Communication over Dispersive Wireless Channels: Theory and Methods Based on Physical Principles

University Of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison WI

Investigators

Abstract

The goal of the wireless revolution is to provide ubiquitous tetherless connectivity and access to information. The last decade has seen great progress towards this goal with cellular phones and wireless LAN cards now being commonplace. In particular, space-time processing, spurred by the use of multiple antenna arrays, has emerged as a key enabler of wireless technology. Notwithstanding recent advances in wireless communications research and technology, the state-of-the-art is far from realizing the capacity of wireless networks because of significant gaps in our fundamental understanding of the shared physical wireless channel. The key challenges posed by the wireless channel are due to its dispersive nature in time, frequency and space resulting from physical signal propagation over multiple spatially distributed paths. This motivates the central questions at the heart of this project: What are the key factors that govern reliable communication over dispersive wireless channels? What are the fundamental limits on communication over dispersive wireless channels? What are the key principles that guide practical system design? We will leverage a novel framework based on a virtual representation of physical wireless channels to address these multi-faceted questions. The virtual representation is a powerful deconstructing tool for unraveling the rich structure underlying dispersive wireless channels. As we demonstrate in this proposal, the insights afforded by the virtual representation framework have deep and wide ranging implications in the design and analysis of wireless communication systems. Within this framework, our proposed research program has three broad integrated thrusts: