Resource Allocation and Performance Analysis for Next Generation Wireless Communication and Radio Astronomy Systems

Radio spectrum is a limited resource for both scientific research and wireless communications industry. The usage of spectrum can be either active, e.g., wireless data transmission and radar detection, or passive, e.g., radio astronomy observation. However, with the rapid growth of active communication and passive signal receiving demand, more efficient and flexible utilization of spectrum is vital. On the other hand, achieving a high power efficiency is also important to signal transmission and detection. This dissertation devotes to developing machine-type communication systems and distributed radio astronomy systems with limited spectrum and power resources. For a radio resource limited multi-tier Machine-type Communication (MTC) network, controlling random access congestion while satisfying the unique requirements of each tier and guaranteeing fairness among nodes is always a challenge. In the first part, we study the network dimensioning and radio resource partitioning for the uplink of an MTC network with signal-to-interference ratio (SIR)-based clustering and relaying, where MTC gateways (MTCGs) capture and forward the packets sent from MTC devices (MTCDs) to the base station (BS). Specifically, under transmission outage probability constraints, we investigate the tradeoff between network utility (in terms of transmission capacity and revenue) and resource allocation fairness. With both outage probability constraints and minimum MTCD density constraints, we propose approaches to maximize the weighted sum of quality of experience (QoE) of different tiers of MTCDs. Furthermore, a transmit power control strategy for MTCG-to-BS link is proposed to achieve a constant data rate. In the second part of this dissertation, we consider a new large-scale communication scheme where randomly distributed backscatter nodes are involved as secondary users to primary transmitter and primary receiver pairs. The secondary communication between a backscatter transmitter and a backscatter receiver introduces additional double fading channels and has a two-side effect to the primary communications. We derive the signal-to-interferenceplus-noise ratio and signal-to-interference ratio based coverage probabilities for two network configuration scenarios, which can provide useful insights in designing such systems. A conflict of the spectrum rights and needs between active wireless communication systems and passive radio astronomy systems (RASs) has become substantially greater due to the phenomenal expansion of wireless communications and increased interest in RAS observation. For sustainable growth and coexistence of cellular wireless communications (CWC) and RAS, a coordinated shared spectrum access paradigm was recently introduced. Embracing such a paradigm, the third part of this dissertation proposes a distributed auxiliary radio telescope (DART) system which can geographically and spectrally coexist with CWC while offering additional capability or performance enhancement to RAS. Theoretical performance analysis of the DART system with different quantization resolutions is presented, and approximate closed-form expressions are obtained. Adaptation of the cooling power of DART receivers according to the time-varying ambient temperature is also proposed. Furthermore, an analytical expression for the DART system parameters under the shared spectrum access paradigm and cooling power constraint to achieve the same performance as the existing single-dish RAS with a radio quiet zone is developed to provide guidance in the DART sysvii tem design. The numerical and simulation results illustrate the feasibility and potentials of the proposed DART system.