Abstract
Improving the capacity and performance of communication systems is typically achieved by either using more bandwidth or enhancing the effective signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Both approaches have led to the invention of various transmission techniques, such as forward error correction (FEC), multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), and many, many others. This paper, however, focuses on the idea that should be immediately apparent when looking at Shannon’s channel capacity formula, but that somehow remained less explored for decades, despite its (unfortunately only in theory) limitless potential. We investigate the idea of improving the performance of communication systems by means of cryogenic cooling of their RF front-ends; the technique, although widely-known and used in radio astronomy for weak signal detection, has attracted limited interest when applied to wireless communications. The obtained results, though mainly theoretical, are promising and lead to a substantial channel capacity increase, implying an increase in spectral efficiency, potential range extension, or decreasing the power emitted by mobile stations. We see its applications in base stations (BSs) of machine-type communication (MTC) and Internet of Things (IoT) systems.
Highlights
Shannon’s formula for channel capacity, i.e., S C = B log 1 + N (1)suggests two main methods that allow an increase of system capacity
Let us stress that we show asymptotic limits, the performance of modern channel coding techniques, e.g., turbo codes [11] or low-density parity check (LDPC) codes [12], allows the performance of the overall system to be close to such limits
This phenomenon is due to the fact that when the interference level becomes very low, its value can be comparable with that of the thermal noise; albeit, depending on the temperature of the cryogenically-cooled down wireless front-end and the received power, such a capacity stabilization point can be found at different interference levels
Summary
Suggests two main methods that allow an increase of system capacity. The first is by enlarging the received signal power, S, which produces logarithmic gains in terms of S. The possibility of lowering the noise power itself in order to improve the capacity is not prevalent in the communications community, regardless of the considerable gains that might result. This is despite the fact that most of the attention is concentrated on the design of an RF receiver block featuring low noise figure (NF) values. Entropy 2019, 21, 832 order to improve the performance of communication systems Such a noise method is to be achieved by cryogenically-cooling wireless front-ends, and as a result, diminishing the impact of thermal noise.
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