Recently, semantic communication (SC) has garnered increasing attention for its efficiency, yet it remains vulnerable to semantic jamming attacks. These attacks entail introducing crafted perturbation signals to legitimate signals over the wireless channel, thereby misleading the receivers’ semantic interpretation. This paper investigates the above issue from a practical perspective. Contrasting with previous studies focusing on power-fixed attacks, we extensively consider a more challenging scenario of power-variable attacks by devising an innovative attack model named Adjustable Perturbation Generator (APG), which is capable of generating semantic jamming signals of various power levels. To combat semantic jamming attacks, we propose a novel framework called Robust Model Ensembling (ROME) for secure semantic communication. Specifically, ROME can detect the presence of semantic jamming attacks and their power levels. When high-power jamming attacks are detected, ROME adapts to raise its robustness at the cost of generalization ability, and thus effectively accommodating the attacks. Furthermore, we theoretically analyze the robustness of the system, demonstrating its superiority in combating semantic jamming attacks via adaptive robustness. Simulation results show that the proposed ROME approach exhibits significant adaptability and delivers graceful robustness and generalization ability under power-variable semantic jamming attacks.

In this paper, we introduce an innovative hierarchical joint source-channel coding (HJSCC) framework for image transmission, utilizing a hierarchical variational autoencoder (VAE). Our approach leverages a combination of bottom-up and top-down paths at the transmitter to autoregressively generate multiple hierarchical representations of the original image. These representations are then directly mapped to channel symbols for transmission by the JSCC encoder. We extend this framework to scenarios with a feedback link, modeling transmission over a noisy channel as a probabilistic sampling process and deriving a novel generative formulation for JSCC with feedback. Compared with existing approaches, our proposed HJSCC provides enhanced adaptability by dynamically adjusting transmission bandwidth, encoding these representations into varying amounts of channel symbols. Additionally, we introduce a rate attention module to guide the JSCC encoder in optimizing its encoding strategy based on prior information. Extensive experiments on images of varying resolutions demonstrate that our proposed model outperforms existing baselines in rate-distortion performance and maintains robustness against channel noise.

Despite the remarkable success of semantic image transmission, existing approaches face the challenge of distortion accumulation. Specifically, as a received image is further forwarded to other devices, reconstruction distortion will accumulate, leading to decreased system stability. In this paper, we propose an idempotent semantic communication system for image transmission to enhance stability. We systematically analyze the factors contributing to this accumulation effect and propose several strategies to mitigate it. First, we design the system using a right-invertible neural network to achieve idempotence, ensuring the decoder functions as the right inverse of the encoder. Second, we introduce a feature discretization mechanism to further reduce distortion accumulation, leveraging the benefits of digitalization over analog transmission. Finally, we employ a recursive training strategy, which incorporates the reconstructed images into the training process to significantly improve overall stability. Empirical results demonstrate that our proposed strategies effectively enhance system stability, minimizing quality degradation and enhancing output consistency across multiple transmissions.

Motivated by progress in data-driven supervised learning, semantic communication has witnessed remarkable advancements in improving the efficiency of data transmission under various channel conditions. These advancements typically require a substantial amount of training data for offline training, which is challenging in practical systems. Therefore, in this work, we propose O2SC, a one-shot online-learning framework for semantic communication to achieve adaptive transmission under different channel conditions. Since semantic communication relies on acquired channel state information (CSI), we jointly design the channel estimation and semantic communication processes. Specifically, we introduce a denoising module based on one-shot self-supervised learning, allowing semantic communication systems to adapt to new channel conditions without the need to collect extensive training data. The denoising module is utilized to eliminate noise in the received data samples, using only the data samples themselves. Following this, we further exploit meta-learning to allow the system to quickly adapt to diverse channel conditions, by finding an appropriate initialization for each data sample in a timely way. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves performance close to that of supervised learning-based approaches while also providing improved generalizability across different channel conditions.

