This paper proposes a data transfer protocol called Logical Airlink Control Procedure for Packet Radio Systems (LAPPR) which offers a high throughput efficiency in fading channels. Two main ideas are presented in the flow control and retransmission control methods. A new flow control scheme called "P/F Sliding Flow" is proposed where a high channel utilization rate is provided by continuously transmitting the data frames. At that time, the acknowledgements for the data frames are reduced so as not to occupy both the forward and reverse channels and data exchange between different transmitter-receiver pairs is enabled. A retransmission control scheme called "Recovery Confirming Retransmission Control" is also proposed which makes conventional Automatic Repeat Request (ARQ) schemes significantly more effective in the fading environments by continuously sending the same frame. Computer simulations were carried out and the result showed that a throughput higher than conventional protocols can be achieved.

This paper proposes applying our inter-cell interference (ICI) cancellation method to fractional frequency reuse (FFR) and evaluates the resulting spectral efficiency improvement. With our ICI cancellation method based on base station cooperation, the control station generates ICI replica signals by simple linear processing. Moreover, FFR effectively utilizes frequency resources by both allowing users in the cell-center region to access all available sub-channels and increasing the transmission power to users in the cell-edge region. FFR provides the conditions under which the ICI cancellation method works effectively. Computer simulations show that the average spectral efficiency of the proposed method is comparable to that of cooperative MU-MIMO, which can completely remove ICI.

This paper proposes two traffic control schemes to support the communication quality of multimedia streaming services such as VoIP and audio/video over IEEE 802.11 wireless LAN systems. The main features of the proposed scheme are bandwidth control for each flow of the multimedia streaming service and load balancing between access points (APs) of the wireless LAN by using information of data link, network and transport layers. The proposed schemes are implemented on a Linux machine which is called the wireless traffic controller (WTC). The WTC connects a high capacity backbone network and an access network to which the APs are attached. We evaluated the performance of the proposed WTC and confirmed that the communication quality of the multimedia streaming would be greatly improved by using this technique.

This paper proposes a new antenna array design of Massive MIMO for capacity enhancement in line of sight (LOS) environments. Massive MIMO has two key problems: the heavy overhead of feeding back the channel state information (CSI) for very large number of transmission and reception antenna element pairs and the huge computation complexity imposed by the very large scale matrixes. We have already proposed a practical application of Massive MIMO, that is, Massive Antenna Systems for Wireless Entrance links (MAS-WE), which can clearly solve the two key problems of Massive MIMO. However, the conventional antenna array arrangements; e.g. uniform planar array (UPA) or uniform circular array (UCA) degrade the system capacity of MAS-WE due to the channel spatial correlation created by the inter-element spacing. When the LOS component dominates the propagation channel, the antenna array can be designed to minimize the inter-user channel correlation. We propose an antenna array arrangement to control the grating-lobe positions and achieve very low channel spatial correlation. Simulation results show that the proposed arrangement can reduce the spatial correlation at CDF=50% value by 80% compared to UCA and 75% compared to UPA.

This paper proposes a null-space expansion scheme for multiuser massive MIMO transmission in order to suppress inter-user interference (IUI) triggered by the temporal variation of the channel. The downlink multiuser MIMO channel capacity of time varying channels is severely degraded since IUI must be suppressed at the transmitter side by using past estimated channel state information at the transmitter side (CSIT). Massive MIMO has emerged as one of the most promising technologies for further capacity enhancement by increasing the number of base station (BS) antenna elements. Exploiting the excess degrees of freedom (DoFs) inherent in massive MIMO, a BS with the proposed IUI suppression scheme performs multiple null-steering for each UE (User Equipment) antenna element, which expands the null-space dimension. Computer simulations show that the proposed scheme has superior IUI suppression performance to the existing channel prediction scheme in time varying channels.

This paper experimentally verifies the potential of higher order space division multiplexing in line-of-sight (LOS) channels for multiuser massive MIMO. We previously proposed an inter-user interference (IUI) cancellation scheme and a simplified user scheduling method for Massive Antenna Systems for Wireless Entrance (MAS-WE). In order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed techniques, channel state information (CSI) for a 1×32 SIMO channel is measured in a real propagation environment with simplified test equipment. Evaluations of the measured CSI data confirm the effectiveness of our proposals; they offer good equal gain transmission (EGT) performance, reduced spatial correlation with enlarged angular gap between users, and quite small channel state fluctuation. Link level simulations elucidate that the simple IUI cancellation method is stable in practical conditions. The degradation in symbol error rate with the measured CSI, relative to that yielded by the output of the theoretical LOS channel model, is insignificant.

