This paper considers a passive localization scenario relying on a single transmitter, several receivers, and multiple moving targets to be located. The so-called “passive” targets equipped with RFID reflectors are capable of reflecting the signals from the transmitter to the receivers. Existing approaches assume that the transmitter and receivers are synchronous or quasi-synchronous, which is not always realistic in practical scenarios. Hence, an asynchronous wireless network is considered, where different clock offsets are assumed at different receivers. We propose a centralized expectation-maximization-based passive localization method for asynchronous receivers (EMpLaR) by treating the clock offsets as hidden variables. Thereby, the proposed algorithm makes use of Taylor expansions to arrive at a closed-form maximization. Furthermore, to improve the robustness to link failures and to reduce the energy consumption, we propose a distributed localization approach based on average consensus formulation to locate the target at each receiver. By applying a quadratic polynomial approximation of the function on which consensus has to be reached, both the computational complexity and the communications overhead are significantly reduced. The Cramér-Rao bound of the target location is derived as a benchmark of our proposed algorithms. Our simulation results show that the proposed centralized and distributed EMpLaR algorithms match the Cramér-Rao bound and significantly improve the localization performance compared with the conventional methods.

In this paper, we propose a timing synchronization method for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems by exploiting the averaged differential correlations of preamble symbol. For the designed simple preamble whose second half-symbol is the complex conjugate of the first one in the time-domain, the proposed timing synchronization method has an impulse-shaped timing metric. Simulation results indicate that the proposed method improves the timing estimate mean square errors (MSE) performance remarkably than conventional methods at low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in multipath fading channel. To reduce the computation complexity of the proposed method, we suggest modifying the timing estimation by simplifying the amplitude information of OFDM signals in polar coordinates.

In this paper, we propose a novel signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) estimation method for linear modulations on additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel. It estimates noise power directly without estimating the received total power. The estimation mean and mean square error (MSE) are analyzed theoretically and verified by simulations. Results show that the proposed SNR estimator performs better at low SNR than the conventional estimators while it suffers a little degradation at high SNR. Moreover, the proposed estimator can be implemented with less real multiplications than the conventional ones.

This study studies the feedforward (FF) non-data-aided (NDA) carrier phase estimation of the amplitude and phase shift keying (APSK) signals. The true Cramer–Rao bounds (CRBs) for NDA phase estimation of APSK signals are derived and evaluated numerically using Gauss–Hermite quadrature. The jitter variance of the FF Viterbi–Viterbi (V&V) algorithm is analysed assuming the absence of data pattern noise. It is proved that, when the design parameter μ=2, the jitter variance is able to converge asymptotically to the modified CRB (MCRB) at high signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). For practical application, the parameter μ is also optimised for 16/32/64-APSK signals at different SNRs. The analytical results of the jitter variance are verified by Monte-Carlo evaluations. It is shown that, for 32/64-APSK signals, the plain V&V algorithm cannot approach the CRBs due to the data pattern noise. A modified V&V algorithm based on the constellation partition and a linear combination of the sub-estimators is proposed to eliminate the divergence. Simulation results show that the jitter variance of the proposed estimator is very close to the CRB at the SNRs of interest and converges to the MCRB at high SNRs.

We analyze the performance of a code-aided (CA) decision-directed (DD) timing synchronizer, which can exploit the dependence structure across coded symbols to improve the timing recovery accuracy. Due to the inherent coupling between timing recovery and decoding, most existing studies rely on extensive simulation rather than on analytical methods to evaluate performance of timing recovery for coded systems. We propose analytical methods in this paper towards this end. A first key step is to approximate timing-offset-induced inter-symbol interference (ISI) as an additive Gaussian noise, since in the low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime the background noise is large enough to mask the ISI. Then, we derive semi-analytical expressions for the mean and variance of extrinsic information as functions of timing offset, building on which we characterize both open-loop and closed-loop performance of decision-directed timing synchronizers. Monte Carlo simulation results corroborate that the proposed method accurately characterizes the performance of CA DD timing recovery, for systems with a wide range of channel bandwidth and different channel codes.

