Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) have emerged as a crucial technology for making sustainable and green communication in future sixth-generation (6G) networks. By adaptively adjusting the wireless environment, RIS facilitates flexible control over signal propagation. When RIS is integrated into a simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) system, it can improve energy efficiency (EE) and link reliability. This enables low-power internet-of-things (IoT) devices to achieve continuous energy acquisition while maintaining reliable data access. This capability aligns well with the increasing demands of future 6G networks for enhancing EE and achieving ubiquitous connectivity. Motivated by this, we investigate a RIS-assisted multi-user SWIPT system that accounts for the nonlinear characteristics of the high power amplifier (HPA) at the transmitting end and the nonlinearity of the energy harvesting (EH) circuits at the receivers. These hardware imperfections pose major challenges for system modeling and optimization, particularly under stringent power limitations and quality of service (QoS) requirements, where improving overall EE is a key objective. Therefore, we proposed a joint optimization framework that simultaneously designs the access point (AP) beamforming, the RIS reflection coefficients, and the power splitting (PS) ratios at the receivers. The resulting problem is non-convex, with strong coupling among these variables. To tackle this issue, we propose an efficient alternating optimization (AO) framework. The fractional EE objective is handled using the Dinkelbach method, while each subproblem is iteratively convexified via successive convex approximation (SCA) and semi-definite relaxation (SDR) algorithms. Simulation results reveal that the proposed AO approach achieves substantial EE gains and confirm that integrating RIS conspicuous boosts the overall system EE performance.

In covert communications, the position of the warden has a variety of situations, which leads to different scenes that require different covert communication schemes to ensure the security. In response to this situation, in this paper, a beamforming optimization method of covert communications for multi-position warden is proposed. Firstly, we formulate a general optimization problem and optimize it to maximize the covert communication rate of the user based on Dinkelbach’s transform. Subsequently, according to the optimized general optimization problem, we propose three schemes for three scenes corresponding to different fixed warden positions, using appropriate technologies for assistance in each scheme. Specifically, the intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is used in Scene 1 and the integrated communication and jamming (ICAJ) is used in Scenes 2 and 3, and these technologies can assist the covert communication. Moreover, we propose an alternate optimization (AO) algorithm to solve the optimization problem of Scene 1 for its optimal covert communication performance. Additionally, we also propose an AO algorithm to solve the optimization problems of Scenes 2 and 3 to optimize the active beamforming. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of all three proposed schemes, that outperform their respective benchmark schemes.

The external power supply requirement of intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRS) restricts its deployment and application. To address this issue, self-sustainable IRS that can harvest energy from wireless signals significantly enhances the convenience and feasibility of IRS deployment. This paper investigates a novel IRS-aided simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) system, where IRS adopts power splitting (PS) protocol, time switching (TS) protocol or element splitting (ES) protocol to extract energy from the incident signals for sustaining its operation. Our aim is to maximize the weighted sum rate (WSR) while accounting for the constraints in terms of maximum transmit power, IRS reflection coefficients, the energy harvesting requirements of both users and the IRS. The WSR maximization problem is non-convex due to the coupling among variables. For the formulated problem, we propose an alternating optimization (AO) framework to transform it into several subproblems and solves them iteratively. Specifically, we utilize successive convex approximation (SCA) technique to tackle the non-convex optimization challenges in both transmit and reflective beamforming subproblems. Finally, simulation results demonstrate that employing a self-sustainable IRS together with the proposed algorithm yields a WSR improvement of 32%–60%.

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is regarded as a promising solution for the development of the emerging low-altitude economy (LAE). Given the necessity of accurate and realistic wireless channel models for ISAC evaluation and optimization, this paper proposes an LAE-oriented ISAC channel modeling framework. By incorporating the target unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) scattering response, we decouple the ISAC channel into target and background channels. For the target channel, the model is formulated as a cascade of the transmitting base station (BS)-target link, the target-sensing BS link, and the scattering response from the target UAV. For the background channel, a novel parameter is introduced to separate the influence of the target UAV. Furthermore, key statistical properties, including the space-time-frequency correlation function, coherence distance, Doppler power spectral density, root mean square delay spread, and stationarity interval, are derived and analyzed. The accuracy of the proposed channel model is verified by the close agreement between simulated statistics properties and measured data, and the effectiveness of the cascaded method is validated by the close agreement between the concatenation output and simulation results.

Fluid antenna systems (FAS) are emerging as a transformative enabler for sixth-generation (6G) wireless communications, providing unprecedented spatial diversity through dynamic reconfiguration of antenna ports. However, the inherent spatial correlation among ports poses significant challenges for accurate analysis. Conventional models such as Jakes are analytically intractable, while oversimplified constant-correlation models fail to capture the true behavior. In this work, we address these challenges by applying the variable block-correlation model (VBCM) -- originally proposed by Ramírez-Espinosa \textit{et al.} in 2024 -- to FAS security analysis, and by developing comprehensive optimization methods to enhance analytical accuracy. We derive new closed-form expressions for average secrecy capacity (ASC) and secrecy outage probability (SOP), demonstrating that the VBCM framework achieves simulation-aligned accuracy, with relative errors consistently below $5\%$ (compared to $10$--$15\%$ for constant-correlation models). To maximize ASC, we further design two algorithms: a grid search (GS) method and a gradient descent (GD) method. Numerical results reveal that the VBCM-based approach not only provides reliable insights into FAS security performance, but also yields substantial gains -- ASC improvements exceeding $120\%$ in high-threat scenarios and $18$--$19\%$ performance enhancements for compact antenna configurations. These findings underscore the practical value of integrating VBCM into FAS security analysis and optimization, establishing it as a powerful tool for advancing 6G communication systems.

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is seen as a future solution to frequency congestion due to its excellent ability to simultaneously support target sensing and information transmission. However, it also introduces a potential security threat due to the sensing behavior. In this paper, we propose a covert ISAC scheme against collusive wardens. In particular, a dual-function base station continuously sense an aerial target while communicating with a ground receiver. First, we derive a closed-form expression of each warden's detection outage probability to obtain the global detection outage probability. Then, we jointly optimize the communication and sensing beamformings to maximize the covert transmission rate under the worst case that all wardens can collusively adjust their detection thresholds to achieve the best detection. To tackle this non-convex optimization problem, an iteration scheme is proposed. Numerical results demonstrate the validity of the proposed covert ISAC scheme.

As unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) increasingly operate in large-scale clusters, traditional routing protocols struggle to ensure efficient and time-sensitive packet path planning due to the growing network size and inherent mobility of UAVs. Meanwhile, despite deep learning (DL) based routing methods have shown promise in small UAV networks, their computational demands and limited scalability to large numbers of UAV nodes pose significant challenges. To address the challenges of scalability and computational demands in large-scale UAV networks, this paper proposes a novel decentralized global guided routing algorithm based on potential field. First, a potential field is constructed using a harmonic function to represent the current network status. Subsequently, leveraging this potential field, a global route is derived to define the overarching direction for data transmission. Finally, a compact neural network deployed at each node utilizes the global guidance direction and the local potential field information obtained from its surroundings to establish a specific data forwarding path within its maximum perception range. Simulation results illustrate the advantages of our proposed approach for establishing UAV paths in large-scale UAV networks.

The external power supply requirement of intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRS) restricts its deployment and application. To address this issue, self-sustainable IRS that can harvest energy from wireless signals significantly enhances the convenience and feasibility of IRS deployment. This paper investigates a novel IRS-aided simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) system, where the IRS adopts a power splitting (PS) protocol to extract energy from the incident signals for sustaining its operation. Our aim is to maximize the weighted sum rate (WSR) while considering the constraints in terms of maximum transmit power, IRS reflection, the harvesting energy requirements of users and IRS. The formulated problem of maximizing WSR is non-convex, which stems from the coupling among variables, making the problem complicated. To solve this problem, we propose an alternating optimization (AO) framework to transform the formulated problem into three subproblems, which enables an iterative solution approach. Specifically, we utilize successive convex approximation (SCA) technique to tackle the non-convex optimization challenges in both transmit and reflective beamforming subproblems. Simulation results demonstrate the efficacy of the proposed algorithm and substantiate the advantages of implementing self-sustained IRS for improving the WSR performance compared to other benchmark schemes.

Fluid antenna systems (FAS) enable dynamic antenna positioning, offering new opportunities to enhance integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) performance. However, existing studies primarily focus on communication enhancement or single-target sensing, leaving multi-target scenarios underexplored. Additionally, the joint optimization of beamforming and antenna positions poses a highly non-convex problem, with traditional methods becoming impractical as the number of fluid antennas increases. To address these challenges, this letter proposes a block coordinate descent (BCD) framework integrated with a deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based approach for intelligent antenna positioning. By leveraging the deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) algorithm, the proposed framework efficiently balances sensing and communication performance. Simulation results demonstrate the scalability and effectiveness of the proposed approach. Unlike traditional optimization approaches that suffer from exponential complexity growth, our DRL-based method achieves real-time decision-making with superior scalability for complex multi-target scenarios while maintaining computational efficiency.

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) assisted semi-grant-free (SGF) transmission, which enables grant-based users to share their spectrum with grant-free (GF) users, becomes an effective solution to the challenge of massive connections. However, this improvement is limited as most of the existing schemes can only admit one GF user. In this paper, we propose a novel NOMA-assisted SGF transmission scheme to support the access of multiple GF users in unmanned aerial vehicle networks. Moreover, in order to further enhance the advantages of the multi-user SGF scheme, two SGF schemes with power matching are devised to further improve the performance by employing the benefits of distributed contention. For ease of performance evaluation, the theoretical expressions of achievable sum rate and average age of information of the three SGF schemes are derived by applying order statistics. We also investigate the high signal-to-noise approximation expressions of sum rate for these schemes to give more insight. Finally, simulation results are provided to demonstrate the performance improvement of three proposed SGF schemes and validate the correctness of the theoretical analysis expressions.

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) has evolved as a critical paradigm to enhance the dual functions concurrently. However, ISAC may encounter performance limitations, due to undesired channel conditions, small target size, and security threats. In this paper, we investigate intelligent reconfigurable surface (IRS)-aided bi-static ISAC networks, where the IRS is mounted directly on the target surface, and analyze the signal enhancing and suppressing effects of the target-mounted IRS, respectively. First, we maximize the sensing signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) while satisfying the users’ communication requirements by jointly optimizing the transmit beamforming and IRS reflection. To solve this optimization problem, an alternating optimization algorithm is employed to decouple the optimization variables, followed by the application of successive convex approximation and penalty dual decomposition to solve the subproblems. Second, we consider two threatening scenarios where two adversarial base stations (BSs) intend to capture the information reflected by the target. In the first scenario where the adversarial receiving BS attempts to exploit the reflected ISAC signal, we minimize its received power via optimizing the transmit beamforming and the IRS reflection alternately. In the second scenario where the adversarial transmitting BS emits a dedicated signal to detect the target, we focus on optimizing the IRS reflection. Simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed schemes.

In wireless communications, the communication channel between the transmitter and receiver can be monitored by an eavesdropper. The eavesdropper uses deep learning (DL) to quickly identify the modulation parameters of signals and further disrupt legitimate communications. Since DL has been proven to be vulnerable to adversarial attacks, this paper proposes to attack the eavesdropper’s model by designing adversarial waveforms, preventing the eavesdropper from correctly identifying the modulation schemes used by legitimate users, and thereby preventing the eavesdropper from interfering with normal communications. This paper proposes an attention-based black-box attack method, which uses the prediction of different networks in the ensemble model to assign adversarial attention factors to each network. This greatly improves the transmission attack performance of the designed adversarial examples. In addition, by analysing the influence of the channel on the adversarial waveform, we further design the adversarial waveform that can be transmitted in the channel to improve the practicability of the attack algorithm. Finally, we theoretically derive the bounds of the adversarial risk increase that the attack brings to the target model. Simulation results show that the proposed method can improve the success rate of the attack on the eavesdropper’s modulation detection model, cause the model to misidentify the signal modulation type, and improve the security and reliability of legitimate transceivers in wireless communication systems.

Distributed reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) provide rich macro-diversity coverage due to different locations of the RISs, which is beneficial to combat coverage holes. However, the system performance relies on the effective coordination of multiple RISs. In particular, distributed RIS-assisted power allocation and the phase shifts of RISs should be jointly designed under nonlinear scheduling constraints. Thus, the resource allocation scheme for distributed RIS-assisted multiuser system is a crucial challenge. To tackle these issues, joint power allocation, phase shifts and communication scheduling design for distributed RIS-assisted systems is investigated in this paper, where all RISs simultaneously and cooperatively serve multiple users. To overcome the formulated nonconvex optimization problem, the original problem is decoupled into three subproblems and solved in an iterative manner. Specifically, we first consider the subproblem of power allocation, which can be solved via maximizing the ergodic achievable rate. By applying the ergodic rate, an approximate closed-form solution is formed for the power allocation. Subsequently, the phase shifts are optimized using the minimization-maximization optimization methods. Finally, a communication scheduling scheme is presented to address the scheduling variables. Numerical simulations are conducted to demonstrate that the considered solution outperforms the existing benchmark and achieves a near-optimal spectral efficiency.

Hierarchical Federated Learning (HFL) has been proposed to achieve large-scale model training and more efficient communication, surpassing conventional Federated Learning (FL). However, inappropriate aggregation frequency and edge association in HFL result in excessive energy consumption for users with poor channels or hinder its convergence performance due to stochastic gradient descent (SGD) and Non-Independent and Identical Distribution (NIID) data, which is particularly challenging for energy-limited users. Motivated by this, a joint aggregation frequency and edge association optimization problem is proposed to minimize the long-term energy consumption during HFL training process. The problem can be formulated by incorporating computation, communication model and convergence analysis together. Due to the coupling between control variables, we decompose it into two sub-problems and adopt an iterative algorithm to approximate their optimal solutions. Specifically, the aggregation frequency is optimized under a given edge association by convex optimization to trade-off the computation and communication energy consumption, considering the convergence characteristic and SGD noise. Then, Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) is adopted to optimize edge association based on data distribution, dynamic channels and the derived aggregation frequency. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed strategy achieves the lowest energy consumption while attaining the required model accuracy, outperforming other benchmarks.

