EED310 PROJECT REPORT

Aim
1. To understand cooperative communication and analyze SER performance for DF cooperative signaling. 2. To understand the working of Software Defined Radio (SDR).
Submitted by: Siddhartha Das (Entry No.: 2009EE10418) Neeraj Yadav (Entry No.: 2009EE10400) Supervisor Prof. Manav Bhatnagar
Indian Institute of Technology Delhi May 2012

Acknowledgements
It is our pleasure to record deepest gratitude to our Supervisor Dr. Manav Bhatnagar for giving us this opportunity to work under his supervision and his interest and valuable suggestions. We would like also to thank the previous members of the GNU Radio Lab and all the students working in the lab for their constant support and cooperation throughout this project. Siddhartha Das (2009EE10418) Neeraj Yadav (2009EE10400)

Contents
Part One Abstract 1. Cooperative Communication 1.1 Cooperative Signaling Methods 1.1. a Detect and Forward Methods 1.1. b Amplify and Forward Methods 1.2. Essentials of Cooperative Communication 1.2.1 Problems and Assumptions 1.2.2 Opportunities 2. SER performance analysis for a DF cooperative signaling 2.1 System Model 2.2 SER Performance Analysis 2.2. a Closed Form SER Formulations 2.2. b Upper Bound SER Formulations 2.2. c Outage Probability 3. Applications Part Two Abstract 1. Software Defined Radio 1.1 GNU-Radio 1.2 USRP2 1.2.1 RFX2400 Daughterboard 2. Experimental Set-up 2.1 Transmitter Implementation 2.2 Packet Message 2.3 RRC Filter 2.4 Receiver References

PART ONE

To understand cooperative communication and analyze SER performance for DF cooperative signaling.
ABSTRACT Here we try to give a brief idea what cooperative communication is all about, in what way is it better, and why should we use it. The basic idea is that singleantenna mobiles in a multi-user scenario can share their antennas in a manner that creates a virtual MIMO system. The mobile wireless channel suffers from fading, meaning that the signal attenuation can vary significantly over the course of a given transmission. Transmitting independent copies of the signal generates diversity and can effectively combat the deleterious effects of fading. In particular, spatial diversity is generated by transmitting signals from different locations, thus allowing independently faded versions of the signal at the receiver. Cooperative communication generates this diversity in a new and interesting way.

1. COOPERATIVE COMMUNICATION
For a preliminary explanation of the ideas behind cooperative communication, we refer to Fig. 1. This figure shows two mobile agents communicating with the same destination. Each mobile has one antenna and cannot individually generate spatial diversity. However, it may be possible for one mobile to receive the other, in which case it can forward some version of overheard information along with its own data. Because the fading paths from two mobiles are statistically independent, this generates spatial diversity. Figure 1 In cooperative wireless communication, we are concerned with a wireless network, of the cellu-lar or ad hoc variety, where the wireless agents, which we call users, may increase their effective quality of service (measured at the physical layer by bit error rates, block error rates, or outage probability) via cooperation. In a cooperative communication system, each wireless user is assumed to transmit data as well as act as a cooperative agent for another user (Fig. 2). Cooperation leads to interesting trade-offs in code rates and transmit power. In the case of power, one may argue on one hand that more power is needed because each user, when in cooperative mode, is transmitting for both users. On the other hand, the baseline transmit power for both users will be reduced because of diversity. In the face of this trade-off, one hopes for a net reduction of transmit power, given every-thing else being constant. Similar questions arise for the rate of the sys-tem. In cooperative communication each user transmits both his/her own bits as well as some information for his/her partner; one might think this causes loss of rate in the system. However, the spectral efficiency of each user improves because, due to cooperation diversity the channel code rates can be increased. Again a trade-off is observed.

Figure 2 One may also describe cooperation as a zero-sum game in terms of power and bandwidth of the mobiles in the network. The premise of cooperation is that certain (admittedly unconventional) allocation strategies for the power and bandwidth of mobiles lead to significant gains in system performance. In the cooperative allocation of resources, each mobile transmits for multiple mobiles.

