Accepted Manuscript

On the SINR statistics of a VFDM cognitive spectrum sharing system

K. Denia Kanellopoulou, Kostas P. Peppas, P. Takis Mathiopoulos

PII: S1874-4907(16)30244-0
DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.phycom.2017.07.004
Reference: PHYCOM 406

To appear in: Physical Communication

Received date : 12 December 2016

Revised date : 13 June 2017
Accepted date : 24 July 2017

Please cite this article as: K.D. Kanellopoulou, K.P. Peppas, P.T. Mathiopoulos, On the SINR
statistics of a VFDM cognitive spectrum sharing system, Physical Communication (2017),
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.phycom.2017.07.004

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On the SINR Statistics of a VFDM Cognitive Spectrum
Sharing System
K. Denia Kanellopouloua,, Kostas P. Peppasb , P. Takis Mathiopoulosa
a
Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, National and Kapodistrian
University of Athens, 15784 Athens, Greece
b
Department of Informatics and Telecommunications, University of Peloponnese, 22100
Tripolis, Greece

Abstract
An analytical precise approximation of the SINR statistics of the two-tier
Vandermonde-subspace frequency division multiplexing (VFDM) cognitive
spectrum sharing systems over frequency-selective Rayleigh fading channels
is presented. It is shown that the gamma distribution provides the best
fitting accuracy and that its use leads to simple, yet accurate, closed-form
expressions for evaluating the ergodic capacity (EC) and average bit error
probability (ABEP) performance of such systems. In deriving these expres-
sions, the parameters of the gamma distribution have been obtained for var-
ious operating conditions of the considered VFDM system using distribution
fitting. Furthermore, regression analysis has been used to obtain approxi-
mate analytical expressions for these parameters in relation to the system
operating parameters. Performance evaluation results, obtained for various
system implementations, including the standardized IEEE 802.11 and 3GPP
LTE, are presented to demonstrate the validity of the proposed methodology.
Its accuracy has been verified by means of computer simulations.
Keywords: Cognitive radio, Two-tier spectrum sharing,
Vandermonde-subspace frequency division multiplexing (VFDM), SINR
statistics approximation, Ergodic capacity, Average bit-error probability
(ABEP)

Corresponding author.
Email addresses: konkanel@gmail.com (K. Denia Kanellopoulou), peppas@uop.gr
(Kostas P. Peppas), mathio@di.uoa.gr (P. Takis Mathiopoulos)

Preprint submitted to Physical Communication August 2, 2017

1. Introduction
The emerging 5th generation (5G) wireless networks are designed to pro-
vide higher data-rates and improved quality-of-service (QoS) in densely pop-
ulated areas, while supporting a vast number of smart and heterogeneous
wireless devices giving rise to the Internet-of-Things (IoT) era. In order to
deal with such requirements, 5G systems plan to adopt a multi-tier architec-
ture [1] consisting of macrocells, different types of licensed small cells, and
device-to-device networks. Operation in such networks creates interference
when different tiers share the same spectrum.
Such multi-tier schemes can be modeled within the cognitive radio con-
cept [2] by considering two tiers. The first one, presumably the licensed, as
the primary system, while the second as the secondary, which is enabled with
cognitive capabilities in order to reduce or eliminate interference towards the
primary. Based on this model, the Vandermonde-subspace frequency division
multiplexing (VFDM) technique, introduced in [3], allows a single-user sec-
ondary system to operate simultaneously with the single-user primary over
the same frequency band. Such operation is achieved with an appropriate
precoder [4] at the secondary system that eliminates interference towards
the primary, without the need for cooperation between the different tiers
nor multiple transmitter/receiver antennas. This technique can be applied
to multi-user two-tier block transmission systems [5], with a guard interval
or a cyclic prefix, over frequency-selective (FS) channels. The performance
of a single-user (per tier) scenario has been evaluated by means of Monte
Carlo computer simulations in [6], where an expression for the SINR at the
secondary receiver was also presented. However, this expression cannot be
used to obtain analytical results, and the computer simulations carried out
in [6] are typically very time-consuming.
In this paper, an alternative approach is proposed, namely the analyti-
cal approximation of the SINR statistics of the considered cognitive system
by the gamma distribution. The advantages of this approach are threefold:
i) Although other distributions have been considered, it turns out that the
gamma distribution accurately approximates the SINR statistics over a wide-
range of system implementations; ii) it is the only accurate distribution that
allows the derivation of novel closed-form expressions for the ergodic capacity
(EC) and average bit error probability (ABEP); and iii) it facilitates the per-
formance evaluation of different practical implementations, including those
that use industrial standards, by deriving the gamma distribution parameters

