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Throughput of Strongly Interfering Slow Frequency-Hopping Networks

Fredrik Florn, Student Member, IEEE, Andr Stranne, Student Member, IEEE, Ove Edfors, Member, IEEE, and Bengt-Arne Molin, Member, IEEE

AbstractWith the increasing use of short-range wireless devices for high-data-rate communication in the shared frequency bands, the level of interference can be expected to increase. The ability to estimate the performance degradation of these devices due to increasing interference is, therefore, important. In this paper, the throughput of devices that perform frequency hops after each transmitted packet in order to achieve diversity is investigated. The system model allows for an analysis of systems where packets of variable durations are used, and the throughput derivation is based on the assumption that collisions result in a total loss of the data in the colliding packets. The resulting expression for the throughput is given as a function of the number of frequency channels used for frequency hopping, the number of interfering networks, the durations of the packet types available, and the probability of networks selecting a certain packet type for transmission. An approximation of the exact expression for the throughput is also derived, and the results are applied to an example system consisting of Bluetooth piconets. Index TermsBluetooth, frequency-hop (FH) communication, packet radio networks, spread-spectrum communication, throughput.

I. INTRODUCTION

T IS EXPECTED that the number of electronic consumer products that are able to interconnect using short-range radio interfaces will increase dramatically in the near future. One technique used in existing radio interfaces is slow frequency hopping, where frequency hops (FHs) are performed on a packet basis. Its use enables the coexistence of multiple units without the need for frequency planning. However, interference is unavoidable, and will increase with the number of units, resulting in decreased throughput. Since an expression that quantifies the impact of the interference is desired, we derive an expression for the throughput as a function of the degree of interference, i.e., the number of units in close proximity to each other. Since current systems allow for the transmission

Paper approved by D. I. Kim, the Editor for Spread Spectrum Transmission and Access of the IEEE Communications Society. Manuscript received April 14, 2003; revised October 14, 2003. This work was performed under the Personal Computing and Communication Research Program, founded by the Swedish Foundation for Strategic Research. This paper was presented in part at the IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference, Rhodes, Greece, May 2001 and in part at the IEEE International Symposium on Personal, Indoor, and Mobile Radio Communications, Lisbon, Portugal, September 2002. F. Florn and A. Stranne are with the Department of Electroscience, Lund University, SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden, and TeliaSonera AB, SE-201 20 Malm, Sweden (e-mail: fredrik.floren@es.lth.se; andre.stranne@es.lth.se). O. Edfors is with the Department of Electroscience, Lund University, SE-221 00 Lund, Sweden (e-mail: ove.edfors@es.lth.se). B.-A. Molin is with Axis Communications AB, SE-223 69 Lund, Sweden (e-mail: bengt-arne.molin@axis.com). Digital Object Identifier 10.1109/TCOMM.2004.831343

of packets of variable durations, the analysis is performed for this case. In the literature, this scenario has not received much attention. In the system model, it is assumed that the slightest overlap in time and frequency between packets, i.e., a collision, results in a total loss of the data contained in the colliding packets. This assumption gives a pessimistic estimate of the throughput for the case where cochannel interference (CCI) is the limiting factor. On the other hand, for more elaborate system models, analytical expressions for the throughput might be more difficult to derive. The analysis is performed by determining the interference between pairs of units and generalizing that result to an arbitrary number of units. In addition to the analytical results, we derive an approximation of the throughput of slow FH networks. The evaluation of the approximate expression is less complex than that of the exact expression, and is, therefore, easier to use. As an illustration of the mapping of the system model to an existing technology and to highlight the impact of using packets of variable durations, we apply our results to a system of interfering Bluetooth piconets. In addition, the error between the exact and approximate results for this scenario is evaluated and is shown to be small. Our aim with this paper is to give a thorough treatment and understanding of how to analyze packet collisions in slow FH systems that transmit packets of varying durations. Herein lies the novelty of our work, since previous analyses of slow FH systems have been limited to packets of equal duration. In addition, the applicability of our approach is clearly shown by means of an example. To the authors knowledge, little work has been done on the topic considered in this paper. The cases that are most commonly investigated are variations of fast FH frequency-shift keying (FSK) schemes [1][5], whereas when slow FH is investigated, only packets, or dwell times, of the same duration are considered [6][12]. The outline of the paper is as follows. The system model is given in Section II and the throughput analysis is performed in Section III. The application example, consisting of an approximation error evaluation and a system throughput analysis, is presented in Section IV and, finally, some concluding remarks are given in Section V. II. SYSTEM MODEL This section is divided into two parts. The first, which describes the network model, defines a network and the networks transmission of packets. The second part, the interference model, states the way in which networks interact.

