CORDIS - Resultados de investigaciones de la UE
CORDIS

WIreless Networks with Interference Exploitation

Final Report Summary - WINIE (WIreless Networks with Interference Exploitation)

Currently, there is a wireless spectrum scarcity, that is several users and mobile operators require more RF spectrum at lower cost. Given that the RF spectrum is limited by physical constraints, it is of outmost importance to use it in the most efficient way. The goal of WINIE was to design signal-level or physical layer (PHY) cooperative algorithms and medium access control (MAC) protocols for wireless networks that allow several users in a wireless network to transmit simultaneously in the same RF spectrum.

In this project we proposed a novel approach for wireless medium access that is based first on the simultaneous transmission from multiple sources and second on the use helping users in a network so as to improve the performance of this new paradigm. With the comprehensive set of protocols and signal processing algorithms developed during the course of WINIE, we can leverage the presence of continuously increasing number of users in wireless networks. The main result is that users in a network can gain significantly if they use the same spectrum together but they cooperate when doing so. These results are possible when two very specific schemes are used.

First, we proposed a practical MAC protocol that operates passively without the need to adopt a different cooperative mode at the simultaneously transmitting users or the helping users (relays). Under any channel condition our protocol always performs better than state-of-the-art multi-source or classic cooperative protocols. The reason is that the MAC protocol is responsible for selecting which two users in a network should transmit simultaneously for optimality. The protocol is described in detail in [1].

The second novel aspect is that during the course of this project we were the first to propose distributed space-time codes (DSTCs) for interfering signals. Specifically, we proposed to leverage the interfering signals at several users that exist in a dense network. Then, these signals are exploited with the proposed DSTC. The result is significant improvement in the spectral efficiency of wireless communication. The detailed results for the DSTC protocol are present in [2], while the concept of leveraging two interfering signals at several users was first described in [3].

This research is of interest primarily to the wireless industry that develops and standardizes wireless communications protocols.
More details can be found in the website of the Fellow: Dr. Antonios Argyriou antoniosargyriou.net
[1] A. Argyriou, Coordinating Interfering Transmissions in Cooperative Wireless LANs, IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications, Volume 10, No. 11, Pages 3804-3812, Nov 2011.
[2] A. Argyriou, "A Cooperative Protocol for Spectral-Efficient Cognitive Relay Networks", IEEE GlobalSIP, Atlanta, GA, Dec. 2014.
[3] A. Argyriou, D. Kosmanos, and L. Tassiulas, ”Optimizing Interference Cancellation in
Cooperative Wireless Networks with Relay Selection ”, CISS 2014, Princeton.