Models of communication | EPFL Graph Search

Models of communication are simplified representations of the process of communication. Most models try to describe both verbal and non-verbal communication and often understand it as an exchange of messages. Their function is to give a compact overview of the complex process of communication. This helps researchers formulate hypotheses, apply communication-related concepts to real-world cases, and test predictions. Despite their usefulness, many models are criticized based on the claim that they are too simple because they leave out essential aspects. The components and their interactions are usually presented in the form of a diagram. Some basic components and interactions reappear in many of the models. They include the idea that a sender encodes information in the form of a message and sends it to a receiver through a channel. The receiver needs to decode the message to understand the initial idea and provides some form of feedback. In both cases, noise may interfere and distort

Simulation of Cooperative Automated Driving by Bidirectional Coupling of Vehicle and Network Simulators

Guillaume Jornod, David Mansolino, Alcherio Martinoli, Inaki Navarro Oiza

The convergence of sensor-based vehicle automation and Inter-Vehicle Communication (IVC) will be a key to achieve the full automation of vehicles. In this paper we present a new method for the design and performance evaluation of Cooperative Automated Driving (CAD) systems, based on a bidirectional coupling of vehicle and network simulators (Webots and ns-3). The coupling exploits the comprehensive capabilities of the simulators at a reasonable computational complexity and allows simulating CAD systems with high accuracy. We demonstrate the capabilities of the simulation tool by a case study of convoy driving with automated vehicles using a fully distributed control algorithm and IVC. The study compares CAD-specific metrics (safety distance, headway, speed) for an ideal and a realistic communication channel. The simulation results underline the need of accurate modeling and give valuable insights for the design of CAD systems.

2017

Re-proving Channel Polarization Theorems

Mine Alsan

The general subject considered in this thesis is a recently discovered coding technique, polar coding, which is used to construct a class of error correction codes with unique properties. In his ground-breaking work, Arikan proved that this class of codes, called polar codes, achieve the symmetric capacity --- the mutual information evaluated at the uniform input distribution ---of any stationary binary discrete memoryless channel with low complexity encoders and decoders requiring in the order of

O(N\log N)

operations in the block-length

N

. This discovery settled the long standing open problem left by Shannon of finding low complexity codes achieving the channel capacity. Polar codes are not only appealing for being the first to 'close the deal'. In contrast to most of the existing coding schemes, polar codes admit an explicit low complexity construction. In addition, for symmetric channels, the polar code construction is deterministic; the theoretically beautiful but practically limited "average performance of an ensemble of codes is good, so there must exist one particular code in the ensemble at least as good as the average'' formalism of information theory is bypassed. Simulations are thus not necessary in principle for evaluating the error probability which is shown in a study by Telatar and Arikan to scale exponentially in the square root of the block-length. As such, at the time of this writing, polar codes are appealing for being the only class of codes proved, and proved with mathematical elegance, to possess all of these properties. Polar coding settled an open problem in information theory, yet opened plenty of challenging problems that need to be addressed. This novel coding scheme is a promising method from which, in addition to data transmission, problems such as data compression or compressed sensing, which includes all types of measurement processes like the MRI or ultrasound, could benefit in terms of efficiency. To make this technique fulfill its promise, the original theory has been, and should still be, extended in multiple directions. A significant part of this thesis is dedicated to advancing the knowledge about this technique in two directions. The first one provides a better understanding of polar coding by generalizing some of the existing results and discussing their implications, and the second one studies the robustness of the theory over communication models introducing various forms of uncertainty or variations into the probabilistic model of the channel. See the fulltext of the thesis for the complete abstract.

EPFL2015

Spike-Based Sensing and Communication for Highly Energy-Efficient Sensor Edge Nodes

Mihai Adrian Ionescu, Teodor Rosca

Highly energy-efficient wireless sensor nodes are a prerequisite for a sustainable operation of the Internet of things. Therefore, classical approaches for system design based on digital signal processing are not a viable solution, but system design has to follow entirely new paradigms. In this regard, we present a sensory system with analog spike-based signal processing for sensing and communication, encoding the sensory information in the pulse repetition frequency (PRF), getting rid of energy hungry A/D and D/A conversion. Our spiking sensory system can generate spikes from any conventional analog output sensor using a compact, highly tunable voltage-controlled oscillator based on vanadium dioxide, and an analog differentiator circuit performing the transmit pulse shaping. The sole conversion from analog to digital takes place at the base station followed by the estimation of the PRF, for which we compare a conventional receiver design consisting of an analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with the use of an integrate-and-fire time encoding machine (IFTEM). Results show the successful communication of sensory information from the edge node over an additive white Gaussian noise channel to the base station, with the IF-TEM outperforming the conventional ADC for a signal-to-noise ratio above 0 dB.

IEEE2022

Re-proving Channel Polarization Theorems

Mine Alsan

O(N\log N)

operations in the block-length

N

EPFL2015