This paper proposes a new effective data transfer method for IEEE 802.11 wireless LANs by integrating priority control and multirate mechanism. The IEEE 802.11 PHY layer supports a multirate mechanism with dynamic rate switching and an appropriate data rate is selected in transmitting a frame. However, the multirate mechanism is used with the CSMA/CA (Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance) protocol, low rate transmissions need much longer time than high rate transmissions to finish sending a frame. As a result, the system capacity is decreased. The proposed method assumes the same number of priority levels as the data rates, and a data rate is associated to a priority level. Priority of a transmission goes up with the used data rate. For this purpose, we have modified the CSMA/CA protocol to support prioritized transmission. By selecting the appropriate priority depending on the data rate and giving more transmission opportunities for high rate transmission, the system capacity is increased. The effect of the proposed mechanism is confirmed by computer simulations.

To improve the reliability and efficiency of multicast transmissions in wireless systems, a novel retransmission procedure is desired. In this paper, the representative acknowledgment scheme for reliable wireless multicast communications is proposed that offers quite a low packet loss rate. The proposed protocol carries out retransmissions in the datalink layer within the wireless region, and retransmissions do not affect the traffic in the wired region. The representative acknowledgment scheme employs both positive acknowledgment (ACK) and negative acknowledgment (NACK) to achieve reliable multicast transmissions and reduces the number of responses to be returned by forming groups of stations in the cell. One of the members in a group, called a representative station, returns a response for a received data frame while the others return a NACK if necessary. With this scheme, reliable multicast transmissions are enabled in wireless communications without spending much time as in conventional reliable multicast protocols. The performance of the proposed protocol is evaluated by numerical analyses and by computer simulation. The results show that 30% or more decrease in transmission time is achieved in a typical wireless environment.

This paper presents experimental results of our proposed null-space expansion scheme for multiuser massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) in time varying channels. Multiuser MIMO transmission with the proposed scheme can suppress the inter-user interference (IUI) caused by outdated channel state information (CSI). The excess degrees of freedom (DoFs) of massive MIMO is exploited to perform additional null-steering using past estimated CSI. The signal-to-interference power ratio (SIR) and spectral efficiency performances achieved by the proposed scheme that uses measured CSI is experimentally evaluated. It is confirmed that the proposed scheme shows performance superior to the conventional channel prediction scheme. In addition, IUI can be stably suppressed even in high mobility environments by further increasing the null-space dimension.

This paper proposes a practical application of Massive MIMO technology, Massive Antenna Systems for Wireless Entrance (MAS-WE), and along with related inter-user interference cancellation (IUIC) and scheduling techniques. MAS-WE, in which the entrance base station (EBS) employs a large number of antennas, can effectively provide high capacity wireless entrance links to a large number of access points (APs) distributed over a wide coverage area. The proposed techniques are simplified to practical implementation; EBS side uses around 100 antenna elements to spatially multiplex more than 16 signal streams. SIR performance is evaluated by system level simulations that consider imperfect channel state information (CSI). The results show that MAS-WE with the proposed techniques can reliably achieve high spectral efficiency with high level space division multiplexing.

The demand for data communication over Personal Handy-phone System (PHS) is expected to rapidly increase in the near future. Some applications based on the circuit-switched services have been recently developed. However, the packet-switched service is better than the circuit-switched service for personal data communications in terms of the flexible utilization of radio resources. In this paper, we propose PHS with packet data communications system (PHS-PD), which has four system concepts; (i) to supprot the Internet access, (ii) to realize compatibility with circuit-switching services, (iii) to share the common radio channels with circuit-switched calls, and (iv) to utilize idle time slots for packet data. Moreover, a novel packet channel structure for sharing radio resources with circuit-switched calls is introduced. Although packet data are transferred using common radio resources, the proposed channel structure prevents any degradation in call loss performance of the circuit-switching service. An evaluation of the maximum packet transmission rate shows that PHS-PD can offer a data communication rate of 20.1 kbps even if circuit-switched calls are in progress. Furthermore, up to 83.6 kbps is possible if circuit-switched calls are quiescent. It is also shown that enough capacity for a practical e-mail service can be ensured by PHS-PD even if the degradation of throughput performance due to packet collisions on random access channels is considered.

VoIP (Voice over IP) is one of the real time applications that demand wireless LAN systems meet severe quality requirements which commonly involve delay time, jitter, and packet loss. However, it is difficult for CSMA/CA (Carrier Sense Multiple Access with Collision Avoidance) to achieve the service quality demanded by VoIP if voice and data traffic coexist, so some form of priority control is needed. This paper proposes a novel multiple access protocol based on autonomous distributed control that allows wireless LANs to satisfy the VoIP requirements. This new protocol suits both VoIP and data traffic and executes priority control dynamically according to whether the VoIP packet collides with a data packet or another VoIP packet. The results of a theoretical analysis and computer simulations indicate its excellent performance. This proposed protocol reduces the delay time of VoIP packets by 54 to 70% compared with conventional CSMA/CA even if the traffic load increases provided that the packet loss probability is less than 3%.