On the performance analysis of full-duplex networks

Abstract

In this thesis we study Full-Duplex (FD) cooperative networks from different perspectives, using concepts of information theory, communication theory and applied statistics. We provide a comprehensive performance analysis of cooperative communications systems operating with FD relays. We demonstrate that FD relaying is feasible even when experiencing strong self-interference, and we show its application under different scenarios. More importantly, the results attained through this work serve as a benchmark for design as well as deployment of current and future wireless communications technologies. Our first contribution is a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art on FD communications, more specifically on FD relaying, and we revisit some of the main properties of cooperative schemes. Another contribution comes from an extensive analysis of outage probability, throughput and energy efficiency of FD relaying over Rayleigh fading channels. Besides the mathematical framework introduced herein, we also show that in some cases cooperative Half-Duplex (HD) schemes achieve better performance than FD relaying with self-interference. Therefore, we draw a discussion on the trade-offs between HD and FD schemes as well as between throughput and energy efficiency. Then, we investigate the performance of FD relaying protocols under general fading settings, namely Nakagami-m fading. Our findings allow a better understanding of effects of the residual self-interference and line-of-sight on a FD relaying setup. Our final contribution lies on the performance analysis of secure cooperative networks relying on information theoretical metrics to provide enhanced privacy and confidentiality to wireless networks. Thus, we provide a comprehensive mathematical framework for composite fading channels. Even though experiencing strong self-interference, we demonstrate that FD relaying is feasible also under secrecy constraints, thus perfect secrecy can be achieved.