Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is very promising for wireless networks to achieve high energy efficiency, extended coverage, improved capacity, massive connectivity, etc. To unleash the full potentials of RIS-aided communications, acquiring accurate channel state information is crucial, which however is very challenging. For RIS-aided multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) communications, the existing channel estimation methods have computational complexity growing rapidly with the number of RIS units $N$ (e.g., in the order of $N^2$ or $N^3$) and/or have special requirements on the matrices involved (e.g., the matrices need to be sparse for algorithm convergence to achieve satisfactory performance), which hinder their applications. In this work, instead of using the conventional signal model in the literature, we derive a new signal model obtained through proper vectorization and reduction operations. Then, leveraging the unitary approximate message passing (UAMP), we develop a more efficient channel estimator that has complexity linear with $N$ and does not have special requirements on the relevant matrices, thanks to the robustness of UAMP. These facilitate the applications of the proposed algorithm to a general RIS-aided MIMO system with a larger $N$. Moreover, extensive numerical results show that the proposed estimator delivers much better performance and/or requires significantly less number of training symbols, thereby leading to notable reductions in both training overhead and latency.
This paper investigates a new downlink nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system, where a multiantenna unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is powered by wireless power transfer (WPT) and serves as the base station for multiple pairs of ground users (GUs) running NOMA in each pair. An energy efficiency (EE) maximization problem is formulated to jointly optimize the WPT time and the placement for the UAV, and the allocation of the UAV's transmit power between different NOMA user pairs and within each pair. To efficiently solve this nonconvex problem, we decompose the problem into three subproblems using block coordinate descent. For the subproblem of intra-pair power allocation within each NOMA user pair, we construct a supermodular game with confirmed convergence to a Nash equilibrium. Given the intra-pair power allocation, successive convex approximation is applied to convexify and solve the subproblem of WPT time allocation and inter-pair power allocation between the user pairs. Finally, we solve the subproblem of UAV placement by using the Lagrange multiplier method. Simulations show that our approach can substantially outperform its alternatives that do not use NOMA and WPT techniques or that do not optimize the UAV location.
Approximate-message passing (AMP) algorithms have become an important element of high-dimensional statistical inference, mostly due to their adaptability and concentration properties, the state evolution (SE) equations. This is demonstrated by the growing number of new iterations proposed for increasingly complex problems, ranging from multi-layer inference to low-rank matrix estimation with elaborate priors. In this paper, we address the following questions: is there a structure underlying all AMP iterations that unifies them in a common framework? Can we use such a structure to give a modular proof of state evolution equations, adaptable to new AMP iterations without reproducing each time the full argument ? We propose an answer to both questions, showing that AMP instances can be generically indexed by an oriented graph. This enables to give a unified interpretation of these iterations, independent from the problem they solve, and a way of composing them arbitrarily. We then show that all AMP iterations indexed by such a graph admit rigorous SE equations, extending the reach of previous proofs, and proving a number of recent heuristic derivations of those equations. Our proof naturally includes non-separable functions and we show how existing refinements, such as spatial coupling or matrix-valued variables, can be combined with our framework.
In this paper, we consider a resilient consensus problem for the multi-agent network where some of the agents are subject to Byzantine attacks and may transmit erroneous state values to their neighbors. In particular, we develop an event-triggered update rule to tackle this problem as well as reduce the communication for each agent. Our approach is based on the mean subsequence reduced (MSR) algorithm with agents being capable to communicate with multi-hop neighbors. Since delays are critical in such an environment, we provide necessary graph conditions for the proposed algorithm to perform well with delays in the communication. We highlight that through multi-hop communication, the network connectivity can be reduced especially in comparison with the common onehop communication case. Lastly, we show the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm by a numerical example.
Given a set $P$ of $n$ points in the plane, the $k$-center problem is to find $k$ congruent disks of minimum possible radius such that their union covers all the points in $P$. The $2$-center problem is a special case of the $k$-center problem that has been extensively studied in the recent past \cite{CAHN,HT,SH}. In this paper, we consider a generalized version of the $2$-center problem called \textit{proximity connected} $2$-center (PCTC) problem. In this problem, we are also given a parameter $\delta\geq 0$ and we have the additional constraint that the distance between the centers of the disks should be at most $\delta$. Note that when $\delta=0$, the PCTC problem is reduced to the $1$-center(minimum enclosing disk) problem and when $\delta$ tends to infinity, it is reduced to the $2$-center problem. The PCTC problem first appeared in the context of wireless networks in 1992 \cite{ACN0}, but obtaining a nontrivial deterministic algorithm for the problem remained open. In this paper, we resolve this open problem by providing a deterministic $O(n^2\log n)$ time algorithm for the problem.
Covariance estimation for matrix-valued data has received an increasing interest in applications. Unlike previous works that rely heavily on matrix normal distribution assumption and the requirement of fixed matrix size, we propose a class of distribution-free regularized covariance estimation methods for high-dimensional matrix data under a separability condition and a bandable covariance structure. Under these conditions, the original covariance matrix is decomposed into a Kronecker product of two bandable small covariance matrices representing the variability over row and column directions. We formulate a unified framework for estimating bandable covariance, and introduce an efficient algorithm based on rank one unconstrained Kronecker product approximation. The convergence rates of the proposed estimators are established, and the derived minimax lower bound shows our proposed estimator is rate-optimal under certain divergence regimes of matrix size. We further introduce a class of robust covariance estimators and provide theoretical guarantees to deal with heavy-tailed data. We demonstrate the superior finite-sample performance of our methods using simulations and real applications from a gridded temperature anomalies dataset and a S&P 500 stock data analysis.
