Graduation Year

2015

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree

Ph.D.

Degree Name

Doctor of Philosophy (Ph.D.)

Department

Electrical Engineering

Degree Granting Department

Electrical Engineering

Major Professor

Richard D. Gitlin, Sc.D.

Committee Member

Huseyin Arslan, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Nasir Ghani, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Srinivas Katkoori, Ph.D.

Committee Member

Zygmunt J. Haas, Ph.D.

Keywords

In vivo communications, MAC, MOS, rate adaptation, system capacity

Abstract

This dissertation is composed of two independent studies: Cellular research and WBAN (Wireless Body Area Network) research. Both investigations are directed towards improving the system performance in wireless communication systems in terms of Quality of Service (QoS) and system capacity.

For the Cellular research part, this dissertation will present novel user-specific QoS requirements as defined by their respective Mean Opinion Score (MOS) formulas, and associated schedulers for wireless applications and systems that optimize spectral allocation. User-specific QoS requirements are defined and several methods to make use of such requirements to maximum the spectral utilization are presented. Five User-Specific QoS Aware (USQA) schedulers are proposed that consider the user-specific QoS requirements in the allocation of spectral resources. Schedulers are introduced that dynamically adapt to the user-specific QoS requirements to improve quality as measured by the MOS, or the system capacity, or can improve both the quality and system capacity.

Due to the different cell deployment arrangements and inter-cell interference in heterogeneous networks in comparison to homogeneous networks, the USQA scheduling is also analyzed and the system performance is evaluated in such networks. Throughput improvements of File Transfer Protocol (FTP) applications benefiting from the rate adaptation and MAC (Media Access Control) scheduling algorithms for video applications that incorporate user-specific QoS requirements to improve system capacity are demonstrated.

Another novel approach recognizes that the user-specific frequency sensitivity can be used to improve capacity. There is considerable variation in the audible range of frequencies that can be perceived by individuals, especially at the high frequency end, which is primarily affected by a gradual decline with age. This can be utilized to improve the system performance by personalizing the VoIP codecs and decreasing the user's source data rate for people from an older age group and thus increase the system capacity.

Given the potentially substantial system performance gain resulting from the USQA schedulers, it is critical to analyze their feasibility and complexity in practical LTE (4G cellular) and future wireless systems. From the LTE system perspective, LTE QoS end-to-end signaling procedures are addressed, and corresponding protocol adaptations are analyzed in order to support the USQA schedulers. In addition, the optimal scheduling period is analyzed that trades off between performance gain and implementation complexity.

In the WBAN research, MIMO (Multiple Input Multiple Output) in vivo antenna technologies are introduced and are motivated by the high data rate requirements of wirelessly transmitted low-delay High Definition (HD) video during Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS). MIMO in vivo technologies are proposed to be used in the in vivo environments to enhance and determine the maximum data transmission rate while satisfying the Specific Absorption Rate (SAR) power limitations. Various factors are considered in the MIMO in vivo study including antenna separation, antenna angular positions, human body size, and system bandwidth to determinate the maximum data rate that can be supported.

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