Cell-free massive MIMO has emerged as a key technology that is envisioned to play a central role in future wireless networks. It leverages the benefits of massive MIMO by utilizing a large number of access points (APs) distributed over a large coverage area to concurrently serve multiple user equipment (UEs). In its canonical form, each user is served by all the APs which is impractical. It is therefore important to carefully select groups of APs that will participate in serving each UE. In this work, we propose a method to form efficient UE-AP association clusters using matching theory, by modeling the problem as a many-to-many matching with externalities. We consider that the UEs exhibit partially altruistic behavior and therefore select APs in an empathetic way, aiming to improve their neighbor’s rate in addition to their own. Simulation results show that we can improve the system sum spectral efficiency, outage probability and the average energy efficiency compared to existing methods.

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is seen as a future solution to frequency congestion due to its excellent ability to simultaneously support target sensing and information transmission. To guarantee robust data security and privacy protection, covert communication can be employed in ISAC systems. In this paper, we propose a covert ISAC scheme against collusive wardens. In particular, a dual-function base station transmits the sensing beamforming to continuously sense an aerial target while communicating with a ground receiver with a probability of 0.5 via the communication beamforming. First, we derive a closed-form expression of the detection outage probability of each warden to obtain the global detection outage probability. Under the worst case that the wardens can collusively adjust their detection thresholds to achieve the best detection performance, we jointly optimize the communication and sensing beamformings to maximize the covert transmission rate. To tackle this non-convex problem, unitary-iteration and zero-forcing schemes are proposed to transform it into convex ones via semidefinite relaxation and successive convex approximation, respectively. Numerical results demonstrate the validity of the proposed covert ISAC scheme, which can achieve a better trade-off among communication, sensing and covertness compared to benchmarks.

Benefiting from the performance enhancement brought by multistatic cooperative sensing, integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) can capture more environmental information to address the security risk of information leakage caused by the openness of wireless channels. In this paper, we study the multistatic cooperative sensing assisted secure transmission via intelligent reflecting surface (IRS). In particular, we propose a multistatic cooperative sensing scheme to obtain the angle of arrival and the localization of the eavesdropping target to achieve the beam alignment accurately. The goal is to maximize the sum secrecy rate by jointly optimizing the association variables of base station (BS) and users, the BS beamforming and the IRS phase shifts, subject to the requirement of target sensing. Due to the coupling of variables and non-convex objective function, the formulated problem is intractable to solve directly. As such, we decompose it into three subproblems and develop an alternative optimization algorithm to solve them iteratively. The association variables are first optimized by successive convex approximation. Then, the BS transmit beamforming can be derived via the semidefinite relaxation. Finally, we adopt an alternating direction method of multiplier for the IRS phase-shift design. Simulation results indicate the feasibility of the proposed scheme, and the multistatic cooperative sensing via IRS can enhance the sensing performance and guarantee the secure transmission.

In this paper, we consider a pulse-radar-based MIMO ISAC system working in a multi-user multi-target scenario. A weighted sum rate maximization problem is formulated under the constraint of guaranteed sensing performance. In this scenario, the sensing interference comes from the reflection of communication users (CUs), In order to achieve the satisfactory sensing performance, we first design the sensing beamforming to eliminate the strong interference reflections comes from the reflected radar pulses. Then we introduce a generalized Weighted-MMSE algorithm applicable for jointly handle the multi-user interference and the reflected communication signals. It is proved that the generalized algorithm has the same magnitude of complexity as the original algorithm. Finally, simulation results show that achieving the sensing function only have minor impact on the communication performance.

In this paper, we investigate a novel intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-aided multiuser communication system, where a multi-antenna base station (BS) integrated with an IRS simultaneously serves multiple low-mobility and high-mobility users via transmit diversity and active/passive precoding, respectively. Specifically, we exploit IRS's common phase shift to help achieve transmit diversity for high-mobility users without any channel state information (CSI), while incorporating the active/passive precoding design into the IRS-integrated BS to serve low-mobility users with known CSI. Then, we formulate and solve a new problem to minimize the total transmit power at the BS by jointly optimizing the reflect precoding at the IRS and the transmit precoding at the BS to cope with interference among different users. Simulation results validate the performance superiority of our proposed IRS-aided multiuser communication.

While traditional electromagnetic stealth materials/metasurfaces can render a target virtually invisible to some extent, they lack flexibility and adaptability, and can only operate within a limited frequency and angle range, making it challenging to ensure the expected stealth performance. In view of this, we propose in this paper a new intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-aided electromagnetic stealth system mounted on targets to evade radar detection, by utilizing the tunable passive reflecting elements of IRS to achieve flexible and adaptive electromagnetic stealth in a cost-effective manner. Specifically, we optimize the IRS's reflection at the target to minimize the sum received signal power of all adversary radars. We first address the IRS's reflection optimization problem using the Lagrange multiplier method and derive a semi-closed-form optimal solution. To meet real-time processing requirements, we further propose a low-complexity closed-form solution based on the minimum mean-square error (MMSE) principle. Simulation results validate the performance advantages of our proposed IRS-aided electromagnetic stealth system with the proposed IRS reflection designs.

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) assisted semi-grant-free (SGF) transmission is a favorable solution to tackle the challenges of massive access in the Internet of Things (IoT), however, only one grant-free user is permitted to access in most of the existing schemes. In this paper, we propose a new NOMA-assisted SGF transmission scheme by artfully employing the benefits of the distributed contention, which can support the access of multiple grant-free (GF) users and hence effectively improve the spectrum efficiency and connectivity of the IoT network. Moreover, we theoretically derive the closed-form expressions of the achievable sum rate and the high signal-to-noise ratio approximation expressions to get some insights. In addition, we also derive the average age-of-information to provide a comprehensive performance evaluation. Finally, simulation results are provided to demonstrate the performance improvement of the new SGF scheme.

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) has emerged as a promising approach for efficiently enhancing communication performance via passive signal reflection. However, in high-mobility scenarios like vehicular communications, the rapidly changing channel presents challenges in acquiring instantaneous channel state information (CSI) for RIS systems with many reflectors, impacting transmission reliability. To overcome this issue, we present an innovative equivalent linear framework equipped with a low-complexity transmitter signal waveform design and receiver signal detection method for downlink communication systems, substantially enhancing stability in fast fading environments. Simulation results indicate that the proposed designs achieve higher communication reliability with low complexity, significantly improving performance in high-mobility scenarios.

Cell-free network and intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) are considered as promising technologies for future network capacity and coverage improvement. They offer advantages such as low cost, low energy consumption, and meeting the requirements of green communication. However, the fixed location of IRS limits the flexibility of the entire network. To address this issue, we propose a more comprehensive cell-free network that enhances network capacity and signal coverage by utilizing the reflected signals from an airborne IRS. Our objective is to maximize the weighted transmission rate for users by jointly optimizing the base station (BS) beamforming, passive beamforming of the IRS, and the location of the UAV. Owing to the non-convex and intricate nature of the problem, we decompose it into three subproblems, employing the principles of Lagrangian duality, multi-ratio fractional programming, and the successive convex approximation (SCA) technique for resolution. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can significantly improve the weighted transmission rate and effectively enhance the network coverage compared to the benchmarks.

In the Internet of Everything (IoE) scenarios, the extensive deployment of devices may result in more stringent power and communication needs. Within this context, we utilize the reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) to support the simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) system, whereby the stable transmission of energy and information services can be guaranteed. Specifically, we construct the system model through electromagnetics (EMs), which is based on the scattering-parameter (S-parameter) analysis, for revealing the crucial factors of the practical hardware. Relying on the model, the energy-efficient (EE) maximization problem constrained to the Quality of Services (QoS) is proposed for the users with the framework of co-located receiver (Rx). However, the problem is more intractable due to the introduced channel model. To resolve it, we propose an effective optimization scheme. First, the Neuman series approximation method is adopted to deconstruct the EM transfer model. Then the reformed problem, which includes the variables (i.e., the power splitting ratio, the active beamformer, and the reflection-coefficient matrix), can be addressed through the strategy of alternative optimization (AO). Further, the inner convex approximation (INCA) scheme and Dinkelbach’s algorithm are applied to tackle each subproblem. In the numerical simulation, we demonstrate that the array configuration can influence not only the hardware properties of RIS but also the EE performance of the whole system. What is more, the proposed scheme performs better for the tightly coupled RIS owing to the awareness of the mutual-coupling (MC) effect.

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) have attracted extensive attention in millimeter wave (mmWave) systems because of the capability of configuring the wireless propagation environment. However, due to the existence of a RIS between the transmitter and receiver, a large number of channel coefficients need to be estimated, resulting in more pilot overhead. In this paper, we propose a joint sparse and low-rank based two-stage channel estimation scheme for RIS-assisted mmWave systems. Specifically, we first establish a low-rank approximation model against the noisy channel, fitting in with the precondition of the compressed sensing theory for perfect signal recovery. To overcome the difficulty of solving the low-rank problem, we propose a trace operator to replace the traditional nuclear norm operator, which can better approximate the rank of a matrix. Furthermore, by utilizing the sparse characteristics of the mmWave channel, sparse recovery is carried out to estimate the RIS-assisted channel in the second stage. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves significant performance gain in terms of estimation accuracy compared to the benchmark schemes.

High-speed train (HST) communication plays a crucial role in providing reliable data services to passengers inside the trains. However, due to the train’s high mobility, a fast time-varying channel generally exists between the static BS and high-speed users, resulting in severe communication performance degradation. To address this issue, we propose in this paper an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-aided HST relaying system, where an IRS is integrated with the relay to aid the data transmission from the BS to the relay. Specifically, an optimization problem is formulated to maximize the received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) at the relay by jointly optimizing the active transmit beamforming at the BS, the active receive beamforming at the relay, and the passive reflect beamforming at the IRS. To solve this problem, we first decouple it into two simpler sub-problems by leveraging the low-dimensional channel decomposition of the high-dimensional BS-relay channel matrix, and then solve them in closed-form with low complexity. Additionally, an efficient transmission protocol tailored for HST communication systems is proposed to implement channel estimation and beam tracking with low complexity. Simulation results verify the performance gains of the proposed IRS-aided HST relaying system, compared with the traditional relaying scheme without IRS and other benchmark schemes.

Utilizing unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) as aerial platforms to provide both sensing and communication services is envisioned as a promising paradigm, due to their inherent flexibility and maneuverability. In this paper, we propose a UAV-enabled sensing-assisted communication scheme for vehicular networks using the integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) technique. Specifically, we consider the geometry of vehicles as extended targets with multiple resolvable scatters and adjust beamwidth to cover the entire vehicle in the ISAC duration. Based on the reflected signals, the UAV can predict the state of vehicle, which is then exploited to generate tailored beams to effectively track the vehicle. To address the asymmetric sensing and communication requirements, a three-stage ISAC scheme with dynamic sensing duration and frequency is proposed according to the communication/sensing performance in real time. The initial state of vehicle is estimated in the first stage, followed by the use of ISAC wide beams in the second stage to achieve the vehicle coverage, employing an extended Kalman filtering (EKF) approach for state tracking and prediction. In the third stage, the UAV selectively transmits either an ISAC beam or a communication-only beam based on monitored sensing and communication performance metrics. Finally, simulation results are provided to evaluate the efficacy of the proposed scheme as compared to other benchmarks and also shed light on the tradeoff between communication and sensing.

Communication networks are becoming increasingly content-centric, and reusable content like viral information and video on demand are often requested by multiple users. Caching at the user equipment enables device-to-device (D2D) communications to be used to deliver requested contents which will help reduce data traffic at base stations and also enhance the achievable data rates. In this paper, we propose a system whereby users are able to exchange valuable cached content with each other via a D2D link which underlays the reception of a downlink non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) signal. We formulated a sum rate maximization problem that is subject to minimum rate constraints and derived optimal solutions depending on which user is the D2D transmitter. Additionally, sub-optimal solutions based on a negligible self-interference assumption are also proposed. Simulation results demonstrate the significant performance gains of underlaid D2D communications as compared with optimal downlink cellular NOMA. Furthermore, results on the self-interference (SI) cancellation factor highlight that the sub-optimal power allocation solution offers sum rate performance close to the optimal case. The performance gains are further enhanced when SI cancellation is high.

Due to its capability of channel reconfiguration and enhancement, intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) can be introduced to improve the secrecy rate of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) networks. However, the cost and hardware complexity of full-digital beamforming in existing related studies are high, especially for the systems with massive antennas. This paper studies the robust secure transmission for IRS-aided NOMA networks with cost-effective hybrid beamforming. Specifically, we deploy an IRS to assist the secure transmission from a base station with cost-effective hybrid beamforming to a cell-center user (U1) and a cell-edge user (U2), with the existence of a potential eavesdropper. Two schemes are proposed for guaranteeing the secure transmission of U1 with the perfect and imperfect channel state information (CSI), respectively. With the perfect CSI, the secrecy rate of U1 is maximized subject to the constant modulus constraint and the quality of service (QoS) constraint of U2 via optimizing the hybrid beamforming and phase shifts of IRS. With the imperfect CSI, the achievable rate at U1 is maximized, satisfying its worst-case eavesdropping rate constraint, the constant modulus constraint and the QoS constraint of U2. Because of the non-convexity, we first decompose each problem into two subproblems, respectively. Then, the subproblems are solved via the penalty-based algorithm and the successive convex approximation. Simulation results verify that the two proposed schemes have higher energy efficiency and can boost the security of IRS-aided NOMA networks with perfect and imperfect CSI, respectively.

Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has become a cost-effective solution for constructing a smart and adaptive radio environment. Most previous works on IRS have jointly designed the active and passive precoding based on perfectly or partially known channel state information (CSI). However, in delay-sensitive or high-mobility communications, it is imperative to explore more effective methods for leveraging IRS to enhance communication reliability without the need for any CSI. In this paper, we investigate an innovative IRS-aided multiuser communication system, which integrates an IRS with its aided multi-antenna base station (BS) to simultaneously serve multiple high-mobility users through transmit diversity and multiple low-mobility users through active/passive precoding. In specific, we first reveal that when dynamically tuning the IRS’s common phase-shift shared with all reflecting elements, its passive precoding gain to any low-mobility user remains unchanged. Inspired by this property, we utilize the design of common phase-shift at the IRS for achieving transmit diversity to serve high-mobility users, yet without requiring any CSI at the BS. Meanwhile, the active/passive precoding design is incorporated into the IRS-integrated BS to serve low-mobility users (assuming the CSI is known). Then, taking into account the interference among different users, we formulate and solve a joint optimization problem of the IRS’s reflect precoding and the BS’s transmit precoding, with the aim of minimizing the total transmit power at the BS. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed co-design of transmit diversity and active/passive precoding in IRS-aided multiuser systems can achieve superior and desirable performance compared to other benchmarks.

