The present paper introduces a prototype design and experimental results for a multi-user MIMO linear precoding system. A base station and two mobile stations are implemented by taking full advantage of the software-defined radio. The base station consists of general purpose signal analyzers and signal generators controlled by a personal computer. Universal software radio peripherals are used as mobile stations. Linear spatial precoding and a simple two-way channel estimation technique are adopted in this experimental system. In-lab and field transmission experiments are carried out, and the bit error rate performance is evaluated. The impact of the channel estimation error under average channel gain discrepancy between two mobile stations is analyzed through computer simulations. Channel estimation error is shown to have a greater influence on the mobile station with the greater average channel gain.

Network traffic keeps increasing due to the increasing popularity of video streaming services. Routers and switches in wire-line networks require guaranteed line rates as high as 20 Gbp/s as well as advanced quality of service (QoS). Hybrid SRAM and DRAM architecture previously presented with the benefit of high-speed and high-density, but it requires complex memory management. As a result, it has hardly supported large numbers of queue, which is an effective approach to satisfying the QoS requirements. This paper proposes an intelligent memory management unit (MMU) which is based on the hybrid architecture, where over 16k multi queues are integrated. The performance examined by the system board is zero-packet loss under the seamless traffic with 60–1.5 kByte packet-length (deterministic manner). Noticeable feature in this paper's architecture is eliminating the need for any premium memories but only low-cost commodity SRAMs and DRAMs are used. The intelligent MMU employs the head buffer architecture, which is suitable for supporting a large numbers of FIFO queues. An experimental board based on this architecture is embedded into a Router system to evaluate the performance. Using 16k queues at 20 Gbps, zero-packet loss is examined with 64-Byte to 1,500-Byte packet-length.

In existing systems of mobile routers, the frequency band is shared in uplinks from wireless terminals to mobile routers, and carrier sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) is generally used as the medium access control protocol. To use the frequency band effectively, adaptive control is one promising approach. In this paper, a decentralized access control protocol in which mobile routers adaptively select the minimum contention window size is proposed. However, because of their mobility, which is one of the main difference between mobile routers and fixed access points, individual local area networks (LANs) consisting of the mobile routers and wireless terminals randomly interact with each other, and such random interactions can cause instability. To analyze the stability of the proposed control, evolutionary game theory is introduced because a system with random interactions between numerous decision-making entities can be analyzed by using evolutionary game theory. Using evolutionary game theory, the condition for existence of a convergence point is obtained. In addition, to implement the decentralized access control, a learning rule is proposed. In the proposed learning rule, each mobile router selects a strategy based on the result of past trials. From the simulation result, it is confirmed that the decentralized access control converges to a point closed to the stable state derived through evolutionary game theory.

The spectral efficiency of cooperative relaying in interference-limited environments in which a given channel is spatially reused is investigated. Cooperative relaying is a promising technique that uses neighboring stations to forward the data toward the destination in order to achieve spatial diversity gain. It has been reported that by introducing cooperative relaying into communication between an isolated source-destination pair, the error rate or spectral efficiency is generally improved. However, it is not intuitively clear whether cooperative relaying can improve the performance in interference-limited environments because the simultaneous transmission of multiple stations increases the number of interference signals. Assuming the most fundamental cooperative relaying arrangement, which consists of only one relay station, numerical results reveal that cooperative relaying is not always superior to non-cooperative single-hop and two-hop transmissions in terms of spectral efficiency.

This paper proposes a concept for a new technical field called wireless distributed network (WDN) as a strategic technical field to enable flexible networking and radio resource management (RRM) to cope with dynamic variation of spatially distributed traffic demands. As the core technical subject areas for the WDN, this paper identifies distributed networking for flexible network creation, cooperative transmission and reception for flexible link creation, and dynamic spectrum access for flexible radio resource management, and explains their technical features and challenges for constructing the WDN. This paper also discusses some already being studied application fields as well as potential future directions of the WDN applications.

In a spectrum sharing system, lower-priority users are allowed to spatially reuse the spectrum allocated to higher-priority users as long as they do not disrupt communications of the latter. Therefore, to improve spectrum utilization, an important requirement for the former users is to manage the interference and ensure that the latter users can maintain reliable communications. In the present paper, a game theoretic framework of joint channel selection and power allocation for spectrum sharing in distributed cognitive radio networks is proposed. First, a utility function that captures the cooperative behavior to manage the interference and the satisfaction level to improve the throughput of the lower-priority users is defined. Next, based on the defined utility function, the proposed framework can be formulated as a potential game; thus, it is guaranteed to converge to a Nash equilibrium when the best response dynamic is performed. Simulation results show the convergence of the proposed potential game and reveal that performance improvements in terms of network throughput of the lower-priority users and outage probability of the higher-priority users can be achieved by the introduction of an adaptive coefficient adjustment scheme in the proposed utility function at the expense of the convergence to the Nash equilibrium.

