Robust QoS-Aware Cross-layer Design of Adaptive Modulation Transmission on OFDM Systems in High-Speed Railway

In this paper, we consider an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing communication system that adopts frame-by-frame transmission in high-speed railway (HSR) scenario. Due to the increase in demand for the QoS sensitive services, an efficient QoS-aware transmission strategy that improves the system performance is required urgently. Many efforts have been devoted to addressing this problem with the assumption of block fading channel in a frame duration. However, due to the frequent channel quality variation in a frame duration and serious inter channel interference in HSR scenario, the throughput of the QoS sensitive services degrades severely. Hence, a robust cross-layer transmission strategy that combines adaptive modulation (AM) scheme with truncated automatic repeat request protocol is proposed. In this cross-layer formulation, the normalized average throughput is optimized subject to the average power and the packet loss rate (PLR) requirements. First, we derive the closed form average bit error rate that represents the PLR requirement at the physical layer. Second, we obtain the solution of robust AM scheme and power allocation policy in the case of continuous rate. Third, we present the adaptive bits and power allocation scheme in the case of discrete rate, which can be implemented in practice. Finally, the performance of the proposed transmission strategy is evaluated by extensive simulations. Comparing with the constant transmit power AM scheme, the throughput increases by 20%, which demonstrates that the proposed robust cross-layer design is suitable for the HSR communication systems.