This application relates to wireless communications and, more particularly, to a method and system for training a multiple-in-multiple-out (MIMO) communication system.
Wireless networking of servers, routers, access points and client devices has greatly expanded the ability of users to create and expand existing networks. In fact, wireless networks have allowed clients to connect devices such as notebook or laptop computers, Personal Digital Assistants (PDAs), and cell phones to office and home networks from remote locations not typically associated with the network. Such remote locations, referred to as hotspots, allow clients to access their own networks from local coffee shops.
To facilitate the wireless communication explosion and provide compatibility among different devices, communications protocols, such as IEEE 802.11a/b/g, have been established.
IEEE 802.11a is an important wireless local area network (WLAN) standard powered by Coded Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (COFDM). The IEEE 802.11a system can achieve transmission data rates from 6 Mbps to 54 Mbps. The current 802.11a system uses 20 MHz band as a channel at 5 GHz carrier frequency band. The entire channel is divided into 64 sub-channels and 48 of them are used to transmit information data, while the remaining 12 sub-carriers are used at the band edge for the spectrum shaping. The details of the 802.11a system sub-carrier usage and system parameters are well-known in the art.
However, these protocols are designed primarily for the transmission of data and, because of the limitations in the quantity of data transmitted, are only marginally suitable for real-time video transmission. Failure to timely deliver video data may cause errors in motion rending the images unusable, for example.
In an OFDM system, the frequency band is partitioned into frequency subchannels, referred to as carrier frequencies, each associated with a subcarrier frequency upon which data is modulated. Typically, each subchannel may experience different conditions such as fading and multipath effects, which also vary with time. Consequently, the number of bits transmitted per subchannel frequency may vary.
In order to satisfy high-volume wireless communication for applications, such as hotspots, home entertaining networks and enterprise communications, higher transmission rates are needed. A new group referred to as the IEEE 802.11n WG (Working Group), has been formed to work on a standard that can provide 100 Mbps throughput at MAC layer.
Considering the channel characteristics of Wireless Local Area Networks (WLANs), it is extremely difficult to increase the data rate with a single antenna system by merely increasing the order of the signal constellation and decoding within a reasonable SNR range. One simple method to obtain the higher transmission data rate is to use a larger channel bandwidth. This solution is simple, cheap and fast to market. However, the spectrum efficiency cannot be dramatically increased. Additional work on a 802.11a-based system is needed to reach the 3 bit/sec/Hz goal set by the standards committee.
Another way to obtain a higher data rate in a rich scattered environment is spatial multiplexing, such as the BLAST system. Different configurations of an 802.11a -based 2×2 Spatial Multiplexing Multiple-Input-Multiple-Output (SP-MIMO) systems have been investigated to find the best solution for the system's performance and complexity.
One complexity encountered in MIMO systems is the need for training each of the channels. This requires the transmission of a series of known bits from which a receiving system can estimate the effect of the transmission medium in the corresponding channel on the bit stream. As training sequences are an overhead on the transmission and do not carry user information, their inclusion in the bit stream reduces the effective rate of transmission.
Hence, there is a need in the industry for a MIMO system and a training sequence that allows the MIMO system to determine corresponding channel characteristics that impose a minimal overhead on the data transmission.
A method and systems for implementing MIMO communications are disclosed. The systems comprise at least one encoder for Reed-Solomon-encoding a corresponding input data stream of data packets; at least one interleaver for interleaving bits of a corresponding encoded input data stream; at least one mapper for mapping said interleaved bits of a corresponding encoded input data stream; at least one inverse FFT for determining transforms of said mapped interleaved bits of a corresponding encoded bit stream; at least one cyclic prefix unit for determining a cyclic prefix of the transformed, mapped interleaved bits of a corresponding encoded bit stream, and at least one pulse shaper for shaping pulses of a corresponding encoded bit stream and means for dividing a data stream into a plurality of input data streams, each input data stream associated with a corresponding communication channel. In addition, the method discloses a training sequence that imposes minimal overhead on data transmission.
It is to be understood that these drawings are solely for purposes of illustrating the concepts of the invention and are not intended as a definition of the limits of the invention. The embodiments shown in the figures herein and described in the accompanying detailed description are to be used as illustrative embodiments and should not be construed as the only manner of practicing the invention. Also, the same reference numerals, possibly supplemented with reference characters where appropriate, have been used to identify similar elements.
Receiving system 150 receives the transmitted bit stream at antenna 151 and reverses the transmission process by applying the received data to pulse shaper 152, sampler 156, FFT 160, de-mapper 164, de-bit interleaver 168, and FEC decoder 172 to produce output 176.
Conventional wireless communication systems operate with up to 64 frequency carriers to improve transmission by avoiding interference. In a preferred embodiment of the invention, one hundred twenty-eight (128) frequency carriers are used. In this aspect, OFDM symbols may then be grouped into blocks of 96, having 2 adjacent zero carriers at DC, 22 carriers for bandedge protection and 8 pilot carriers. The 128-block input to IFFT 132 may be formed as:
0,0, s1, s2 . . . s52, 0, 0, . . . 0, s53, s54 . . . s104, 0
In one preferred embodiment, signal transmission may appear, in the FFT domain, as:
Carrier No: [1, 2, 3 . . . 10, 11, 12 . . . 28, 29, 30 . . . 46, 47, 48 . . . 53, 54 . . . 76, 77 . . . 82, 83, 84 . . . 100, 101, 102 . . . 118, 119, 120 . . . 127, 128]
value [0, 0 d1 . . . d8 p1 d . . . d25 p2 d26 . . . d42 p3 d43 . . . d48 0 . . . 0 d49 . . . d54 p4 d55 . . . d71 p5 d72 . . . d88 p6 d89 . . . d96 0]
Thus improvement in the transmission is achieved as there are more data symbols transmitted as carrier frequencies numbered 3 through 53 and carrier frequencies numbered 77-127 are utilized for transmission. Further, carrier frequencies numbered 54 and 76, in this 128 FFT representation, are reserved for training symbols only.
