Past Research
Most modern communication systems are coherent, meaning the receiver uses knowledge of the channel state information to aid in detection, thus enabling more reliable communication. However, acquiring knowledge about the channel comes at a cost, usually in the form of overhead signaling (using so-called pilots), which reduces data rate and wastes energy.
In some scenarios, such as the transmission of short packets, overhead signaling is especially undesirable, as it comprises a significant fraction of the total packet length. In these regimes, communication without knowledge of the instantaneous channel state information, called non-coherent communication, is an attractive alternative.
In this research, I studied binary modulation on conjugate-reciprocal zeros (BMOCZ), a novel binary digital modulation technique enabling non-coherent detection. The principle of BMOCZ is quite unique: instead of encoding bits into conventional resources, such as time or frequency coefficients, BMOCZ encodes data into the zeros (i.e., roots) of a polynomial. With such an encoding, convolution corresponds to polynomial multiplication, which preserves the transmitted data zeros, regardless of the channel impulse response realization.
Together with my coauthors, I proposed signal processing techniques for BMOCZ to yield robust performance under hardware impairments at the physical layer (e.g., time and frequency offsets). I also analyzed BMOCZ in more conventional communication scenarios, such as uplink OFDMA, where I exploited the auto-correlation properties of BMOCZ to propose a pilot-free, low-PAPR, BMOCZ-based OFDM framework for multi-polynomial packets.