In this paper, we propose a signal design unconstrained ISAC framework, where different transmit signal design has no significant effect on both sensing and communication performance. To begin with, we describe the model of transmit signals with transmission power limitations. Next, the sensing and communication performance are analysed with reasonable metrics respectively. The property of unconstrained signal design is implied in a proved signal intensity distribution theorem, which facilitates the sensing function of our framework. Then, a beamforming optimization problem is formulated to maximize a weighted transmission rate subject to the guaranteed sensing performance. The formulated non-convex problem is approximately solved by alternatively solving two simpler sub-problems. Finally, numerical results are given to validate the effectiveness, practicality and satisfactory performance of our proposed framework.

The past few years have witnessed a remarkable leap forward in the tactical position of UAV swarm in aerial electronic warfare. Among them, energy-aware packet routing is one of the fundamental problems for cooperation between multiple UAVs to complete combat missions in complex battlefield environments. Recently, deep reinforcement learning (DRL) technique provides a new opportunity to networks related applications, including routing, resource allocation and network access. However, most existing DRL-based routing protocols are difficult to adapt to the changes of network scale, which have weak generalization capabilities and rely on centralized trainers. Thus, these protocols cannot be directly applied to the aerial electronic warfare. In this paper, we propose an adaptive and scalable routing protocol for UAV swarm electronic warfare with graph attention based fully distributed multi-agent reinforcement learning. Besides, a reward function design method based on fuzzy logic is proposed to reduce the probability of abnormal behaviors performed by agents. The simulation results show that our protocol can make effective routing decisions in dynamic wireless multihop networks and enhance the system performances in terms of packet delivery ratio, end-to-end delay and throughput.

The simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) technology assisted by the reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) can bring flexibility and stability to the end nodes of the internet of things (IoT) during the deployment. In this paper, we propose a RIS-aided SWIPT system based on a hardware transfer model from the electromagnetic perspective. Particularly, an energy efficiency (EE) maximization problem subject to the quality of service (QoS) demands, power resource budget and circuit restrains is introduced. Furthermore, the active beamforming vectors of the BS and the circuit parameters at the RIS are optimized jointly. The problem can be decomposed into two sub-problems and solved iteratively until convergence. In particular, semi-definite relaxation (SDR), successive convex approximation (SCA), Dinkelbach's algorithm are applied to the solutions of the sub-problems. Numerical results reveal the influences of the various QoS requirements on EE performance. Moreover, the actual generated beams of the BS and the RIS are shown to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed optimization strategy.

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) have attracted extensive attention in millimeter wave (mmWave) systems because of the capability of configuring the wireless propagation environment. However, due to the existence of a RIS between the transmitter and receiver, a large number of channel coefficients need to be estimated, resulting in more pilot overhead. In this paper, we propose a joint sparse and low-rank based two-stage channel estimation scheme for RIS-assisted mmWave systems. Specifically, we first establish a low-rank approximation model against the noisy channel, fitting in with the precondition of the compressed sensing theory for perfect channel recovery. To overcome the difficulty of solving the low-rank problem, we propose a trace operator to replace the traditional nuclear norm operator, which can better approximate the rank of a matrix. Furthermore, by utilizing the sparse characteristics of the mmWave channel, sparse recovery is carried out to estimate RIS-assisted channels in the second stage. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves significant performance gain in terms of estimation accuracy compared to the benchmark schemes.

In this paper, we propose a secure transmission scheme for aerial intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted wireless networks. A multi-antenna access point (AP) serves multiple legitimate users in the presence of multiple eavesdroppers, whose precise positions are unknown. An IRS is carried by the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) to help establish virtual line-of-sight links between the AP and ground users, as well as ensuring the secure transmission. The hovering position of UAV, the transmit beamforming of AP and the phase shifts of IRS are jointly optimized to maximize the worst-case sum secrecy rate, subject to the minimum rate requirement of legitimate users. The non-convex optimization problem is decomposed into three subproblems, each of which is transformed into a convex one by utilizing successive convex approximation. An alternating optimization algorithm is applied to tackle the subproblems iteratively. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme and the security enhancement by the joint optimization.

Due to the ability of channel reconfiguration, intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) can be used to boost the secrecy rate of cognitive non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) systems. However, the cost and hardware complexity of full-digital beamforming in existing related studies is high, especially for the systems with massive antennas. In this paper, we investigate the secure transmission for IRS-aided cognitive NOMA systems with cost-effective analog beamforming. The secrecy rate of primary user is maximized subject to the quality of service constraint of secondary user via joint analog and passive beamforming optimization. Owing to the non-convexity, we first transform the problem into two subproblems. Then, each subproblem is tackled via the penalty-based algorithm and the successive convex approximation. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed transmission scheme has higher energy efficiency and can boost the security of IRS-aided cognitive NOMA systems.

Multiple instance learning(MIL) is widely used for whole slide image(WSI) classification. However, these methods suffer from severe overfitting. In this paper, we introduce two main causes of such overfitting problems by rethinking the MIL task and formulation of attention-based MIL models: (i) The model is sensitive to the proportion of positive regions, and (ii)incorrectly learns the positional relationship of patches (i.e., the order of instances). To this end, we propose recurrent random padding(RRP) module and patch shuffle(PS) module to tackle these two issues, respectively. Furthermore, we present random alignment(RA) algorithm to solve these two overfitting problems simultaneously. On CAMELYON16 and TCGA-NSCLC, the proposed plug-and-play modules improve the performance of six baselines by large margins. The significant and consistent refinement demonstrates the correctness of our theories and the effectiveness of our modules.

Due to its strong flexibility, easy deployment, high maneuverability and extensive connectivity, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) swarm has been widely used in the construction of emergency communication network in recent years. Among them, packet routing in a resilient and adaptive manner is one of the fundamental problems for cooperation between multiple UAVs to complete search and rescue tasks. Recently, reinforcement learning (RL) technique has provided a new opportunity for network-related applications, including routing. However, most existing RL-based routing protocols suffer from issues such as local optimum, blind exploration and slow convergence speed. Additionally, the routing protocols based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL) has high computational complexity, making them unsuitable for energy-limited emergency relief scenarios. In this paper, we proposed a Q-learning aided resilient routing protocol with hindsight pre-calculation (QR2HPC) in UAV swarm for the construction of the emergency networks. Firstly, a dynamic exploration and exploitation coefficient is proposed based on the number and speed of neighbors. Secondly, a warm-start mechanism is proposed in the exploration phase that modifies the traditional random next hop selection to a routing approach guided by various indicators. Finally, we introduce a hindsight pre-calculation (HPC) mechanism to improve the robustness of Q-table to traffic flow changes. The experimental results manifest that our protocols can make effective routing decisions in dynamic wireless multi-hop networks, thereby enhancing the system performances in terms of packet delivery ratio, end-to-end delay, throughput and network lifetime.

The widespread deployment of the Internet of Things (IoT) is promoting interest in simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT), the performance of which can be further improved by employing a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS). In this article, we propose a novel RIS-enhanced SWIPT system built on an electromagnetic-compliant framework. The mutual-coupling effects in the whole system are presented explicitly. Moreover, the reconfigurability of RIS is no longer expressed by the reflection-coefficient matrix but by the impedances of the tunable circuit. For comparison, both the no-coupling and the coupling-awareness cases are discussed. In particular, the energy efficiency (EE) is maximized by cooperatively optimizing the impedance parameters of the RIS elements as well as the active beamforming vectors at the base station (BS). For the coupling-awareness case, the considered problem is split into several subproblems and solved alternatively due to its nonconvexity. First, it is transformed into a more solvable form by applying the Neuman series approximation, which can be resolved iteratively. Then, an alternative optimization (AO) framework and semidefinite relaxation (SDR), successive convex approximation (SCA), and Dinkelbach’s algorithm are applied to solve each subproblem decomposed from it. Owning to the similarity between the two cases, the no-coupling one can be viewed as a reduced form of the coupling case and, thus, solved through a similar approach. Numerical results reveal the influence of mutual-coupling effects on the EE, especially in the RIS with closely spaced elements. In addition, physical beam designs are presented to demonstrate how the RIS assists SWIPT through various reflecting states in different conditions.

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) has been viewed as a typical application for the fifth generation (5G) mobile networks. This article investigates the energy efficiency (EE) optimization problem for the Device-to-Device (D2D) communications underlaying unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)-assisted IIoT networks with simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT). We aim to maximize the EE of the system while satisfying the constraints of transmission rate and transmission power budget. However, the designed EE optimization problem is nonconvex involving joint optimization of the UAV’s location, beam pattern, power control, and time scheduling, which is difficult to tackle directly. To solve this problem, we present a joint UAV location and resource allocation algorithm to decouple the original problem into several subproblems and solve them sequentially. Specifically, we first apply the Dinkelbach method to transform the fraction problem to a subtractive-form one and propose a mulitiobjective evolutionary algorithm based on decomposition (MOEA/D)-based algorithm to optimize the beam pattern. We then optimize UAV’s location and power control using the successive convex optimization techniques. Finally, after solving the above variables, the original problem can be transformed into a single-variable problem with respect to the charging time, which is linear and can be tackled directly. Numerical results verify that significant EE gain can be obtained by our proposed algorithm as compared to the benchmark schemes.

Integrating mobile edge computing (MEC) into the Internet of Things (IoT) enables resource-limited mobile terminals to offload part or all of the computation-intensive applications to nearby edge servers. On the other hand, by introducing reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), it can enhance the offloading capability of MEC, such that enabling low latency and high throughput. To enhance the task offloading, we investigate the MEC non-orthogonal multiple access (MEC-NOMA) network framework for mobile edge computation offloading with the assistance of a RIS. Different from conventional communication systems, we aim at allowing multiple IoT devices to share the same channel in tasks offloading process. Specifically, the joint consideration of channel assignments, beamwidth allocation, offloading rate and power control is formulated as a multi-objective optimization problem (MOP), which includes minimizing the offloading delay of computing-oriented IoT devices (CP-IDs) and maximizing the transmission rate of communication-oriented IoT devices (CM-IDs). Since the resulting problem is non-convex, we employ$\epsilon $-constraint approach to transform the MOP into the single-objective optimization problems (SOP), and then the RIS-assisted channel assignment algorithm is developed to tackle the fractional objective function. Simulation results corroborate the benefits of our strategy, which can outperforms the other benchmark schemes.

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is a promising technique that smartly reshapes wireless propagation environment in the future wireless networks. In this paper, we apply RIS to an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) network, in which the transmit signals from multiple UAVs to ground users are strengthened through RIS. Our objective is to minimize the power consumption of the system while meeting the constraints of minimum data rate for users and minimum inter-UAV distance. The formulated optimization problem is non-convex by jointly optimizing the position of UAVs, RIS reflection coefficients, transmit power, active beamforming vectors and decoding order, and thus is quite hard to solve optimally. To tackle this problem, we divide the resultant optimization problem into four independent subproblems, and solve them in an iterative manner. In particular, we first consider the sub-solution of UAVs placement which can be obtained via the successive convex approximation (SCA) and maximum ratio transmission (MRT). By applying the Gaussian randomization procedure, we yield the closed-form expression for the RIS reflection coefficients. Subsequently, the transmit power is optimized using standard convex optimization methods. Finally, a dynamic-order decoding scheme is presented for optimizing the NOMA decoding order in order to guarantee fairness among users. Simulation results verify that our designed joint UAV deployment and resource allocation scheme can effectively reduce the total power consumption compared to the benchmark methods, thus verifying the advantages of combining RIS into the multi-UAV assisted NOMA networks.

Combining simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) and an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is a feasible scheme to enhance energy efficiency (EE) performance. In this paper, we investigate a multiuser IRS-aided multiple-input single-output (MISO) system with SWIPT. For the purpose of maximizing the EE of the system, we jointly optimize the base station (BS) transmit beamforming vectors, the IRS reflective beamforming vector, and the power splitting (PS) ratios, while considering the maximum transmit power budget, the IRS reflection constraints, and the quality of service (QoS) requirements containing the minimum data rate and the minimum harvested energy of each user. The formulated EE maximization problem is non-convex and extremely complex. To tackle it, we develop an efficient alternating optimization (AO) algorithm by decoupling the original nonconvex problem into three subproblems, which are solved iteratively by using the Dinkelbach method. In particular, we apply the successive convex approximation (SCA) as well as the semi-definite relaxation (SDR) techniques to solve the non-convex transmit beamforming and reflective beamforming optimization subproblems. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the AO algorithm as well as the benefit of deploying IRS for enhancing the EE performance compared with the benchmark schemes.

Combining intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) offers a new degree of freedom to improve the coverage performance. However, it is more challenging to secure the air-ground transmission, due to the line-of-sight (LoS) links established by UAV. Since IRS is a promising solution for wireless environment reconfiguration, in this paper, we propose an aerial IRS-assisted secure transmission design in wireless networks. In particular, an access point (AP) equipped with a uniform planar array serves several single-antenna legitimate users in the presence of multiple single-antenna eavesdroppers, whose precise positions are unknown. An IRS is mounted on the UAV to help establish desired virtual LoS links between the AP and legitimate users, while ensuring their security. We aim to maximize the worst-case sum secrecy rate by jointly optimizing the hovering position of UAV, the transmit beamforming of AP and the phase shifts of IRS, subject to the requirement of minimum rate for legitimate users. To tackle this non-convex problem, we first decompose it into three subproblems, which are transformed into convex ones via successive convex approximation. An alternating algorithm is then proposed to solve them iteratively. Simulation results show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme and the security improvement by the joint optimization.

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) has been developed as a promising approach to enhance the performance of fifth-generation (5G) systems through intelligently reconfiguring the reflection elements. However, RIS-assisted beamforming design highly depends on the channel state information (CSI) and RIS’s location, which could have a significant impact on system performance. In this paper, the robust beamforming design is investigated for a RIS-assisted multiuser millimeter wave system with imperfect CSI, where the weighted sum-rate maximization problem (WSM) is formulated to jointly optimize transmit beamforming of the BS, RIS placement and reflect beamforming of the RIS. The considered WSM maximization problem includes CSI error, phase shifts matrices, transmit beamforming as well as RIS placement variables, which results in a complicated nonconvex problem. To handle this problem, the original problem is divided into a series of subproblems, where the location of RIS, transmit/reflect beamforming and CSI error are optimized iteratively. Then, a multiobjective evolutionary algorithm is introduced to gradient projection-based alternating optimization, which can alleviate the performance loss caused by the effect of imperfect CSI. Simulation results reveal that the proposed scheme can potentially enhance the performance of existing wireless communication, especially considering a desirable trade-off among beamforming gain, user priority and error factor.