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Fig. 1. Definition of a packet and its components: header, payload, and guard interval. Their durations are h ; l and d , respectively, and the sum of the durations equals L .

A. Network Model A system is defined to consist of networks, each consisting of an arbitrary number of units that communicate without interference. Specifically, there is exactly one ongoing transmission within a network at a time. This implies that there is no interference within a network and that networks are fully loaded, i.e., always have packets to transmit. Networks transmit packets that consist of the following components: a header of duration ; a payload of duration ; and a guard interval of duration , where refers to the th packet type. The components of a type packet can be seen in Fig. 1. The duration , during which the transmitter is active, is referred to as the active interval. In contrast, the transmitter is idle during the guard interval. When referring to the entire packet . The durations duration, we use the notation can be specified in, for example, seconds, or bits if a constant bit time is used. In the most general case, the number of packet types available and the probability of selecting a certain packet type is different for each network. However, this analysis will concern a specific network scenario where all networks use the same set of packet types and corresponding probabilities. Therefore, for packet types available, and the all networks, there will be probability of selecting a packet of type is denoted . The packet types, their corresponding probabilities, and the component durations of the packet types are henceforth referred to as a packet-type distribution. This term completely specifies the number of available packet types, their respective component durations, and the probability of selecting a certain packet type. With the method of analysis employed in this paper, the extension to the case of multiple packet-type distributions is straightforward. However, for the sake of simplicity, only a single packet-type distribution is used in this paper. To obtain the worst-case interference situation, networks are fully loaded, and therefore, they are only idle during the guard interval. When a new packet is about to be sent, a packet type is selected from the set of packet types. Upon transmission of a new packet, the network also selects a new frequency channel. The new channel is selected from a set of channels, and all channels are selected with the same probability. In other words, we employ a packet-based slow FH scheme. We further assume that all networks select their channels independently of all other networks, and that the networks are not time synchronized. B. Interference Model To simplify the explanation of the analysis, the terms overlap and collision are defined as follows. An overlap between two packets occurs when their active intervals, at some point in time, are transmitted simultaneously, whereas a collision is an overlap

on the same frequency channel. Hence, a collision implies an overlap, but the converse is not necessarily true. It is assumed that networks interfere strongly, i.e., all packets involved in a collision are destroyed and the data contained in the colliding packets are lost. On the other hand, if no collisions occur, packets are assumed to be correctly received. Throughout the analysis, we will consider a system of networks. One of these networks will act as a reference network, networks will act as interferers, henceforth and the other referred to as inets. III. THROUGHPUT ANALYSIS When analyzing with respect to throughput, we assume that the reference network transmits a reference packet, which has an active interval of duration , on one of the frequency channels. The throughput can be obtained by calculating the probability of successful transmission of that reference packet. This prob, where is the event of successful ability is denoted transmission. It will depend on the duration of the reference packets active interval, but not on the duration of its guard interval, since networks are idle during the guard interval. Note that the duration of the reference packets active interval is variable, and the value of need not be limited to one of the active interval durations of the inets common packet-type distribution. However, this restriction is imposed later in order to derive the throughput of a network using the same packet-type distribution as the inets. By letting denote the total number of interfering packets overlapping the reference packets active interval, and by conditioning on overlaps, the conditional probability of successful transmission becomes [5] (1) where denotes the number of available frequency channels. We note that this probability is independent of . The overinets, and each inet can generate laps are generated by the multiple overlaps during its transmissions if, e.g., the active interval of the reference packet is long, compared with the durations of the inets packets. denote the probability that a total Furthermore, let of overlaps are generated by the inets during the reference packets active interval. To remove the condition on overlaps by and sum over to in (1), we multiply obtain (2) , To find the probability density function (PDF) as the probability of inet transmitting we define packets overlapping the reference packets active interval. Since all inets transmit independently, convolution of the individual yields the PDF of the sum of the number of overPDFs laps generated by the individual inets, i.e., (3) where denotes convolution with respect to . Up to this point, all expressions are for the general case, where every inet has its