2
as functions of the system operating parameters.
The rest of this paper is organized as follows. After this Introduction, the
system model under study is presented in Section 2. In Section 3, different
distributions are tested for the analytical approximation of the statistics of
the SINR. By using the approximation with the gamma distribution, novel
closed-form expressions for the EC and ABEP are derived. In Section 4,
analytical and computer simulation results are presented for the performance
evaluation of different implementations of the system under consideration.
Finally, in Section 5, the concluding remarks of the paper can be found.
Mathematical Notations: A lower case italic symbol denotes a scalar
value, a lower case bold symbol denotes a vector and an upper case bold
symbol denotes a matrix. IN is the identity matrix of size N . X denotes
the pseudo-inverse and XH the transpose conjugate of the matrix X. Ehi
denotes expectation and f (x; a, b) denotes the PDF with parameters a and
b. () denotes the gamma function, G m,n p,q [] is the Meijers G-function, Q()
is the Q-function and 2 F1 (a, b; c; z) is the Gaussian hypergeometric function.
All vectors are columns, unless otherwise stated.

2. System Model
Let us consider the typical case of a cognitive interference channel model,
which is presented in [6] and depicted in Fig. 1. In particular, a primary com-
munication system (Tx1 Rx1 ) transmits over a licensed frequency band and
a secondary (cognitive) system (Tx2 Rx2 ) opportunistically communicates
over the same frequency band, without creating interference to the primary.
It is assumed that all transmitters and receivers have a single antenna, the
secondary transmitter and receiver have perfect channel state information
(CSI) and there is no cooperation between primary and secondary system.
In this context, the detailed system model under consideration is depicted
in Fig. 2, where the primary and secondary systems are presented in Figs. 2a
and 2b, respectively. Between transmitter Txi and receiver Rxj , where
i and j {1,2}1 , the (L + 1)-tap FS channel, denoted as h(ij) , consists of
unit-norm, independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.), complex circularly
symmetric and Gaussian CN (0, IL+1 /(L + 1)) channel entries. Both primary

1
From now on and unless otherwise indicated, all subscripts using the symbols i and j
will be assumed to take values from this alphabet.

3
 Fig. 1. Cognitive interference channel model

and secondary systems are also corrupted by additive white Gaussian noise
(AWGN) noise, denoted as ni CN (0, 2 IN ).
The primary system consists of a primary user with a transmitter Tx1 ,
which utilizes the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) with
N subcarriers and a cyclic prefix of size L. Thus, the transmitted symbols
can be expressed as

x1 = AF1 s1 ,

where A is an (N +L)N cyclic prefix precoding matrix that appends the last
L elements of F1 s1 and s1 is a symbol vector of size N with unitary norm.
F1 is the inverse Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) matrix. The secondary
system consists of a secondary user with a transmitter Tx2 that uses the
VFDM technique. More specifically, the secondary user exploits the resources
created by the frequency selectivity of the channel and the cyclic prefix used
by the primary in order to transmit symbols of the form

x2 = Vs2 ,

where s2 is a symbol vector of size L with unitary norm. The secondary user
can transmit simultaneously with the primary, over the same frequency band,
by implementing an (N + L) N precoder V that eliminates its interference
towards the primary receiver Rx1 .
Let Hij denote the overall channel matrices defined in [4] and [6] as

H11 = FT (h(11) )AF1 ,

4
 (a)

(b)

Fig. 2. Block diagram of the two-tier cognitive VFDM system model: (a) Primary system
(b) Secondary (cognitive) system.

