The present invention is directed, in general, to wireless communications and, more specifically, to antenna diversity combining in reception of wireless communications.
Currently available commercial wireless communications devices generally all utilize a single antenna for reception. Currently proposed wireless local area network (WLAN) standards, such as the Institute for Electrical and Electronic Engineers (IEEE) 802.11a and European Tele-communications Standards Institute (ETSI) High Performance European Radio Local Area Network version 2 (HiperLAN2) standards, suggest antenna switching and diversity combining techniques to overcome typical channel fading problems in wireless systems. The antenna switching techniques normally select a signal from among various antenna based on the criteria of signal amplitude, while diversity combining utilizes the signals from each antenna by applying different weights. At least in theory, diversity combining produces better results than switching systems.
However, all currently published proposals for diversity combining or beamforming for coded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (COFDM) systems employ algorithms operating at the symbol level, which fails to take maximum advantage of the one of the most important benefits of COFDM signaling: that equalization is embedded in the decoding process.
There is, therefore, a need in the art for bit-level diversity combining for coded orthogonal frequency division multiplexing receivers.
To address the above-discussed deficiencies of the prior art, it is a primary object of the present invention to provide, for use in wireless communications receiver, use of bit level, rather than symbol level, diversity combining. Channel estimates and bit metrics are separately computed for signals received by different antenna elements. Bit metrics are calculated by determining a least squares cumulative difference between all bits within the received symbol and corresponding bits within constellation symbols as modified by the channel estimate. The separately-determined bit metrics are then combined for decoding. Performance improvements over both single antenna systems and multiple antenna systems with symbol level diversity combining are achieved.
The foregoing has outlined rather broadly the features and technical advantages of the present invention so that those skilled in the art may better understand the detailed description of the invention that follows. Additional features and advantages of the invention will be described hereinafter that form the subject of the claims of the invention. Those skilled in the art will appreciate that they may readily use the conception and the specific embodiment disclosed as a basis for modifying or designing other structures for carrying out the same purposes of the present invention. Those skilled in the art will also realize that such equivalent constructions do not depart from the spirit and scope of the invention in its broadest form.
Before undertaking the DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION below, it may be advantageous to set forth definitions of certain words or phrases used throughout this patent document: the terms “include” and “comprise,” as well as derivatives thereof, mean inclusion without limitation; the term “or” is inclusive, meaning and/or; the phrases “associated with” and “associated therewith,” as well as derivatives thereof, may mean to include, be included within, interconnect with, contain, be contained within, connect to or with, couple to or with, be communicable with, cooperate with, interleave, juxtapose, be proximate to, be bound to or with, have, have a property of, or the like; and the term “controller” means any device, system or part thereof that controls at least one operation, whether such a device is implemented in hardware, firmware, software or some combination of at least two of the same. It should be noted that the functionality associated with any particular controller may be centralized or distributed, whether locally or remotely. Definitions for certain words and phrases are provided throughout this patent document, and those of ordinary skill in the art will understand that such definitions apply in many, if not most, instances to prior as well as future uses of such defined words and phrases.
For a more complete understanding of the present invention, and the advantages thereof, reference is now made to the following descriptions taken in conjunction with the accompanying drawings, wherein like numbers designate like objects, and in which:
In the exemplary embodiment, transmitter 101 includes a unit 104 for generating and/or buffering the data bits to be transmitted, serially connected to a scrambling unit 105, a convolution coder 106 (with optionally puncturing), a bit interleaving unit 107, a pilot addition unit 108, an inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) unit 109, and a guard band addition unit 110.
Transmitter 101 transmits the output of guard band addition unit 110 on wireless channel 103. Receiver 102 employs multiple antenna elements (not shown), with optional tuning to different frequencies, to improve reception in situations where the antenna elements do not experience fading at the same time or frequency.
Within receiver 102, separate processing paths 111a and 111b are maintained for the signals received on different antenna elements. Although only two paths (and corresponding antenna elements) are illustrated in the exemplary embodiment, any integer number of antenna elements and respective processing paths may be employed.
Each signal processing path 111a and 111b within receiver 102 includes a channel estimation unit 112a, 112b serially connected with a guard band removal unit 113a, 113b, a fast Fourier transform (FFT) unit 114a, 114b for converting the received time domain signal samples into the frequency domain, a pilot removal unit 115a, 115b, a bit metrics calculation unit 116a, 116b, and channel weighting units (C1 and C2) 117a, 117b.
Within signal processing paths 111a, 111b, bit metrics calculation units 116a and 116b utilize the characteristics of bit interleaving under COFDM standards to perform symbol to bit mapping before de-interleaving in the soft decoding by calculating the bit metrics according to the largest probability for each bit using the received symbol. The faded, noisy received version of the transmitted channel symbol is passed through bit metric computation units 116a and 116b, which calculate:
where m is the metric for bit i in one symbol, y is the received symbol, h is the fading and noisy channel (based on the channel estimate), x is the original symbol constellation, and c represents the transmitted bits to be “0” or “1”. In physical terms, equation (1) determines the shortest distance between the received symbol and projections of the constellation symbols in the channel.
The bit patterns determined by bit metrics computation units 116a and 1166b are then weighted by weighting unit 117a and 117b and combined by signal adder 118 before being sent to bit de-interleaving unit 119 and Viterbi decoder 120, then to descrambling unit 121 for determination of the data bits stored and/or utilized in by unit 122 and employed for bit error rate (BER) calculation in unit 123.
In the simulation results, the dual antenna system with bit level diversity combining exhibits a substantial performance gain—about 4–6 decibels (dB) better—over the single antenna system. The performance gap between single antenna and dual antenna with bit level diversity combining increases with the signal to noise ratio since better channel estimation is provided by the dual antenna system at higher signal to noise rations.
The unique interleaving and coding characteristics of COFDM systems are considered and exploited in the present invention by employing bit level diversity combining together with combined equalization and decoding within a single wireless receiver stage. Channel estimation and bit metrics calculation for soft Viterbi decoding are performed separately for each antenna element, which experience different channel characteristics. The separate bit metrics are then combined prior to be sent to the Viterbi decoder, producing a performance improvement over both single antenna systems and dual antenna systems utilizing symbol level diversity combining.
It is important to note that while the present invention has been described in the context of a fully functional system, those skilled in the art will appreciate that at least portions of the mechanism of the present invention are capable of being distributed in the form of a machine usable medium containing instructions in a variety of forms, and that the present invention applies equally regardless of the particular type of signal bearing medium utilized to actually carry out the distribution. Examples of machine usable mediums include: nonvolatile, hard-coded type mediums such as read only memories (ROMs) or erasable, electrically programmable read only memories (EEPROMs), recordable type mediums such as floppy disks, hard disk drives and compact disc read only memories (CD-ROMs) or digital versatile discs (DVDs), and transmission type mediums such as digital and analog communication links.
Although the present invention has been described in detail, those skilled in the art will understand that various changes, substitutions, variations, enhancements, nuances, gradations, lesser forms, alterations, revisions, improvements and knock-offs of the invention disclosed herein may be made without departing from the spirit and scope of the invention in its broadest form.
This application claims priority to U.S. Provisional Application No. 60/341,508 filed Dec. 13, 2001, the content of which is hereby incorporated by reference.
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