Chapter 5: Mitigation Techniques

Overview
• Introduction
• Equalization techniques
• Diversity techniques
• Channel coding

2
Introduction
• Mobile radio channel (in Ch 2+3) is particularly dynamic
due to
• Multipath fading + delay spread
• Doppler spread

• As a result, the channel has a strong negative impact on

BER of any modulation technique (in Ch 4)
• To improve received signal quality in hostile mobile radio
environment, we need
• Equalization
• Diversity
• Channel coding, …
• Each can be used independently or in tandem

3
Introduction - Equalization

• Equalization compensates for intersymbol interference (ISI)

created by multipath with time dispersive channels
• ISI is the result of frequency selective channel
• Can also be used for time selective channels

• Equalizers must be adaptive since the channel is generally

unknown and time varying
• Linear equalization vs. nonlinear equalization

4
Introduction – Diversity
• Diversity compensates for flat fading channel impairments
• Is employed to reduce the depth and duration of the fades
experienced by a receiver
• Idea: Create independent (or at least highly uncorrelated)
signal “channels” for communication
• Kinds of diversity
• Spatial diversity
• Frequency diversity
• Time diversity
• Polarization diversity
• Spatial diversity: usually implemented by using two or more
receiving antennas
• Widely used than both time and frequency diversity

5
Introduction - Channel Coding
• Channel Coding improves mobile communication link
performance by adding redundant data bits in the
transmitted message
• Channel coding is used by the Rx to detect or correct
some (or all) of errors introduced by the channel in a
particular sequence of message bits (fading or noise)
• Post detection technique
• Examples: Block code and convolutional code
Baseband
Signal Channel Modulation
coding
Carrier

6
Overview
• Introduction
• Equalization techniques
• Algorithms for adaptive equalization
• Diversity techniques
• Channel coding

7
Equalization – Fundamentals
• Fading channel is random and time varying, so that
equalizers must take this time varying characteristics
• Hence called adaptive equalizers

• The term equalization can be used to describe any signal

processing operation that minimizes ISI
• Two operating modes for an adaptive equalizer are:
• Training
• Tracking

• Three factors affect the time span over which an equalizer

converges:
• Equalizer algorithm, equalizer structure, and time rate of change of
the multipath radio channel

8
Adaptive Equalization – Training Mode
• Initially, a known, fixed length training sequence (TS) is
sent by the transmitter so that the receiver’s equalizer may
average to a proper setting
• TS is a pseudo random signal or a fixed, prescribed bit pattern
• Immediately following the TS, the user data is sent
• TS is designed to permit an equalizer at the receiver to
acquire the proper filter coefficients in the worst possible
channel conditions

9
Adaptive Equalization – Training Mode …
• Therefore, when the training sequence is finished, the filter
coefficients are near optimal
• An adaptive equalizer at the receiver uses a recursive
algorithm to evaluate the channel and estimate filter
coefficients to compensate for the channel

10
Adaptive Equalization – Tracking Mode
• When the data of the users are received, the adaptive
algorithm of the equalizer tracks the changing channel
• As a result of this, the adaptive equalizer continuously
changes the filter characteristics over time
• Equalizers are widely used in TDMA systems

11
Equalization – Combating Multipath/delay Spread
• Think of multipath 1
propagation/delay spread as a
set of channels with different 2
delay i & attenuation, then Sender  Receiver
3
adding signals up at receiver
4
• Equalization tries to “undo” this Channel
delay/summing up by
introducing additional delay
terms & factors, complementary
to the channel’s 1 T1
• Ideally, i + Ti = const 2 T2
• i not known Sender   Receiver
• Estimate factors by 3 T3
periodically sending
4 T4
known training sequences
• Hence, determine Ti Channel Equalizer

Sem. II, 2013 12

Equalization – Block Diagram
• Equalizer is usually implemented at baseband or at IF in a
receiver

y(t) = x(t)  f (t) + n (t)

b
• f*(t): complex
conjugate of f(t)
• nb(t): baseband
noise at the input
of the equalizer
• heq(t): impulse
of the equalizer

13
Equalization …
dˆ (t ) = y (t )  heq (t )
= x(t )  f  (t )  heq (t ) + nb (t )  heq (t )

= δ (t )
 F  (− f )  H eq ( f ) = 1
• An equalizer is actually an inverse filter of the channel

Ideal Equalizer
Loss [dB]

Equalized
Interconnect
Channel
f [GHz]

14
Equalization …

F  (− f )  H eq ( f ) = 1
• If the channel is frequency selective, the equalizer
• Enhances the frequency components with small amplitudes and
• Attenuates the strong frequencies in the received frequency
response
• So as to provide
• Flat, composite, received frequency response and
• A linear phase response

