WIRELESS COMMUNICATION

MODULE IV
2
 Diversity
3

 Fading imposes a large penalty on the performance of modulation

over wireless channels.

 One of the best techniques to mitigate the effects of fading is

diversity combining of independently fading signal paths.

 Diversity combining exploits the fact that independent signal paths

have a low probability of experiencing deep fades
simultaneously.

 Thus, the idea behind diversity is to send the same data over
independent fading paths.

 These independent paths are combined in such a way that the

fading of the resultant signal is reduced.
 Diversity…
4

 Consider a system with two antennas at either the

transmitter or receiver that experience independent fading.
 By selecting the antenna with the strongest signal, a
technique known as selection combining, we obtain a much
better signal than if we had just one antenna.
 Diversity techniques that mitigate the effect of multipath
fading are called microdiversity.
 Diversity to mitigate the effects of shadowing from buildings
and objects is called macrodiversity.
 Realization of Independent Fading
5
Paths
 There are many ways of achieving independent fading paths
in a wireless system.
 One method is to use multiple transmit or receive antennas,
also called an antenna array, where the elements of the array
are separated in distance.
 This type of diversity is referred to as space diversity.
 Receiver space diversity has the following advantages:
 Independent fading paths are realized without an increase in
transmit signal power or bandwidth.
 Coherent combining of the diversity signals increases the signal-to-
noise power ratio at the receiver over the SNR that would be
obtained with just a single receive antenna.
 Realization of Independent Fading
6
Paths…
 This increase in SNR is called array gain.
 Array gain can be achieved by transmitter diversity by
weighting the antenna transmit powers relative to the channel
gains.
 Space diversity also provides diversity gain, defined as the
change in slope of the error probability resulting from the
diversity combining.
 The maximum diversity gain for either transmitter or receiver
space diversity typically requires that the separation
between antennas be such that the fading amplitudes
corresponding to each antenna are approximately
independent.
 Realization of Independent Fading
7
Paths…
 A second method of achieving diversity is by using either two
transmit antennas or two receive antennas with different
polarization.
 The two transmitted waves follow the same path but it is highly
improbable that the signals received on the two differently
polarized antennas would be simultaneously in a deep
fade.
 Polarization diversity has the following disadvantages:
 It is possible to have at most two diversity branches, corresponding
to the two types of polarization.
 Half the power is lost effectively because the transmit or receive
power is divided between the two differently polarized antennas.
 Realization of Independent Fading
8
Paths…
 Angle or directional diversity can be obtained by using directional
antennas.
 Directional antennas may restrict the receive antenna beamwidth to a
given angle.
 If the angle is very small then at most one of the multipath rays will
fall within the receive beamwidth, so there is no multipath fading from
multiple rays.
 Angle diversity has the following disadvantages:
 Requires either a sufficient number of directional antennas to span all
possible directions of arrival or a single antenna whose directivity can be
steered to the arrival angle of one of the multipath components.
 SNR may decrease owing to the loss of multipath components that fall
outside the receive antenna beamwidth – unless the directional gain of the
antenna is sufficiently large to compensate for this lost power.
 Realization of Independent Fading
9
Paths…
 Frequency diversity is achieved by transmitting the same narrowband
signal at different carrier frequencies, where the carriers are
separated by the coherence bandwidth of the channel.
 Frequency diversity has the following disadvantages:
 Requires additional transmit power to send the signal over multiple frequency
bands.
 Time diversity is achieved by transmitting the same signal at different
times, where the time difference is greater than the channel coherence
time.
 Time diversity has the following disadvantages:
 The data rate is lowered since data is repeated in the diversity time slots
rather than sending new data in those time slots.
 Receiver Diversity
10

System Model:
 The independent fading paths associated with multiple receive
antennas are combined to obtain a signal that is then passed
through a standard demodulator.
 There are several combining techniques which vary in complexity
and overall performance:
 Linear: The output of the combiner is just a weighted sum of the
different fading paths or branches.
 Receiver Diversity…
11
 Receiver Diversity…
12