Long-distance wireless local area networks (WLANs) are the key enablers of wide-area and low-cost access networks in rural areas. In a WLAN, the long propagation delay between an access point (AP) and stations (STAs) significantly degrades the throughput and creates a throughput imbalance because the delay causes unexpected frame collisions. This paper summarizes the problems caused in the medium access control (MAC) mechanism of the WLAN by a long propagation delay. We propose a MAC protocol for solving the delay-induced throughput degradation and the throughput imbalance between the uplink and the downlink in WLANs to address these problems. In the protocol, the AP extends NAV duration of CTS frame to protect an ACK frame and transmits its data frame to avoid delay induced frame collisions by piggybacking on the ACK frame transmission. We also provide a throughput model for the proposed protocol based on the Bianchi model. A numerical analysis using the proposed throughput model and simulation evaluation demonstrate that the proposed protocol increases the system throughput by 150% compared with that obtained using the conventional method, and the uplink throughput can be increased to the same level as the downlink throughput.

Broadcast services for wireless local area networks (WLANs) are being standardized in the IEEE 802.11 task group bc. Envisaging the upcoming coexistence of broadcast access points (APs) with densely-deployed legacy APs, this paper addresses a learning-based spatial reuse with only partial receiver-awareness. This partial awareness means that the broadcast APs can leverage few acknowledgment frames (ACKs) from recipient stations (STAs). This is in view of the specific concerns of broadcast communications. In broadcast communications for a very large number of STAs, ACK implosions occur unless some STAs are stopped from responding with ACKs. Given this, the main contribution of this paper is to demonstrate the feasibility to improve the robustness of learning-based spatial reuse to hidden interferers only with the partial receiver-awareness while discarding any re-training of broadcast APs. The core idea is to leverage robust adversarial reinforcement learning (RARL), where before a hidden interferer is installed, a broadcast AP learns a rate adaptation policy in a competition with a proxy interferer that provides jamming signals intelligently. Therein, the recipient STAs experience interference and the partial STAs provide a feedback overestimating the effect of interference, allowing the broadcast AP to select a data rate to avoid frame losses in a broad range of recipient STAs. Simulations demonstrate the suppression of the throughput degradation under a sudden installation of a hidden interferer, indicating the feasibility of acquiring robustness to the hidden interferer.

Ternary Content Addressable Memory (TCAM) is a special type of memory used in routers to achieve high-speed packet forwarding and classification. Packet forwarding is done by referring to the rules written in the routing table, whereas packet classification is performed by referring to the rules in the Access Control List (ACL). TCAM uses more transistors than Random Access Memory (RAM), resulting in high power consumption and high production cost. Therefore, it is necessary to reduce the entries written in the TCAM to reduce the transistor count. In this paper, we propose a new TCAM architecture by using Range Matching Devices (RMD) integrated within the TCAM's control logic with an optimized prefix expansion algorithm. The proposed method reduces the number of entries required to express ACL rules, especially when specifying port ranges. With less than 10 RMDs, the total number of lines required to write port ranges in the TCAM can be reduced to approximately 50%.

Decentralized channel assignment schemes are proposed to obtain low system-wide spatial overlap regions in wireless local area networks (WLANs). The important point of channel assignment in WLANs is selecting channels with fewer contending stations rather than mitigating interference power due to its medium access control mechanism. This paper designs two potential game-based channel selection schemes, basically each access point (AP) selects a channel with smaller spatial overlaps with other APs. Owing to the property of potential games, each decentralized channel assignment is guaranteed to converge to a Nash equilibrium. In order that each AP selects a channel with smaller overlaps, two metrics are proposed: general overlap-based scheme yields the largest overlap reduction if a sufficient number of stations (STAs) to detect overlaps are available; whereas decomposed overlap-based scheme need not require such STAs, while the performance would be degraded due to the shadowing effect. In addition, the system-wide overlap area is analytically shown to be upper bounded by the negative potential functions, which derives the condition that local overlap reduction by each AP leads to system-wide overlap reduction. The simulation results confirm that the proposed schemes perform better reductions in the system-wide overlap area compared to the conventional interference power-based scheme under the spatially correlated shadowing effect. The experimental results demonstrate that the channel assignment dynamics converge to stable equilibria even in a real environment, particularly when uncontrollable APs exist.