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own individual packet-type distribution. However, as mentioned in Section II, we will limit the analysis to networks using the same packet-type distribution to illustrate the main points of the analysis. for all , (3) In this special case, where simplifies to

replicas of (4) where function get denotes the convolution of replicas of the with each other. By combining (2) and (4), we

Fig. 2. Reference packet with active interval duration T beginning its transmission in the active interval of a type-i inet packet. The type-i inet packet has a packet duration of L and a payload duration of d . Transmission of the reference packet starts x time units after the start of the of the inet packet, and continues y time units after the end of the initial inet packet. Active intervals are shaded.

(5) where the last step can be obtained by exploiting the similarity to the -transform, temporarily substituting , and using its convolution property. We assume that the reference network uses the same packettype distribution as the inets, and calculate the throughput for the reference network. Since this investigation is focused on the ensemble average throughput of networks, rather than the throughput as a function of time, we do not need to take into account the dependence between the number of overlaps for successively transmitted packets. Hence, the throughput can be derived on a single reference-packet basis, and we define the throughput as the fraction of time used for successful transmission of payloads. In other words, the throughput is expressed as the ratio between the mean duration of successfully transmitted payloads and the mean packet duration, including guard intervals. In our notation (6) Note that the throughput of a single network without interference is generally not one, unless, however, its headers and guard intervals are zero. In the following, the PDF of the number of overlaps generated by an inet during the transmission of the reference packets , will simply be referred to as the PDF of active interval, the number of overlaps. Correspondingly, the PDF of the total number of overlaps generated by all inets during the transmis, will be sion of the reference packets active interval, referred to as the PDF of the total number of overlaps. In Section III-A, we will derive an exact expression for the PDF of the number of overlaps which, using (5) and (6), yields and , respectively. These calculations involve recursive expressions and are quite complicated. Therefore, we derive a more tractable approximation in Section III-B. A. Exact Analysis In the exact analysis, a reference packet is considered, and the PDF of the number of overlaps between that packet and

the packets transmitted by a single inet is derived. This is done by noting that when the transmission of the reference packet is started, the inet is also transmitting a packet, referred to as the initial inet packet. Then, the key to finding the PDF of the is to condition on the type of that number of overlaps initial inet packet, and how far into it the reference packet starts. The exact analysis is separated into two cases: one where the reference packet starts its transmission in the initial inet packets active interval, and one where it starts in the guard interval. The two cases have been separated, since the PDFs of the number of overlaps conditioned on the starting points are not the same for the two cases. The first step is to consider the packet type currently being transmitted by the inet when the start of the reference-packet transmission occurs, i.e., the initial inet packet type. By conditioning the PDF of the number of overlaps on that inet packet type, we have type type (7)

where type is the probability that the reference-packet transmission started in an inet packet of type . Clearly, type is independent of the parameter , and this probability is given by the fraction of time the inet transmits type packets. Since the mean packet duration is , we have type (8)

which is the mean fraction of time that type packets, including guard intervals, are being transmitted. In order to proceed, we let be the starting time of the reference-packet transmission relative the starting time of the type packet, as indicated in Fig. 2. By conditioning type on the starting point of the reference packets transmission, we obtain type type type (9)

where type is the PDF of the starting point of the reference packets transmission, given that the initial inet packet is of type . Since the networks are not synchronized in time, the