• For a time varying channel, the equalizer is designed to

track the channel variations so that the above equation is
approximately satisfied

15
Generic Adaptive Equalizer – Basic Structure
• Transversal filter with N delay elements, N+1 taps, and N+1
tunable complex weights

• Weights are updated continuously by an adaptive algorithm

• The adaptive algorithm is controlled by the error signal ek
16
Generic Adaptive Equalizer …
• An adaptive equalizer is a time-varying filter which must
constantly be retuned
• In the block diagram
• The subscript k represents discrete time index
• There is a single input yk at any time instant

• The value of yk depends upon

• Instantaneous state of radio channel and specific value of noise
• The block diagram shown is called transversal filter, has N
delay elements, N+1 taps and N+1 tunable multipliers called
weights
• The weights have second subscript k to show that they vary
with time and are updated on a sample by sample basis

17
Adaptive Equalization – Algorithm
• The error signal ek
• Controls the adaptive algorithm
• The error signal is derived by comparing the output of the
equalizer with some signal dk which is either
• Replica of transmitted signal xk or
• Which represents a known property of the transmitted signal
• ek is used to minimize a cost function and iteratively update
equalizer weights so as to reduce the cost function

18
Adaptive Equalization – Classification

19
Adaptive Equalization – Algorithm
• The Least Mean Square (MSE) algorithm searches for the
optimum or near optimum weight by
• Computing the error between the desired signal and the output of
the equalizer and minimizes it
• Most common cost function

20
Adaptive Equalization – Classification …
• Performance measures for an algorithm
• Rate of convergence
• Mis-adjustment
• Computational complexity and numerical properties

• Factors that dominate the choice of an equalization

structure and its algorithm
• The cost of computing platform
• The power budget
• The radio propagation characteristics

• Algorithms
• ZeroForcing (ZF)
• Least Mean Squares (LMS)
• Recursive least square (RLS)

21
Adaptive Equalization – Classification …

22
Adaptive Equalization – Algorithms …
• The speed of the mobile unit determines the channel
fading rate and the Dopper spread
• Which is related to the coherent time of the channel directly
• The choice of algorithm, and its corresponding rate of
convergence, depends on the channel data rate and
coherent time
• The number of taps used in the equalizer design depends
on the maximum expected time delay spread of the
channel
• The circuit complexity and processing time increases with
the number of taps and delay elements

23
Overview
• Introduction
• Equalization techniques
• Diversity techniques
• Spatial diversity and combining
• Time diversity: Interleaving and RAKE receiver
• Polarization diversity
• Channel coding

24
Diversity
• Diversity exploits the random nature of radio propagation
by finding independent (or at least highly uncorrelated)
signal “channels or paths” for communication
• Idea: “don’t put all of your eggs in one basket”

• In fading channels, a signal power will fall below any given

fade margin at finite probability exists

25
Diversity …
• Send copies of a signal using multiple channels
• Time, frequency, space, antenna
• If one radio path undergoes a deep fade, another
independent path may have a strong signal
• Assumption: Individual channels experience independent
fading events
• By having more than one path to select from, SNR at a
receiver may be improved (by as much as 20 dB to 30 dB)

26
Diversity ….
• Advantage: Diversity requires no training overhead
• It provides significant link improvement with little added cost

• Assume that we have M statistically independent channels

• This independence means that one channel’s fading does not
influence, or is not correlated with, another channel’s fading

• Examples: Using antenna (or space) diversity

• Microscopic diversity: Mitigates small-scale fading effects (deep
fading)
• Macroscopic diversity: Reduces the large-scale fading (selecting
different base stations), can also be used for uplink
• Selecting an antenna which is not shadowed

27
Diversity – Types
• Time diversity
• Repeatedly transmits information at time spacing that exceed
the coherence time of the channel, e..g., interleaver
• Spreading the data out over time & better for fast fading
channel

• Frequency diversity
• Transmits information on more than one carrier frequency
• Frequencies separated by more than the coherence bandwidth
of the channel will not experience the same fads (FDM)
• Also spread spectrum (spread the signal over a larger
frequency bandwidth) or OFDM (use multiple frequency
carriers)

28
Diversity – Space Diversity
• Space diversity
• Transmit information on spatially uncorrelated channels
• Requires multiple antennas at transmitter and/or receiver
• Example: MIMO, SIMO, MISO, virtual antenna systems

• Multipath fading changes quickly over space

• Hence, the signal amplitude received on the different antennas can
have a low correlation coefficient

• Benefits of space diversity are no additional

• Signal needs to be transmitted (no reduction in data rate)
• Bandwidth is required