Recent studies in joint source-channel coding (JSCC) have fostered a fresh paradigm in end-to-end semantic communication. Despite notable performance achievements, present initiatives in building semantic communication systems primarily hinge on the transmission of continuous channel symbols, thus presenting challenges in compatibility with established digital systems. In this paper, we introduce a novel approach to address this challenge by developing a multi-order digital joint coding-modulation (MDJCM) scheme for semantic communications. Initially, we construct a digital semantic communication system by integrating a multi-order modulation/demodulation module into a nonlinear transform source-channel coding (NTSCC) framework. Recognizing the non-differentiable nature of modulation/demodulation, we propose a novel substitution training strategy. Herein, we treat modulation/demodulation as a constrained quantization process and introduce scaling operations alongside manually crafted noise to approximate this process. As a result, employing this approximation in training semantic communication systems can be deployed in practical modulation/demodulation scenarios with superior performance. Additionally, we demonstrate the equivalence by analyzing the involved probability distribution. Moreover, to further upgrade the performance, we develop a hierarchical dimension-reduction strategy to provide a gradual information extraction process. Extensive experimental evaluations demonstrate the superiority of our proposed method over existing digital and non-digital JSCC techniques.

In the realm of semantic communication, the significance of encoded features can vary, while wireless channels are known to exhibit fluctuations across multiple subchannels in different domains. Consequently, critical features may traverse subchannels with poor states, resulting in performance degradation. To tackle this challenge, we introduce a framework called Feature Allocation for Semantic Transmission (FAST), which offers adaptability to channel fluctuations across both spatial and temporal domains. In particular, an importance evaluator is first developed to assess the importance of various features. In the temporal domain, channel prediction is utilized to estimate future channel state information (CSI). Subsequently, feature allocation is implemented by assigning suitable transmission time slots to different features. Furthermore, we extend FAST to the space-time domain, considering two common scenarios: precoding-free and precoding-based multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. An important attribute of FAST is its versatility, requiring no intricate fine-tuning. Simulation results demonstrate that this approach significantly enhances the performance of semantic communication systems in image transmission. It retains its superiority even when faced with substantial changes in system configuration.

Recently, semantic communication has received increasing attention for its potential to enhance efficiency, yet research on semantic security is still in its infancy. Due to the open nature of wireless channels, semantic communication systems are susceptible to wireless adversarial attacks. These attacks entail introducing deliberately crafted perturbation signals to legitimate signals over the wireless channel, which misleads the semantic interpretation at the receiver. This paper explores defense approaches from a practical perspective. To better characterize real-world wireless adversarial attacks, we first introduce an effective attack model named Adjustable Perturbation Generator (APG), designed to generate perturbation signals of various power levels. To combat these attacks, we propose a novel framework called Robust Model Ensembling for Semantic Communication (ROME-SC). Specifically, a Multi-level Perturbation Detector (MPD) is developed to detect the presence of attacks and measure their power levels. Then, the robust model ensembling approach is proposed to handle wireless adversarial attacks adaptively with the assistance of the MPD. Simulation results show that the proposed ROME-SC significantly enhances the overall performance of semantic communication systems under wireless adversarial attacks.

Although existing semantic communication systems have achieved great success, they have not considered that the channel is time-varying wherein deep fading occurs occasionally. Moreover, the importance of each semantic feature differs from each other. Consequently, the important features may be affected by channel fading and corrupted, resulting in performance degradation. Therefore, higher performance can be achieved by avoiding the transmission of important features when the channel state is poor. In this paper, we propose a scheme of Feature Arrangement for Semantic Transmission (FAST). In particular, we aim to schedule the transmission order of features and transmit important features when the channel state is good. To this end, we first propose a novel metric termed feature priority, which takes into consideration both feature importance and feature robustness. Then, we perform channel prediction at the transmitter side to obtain the future channel state information (CSI). Furthermore, the feature arrangement module is developed based on the proposed feature priority and the predicted CSI by transmitting the prior features under better CSI. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme significantly improves the performance of image transmission compared to existing semantic communication systems without feature arrangement.

Task-oriented semantic communications have achieved significant performance gains. However, the employed deep neural networks in semantic communications have to be updated when the task is changed or multiple models need to be stored for performing different tasks. To address this issue, we develop a unified deep learning-enabled semantic communication system (U-DeepSC), where a unified end-to-end framework can serve many different tasks with multiple modalities of data. As the number of required features varies from task to task, we propose a vector-wise dynamic scheme that can adjust the number of transmitted symbols for different tasks. Moreover, our dynamic scheme can also adaptively adjust the number of transmitted features under different channel conditions to optimize the transmission efficiency. Particularly, we devise a lightweight feature selection module (FSM) to evaluate the importance of feature vectors, which can hierarchically drop redundant feature vectors and significantly accelerate the inference. To reduce the transmission overhead, we then design a unified codebook for feature representation to serve multiple tasks, where only the indices of these task-specific features in the codebook are transmitted. According to the simulation results, the proposed U-DeepSC achieves comparable performance to the task-oriented semantic communication system designed for a specific task but with significant reduction in both transmission overhead and model size.