In this paper, we investigate the fundamental multiple access (MA) scheme in an active intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) aided energy-constrained Internet-of-Things (IoT) system, where an active IRS is deployed to assist the uplink transmission from multiple IoT devices to an access point (AP). Our goal is to maximize the sum throughput by optimizing the IRS beamforming vectors across time and resource allocation. To this end, we first study two typical active IRS aided MA schemes, namely time division multiple access (TDMA) and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), by analytically comparing their achievable sum throughput and proposing corresponding algorithms. Interestingly, we prove that given only one available IRS beamforming vector, the NOMA-based scheme generally achieves a larger throughput than the TDMA-based scheme, whereas the latter can potentially outperform the former if multiple IRS beamforming vectors are available to harness the favorable time selectivity of the IRS. To strike a flexible balance between the system performance and the associated signaling overhead incurred by more IRS beamforming vectors, we then propose a general hybrid TDMA-NOMA scheme with device grouping, where the devices in the same group transmit simultaneously via NOMA while devices in different groups occupy orthogonal time slots. By controlling the number of groups, the hybrid TDMA-NOMA scheme is applicable for any given number of IRS beamforming vectors available. Despite of the non-convexity of the considered optimization problem, we propose an efficient algorithm based on alternating optimization, where each subproblem is solved optimally. Simulation results illustrate the practical superiorities of the active IRS over the passive IRS in terms of the coverage extension and supporting multiple energy-limited devices, and demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed hybrid MA scheme for flexibly balancing the performance-cost tradeoff.

Combining simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) and intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is a feasible scheme to enhance the energy efficiency (EE) performance. In this paper, we investigate a multiuser IRS-aided multiple-input single-output (MISO) system with SWIPT. For the purpose of maximizing the EE of the system, we jointly optimize the base station (BS) transmit beamforming vectors, the IRS reflective beamforming vector and the power splitting (PS) ratios, while considering the maximum transmit power budget, the IRS reflection constraints and the quality of service (QoS) requirements containing the minimum data rate and the minimum harvested energy per user. As the proposed EE maximization problem is non-convex and extremely complex, we propose an efficient alternating optimization (AO) algorithm by decoupling the original problem into three subproblems which are tackled iteratively by using the Dinkelbach method. In particular, we apply the successive convex approximation (SCA) as well as the semi-definite relaxation (SDR) techniques to solve the non-convex transmit beamforming and reflective beamforming optimization subproblems. Numerical results confirm the effectiveness of the AO algorithm as well as the benefit of deploying IRS for enhancing the EE performance compared with the benchmark schemes.

In this paper, we investigate the uplink secure communication by combining intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) and energy-harvesting (EH) jammer. Specifically, we propose an IRS-aided secure scheme for the uplink transmission via an EH jammer, to fight against the malicious eavesdropper. An energy transfer (ET) phase and an information transmission (IT) phase are proposed in this scheme. In the ET phase, we optimize the phase-shift matrix of IRS to maximize the harvested energy of jammer. In the IT phase, the phase-shift matrix of IRS and time switching factor are jointly optimized to maximize the secrecy rate. To tackle the non-convex problem, we first decompose it into two subproblems to solve by capitalizing on semi-definite relaxation (SDR) and Lagrange duality. Then, the solutions to the original problem can be obtained by alternately optimizing the two subproblems. Simulation results show that the proposed Jammer-IRS assisted secure transmission scheme can significantly enhance the uplink security.

This paper investigates a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) system with non-orthogonal-multiple access (NOMA), where the transmit signals from multiple UAVs to ground users are strengthened through a RIS. An innovative framework is designed to minimize the total power consumption of the system, by jointly optimizing the position of UAVs, RIS reflection coefficients, active beamforming vectors and decoding order. To solve this problem, we first consider the sub-solution of the UAV’s location which can be achieved via the successive convex approximation (SCA) and maximum ratio transmission (MRT). By applying the Gaussian randomization procedure, we then yield the closed-form solution for RIS phase coefficients. Subsequently, the transmit power is obtained by the standard convex optimization methods. Finally, a dynamic-order decoding scheme is proposed to optimize the decoding order. Simulation results show that the resource allocation scheme can obviously reduce the total power consumption compared to the benchmark schemes.

This article investigates nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA)-based cloud radio access networks (C-RANs), where edge caching is adopted to cut down the crowdedness of the fronthaul links. We aim to maximize the energy efficiency (EE) by jointly optimizing the power allocation, analog, and digital precoding, which turns out to be an intractable nonconvex optimization problem. To tackle this problem, we first select cluster heads using the selecting cluster-head (SCH) algorithm, where the analog precoding matrix can be resolved by means of maximizing the array gains. Then, the device grouping algorithm is proposed to group devices according to the equivalent channel correlations, and thus, the NOMA devices in the same beam are capable of sharing the same digital precoding vector. Finally, the joint digital precoding design and power allocation algorithm is proposed to decompose the resultant optimization problem into two subproblems and solve them iteratively by applying the Taylor expansion operation and the minimum mean square error (MMSE) detection. Simulation results validate that the proposed NOMA-based C-RANs with a hybrid precoding (HP) scheme can achieve higher spectral efficiency and EE than the traditional orthogonal multiple access (OMA)-based approach and two-stage HP scheme.

The integration of device-to-device (D2D) communications with cooperative non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) can achieve superior spectral efficiency. However, the mutual interference caused by D2D communications may prevent NOMA from diverging its high spectral efficiency advantage. Meanwhile, the low adaptability of the fixed transmission strategy can decrease the reliability of the cell-edge user (CEU). To further improve the spectral efficiency, we investigate a device-to-multi-device (D2MD) assisted cooperative NOMA system, where two cell-center users (CCUs) and one CEU are paired as a D2MD cluster. Specifically, the base station directly serves the two CCUs while communicating with the CEU via one CCU. Moreover, we propose an adaptive aggregate transmission scheme using dynamic superposition coding, pre-designing the decoding orders and prior information cancellation for the D2MD assisted cooperative NOMA system to enhance the reliability of the CEU. We provide the closed-form expressions for the outage probability, diversity order, outage throughput, ergodic sum capacity, average spectral efficiency, and spectral efficiency scaling over Nakagami-$m$fading channels under perfect and imperfect successive interference cancellation. The numerical results validate the correctness of the analytical derivations and the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

A highly integrated RF power and information receiving system is proposed in this paper. The system consists of an antenna, a rectifier, and an information receiving module. The information receiving module acts as part of the dc load. To realize high integration, a dual-band, dual-circular-polarized shared- aperture antenna is implemented. The antenna consists of a left-circular-polarized element operating at 2.4-GHz band, and a high-gain, right-circular-polarized$2\times 2$array operating at 5.8-GHz band. The lower-frequency antenna is for communication, while the higher-frequency one is for power transmission. All the elements share the same aperture, and the radiator of lower- frequency antenna acts as the reflector of higher-frequency elements. Accordingly, a class-F rectifier that matches the higher- frequency array is designed and verified, and a system-level demonstration is implemented. Owing to the high isolation on frequency splitting and polarization diversity, the baseband signal can be successfully demodulated under a 30-dB input-power-level difference at two frequency bands. The base-band information can be displayed by an ink screen. The received RF power can be effectively rectified and power the data-processing modules.

Despite the wide utilization of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), UAV communications are susceptible to eavesdropping due to air-ground line-of-sight channels. Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is capable of reconfiguring the propagation environment, and thus is an attractive solution for integrating with UAV to facilitate the security in wireless networks. In this paper, we investigate the secure transmission design for an IRS-assisted UAV network in the presence of an eavesdropper. With the aim at maximizing the average secrecy rate, the trajectory of UAV, the transmit beamforming, and the phase shift of IRS are jointly optimized. To address this sophisticated problem, we decompose it into three sub-problems and resort to an iterative algorithm to solve them alternately. First, we derive the closed-form solution to the active beamforming. Then, with the optimal transmit beamforming, the passive beamforming optimization problem of fractional programming is transformed into corresponding parametric sub-problems. Moreover, the successive convex approximation is applied to deal with the non-convex UAV trajectory optimization problem by reformulating a convex problem which serves as a lower bound for the original one. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme and the performance improvement achieved by the joint trajectory and beamforming design.

In this paper, we investigate the security enhancement by combining intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) and energy harvesting (EH) jammer for the uplink transmission. Specifically, we propose an IRS-aided secure scheme for the uplink transmission via an EH jammer, to fight against the malicious eavesdropper. The proposed scheme can be divided into an energy transfer (ET) phase and an information transmission (IT) phase. In the first phase, the friendly EH jammer harvests energy from the base station (BS) aided by IRS. We maximize the harvested energy of jammer by obtaining the closed-form solution to the phase-shift matrix of IRS. In the second phase, the user transmits confidential information to the BS while the jamming is generated to confuse the eavesdropper without affecting the legitimate transmission. The phase-shift matrix of IRS and time switching factor are jointly optimized to maximize the secrecy rate. To tackle the non-convex problem, we first decompose it into two sub-problems. The one of IRS can be approximated to convex with fixed time switching factor. Then, the time switching factor can be solved by Lagrange duality. Thus, the solution to the original problem can be obtained by alternately optimizing these two sub-problems. Simulation results show that the proposed Jammer-IRS assisted secure transmission scheme can significantly enhance the uplink security.

Plane spiral orbital angular momentum (PSOAM) mode-groups (MGs) and multiple-input multiple-output non-orthogonal multiple access (MIMO-NOMA) serve as two emerging techniques for achieving high spectral efficiency (SE) in the next-generation networks. In this paper, a PSOAM MGs based multi-user MIMO-NOMA system is studied, where the base station transmits data to users by utilizing the generated PSOAM beams. For such scenario, the interference between users in different PSOAM mode groups can be avoided, which leads to a significant performance enhancement. We aim to maximize the energy efficiency (EE) of the system subject to the constraints of the total transmission power and the minimum data rate. This designed optimization problem is non-convex owing to the interference among users, and hence is quite difficult to tackle directly. To solve this issue, we develop a dual layer resource allocation algorithm where the bisection method is exploited in the outer layer to obtain the optimal EE and a resource distributed iterative algorithm is exploited in the inner layer to optimize the transmit power. Besides, an alternative resource allocation algorithm with Deep Belief Networks (DBN) is proposed to cope with the requirement for low computational complexity. Simulation results verify the theoretical findings and demonstrate the proposed algorithms on the PSOAM MGs based MIMO-NOMA system can obtain a better performance comparing to the conventional MIMO-NOMA system in terms of EE.

The intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted millimeter wave (mmWave) communication system has emerged as a promising technology for coverage extension and capacity enhancement. Prior works on IRS have mostly assumed perfect channel state information (CSI), which facilitates in deriving the upper-bound performance but is difficult to realize in practice due to passive elements of IRS without signal processing capabilities. In this paper, we propose a compressive channel estimation techniques for IRS-assisted mmWave multi-input and multi-output (MIMO) system. To reduce the training overhead, the inherent sparsity of mmWave channels is exploited. By utilizing the properties of Kronecker products, IRS-assisted mmWave channel is converted into a sparse signal recovery problem, which involves two competing cost function terms (measurement error and sparsity term). Existing sparse recovery algorithms solve the combined contradictory objectives function using a regularization parameter, which leads to a suboptimal solution. To address this concern, a hybrid multiobjective evolutionary paradigm is developed to solve the sparse recovery problem, which can overcome the difficulty in the choice of regularization parameter value. Simulation results show that under a wide range of simulation settings, the proposed method achieves competitive error performance compared to existing channel estimation methods.

Coded multicasting is considered to be an effective approach to simultaneously serve multiple users in the same frequency/time/code resource, which is made possible by exploiting the information available in users’ caches. Recently, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has emerged as an alternative transmission technique for cache-aided network. In cache-aided NOMA system, cache-enabled interference cancellation (CIC) is employed to cancel the interference using the information in the cache, and thus enhance the user transmission rate, particularly for the weak users. Despite the enhanced spectral efficiency offered by both techniques, complexity issue arises from handling large number of users. Therefore, user pairing/clustering should be employed to limit the number of users served in the same time-frequency resource. However, the key question is which delivery technique performs better under different pairing scenarios. In this paper, the performance of NOMA and coded multicasting for two-user pairing are investigated in terms of probability of sum rate comparison and outage probability. In order to exploit the benefits of NOMA and coded multicasting, we also propose a hybrid delivery scheme, which select either NOMA or coded multicasting depending on the channel conditions of the paired users in each resource block (RB). A joint mode selection, power allocation and user pairing scheme is developed to enhance the performance of the hybrid scheme. Both analytical and simulation results demonstrate that NOMA outperforms coded multicasting when pairing users whose channel gains are highly distinctive, while coded multicasting is preferred when the paired users have similar channel gains. In addition, the hybrid scheme is demonstrated to offer enhanced sum rate performance in comparison to NOMA and coded multicasting.

The integration of intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) and multiple access provides a promising solution to improved coverage and massive connections at low cost. However, securing IRS-aided networks remains a challenge since the potential eavesdropper also has access to an additional IRS reflection link, especially when the eavesdropping channel state information is unknown. In this paper, we propose an IRS-assisted non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme to achieve secure communication via artificial jamming, where the multi-antenna base station sends the NOMA and jamming signals together to the legitimate users with the assistance of IRS, in the presence of a passive eavesdropper. The sum rate of legitimate users is maximized by optimizing the transmit beamforming, the jamming vector and the IRS reflecting vector, satisfying the quality of service requirement, the IRS reflecting constraint and the successive interference cancellation (SIC) decoding condition. In addition, the received jamming power is adapted at the highest level at all legitimate users for successful cancellation via SIC. To tackle this non-convex optimization problem, we first decompose it into two subproblems, and then each subproblem is converted into a convex one using successive convex approximation. An alternate optimization algorithm is proposed to solve them iteratively. Numerical results show that the secure transmission in the proposed IRS-NOMA scheme can be effectively guaranteed with the assistance of artificial jamming.

The system capacity can be remarkably enhanced with the help of intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) which has been recognized as a advanced breaking point for the beyond fifth-generation (B5G) communications. However, the accuracy of IRS channel estimation restricts the potential of IRS-assisted multiple input multiple output (MIMO) systems. Especially, for the resource-limited indoor applications which typically contains lots of parameters estimation calculation and is limited by the rare pilots, the practical applications encountered severe obstacles. Previous works takes the advantages of mathematical-based statistical approaches to associate the optimization issue, but the increasing of scatterers number reduces the practicality of statistical approaches in more complex situations. To obtain the accurate estimation of indoor channels with appropriate piloting overhead, an offset learning (OL)-based neural network method is proposed. The proposed estimation method can trace the channel state information (CSI) dynamically with non-prior information, which get rid of the IRS-assisted channel structure as well as indoor statistics. Moreover, a convolution neural network (CNN)-based inversion is investigated. The CNN, which owns powerful information extraction capability, is deployed to estimate the offset, it works as an offset estimation operator. Numerical results show that the proposed OL-based estimator can achieve more accurate indoor CSI with a lower complexity as compared to the benchmark schemes.

