Phase Noise Channel: Models and Fundamental Limits

Marco Martalo
Department of Information Engineering, University of Parma, Italy

Abstract:

The phase noise channel is a well-known model for temporal instabilities and spectral dispersions generated by oscillators in wireless and optical communication systems. Phase noise may be a limiting factor for system performance, since it can cause signal distortion and information loss. In this talk, we address different discrete-time models for the continuous-time Wiener phase noise channel. These models are characterized in terms of the achievable information rate. We first review and discuss the well-established “symbol-time” model, where both the channel and the receiver are characterized by only one sample per symbol interval. However, this model is effective only for sufficiently small phase variations and represents a worst-case description of the true continuous-time channel. Therefore, we show that a refined channel representation with more samples per symbol interval can better describe the true channel and increase the achievable information rate. Finally, we discuss the recently proposed multi-sample receiver, where more samples per symbol interval are exploited at the receiver. In particular, we compute the information rate in the presence of band-limited shaping pulses and show that such systems can tolerate very strong phase noise intensities.

Biography:

Marco Martalo' received the Ph.D. degree in Information Technologies from the University of Parma, Italy, on March 2009. From October 2007 to March 2008, he was a "Visiting Scholar" at the EPFL, Lausanne, Switzerland, collaborating with the ARNI laboratory. From January 2009 to April 2012, he was a Post-Doc researcher at the Information Engineering Department (DII) of the University of Parma, Italy. From May 2012, he is an Assistant Professor at the E-Campus University and a Research Associate at the DII of the University of Parma, where he is a member of the Wireless Ad-hoc and Sensor Networks (WASN) and the MultimediaLab laboratories. His research interests are in the analysis and design of digital communication systems, with focus on low-complexity communication and distributed signal processing algorithms for wireless systems and networks.

Dr. Martalo' was a co-recipient of a "best student paper award" at IWWAN 2006. He also won the first prize award, together with the WASNLab team, at the the 2011 Body Sensor Network (BSN) Contest. He also serves as frequent reviewer for many international journals and conferences.