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distribution of the starting point of the reference-packet transmission is uniform over the inets type packet, and we have type (10)

TABLE I PROBABILITY OF n OVERLAPS IN INTERVAL y; g (njy )

The integral (9) can be split into two parts, since the integrand differs by one overlap, depending on whether the integration is performed over the inets active interval or guard interval. This gives type type type (11)

that a packet of type is sent after an inet packet, we obtain the recursive expression (13) are summarized in Table I. All cases mentioned above for can be calculated for all and using the At this point, recursion and the initial values given above. It is, however, inby reasoning instead of using the structive to derive recursion (13). It is first noted that if , only zero overlaps . At , the is possible, and therefore, initial inet packet ends and a new inet packet is sent, resulting in until it is posthe first overlap. Thus, we have sible that a second inet packet could have been sent, i.e., until . After this point, the probability of one overlap for will be reduced by at every instant when a second inet packet could have been sent. This successive reduction of can be expressed as (14) is the Heaviside step function [13]. where Now (7), (8), and (12) can be combined to form the PDF of the number of overlaps during a reference packet of duration when a single inet is the source of interference. The combination yields

It is convenient to perform the variable substitution , since (11) can be expressed in terms of a function that gives the number of overlaps in the interval . The definition of in relation to and can also be seen in Fig. 2. Consider first the case where the reference packet begins in the active interval of the initial inet packet, corresponding to the first integrand in (11). For this case, one overlap is generated by the initial inet packet, and the probability of overlaps over the whole reference packet is, therefore, equal to the probability of overlaps in . On the other hand, if the reference packet begins in the guard interval of the initial inet packet, the probability of overlaps over the whole reference packet is given by the probability of overlaps in . Therefore, (11) becomes type (12) where the variable substitution has been used, and is defined as the probability of overlaps in the interval following the initial inet packet. must be determined. Fewer than zero To proceed, for all overlaps is impossible, and thus . If the reference packet ends before the inet packet does, corresponding to , only zero overlaps is possible and, and . therefore, However, if the reference packet is longer than the initial inet packet, at least one additional overlap will be generated, due to the successive inet transmissions following the initial inet . These can be seen as packet, yielding . boundary conditions on for and . At the It remains to determine , a new inet packet end of the initial inet packet, i.e., at will be sent, and thereby, an additional overlap is generated. The probability of exactly overlaps in the duration can be formuoverlaps in the interval follated using the probability for lowing the packet transmitted after the initial inet packet. More generally, if a packet of type is sent after an inet packet with probability , one more overlap has occurred during the time , and it remains to calculate the probability of overlaps . By conditioning on the event during the remaining time

(15) where is calculated according to Table I. The throughput can now be calculated by using (15) in (5) and (6). In the special case when only one packet type is used, straightforward but tedious derivations yield a closed-form expression and , as of (5), for

(16) This expression equals its counterpart in [12]. For the case of mixed packet types, no results are available in the literature for comparison. We have, therefore, verified that the expressions agree with Monte Carlo simulations of the system model. B. Approximate Analysis In order to avoid the somewhat tedious calculations required to arrive at the exact probability of successful transmission, we

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Fig. 4. Critical duration T + L d , for overlaps from a type-i packet during the transmission of a reference packet of duration T .

of the interfering Per definition, we know that a fraction packets are of type . Hence, the average number of type packets is (21) interfering inets transmit independently, the avSince all erage number of type packet transmissions by all inets during can be expressed as
Fig. 3.
p

Illustration of a typical PDF of the total number of overlaps,

(n; T ), and the probability of successful transmission given n overlaps, (1 1=q ) , for q = 20; N = 30, and T = 150 + 2700. The inet uses

three packet types according to Table II, and the reference packet is the longest packet, packet type three, in this table.

