Key research themes
1. How does adjacent channel interference (ACI) affect WCDMA network capacity and what strategies mitigate its impact?
This research theme investigates the detrimental effect of adjacent channel interference (ACI) arising from imperfect filtering, power amplifier nonlinearities, and multiple operators using adjacent frequency bands on the overall capacity and quality of WCDMA/FDD networks. The works focus on characterizing ACI-induced dead zones where quality of service degrades, quantifying capacity loss, and exploring frequency deployment strategies and advanced receiver techniques such as multi-antenna processing to mitigate ACI impact.
2. What are effective power control and pilot power strategies to balance load and coverage in WCDMA networks?
This theme encompasses research on automated radio network planning to dynamically optimize common pilot power settings in WCDMA. Control of the pilot power directly impacts cell coverage and loading by influencing the effective cell size and interference levels. The primary objective is to improve network operability by balancing load between macro and micro cells while ensuring continuous coverage without uncovered areas. The studied methods rely on measurement-based feedback and heuristic control algorithms.
3. How do advanced modulation and spreading techniques influence WCDMA performance under multipath fading and noise?
Research in this area studies the impact of different physical layer modulation and coding schemes, including chaotic spreading sequences, multicarrier CDMA variants, and adaptive techniques on the robustness and bit error rates of WCDMA systems. This includes simulations evaluating performance in additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and multipath Rayleigh fading channels to inform the selection of spreading codes and modulation protocols for improved capacity and signal quality.