Anyone skilled in the art would recognize that the exemplary training sequence shown may be applied to systems using a different number of transmission frequencies. For example, in IEEE 802.11a/b/g systems, 64 carrier frequencies are used and, hence, the number of symbols used is changed to provide the desired isolation of training tones to specific carrier frequencies. Increasing the number of carrier frequencies from 64 to 128 requires that the phase noise between channels is significantly decreased. Hence, although the present invention is described with regard to a preferred 128 frequency system, it would be also applicable to systems with a lower number—e.g., 64, 32, etc., or a higher number—e.g., 256, 512, etc.—of carrier frequencies.
Another aspect of the invention employs a Reed-Soloman (220, 200) 20 byte-error correcting code over GF (256) using a generator polynomial represented as
x8+x4+x3+x2+1.
This generator polynomial is the same as that used in the ATSC HDTV standard. This code corrects up to 10 byte errors per 220 byte codeword. In one aspect, the packet size need not be restricted to an integral multiple of the codeword size. The RS encoder begins encoding data in blocks of 200 bytes and any leftover bytes, e.g., less than 200, are encoded as a shortened RS codeword with the same number of parity bytes (20). In one aspect, the packets may be filled with RS parity bits. For example, encoding a 100 byte packet transmitted over the 2×2 system shown above, using 128-FFT, a rate of ¾ 64 QAM modulation using a 10-byte over GF(28) (220, 200) RS requires 8 bytes as pad bits. In this case, the 8 parity bytes may be used as the 8 “pad bit”-bytes; resulting in a (108, 100) code. Shortening and puncturing of RS codes is well-known in the art and need not be discussed in detail.
Input/output devices 802, processors 803 and memories 804 may communicate over a communication medium 825. Communication medium 825 may represent, for example, a bus, a communication network, one or more internal connections of a circuit, circuit card or other apparatus, as well as portions and combinations of these and other communication media. Input data requests from the client devices 801 are processed in accordance with one or more programs that may be stored in memories 804 and executed by processors 803. Processors 803 may be any means, such as a general-purpose or a special-purpose computing system, or may be a hardware configuration, such as a laptop computer, desktop computer, a server, handheld computer, dedicated logic circuit, or integrated circuit. Processors 803 may also be Programmable Array Logic (PAL), Application Specific Integrated Circuit (ASIC), etc., which may be a hardware “programmed” to include software instructions or a code that provides a known output in response to known inputs. In one aspect, hardware circuitry may be used in place of, or in combination with, software instructions to implement the invention. The elements illustrated herein may also be implemented as discrete hardware elements that are operable to perform the operations shown using coded logical operations or by executing a hardware-executable code.
In one aspect, the principles of the present invention may be implemented by a computer-readable code executed by processor 803. The code may be stored in the memory 804 or read/downloaded from a memory medium 883, an I/O device 885 or magnetic, optical media such as a floppy disk, a CD-ROM or a DVD, 887.
Information items from device 801 received by I/O device 802 after processing in accordance with one or more software programs operable to perform the functions illustrated herein may be also transmitted over network 880 to one or more output devices represented as display 880, reporting device 890 or second processing system 895.
As one skilled in the art would recognize, the term computer or computer system may represent one or more processing units in communication with one or more memory units and other devices, e.g., peripherals, connected electronically to and communicating with at least one processing unit. Furthermore, the devices may be electronically connected to the one or more processing units via internal buses, e.g., ISA bus, microchannel bus, PCI bus, PCMCIA bus, etc., or one or more internal connections of a circuit, circuit card or other device, as well as portions and combinations of these and other communication media or an external network—e.g., the Internet and Intranet.
In the current IEEE 802.11a/g standard, a 64-point FFT is used to form the transmitted signal. In this case, the cyclic prefix, which is inserted to protect against a multipath, is 16 samples long, and, thus leads to an overhead of 25%. This large overhead limits the user data rate, even if one were to use a MIMO system. Moreover, the channel estimation for MIMO systems suffers when a 64-point FFT used as a frequency interleaved training sequence allows each antenna only a small number of frequency bins for channel estimation. Hence, the present invention preferably employs a 128-point FFT system that allows for a greater number of entries per bin and further reduces the overhead due to the cyclic prefix. In conjunction with the frequency interleaved training sequence used for channel estimation described herein, there is very little loss of performance compared to a 64-point FFT system.
While there has been shown, described, and noted fundamentally novel features of the present invention as applied to preferred embodiments thereof, it will be understood that various omissions and substitutions and changes in the apparatus described, in the form and details of the devices disclosed, and in their operation, may be made by those skilled in the art without departing from the spirit of the present invention. For example, while the present invention has been described with regard to a two-channel MIMO, it would be within the skill of those practicing the art to expand the concept shown herein to a system with more channels. It is expressly intended that all combinations of those elements that perform substantially the same function in substantially the same way to achieve the same results are within the scope of the invention. Substitutions of elements from one described embodiment to another are also fully intended and contemplated.
This application claims the benefit, pursuant to 35 USC §119(e), to that provisional patent application filed on May 13, 2004 in the United States Patent and Trademark Office, entitled “MIMO OFDM System For Wireless LAN Application,” and assigned Ser. No. 60/570,637, the contents of which are incorporated by reference herein.
Filing Document | Filing Date | Country | Kind | 371c Date |
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PCT/IB05/51529 | 5/10/2005 | WO | 11/13/2006 |
Number | Date | Country | |
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60570637 | May 2004 | US | |
60614726 | Sep 2004 | US |