1. Project title: 5G mmWave Channel Characterization in the UAE

Dr. Mahmoud Ibrahim (AUS), Dr. Mohamed El-Tarhuni (AUS), and Dr. Amer Zakaria (AUS)

Fifth generation (5G) mobile radio systems are being explored by the wireless community to support the new and advanced applications that need faster data rates, lower latency, higher reliability and availability, and supporting a huge number of connected devices. This is motivated by the tremendous growth excepted in the machine-to-machine type communications and their use in the Internet of Things (IoT). One of the enabling technologies for 5G is the use of higher frequency bands in the 30 to 60 GHz range, which is called the mm-wave (mmW) range.  The mmW band is barely used and thus provides a wider bandwidth that can support higher data rates. It also allows for the use of a large number of closely spaced antennas to provide higher directivity and better performance. However, for proper deployment of wireless systems using mm-waves, it is very important to have an accurate channel model to allow for predicting the coverage and performance of these systems. Furthermore, there has been little amount of work related to practical measurements aiming at characterizing the mobile radio channel at the mm waves band, especially in the MENA region in general and the UAE in particular. This is particularly interesting since this region is characterized by very harsh conditions that might affect the propagation in the mm band in an unexpected way.

In this project, we develop an experimental setup for mm-wave channel characterization and conduct a measurements campaign at American University of Sharjah. Both indoor and outdoor channel characterization will be conducted. In particular, an appropriate large-scale pathloss model will be proposed, different channel parameters such as the delay spread and the maximum excess delay will also be estimated. Moreover, the small-scale fading behavior will be investigated and an appropriate statistical model will be proposed to describe this behavior.

2. Project title: Video Streaming over LTE-U

Dr. Mahmoud Ibrahim (AUS), Dr. Mohamed Hassan (AUS)

A looming spectrum crisis is expected to occur over the next decade or so. This is caused by the exponential increase in the number of connected mobile devices as well as the concept of Internet of things (IoT).  According to Cisco Systems Inc., over two-thirds of the world’s mobile data traffic will be video traffic by 2018. That’s why the industry is preparing for the 1000x challenge, where the wireless demand in 2020 is expected to be 1000x the demand in 2010. To meet the 1000x challenge, one possible approach is to allow the LTE users to exploit the unlicensed Wi-Fi spectrum without affecting its performance, known as LTE-U. In this research effort, we investigate different video streaming approaches while taking into consideration the challenges caused by the coexistence of the two technologies.

3. Project title: Performance Evaluation Studies over the H-function Fading Channel

Dr. Mahmoud Ibrahim (AUS), Dr. Mohamed Hassan (AUS)

The H-function distribution is a commonly used, generalized composite fading model that has been recently introduced. This model subsumes many of the classical models such as the Rayleigh and Nakagami-m as well as more recent ones such as the Weibull. In this study, we are interested in evaluating the performance of different scenarios operating over this fading model. This includes capacity studies assuming different diversity reception techniques as well as BER and outage probability studies.