(22) For each transmitted reference packet of length , there is a critical duration associated with the interfering packet type. This is illustrated in Fig. 4. It is this duration that we need to take into account when counting the number of packets of type overlapping the packet of active interval . This follows, since the critical duration is the time during which a start of transmission of a type- packet will generate an overlap with the packet of active interval , and hence, a collision might occur. This results in an average number of possibly destructive packets of type . Given the average number of overlapping packets of each type, the average number of is packets overlapping a reference packet of length given by

derive an approximation. Fig. 3 exemplifies how the PDF of the , after a few convototal number of overlaps in (4), lutions exhibits a Gaussian-like shape. It would, therefore, be natural to use a Gaussian approximation. However, approxiwith a Gaussian distribution would require mating both the mean and the standard deviation of the number of overlaps. The latter one has, unfortunately, not been found without first evaluating the recursion in (13). Therefore, we approximate with a Dirac pulse located in the mean of the number of overlaps, i.e., in (17)

(23) where the dependence on has been explicitly indicated. If the standard deviation of the total number of overlaps is sufficiently small, as compared with its mean, the approximation will be accurate. By applying the approximation, (2) reduces to (18) and is introduced to denote the approximation, i.e., (19) Given the approximation in (19), the problem is reduced to . Using the average packet finding an expression for , we can calculate the average number of duration packets transmitted by a single interfering network during the duration as (20) IV. APPLICATION EXAMPLEINTERFERING BLUETOOTH PICONETS We will now consider a specific technology, i.e., a specific set of packet types, that demonstrates the applicability of the presented results. Our aim is to analyze the system throughput dependence on the packet-type probabilities, using either the exact or approximate throughput expressions. In order to determine (24) where we have used . A closed-form approximate expression for the throughput, , that does require the calculation of the PDF of the number of overlaps can now be stated using (6), (19), and (23). For the case when the reference network uses the same packet-type distribution as the inets, we have

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TABLE II PARAMETERS FOR BLUETOOTH EXAMPLE

any mix of packet types for up to 300 networks, which for practical purposes is a high number of networks. Second, it can be seen that the approximation underestimates the throughput. It is also observed that using only one packet type gives a low error. Interestingly, the error when using medium packets is higher than when using long packets. That this is indeed the case can be verified by deriving a closed-form expression for the relative error for the single-packet-type scenario. The derivation is straightforward, but beyond the scope of this paper. B. System Throughput Analysis By using the expression for the approximate throughput in (24), the system throughput can be analyzed. The system, or aggregate, throughput of the whole system with networks is given by (25) Since the unnormalized value of the throughput in (25) may be difficult to appreciate, it is of interest to study a normalized system throughput. For the normalization, we apply the largest obtainable throughput for a network without interference. For , and , we can calculate this maximal given parameters throughput of an interference-free network as (26)

~ Fig. 5. Relative approximation error, (R R)=R, between the exact and approximate expressions for the throughput when using only short, medium, or long packets, is shown as curves. Shaded region represents the range of relative approximation errors for all possible packet-type probabilities with a resolution of 0.025 in probability. Packet-type parameters can be found in Table II.

Expression (26) is maximized by only transmitting the packet type with the largest payload-to-dwell-time ratio . Hence, the normalized version of (25) is (27)

if the approximate expression can be used, we evaluate the approximation error in Section IV-A. Since the error is shown to be small, the approximation is used in the system throughput analysis in Section IV-B. The parameters in the example are chosen to roughly correspond to the ones used in Bluetooths Asynchronous Connectionless Link (ACL)-packet transmissions [14]. The piconets, which are equivalent to networks in our system model, use 79 channels, and they have three different packet types with different payload durations , but equal header duration and guard interval duration . The numeric values of the parameters are presented in Table II. A. Throughput Approximation Error Due to the complexity of the exact expression for the throughput, it is difficult to treat the relative approximation error analytically. Therefore, we perform a quantitative evaluation of the error between the exact and approximate throughput expressions for the parameters given in Table II. The result is shown in Fig. 5. The maximum and minimum of the relative error is calculated for all possible packet-type probabilities with a resolution of 0.025. For reference, the relative error is also presented for the cases where only short, medium, or long packets are used. The conclusions that can be drawn from this figure are, first, that the magnitude of the relative error does not exceed 0.7% for