 If more than one of the αi are nonzero then the combiner adds
together multiple paths, though each path may be weighted by
a different value.
 Combining more than one branch signal requires co-phasing,
where the phase θi of the branch is removed through
multiplication by αi = aie−jθi for some real valued ai .
 This phase removal requires coherent detection of each branch
to determine its phase θi .
 Without co-phasing, the branch signals would not add up
coherently in the combiner, so the resulting output could still
exhibit significant fading due to constructive and destructive
addition of the signals in all the branches.
 Receiver Diversity…
13

 The signal output from the combiner equals the original

transmitted signal s(t) multiplied by a random complex
amplitude term α = iairi .
 This complex amplitude term results in a random SNR γ at the
combiner output, where the distribution of γ is a function of
the number of diversity paths, the fading distribution on each
path, and the combining technique.
 The array gain in receiver space diversity results from coherent
combining of multiple receive signals.
 If there is no fading, ri = Es where Es is the energy per symbol
of the transmitted signal. Assume a noise power spectral density
of N0/2 per branch.
 Receiver Diversity…
14

 Then the SNR of each branch is given by

 If ai = ri/N0, then the received SNR is given by,

 Thus, in the absence of fading, with appropriate weighting there

is an M-fold increase in SNR due to the coherent combining of
the M signals received from the different antennas.
 Receiver Diversity…
15

 This SNR increase in the absence of fading is referred to as the

array gain.
 Array gain Ag is defined as the increase in the average
combined SNR γ over the average branch SNR γ

 The array gain allows a system with multiple transmit or receive

antennas in a fading channel to achieve better performance
than a system without diversity in an AWGN channel with the
same average SNR.
 Receiver Diversity…
16

 The performance of a diversity system in terms of Ps and Pout is

as defined

where Ps(γ ) is the probability of symbol error for demodulation of

s(t) in AWGN with SNR γ and γ0 is some target SNR value.
 The more favorable distribution for γ leads to a decrease in

Ps and Pout as a result of diversity combining, and the resulting

performance advantage is called the diversity gain.
 Receiver Diversity…
17

 The average probability of error for some diversity systems can

be expressed in the form Ps = cγ −M, where c is a constant that
depends on the specific modulation and coding, γ is the
average received SNR per branch, and M is the diversity order
of the system.
 The diversity order indicates how the slope of the average
probability of error as a function of average SNR changes
with diversity.
 Selection Combining
18

 In selection combining (SC), the combiner outputs the signal on the

branch with the highest SNR r2i /Ni .
 This is equivalent to choosing the branch with the highest r2i + Ni if the
noise power Ni = N is the same on all branches.
 Because only one branch is used at a time, SC often requires just one
receiver that is switched into the active antenna branch.
 Advantages of SC combining techniques:
 The path output from the combiner has an SNR equal to the maximum SNR of
all the branches.
 Since only one branch output is used, co-phasing of multiple branches is not
required; hence this technique can be used with either coherent or differential
modulation.
 Selection Combining…
19

 For M-branch diversity, the cumulative distribution function (cdf ) of γ

is given by

 The probability distribution of γ is obtained by differentiating Pγ(γ)

relative to γ and the outage probability is obtained by evaluating
Pγ(γ) at γ = γ0.
 Assume that we have M branches with uncorrelated Rayleigh fading
amplitudes ri .
 The instantaneous SNR on the ith branch is therefore given by
γi = r2i /N.
 Selection Combining…
20

 Defining the average SNR on the ith branch as γi = E[γi], the
SNR distribution will be exponential:

 The outage probability for a target γ0 on the ith branch in

Rayleigh fading is

 The outage probability of the selection combiner for the target

γ0 is then
 Selection Combining…
21

 If the average SNR for all of the branches are the same (γi =
γ for all i), then this reduces to

 The probability distribution of γ is obtained by differentiating

the above equation relative to γ0
 Selection Combining…
22

 The average SNR of the combiner output in independent and

identically distributed Rayleigh fading is

 It is observed that the average SNR gain and corresponding array

gain increase with M, but not linearly.
 Increasing M(the number of branches) yields diminishing returns in
terms of the array gain.
 Problem
23

Q) Find the outage probability of BPSK modulation at Pb = 10−3 for a

Rayleigh fading channel with SC diversity for M = 1 (no diversity), M =
2, and M = 3. Assume equal branch SNRs of γ = 15 dB.
SOLUTION:
A BPSK modulated signal with γb = 7 dB has Pb = 10−3.
We can consider γ0 = 7 dB = 100.7 and γ = 101.5

