title: Exploring the physical layer frontiers of cellular uplink: The Vienna LTE-A Uplink Simulator.
abstract: Communication systems in practice are subject to many technical/technological constraints and restrictions. Multiple input, multiple output (MIMO) processing in current wireless communications, as an example, mostly employs codebook-based pre-coding to save computational complexity at the transmitters and receivers. In such cases, closed form expressions for capacity or bit-error probability are often unattainable; effects of realistic signal processing algorithms on the performance of practical communication systems rather have to be studied in simulation environments. The Vienna LTE-A Uplink Simulator is a 3GPP LTE-A standard compliant MATLAB-based link level simulator that is publicly available under an academic use license, facilitating reproducible evaluations of signal processing algorithms and transceiver designs in wireless communications. This paper reviews research results that have been obtained by means of the Vienna LTE-A Uplink Simulator, highlights the effects of single-carrier frequency-division multiplexing (as the distinguishing feature to LTE-A downlink), extends known link adaptation concepts to uplink transmission, shows the implications of the uplink pilot pattern for gathering channel state information at the receiver and completes with possible future research directions.
authors.affiliation: Institute of Telecommunications, TU Wien, Vienna, 1040 Austria ; Christian Doppler Laboratory for Dependable Wireless Connectivity for the Society in Motion, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Erich
authors.initials: E
authors.lastname: Zöchmann
authors.affiliation: Institute of Telecommunications, TU Wien, Vienna, 1040 Austria ; Christian Doppler Laboratory for Dependable Wireless Connectivity for the Society in Motion, Vienna, Austria.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Schwarz
authors.affiliation: Institute of Telecommunications, TU Wien, Vienna, 1040 Austria.
authors.forename: Stefan
authors.initials: S
authors.lastname: Pratschner
authors.affiliation: Institute of Telecommunications, TU Wien, Vienna, 1040 Austria.
authors.forename: Lukas
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Nagel
authors.affiliation: Institute of Telecommunications, TU Wien, Vienna, 1040 Austria.
authors.forename: Martin
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Lerch
authors.affiliation: Institute of Telecommunications, TU Wien, Vienna, 1040 Austria.
authors.forename: Markus
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Rupp
keywords: 4G mobile communication; Cellular uplink; Computer simulation