5
 H12 = FT (h(12) )AF1 ,

H22 = FT (h(22) )V,

where F is an FFT matrix and T (h(ij) ) is an N (N + L) matrix with a

Toeplitz structure constructed from the channels coefficients as
(ij) (ij)

hL h0 0 0
... ... .. ..
0 . .
T (h ) =
(ij)
.. ... ... ...
.

. 0
(ij) (ij)
0 0 hL h0

The precoder V is constructed by using the available CSI at its transmitter

and singular value decomposition [7] so that

T (h(21) )V = 0.

Then, the received signal at the primary receiver Rx1 can be expressed as

y1 = H11 s1 + 1

and at the secondary receiver Rx2 as

y2 = H22 s2 + H12 s1 + 2 .

In the above equations, i is the FFT of the noise vector ni , while the factor
[0, 1] is introduced (see also Fig. 2) in order to control the amount of
interference, H12 s1 , from the primary to the secondary system so that its
effects on the latters performance can be assessed.2
As the primary systems operation is not affected by the presence of the
secondary, it can be considered as a typical OFDM system, which has been
extensively studied in the past (e.g. see [8], [4], [6]). Therefore, the focus of
this paper will be on the performance of the secondary system. By including

2
For an overview of techniques that can be used to control this cross-interference the
reader may refer to [9].

6
, the SINR at the secondary receiver can be rewritten in a more general
form, as compared to [6, Eq. (11)], as

|gk h2k |2
k = , (1)
P
N P
L
2 |gk gkH |2 + 2 |2
|gk h1m + |gk h2n |2
m=1 n=1;n6=k

where k is the SINR of the k th received symbol, hik is the k th column of

Hi2 and gk is the k th row of the equalization filter G that is applied at the
receiver so that we get the estimated symbols

s02 = Gy2 .

In this work, the zero-forcing (ZF) and the minimum mean square error
(MMSE) equalization filters have been applied at the secondary receiver.
Thus G, denoted hereafter as GZF and GM M SE for the ZF and MMSE
equalization, respectively, is given by [6, Eq. (13)]

GZF = H22

and [6, Eq. (10)]

1
GM M SE = HH H H 2
22 (H11 H11 + H22 H22 + IN ) .

3. Performance Analysis
Unfortunately for the considered system, the expression of the SINR in
(1) cannot be used to obtain analytical results. Furthermore, its evalua-
tion by means of computer simulations is a time-consuming task. Thus, an
alternative approach is proposed in this Section, which is based on an analyt-
ical accurate approximation. In particular, in Subsection 3.1 the analytical
approximation of the SINR statistics will be investigated. Then, in Sub-
section 3.2, the proposed approximation will be used to obtain closed-form
expressions for the EC and ABEP. Finally, in Subsection 3.3 the parameters
of the approximating distribution will be estimated in terms of the system
operating parameters.