Computing a maximum independent set (MaxIS) is a fundamental NP-hard problem in graph theory, which has important applications in a wide spectrum of fields. Since graphs in many applications are changing frequently over time, the problem of maintaining a MaxIS over dynamic graphs has attracted increasing attention over the past few years. Due to the intractability of maintaining an exact MaxIS, this paper aims to develop efficient algorithms that can maintain an approximate MaxIS with an accuracy guarantee theoretically. In particular, we propose a framework that maintains a $(\frac{\Delta}{2} + 1)$-approximate MaxIS over dynamic graphs and prove that it achieves a constant approximation ratio in many real-world networks. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first non-trivial approximability result for the dynamic MaxIS problem. Following the framework, we implement an efficient linear-time dynamic algorithm and a more effective dynamic algorithm with near-linear expected time complexity. Our thorough experiments over real and synthetic graphs demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of the proposed algorithms, especially when the graph is highly dynamic.
Computing a dense subgraph is a fundamental problem in graph mining, with a diverse set of applications ranging from electronic commerce to community detection in social networks. In many of these applications, the underlying context is better modelled as a weighted hypergraph that keeps evolving with time. This motivates the problem of maintaining the densest subhypergraph of a weighted hypergraph in a {\em dynamic setting}, where the input keeps changing via a sequence of updates (hyperedge insertions/deletions). Previously, the only known algorithm for this problem was due to Hu et al. [HWC17]. This algorithm worked only on unweighted hypergraphs, and had an approximation ratio of $(1+\epsilon)r^2$ and an update time of $O(\text{poly} (r, \log n))$, where $r$ denotes the maximum rank of the input across all the updates. We obtain a new algorithm for this problem, which works even when the input hypergraph is weighted. Our algorithm has a significantly improved (near-optimal) approximation ratio of $(1+\epsilon)$ that is independent of $r$, and a similar update time of $O(\text{poly} (r, \log n))$. It is the first $(1+\epsilon)$-approximation algorithm even for the special case of weighted simple graphs. To complement our theoretical analysis, we perform experiments with our dynamic algorithm on large-scale, real-world data-sets. Our algorithm significantly outperforms the state of the art [HWC17] both in terms of accuracy and efficiency.
We study efficient estimation of an interventional mean associated with a point exposure treatment under a causal graphical model represented by a directed acyclic graph without hidden variables. Under such a model, it may happen that a subset of the variables are uninformative in that failure to measure them neither precludes identification of the interventional mean nor changes the semiparametric variance bound for regular estimators of it. We develop a set of graphical criteria that are sound and complete for eliminating all the uninformative variables so that the cost of measuring them can be saved without sacrificing estimation efficiency, which could be useful when designing a planned observational or randomized study. Further, we construct a reduced directed acyclic graph on the set of informative variables only. We show that the interventional mean is identified from the marginal law by the g-formula (Robins, 1986) associated with the reduced graph, and the semiparametric variance bounds for estimating the interventional mean under the original and the reduced graphical model agree. This g-formula is an irreducible, efficient identifying formula in the sense that the nonparametric estimator of the formula, under regularity conditions, is asymptotically efficient under the original causal graphical model, and no formula with such property exists that only depends on a strict subset of the variables.
The fact that the millimeter-wave (mmWave) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel has sparse support in the spatial domain has motivated recent compressed sensing (CS)-based mmWave channel estimation methods, where the angles of arrivals (AoAs) and angles of departures (AoDs) are quantized using angle dictionary matrices. However, the existing CS-based methods usually obtain the estimation result through one-stage channel sounding that have two limitations: (i) the requirement of large-dimensional dictionary and (ii) unresolvable quantization error. These two drawbacks are irreconcilable; improvement of the one implies deterioration of the other. To address these challenges, we propose, in this paper, a two-stage method to estimate the AoAs and AoDs of mmWave channels. In the proposed method, the channel estimation task is divided into two stages, Stage I and Stage II. Specifically, in Stage I, the AoAs are estimated by solving a multiple measurement vectors (MMV) problem. In Stage II, based on the estimated AoAs, the receive sounders are designed to estimate AoDs. The dimension of the angle dictionary in each stage can be reduced, which in turn reduces the computational complexity substantially. We then analyze the successful recovery probability (SRP) of the proposed method, revealing the superiority of the proposed framework over the existing one-stage CS-based methods. We further enhance the reconstruction performance by performing resource allocation between the two stages. We also overcome the unresolvable quantization error issue present in the prior techniques by applying the atomic norm minimization method to each stage of the proposed two-stage approach. The simulation results illustrate the substantially improved performance with low complexity of the proposed two-stage method.
Recent contrastive representation learning methods rely on estimating mutual information (MI) between multiple views of an underlying context. E.g., we can derive multiple views of a given image by applying data augmentation, or we can split a sequence into views comprising the past and future of some step in the sequence. Contrastive lower bounds on MI are easy to optimize, but have a strong underestimation bias when estimating large amounts of MI. We propose decomposing the full MI estimation problem into a sum of smaller estimation problems by splitting one of the views into progressively more informed subviews and by applying the chain rule on MI between the decomposed views. This expression contains a sum of unconditional and conditional MI terms, each measuring modest chunks of the total MI, which facilitates approximation via contrastive bounds. To maximize the sum, we formulate a contrastive lower bound on the conditional MI which can be approximated efficiently. We refer to our general approach as Decomposed Estimation of Mutual Information (DEMI). We show that DEMI can capture a larger amount of MI than standard non-decomposed contrastive bounds in a synthetic setting, and learns better representations in a vision domain and for dialogue generation.