29
Overview
• Introduction
• Equalization techniques
• Diversity techniques
• Spatial diversity and combining
• Time diversity: Interleaving and RAKE receiver
• Channel coding

30
Diversity – Combining
• Combining: What to do with those independent signals
once we get them?
• Reception methods of space diversity includes
1. Selection combining
2. Scanning or feedback combining
3. Maximal-ratio combining
4. Equal gain combining

• Let us see each of them assuming spatial diversity

31
Diversity – Selection Combining
• Selection combining/diversity
• The receiver branch, having the highest instantaneous SNR, is
connected to the demodulator
• The antenna signals themselves could be sampled and the best
one sent to a single demodulation
• Simple to implement but does not use all of the possible branches

>/2

Generalized receiver block diagram for selection diversity

32
Diversity Techniques – Examples

33
Diversity – Scanning Diversity
• Scanning or feedback diversity
• Scanning all the signals in a fixed sequence until the one with
SNR more than a predetermined threshold is identified
• The best of M signals, is received until it falls below threshold
and the scanning process is again initiated
• Simple to implement, requires only one receiver

Basic form for scanning

diversity

34
Diversity – Scanning Diversity …
• Performance for a single branch
 th  th 
Pr  i   th  =  p( i )d i =  e d i = 1 − e − th /
1 − i
0 0

• Performance for M branch selection diversity
Pr  1 , .... ,  M   th  = (1 − e − th / ) M = PM ( th )

• The probability that at lease one of the channel not in fade

Pr  i   th  = 1 − PM ( th ) = 1 − (1 − e − th / M
)
• E.g., assume two branches or links and selection combining.
P(one link fails) =0.5, then what is the probability that both
links work? Ans: 0.25.
35
Diversity – Scanning Combining …
• Graph of
probability
distributions of
SNR= = th
threshold for M
branch selection
diversity
• The term 
represents the Rule of
mean SNR on diminishing
each branch return

36
Diversity – Maximal Ratio Combining (MRC)
• Principle: “Combine all the signals from all of the M
branches in a co-phased and weighted manner so as to
have the highest SNR at the receiver at all times”

• The control algorithms for setting the gains and phases for
MRC are similar to those required in equalizer
• Need time to converge & performance is as good as the channel

Maximal-ratio combiner

37
Diversity – Maximal Ratio Combining …
• Resulting signal envelope applied to the detector is

• Assume that all amplifiers have additive noise at their input

and that the noise is uncorrelated between different
amplifiers
• Then, the total noise power NT applied to the detector is
the weighted sum of the noise in each branch

• Which results in a SNR applied to the detector M

38
Diversity – Maximum Ratio Combining …
• Using Chebychev’s inequality M is maximized when Gi=ri/N
• The maximized value is

39
Diversity – Maximum Ratio Combining …
• The probability that M is less than some SNR threshold  is

• Hence the mean SNR is

40
Diversity – Equal Gain Combining
• Equal gain diversity
• The branch weights are all set to unity but the signals from
each are co-phased to provide equal gain combining diversity
• Co-phased signals and then add them together

• This allows the receiver to exploit signals that are

simultaneously received on each branch

41
Diversity – Equal Gain Combining …
• In certain cases, it is not convenient to provide for the
variable weighting capability as in MRC
• The probability of producing an acceptable signals from a
number of unacceptable inputs is still retained

• The performance is marginally inferior to maximal ratio

combining and superior to selection combining

42
Diversity – Equal Gain Combining …
• Practical considerations for space diversity to assure the
de-correlation (narrow angle of incident fields)
1
• For mobile units  
2

• For base station  x 10

43
Overview
• Introduction
• Equalization techniques
• Diversity techniques
• Spatial diversity and combining
• Time diversity: Interleaving and RAKE receiver
• Channel coding

44
Time Diversity – Interleaving
• Time diversity: Uses a changing channel (due to mobility)
at different times
• Example: Send same data at multiple different times
• However, this require multiple times the transmit power, and
reduce data rate (incurs additional latency)
• Latency depends on the application, e.g., voice is latency sensitive

• Time diversity is used in almost all common commercial

systems in the form of “interleaving”
• Error correction codes are more effective when errors are
not grouped together
• Block codes – At most one error per 6 or 7 received coded bits
• In general, coding methods correct a few out of each group of
coded bits received, but not more