For M = 1, Pout = 0.146

M = 2, Pout = 0.0215
M = 3, Pout = 0.0031
 Selection Combining…
24
 Selection Combining…
25
 Maximal-Ratio Combining
26

 In maximal-ratio combining (MRC) the output is a weighted sum

of all branches, so the αi in all branches are nonzero.
 The signals are co-phased and so αi = aie −jθi, where θi is the
phase of the incoming signal on the ith branch.
 The envelope of the combiner output will be
 Assuming the same noise PSD N0/2 in each branch yields a total
noise PSD Ntot/2 at the combiner output of Ntot/2 =
.
 The output SNR of the MRC combiner is
 Maximal-Ratio Combining…
27

 The goal is to maximize the overall SNR γ.

 Branches with a high SNR should be weighted more than
branches with a low SNR, so the weights a2i should be
proportional to the branch SNRs r2i /N0.
 The optimal value of ai that maximize γ by taking partial
derivatives of the previous equation and it is obtained as

 The resulting combiner SNR becomes γ =

 Thus, the SNR of the combiner output is the sum of SNRs on
each branch  Maximum diversity in MRC
 Maximal-Ratio Combining…
28

 The average combiner SNR and corresponding array gain increase

linearly with the number of diversity branches M, in contrast to the
diminishing returns associated with the average combiner SNR in SC.
 The distribution of γ is obtained as

assuming an i.i.d. Rayleigh fading on each branch with equal average

branch SNR γ.
 The corresponding outage probability for a given threshold γ0 is given

by
 Maximal-Ratio Combining…
29

 The average probability of bit error is given by

where  

Comparing the outage probability for MRC with that of SC in or

comparing the average probability of error for MRC with that of
SC it is observed that MRC has significantly better performance
than SC.
 Maximal-Ratio Combining…
30
 Problem
31

Q) Compute the average probability of bit error of BPSK under

maximal-ratio combining two-branch diversity with iid Rayleigh
fading. Average SNR on each branch is 10dB.
SOLUTION:
M=2
 = 10

= (10/11)
 Transmitter Diversity
32

 In transmit diversity there are multiple transmit antennas, and the

transmit power is divided among these antennas.
 Transmit diversity is desirable in systems where more space, power,
and processing capability is available on the transmit side than on
the receive side.
 Transmit diversity design depends on whether or not the complex
channel gain is known to the transmitter.
 When this gain is known, the system is quite similar to receiver
diversity.
 Without this channel knowledge, transmit diversity gain requires a
combination of space and time diversity via a novel technique
called the Alamouti scheme and its extensions.
 Channel Known at Transmitter
33

 Consider a transmit diversity system with M transmit antennas

and one receive antenna.
 Assume that the path gain riejθi associated with the ith antenna is
known at the transmitter; this is referred to as having channel
side information (CSI) at the transmitter, or CSIT.
 Let s(t) denote the transmitted signal with total energy per
symbol Es .
 The signal is multiplied by a complex gain αi = aie−jθi (0 ≤ ai ≤
1) and then sent through the ith antenna.
 This complex multiplication performs both co-phasing and
weighting relative to the channel gains.
 Channel Known at Transmitter…
34

 Because of the average total energy constraint Es , the weights

must satisfy = 1.
 The weighted signals transmitted over all antennas are added
“in the air”, which leads to a received signal given by

 Let N0/2 denote the noise PSD in the receiver.

 Using a similar analysis as in receiver MRC diversity, we see that
the weights ai that achieve the maximum SNR are given by
 Channel Known at Transmitter…
35

 The resulting SNR is

 The branch SNR between the transmit antenna and the

receive antenna for the above overall SNR will be

 Thus the transmit diversity when the channel gains are known
to the transmitter is very similar to receiver diversity with
MRC: the received SNR is the sum of SNRs on each of the
individual branches.
 Channel Known at Transmitter…
36