1.1 COOPERATIVE SIGNALING METHODS

We now review several of the main cooperative signaling methods. A simplified demonstration and comparison of these methods appears in Fig. 3 1.1.a Detect and Forward Methods This method is perhaps closest to the idea of a traditional relay. In this method a user attempts to detect the partners bits and then retransmits the detected bits (Fig. 3). The partners may be assigned mutually by the base station, or via some other technique. We consider two users partnering with each other, but in reality the only important factor is that each user has a partner that provides a second (diversity) data path. The easiest way to visualize this is via pairs, but it is also possible to achieve the same effect via other partnership topologies that remove the strict constraint of pairing. Partner assignment is a rich topic of research. This signaling has the advantage of simplicity and adaptability to channel conditions. Several notes must be made in reference to this method. First, it is possible that detection by the partner is unsuccessful, in which case cooperation can be detrimental to the eventual detection of the bits at the base station. Also, the base station needs to know the error characteristics of the inter user channel for optimal decoding.

Figure 3 1.1.b Amplify and Forward Methods Another simple cooperative signaling is the amplify-and-forward method. Each user in this method receives a noisy version of the signal transmitted by its partner. As the name implies, the user then amplifies and retransmits this noisy version. The base station combines the information sent by the user and partner, and makes a final decision on the transmitted bit (Fig.3). Although noise is amplified by cooperation, the base station receives two independently faded versions of the signal and can make better decisions on the detection of information. In amplify-and-forward it is assumed that the base station knows the inter user channel coefficients to do optimal decoding, so some mechanism of exchanging or estimating this information must be incorporated into any implementation. Another potential challenge is that sampling, amplifying, and retransmitting analog values is technologically nontrivial. Nevertheless, amplify-and-forward is a simple method that lends itself to analysis, and thus has been very useful in furthering our understanding of cooperative communication systems.

1.2 ESSENTIALS OF COOPERATIVE COMMUNICATION

1.2.1 Problems and Assumptions Cooperative communication, as described previously, assumes that the base station can separately receive the original and relayed transmissions. This is accomplished by transmitting the two parts orthogonally so that they can be separated. The most straightforward method is separation in time, that is, the users data and relayed data are transmitted in non-overlapping time intervals. It is also important to consider the knowledge required by the base station to handle cooperative communication. The amount of additional information varies for the various schemes introduced previously. In the simple detect-and-for -ward method, the base station needs to know the error probability of the inter user channel for optimal detection. In amplify-and-forward this is not required, since conventional channel estimation methods can be used to extract the necessary information from the direct and relayed signals. In the course of the development of cooperative communication, several complicating issues must be addressed, including the loss of rate to the cooperating mobile, overall interference in the network, cooperation assignment and hand -off, fairness of the system, and transmit and receive requirement on the mobiles. 1.2.2 Opportunities One may ask what the tangible benefits of cooperation are at the network level. To answer this, we point to the multi-antenna technologies that motivated cooperation in the first place. Studies have shown that the diversity provided by MIMO space-time codes can improve performance at the medium access control (MAC), network, and transport layers. Since the net effect of cooperation in a micro-scattering environment, in terms of bit and packet error rates, is similar to that of space- time codes (both provide spatial diversity), one can use the same studies to conclude that cooperation can provide the same advantages as MIMO space-time codes in the higher layers. An important question is how partners are assigned and managed in multi-user networks. In other words, how is it determined which users cooperate with each other, and how often are partners reassigned? Systems such as cellular, in which the users communicate with a central base station, offer the possibility of a centralized mechanism. Assuming that the base station has some knowledge of the all the channels between users, partners could be assigned to optimize a given performance criterion, such as the average block error rate for all users in the network. In contrast, systems such as ad hoc networks and sensor networks typically do not have any centralized control. Such systems therefore require a distributed cooperative protocol, in which users are able to independently decide with whom to cooper-ate at any given time. A related issue is the extension of the proposed cooperative methods to allow a

user to have multiple partners. The challenge here is to develop a scheme that treats all users fairly, does not require significant additional system resources, and can be implemented feasibly in conjunction with the systems multiple access protocol. Another important issue is the development of power control mechanisms for cooperative transmission. Work thus far generally assumes that the users transmit with equal power. It may be possible to improve performance even further by varying transmit power for each user.