7
3.1. SINR Statistics Approximation
The accurate approximation of the statistics of (1) with an appropriate
distribution can provide mathematically tractable formulas for evaluating
the system performance and thus facilitate further analysis. For this reason,
we have considered various Probability Density Functions (PDFs) of well-
known distributions that have been used in the past for channel modeling,
such as the gamma, Weibull, Nakagami, Rice, exponential and lognormal.
Our purpose was to first obtain values of the SINR for different inputs and
then use the PDFs of known distributions to fit the PDF of the results. With
this in mind, we have first considered the system model described in Section 2
and have run extensive Monte Carlo simulations in Matlab in order to obtain
the SINR. For these simulations we have generated random Rayleigh channel
vectors and constructed the channel matrices and the precoder, as described
in Section 2. This procedure was repeated for various values of the system
operating parameters N and L, as well as for different operating conditions,
set by the input SNR and the cross-interference factor , for both receiver
structures employing ZF and MMSE equalizers. In this way, the SINR in
(1) was evaluated and its statistics were obtained. Then, the maximum
likelihood estimation (MLE) method [10] was used to match these results to
the statistics of these well-known distributions that are built-in in Matlab.
In order to evaluate their goodness-of-fit, the Kolmogorov-Smirnov (KS)
statistical test [11] has been employed, measuring the maximum values of the
absolute difference between the Cumulative Distribution Function (CDF) of
the simulated SINR and the CDF of the distributions that were fitted to
it. More specifically, the null hypothesis under which the observed data be-
long to the CDF of the approximating distribution at the 5% significance
level has been tested, resulting in 1 if the test is rejected and in 0 otherwise.
Typical comparative results can be found in Table 1, where the percentage
of the cases in which the KS goodness-of-fit statistical test succeeded is pre-
sented for each of the distributions tested, under the different combinations of
the simulation input parameters. The results have indicated that the gamma
distribution has provided the most accurate fitting for a wide range of the op-
erating conditions of the considered VFDM system, followed by the Weibull
distribution. However, as it will be shown in Subsection 3.2, the Weibull
distribution leads to very complex expressions for the evaluation of the EC
and ABEP performance of the considered VFDM cognitive spectrum sharing
system. On the contrary, the gamma distribution leads to simple closed-form
expressions, which can be very conveniently used for performance analysis

8
purposes.
Table 1. Percentage of cases the KS goodness-of-fit statistical test succeeded for the
considered distributions.

Distributions Gamma Weibull Rice Nakagami Rayleigh Exponential Lognormal

Percentage of cases 88 86 36 81 13 38 83

3.2. Closed-form Expressions

Following the results of Subsection 3.1, we will examine the suitability of
the two best approximating distributions, namely the gamma and Weibull, in
providing closed-form results for the performance analysis of the considered
VFDM system.
An important performance metric of communication systems is the EC,
which can be calculated as
L
1X
Cerg = E hlog2 (1 + k )i .
L k=1

However, the above computation involves multiple sums of large matrices,

which might not produce closed-form expressions, while obtaining results via
computer simulations is typically very time-consuming. Alternatively, one
can estimate the EC as
Z
e
Cerg = log2 (1 + x)f (x; a, b)dx, (2)
0

where f (x; a, b) is the approximate PDF of the SINR in (1).

In this case, by using the gamma distribution [12, 13], whose PDF is given
by
1
f (x; a, b) = xa1 exp(x/b),
ba (a)
where a is the shape parameter and b is the rate parameter, as the analytical
approximation of the PDF of (1) and with the help of [14, Eq. (3)], the EC
can be obtained in closed-form as
  
e =
CF 1 3,1 1  a, 1 a
C G  . (3)
erg
ln(2)(a)ba 2,3 b 0, a, a

9
 Another important performance metric is the ABEP, which can be ob-
tained for QPSK modulated symbols by
L
1X
Pe = E hQ( k )i .
L k=1

Similar to the EC evaluation, instead of computing sums of integrals of large

matrices, by using the previously mentioned analytical approximation we can
simply calculate
Z

Pee = Q( x)f (x; a, b)dx, (4)
0

which can be obtained in closed-form for the gamma distribution with the
help of [15, Eq. (3.7.2.4)] as
r  
e CF 1 (a + 21 ) b 1 1 3 b
Pe = 2 F1 ,a + ; ; . (5)
2 (a) 2 2 2 2 2
Note that the Meijers G-function in (3) and the Gaussian hypergeometric
function in (5) are both included in commercially available mathematical
software packages, e.g. Matlab. On the contrary, by using the PDF of the
Weibull distribution [16]
a  x a1
f (x; a, b) = exp((x/b)a ),
b b
in (2) and (4), the integrals obtained can be expressed only for specific val-
ues of the Weibull shape and scale parameters (a, b)3 in terms of tabulated
functions. Note that although these integrals can be expressed in terms of
the H-function, their evaluation requires significantly more complex compu-
tations [19].

