Experimental evaluation in wireless communications

Abstract

This editorial sums up relevant topics on the assessment of wireless communication systems covered by the especial issue entitled "Experimental Evaluation in Wireless Communications." The topics include practical aspects on the implementation of distributed asynchronous non-linear kernel methods over wireless sensor networks; localization methods based on the exploitation of radio-frequency identification (RFID) wireless sensors and cellular networks or on sparsity approximations; channel sounding and assessment of broadband orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM)-based wireless systems in high-speed vehicular communications; coexistence analysis of femtocell-based and outdoor-to-indoor systems; techniques for peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) reduction; new solutions for baseband and radio frequency (RF) hardware impairments in full-duplex wireless systems; and, finally, suitability of interference alignment for broadband indoor wireless communications. Special issue motivation and overviewThe benefits of experimentation are not always realized in research on signal processing for wireless communication systems. In wireless systems, many abstractions are made to facilitate analysis. With unknown channels and realistic hardware, experimentation is a crucial means towards understanding the real-world viability of new ideas. Furthermore, during such experimental work, often new research questions arise as it may turn out that not all aspects have been sufficiently modeled.This special issue brings together research results obtained through experimental evaluation and measurements. The applications embrace cellular transmissions such as Long-Term Evolution Advanced (LTE-A), interference alignment techniques, local area networks, vehicular networks, wireless sensor networks, localization, and other wireless transmission systems.After a rigorous peer review process, the following 12 articles were selected for publication out of 42 submissions. All papers received at least three high quality reviews. We appreciate the careful and methodical *Correspondence: jagarcia@udc.es 1 Department of Electronics and Systems, University of A Coruña, Campus de Elviña s/n, 15071 A Coruña, Spain Full list of author information is available at the end of the article reviews. We would like to thank all the authors for submitting their work to our special issue and also all the reviewers for their efforts.The published articles were grouped according to the topics addressed, and they are briefly introduced in the following.Wireless sensor networks received a great attention in this special issue. Implementation aspects of distributed and asynchronous non-linear kernel methods were addressed in [1]. For their evaluations, they employed MICAz motes running TinyOS 2.1.1, and the practical aspects considered were related to matrix and floating computations, acknowledgment mechanisms, and data loss. On the other hand, wireless sensor networks are typically employed in localization applications. In [2], a target sensor was ...