Spatial Diversity

This paper presents a GPS multipath mitigation method using a dual circularly polarized antenna array and a multi-channel receiver. The method is based on the exploitation of both polarization and spatial diversity associated with a GPS signal and its multipath signals available at the receiver input. Conventional GPS antennas are right-hand circularly polarized (RHCP) to suppress multipath contributions to the input. This polarization-based discrimination of multipath signal cannot completely eliminate multipath induced GPS range measurement errors. We present an algorithm that performs spatial processing on the input from the left-hand circular polarized (LHCP) array with an increased relative strength of the multipath signal, thereby providing improved multipath angle of arrival (AOA) estimation. With the known multipath AOA and direct signal AOA (which can be obtained from almanac/ephemeris together with the antenna attitude or estimated in a separate process), we can then take ...

The study relates village seed systems to biological diversity of millet crops grown by farmers in the semi-arid lands of Andhra Pradesh and Karnataka, India. In these subsistence-oriented, semi-arid production systems the environment is marginal for crop growth and often there is no substitute for millet crops. Across communities, farmers grow 13 different combinations of pearl millet, sorghum, finger millet, little millet, and foxtail millet varieties, but individual farmers grow an average of only 2–3 millet varieties per season. The “village seed system” in this study refers to all channels through which farmers acquire genetic materials, separate from or in interaction with the commercial seed industry, observed at the local level. Data are compiled through household surveys and interviews with traders and dealers in village and district markets. Based on the concept of the seed lot, several seed system parameters are defined and measured by millet crop. Most seed transactions, including gifts of seed, appear to be monetized. Seed supply channels differ by improvement status of the genetic material. Regression results confirm that seed system parameters are statistically significant determinants of the spatial diversity of millet crops measured at the village level. Furthermore, both the trade through weekly village markets (shandies) and through the formal seed supply channel contribute positively to the breadth of genetic materials in these communities. Ways should be found to strengthen and improve the overall efficiency of the seed system, including both formal and informal channels, in order to reduce the costs to farmers of procuring and managing diverse crop varieties.

Despite the popularity and maturity of RTK GPS (GNSS), acceptable performance is heavily dependent on a relatively unobstructed sky-view, where there are at least five satellites with good geometry available, and on the reliability of the wireless data link used for differential corrections. In so-called "difficult" environments where satellite obstruction is common, such as open-pit mining and urban environments, the

Diversity methods provide the receiver with independently faded copies of the transmitted signal with the expectation that at least one of these replicas will be received correctly. There are ranges of techniques available through which these faded copies can be recovered and used as part of arrangements for better reception. This paper proposes a method based on Space-Time Block Coding (STBC) with Multiple-Input Single-Output (MISO) and Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) set-up for use in wireless channels. A special version of STBC called Alamouti code is used for exploiting the performance of MISO and MIMO in frequency-selective fading environment. Performance differences are observed with and without STBC in frequency selective faded channels. A comparison is made between the diversity gain of MISO and MIMO systems in terms of BER for two specific modulation schemes, namely BPSK and QPSK. The obtained results demonstrate that spatial diversity along with the power of STBC significantly improves the error performance in frequency selective wireless fading channels.

In emerging cognitive radio (CR) networks, the first cognitive task preceding any dynamic spectrum management is the sensing and identification of spectrum holes in wireless environments. This paper develops a distributed compressed spectrum sensing approach for (ultra-)wideband CR networks. First, compressive sampling is performed at local CRs to scan the very wide spectrum at practical signal-acquisition complexity. Then, measurements or states from multiple CR detectors are fused to collect spatial diversity gain, which improves the detection quality especially under fading channels. Distributed fusion algorithms are derived to effect collaborative fusion at low communication and computation load scalable to the network size. Multiple performance metrics are identified to evaluate the proposed spectrum sensing techniques, as well as to assess those performance-determining factors in system design. Computer simulations corroborate the effectiveness of the proposed techniques in id...

The study presents an analysis of forest spatial structure and diversity in the Federal State of Durango where the majority of the forests consist of pure pine stands or pine mixed with oak. Natural forests of greater diversity and of high ecological significance are found only in a few isolated localities in the Santa Bárbara valley. These forests, with rare

Consider L independent and identically distributed exponential random variables (r.vs) X1, X2,...,XL and positive scalars b1, b2,...,bL. In this letter, we present the probability density function (pdf), cumulative distribution function and the Laplace transform of the pdf of the composite r.v Z = (Σ(j=1)L Xj)2/(Σ(j=1}L bj Xj). We show that the r.v Z appears in various communication systems such as i) maximal ratio combining of signals received over multiple channels with mismatched noise variances, ii) M-ary phase-shift keying with spatial diversity and imperfect channel estimation, and iii) coded multi-carrier code-division multiple access reception affected by an unknown narrow-band interference, and the statistics of the r.v Z derived here enable us to carry out the performance analysis of such systems in closed-form.

We address the problem of transmit beamforming under channel uncertainties for a multiuser MIMO system, where both the transmitter and the receiver are equipped with multiple antennas. In transmit beamforming multi-user multiplexing is performed using spatial diversity techniques so that a base station could serve multiple users in the same frequency band enabling a substantial saving in bandwidth utilization. However, such techniques require nearly perfect knowledge of the channel state information at the transmitter, which is generally not available in practise. In this paper, we propose robust spatial multiplexing schemes based on a worst case performance optimization by incorporating imperfect channel state information. In the simulation, we have examined two scenarios. In the first the channel state information is assumed to have Gaussian distribution errors. In the second scenario, we analyze the performance for errors introduced due to a partial channel state information feedback scheme. In both scenarios, the proposed robust scheme outperforms the conventional scheme.

Equalization in the time domain is a well-known technique for combating intersymbol interference (ISI) in frequency selective channels. We derive the general structure of the linear zero forcing (ZF) equalizing filters for multiple input multiple output (MIMO) communication systems with more outputs than inputs. These filters are finite impulse response (FIR) filters in general and their structure is determined by the number of inputs and outputs. The relation between the spatial diversity of the system and the ...

High sensitivity GPS (HSGPS) receiver technology enables GPS signals to be acquired in harsh signal environments such as urban canyons and indoors where previously impossible. However, the measurements are biased and noisy due to multipath and noise associated with the low-power signals. The occurrence of simultaneous blunders might cause traditional RAIM (Receiver Autonomous Integrity Monitoring) schemes, relying on the assumption of only one erroneous satellite signal, to fail. In addition, the poor geometry due to blocked satellites under the harsh signal environments may fail to provide the redundancy required for RAIM. This paper presents the result of an investigation based on the use of a twin-antenna system for improving HSGPS performance in terms of accuracy and reliability. The key idea is to use two identical antennas with known inter-antenna distance and exploit signal spatial diversity. Although the system requires the use of an extra antenna, it provides more redundanc...