all Pareto optimal power/delay operating points. We then quantify the behavior of this tradeoff in the regime of asymptotically large delay. In this regime, we characterize simple buffer control policies which exhibit optimal characteristics. Connections to the delay-limited capacity and the expected capacity of fading channels are also discussed.

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Communication over fading channels with delay constraints

In this paper, we provide a theoretical framework for cross-layer optimization for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) wireless networks. The utility is used in our study to build a bridge between the physical layer and the media access control (MAC) layer and to balance the efficiency and fairness of wireless resource allocation. We formulate the cross-layer optimization problem as one that maximizes the average utility of all active users subject to certain conditions, which are determined by adaptive resource allocation schemes. We present necessary and sufficient conditions for utility-based optimal subcarrier assignment and power allocation and discuss the convergence properties of optimization. Numerical results demonstrate a significant performance gain for the cross-layer optimization and the gain increases with the number of active users in the networks.

Cross-layer optimization for OFDM wireless networks-part I: theoretical framework

We present an "opportunistic" transmission scheduling policy that exploits time-varying channel conditions and maximizes the system performance stochastically under a certain resource allocation constraint. We establish the optimality of the scheduling scheme and also that every user experiences a performance improvement over any nonopportunistic scheduling policy when users have independent performance values. We demonstrate via simulation results that the scheme is robust to estimation errors and also works well for nonstationary scenarios, resulting in performance improvements of 20%-150% compared with a scheduling scheme that does not take into account channel conditions. Last, we discuss an extension of our opportunistic scheduling scheme to improve "short-term" performance.

/pdf/opportunistic-transmission-scheduling-with-resource-sharing-40ysq0qdkh.pdf

Opportunistic transmission scheduling with resource-sharing constraints in wireless networks

Link adaptation techniques, where the modulation, coding rate, and/or other signal transmission parameters are dynamically adapted to the changing channel conditions, have emerged as powerful tools for increasing the data rate and spectral efficiency of wireless data-centric networks. While there has been significant progress on understanding the theoretical aspects of time adaptation in LA protocols, new challenges surface when dynamic transmission techniques are employed in broadband wireless networks with multiple signaling dimensions. Those additional dimensions are mainly frequency, especially in multicarrier systems, and space in multiple-antenna systems, particularly multiarray multiple-input multiple-output communication systems. We give an overview of the challenges and promises of link adaptation in future broadband wireless networks. We suggest guidelines to help in the design of robust, complexity/cost-effective algorithms for these future wireless networks.

Adaptive modulation and MIMO coding for broadband wireless data networks

Today's cellular systems are designed to achieve 90-95 percent coverage for voice users (i.e., the ratio of signal to interference plus noise must be above a design target over 90 to 95 percent of the cell area). This ensures that the desired data rate which achieves good voice quality can be provided "everywhere". As a result, SINRs that are much larger than the target are achieved over a large portion of the cellular coverage area. For a packet data service, the larger SINR can be used to provide higher data rates by reducing coding or spreading and/or increasing the constellation density. It is straight-forward to see that cellular spectral efficiency (in terms of b/s/Hz/sector) can be increased by a factor of two or more if users with better links are served at higher data rates. Procedures that exploit this are already in place for all the major cellular standards in the world. In this article, we describe data rate adaptation procedures for CDMA (IS-95), wideband CDMA (cdma2000 and UMTS WCDMA), TDMA (IS-136), and GSM (GPRS and EDGE).

K. Balachandran

Papers

Adaptation techniques in wireless packet data services