Using the fixed parameters in our example in combination with the approximation of the throughput, we can estimate the upper and lower limits on the system throughput, thereby obtaining a range in which we can expect a system of interfering networks, using the same packet-type distribution, to operate. The only free variables are the packet-type probabilities , and to obtain estimates on upper and lower limits on throughput, we maximize and minimize the approximated throughput

(28) where the parameters in Table II are used. is done numerThe maximization and minimization of , and . Fig. 6 ically, with respect to the probabilities shows the results in terms of the normalized system throughput , following (27), when the number of interfering networks is between 1 and 300. The shaded region represents the range of achievable values of the normalized system throughput, obtained by varying the packet-type probabilities. In this figure, we have also indicated the packet-type probabilities that yield the maximum throughput. These probabilities are different depending on the number of interferers, and it is seen that for the

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throughput of slow FH systems. For example, it would be desirable to take the path loss, error-correcting codes, and other aspects into account in future investigations, based on the presented method of analysis. REFERENCES
[1] G. L. Stber and K. Yang, Throughput analysis of a slotted frequencyhopped spread-spectrum multiple-access network, in Proc. IEEE Int. Conf. Communications, vol. 1, 1990, pp. 494498. [2] M. Subbarao and B. Hughes, Optimal transmission ranges and code rates for frequency-hop packet radio networks, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 48, pp. 670678, Apr. 2000. [3] S. W. Kim, Y. H. Lee, and S. Kim, Bandwidth tradeoffs among coding, processing gain and modulation in frequency-hopped multiple access communications, Inst. Elect. Eng. Proc. Commun., vol. 141, pp. 6369, Apr. 1994. [4] J. Ilow, D. Hatzinakos, and A. Venetsanopoulos, Performance bounds evaluation of FH SS radio networks with interference modeled as a mixture of Gaussian and alpha-stable noise, in Proc. 6th IEEE PIMRC, vol. 1, 1995, pp. 153157. [5] E. A. Geraniotis and M. B. Pursley, Error probabilities for slow frequency-hopped spread-spectrum multiple-access communications over fading channels, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. COM-30, pp. 9961009, May 1982. [6] S. Chennakeshu, A. A. Hassan, J. B. Anderson, and B. Gudmundson, Capacity analysis of a TDMA-based slow frequency-hopped cellular system, IEEE Trans. Veh. Technol., vol. 45, pp. 531542, Aug. 1996. [7] F. Santucci and M. Pratesi, Outage analysis in slow frequency-hopping mobile radio networks, in Proc. 49th IEEE Vehicular Technology Conf., vol. 2, 1999, pp. 909913. [8] N. Guo and S. Morgera, Throughput efficiency of frequency-hopped ARQ over fading channels, in Proc. Canadian Conf. Electrical, Computer Engineering, vol. 2, 1993, pp. 883887. [9] K. A. Hamdi, Packet-error probability analysis for FH-CDMA unslotted packet networks, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 51, pp. 151154, Feb. 2003. [10] T. Vlachos and E. Geraniotis, Performance study of hybrid spread-spectrum random-access communications, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 39, pp. 975985, June 1991. [11] M. Soroushnejad and E. Geraniotis, Performance comparison of different spread-spectrum signaling schemes for cellular mobile radio networks, IEEE Trans. Commun., vol. 40, pp. 947956, May 1992. [12] A. El-Hoiydi, Interference between Bluetooth networksUpper bound on the packet-error rate, IEEE Commun. Lett., vol. 5, pp. 245247, June 2001. [13] L. Rde and B. Westergren, Mathematics Handbook for Science and Engineering. New York: Springer-Verlag, 1998. [14] J. Haartsen, The Bluetooth radio system, IEEE Pers. Commun., vol. 7, pp. 2836, Feb. 2000.