Recently, deep learning-enabled joint-source channel coding (JSCC) has received increasing attention due to its great success in image transmission. However, most existing JSCC studies only focus on single-input single-output (SISO) channels. In this paper, we first propose a JSCC system for wireless image transmission over multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels. As the complexity of an image determines its reconstruction difficulty, the JSCC achieves quite different reconstruction performances on different images. Moreover, we observe that the images with higher reconstruction qualities are generally more robust to the noise, and can be allocated with less communication resources than the images with lower reconstruction qualities. Based on this observation, we propose an adaptive channel state information (CSI) feedback scheme for precoding, which improves the effectiveness by adjusting the feedback overhead. In particular, we develop a performance evaluator to predict the reconstruction quality of each image, so that the proposed scheme can adaptively decrease the CSI feedback overhead for the transmitted images with high predicted reconstruction qualities in the JSCC system. We perform experiments to demonstrate that the proposed scheme can significantly improve the image transmission performance with much-reduced feedback overhead.

In conventional supervised deep learning based channel estimation algorithms, a large number of training samples are required for offline training. However, in practical communication systems, it is difficult to obtain channel samples for every signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Furthermore, the generalization ability of these deep neural networks (DNN) is typically poor. In this work, we propose a one-shot self-supervised learning framework for channel estimation in multi-input multi-output (MIMO) systems. The required number of samples for offline training is small and our approach can be directly deployed to adapt to variable channels. Our framework consists of a traditional channel estimation module and a denoising module. The denoising module is designed based on the one-shot learning method Self2Self and employs Bernoulli sampling to generate training labels. Besides,we further utilize a blind spot strategy and dropout technique to avoid overfitting. Simulation results show that the performance of the proposed one-shot self-supervised learning method is very close to the supervised learning approach while obtaining improved generalization ability for different channel environments.

As an important part of the fifth generation (5G) mobile networks, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been applied in various communication scenarios due to their high operability and low cost. In this paper, we investigate a multi-UAV communication system with moving users and consider the co-channel interference caused by the transmissions of all other UAVs. To ensure the fairness, we maximize the minimum average user rate during the observed time by jointly optimizing UAVs’ trajectories, transmission power, and user association. Considering that UAVs can cover a large area for communications, UAVs do not need to move as soon as the users move. Therefore, a two-timescale structure is proposed for the considered scenario, where the UAVs’ trajectories are optimized based on the channel state information (CSI) in a long timescale, while the transmission power and the user association are optimized based on the instantaneous CSI in a short timescale. To effectively tackle this challenging non-convex problem with both discrete and continuous variables, we propose a joint neural network (NN) design, where a deep reinforcement learning based Pointer Network named advantage pointer-critic (APC) is applied to optimize discrete variables and a deep-unfolding NN is used to optimize the continuous variables. Specifically, we first formulate a Markov decision process to model the user association, and then employ the APC network trained by the advantage actor-critic algorithm to address it. The APC network consists of a Pointer Network and a Multilayer Perceptron. As for the deep-unfolding NN, we first develop a block coordinate descent based algorithm to optimize the UAVs’ trajectories and transmission power, and then unfold the algorithm into a layer-wise NN with introduced trainable parameters. These two networks are jointly trained in an unsupervised fashion. Simulation results validate that the proposed joint NN significantly outperforms the optimization algorithm with much lower complexity, and achieves good performances on scalability and generalization ability.