2. SER PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS FOR A DECODE-AND-FORWARD COOPERATIVE SIGNALING

We consider a decode-and-forward cooperation protocol in wireless networks. We saw closed-form symbol-error-rate (SER) for the decode-and-forward cooperation systems with PSK and QAM signals. Since the closed-form SER formulation is complicated, we established two SER upper bounds to show the asymptotic performance of the cooperation system, in which one of them is tight at high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).

2.1 SYSTEM MODEL

A cooperation strategy has been considered with two phases in a wireless network. In Phase 1, each mobile user (or node) in the wireless network sends information to its destination, and the information is also received by other users at the same time. In Phase 2, each user helps others by decoding the information that it received from other users in Phase 1 and sending out the decoded symbols. In both phases, all users transmit signals through orthogonal channels by using TDMA, FDMA or CDMA scheme. For better understanding the cooperation concept, the focus is on a two- user cooperation scheme. Specifically, user 1 sends information to its destination in Phase 1, and user 2 also receives the information. User 2 decodes the information and helps user 1 to send out the information in Phase 2. Similarly, when user 2 sends its information to its destination in Phase 1, user 1 receives and decodes the information and will send it to user 2s destination in Phase 2. Due to the symmetry of the two users, only user 1s performance will be analyzed. Without loss of generality, we will consider a concise model as shown in Fig. 4, in which source denotes user 1 and relay represents user 2. Figure 4 In Phase 1, the source broadcasts its information to both the destination and the relay. The received signals y
s,d

and y
s,r

at the destination and the relay respectively can be written as (1) and (2)

 in which P
1

is the transmitted power at the source, x is the transmitted information symbol, and s ,d and
s,r

are additive noise. In (1) and (2), h

s,d

and h s,r are the channel coefficients from the source to the destination and the relay respectively. If the relay is able to decode the transmitted symbol correctly, then in Phase 2, the relay forwards the decoded symbol with power P
2

to the destination, otherwise the relay does not send or idle. Thus, the received signal at the destination in Phase 2 can be modeled as (3) Where P
2

=P
2

if the relay decodes the transmitted symbol correctly, otherwise P

2

=0, and h r,d is the channel coefficient from the relay to the destination. The channel coefficients h
s,d,

h
s,r and h r ,d are modeled as zero-mean, complex Gaussian random variables with variances
2

,d respectively. They are assumed to be known at the receiver, but not at the transmitter. The noise terms
2 s,d,

2 s,r

and

s,d,

s,r

and

r,d

are modeled as zero-mean complex Gaussian random variables with variance N 0. Jointly combining the received signal from the source directly in Phase 1 and that from the relay in Phase 2, the destination detects the transmitted symbols by use ofthe maximum-ratio combining (MRC) . We fix the total transmitted power P such as P
1

= P. (4) Note that the power saving in case of P

2

+P
2

=0 is negligible, since at high SNR, the chance that the relay incorrectly decodes the symbol is rare.

2.2 SER PERFORMANCE ANALYSIS

In this section, we analyzed the SER performance for the cooperative communication systems. We derived closed-form SER formulations for the systems with M -PSK and M

QAM modulation, and also provide two SER upper bounds to reveal the asymptotic performance. 2.2. a Closed-form SER formulations With knowledge of the channel coefficients h
s,d

(from the source to the destination) and h r,d (from the relay to the destination), the output of the detector at the destination can be written as (5) Where a
1

=P
1

h*
s,d

/N
0

and a
2

=P
2

h*
r,d

/N
0

. Assume that the transmitted symbol x has average energy 1, then the SNR of the output is (6)