Fig. 6. Obtainable values (shaded) of normalized system throughput and throughput for the three single-packet-type cases. The lower limit of the shaded region, i.e., minimum throughput, is obtained for a mix of packet types, dependent on the number of networks.

given parameters, the maximum is obtained when only transmitting one packet type. However, the minimum throughput, represented by the lower limit of the shaded region, is obtained by using a varying mix of packet types that depends on the number of interferers. It is also observed that the system throughput increases up to about 45 interfering networks. Beyond that point, the system throughput decreases with additional networks, i.e., the addition of more networks to the system reduces the aggregated throughput. In other words, the throughput gain of additional networks is outweighed by the interference they give rise to. We can also conclude that we can never achieve a throughput greater than that of about 16 noninterfering networks. The large difference between maximum and minimum throughput in this example clearly illustrates the value of being able to analyze the impact of systems using multiple packet types. V. CONCLUSION In this paper, we determine the throughput of slow FH networks under the assumption that collisions result in a total loss of the data in the colliding packets. The major contribution of this paper lies in the ability to take into account packets of varying durations in the derivation of an expression for the exact throughput. In addition, we present an approximation of the throughput, which is less complex to evaluate. The results are applied to an existing technology, for which the exact and the approximate throughputs are shown to agree well, and the applicability of the approximation is illustrated by performing an analysis of the aggregate throughput of this technology. However, care should be taken in using the approximation for other technologies than the examined Bluetooth system, since it may give large errors for certain parameter settings, e.g., when the number of frequency channels is very small. Although the assumptions are somewhat restrictive, they represent a lower limit on the throughput in cases where the CCI is the limiting factor. Furthermore, our work is a significant first step toward deriving a more general expression for the

Fredrik Florn (S00) received the M.Sc. degree in electrical engineering in 1999 from Lund University, Lund, Sweden, where he is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in the Department of Electroscience. He is also with TeliaSonera AB (formerly Telia AB), Malm, Sweden. His research interests include diversity techniques, wideband CDMA systems, and mobile ad-hoc networks.

Andr Stranne (S00) was born in Karlskrona, Sweden, on June 28, 1974. He received the M.Sc. degree in physics in 1999 from Lund University, Lund, Sweden, where he is currently working toward the Ph.D. degree in the Department of Electroscience. In 1998, he joined TeliaSonera AB (formerly Telia AB), in Malm, Sweden, mainly working with radio propagation in city environments. His research interests include interference analysis of packet radio networks, radio interface design, and physical and medium access-control-layer-related quality of service aspects.

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Ove Edfors (S92A96M00) was born in rnskldsvik, Sweden in 1966. He received the M.Sc. degree in computer science and electrical engineering in 1990 and the Ph.D. degree in signal processing in 1996, both from Lule University of Technology, Lule, Sweden. In the spring of 1997, he worked as a Researcher at the Division of Signal Processing at the same university, and in July 1997, he joined the staff at the Department of Electroscience, Lund University, Lund, Sweden, where he currently is a Professor in radio systems. His research interests include radio systems, statistical signal processing, and low-complexity algorithms with applications in telecommunication.

Bengt-Arne Molin (M88) received the M.Sc. and Ph.D. degrees in electrical engineering in 1982 and 1993 respectively, both from Lund University, Lund, Sweden. He has been Chief Technical Officer with Axis Communications AB, Lund, Sweden, since 2000 and Adjunct Professor in wireless data communications at Lund University since 2002. He also held a position as Associate Professor in Applied Electronics. During 19972000, he was the Program Director of the national Swedish research program Personal Computing and Communication (PCC), focusing on next-generation mobile communications systems. His main interests today concern rich data communications over wired and wireless links.