In this paper, a channel coding scheme is considered for a pair of cooperative broadcasting nodes in a cognitive wireless network. The scheme offers two levels of error protection using as components two low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes drawn from the IEEE 802.16e (WiMAX) specification. A modified version of the |u|u+v| code construction of Plotkin is employed, to obtain two values of error protection for two types messages, as follows. Each cooperating node transmits two sequences: For the first node, the first sequence is a modulated codeword m(v̅1) from a code C1, while the second node remains quiet. The second sequence sent by the first node is again m(v̅1) while the second code sends a modulated codeword m(v̅2) from a code C2. At the receiving node antenna, the sequences are superposed to construct an “over-the-air” modulated |u|u + v| code. Messages with a higher degree of error protection are intended for receiving nodes physically located far from the pair of cooperating nodes. The performance is examined of two-level codes using both BPSK/QPSK mappings and two 4-PAM mappings with two different levels of average energy, over both AWGN and Rayleigh fading channels.

Cognitive radios aim to coexist in the unused spectrum bands which are licensed to primary users without harming the primary transmission/reception. For a cognitive radio, it is important to detect the band in which the primary is operating as fast as possible and with high reliability in order to adapt its transmission. In this work, we proposeP-partitioningmethodin combination with energy detectors for the search of the band that the primary user is operating. In the P-partitioning method, the spectrum bands are categorized into P groups and the group that the primary band belongs to is detected in a recursive fashion. The energy detector operates on each group and the test statistics is the total energy received in the bands belonging to the group. The proposed search technique has detection timePlogP(N), whereNis the number of bands in the spectrum. WhenP=N, the proposed scheme is equivalent to linear search with detection time N. We study the performance of the proposed scheme for a single non-cooperative radio and also for multiple cooperating radios. For a single cognitive radio, we provide an upper bound on the probability of correct detection which presents two different regimes of operation. In the low SNR regime, although it is counter-intuitive the partitioning improves the probability of detection. This is due an averaging effect when the signal energy in different bands are accumulated to obtain the energy contribution from a group. In the high SNR regime, performance degrades with partitioning. In addition, we observe that user cooperation improves the performance in the high SNR regimes.

Recent research activities in the area of mobile radio communications have moved to third generation (3G) cellular systems to achieve higher quality with variable transmission rate of multimedia information. In this paper, an overview is presented of various interference cancellation and iterative detection techniques that are believed to be suitable for 3G wireless communications systems. Key concepts are space-time processing and space-division multiple access (or SDMA) techniques. SDMA techniques are possible with software antennas. Furthermore, to reduce receiver implementation complexity, iterative detection techniques are considered. A particularly attractive method uses tentative hard decisions, made on the received positions with the highest reliability, according to some criterion, and can potentially yield an important reduction in the computational requirements of an iterative receiver, with minimum penalty in error performance. A study of the tradeoffs between complexity and performance loss of iterative multiuser detection techniques is a good research topic.

A new software defined radio platform with multiport-based direct conversion is proposed, named SOPRANO (Software Programmable and Hardware Reconfigurable Architecture for Network). The main features of SOPRANO are a high-level design methodology for digital circuits, a new mixer-less direct conversion method, and software algorithms for multi-band and multi-mode operation. We built the first prototype SOPRANO 1.0, which was able to receive PSK and QAM signals with two different carrier frequencies at 2.45 GHz and 5.25 GHz by changing signal processing software.

A two-stage decoding procedure for pragmatic trellis-coded modulation (TCM) is introduced. It applies a transformation from the received I-channel and Q-channel samples onto points in a two-dimensional (2-D) signal space that contains a coset constellation. For pragmatic TCM over M-PSK signal sets with /spl nu/ coded bits per symbol, /spl nu/=1, 2, the signal points in the coset constellations represent cosets of a B/QPSK signal subset-associated with the coded bits-in the original M-PSK signal constellation. A conventional Viterbi decoder operates on the transformed symbols to estimate the coded bits. After reencoding these bits, the uncoded bits are estimated in a second stage, on a symbol-by-symbol basis, with decisions based on the location of the received symbols. In addition to requiring no changes in the Viterbi decoder core, it is shown that the proposed method results in savings of up to 40% in the memory required to store (or in the size of the logic required to compute) metrics and transformed symbols.

In this paper, multilevel coded asymmetric modulation with multistage decoding and unequal error protection (UEP) is discussed. These results further emphasize the fact that unconventional signal set partitionings are more promising than traditional (Ungerboeck-type) partitionings, to achieve UEP capabilities with multilevel coding and multistage decoding. Three types of unconventional partitionings are analyzed for asymmetric 8-PSK and 16-QAM constellations over the additive white Gaussian noise channel to introduce design guidelines. Generalizations to other PSK and QAM type constellations follow the same lines. Upper bounds on the bit-error probability based on union bound arguments are first derived. In some cases, these bounds become loose due to the large overlappings of decision regions associated with asymmetric constellations and unconventional partitionings. To overcome this problem, simpler and tighter approximated bounds are derived. Based on these bounds, it is shown that additional refinements can be achieved in the construction of multilevel UEP codes, by introducing asymmetries in PSK and QAM signal constellations.

In this paper, theoretical upper bounds and computer simulation results on the error performance of multilevel block coded modulations for unequal error protection (UEP) and multistage decoding are presented. It is shown that nonstandard signal set partitionings and multistage decoding provide excellent UEP capabilities beyond those achievable with conventional coded modulation. The coding scheme is designed in such a way that the most important information bits have a lower error rate than other information bits. The large effective error coefficients, normally associated with standard mapping by set partitioning, are reduced by considering nonstandard partitionings of the underlying signal set. The bits-to-signal mappings induced by these partitionings allow the use of soft-decision decoding of binary block codes. Moreover, parallel operation of some of the staged decoders is possible, to achieve high data rate transmission, so that there is no error propagation between these decoders. Hybrid partitionings are also considered that trade off increased intraset distances in the last partition levels with larger effective error coefficients in the middle partition levels. The error performance of specific examples of multilevel codes over 8-PSK and 64-QAM signal sets are simulated and compared with theoretical upper bounds on the error performance.