This paper investigates the energy efficiency (EE) optimization problem for device-to-device (D2D) communications underlaying non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs)-assisted networks with simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT). Our aim is to maximize the energy efficiency of the system while satisfying the constraints of transmission rate and transmission power budget. However, the considered EE optimization problem is non-convex involving joint optimization of the UAV's location, beam pattern, power control and time scheduling, which is difficult to solve directly. To tackle this problem, we develop an efficient resource allocation algorithm to decompose the original problem into several sub-problems and solve them sequentially. Specifically, we first apply the Dinkelbach method to transform the fraction problem to a subtractive-form one, and propose a mulitiobjective evolutionary algorithm based on decomposition (MOEA/D) based algorithm to optimize the beam pattern. We then optimize UAV's location and power control by applying the successive convex optimization techniques. Finally, after solving the above variables, the original problem is transformed into a single-variable problem with respect to the charging time, which is a linear problem and can be solved directly. Numerical results verify that the significant EE gain can be obtained by our proposed method as compared to the benchmark schemes.

In this paper, we propose a compressive channel estimation technique for IRS-assisted mmWave multi-input and multi-output (MIMO) system. To reduce the training overhead, the inherent sparsity in mmWave channels is exploited. By utilizing the properties of Kronecker products, IRS-assisted mmWave channel estimation are converted into a sparse signal recovery problem, which involves two competing cost function terms (measurement error and a sparsity term). Existing sparse recovery algorithms solve the combined contradictory objectives function using a regularization parameter, which leads to a suboptimal solution. To address this concern, a hybrid multi-objective evolutionary paradigm is developed to solve the sparse recovery problem, which can overcome the difficulty in the choice of regularization parameter value. Simulation results show that under a wide range of simulation settings, the proposed algorithm achieves competitive error performance compared to existing channel estimation algorithms.

In this paper, we propose a UAV-aided covert communication scheme assisted by a multi-antenna jammer to maximize the transmission rate between a ground transmitter and a UAV receiver against several randomly distributed wardens. The transmitter adopts the maximum ratio transmission, while the jammer zero-forces its transmitted signal at the UAV to disturb the monitoring at wardens without interfering the legitimate transmission. First, we analyze the detection performance and derive the optimal threshold for each warden to minimize its detection outage probability (DOP). Then, with the worst situation in which all wardens set their respective optimal thresholds to achieve the minimum global DOP, the location and the transmit power of the jammer are optimized to maximize the DOP. The location of UAV and the transmit power of the ground transmitter are also optimized to maximize the transmission rate with the minimum DOP requirement satisfied. Numerical results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed UAV-aided covert communication scheme.

Beamforming and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) are two key techniques for achieving spectral efficient communication in the fifth generation and beyond wireless networks. In this paper, we jointly apply a hybrid beamforming and NOMA techniques to an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-carried wireless-powered mobile edge computing (MEC) system, within which the UAV is mounted with a wireless power charger and the MEC platform delivers energy and computing services to Internet of Things (IoT) devices. We aim to maximize the sum computation rate at all IoT devices whilst satisfying the constraint of energy harvesting and coverage. The considered optimization problem is non-convex involving joint optimization of the UAV’s 3D placement and hybrid beamforming matrices as well as computation resource allocation in partial offloading pattern, and thus is quite difficult to tackle directly. By applying the polyhedral annexation method and the deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) algorithm, we propose an effective algorithm to derive the closed-form solution for the optimal 3D deployment of the UAV, and find the solution for the hybrid beamformer. A resource allocation algorithm for partial offloading pattern is thereby proposed. Simulation results demonstrate that our designed algorithm yields a significant computation performance enhancement as compared to the benchmark schemes.

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is an important technology for the forthcoming 5G and beyond. However, its privacy often suffers from adversarial eavesdropping, especially for the users with higher transmit power. In this paper, we propose a jamming-aided secure transmission scheme for cooperative NOMA networks with a full-duplex (FD) relay. In this scheme, two pairs of users perform secure transmission with the help of a decode-forward (DF) relay, which forwards information and generates artificial jamming to counteract eavesdropping. The precoding vectors are designed to zero-force the artificial jamming at legal receivers. Then, the channel statistics are calculated, based on which the expressions of secrecy outage probability (SOP) are derived. Simulation results show the accuracy of our analysis, and demonstrate that the proposed scheme can effectively reduce the SOP and improve the effective secrecy throughput via artificial jamming and FD relaying.

Beamforming and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) serve as two potential solutions for achieving spectral efficient communication in the fifth generation and beyond wireless networks. In this paper, we jointly apply a hybrid beamforming and NOMA techniques to an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-carried wireless-powered mobile edge computing (MEC) system, within which the UAV is equipped with a wireless power charger and the MEC platform delivers energy and computing services to Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Our aim is to maximize the sum computation rate at all IoT devices whilst satisfying the constraint of energy harvesting and coverage. The resultant optimization problem is non-convex involving joint optimization of the UAV’s 3D placement and hybrid beamforming matrices as well as computation resource allocation in both partial and binary offloading patterns, and thus is quite difficult to tackle directly. By applying the polyhedral annexation method and the deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) algorithm, we develop an effective algorithm to derive the closed-form solution for the optimal 3D deployment of the UAV, and find the solution for the hybrid beamformer. Two resource allocation algorithms for partial and binary offloading patterns are thereby proposed. Simulation results verify that our designed algorithms achieve a significant computation performance enhancement as compared to the benchmark schemes.

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) and ultra-dense networks are two key technologies for the fifth-generation (5G) and beyond communication system. However, the ultra-dense deployment of small base stations (SBSs) might introduce severe interference to users that connect to SBSs. This paper analyzes the performance of 5G communication networks where the SBSs with coordinated beamforming, operating at mmWave frequency band and macro base stations (MBSs) operating at sub-6 GHz coexist. First, by utilizing a stochastic geometry approach, we obtain the cell association probability expressions in terms of different cell association biases, base station density ratios and probabilities of line of sight (LoS) link. Furthermore, we propose a clustering method to choose some SBSs to eliminate intra-cell interference. Then, we put forward an average distance from the Kth SBS to a user to obtain signal-to-interference-ratio (SINR) and rate coverage probability expressions. The simulation results validate the correctness of the expressions, and indicate that the optimal cardinality of coordinated SBSs increases with the density of SBSs. In addition, the relationship between the cluster size K and the average energy efficiency is obtained, which can be used to guide the coordination principle in 5G and beyond communication systems.

This paper considers an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-aided millimeter Wave (mmWave) multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system, where a UAV serves as a flying base station (BS) to provide wireless access services to a set of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in different clusters. We aim to maximize the downlink sum rate by jointly optimizing the three-dimensional (3D) placement of the UAV, beam pattern and transmit power. To address this problem, we first transform the non-convex problem into a total path loss minimization problem, and hence the optimal 3D placement of the UAV can be achieved via standard convex optimization techniques. Then, the multiobjective evolutionary algorithm based on decomposition (MOEA/D) based algorithm is presented for the shaped-beam pattern synthesis of an antenna array. Finally, by transforming the original problem into an optimal power allocation problem under the fixed 3D placement of the UAV and beam pattern, we derive the closed-form expression of transmit power based on Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions. In addition, inspired by fraction programming (FP), we propose a FP-based suboptimal algorithm to achieve a near-optimal performance. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves a significant performance gain in terms of sum rate for all IoT devices, as compared with orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) scheme.

This paper studies an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted wireless powered IoT network, where a rotary-wing UAV adopts fly-hover-communicate protocol to successively visit IoT devices in demand. During the hovering periods, the UAV works on full-duplex mode to simultaneously collect data from the target device and charge other devices within its coverage. Practical propulsion power consumption model and non-linear energy harvesting model are taken into account. We formulate a multi-objective optimization problem to jointly optimize three objectives: maximization of sum data rate, maximization of total harvested energy and minimization of UAV's energy consumption over a particular mission period. These three objectives are in conflict with each other partly and weight parameters are given to describe associated importance. Since IoT devices keep gathering information from the physical surrounding environment and their requirements to upload data change dynamically, online path planning of the UAV is required. In this paper, we apply deep reinforcement learning algorithm to achieve online decision. An extended deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG) algorithm is proposed to learn control policies of UAV over multiple objectives. While training, the agent learns to produce optimal policies under given weights conditions on the basis of achieving timely data collection according to the requirement priority and avoiding devices' data overflow. The verification results show that the proposed MODDPG (multi-objective DDPG) algorithm achieves joint optimization of three objectives and optimal policies can be adjusted according to weight parameters among optimization objectives.

Satellite industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) plays an important role in industrial manufactures without requiring the support of terrestrial infrastructures. However, due to the scarcity of spectrum resources, existing satellite frequency bands cannot satisfy the demand of IIoT, which have to explore other available spectrum resources. Cognitive satellite networks are promising technologies and have the potential to alleviate the shortage of spectrum resources and enhance spectrum efficiency by sharing both spectral and spatial degrees of freedom. For effective signal estimations, multiple features of wireless signals are needed at receivers, the transmissions of which may cause considerable overhead. To mitigate the overhead, part of parameters, such as modulation order, constellation type, and signal to noise ratio (SNR), could be obtained at receivers through signal estimation rather than transmissions from transmitters to receivers. In this article, a grid method is utilized to process the constellation map to obtain its equivalent probability density function. Then, binary feature matrix of the probability density function is employed to construct a cost function to estimate the modulation order and constellation type for multiple quadrature amplitude modulation (MQAM) signal. Finally, an improved M2M∞method is adopted to realize the SNR estimation of MQAM. Simulation results show that the proposed method is able to accurately estimate the modulation order, constellation type, and SNR of MQAM signal, and these features are extremely useful in satellite-based IIoT.

Cognitive multihop relaying has been widely considered for device-to-device (D2D) communications for applications in the physical layer of the Internet of Things. In this article, we construct a multihop cellular D2D communications system model with energy harvesting (EH) in underlay cognitive radio networks. The locations of primary user equipments (PUEs) and cellular base stations are considered as a Poisson point process in this model. The transmit power of secondary devices is collected from the power beacon with time-switching EH policy. Two charging policies for different applications are considered in this article. Then, the end-to-end outage probability analysis expressions of these two scenarios for the transmission scheme subject to interferences from PUEs are derived. The optimal harvesting time ratio is obtained to get the maximum capacity for end-to-end D2D communications. The analytical results are validated by performing the Monte Carlo simulation of the end-to-end outage probability, which is based on the half-duplex transmission scheme. The results of this article provide a potential pathway to reduce reliance on grid or battery energy supplies and, hence, further strengthen the benefits for the environment and deployment of future smart devices.

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is one of the most significant technologies to meet the demand of high spectral efficiency (SE) in the fifth generation (5G) cellular networks. The utilization of simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) contributes to prolonging the battery life of the mobile users (MUs) and enhancing the system energy efficiency (EE), especially in the NOMA scenario where the inter-user interference can be reused for energy harvesting (EH). In this paper, we study the achievable data rate maximization problem for the downlink multi-carrier NOMA (MC-NOMA) network with power splitting (PS)-based SWIPT, in which power allocation and PS control are jointly optimized with the limitation of available power budget as well as the requirement for EH. The considered non-convex optimization problem is arduous to tackle, resulting from the presence of the coupled variables and the inter-user interference. To cope with the problem, a decoupled approach is developed, in which the power allocation and PS control are separated and the corresponding sub-problems are respectively solved through Lagrangian duality method. Furthermore, an alternative approach based on deep learning is proposed, which is capable of effectively obtaining the approximate optimal solution according to the empirical data. Simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed schemes, and demonstrate the superiority of the combination of PS-based SWIPT with MC-NOMA over SWIPT-aided single-carrier NOMA (SC-NOMA) and SWIPT-aided orthogonal multiple access (OMA).

In this paper, we consider an energy-constrained unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled mobile relay assisted secure communication system in the presence of a legitimate source-destination pair and multiple eavesdroppers with imperfect locations. The energy-constrained UAV employs the power splitting (PS) scheme to simultaneously receive information and harvest energy from the source, and then exploits the time switching (TS) protocol to perform information relaying. Furthermore, we consider a full-duplex destination node which can simultaneously receive confidential signals from the UAV and cooperatively transmit artificial noise (AN) signals to confuse malicious eavesdroppers. To further enhance the reliability and security of this system, we formulate a worst case secrecy rate maximization problem, which jointly optimizes the position of the UAV, the AN transmit power, as well as the PS and TS ratios. The formulated problem is non-convex and generally intractable. In order to circumvent the non-convexity, we decouple the original optimization problem into three subproblems; this facilitates the design of a suboptimal iterative algorithm. In each iteration, we propose a multi-dimensional search and numerical method to handle the subproblem. Numerical simulation results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and superior performance of the proposed joint design versus the conventional schemes in the literature.

Combination of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is deemed as an promising solution to achieving massive connectivity in future wireless networks. In this paper, a UAV-aided NOMA scheme is proposed to achieve simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) and guarantee the secure transmission for ground passive receivers (PRs), in which the nonlinear energy harvesting model is applied. Each time frame is divided into two phases. In the first phase, the received power at each PR is maximized to achieve rapid charging. In the second phase, SWIPT is performed via NOMA with the remaining energy at each PR, and artificial jamming is generated at UAV together with the NOMA information to guarantee the security. The throughput of PRs is maximized, with the highest received jamming power cancelled at each PR via successive interference cancellation (SIC). This disrupts the eavesdropping effectively by jamming without affecting the legitimate transmission. Due to the non-convexity of these two optimization problems, we first convert them to convex ones and then propose iterative algorithms to solve them. Simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

Mobile edge caching (MEC) and device-todevice (D2D) communications are two potential technologies to resolve traffic overload problems in the Internet of Things. Previous works usually investigate them separately with MEC for traffic offloading and D2D for information transmission. In this article, a joint framework consisting of MEC and cache-enabled D2D communications is proposed to minimize the energy cost of systematic traffic transmission, where file popularity and user preference are the critical criteria for small base stations (SBSs) and user devices, respectively. Under this framework, we propose a novel caching strategy, where the Markov decision process is applied to model the requesting behaviors. A novel scheme based on reinforcement learning (RL) is proposed to reveal the popularity of files as well as users' preference. In particular, a Q-learning algorithm and a deep Q-network algorithm are, respectively, applied to user devices and the SBS due to different complexities of status. To save the energy cost of systematic traffic transmission, users acquire partial traffic through D2D communications based on the cached contents and user distribution. Taking the memory limits, D2D available files, and status changing into consideration, the proposed RL algorithm enables user devices and the SBS to prefetch the optimal files while learning, which can reduce the energy cost significantly. Simulation results demonstrate the superior energy saving performance of the proposed RL-based algorithm over other existing methods under various conditions.