 If all antennas have the same gain ri = r, then ,

so there is an array gain of M corresponding to an M-fold increase

in SNR over a single antenna transmitting with full power.
 The complication of transmit diversity is to obtain the channel
phase and the channel gain – at the transmitter.
 These channel values can be measured at the receiver using a
pilot technique and then fed back to the transmitter.
 Channel Unknown at Transmitter –
37
The Alamouti Scheme
 Assume here that the transmitter no longer knows the channel
gains riejθi, so there is no CSIT.
 Consider a strategy whereby for a two-antenna system we
divide the transmit energy equally between the two antennas.
 The transmit signal on antenna i will be for s(t)
the transmit signal with energy per symbol Es .
 Assume that each antenna has a complex Gaussian channel gain
(i =1, 2) with mean 0 and variance 1.
 The received signal is then
 Channel Unknown at Transmitter –
38
The Alamouti Scheme…
 h1 + h2 is the sum of two complex Gaussian random variables and
thus is itself a complex Gaussian, with mean equal to the sum of
means (0) and variance equal to the sum of variances (2).

 Hence is a complex Gaussian random variable

with mean 0 and variance 1, so the received signal has the
same distribution as if we had just used one antenna with the
full energy per symbol.
 It means that no performance advantage has been obtained from
the two antennas.
 A scheme which combines both space and time diversity was
developed by Alamouti which provides transmit diversity gain
can be obtained even in the absence of channel information.
 Channel Unknown at Transmitter –
39
The Alamouti Scheme…
 Alamouti’s scheme is designed for a digital communication
system with two-antenna transmit diversity.
 The scheme works over two symbol periods and it is assumed
that the channel gain is constant over this time.
 Over the first symbol period, two different symbols s1 and s2
(each with energy Es/2) are transmitted simultaneously from
antennas 1 and 2, respectively.
 Over the next symbol period, symbol −s 2 is transmitted from
antenna 1 and symbol s 1 is transmitted from antenna 2, each
again with symbol energy Es/2.
 Channel Unknown at Transmitter –
40
The Alamouti Scheme…
 Assume complex channel gains hi = riejθi (i = 1, 2) between the ith
transmit antenna and the receive antenna.
 The received symbol over the first symbol period is

 The received symbol over the second symbol period is

where ni (i = 1, 2) is the AWGN sample at the receiver associated

with the ith symbol transmission.
 Channel Unknown at Transmitter –
41
The Alamouti Scheme…
 The receiver uses these sequentially received symbols to form the
vector y = [y1 y 2 ]T given by

where s = [s1 s2 ]T, n = [n1 n2 ]T, and

 Channel Unknown at Transmitter –
42
The Alamouti Scheme…

 define the new vector z = HHA y where

HHAHA = (|h21| + |h22|)I2
 Therefore,

where n ̃ = n is a complex Gaussian noise vector with mean 0

and covariance matrix E[ ] = (|h12| + |h22|)N0I2.
 Channel Unknown at Transmitter –
43
The Alamouti Scheme…
 The diagonal nature of z effectively decouples the two symbol
transmissions, so that each component of z corresponds to one of
the transmitted symbols:

 The received SNR thus corresponds to the SNR for zi given by

where the factor of 2 comes from the fact that si is transmitted

using half the total symbol energy Es .
 Channel Unknown at Transmitter –
44
The Alamouti Scheme…
 The received SNR is thus equal to the sum of SNRs on each
branch divided by 2.
 The Alamouti scheme achieves a diversity order of 2 – the
maximum possible for a two-antenna transmit system –
despite the fact that channel knowledge is not available at the
transmitter.
 However, it only achieves an array gain of 1, whereas MRC can
achieve an array gain and a diversity gain of 2.
 Channel Unknown at Transmitter – The
Alamouti Scheme for 2x2 MIMO
45

