GENERAL DESCRIPTION:
The wireless communication industry has experienced rapid growth in recent years, and digital cellular systems are currently being designed to provide very high speed multimedia services, such as voice, internet access and video conferencing and provide access speeds ranging from a few hundred kbits/s for full mobility users up to 2 Mbits/s for low mobility users. Multimedia and computer communications are expected to play an increasing role in the society at large, making reliable high data rate wireless communication of extreme importance. Achieving such high data rates in radio channels that are inherently limited by multipath and fading is a challenging task.

Efficient temporal processing, such as advanced source coding, channel coding, modulation, equalization, and detection techniques, can help alleviate this problem. However, more dramatic improvements may be achieved by exploiting the spatial degree of freedom offered by multiple antennas. The spatial degree of freedom offered by multiple antennas provides unique opportunities for enhancing link reliability, for interference suppression, for supporting high data rates, for lowering handset power consumption, and for increasing basestation coverage. The goal of this project is to realize the promise of multiple-antenna technology and to enable future broadband wireless communication services. To this end, this research will include design issues related to developing robust receivers for improving the reverse link (user to basestation), transmit techniques to improve the reliability of the the forward link (basestation to user), and coding and decoding techniques for multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems for reliable broadband communication.

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT:
This project involves a comprehensive study of the use of multiple receive and multiple transmit antennas (space-time processing) for supporting the need for reliable high data rate communication services of the future. Achieving such high data rates in radio channels that are inherently limited by multipath and fading is a challenging task. The spatial degree of freedom offered by multiple antennas provides unique opportunities for enhancing link reliability, for interference suppression, for supporting high data rates, for lowering handset power consumption, and for increasing basestation coverage. Hence, the goal of this project is to develop effective space-time processing methods to realize the potential of multiple-antenna technology.

To realize the promise of multiple antenna technology, this research will include issues related to developing robust receivers for improving the reverse link (user to basestation), transmit techniques to improve the reliability of the forward link (basestation to user), and coding and decoding techniques for multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems for reliable broadband communications. On the reverse link, use of an antenna array based receiver can provide for antenna gain, diversity gain, and interference suppression. Design of robust receivers and their performance evaluation is a subject of this study. Of particular interest are receiver design for low signal to noise ratio and high mobility conditions. In the forward link, the use of multiple transmit antennas can improve the quality of the communication channel. In this context our plan considers space-time coding techniques, and transmit diversity techniques with and without feedback. In the MIMO context, we examine coding and decoding techniques that can reliably support high data rates through spatial multiplexing. Also considered in this project is the analysis of adaptive algorithms which play an important role in dealing with mobility.

PARTICIPATING FACULTY:
The following CWC faculty are participating in this research project: Bhaskar Rao(lead PI), Elias Masry, Larry Milstein, John Proakis, Paul Siegel, Ken Zeger, and Jim Zeidler.