Cell-Free Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) are two promising technologies for application to beyond-5G networks. This paper considers Cell-Free Massive MIMO systems with the assistance of an RIS for enhancing the system performance under the presence of spatial correlation among the engineered scattering elements of the RIS. Distributed maximum-ratio processing is considered at the access points (APs). We introduce an aggregated channel estimation approach that provides sufficient information for data processing with the main benefit of reducing the overhead required for channel estimation. The considered system is studied by using asymptotic analysis which lets the number of APs and/or the number of RIS elements grow large. A lower bound for the channel capacity is obtained for a finite number of APs and engineered scattering elements of the RIS, and closed-form expressions for the uplink and downlink ergodic net throughput are formulated in terms of only the channel statistics. Based on the obtained analytical frameworks, we unveil the impact of channel correlation, the number of RIS elements, and the pilot contamination on the net throughput of each user. In addition, a simple control scheme for optimizing the configuration of the engineered scattering elements of the RIS is proposed, which is shown to increase the channel estimation quality, and, hence, the system performance. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed system design and performance analysis. In particular, the performance benefits of using RISs in Cell-Free Massive MIMO systems are confirmed, especially if the direct links between the APs and the users are of insufficient quality with high probability.
This paper investigates the throughput performance issue of the relay-assisted mmWave backhaul network. The maximum traffic demand of small-cell base stations (BSs) and the maximum throughput at the macro-cell BS have been found in a tree-style backhaul network through linear programming under different network settings, which concern both the number of radio chains available on BSs and the interference relationship between logical links in the backhaul network. A novel interference model for the relay-assisted mmWave backhaul network in the dense urban environment is proposed, which demonstrates the limited interference footprint of mmWave directional communications. Moreover, a scheduling algorithm is developed to find the optimal scheduling for tree-style mmWave backhaul networks. Extensive numerical analysis and simulations are conducted to show and validate the network throughput performance and the scheduling algorithm.
We present a framework for operating a self-adaptive RIS inside a fading rich-scattering wireless environment. We model the rich-scattering wireless channel as being double-parametrized by (i) the RIS, and (ii) dynamic perturbers (moving objects, etc.). Within each coherence time, first, the self-adaptive RIS estimates the status of the dynamic perturbers (e.g., the perturbers' orientations and locations) based on measurements with an auxiliary wireless channel. Then, second, using a learned surrogate forward model of the mapping from RIS configuration and perturber status to wireless channel, an optimized RIS configuration to achieve a desired functionality is obtained. We demonstrate our technique using a physics-based end-to-end model of RIS-parametrized communication with adjustable fading (PhysFad) for the example objective of maximizing the received signal strength indicator. Our results present a route toward convergence of RIS-empowered localization and sensing with RIS-empowered channel shaping beyond the simple case of operation in free space without fading.
This paper considers a single-cell massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) system with dual-polarized antennas at both the base station and users. We study a channel model that takes into account several practical aspects that arise when utilizing dual-polarization, such as channel cross-polar discrimination (XPD) and cross-polar correlations (XPC) at the transmitter and receiver. We analyze uplink and downlink achievable spectral efficiencies (SE) with and without successive interference cancellation (SIC) for the linear minimum mean squared error (MMSE), zero-forcing (ZF), and maximum ratio (MR) combining/precoding schemes. In addition, we derive the statistical properties of the MMSE channel estimator for the dual-polarized channel model. These estimates are used to implement different precoding and combining schemes when the uplink and downlink SE expressions are calculated for the case. Closed-form uplink and downlink SE expressions for MR combining/precoding are derived. Based on these results, we also provide power control algorithms to maximize the uplink and downlink sum SEs. Moreover, we compare the SEs achieved in dual-polarized and uni-polarized setups numerically and evaluate the impact of XPD and XPC.
The reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) technology is a promising enabler for millimeter wave (mmWave) wireless communications, as it can potentially provide spectral efficiency comparable to the conventional massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) but with significantly lower hardware complexity. In this paper, we focus on the estimation and projection of the uplink RIS-aided massive MIMO channel, which can be time-varying. We propose to let the user equipments (UE) transmit Zadoff-Chu (ZC) sequences and let the base station (BS) conduct maximum likelihood (ML) estimation of the uplink channel. The proposed scheme is computationally efficient: it uses ZC sequences to decouple the estimation of the frequency and time offsets; it uses the space-alternating generalized expectation-maximization (SAGE) method to reduce the high-dimensional problem due to the multipaths to multiple lower-dimensional ones per path. Owing to the estimation of the Doppler frequency offsets, the time-varying channel state can be projected, which can significantly lower the overhead of the pilots for channel estimation. The numerical simulations verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.
Intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) have emerged as a promising economical solution to implement cell-free networks. However, the performance gains achieved by IRSs critically depend on smartly tuned passive beamforming based on the assumption that the accurate channel state information (CSI) knowledge is available, which is practically impossible. Thus, in this paper, we investigate the impact of the CSI uncertainty on IRS-assisted cell-free networks. We adopt a stochastic programming method to cope with the CSI uncertainty by maximizing the expectation of the sum-rate, which guarantees robust performance over the average. Accordingly, an average sum-rate maximization problem is formulated, which is non-convex and arduous to obtain its optimal solution due to the coupled variables and the expectation operation with respect to CSI uncertainties. As a compromising approach, we develop an efficient robust joint design algorithm with low-complexity. Particularly, the original problem is equivalently transformed into a tractable form, and then, the locally optimal solution can be obtained by employing the block coordinate descent method. We further prove that the CSI uncertainty impacts the design of the active transmitting beamforming of APs, but surprisingly does not directly impact the design of the passive reflecting beamforming of IRSs. It is worth noting that the investigated scenario is flexible and general, and thus the proposed algorithm can act as a general framework to solve various sum-rate maximization problems. Simulation results demonstrate that IRSs can achieve considerable data rate improvement for conventional cell-free networks, and confirm the resilience of the proposed algorithm against the CSI uncertainty.