 The 2x2 Alamouti space time block code (STBC) system shown in
figure below is similar to 2x1 Alamouti but we have one more
receiver antenna.
 This system is consists of 2 Transmitters and 2 Receivers.
 In 2x1 Alamouti we send block codes to just one receiver but in
this system we send block codes to 2 receiver.
 Channel Unknown at Transmitter – The
Alamouti Scheme for 2x2 MIMO…
46

y11 = X1h11 + X2h12 + n11 (first timeslot received data in Rx1)

y12 = -X2*h11 + X1*h12 + n12 (second timeslot received data in Rx1)
y21 = X1h21 + X2h22 + n21 (first timeslot received data in Rx2)
y22 = -X2*h21 + X1*h22 + n22 (second timeslot received data in Rx2)

where
X1 and X2 are the transmitted data
y11 and y21 are received data (for first time slot)
y12 and y22 are received data in (for second time slot)
h11, h12, h21 and h22 are the channel parameters
n11, n12, n21 and n22 are the AWGN noise
 Channel Unknown at Transmitter – The
Alamouti Scheme for 2x2 MIMO…
47

 Now we take conjugates of y12 and y22 to get rid of conjugates of

transmitted data at the receiver.
y*12 = -X2h*11 + X1h*12 + n*12
y*22 = -X2h*21 + X1h*22 + n*22

 In matrix form
 Channel Unknown at Transmitter – The
Alamouti Scheme for 2x2 MIMO…
48

 We now define X, Y, H, N matrices as

and we get Y = HX + N
 In order to get transmitted data at the receiver, we eliminate “H
“ matrix as 2x1 Alamouti scheme.
 Channel Unknown at Transmitter – The
Alamouti Scheme for 2x2 MIMO…
49

 We take the Hermitian transposition of the H matrix.

 HH H is obtained as

 We define ‘d’ as

 Then HH H is
 Channel Unknown at Transmitter – The
Alamouti Scheme for 2x2 MIMO…
50

 Inorder to get the identity matrix,

 Now,

 As a result we get transmitted data at the receiver with noise and

channel effect.
 Channel Unknown at Transmitter – The
Alamouti Scheme for 2x2 MIMO…
51

 Thus the Alamouti scheme with 2x2 antennas shows the better
performance when compared to MRC case.
 This is because the effective channel information from 2 receive
antenna over 2 symbols results in diversity order of 4.
 In general receive antennas, the diversity order of 2
transmit antenna Alamouti STBC is 2 .
 Equalization
52

 Delay spread causes intersymbol interference (ISI), which can

cause an irreducible error when the symbol time is on the same
order as the channel delay spread ( .
 Equalization defines any signal processing technique used at
the receiver to alleviate the ISI problem caused by delay
spread.
 Mitigation of ISI is required when the symbol time Ts is on the
order of the channel’s rms delay spread .
 Equalizer design must balance ISI mitigation with noise
enhancement, since both the signal and the noise pass through
the equalizer, which can increase the noise power.
 Equalization…
53

 Nonlinear equalizers suffer less from noise enhancement than linear

equalizers but typically entail higher complexity.
 Equalizers require an estimate of the channel impulse or frequency
response to mitigate the resulting ISI.
 Since the wireless channel varies over time, the equalizer must
 Learn the frequency or impulse response of the channel (training)
 Then update its estimate of the frequency response as the channel changes
(tracking)
 The process of equalizer training and tracking is often referred to as
adaptive equalization, since the equalizer adapts to the changing
channel.
 Equalizer training and tracking can be quite difficult if the channel is
changing rapidly.
 Equalizer Noise Enhancement
54

 Equalizer must balance ISI mitigation so that noise power in the received
signal is not enhanced.

 Consider a simple analog equalizer shown in the figure above.

 Consider a signal s(t) that is passed through a channel with frequency
response H(f).
 At the receiver front end, white Gaussian noise n(t) is added to the signal
and so the signal input to the receiver is
Y(f ) = S(f)H(f) + N(f)
 Equalizer Noise Enhancement…
55

where N(f ) is white noise with power spectral density (PSD) N0/2.
 If the bandwidth of s(t) is B, then the noise power within the signal
bandwidth of interest is N0B.
 In order to completely remove ISI, an analog equalizer is introduced in
the receiver that is defined by

 The received signal Y(f ) after passing through this equalizer becomes

where N’(f) is colored Gaussian noise with power spectral density .