Energy efficiency (EE) and spectral efficiency (SE) are two of the key performance metrics in future wireless networks, covering both design and operational requirements. For previous conventional resource allocation techniques, these two performance metrics have been considered in isolation, resulting in severe performance degradation in either of these metrics. Motivated by this problem, in this paper, we propose a novel beamforming design that jointly considers the trade-off between the two performance metrics in a multiple-input single-output non-orthogonal multiple access system. In particular, we formulate a joint SE-EE based design as a multi-objective optimization (MOO) problem to achieve a good trade-off between the two performance metrics. However, this MOO problem is not mathematically tractable and, thus, it is difficult to determine a feasible solution due to the conflicting objectives, where both need to be simultaneously optimized. To overcome this issue, we exploit a priori articulation scheme combined with the weighted sum approach. Using this, we reformulate the original MOO problem as a conventional single objective optimization (SOO) problem. In doing so, we develop an iterative algorithm to solve this non-convex SOO problem using the sequential convex approximation technique. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the advantages and effectiveness of the proposed approach over the available beamforming designs.

Transmission rate and harvested energy are well-known conflictive optimization objectives in simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) systems, and thus their trade-off and joint optimization are important problems to be studied. In this paper, we investigate joint power allocation and splitting control in a SWIPT-enabled non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system with the power splitting (PS) technique, with an aim to optimize the total transmission rate and harvested energy simultaneously whilst satisfying the minimum rate and the harvested energy requirements of each user. These two conflicting objectives make the formulated problem a constrained multi-objective optimization problem. Since the harvested power is usually stored in the battery and used to support the reverse link transmission, we transform the harvested energy into throughput and define a new objective function by summing the weighted values of the transmission rate achieved by information decoding and transformed throughput from energy harvesting, defined as equivalent-sum-rate (ESR). As a result, the original problem is transformed into a single-objective optimization problem. The considered ESR maximization problem which involves joint optimization of power allocation and PS ratio is nonconvex, and hence challenging to solve. In order to tackle it, we decouple the original nonconvex problem into two convex subproblems and solve them iteratively. In addition, both equal PS ratio case and independent PS ratio case are considered to further explore the performance. Numerical results validate the theoretical findings and demonstrate that significant performance gain over the traditional rate maximization scheme can be achieved by the proposed algorithms in a SWIPT-enabled NOMA system.

In this paper, we investigate energy harvesting capabilities of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme integrated with the conventional time division multiple access (TDMA) scheme, which is referred to as hybrid TDMA-NOMA system. In a such hybrid scheme, users are divided into a number of groups, with the total time allocated for transmission is shared between these groups through multiple time slots. In particular, a time slot is assigned to serve each group, whereas the users in the corresponding group are served based on power-domain NOMA technique. Furthermore, simultaneous wireless power and information transfer technique is utilized to simultaneously harvest energy and decode information at each user. Therefore, each user splits the received signal into two parts, namely, energy harvesting part and information decoding part. In particular, we jointly determine the power allocation and power splitting ratios for all users to minimize the transmit power under minimum rate and minimum energy harvesting requirements at each user. Furthermore, this joint design is a non-convex problem in nature. Hence, we employ successive interference cancellation to overcome these non- convexity issues and determine the design parameters (i.e., the power allocations and the power splitting ratios). In simulation results, we demonstrate the performance of the proposed hybrid TDMA-NOMA design and show that it outperforms the conventional TDMA scheme in terms of transmit power consumption.

Mobile edge caching (MEC) and device to device (D2D) communications are two potential technologies to resolve traffic overload in heterogeneous networks. Prior works usually investigate them separately with MEC for traffic offloading and D2D for information transmission. In this paper, a composite framework consists of MEC and cache-enabled D2D communications is proposed to minimize the energy cost of systematic traffic transmission, where file popularity and user preference are the critical criteria for small base stations (SBSs) and users respectively. Under this framework, we propose a novel caching strategy where Markov decision process (MDP) is applied to model the requesting behaviors of users. A new algorithm based on reinforcement learning (RL) is proposed to reveal the popularity of files as well as users' preference. In particular, Q-learning (QL) algorithm and deep Q- network (DQN) algorithm are respectively applied to users and SBS due to different complexity of status. To save the energy cost of systematic traffic transmission, users acquire partial traffic through D2D communications based on the cached contents. Taking the memory limits, D2D available files and status changing into consideration, the proposed RL algorithm enables users' devices and SBS to prefetch the optimal files while learning, and hence reducing the energy cost significantly. Simulation results demonstrate the superior energy saving performance of the proposed RL-based algorithm over other existing methods under various conditions.

In this paper, we propose a novel scheme to guarantee the security of UAV-relayed networks with caching via jointly optimizing the UAV trajectory and time scheduling. For the two users that have cached the required file for the other, the UAV broadcasts the files together to these two users and the eavesdropping can be disrupted. For the user without caching, we maximize its secrecy rate by jointly optimizing the trajectory and scheduling, with the secrecy rate of the caching users satisfied. The corresponding optimization problem is difficult to solve due to its non-convexity, and we propose an iterative algorithm via successive convex optimization to solve it approximatively. Simulation results are provided to show the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed scheme.

In this paper, we investigate the uplink transmission in a cellular network from a UAV and ground users to ground base stations (BSs). Specifically, we aim to maximize the sum rate of the uplink from the UAV to ground BSs in a specific idle frequency band as well as from the co-channel users to their associated BSs by optimizing precoding vectors at UAV. To mitigate the interference, we apply successive interference cancellation (SIC) not only to the BSs connected with UAV using non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) for transmission, but also to other BSs communicating with ground users in the same band. The precoding optimization problem with constraints on the SIC decoding and the uplink transmission rate is formulated, which is non-convex and intractable. Thus, we introduce auxiliary variables and apply first-order approximations based on Taylor expansion to convert it into a second-order cone programming. An iterative algorithm is proposed with low complexity to calculate the solution to the non-convex precoding optimization problem. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed scheme.

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been developed as a key multi-access technique for 5G. However, secure transmission remains a challenge in NOMA. Especially, the user with weakest channel is most threatened by eavesdropping, due to its highest transmit power. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme to generate artificial jamming at the NOMA base station (BS), aiming at disrupting the potential eavesdropping without affecting the legitimate transmission. In the scheme, the transmit power of artificial jamming is maximized, with its received power at each receiver higher than that of other users. Thus, the jamming signal can be eliminated via successive interference cancellation before others, and the eavesdropping can be disrupted effectively. Due to the non-convexity of the optimization problems, we first convert it to a convex one and then provide an iterative algorithm to solve it. Simulation results are presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in guaranteeing the security of NOMA networks.

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) can be utilized as a relay to connect nodes with long distance, which can achieve significant throughput gain owing to its mobility and line-of-sight (LoS) channel with ground nodes. However, such LoS channels make UAV transmission easy to eavesdrop. In this paper, we propose a novel scheme to guarantee the security of UAV-relayed wireless networks with caching via jointly optimizing the UAV trajectory and time scheduling. For every two users that have cached the required file for the other, the UAV broadcasts the files together to these two users, and the eavesdropping can be disrupted. For the users without caching, we maximize their minimum average secrecy rate by jointly optimizing the trajectory and scheduling, with the secrecy rate of the caching users satisfied. The corresponding optimization problem is difficult to solve due to its non-convexity, and we propose an iterative algorithm via successive convex optimization to solve it approximately. Furthermore, we also consider a benchmark scheme in which we maximize the minimum average secrecy rate among all users by jointly optimizing the UAV trajectory and time scheduling when no user has the caching ability. Simulation results are provided to show the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed scheme.

In this paper, we investigate joint power allocation and time switching (TS) control for energy efficiency (EE) optimization in a TS-based simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system. Our aim is to optimize the EE of the system whilst satisfying the constraints on maximum transmit power, minimum data rate and minimum harvested energy per-terminal. The considered EE optimization problem is formulated and then transformed according to the duality of broadcast channels (BC) and multiple access channels (MAC). The corresponding non-linear and non-convex optimization problem, involving joint optimization of power allocation and time switching factor, is difficult to solve directly. In order to tackle this problem, we develop a dual-layer algorithm where a convex programming-based Dinkelbach's method is proposed to optimize the power allocation in the inner-layer and an efficient search method is then applied to optimize the TS factor in the outer-layer. Numerical results validate the theoretical findings and demonstrate that significant performance gain over orthogonal multiple access (OMA) scheme in terms of EE can be achieved by the proposed algorithm in a SWIPT-enabled NOMA system.

In this paper, we develop a secure non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA)-based two-way relay network, in which two users wish to exchange their NOMA signals via a trusted relay in the presence of an eavesdropper. To ensure secure communications, the relay not only forwards confidential information to the legitimate users but also keeps emitting jamming signals all the time to confuse any potential eavesdropper. Specifically, we equip the relay and each user with the full-duplex technique in the multiple-access phase to combat the eavesdropping and improve the data transmission efficiency, respectively. Different decoding schemes based on the successive interference cancellation (SIC) are proposed for the legitimate users, relay, and eavesdropper. Closed-form expressions for the achievable ergodic secrecy rates of all data symbols are derived, validated by the excellent fitting to the computer simulation results for our proposed network.

Full-duplex (FD) has emerged as a disruptive solution for improving the achievable spectral efficiency (SE), thanks to the recent major breakthroughs in self-interference (SI) mitigation. The FD versus half-duplex (HD) SE gain, in the context of cellular networks, is however largely limited by the mutual interference (MI) between the downlink (DL) and uplink (UL). A potential remedy for tackling the MI bottleneck is through cooperative communications. This paper provides a stochastic analysis of FD enabled cloud radio access network (CRAN) with finite user- centric cooperative clusters. Contrary to the most existing theoretical studies of C-RAN, we explicitly take into consideration non-isotropic fading channel conditions, and finite-capacity fronthaul links. Accordingly, we develop analytical expressions for the FD C-RAN DL and UL SEs. The results indicate that significant FD versus HD C-RAN SE gains can be achieved, particularly in the presence of sufficient- capacity fronthaul links and advanced interference cancellation capabilities.

In this paper, we investigate the energy efficiency (EE) optimization for a downlink orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) system with overlaying Device-to-Device (D2D) communications. Joint EE optimization is highly complex while a two-stage solution will utilize most of the bandwidth for cellular users and not providing sufficient bandwidth for D2D users. Using resource efficiency (RE) optimization approach that balances the bandwidth usage and EE, we propose a two-stage solution that optimizes RE for base station (BS) and EE for D2D pairs. To achieve higher EE, D2D communications operate in non-orthogonal mode, where each resource block (RB) not being assigned to the cellular users are reused by multiple D2D pairs. By exploiting a range of optimization tools including fractional programming, Dinkelbach approach, Lagrange dual decomposition, difference of convex functions, and concave-convex procedure, the original non-convex problem is transformed and we present an iterative two-stage RE-EE solution. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed resource allocation scheme provides comparable EE performance to a two-stage EE-EE solution with significant gain on EE for D2D users, and achieves much higher EE compared to a sum rate maximization scheme.

In this paper, a received signal strength indicator (RSSI) based indoor localization system is implemented employing Wi-Fi infrastructure. In the light of the feature-scaling-based k-nearest neighbor (FS-kNN) algorithm, a new continuous-feature-scaling model is proposed, which uses continuous weights instead of the discrete weights used in the FS-kNN, and needs not divide the entire RSSI space into the intervals. This gridless scheme avoids the difficulty of the weight selection at the common boundary of the adjacent intervals that could meet in the grid-based method of FS-kNN, which needs to divide the RSSI space into the intervals, ahead. An outlier deleting procedure is further used to improve the accuracy of the localization system. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method can be with a small localization error and is superior to some previous methods. One of the experiments achieves 1.34 m of the indoor localization error in a 12 m × 8 m area. The other is with 1.72 m of the indoor localization error in a 30 m × 25 m area. The proposed method performances best among the counterparts in the experiments.

Simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) is anticipated to have great applications in 5G communication systems and the Internet of Things. In this paper, we address the energy efficiency (EE) optimization problem for SWIPT multiple-input multiple-output broadcast channel (BC) with time-switching (TS) receiver design. Our aim is to maximize the EE of the system whilst satisfying certain constraints in terms of maximum transmit power and minimum harvested energy per user. The coupling of the optimization variables, namely transmit covariance matrices and TS ratios, leads to an EE problem which is nonconvex, and hence very difficult to solve directly. Hence, we transform the original maximization problem with multiple constraints into a suboptimal min-max problem with a single constraint and multiple auxiliary variables. We propose a dual inner/outer layer resource allocation framework to tackle the problem. For the inner-layer, we invoke an extended SWIPT-based BC-multiple access channel (MAC) duality approach and provide two iterative resource allocation schemes under fixed auxiliary variables for solving the dual MAC problem. A subgradient searching scheme is then proposed for the outer-layer in order to obtain the optimal auxiliary variables. Numerical results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms and illustrate that significant performance gain in terms of EE can be achieved by adopting the proposed extended BC-MAC duality-based algorithm.

Security is a challenging issue for cognitive radio (CR) to be used in future 5G mobile systems. Conventionally, interference will degrade the performance of a primary user (PU) when the spectrum is shared with secondary users (SUs). However, when properly designed, SUs can serve as friendly jammers to guarantee the secure transmission of PU. Thus, in this paper, we propose two schemes to improve the sum rate of SUs while guaranteeing the secrecy rate of PU. In the first scheme, the secondary transceivers are jointly designed to maximize their sum rate while satisfying a threshold on the PU's secrecy rate. Due to the non-convex nature, it is first converted into a convex one and then, an alternating optimization algorithm based on the second-order cone programming is proposed to solve it. In the second scheme, the principle of interference alignment is employed to eliminate interference from PU and other SUs at each secondary receiver, and the interference from SUs is zero-forced at the primary receiver. Thus, interference-free transmission can be performed by the legitimate CR network, with eavesdropping towards PU disrupted by SUs. The key features and performances of the two proposed schemes are also compared. Finally, simulation results are presented to verify the effectiveness of the two proposed schemes for secure CR networks.