3.3. Gamma Distribution Parameters Estimation

It is emphasized that both closed-form expressions in (3) and (5) only
require as inputs the parameters (a, b) of the gamma distribution that ap-
proximates the SINR statistics. In order to further facilitate the performance

3
For example, (2) can be evaluated only for a = 1 using [17, Eq. (2.6.23.5)] and (4) for
a = 3/2 using [18, Eq. (2.8.5.6)].

10
analysis, we have examined the possibility of deriving expressions for these
two parameters in terms of independent controllable variables. A widely-used
statistical method that provides relationships between a dependent variable
and one or more independent variables is regression analysis [20]. However,
large sets of observational data are required in order to choose and apply
an appropriate regression technique. Those data sets were generated by the
Monte Carlo simulations that have been described in Subsection 3.1. The
simulations have been repeated for different values of the system operating
parameters (N, L) and different levels of cross-interference and SNR until a
sufficiently complete data set of SINR values was created. Then, the MLE
method was used to fit the gamma PDF to the PDF of the simulated SINR,
providing the estimates of the parameters (a, b) for each operating condition.
In this way, another set of data of the MLE parameters, denoted as (a, b), was
created. It is evident that the use of this distribution fitting method requires
repeating the simulations for every pair of the system operating parameters
(N, L) as well as for the different operating conditions. In order to obtain
analytical expressions for the parameters (a, b) as a function of the system
parameters (N, L), we tried linear and non-linear regression techniques. As
linear functions failed to fit the data, the non-linear regression (NLR) [21]
technique was applied. With this technique, successive approximations were
made in order to model the observational data with a heuristic function that
is a nonlinear combination of some independent variables. Thus, by applying
NLR in Matlab on the previously created data set of the MLE parameters,
the following approximate expressions were empirically derived for the pair
a, eb), in terms of (N, L)
(a, b), denoted in this case as (e
c1 c2 c4 c5
a
e + + c3 and eb + + c6 , (6)
N L N L
where e a and eb denote the parameters estimated with the NLR technique
and c1 -c6 are coefficients whose values depend on the cross-interference and
SNR levels. Note that these expressions are valid for both ZF and MMSE
equalization filters. The values for c1 -c6 with cross-interference factors =
{0, 0.1, 0.3, 1} and SNR values from -4 up to 20 dB (in steps of 2 dB) have
been obtained and can be found in tabulated form in [22]. Indicative values
for these coefficients, which have been also used for the performance evalua-
tion results presented in this paper, can be found in Table 2.
It is underlined that, as it will be shown next, the main advantage of
our approach is that it allows, by using (6) in connection with the closed-

11
Table 2. The coefficient values obtained for different equalization filters, cross-interference
and SNR levels.

c1 c2 c3 c4 c5 c6
ZF (=0, SNR=10dB) 19.4130 46.2444 1.3516 -0.5481 0.8821 -0.0059
ZF (=0.1, SNR=10dB) -16.3806 56.3218 1.2986 -0.1324 0.6963 -0.0038
ZF (=0.1, SNR=12dB) -16.2428 54.8538 1.3386 -0.0782 0.4647 -0.0031
MMSE (=0, SNR=10dB) 25.2595 57.7680 5.6632 -0.6919 -0.0164 0.2590
MMSE (=0.1, SNR=10dB) -5.8618 68.4794 5.6899 -0.3083 -0.2102 0.2471
MMSE (=0.1, SNR=12dB) -7.5849 82.9164 5.8843 -0.2207 -0.3626 0.2135

form expressions in (3) and (5), the accurate and computational efficient
evaluation of the EC and ABEP of different (N, L) VFDM systems. As
important case studies, we have considered the IEEE 802.11 and the 3GPP
LTE telecommunication standards in obtaining the performance evaluation
results, which will be presented next.