The accurate estimation of Channel State Information (CSI) is of crucial importance for the successful operation of Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) communication systems, especially in a Multi-User (MU) time-varying environment and when employing the emerging technology of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs). Their predominantly passive nature renders the estimation of the channels involved in the user-RIS-base station link a quite challenging problem. Moreover, the time-varying nature of most of the realistic wireless channels drives up the cost of real-time channel tracking significantly, especially when RISs of massive size are deployed. In this paper, we develop a channel tracking scheme for the uplink of RIS-enabled MU MIMO systems in the presence of channel fading. The starting point is a tensor representation of the received signal and we rely on its PARAllel FACtor (PARAFAC) analysis to both get the initial estimate and track the channel time variation. Simulation results for various system settings are reported, which validate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed channel tracking approach.
Simultaneously transmitting/refracting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS) has been introduced to achieve full coverage area. This paper investigate the performance of STAR-RIS assisted non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) networks over Rician fading channels, where the incidence signals sent by base station are reflected and transmitted to the nearby user and distant user, respectively. To evaluate the performance of STAR-RIS-NOMA networks, we derive new exact and asymptotic expressions of outage probability and ergodic rate for a pair of users, in which the imperfect successive interference cancellation (ipSIC) and perfect SIC (pSIC) schemes are taken into consideration. Based on the approximated results, the diversity orders of $zero$ and $ {\frac{{\mu _n^2K}}{{2{\Omega _n}}} + 1} $ are achieved for the nearby user with ipSIC/pSIC, while the diversity order of distant user is equal to ${\frac{{\mu _m^2 K}}{{2{\Omega _m}}}}$. The high signal-to-noise radio (SNR) slopes of ergodic rates for nearby user with pSIC and distant user are equal to $one$ and $zero$, respectively. In addition, the system throughput of STAR-RIS-NOMA is discussed in delay-limited and delay-tolerant modes. Simulation results are provided to verify the accuracy of the theoretical analyses and demonstrate that: 1) The outage probability of STAR-RIS-NOMA outperforms that of STAR-RIS assisted orthogonal multiple access (OMA) and conventional cooperative communication systems; 2) With the increasing of configurable elements $K$ and Rician factor $\kappa $, the STAR-RIS-NOMA networks are capable of attaining the enhanced performance; and 3) The ergodic rates of STAR-RIS-NOMA are superior to that of STAR-RIS-OMA.
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is considered as an extraordinarily promising technology to solve the blockage problem of millimeter wave (mmWave) communications owing to its capable of establishing a reconfigurable wireless propagation. In this paper, we focus on a RIS-assisted mmWave communication network consisting of multiple base stations (BSs) serving a set of user equipments (UEs). Considering the BS-RIS-UE association problem which determines that the RIS should assist which BS and UEs, we joint optimize BS-RIS-UE association and passive beamforming at RIS to maximize the sum-rate of the system. To solve this intractable non-convex problem, we propose a soft actor-critic (SAC) deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based joint beamforming and BS-RIS-UE association design algorithm, which can learn the best policy by interacting with the environment using less prior information and avoid falling into the local optimal solution by incorporating with the maximization of policy information entropy. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed SAC-DRL algorithm can achieve significant performance gains compared with benchmark schemes.
We consider the on-time transmissions of a sequence of packets over a fading channel.Different from traditional in-time communications, we investigate how many packets can be received $\delta$-on-time, meaning that the packet is received with a deviation no larger than $\delta$ slots. In this framework, we first derive the on-time reception rate of the random transmissions over the fading channel when no controlling is used. To improve the on-time reception rate, we further propose to schedule the transmissions by delaying, dropping, or repeating the packets. Specifically, we model the scheduling over the fading channel as a Markov decision process (MDP) and then obtain the optimal scheduling policy using an efficient iterative algorithm. For a given sequence of packet transmissions, we analyze the on-time reception rate for the random transmissions and the optimal scheduling. Our analytical and simulation results show that the on-time reception rate of random transmissions decreases (to zero) with the sequence length.By using the optimal packet scheduling, the on-time reception rate converges to a much larger constant. Moreover, we show that the on-time reception rate increases if the target reception interval and/or the deviation tolerance $\delta$ is increased, or the randomness of the fading channel is reduced.
The integration of advanced localization techniques in the upcoming next generation networks (B5G/6G) is becoming increasingly important for many use cases comprising contact tracing, natural disasters, terrorist attacks, etc. Therefore, emerging lightweight and passive technologies that allow accurately controlling the propagation environment, such as reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs), may help to develop advance positioning solutions relying on channel statistics and beamforming. In this paper, we devise PAPIR, a practical localization system leveraging on RISs by designing a two-stage solution building upon prior statistical information on the target user equipment (UE) position. PAPIR aims at finely estimating the UE position by performing statistical beamforming, direction-of-arrival (DoA) and time-of-arrival (ToA) estimation on a given three-dimensional search space, which is iteratively updated by exploiting the likelihood of the UE position.