Although semantic communications have exhibited satisfactory performance on a large number of tasks, the impact of semantic noise and the robustness of the systems have not been well investigated. Semantic noise refers to the misleading between the intended semantic symbols and received ones, thus causes the failure of tasks. In this paper, we first propose a framework for the robust end-to-end semantic communication systems to combat the semantic noise. In particular, we analyze sample-dependent and sample-independent semantic noise. To combat the semantic noise, the adversarial training with weight perturbation is developed to incorporate the samples with semantic noise in the training dataset. Then, we propose to mask a portion of the input, where the semantic noise appears frequently, and design the masked vector quantized-variational autoencoder (VQ-VAE) with the noise-related masking strategy. We use a discrete codebook shared by the transmitter and the receiver for encoded feature representation. To further improve the system robustness, we develop a feature importance module (FIM) to suppress the noise-related and task-unrelated features. Thus, the transmitter simply needs to transmit the indices of these important task-related features in the codebook. Simulation results show that the proposed method can be applied in many downstream tasks and significantly improve the robustness against semantic noise with remarkable reduction on the transmission overhead.

The time of arrival (TOA)-based localization techniques, which need to estimate the delay of the line-of-sight (LoS) path, have been widely employed in location-aware networks. To achieve a high-accuracy delay estimation, a number of multiband-based algorithms have been proposed recently, which exploit the channel state information (CSI) measurements over multiple non-contiguous frequency bands. However, to the best of our knowledge, there still lacks an efficient scheme that fully exploits the multiband gains when the phase distortion factors caused by hardware imperfections are considered, due to that the associated multi-parameter estimation problem contains many local optimums and the existing algorithms can easily get stuck in a “bad” local optimum. To address these issues, we propose a novel two-stage global estimation (TSGE) scheme for multiband delay estimation. In the coarse stage, we exploit the group sparsity structure of the multiband channel and propose a Turbo Bayesian inference (Turbo-BI) algorithm to achieve a good initial delay estimation based on a coarse signal model, which is transformed from the original multiband signal model by absorbing the carrier frequency terms. The estimation problem derived from the coarse signal model contains fewer local optimums and thus a more stable estimation can be achieved than directly using the original signal model. Then in the refined stage, with the help of coarse estimation results to narrow down the search range, we perform a global delay estimation using a particle swarm optimization-least square (PSO-LS) algorithm based on a refined multiband signal model to exploit the multiband gains to further improve the estimation accuracy. Simulation results show that the proposed TSGE significantly outperforms the benchmarks with comparative computational complexity.

In this paper, we investigate a multi-UAV communication system with moving users and consider the co-channel interference caused by the transmissions of all other UAVs. To ensure the fairness of moving users, we maximize the minimum average user rate during the observed time by jointly optimizing UAVs' trajectories, transmission power, and user association. To effectively tackle this non-convex problem with both discrete and continuous variables, we propose a joint neural network (NN) design, where a network named advantage pointer-critic (APC) is applied to optimize discrete variables and a deep-unfolding NN is used to optimize continuous variables. Specifically, we first elaborately formulate a Markov decision process to model the user association, and then use the APC network trained by the advantage actor-critic algorithm to address it. As for the deep-unfolding NN, we first develop a block coordinate descent based algorithm to optimize UAVs' trajectories and transmission power, and then unfold this algorithm into a layer-wise NN with introduced trainable parameters. These two networks are jointly trained in an unsupervised fashion. Simulation results validate that the proposed joint NN significantly outperforms the mathematical optimization algorithm with much lower complexity.

In location-aware networks, the time of arrival (TOA)-based localization techniques have been widely employed. To achieve high-accuracy delay estimation, a number of multiband-based algorithms have been proposed recently, which exploit the channel state information (CSI) measurements over multiple non-contiguous frequency bands. However, to our best knowledge, there still lacks an efficient scheme that fully exploits the multiband gains when phase distortion factors are considered, due to that the associated multi-parameter estimation problem contains many local optimums and the existing algorithms can easily get stuck in a “bad” local optimum. To address these issues, we propose a novel two-stage global estimation (TSGE) scheme for multiband delay estimation. In the coarse stage, we propose a weighted multiple signal classification (MUSIC) algorithm to achieve an initial delay estimation based on a coarse signal model. The estimation problem derived from the coarse signal model contains less local optimums and thus a more stable estimation can be achieved than directly using the original signal model. Then in the refined stage, with the help of coarse estimation results to narrow down the search range, we perform a global delay estimation using a particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm based on a refined multiband signal model to exploit the multiband gains to further improve the estimation accuracy. Simulation results show that the proposed TSGE significantly outperforms the benchmarks.