In this article, constructions of generalized concatenated (GC) codes with good rates and distances are presented. Some of the proposed GC codes have simpler trellis complexity than Euclidean geometry (EG), Reed-Muller (RM), or Bose-Chaudhuri-Hocquenghem (BCH) codes of approximately the same rates and minimum distances, and in addition can be decoded with trellis-based multistage decoding up to their minimum distances. Several codes of the same length, dimension, and minimum distance as the best linear codes known are constructed.

Binary multilevel convolutional codes (CCs) with unequal error protection (UEP) capabilities are studied. These codes belong to the class of generalized concatenated (GC) codes. Binary CCs are used as outer codes. Binary linear block codes of short length, and selected subcodes in their two-way subcode partition chain, are used as inner codes. Multistage decodings are presented that use Viterbi decoders operating on trellises with similar structure to that of the constituent binary CCs. Simulation results of example binary two-level CC's are also reported.

This paper considers block-coded 8-phase-shift-keying (PSK) modulations for the unequal error protection (UEP) of information transmitted over Rayleigh-fading channels. Both conventional linear block codes and linear UEP (LUEP) codes are combined with a naturally labeled 8-PSK signal set, using the multilevel construction of Imai and Hirakawa (1977). Computer simulation results are presented showing that, over Rayleigh-fading channels, it is possible to improve the coding gain for the most significant bits with the use of binary LUEP codes as constituent codes, in comparison with using conventional binary linear codes alone.

This paper introduces new block coded 8-PSK modulations with unequal error protection (UEP) capabilities for Rayleigh fading channels. The design of efficient block coded modulations (BCM) over 8-PSK signal sets, for the specific purpose of UEP, over Rayleigh fading channels is considered. UEP is desirable in communications systems where part of the source information is more important, or error sensitive, such as the transmission of coded speech and data broadcasting. The proposed block modulation codes are based on the multilevel construction of Imai and Hirakawa (1977). It is shown that the use of binary linear UEP (LUEP) codes as component codes in one or two of the encoding levels provides, in addition to superior UEP capabilities, a higher error performance, at the expense of a very modest reduction in bandwidth efficiency, with respect to conventional multilevel codes. Computer simulation results show that, over a Rayleigh fading channel, a significant improvement in the coding gain is obtained by the use of binary LUEP codes as constituent codes in the multilevel construction.

Unequal error protection (UEP) codes find applications in broadcast channels, as well as in other digital communication systems, where messages have different degrees of importance. Binary linear UEP (LUEP) codes combined with a Gray mapped QPSK signal set are used to obtain new efficient QPSK block-modulation codes for unequal error protection. Several examples of QPSK modulation codes that have the same minimum squared Euclidean distance as the best QPSK modulation codes, of the same rate and length, are given. In the new constructions of QPSK block-modulation codes, even-length binary LUEP codes are used. Good even-length binary LUEP codes are obtained when shorter binary linear codes are combined using either the well-known |u~|u~+v~|-construction or the so-called construction X. Both constructions have the advantage of resulting in optimal or near-optimal binary LUEP codes of short to moderate lengths, using very simple linear codes, and may be used as constituent codes in the new constructions. LUEP codes lend themselves quite naturally to multistage decoding up to their minimum distance, using the decoding of component subcodes. A new suboptimal two-stage soft-decision decoding of LUEP codes is presented and its application to QPSK block-modulation codes for UEP illustrated.>

Presents a class of binary primitive BCH codes that have unequal-error-protection (UEP) capabilities. The authors use a previous result on the span of their minimum weight vectors to show that binary primitive BCH codes, containing second-order punctured Reed-Muller (RM) codes of the same minimum distance, are binary-cyclic UEP codes. The values of the error correction levels for this class of binary LUEP codes are estimated.>

A class of block QPSK modulation codes for unequal error protection (UEP) is presented. These codes are particularly suitable either for broadcast channels or for communication systems where parts of the information messages are more important than others. An example of the latter is coded speech transmission. Not much is known on the application of block UEP codes in combined coding and modulation schemes. We exhibit a method to combine binary linear UEP (LUEP) block codes of even length, using a Gray mapping, with a QPSK signal set to construct efficient block QPSK modulation codes with nonuniform error protection capabilities for bandwidth efficient transmission over AWGN (additive white Gaussian noise) and Rayleigh fading channels.

Several authors have addressed the problem of designing good linear unequal error protection (LUEP) codes. However, very little is known about good nonbinary LUEP codes. The authors present a class of optimal nonbinary LUEP codes for two different sets of messages. By combining t-error-correcting Reed-Solomon (RS) codes and shortened nonbinary Hamming codes, they obtain nonbinary LUEP codes that protect one set of messages against any t or fewer symbol errors and the remaining set of messages against any single symbol error. For t/spl ges/2, they show that these codes are optimal in the sense of achieving the Hamming lower bound on the number of redundant symbols of a nonbinary LUEP code with the same parameters.>

G. Castagnoli et al. (see ibid., vol.37, no.2, p.337-42, 1991) and J.H. van Lint (see ibid., vol.37, no.2, p.343-5, 1991) analyzed cyclic codes with repeated roots. These studies fail to acknowledge a previous work by C.L. Chen (1969) which includes an analysis of even-length binary cyclic codes. Results from Chen's study are presented.>