In this paper, we consider the effect of different rules of symbol decision on the performance of decision-directed synchronizers for LDPC-coded systems. Different from the conventional hard symbol decision based on the Maximum-A- Posteriori (MAP) criterion, soft symbol decision can be considered as the Minimum-Mean-Square-Error (MMSE) estimation of the transmitted symbol. By whether or not the coding constraints are taken into account, soft symbol decision is derived in non-code-aided (NCA) mode and code-aided (CA) mode, respectively. The performance of the soft decision-directed (SDD) synchronizer is compared with that of the hard decision-directed (HDD) counterpart in both NCA and CA mode. Simulation results show that, without much implementation complexity increase, the jitter performance of the synchronizer in CA mode significantly outperforms that in NCA mode. It is also observed that, in the scenario of this paper, SDD synchronizer works only slightly better than HDD synchronizer.

In this paper, based on analyzing some existing phase lock detectors for quadratic phase-shift keying (QPSK),we propose a novel method of estimating the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) operating with the lock metric value of classical Mth-power (M=4) phase lock detector. The proposed lock detector-based SNR estimator can perform better than the conventional SNR estimator in terms of mean estimated value (MEV) at medium to high SNR when phase recovery loop is in-lock status. And its normalized mean squared error (NMSE) can reach Cramer-Rao bounds (CRBs) at that SNR. Moreover, the computational complexity of new estimator operating in phase recovery loop is analyzed with less additional multiplications than that of conventional one. This estimation method can also be applied to other similar phase lock detectors.

An improved data-aided (DA) frequency error detector (FED) and a frequency lock detector are proposed under large frequency offset for Digital Video Broadcasting Satellite Second Generation (DVB-S2) system. Computer simulations results show that the proposed error detector can increase the frequency acquisition range and decrease the acquisition time without complexity increase. Its closed-loop normalized frequency root mean square error (RMSE) improves at least 1.5 dB compared with that of conventional error detector. The proposed lock detector shows good lock indication. Its modified version can save more symbols to indicate the locking status.

For the symbol timing recovery techniques which are susceptible to carrier phase offset, clockless phase recovery is necessary in advance. In this paper, we propose a clockless nondata-aided (NDA) feedback phase error detector (PED) for M-ary phase-shift keying (MPSK) signal. Its derivation is given based on maximum likelihood (ML) criterion. The clockless NDA (Mthpower)PED can also be generalized with a design parameter 0≤m≤M to improve performance at low SNR. The openloop S-curves and closed-loop phase error variances of these PEDs are given with extensive simulations. Results show that the S-curve of clockless Mth-power PED is robust to signal-tonoise ratio (SNR). Its phase error variance is investigated with excellent performance under different shaping roll-off factors and parameter m. We also analyze the clockless decision-directed (DD) PED which may not be a good choice for over-sampled signals due to its unstable equilibrium point of S-curve.

Data-aided (DA) signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) estimation is required especially at low SNR. The conventional maximum likelihood (ML) DA SNR estimator requires perfect carrier phase estimation and frequency recovery. In this paper, we propose a novel carrier frequency robust DA SNR estimator with its improved variant using autocorrelation of received MPSK symbols. Computer simulations are used to examine their performance in terms of mean estimation value (MEV) and normalized mean square error (NMSE). For the example system in simulations, the MEV of proposed estimator is accurate enough with normalized frequency error on the order of symbol rate. However, its NMSE can not reach DA normalized Cramer-Rao bound (NCRB) even with large observatory length, whereas its NMSE may perform a little worse at high SNR for short pilot symbols. On the other hand, fortunately the its improved variant can reach NCRB with enough pilot symbols. What's more, the proposed DA SNR estimators can operate under large frequency errors or before the frequency recovery unit with baud rate. The implementation complexity is also analyzed.