Showing papers in "IEICE Transactions on Communications in 2016"

Massive MIMO Technologies and Challenges towards 5G

Abstract: Massive MIMO is widely recognized as an essential technology for 5G. Together with newly allocated spectrum (bandwidth) and network densification (small cells), it is expected to play a key role in coping with the ongoing explosion in data-traffic demand and services. Compared to 4G MIMO technologies, massive MIMO can offer large gains in cell spectral efficiency, which, in combination with small cells and additional bandwidth, can translate into vast gains in throughput per unit area. We briefly overview the most promising TDD and FDD operation modes for massive MIMO, and discuss their potential benefits and challenges considering operation over different tiers and frequency bands. TDD operation is naturally suited to massive MIMO and can offer “massive MIMO” gains, with simple in-cell processing, low overheads and low end-to-end latencies. We also briefly describe some important massive MIMO activities towards 5G, including standardization efforts, system development and experimental trials. key words: 5G, massive MIMO, TDD, FDD

Simple Primary User Signal Area Estimation for Spectrum Measurement

Abstract: This paper investigates a signal area (SA) estimation method for wideband and long time duration spectrum measurements for dynamic spectrum access. SA denotes the area (in time/frequency domain) occupied by the primary user’s signal. The traditional approach, which utilizes only Fourier transform (FT) and energy detector (ED) for SA estimation, can achieve low complexity, but its estimation performance is not very high. Against this issue, we apply post-processing to improve the performance of the FT-based ED. Our proposed method, simple SA (SSA) estimation, exploits the correlation of the spectrum states among the neighboring tiles and the fact that SA typically has a rectangular shape to estimate SA with high accuracy and relatively low complexity compared to a conventional method, contour tracing SA (CT-SA) estimation. Numerical results will show that the S-SA estimation method can achieve better detection performance. The SA estimation and processing can reduce the number of bits needed to store/transmit the observed information compared to the FT-based ED. Thus, in addition to improved detection performance it also compresses the data. key words: dynamic spectrum access, smart spectrum access, spectrum measurement, cognitive radio, signal detection, signal area estimation

Free Space Optic and mmWave Communications: Technologies, Challenges and Applications

Abstract: SUMMARY Increasing demand in data-traffic has been addressed over the last few years. It is expected that the data-traffic will present the significant part of the total backbone traffic. Accordingly, much more transmission systems will be required to support this growth. A free space optic (FSO) communication is the greatest promising technology supporting high-speed and high-capacity transport networks. It can support multi Gbit/ s for few kilometers transmission distance. The benefits of an FSO system are widespread, low cost, flexibility, immunity to electromagnetic field, fast deployment, security, etc. However, it suffers from some drawbacks, which limit the deployment of FSO links. The main drawback in FSO is the degradation in the signal quality because of atmospheric channel impairments. In addition, it is high sensitive for illumination noise coming from external sources such as sun and lighting systems. It is more benefit that FSO and mmWave are operating as a complementary solution that is known as hybrid FSO/ mmWave links. Whereas the mmWave is susceptible to heavy rain conditions and oxygen absorption, while fog has no particular effect. This paper will help to better understand the FSO and mmWave technologies and applications operating under various atmospheric conditions. Furthermore, in order to improve the system performance and availability, several modulation schemes will be discussed. In

Queuing Systems for the Internet

Abstract: SUMMARY This article proposes a versatile model of a multiservice queueing system with elastic traffic. The model can provide a basis for an analysis of telecommunications and computer network systems, internet network systems in particular. The advantage of the proposed approach is a possibility of a determination of delays in network nodes for a number of

Real-Time Streaming Data Delivery over Named Data Networking

Abstract: Named Data Networking (NDN) is a proposed future Internet architecture that shifts the fundamental abstraction of the network from host-to-host communication to request-response for named, signed data–an information dissemination focused approach. This paper describes a general design for receiver-driven, real-time streaming data (RTSD) applications over the current NDN implementation that aims to take advantage of the architecture’s unique affordances. It is based on experimental development and testing of running code for real-time video conferencing, a positional tracking system for interactive multimedia, and a distributed control system for live performance. The design includes initial approaches to minimizing latency, managing buffer size and Interest retransmission, and adapting retrieval to maximize bandwidth and control congestion. Initial implementations of these approaches are evaluated for functionality and performance results, and the potential for future research in this area, and improved performance as new features of the architecture become available, is discussed. key words: named data networking, information centric networking, videoconferencing, real-time, low-latency, congestion control

A Survey of Caching Networks in Content Oriented Networks

Abstract: Content oriented network is expected to be one of the most promising approaches for resolving design concept difference between content oriented network services and location oriented architecture of current network infrastructure. There have been proposed several content oriented network architectures, but research efforts for content oriented networks have just started and technical issues to be resolved are still remained. Because of content oriented feature, content data transmitted in a network can be reused by content requests from other users. Pervasive cache is one of the most important benefits brought by the content oriented network architecture, which forms interconnected caching networks. Caching network is the hottest research area and lots of research activities have been published. This paper surveys recent research activities for caching networks in content oriented networks, with focusing on important factors which affect caching network performance, i.e. content request routing, caching decision, and replacement policy of cache. And this paper also discusses future direction of caching network researches. key words: cache networks, content oriented networks, in-network cache