4. Performance Evaluation Results

In order to validate the proposed analysis, the EC and ABEP performance
of a secondary user under the considered VFDM cognitive spectrum sharing
system have been evaluated in two case studies, involving the IEEE 802.11
and the 3GPP LTE standardized systems. In particular, we used the closed-
form expressions (3) and (5) as well as the integral expressions (2) and (4) to
calculate the approximate EC and ABEP, respectively. In doing so, we have
obtained the required values for the gamma distribution parameters, namely
a, eb) with the MLE and NLR techniques, respectively. For
the (a, b) and (e
both case studies and for all the considered operating parameters and condi-
tions, the analytical results were complemented with equivalent performance
evaluation results obtained by means of Monte Carlo computer simulations.
Firstly, a VFDM secondary user operating simultaneously with a primary
user in an IEEE 802.11 a/g (WLAN) system [23] (N = 64, L = 16) was
considered. For this case study, the EC performance of the secondary user for
cross-interference factor values = {0, 0.1, 0.3} using the ZF and the MMSE
equalization filters is depicted in Figs. 3 and 4 respectively. The results
show that for all cases considered, there is a fine agreement between the
approximated and simulated performance results, confirming the accuracy of
the proposed approximation. It is also noted that the values of the closed-

12
form expression (3) always coincide with the values of the integral expression
(2) for the EC. It is further noted that, while the results of the approximate
EC, i.e. when the parameters (a, b) are obtained using the NLR technique, are
precise for a receiver employing a ZF equalization, they are less accurate when
an MMSE equalizer is employed. This happens because of the more complex
nature of the MMSE. Moreover, it can be observed from the results of Figs. 3
and 4 that the EC performance of the secondary user is significantly affected
by the interference from the primary user. By comparing these results, it
is also evident that, as expected, the MMSE equalization outperforms the
ZF, since its operation is the maximization of the SINR in the presence of
interference.

4
Simulation (ZF)

Approximation [Eq.(2), MLE]

Ergodic Capacity (EC) [bits/s/Hz]

Approximation [Eq.(2), NLR Eq. (6)]

3 Approximation [Eq.(3), MLE]

0
4 8 12 16 20 24
SNR [dB]

Fig. 3. EC vs. SNR performance for the IEEE 802.11 a/g standard with ZF equalization,
for the various methods of evaluation under consideration and different values of .

In the second set of evaluation results, the ABEP performance of a

VFDM secondary user, considering the operation of the previously men-
tioned standardized WLAN system as well as the 3GPP LTE (4G) [24]
(N = 128, L = 32) has been assessed. For both standardized systems the

13
 4
Simulation (MMSE)

Approximation [Eq.(2), MLE]

Ergodic Capacity (EC) [bits/s/Hz]

Approximation [Eq.(2), NLR Eq. (6)]

3 Approximation [Eq.(3), MLE]

0
4 8 12 16 20 24
SNR [dB]

Fig. 4. EC vs. SNR performance for the IEEE 802.11 a/g standard with MMSE equal-
ization, for the various methods of evaluation under consideration and different values of
.

14
MMSE equalization has been employed and cross-interference factor values
= {0, 0.1, 0.3} have been considered. The results are illustrated in Figs. 5
and 6 for the WLAN and LTE standards, respectively, again showing a fine
agreement with the simulated performance results. It can be also observed
that the values of the closed-form expression (5) always coincide with the
values of the integral expression (4) for the ABEP performance. Note that,
by using the analytical approximation, the results are very precise when the
gamma distribution parameters (a, b) were obtained by the MLE method. In
contrast, when the NLR technique was used to obtain (e a, eb), the results are
less accurate, especially for high SNR and low cross-interference values. This
happens because the MLE method was applied after obtaining results for
the SINR of the specific, i.e. (N = 128, L = 32), system, whereas the NLR
technique was applied directly using the values of (N, L) in (6). Therefore,
there is a difference in accuracy between the values of (ea, eb) and (a, b) that
decreases as the SNR decreases and/or the cross-interference increases. In
the same figures, the dependence of the ABEP performance on the amount of
interference from the primary system is also illustrated. Comparing the two
case studies, it can be concluded that for the considered system model, the
WLAN standard outperforms the LTE, since it uses fewer subcarriers and
taps. This difference in performance is more pronounced at the high-SNR
and low cross-interference regimes.