Differential games are considered an extension of optimal control problems, which are used to formulate centralized control problems in smart grids. Optimal control theory is used to study systems consisting of one agent with one objective, whereas differential games are used to formulate systems consisting of multiple agents with multiple objectives. Therefore, a differential-game-theoretic approach is appropriate for formulating decentralized demand-side energy management systems where there are multiple decision-making entities interacting with each other. Moreover, in many smart grid applications, we need to obtain information for control via communication systems. To formulate the influence of communication availability, differential game theory is also promising because the availability of communication is considered as part of an information structure (i.e., feedback or open-loop) in differential games. The feedback information structure is adopted when information for control can be obtained, whereas the open-loop information structure is applied when the information cannot be obtained because of communication failure. This paper proposes a comprehensive framework for evaluating the performance of demand-side actors in a demand-side management system using each control scheme according to both communication availability and sampling frequency. Numerical analysis shows that the proposed comprehensive framework allows for an analysis of trade-off for decentralized and centralized control schemes.

In this paper, a priority control problem between uplink and downlink flows in IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs is considered. The minimum contention window size (CWmin) has a nonnegative integer value. CWmin control scheme is one of the solutions for priority control to achieve the fairness between links. However, it has the problem that CWmin control scheme cannot achieve precise priority control when the CWmin values become small. As the solution of this problem, this paper proposes a new CWmin control method called a virtual continuous CWmin control (VCCC) scheme. The key concept of this method is that it involves the use of small and large CWmin values probabilistically. The proposed scheme realizes the expected value of CWmin as a nonnegative real number and solves the precise priority control problem. Moreover, we proposed a theoretical analysis model for the proposed VCCC scheme. Computer simulation results show that the proposed scheme improves the throughput performance and achieves fairness between the uplink and the downlink flows in an infrastructure mode of the IEEE 802.11 based wireless LAN. Throughput of the proposed scheme is 31% higher than that of a conventional scheme when the number of wireless stations is 18. The difference between the theoretical analysis results and computer simulation results of the throughput is within 1% when the number of STAs is less than 10.

The present paper focuses on the application of the base station cooperation (BSC) technique in fractional frequency reuse (FFR) networks. Fractional frequency reuse is considered to be a promising scheme for avoiding the inter-cell interference problem in OFDMA cellular systems, such as WiMAX, in which the edge mobile stations (MSs) of adjacent cells use different subchannels for separate transmission. However, the problem of FFR is that the cell edge spectral efficiency (SE) is much lower than that of the cell center. The BSC technique, in which adjacent BSs perform cooperative transmission for one cell edge MS with the same channel, may improve the cell edge SE. However, since more BSs transmit signals for one cell edge MS, the use of BSC can also increase the inter-cell interference, which might degrade the network performance. In this paper, with a focus on this tradeoff, we propose an adaptive BSC scheme in which BSC is only performed for the cell edge MSs that can achieve a significant capacity increase with only a slight increase in inter-cell interference. Moreover, a channel reallocation scheme is proposed in order to further improve the performance of the adaptive BSC scheme. The simulation results reveal that, compared to the conventional FFR scheme, the proposed schemes are effective for improving the performance of FFR networks.

Stochastic geometry analysis of wireless backhaul networks with beamforming in roadside environments is provided. In particular, a new model to analyze antenna gains, interference, and coverage in roadside environments of wireless networks with Poisson point process deployment of BSs is proposed. The received interference from the BSs with wired backhaul (referred to as anchored BS or A-BS) and the coverage probability of a typical BS are analyzed under different approximations of the location of the serving A-BS and combined antenna gains. Considering the beamforming, the coverage probability based on the aggregate interference consisting of the direct interference from the A-BSs and reflected interference from the BSs with wireless backhaul is also derived.

In this paper, a stochasic geometry analysis of the inversely proportional setting (IPS) of carrier sense threshold (CST) and transmission power for densely deployed wireless local area networks (WLANs) is presented. In densely deployed WLANs, CST adjustment is a crucial technology to enhance spatial reuse, but it can starve surrounding transmitters due to an asymmetric carrier sensing relationship. In order for the carrier sensing relationship to be symmetric, the IPS of the CST and transmission power is a promising approach, i.e., each transmitter jointly adjusts its CST and transmission power in order for their product to be equal to those of others. This setting is used for spatial reuse in IEEE 802.11ax. By assuming that the set of potential transmitters follows a Poisson point process, the impact of the IPS on throughput is formulated based on stochastic geometry in two scenarios: an adjustment at a single transmitter and an identical adjustment at all transmitters. The asymptotic expression of the throughput in dense WLANs is derived and an explicit solution of the optimal CST is achieved as a function of the number of neighboring potential transmitters and signal-to-interference power ratio using approximations. This solution was confirmed through numerical results, where the explicit solution achieved throughput penalties of less than 8% relative to the numerically evaluated optimal solution.

