Extended Coverage Cellular Communication
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2022
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Doctoral Thesis
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yes
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Abstract
Traditionally, the development of wireless communication standards has primarily focused on increasing the maximum throughput, as with the introduction of 5G New Radio (NR). However, another critical metric for service quality is the extent of the geographical area where a connection can be established. This has led to a separate push to extend the coverage of cellular networks to remote and deep-indoor locations with large path losses to the nearest base station. Practically, this increase in coverage can only be achieved if the receivers are able to operate at significantly lower signal-to-noise ratios (SNRs). In principle, sufficient energy can still be conveyed by simply increasing the duration of transmission with repetitions. However, combining the information from these repetitions at very low SNR is a considerable obstacle due to changing channels and receiver offsets.
In this thesis, the major challenges in the extended coverage downlink are studied for eMTC, an extended coverage standard derived from LTE. To be able to set up communication, a device must perform a series of tasks, including cell detection, synchronization, and the decoding of data channels. The algorithms for these steps are explored and evaluated in the extended coverage regime, resulting in a comparison of the achievable coverage in the different phases. Specific improvements are presented for the limiting tasks of cell detection and decoding the initial broadcast data channel.
These methods have also been implemented as part of a multi-standard radio frequency system-on-a-chip (RF-SoC). Lab measurements have been performed, which validate the simulation results. Comparison to several commercial devices shows that the RF-SoC achieves best-in-class sensitivity.
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Examiner : Huang, Qiuting
Examiner : Burg, Andreas Peter
Examiner : Korb, Matthias
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ETH Zurich
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03380 - Huang, Qiuting (emeritus) / Huang, Qiuting (emeritus)