Equalization Techniques for Broadband Wireless Networks

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are characterized by low-power devices equipped with communication capabilities. Due to the lack of a set infrastructure, WSNs exhibit characteristics fundamentally different from traditional networks. The existing literature in conventional wireless networks, therefore, cannot be applied to WSN design. The recently introduced Cooperative diversity techniques exploit the broadcast nature of wireless transmission, creating a virtual antenna array through cooperating nodes. This form of diversity is therefore well suited for WSNs. The research in this field is however, still in it’s infancy. Particularly, most of the current literature in this area assumes an idealized transmission environment with an underlying frequency-flat fading channel model and perfect channel state information, which are far away from being realistic if wideband sensor applications or mobile sensor networks are considered. Motivated by these practical concerns, this thesis addresses the analysis and design of efficient equalization techniques for non-cooperative and cooperative wireless networks.