45
Time Diversity – Interleaving …

46
Time Diversity – Interleaving …
• Used to combat the effect of burst errors

Interleavers Channel Coding

• Types: Block interleaver or convolutional interleaver

Block interleaver where source bits are read into columns and out as n-bit rows

47
Time Diversity – Interleaving …
• Interleaving: Takes an incoming coded bit stream and
spreads the bits across a transmitted packet in a known
pattern
• So that a burst of (multiple sequential) coded bit errors caused by
the channel are spread across the packet by the interleaver
• At the receiver, inverse interleaving operation is performed
• Drawback: Temporal correlation can be very long for most
applications, even for vehicular communications
• Packet retransmissions (e.g., TCP) can be viewed as time
diversity

48
Time Diversity – RAKE Receiver
• RAKE Receiver for CDMA with multipath channel

• An M-branch (M-finger) RAKE receiver implementation

• Each correlator detects a time shifted version of the original CDMA
transmission
• Each finger of the RAKE correlates to a portion of the signal which
is delayed by at least one chip in time from the other finger

49
Time Diversity – RAKE Receiver …
• In DS-SS, a rake receiver separates multipath components
from each other based on their differing time delays
• Hence, helps to achieves multipath diversity

• If one time delay group fades, another time delay group

may not fade
• Advantage (compared to space diversity)
• The “fingers” of the rake receiver do not require different RF chains
• Beneficial when the multipath channel is the worst, for example, in
urban areas, or in mountain canyons

• Disadvantage of DS-SS
• Large frequency band required – for example, 20 MHz for 802.11b,
or 1.25 MHz for IS-95 (cellular CDMA)
• Significant computational complexity in the receiver

50
Overview
• Introduction
• Equalization techniques
• Diversity techniques
• Channel coding

51
Channel coding
Channel models
Simple error detections
Block codes: error correcting and
detection
Linear block codes
Generator matrix
Systematic codes
Hamming weight and distance def.
Example
Error detection
Error correction
Block code decoding: parity check
matrix
Block code decoding: syndrome
Syndrome decoding
Linear block code summary
Linear block code: Hamming code
Hamming code matrix and table
Hamming code example
Cyclic codes
Cyclic code matrixes
Example and application of Cyclic codes
Convolutional codes
Convolutional Codes
• Block codes require a buffer
• What if data is available serially bit
by bit? Convolutional Codes
• Example
k=1
n=2
Rate R = ½
Convolutional Codes
• Encoder consists of shift registers
forming a finite state machine
• Decoding is also simple – Viterbi
Decoder which works by tracking these
states
• First used by NASA in the voyager space
programme
• Extensively used in coding speech data
in mobile phones
Achieving Capacity?
• Do Block codes and Convolutional codes
achieve Shannon Capacity?
✓ Actually they are far away
• Achieving Capacity requires large k
(block lengths)
• Decoder complexity for both codes
increases exponentially with k – not
feasible to implement
Turbo Codes
• Proposed by Berrou & Glavieux in 1993
• Advantages
– Use very large block lengths
– Have feasible decoding complexity
– Perform very close to capacity
• Limitation – delay, complexity
Summary
• There is a limit on the how good codes
can be
• Linear Block Codes and Convolutional
Codes have traditionally been used for
error detection and correction
• Turbo codes in 1993 introduced a new
way of designing very good codes with
feasible decoding complexity
Conclusion
• Equalizers attempt to make the discrete time impulse
response of the channel ideal
• Channels act as filters that cause both amplitude and phase
distortion of signals
• Transmitters and receivers can be designed as filters to
compensate for non-ideal channel behavior
• Training sequences can be used to adapt equalizer weights
• Multiple techniques are available for setting filter tap weights
• Zero forcing
• Least mean squares
• Recursive least squares

79
Conclusion …
• Diversity is one technique to combat fading in wireless
channel
• Time diversity: Used when channels spacing is greater
than the coherence time of the channel
• Repeating transmission in time correlated channel brings little
advantage
• Good with fast fading channels
• Frequency diversity: used when channels frequency
separation is greater than the coherence bandwidth of the
channel
• Spatial diversity requires multiple antennas
• E.g., MIMO and virtual antenna systems

• Channel coding is mainly used for error control

80
 Group Assignment 3

1. Compare quantitatively performance of QPSK, 16QAM and 64QAM in

wireless fading channel in terms of Spectral Efficiency, Energy
Efficiency, Reliability, Complexity and Cost, providing quantitative
examples.
2. Provide practical examples how the following techniques mitigate
impacts of wireless fading channels and compare them quantitatively
in their mitigation level?
A. Zero Forcing, Least Mean Square and Recursive Least Squares
Equalizers
B. Spatial, Polarization, Frequency and Time diversity techniques
C. Cyclic, Convolutional and Block Codes
3. Compare mathematically performance of Selection, Equal Gain and
Maximum Ratio Combining in terms of SNR and implementation
complexity for 10 number of antennas?

81