Radio Access Technologies for Fifth Generation Mobile Communications System: Review of Recent Research and Developments in Japan

Abstract: As the demand for higher transmission rates and spectral efficiency is steadily increasing, the research and development of novel mobile communication systems has gained momentum. This paper focuses on providing a comprehensive survey of research and development activities on fifth generation mobile communication systems in Japan. We try to survey a vast area of wireless communication systems and the developments that led to future 5G systems. key words: fifth generation mobile communication systems, higher frequency band, massive MIMO, C-Plane/U-Plane splitting, C-RAN

Experimental Study on Battery-Less Sensor Network Activated by Multi-Point Wireless Energy Transmission

Abstract: This paper empirically validates battery-less sensor activation via wireless energy transmission to release sensors from wires and batteries. To seamlessly extend the coverage and activate sensor nodes distributed in any indoor environment, we proposed multi-point wireless energy transmission with carrier shift diversity. In this scheme, multiple transmitters are employed to compensate path-loss attenuation and orthogonal frequencies are allocated to the multiple transmitters to avoid the destructive interference that occurs when the same frequency is used by all transmitters. In our previous works, the effectiveness of the proposed scheme was validated theoretically and also empirically by using just a spectrum analyzer to measure the received power. In this paper, we develop low-energy battery-less sensor nodes whose consumed power and required received power for activation are respectively 142 uW and 400 uW. In addition, we conduct indoor experiments in which the received power and activation of battery-less sensor node are simultaneously observed by using the developed battery-less sensor node and a spectrum analyzer. The results show that the coverage of single-point and multi-point wireless energy transmission without carrier shift diversity are, respectively, 84.4% and 83.7%, while the coverage of the proposed scheme is 100%. It can be concluded that the effectiveness of the proposed scheme can be verified by our experiments using real battery-less sensor nodes.

ROD-SAN: Energy-Efficient and High-Response Wireless Sensor and Actuator Networks Employing Wake-Up Receiver

Abstract: Wireless sensor and actuator networks (WSANs) are required to achieve both energy–efficiency and low–latency in order to prolong the network lifetime while being able to quickly respond to actuation commands transmitted based on the real–time sensing data. These two requirements are in general in a relationship of trade–off when each node operates with well–known duty–cycling modes: nodes need to make their radio interfaces (IFs) frequently active in order to promptly detect the communication requests from the other nodes. One approach to break this inherent trade–off, which has been actively studied in recent literature of wireless sensor networks (WSNs), is the introduction of wake–up receiver that is installed into each node and used only for detecting the communication requests. The main radio IF in each node is woken up only when needed, i.e., in an on–demand manner, through a wake–up message received by the wake–up receiver. In this paper, we introduce radio–on– demand sensor and actuator networks (ROD–SAN) where the concept of wake–up receiver is applied to realize on–demand WSANs. We first evaluate data collection rate, packet delivery latency, and energy–efficiency of ROD–SAN and duty–cycling modes defined in IEEE 802.15.4e by computer simulations. Then, we present our test–bed implementation of ROD– SAN including all protocols from the lowest layer of wake–up signaling to the application layer offering the functionalities of information monitoring and networked control. Finally, we show experimental results obtained through our field trial in which 20 nodes are deployed in an outdoor area with the scale of 450 m × 200 m. The numerical results obtained by computer simulations and experiments confirm the effectiveness of ROD–SAN to realize energy–efficient and high–response WSANs. key words: wireless sensor and actuator networks, wake–up receiver, duty–cycling, experimental prototype and implementation

Spatial Modeling and Analysis of Cellular Networks Using the Ginibre Point Process: A Tutorial

Abstract: Spatial stochastic models have been much used for performance analysis of wireless communication networks. This is due to the fact that the performance of wireless networks depends on the spatial configuration of wireless nodes and the irregularity of node locations in a real wireless network can be captured by a spatial point process. Most works on such spatial stochastic models of wireless networks have adopted homogeneous Poisson point processes as the models of wireless node locations. While this adoption makes the models analytically tractable, it assumes that the wireless nodes are located independently of each other and their spatial correlation is ignored. Recently, the authors have proposed to adopt the Ginibre point process---one of the determinantal point processes---as the deployment models of base stations (BSs) in cellular networks. The determinantal point processes constitute a class of repulsive point processes and have been attracting attention due to their mathematically interesting properties and efficient simulation methods. In this tutorial, we provide a brief guide to the Ginibre point process and its variant, $\alpha$-Ginibre point process, as the models of BS deployments in cellular networks and show some existing results on the performance analysis of cellular network models with $\alpha$-Ginibre deployed BSs. The authors hope the readers to use such point processes as a tool for analyzing various problems arising in future cellular networks.