In this paper, we develop a non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA)-based two-way relay network with secrecy considerations, in which two users wish to exchange their NOMA signals via a trusted relay in the presence of single and multiple eavesdroppers. To ensure secure communications, the relay not only forwards confidential information to the legitimate users but also keeps emitting jamming signals all the time to degrade the performance of any potential eavesdropper. Moreover, we equip the relay and each user with the full-duplex technique in the multiple-access phase to combat the eavesdropping and improve the data transmission efficiency, respectively. We propose different decoding schemes based on the successive interference cancellation for the legitimate users, relay, and eavesdroppers. Closed-form expressions for the achievable ergodic secrecy rates of all data symbols under both single- and multiple-eavesdropper cases are derived, validated by the excellent fitting to the computer simulation results for our proposed network.

In this paper, a fundamental study of energy efficiency (EE) optimization for coordinated multi-point (CoMP) simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) heterogeneous networks (HetNets) is provided. We aim to optimize the EE while satisfying certain quality-of-service requirements in regard to transmission rate and energy harvesting at both the macro cell and small cells. The corresponding joint beamforming and power allocation in the presence of intra- and inter-cell interference constitutes an EE maximization problem that is non-convex, and hence, very challenging to solve. In order to solve this problem, we propose to separate the beamforming design and power allocation processes. First, we adopt linear zero-forcing (ZF) beamforming to suppress the multi-user interference from both the energy harvesting users (EH-UEs) as well as the information decoding UEs (ID-UEs), thus transforming the HetNet under consideration to a virtual point-to-point system. An efficient power allocation algorithm is then developed to maximize the corresponding EE. On the other hand, the ZF strategy does not utilize the notion that interference benefits the EH-UEs. As a result, we propose a partial ZF approach by differentiating the EH-UEs and ID-UEs in order to further improve the EE. Our findings show that the EE can be significantly improved through the integration of CoMP-SWIPT in HetNets.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) can help small-cell base stations (SBSs) offload traffic via wireless backhaul to improve coverage and increase rate. However, the capacity of backhaul is limited. In this paper, UAV assisted secure transmission for scalable videos in hyper-dense networks via caching is studied. In the proposed scheme, UAVs can act as SBSs to provide videos to mobile users in some small cells. To reduce the pressure of wireless backhaul, UAVs and SBSs are both equipped with caches to store videos at off-peak time. To facilitate UAVs, a single antenna is equipped at each UAV and thus, only the precoding matrices of SBSs should be cooperatively designed to manage interference by exploiting the principle of interference alignment. On the other hand, the SBSs replaced by UAVs will be idle. Thus, in order to guarantee secure transmission, the idle SBSs can be further exploited to generate jamming signal to disrupt eavesdropping. The jamming signal is zero-forced at the legitimate users through the precoding of the idle SBSs, without affecting the legitimate transmission. The feasibility conditions of the proposed scheme are derived, and the secrecy performance is analyzed. Finally, simulation results are presented to verify the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

Full-duplex (FD) wireless has emerged as a disruptive communications paradigm for enhancing the achievable spectral efficiency (SE), thanks to the recent major breakthroughs in self-interference mitigation. The FD versus half-duplex (HD) SE gain in cellular networks is, however, largely limited by the mutual-interference (MI) between the downlink (DL) and the uplink (UL). A potential remedy for tackling the MI bottleneck is through cooperative communications. This paper provides a stochastic design and analysis of FD enabled cloud radio access network (C-RAN) under the Poisson point process-based abstraction model of multi-antenna radio units and user equipments. We consider different network- and user-centric approaches toward the formation of finite clusters in the C-RAN. Contrary to most existing studies, we explicitly take into consideration non-isotropic fading channel conditions and finite-capacity fronthaul links. Accordingly, upper-bound expressions for the C-RAN DL and UL SEs, involving the statistics of all intended and interfering signals, are derived. The performance of the FD C-RAN is investigated through the proposed theoretical framework and Monte-Carlo simulations. According to simulations using parameters of a state-of-the-art system, significant FD versus HD C-RAN SE gains can be achieved in the presence of advanced interference cancellation capabilities and sufficient-capacity fronthaul links.

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has attracted a lot of attention recently due to its superior spectral efficiency and could play a vital role in improving the capacity of future networks. This paper considers resource allocation for a downlink, multi-user (MU) MIMO-NOMA system that aims at maximizing the sum rate with interference alignment (IA) technique. Using singular decomposition value (SVD) based IA, we propose IA based NOMA system in which a number of users are grouped together while the others are aligned to the null space as interference. The targeted group of users employ NOMA with a low complexity hierarchical power allocation scheme for sum rate maximization. In addition, an optimization problem is formulated to maximize the sum rate under the total power and proportional fairness constraints. A low complexity sub-optimal solution for two-user scenario is obtained and then extended to the multi-user case by a hierarchical pairing scheme. Another approach is proposed to allocate the transmission power of each user using an iterative subgradient method. Simulation results show that the proposed schemes provide better performance than an existing scheme and perform close to the optimal one. In addition, the simulation scenario considers the case where two users share the data streams while performing IA as compared to the case where all users are sharing it without IA. Simulation results verify that applying IA with NOMA could improve the achievable sum rate and offers simplicity in terms of successive interference cancellation (SIC) application.

This paper investigates the resource allocation scheme to maximize the energy efficiency for a downlink nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system. An optimization problem is formulated taking into account the total power and the minimum user rate requirements to balance the system energy efficiency and the total system throughput. Due to the complexity of the objective function, we used the Dinkelbach approach to convert the non-linear fractional programming problem into a simpler subtractive form. Then, the equivalent subtractive form-objective function problem is solved by using iterative programming. A subgradient based resource allocation algorithm is proposed to allocate the power for each user. Simulation results justify the effectiveness of the proposed method and show how it approaches the optimal solution. It also shows that the proposed schemes for NOMA provide better performance than the orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) in terms of the energy efficiency and sum rate.

Device-to-Device (D2D) communication is one of the technologies for next generation communication system. Unlike traditional cellular network, D2D allows proximity users to communicate directly with each other without routing the data through a base station. In this paper, we propose a resource allocation scheme for energy efficiency (EE) optimization in cellular network with overlaying D2D communication. The objective of this work is to maximize the overall EE of the network while satisfying the rate and power constraints for all users. We decompose the main problem into two subproblems; resource efficiency (RE) optimization for cellular user in the first stage and EE optimization for D2D pair in the second stage. The RE optimization problem is solved using the bisection method while Dinkelbach and interior point method are implemented to solve the EE optimization problem. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms the cellular mode and dedicated mode of communication and the performance is close to the global optimal solution.

In this paper, we provide joint subcarrier assignment and power allocation schemes for quality- of-service (QoS)-constrained energy-efficiency (EE) optimization in the downlink of an orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA)-based two-tier heterogeneous cellular network (HCN). Considering underlay transmission, where spectrum- efficiency (SE) is fully exploited, the EE solution involves tackling a complex mixed-combinatorial and non-convex optimization problem. With appropriate decomposition of the original problem and leveraging on the quasi-concavity of the EE function, the problem can be efficiently solved. On the other hand, the inherent inter-tier interference from spectrum underlay access may degrade EE particularly under dense small-cell deployment and large bandwidth utilization. We therefore develop a novel resource allocation approach based on the concepts of spectrum overlay access and resource efficiency (RE) (normalized EE-SE trade-off). Specifically, the optimization procedure is separated where the macro- cell optimal RE and the corresponding bandwidth is first determined, then the EE of small-cells utilizing the remaining spectrum is maximized. Simulation results confirm the theoretical findings and demonstrate that the proposed resource allocation schemes can approach the optimal EE with each strategy being superior under certain system settings.

In this paper, we investigate joint antenna selection and spatial switching (SS) for energy efficiency (EE) optimization in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) system. A practical linear power model taking into account the entire transmit-receive chain is accordingly utilized. The corresponding fractional-combinatorial and non-convex EE problem, involving joint optimization of eigen-channel assignment, power allocation, and active receive antenna set selection, subject to satisfying minimum sum-rate and power transfer constraints, is extremely difficult to solve directly. In order to tackle this, we separate the eigen-channel assignment and power allocation procedure with the antenna selection functionality. In particular, we first tackle the EE maximization problem under fixed receive antenna set using Dinkelbach-based convex programming. We then provide a fundamental study of the achievable EE with antenna selection and accordingly develop dynamic optimal exhaustive search and Frobenius-norm-based schemes. Simulation results confirm the theoretical findings and demonstrate that the proposed resource allocation algorithms can efficiently approach the optimal EE.

In this paper, we address the energy efficiency (EE) optimization problem for SWIPT multiple-input multiple-output broadcast channel (MIMO-BC) with time-switching (TS) receiver design. Our aim is to maximize the EE of the system whilst satisfying certain constraints in terms of maximum transmit power and minimum harvested energy per user. The coupling of the optimization variables, namely, transmit covariance matrices and TS ratios, leads to a EE problem which is non-convex, and hence very difficult to solve directly. Hence, we transform the original maximization problem with multiple constraints into a min-max problem with a single constraint and multiple auxiliary variables. We propose a dual inner/outer layer resource allocation framework to tackle the problem. For the inner- layer, we invoke an extended SWIPT-based BC-multiple access channel (MAC) duality approach and provide an iterative resource allocation scheme under fixed auxiliary variables for solving the dual MAC problem. A sub-gradient searching scheme is then proposed for the outer-layer in order to obtain the optimal auxiliary variables. Numerical results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms and illustrate that significant performance gain in terms of EE can be achieved by adopting the proposed extended BC-MAC duality-based algorithm.

We consider the case where a reference full-duplex (FD) node (e.g., base station), equipped with arbitrary number of transmit/receive antennas, utilizes generalized linear beamformers to simultaneously communicate with multiple FD radios (e.g., user equipments). The fading coefficients for the residual self-interference (SI) channels are drawn from the complex Gaussian distribution with arbitrary mean and variance. Here, it is not possible to directly derive the distribution of the bidirectional channel power gain. As a result, we adopt the method of moments in order to provide a new Gamma approximation for the residual SI distribution over FD multi-user MIMO Rician fading channels. The proposed theorem holds under arbitrary linear precoder/decoder design, number of antennas and streams, and SI cancellation capability. The validity of the theoretical findings is confirmed via extensive simulations of the entire transmit/receive processing chain.

We provide a theoretical framework for the study of massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO)-enabled full-duplex (FD) cellular networks in which the residual self-interference (SI) channels follow the Rician distribution and other channels are Rayleigh distributed. In order to facilitate bi-directional wireless functionality, we adopt: 1) in the downlink (DL), a linear zero-forcing (ZF) with SI-nulling precoding scheme at the FD base stations and 2) in the uplink (UL), an SI-aware fractional power control mechanism at the FD mobile terminals. Linear ZF receivers are further utilized for signal detection in the UL. The results indicate that the UL rate bottleneck in the FD baseline single-input single-output system can be overcome via exploiting massive MIMO. On the other hand, the findings may be viewed as a reality-check, since we show that, under state-of-the-art system parameters, the spectral efficiency gain of FD massive MIMO over its half-duplex counterpart is largely limited by the cross-mode interference between the DL and the UL. In point of fact, the anticipated twofold increase in SE is shown to be only achievable when the number of antennas tends to be infinitely large.

In this paper, we investigate joint antenna selection and spatial switching for quality-of-service-constrained energy efficiency (EE) optimization in a multiple-input multiple-output simultaneous wireless information and power transfer system. A practical linear power model taking into account the entire transmit-receive chain is accordingly utilized. The corresponding fractional-combinatorial and non-convex EE problem, involving joint optimization of eigenchannel assignment, power allocation, and active receive antenna set selection, subject to satisfying minimum sum-rate and power transfer constraints, is extremely difficult to solve directly. In order to tackle this, we separate the eigenchannel assignment and power allocation procedure with the antenna selection functionality. In particular, we first tackle the EE maximization problem under fixed receive antenna set using Dinkelbach-based convex programming, iterative joint eigenchannel assignment and power allocation, and low-complexity multi-objective optimization-based approach. On the other hand, the number of active receive antennas induces a tradeoff in the achievable sum-rate and power transfer versus the transmit-independent power consumption. We provide a fundamental study of the achievable EE with antenna selection and accordingly develop dynamic optimal exhaustive search and Frobenius-norm-based schemes. Simulation results confirm the theoretical findings and demonstrate that the proposed resource allocation algorithms can efficiently approach the optimal EE.

We devise a framework using tools from stochastic geometry and queuing theory for the study of irregular cellular networks when user traffic varies randomly in time and space. We consider a typical wireless cell with a guard zone surrounded by an interference environment comprised of a dominant node at the guard-edge plus an outer-bound Poisson field of sources. A systematic approach is presented to characterize the flow rate in the presence of elastic data traffic with closed-form expressions of the intended signal power and bounded aggregate interference statistics over Nakagami-m fading channels accordingly derived. We then formulate and solve an optimization problem for the computation of the traffic capacity defined as the maximum elastic data flow intensity for which the system remains unsaturated.

We present an analytical model for the design and analysis of dense cellular networks (DenseNets) where load-awareness is explicitly incorporated in the system performance. New bounded expressions of aggregate interference and average rate are developed considering spatially-correlated heterogeneous sources. Subsequently, an optimization problem for pinpointing the optimal network density which minimizes the total energy expenditure is formulated and tackled. The validity of our framework and its advantages over the existing fully-loaded and interference- thinning methods are depicted via Monte-Carlo simulations. Based on state-of-the-art system parameters, a homogeneous pico deployment is revealed to be the most energy-efficient solution in future dense urban environments.

We propose an analytical stochastic geometry-based model for multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) heterogeneous cellular networks (HetNets) with zero-forcing (ZF) precoding at transmitting base stations (BSs) and partial zero-forcing (PZF) beamforming at receiving user equipments (UEs). The user and area spectral efficiencies are characterized using a non-direct moment- generating-function (MGF) methodology with closed- form expressions of the intended signal power and aggregate network interference statistics accordingly developed. The impact of different cellular network deployments, antenna configurations, and transmission schemes on achievable performance are examined through theoretical and simulation studies. The results confirm the promising potential of multi-antenna communications and small-cell solution in emerging wireless environments.