 Equalizer Noise Enhancement…
56

 Now all ISI is removed but it encounters noise enhancement under

certain conditions.
 If H(f) has a spectral null (H(f0) = 0 for some f0) at any
frequency within the bandwidth of s(t), then the power of the
noise N’(f) is infinite.
 Even without a spectral null, if some frequencies in H(f) are
greatly attenuated then the equalizer Heq(f ) = 1/H(f) will
greatly enhance the noise power at those frequencies.
 In this case, even though the ISI effects are removed, the
equalized system will perform poorly because of its greatly
reduced SNR.
 Equalizer Noise Enhancement…
57

 Linear digital equalizers work by approximately inverting the

channel frequency response and thus have the most noise
enhancement.

 Nonlinear equalizers do not invert the channel frequency

response, so they tend to suffer much less from noise
enhancement.
 Equalizer Types
58

 Equalization techniques fall into two broad categories: linear

and nonlinear.
 Linear Techniques:
 The simplest to implement and to understand conceptually.
 Suffer from more noise enhancement than nonlinear equalizers and
hence are not used in most wireless applications.
 Non-Linear Techniques:
 Decision-feedback equalization (DFE) is the most common because it
is fairly simple to implement and usually performs well.
 On channels with low SNR, the DFE suffers from poor performance. The
optimal equalization technique is maximum likelihood sequence
estimation (MLSE).
 Equalizer Types…
59
 Equalizer Types…
60

 Linear and nonlinear equalizers are typically implemented using

a transversal or lattice structure.
 The transversal structure is a filter with N −1 delay elements and
N taps featuring tunable complex weights.
 The lattice filter uses a more complex recursive structure.
 Adaptive equalizers require algorithms for updating the filter
tap coefficients during training and tracking.
 These algorithms generally incorporate trade-offs between
complexity, convergence rate, and numerical stability.
 Equalizer Types…
61

 Equalizers can also be categorized as symbol-by-symbol (SBS)

or sequence estimators (SEs).
 SBS equalizers remove ISI from each symbol and then detect
each symbol individually.
 All linear equalizers as well as the DFE are SBS equalizers.
 Sequence estimators detect sequences of symbols, so the effect
of ISI is part of the estimation process.
 Maximum likelihood sequence estimation is the optimal form of
sequence detection
 Linear Equalizer
62

 We assume a linear equalizer implemented via a 2L +1 = N-

tap transversal filter:
 Linear Equalizer…
63

 For a given equalizer size N, the equalizer design must specify

(i) the tap weights {wi}Li=−L for a given channel frequency
response and (ii) the algorithm for updating these tap weights as
the channel varies.
 Even though the performance metric in wireless systems is outage
probability, it is difficult to optimize the equalizer coefficients
subject to this criteria.
 Hence an indirect optimization that balances ISI mitigation with
the prevention of noise enhancement is employed.
 Zero-Forcing (ZF) Equalizers
64
 Zero-Forcing (ZF) Equalizers…
65

 The samples {yn} input to the equalizer can be represented

based on the combined impulse response f(t) = h(t) g (−t) as

where Ng(z) is the z-transform of the noise samples at the output of

the matched filter G m(1/z ) and

 The zero-forcing equalizer removes all ISI introduced in the

composite response f(t).
 Zero-Forcing (ZF) Equalizers…
66

 To accomplish this, the equalizer impulse response should be

 The power spectrum N(z) of the noise samples at the equalizer

output is given by
 Zero-Forcing (ZF) Equalizers…
67

 If the channel H(z) is sharply attenuated at any frequency within

the signal bandwidth of interest – as is common on frequency-
selective fading channels – the noise power will be significantly
increased.
 This requires an equalizer design that better optimizes between
ISI mitigation and noise enhancement. One such equalizer is
the MMSE equalizer.
 Since linear equalizers are implemented as transversal tap
filters, we can find a set of coefficients {wi} that best
approximates the zero-forcing equalizer.
 Problem
68

Q) Consider a channel with impulse response

Find a two-tap ZF equalizer for this channel.

SOLUTION:
Sampled version of h(t), 

h[n] = 1+ e−Ts/τδ[n −1] + e−2Ts/τδ[n − 2]+· · ·

−1
H(z) = 1+ e−Ts/τz + e−2Ts/τz−2 + e−3Ts/τz−3 +· · ·
 Problem…
69

Heq(z) = 1/H(z) = 1 − e−Ts/τz −1.

The two-tap ZF equalizer therefore has tap weight coefficients w0 = 1

and w1 = e−Ts/τ.