Weighted-Polarization Wearable MIMO Antenna with Three Orthogonally Arranged Dipoles Based on RF Signal Processing

Abstract: In this paper, we present a weighted-polarization wearable multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antenna that is based on radiofrequency (RF) signal processing to realize ultra-high-speed and highcapacity mobile communications. The proposed antenna is comprised of three orthogonal dipoles, two of which can be selected according to a weight function in different usage scenarios. The weight function is determined by considering the variation in the cross-polarization power ratio (XPR) and the antenna inclination angle which depend on the radiopropagation environment and human motion. To confirm the suitability of the proposed antenna, we perform preliminary experiments to evaluate the channel capacity of a weighted-polarization wearable MIMO antenna with an arm-swinging dynamic phantom. The measured and analytical results are in good agreement, which verifies the effectiveness of the proposed antenna. We demonstrate that the proposed antenna is suitable for realizing gigabit mobile communications in future wearable MIMO applications. key words: weighted-polarization wearable MIMO antenna, RF signal processing, channel capacity, shadowing

Uplink Blocking Probabilities in Priority-Based Cellular CDMA Networks with Finite Source Population

Abstract: Fast proliferation of mobile Internet and high-demand mobile applications necessitates the introduction of different priority classes in next-generation cellular networks. This is especially crucial for efficient use of radio resources in the heterogeneous and virtualized network environments. Despite the fact that many analytical tools have been proposed for capacity and radio resource modelling in cellular networks, only a few of them explicitly incorporate priorities among services. We propose a novel analytical model to analyse the performance of a priority-based cellular CDMA system with finite source population. When the cell load is above a certain level, low-priority calls may be blocked to preserve the quality of service of high-priority calls. The proposed model leads to an efficient closed-form solution that enables fast and very accurate calculation of resource occupancy of the CDMA system and call blocking probabilities, for different services and many priority classes. To achieve them, the system is modelled as a continuous-time Markov chain. We evaluate the accuracy of the proposed analytical model by means of computer simulations and find that the introduced approximation errors are negligible.

Welch FFT Segment Size Selection Method for Spectrum Awareness System

Abstract: We create a practical method to set the segment size of the Welch FFT for wideband and long-term spectrum usage measurements in the context of hierarchical dynamic spectrum access (DSA). An energy detector (ED) based on the Welch FFT can be used to detect the presence or absence of primary user (PU) signal and to estimate the duty cycle (DC). In signal detection with the Welch FFT, segment size is an important design parameter since it determines both the detection performance and the frequency resolution. Between these two metrics, there is a trade-off relationship which can be controlled by adjusting the segment size. To cope with this trade-off relationship, we define an optimum and, more easy to analyze sub-optimum segment size design criterion. An analysis of the sub-optimum segment size criterion reveals that the resulting segment size depends on the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and the DC. Since in practice both SNR and DC are unknown, proper segment setting is difficult. To overcome this problem, we propose an adaptive segment size selection (ASSS) method that uses noise floor estimation outputs. The proposed method does not require any prior knowledge on the SNR or the DC. Simulation results confirm that the proposed ASSS method matches the performance achieved with the optimum design criterion. key words: cognitive radio, duty cycle, dynamic spectrum access, spectrum measurement, Welch FFT

Lattice Reduction-Aided Detection for Overloaded MIMO Using Slab Decoding

Abstract: In this paper, we propose an overloaded multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) signal detection scheme with slab decoding and lattice reduction (LR). The proposed scheme firstly splits the transmitted signal vector into two parts, the post-voting vector composed of the same number of signal elements as that of receive antennas, and the pre-voting vector composed of the remaining elements. Secondly, it reduces the candidates of the pre-voting vector using slab decoding and determines the postvoting vectors for each pre-voting vector candidate by LR-aided minimum mean square error (MMSE)-successive interference cancellation (SIC) detection. From the performance analysis of the proposed scheme, we derive an upper bound of the error probability and show that it can achieve the full diversity order. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme can achieve almost the same performance as the optimal ML detection while reducing the required computational complexity. key words: overloaded MIMO, signal detection, lattice reduction, slab decoding

Three-Dimensional Over-The-Air Assessment for Vertically Arranged MIMO Array Antennas

Abstract: This paper presents a new methodology of the over-theair (OTA) assessment for vertically arranged multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) array antennas. Particular emphasis is placed on how well handset MIMO antennas with a vertically arranged structure are characterized using the limited number of scatterers implemented in a fading emulator. First we studied the mechanism of the arrangement of scatterers on the variation of channel responses using a proposed three-dimensional analytical model. It is shown that the condition of a 3D-OTA with the prescribed parameters allows the correlation to be reduced, which permits the channel capacity to increase in the same manner that sufficient scatterers are distributed over the entire solid angle. Then the appropriate scatterers arrangement for a 3D-OTA instrument considering the number of DUT antenna elements and multipath characteristics is investigated. The analytical results show that a suitable scatterers arrangement can be determined for various conditions of multipath environments and numbers of array elements, and that the arrangement can be employed for designing an actual 3D-OTA apparatus. key words: MIMO-OTA, fading emulator, vertically arranged array antenna, three-dimensional channel model