Position
PhD student
Qualifications
BE(Honours)
ME
Background
Tri received his Bachelor of Engineering with Honours (BE Honours) and his Master of Engineering (ME) in Electrical and Electronic Engineering (ECE) at the University of Canterbury. His ME was in the field of wireless communications systems. He developed an iterative detection method for extending the coverage of Continuous Phase Modulation (CPM). He is now working toward a Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) with the Wireless Research Center (WRC).
Research Company: Tait Radio Communications
Soft Detection of Trellis Coded CPM in Frequency-Selective Fading Channel
Tri's research is looking at an efficient technique that can enhance the performance of an advanced receiver for radio systems that Tait Radio Communications and The Wireless Research Centre have recently developed. Through the union of advanced modem techniques with FEC and using soft decoding this receiver is able to provide outstanding reliability in data detection especially for bad channel conditions such as low signal to noise ratio (SNR), and multi-path. This technique may offer a very good solution to improve Tait current products within specific deployment scenarios.
At present, the receiver technique has some drawbacks that can limit its potential. First, the receiver currently provides hard-decision output, which can not incorporate a soft input decoder to produce optimal detection. Secondly, the number of coefficients required to make reliable detection may be high. The research looks at these limitations and suitable solution to improve the current design of the receiver. This will be analysed under frequency selective fading channel.
This design may also be extended to work with a channel estimation scheme that can provide current state channel information that helps to improve the detection. This allows adaptation to be introduced into the current design. Another area of interest is to pass the receiver output to a recently developed time-diversity coded system.
If this research is successful, it may significantly lower the SNRs required to achieve a satisfactory BLER (Block Error Rate) for both the downlink and uplink of Tait radio systems. The improvement in the SNR means an increase in the communication range of the systems, and the number of required base stations can be reduced.
Prior to his ME, Tri completed a BE Hons in 2009 at Canterbury University and internships at Tait Radio Communications (09/10) and Telecom (08/09).
Publications
Pham, T. M., Martin, P. A., Woodward, G., Kongara, K. P. and Horn C. (2014) Receiver Design for SIMO-OFDM Systems with Insufficient Cyclic Prefix. Vancouver, Canada: IEEE 80th Vehicular Technology Conference: VTC2014-Fall, to be presented 14–17 September 2014. (Conference Contributions - Papers in published proceedings)
T. Pham, P. A. Martin, D. P. Taylor and C. Horn, Soft Detection of CPM in Multipath Fading, in Proc. VTC, 2013.