The present paper proposes two novel and practical schemes for distributed and asynchronous power control in wireless ad hoc networks, in which users dynamically share several frequency bands as in "cognitive radio" networks. These schemes iteratively adjust transmit powers of individual network transmitters with respect to mutually caused interference in the shared bands. Their most attractive feature is that they find network-wide acceptable trade-offs to diverse signal-to-noise and interference (SINR) requirements and efficiently use techniques of stochastic approximation and time-averaging to guarantee a robust performance in random channels. Advantageously, both proposed algorithms do not assume any particular modulation, coding, QoS measure definition or network architecture, which assures their high applicability in the industry and research. Moreover, the broad definition and non-linear nature of these schemes mathematically generalize and thus encompass as a special case many widely deployed power control schemes such as e.g. those for achieving fixed SINR targets or using game-theoretic utility maximization. Simulations are provided to illustrate our approach and its better performance compared to standard algorithms.

Multihop network is an approach utilizing distributed wireless stations for relaying. In this system, area size, coverage and total transmit power efficiency can be improved. It is shown by computer simulations that the cooperative relaying scheme provides transmit diversity effect, and can offer much better performance compared with that of non-cooperation case. To confirm this superior performance in actual environments, field trials using real time communication equipments are now being planned. This paper reports the design and the performance of wireless equipments for field trials.

A routing algorithm, utilizing two-hop relaying when necessary, is proposed to enhance the system capacity of code division multiple access (CDMA) cellular systems. Up to now, multihop relaying is applied to cellular systems mainly with the aim of decreasing the transmit power of each mobile station or extending the cell coverage area. Here, in this paper, potential benefit of multihop relaying is studied so as to increase the system capacity. A condition for the interference to be reduced by changing single-hop connections to two-hop connections is analyzed. In addition, a new route selection criterion maximizing the amount of interference reduction is proposed. Simulation results reveal that the proposed criterion is superior to the conventional criterion minimizing the total transmit power in respect of the amount of interference reduction. By using this criterion, an efficient routing algorithm for two-hop CDMA cellular systems is proposed to enhance the system capacity. Simulation results also indicate that by using the proposed routing algorithm in combination with a call admission control, the system capacity is increased even under heavy traffic conditions.

We discuss the division of radio resources in the time and frequency domains for wireless local area network (WLAN) devices powered with microwave energy. In general, there are two ways to avoid microwave power transmission (MPT) from influencing data communications: adjacent channel operation of continuous MPT and WLAN data transmission and co-channel operation of intermittent MPT and WLAN data transmission. Experimental results reveal that, even when we implement these methods, several problems arise because WLAN devices have been developed without supposing the existence of MPT. One problem clarified in our experiment is that adjacent channel operation at 2.4GHz does not necessarily perform well owing to the interference from MPT. This interference occurs regardless of the frequency separation at 2.4GHz. The other problem is that intermittent MPT could result in throughput degradation owing to the data rate control algorithm and the association scheme of the WLAN. In addition, the experimental results imply that a microwave energy source and a WLAN device should share information on the timings of intermittent MPT and data transmission to avoid buffer overflow.

Advanced Evolved Universal Terrestrial Radio Access (Advanced E-UTRA), called LTE-Advanced, has been standardized in the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) as a candidate for IMT-Advanced. LTE-Advanced supports spatial orthogonal-resource transmit diversity (SORTD) [1],[2] for ACK/NACK signals and scheduling requests (SRs), which are used to control downlink hybrid automatic repeat requests (HARQs) and manage uplink radio resources based on uplink data traffic, respectively. Both ACK/NACK signals and SRs are carried via a physical uplink control channel (PUCCH) [3], and a common PUCCH format is used for both ACK/NACK signals and SRs. If SORTD is used, the base station assigns mutually orthogonal resources to each antenna included in the user equipment (UE) for ACK/NACK signals and SRs; hence, the number of required resources increases with the number of transmitting antennas in the UE. In this paper, we study the resource reduction method for ACK/NACK signal and SR in case of SORTD using the concept of common resource. In addition, we investigate a phase rotation scheme for common resources to improve the SR detection performance.