This paper presents a stochastic geometry-based framework for the design and analysis of downlink multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) heterogeneous cellular networks with linear zero-forcing transmit precoding and receive combining, assuming Rayleigh fading channels and perfect channel state information. The generalized tiers of base stations may differ in terms of their Poisson point process spatial density, number of transmit antennas, transmit power, artificial-biasing weight, and number of user equipments served per resource block. The spectral efficiency of a typical user equipped with multiple receive antennas is characterized using a non-direct moment-generating-function-based methodology with closed-form expressions of the useful received signal and aggregate network interference statistics systematically derived. In addition, the area spectral efficiency is formulated under different space-division multiple-access and single-user beamforming transmission schemes. We examine the impact of different cellular network deployments, propagation conditions, antenna configurations, and MIMO setups on the achievable performance through theoretical and simulation studies. Based on the state-of-the-art system parameters, the results highlight the inherent limitations of baseline single-input single-output transmission and conventional sparse macro-cell deployment, as well as the promising potential of multi-antenna communications and small-cell solution in interference-limited cellular environments.

We provide new results on the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) statistics considering a Poisson point process (PPP)-based heterogeneous interference field. In particular, closed-form expressions for the density functions of the reciprocal of the aggregate interference and signal-to-interference ratio (SIR) are developed. We prove that the effect of PPP-based interference on useful transmission is mathematically equivalent to the severe impact from a one-sided Gaussian fading channel. As an application example, the proposed approach is used to design and analyze the average SINR performance of a typical user in heterogeneous cellular networks (HetNets).

Heterogeneous network (HetNet) deployment is considered a de facto solution for meeting the ever increasing mobile traffic demand. However, excessive power usage in such networks is a critical issue, particularly for the mobile operators. Characterizing the fundamental energy efficiency (EE) performance of HetNets is therefore important for the design of green wireless systems. In this paper, we address the EE optimization problem for downlink two-tier HetNets comprised of a single macro-cell and multiple pico-cells. Considering a heterogeneous real-time and non-real-time traffic, transmit beamforming design and power allocation policies are jointly considered in order to optimize the system energy efficiency. The EE resource allocation problem under consideration is a mixed combinatorial and non-convex optimization problem, which is extremely difficult to solve. In order to reduce the computational complexity, we decompose the original problem with multiple inequality constraints into multiple optimization problems with single inequality constraint. For the latter problem, a two-layer resource allocation algorithm is proposed based on the quasiconcavity property of EE. Simulation results confirm the theoretical findings and demonstrate that the proposed resource allocation algorithm can efficiently approach the optimal EE.

Interference Alignment is an effective technique to reduce interference in a wireless system. This paper proposes an alignment based interference cancellation scheme for a multi-cell network with multiple-input multiple-output users under Gaussian Interference Broadcast Channel scenario. We focus the description on a three cell network scenario and design transmit beamforming matrix using a non-iterative closed-form approach. This approach utilizes the possibility to split up the role of the transmit beamforming matrix according to the type of interference caused by a base station. Simulation results confirm the theoretical findings and demonstrate that the proposed scheme can achieve the (L-1) degrees of freedom for each user.

Spectral efficiency (SE) and energy efficiency (EE) are the main performance metrics for designing green radio (GR) networks; however they are conflicting criteria. Consequently, instead of separately focusing on either SE or EE, characterizing the fundamental trade-off between EE and SE of MIMO broadcast channels (BC) is significant for the development of green wireless communications. This paper investigates the fundamental EE-SE relationship in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) broadcast channel, which is important for facilitating a desirable balance between energy savings and spectrum utilization. Through our investigation, we prove that EE-SE relationship for MIMO-BC is a quasiconcave function. Furthermore, EE is proved to be either strictly decreasing with SE or first strictly increasing and then strictly decreasing with SE. Based on these findings, we propose a two-layer resource allocation algorithm in order to tackle the comprehensive EE-SE trade-offs problem. The key of the proposed method lies in the inner-layer algorithm which is solved by applying the principle of multiple access channel - broadcast channel (MAC-BC) duality. The algorithm in its dual form is solved using sub-gradient method and bisection searching scheme. Simulation results confirm the theoretical findings and demonstrate that the proposed resource allocation algorithm can efficiently approach the optimal EE-SE trade-off for MIMO-BC.

We present a new unified model for the design and analysis of load-aware downlink heterogeneous networks (HetNets) where interferers are inherently spatially-correlated. A closed-form expression for the aggregate network interference statistics generated by correlated load-proportional tiers of base stations (BSs) over Nakagami-m fading interfering channels is developed. This approach allows for relaxation of several major limitations in the existing state-of-the-art models, in particular the always-on-BSs, uncorrelated interferers, and Rayleigh fading with no shadowing assumptions. The validity and advantages of the proposed load-aware framework over the heavily-adopted fully-loaded model and the more recent interference-thinning-based approximation are confirmed via extensive Monte-Carlo (MC) simulations. The results reveal several important trends and design guidelines for the practical deployment of HetNets.

Heterogeneous network (HetNet) deployment is considered a de facto solution for meeting the ever increasing mobile traffic demand. However, excessive power usage in such networks is a critical issue, particularly for mobile operators. Characterizing the fundamental energy efficiency (EE) performance of HetNets is therefore important for the design of green wireless systems. In this paper, we address the EE optimization problem for downlink two-tier HetNets comprised of a single macro-cell and multiple pico-cells. Considering a heterogeneous real-time and non-real-time traffic, transmit beamforming design and power allocation policies are jointly considered in order to optimize the system energy efficiency. The EE resource allocation problem under consideration is a mixed combinatorial and non-convex optimization problem, which is extremely difficult to solve. In order to reduce the computational complexity, we decompose the original problem with multiple inequality constraints into multiple optimization problems with single inequality constraint. For the latter problem, a two-layer resource allocation algorithm is proposed based on the quasiconcavity property of EE. Simulation results confirm the theoretical findings and demonstrate that the proposed resource allocation algorithm can efficiently approach the optimal EE.

Characterizing the fundamental energy efficiency (EE) performance of multiple-input–multiple-output interfering broadcast channels (MIMO-IFBC) is important for the design of green wireless system. In this paper, we propose a new network architecture proposition based on EE maximization for Multi-Cell MIMO-IFBC within the context of interference alignment (IA). Particularly, EE is maximized subject to maximum power and minimum throughput constraints. We propose two schemes to optimize EE for different signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regions. For high-SNR operating regions, we employ a grouping-based IA scheme to jointly cancel intra- and inter-cell interferences and thus transform the MIMO-IFBC to a single-cell MIMO scenario. A gradient-based power adaptation scheme is proposed based on water-filling power adaptation and singular value decomposition to maximize EE for each cell. For moderate SNR cases, we propose an approach using dirty paper coding (DPC) with the principle of multiple access channel and broadcast channel duality to perform IA while maximizing EE in each cell. The algorithm in its dual form is solved using a subgradient method and a bisection searching scheme. Simulation results demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed schemes over several existing approaches. It also shows that interference-nulling-based IA approaches outperform hybrid DPC-IA approach in high-SNR region, and the opposite occurs in low-SNR region.

We derive new results for the higher order moments of signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) in the presence of an arbitrary Poisson point process (PPP)-based heterogeneous interference field. The analysis leverages on a moment-generating-function (MGF) methodology, which only requires the statistics of intended signal and aggregate interference, thus eliminating the need for the exact distribution of SINR. We extend the existing results on interference statistics by deriving a generalized closed-form expression of the interference MGF considering Nakagami-m fading channels with exclusion region. In certain special cases, explicit expressions for the averages of different functions of SINR are found, which also lead to closed-form solutions for the probability distributions of aggregate interference reciprocal and signal-to-interference ratio. We prove that in such cases the effect of total PPP-based interference power on useful transmission is mathematically equivalent to the severe fluctuations from a one-sided Gaussian fading channel. As an application example, the proposed methodology is used together with stochastic geometry theory to characterize the average SINR and rate in heterogeneous cellular networks. The validity of our analytical derivations is confirmed via Monte Carlo simulations for various system settings. We show that with cellular network densification there exists a tradeoff between the average SINR and rate performance.

Characterizing the fundamental metric of energy efficiency (EE) of multiple-input multiple-output interfering broadcast channels (MIMO-IFBC) is important for the development of green wireless communications. In this paper, we address the EE optimization problem for multi-cell MIMO-IFBC within the context of interference alignment (IA). We employ grouping-based IA scheme to cancel both inter-cell interference (ICI) and inter-user inference (IUI), and thus transform the MIMO-IFBC to a single cell single user MIMO scenario. A gradient-based optimal power adaptation scheme is proposed which utilizes water-filling approach and singular value decomposition (SVD) to maximize EE for each cell. Simulation results confirm the theoretical findings and demonstrate that the proposed resource allocation algorithm can efficiently approach the optimal EE.

We develop a unified framework for the performance analysis of arbitrary-loaded downlink heterogeneous networks (HetNets) in which interfering sources are inherently spatially-correlated. Considering a randomly-deployed multi-tier cellular network comprised of a diverse set of large-and small-cells, we incorporate the notion of load-awareness and spatial-correlations in characterizing the activities of base stations (BSs) using binary decision variables. A stochastic geometry-based approach is accordingly employed to systematically develop a bounded expression of ergodic rate with different cellular association and load-balancing strategies. Employing the proposed unified framework hence allows for relaxation of several major limitations in the existing state-of-the-art models, in particular the always-transmitting-BSs, uncorrelated interferers, and Rayleigh fading assumptions. We elaborate on the usefulness of adopting this methodology by providing detailed analysis of the aggregate network interference generated by interdependent load-proportional sources over Nakagami-m fading interfering channels. The analytical formulations are validated through Monte-Carlo (MC) simulations for various scenarios and system settings of interest. We observe that the heavily-adopted fully-loaded model as well as the more recent interference-thinning-based approximations are significantly limited in capturing the actual performance curve. The proposed bounded load-aware model and MC trials reveal several important trends and design guidelines for the practical deployment of HetNets.

Spectral efficiency (SE) and energy efficiency (EE) are the main metrics for designing wireless networks. Rather than focusing on either SE or EE separately, recent works have focused on the relationship between EE and SE and provided good insight into the joint EE-SE tradeoff. However, such works have assumed that the bandwidth was fully occupied regardless of the transmission requirements and therefore are only valid for this type of scenario. In this paper, we propose a new paradigm for EE-SE tradeoff, namely the resource efficiency (RE) for orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) cellular network in which we take into consideration different transmission-bandwidth requirements. We analyse the properties of the proposed RE and prove that it is capable of exploiting the tradeoff between EE and SE by balancing consumption power and occupied bandwidth; hence simultaneously optimizing both EE and SE. We then formulate the generalized RE optimization problem with guaranteed quality of service (QoS) and provide a gradient based optimal power adaptation scheme to solve it. We also provide an upper bound near optimal method to jointly solve the optimization problem. Furthermore, a low-complexity suboptimal algorithm based on a uniform power allocation scheme is proposed to reduce the complexity. Numerical results confirm the analytical findings and demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed resource allocation schemes for efficient resource usage.

We consider a multiple‐input and multiple‐output (MIMO) cognitive radio (CR) network with a MIMO relay that opportunistically accesses the same frequency band as that of a MIMO primary network. In particular, both interference cancellation and interference alignment techniques have been investigated to enhance the achievable degrees of freedom (DoF) for the MIMO CR network. Based on the number of antennas at the primary network and the secondary network, the authors analytically quantify the maximum achievable DoF of the secondary network by using the proposed techniques. It is shown that the DoF obtained by the CR network in the presence of a MIMO relay is higher than that could be obtained without a relay. The analyses consider both sufficient and insufficient number of antennas at the relay in terms of the ability to separate and decode both the primary and secondary transmitted signals. The simulation results support the analytically quantified achievable DoF results.

The interference alignment (IA) is a promising technique to efficiently mitigate interference and to enhance capacity of a wireless communication network. This paper proposes an interference alignment scheme for a network with multiple cells and multiple multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) users under a Gaussian interference broadcast channel (IFBC) scenario. We first extend a grouping method already known in the literature to a multiple-cells scenario and jointly design transmit and receiver beamforming vectors using a closed-form expression without iterative computation. Then we propose a new approach using the principle of multiple access channel (MAC) - broadcast channel (BC) duality to perform interference alignment while maximizing capacity of users in each cell. The algorithm in its dual form is solved using interior point methods. We show that the proposed approach outperforms the extension of the grouping method in terms of capacity and basestation complexity. Finally, a rate balancing technique is introduced to maintain fairness among users.

We investigate a weighted sum rate maximization and rate balancing problem for a spectrum sharing multiple input multiple output (MIMO) based wireless relay network. The aim is to maximize the sum rate of the wireless relay network whilst ensuring the interference leakage to the primary user terminals during two time slots are below a specific value. We solve this problem by asymmetrically allocating the power to different time slots and using the principle of MAC-BC duality. The algorithm in its dual form has been solved using sub-gradient methods. The simulation results demonstrate the convergence of the algorithm and the simultaneous satisfaction of maximum power and the interference constraints.

We solve the rate balancing problem in the downlink for a multiuser multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) system with multiple linear transmit covariance constraints. In particular, we adopt a linear transceiver structure to maximize the worst-case rate of the user while satisfying multiple linear transmit covariance constraints. The original rate balancing problem in the downlink is more complicated due to the coupled structure of the transmit filters. Hence, this optimization problem is solved in an alternating manner by switching between the virtual uplink and the downlink and exploiting the stream-wise mean square error (MSE) duality. An iterative algorithm has been proposed based on stream-wise MSE duality to obtain transceiver filters. In each iteration, the virtual uplink receiver filter design is formulated into a quadratically constrained quadratic programming (QCQP) by incorporating the multiple linear constraints, where the downlink receiver filters are obtained by minimizing each layer MSE. A geometric programming (GP) is solved to obtain the power allocation in the virtual uplink where the product of layer MSEs of each user is balanced with total transmit power constraint. Simulation results have been provided to validate the performance of the proposed algorithm.

We propose a suboptimal optimization algorithm for user maximization and resource allocation in an OFDMA based cognitive radio network. The aim is to admit as many secondary users as possible while satisfying quality of services for each admitted secondary user and ensuring the interference leakage to primary network is below a threshold. The original problem which is a combinatorial optimization problem becomes computationally prohibitive as the problem dimension in terms of the number of users seeking access to the network increases. However, our proposed suboptimal algorithm performs very closely to the optimal combinatorial optimization algorithm while keeping the complexity substantially low.