5. Conclusions
This paper has proposed the approximation of the SINR statistics of a
VFDM cognitive system by the gamma distribution. Although other dis-
tributions have been considered, the gamma distribution provided the best
fitting results. Moreover, it has been shown that using this approximation,
closed-form expressions for the EC and the ABEP can be derived, facilitating
the performance evaluation. Furthermore, analytical expressions have been
provided for obtaining the parameters of the gamma distribution as functions
of the system operating characteristics. The accuracy of the proposed anal-
ysis was validated with analytical and complementary computer simulation
performance evaluation results for such VFDM cognitive spectrum sharing
systems employing the IEEE 802.11 a/g and 3GPP LTE standards.

15
 0.15

0.1
Average Bit Error Probability (ABEP)

0.01

Simulation (W LAN)

Approximation [Eq. (4), MLE]

Approximation [Eq. (2), NLR Eq. (6)]

Approximation [Eq. (5), MLE]

1E-3
4 8 12 16 20 24

SNR [dB]

Fig. 5. ABEP vs. SNR performance for the IEEE 802.11 a/g standard with MMSE
equalization, for the various methods of evaluation under consideration and different values
of .

16
 0.15

0.1
Average Bit Error Probability (ABEP)

0.01

Simulation (LTE)

Approximation [Eq. (4), MLE]

Approximation [Eq. (2), NLR Eq. (6)]

Approximation [Eq. (5), MLE]

1E-3
4 8 12 16 20 24

SNR [dB]

Fig. 6. ABEP vs. SNR performance for the 3GPP LTE standard with MMSE equal-
ization, for the various methods of evaluation under consideration and different values of
.

17
Acknowledgements
The authors would like to thank the anonymous reviewers as well as the
reviewing Editor for their comments, which have helped us in improving the
presentation of our research.

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K. Denia Kanellopoulou reveived the diploma in

electrical and computer engineering (5-year) from the
Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece, in 2009
and the M.Sc. in telecommunication networks (2-
year) from the National and Kapodistrian University of
Athens, Greece, in 2011, where she is currently pursuing
a Ph.D degree. Her research interests include wireless
communications and cognitive radio.

Kostas P. Peppas was born in Athens, Greece in 1975.

He obtained his diploma in electrical and computer
engineering from the National Technical University of
Athens in 1997 and the Ph.D. degree in wireless com-
munications from the same department in 2004. From
2004 to 2007 he was with the University of Peloponnese,
Department of Computer Science, Tripoli, Greece and
from 2008 to 2014 with the National Centre for Scien-
tific Research-Demokritos, Institute of Informatics and
Telecommunications as a researcher. In 2014, he joined the Department
of Telecommunication Science and Technology, University of Peloponnese,
where he is currently a lecturer. His current research interests include digital
communications, MIMO systems,cooperative communications, wireless and
personal communication networks, cognitive radio, digital signal processing,
system level analysis, and design. Dr. K. P. Peppas has authored more than
70 journal and conference papers.

P. Takis Mathiopoulos is Professor of Telecommuni-

cations at the Department of Informatics and Telecom-
munications, University of Athens, Greece. Prior to

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 that, he was with the Institute for Space Applications
and Remote Sensing (ISARS) of the National Obser-
vatory of Athens (NOA), first as his Director (2001 -
2005) and then as Director of Research (2006 - 2014).
From 1989 - 2003, he was a faculty member in the De-
partment of Electrical and Computer Engineering, the
University of British Columbia (UBC), where he was a Professor from 2000 -
2003. He has been an ASI and Killam Fellow and has served as an Editor for
several IEEE and IET journals. His research activities are in the general area
of wireless communications for terrestrial and satellite based applications, as
well as in the remote sensing field with emphasis on LiDAR systems and
photogrammetry. He has published more then 100 journal papers and 120
conference papers in these fields and has received two best paper awards.

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