The task-oriented semantic communication sys-tems have achieved significant performance gain, however, the paradigm that employs a model for a specific task might be limited, since the system has to be updated once the task is changed or multiple models are stored for serving various tasks. To address this issue, we firstly propose a unified deep learning enabled semantic communication system (U-DeepSC), where a unified model is developed to serve various transmission tasks. To jointly serve these tasks in one model with fixed parameters, we employ domain adaptation in the training procedure to specify the task-specific features for each task. Thus, the system only needs to transmit the task-specific features, rather than all the features, to reduce the transmission overhead. Moreover, since each task is of different difficulty and requires different number of layers to achieve satisfactory performance, we develop the multi-exit architecture to provide early-exit results for relatively simple tasks. In the experiments, we employ a proposed U-DeepSC to serve five tasks with multi-modalities. Simulation re-sults demonstrate that our proposed U-DeepSC achieves compa-rable performance to the task-oriented semantic communication system designed for a specific task with significant transmission overhead reduction and much less number of model parameters.

Deep-unfolding has received great attention since it achieves satisfactory performance with relatively low complexity. Typically, the deep-unfolding networks are restricted to a fixed-depth for all inputs. However, the optimal number of layers required for convergence changes with different inputs. In this paper, we first develop a framework of deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG)-driven deep-unfolding with adaptive depth for different inputs. Specifically, the optimization variables, trainable parameters, and the deep-unfolding architecture are designed as the state, action, and state transition of DDPG, respectively. Then, this framework is employed to deal with the channel estimation problem in massive multiple-input multiple-output systems. Specifically, first of all we formulate the channel estimation problem with off-grid basis and develop a sparse Bayesian learning (SBL)-based algorithm to solve it. Secondly, the SBL-based algorithm is unfolded into a layer-wise structure with a set of introduced trainable parameters. Thirdly, the proposed DDPG-driven deep-unfolding framework is employed to solve this channel estimation problem based on the unfolded structure of the SBL-based algorithm. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm outperforms the conventional algorithms with much reduced number of layers.

Although the semantic communications have exhibited satisfactory performance in a large number of tasks, the impact of semantic noise and the robustness of the systems have not been well investigated. Semantic noise is a particular kind of noise in semantic communication systems, which refers to the misleading between the intended semantic symbols and received ones. In this paper, we first propose a framework for the robust end-to-end semantic communication systems to combat the semantic noise. Particularly, we analyze the causes of semantic noise and propose a practical method to generate it. To remove the effect of semantic noise, adversarial training is proposed to incorporate the samples with semantic noise in the training dataset. Then, the masked autoencoder (MAE) is designed as the architecture of a robust semantic communication system, where a portion of the input is masked. To further improve the robustness of semantic communication systems, we firstly employ the vector quantization-variational autoencoder (VQ-VAE) to design a discrete codebook shared by the transmitter and the receiver for encoded feature representation. Thus, the transmitter simply needs to transmit the indices of these features in the codebook. Simulation results show that our proposed method significantly improves the robustness of semantic communication systems against semantic noise with significant reduction on the transmission overhead.

In this paper, we propose an end-to-end deep learning-based joint transceiver design algorithm for millimeter wave (mmWave) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, which consists of deep neural network (DNN)-aided pilot training, channel feedback, and hybrid analog-digital (HAD) precoding. Specifically, we develop a DNN architecture that maps the received pilots into feedback bits at the receiver, and then further maps the feedback bits into the hybrid precoder at the transmitter. To reduce the signaling overhead and channel state information (CSI) mismatch caused by the transmission delay, a two-timescale DNN composed of a long-term DNN and a short-term DNN is developed. The analog precoders are designed by the long-term DNN based on the CSI statistics and updated once in a frame consisting of a number of time slots. In contrast, the digital precoders are optimized by the short-term DNN at each time slot based on the estimated low-dimensional equivalent CSI matrices. A two-timescale training method is also developed for the proposed DNN with a binary layer. We then analyze the generalization ability and signaling overhead for the proposed DNN based algorithm. Simulation results show that our proposed technique significantly outperforms conventional schemes in terms of bit-error rate performance with reduced signaling overhead and shorter pilot sequences.

In massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, hybrid analog-digital beamforming is an essential technique for exploiting the potential array gain without using a dedicated radio frequency chain for each antenna. However, due to the large number of antennas, the conventional channel estimation and hybrid beamforming algorithms generally require high computational complexity and signaling overhead. In this work, we propose an end-to-end deep-unfolding neural network (NN) joint channel estimation and hybrid beamforming (JCEHB) algorithm to maximize the system sum rate in time-division duplex (TDD) massive MIMO. Specifically, the recursive least-squares (RLS) algorithm and stochastic successive convex approximation (SSCA) algorithm are unfolded for channel estimation and hybrid beamforming, respectively. In order to reduce the signaling overhead, we consider a mixed-timescale hybrid beamforming scheme, where the analog beamforming matrices are optimized based on the channel state information (CSI) statistics offline, while the digital beamforming matrices are designed at each time slot based on the estimated low-dimensional equivalent CSI matrices. We jointly train the analog beamformers together with the trainable parameters of the RLS and SSCA induced deep-unfolding NNs based on the CSI statistics offline. During data transmission, we estimate the low-dimensional equivalent CSI by the RLS induced deep-unfolding NN and update the digital beamformers. In addition, we propose a mixed-timescale deep-unfolding NN where the analog beamformers are optimized online, and extend the framework to frequency-division duplex (FDD) systems where channel feedback is considered. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can significantly outperform conventional algorithms with reduced computational complexity and signaling overhead.

In this paper, we investigate an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) full-duplex (FD) system. We jointly optimize the active beamforming matrices at the access point (AP) and uplink users, and the passive beamforming matrix at the IRS to maximize the weighted sum-rate of the system. Since it is practically difficult to acquire the channel state information (CSI) for IRS-related links due to its passive operation and large number of elements, we conceive a mixed-timescale beamforming scheme. Specifically, the high-dimensional passive beamforming matrix at the IRS is updated based on the channel statistics while the active beamforming matrices are optimized relied on the low-dimensional real-time effective CSI at each time slot. We propose an efficient stochastic successive convex approximation (SSCA)-based algorithm for jointly designing the active and passive beamforming matrices. Moreover, due to the high computational complexity caused by the matrix inversion computation in the SSCA-based optimization algorithm, we further develop a deep-unfolding neural network (NN) to address this issue. The proposed deep-unfolding NN maintains the structure of the SSCA-based algorithm but introduces a novel non-linear activation function and some learnable parameters induced by the first-order Taylor expansion to approximate the matrix inversion. In addition, we develop a black-box NN as a benchmark. Simulation results show that the proposed mixed-timescale algorithm outperforms the existing single-timescale algorithm and the proposed deep-unfolding NN approaches the performance of the SSCA-based algorithm with much reduced computational complexity when deployed online.

In this work, we investigate the joint design of beam selection and digital precoding matrices for millimeter wave (mmWave) multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) systems with discrete lens arrays (DLA) to maximize the sum-rate. To tackle this challenging problem with discrete variables and coupled constraints, we propose an efficient framework of joint neural network (NN) design. Specifically, the proposed framework consists of a deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based NN and a deep-unfolding NN, which are employed to optimize the beam selection and digital precoding matrices, respectively. As for the DRL-based NN, we formulate the beam selection problem as a Markov decision process and a double deep Q-network algorithm is developed to solve it. Regarding the design of the digital precoding matrix, we develop an iterative weighted minimum mean-square error algorithm induced deep-unfolding NN, which unfolds this algorithm into a layer-wise structure. Simulation results show that our proposed jointly trained NN significantly outperforms the existing iterative algorithms.

Dual-layer iterative algorithms are generally required when solving resource allocation problems in wireless communication systems. Specifically, the spectrum efficiency maximization problem for hybrid precoding architecture is hard to solve by the single-layer iterative algorithm. The dual-layer penalty dual decomposition (PDD) algorithm has been proposed to address the problem. Although the PDD algorithm achieves significant performance, it requires high computational complexity, which hinders its practical applications in real-time systems. To address this issue, we first propose a novel framework for deep-unfolding, where a dual-layer deep-unfolding neural network (DLDUNN) is formulated. We then apply the proposed frame-work to solve the spectrum efficiency maximization problem for hybrid precoding architecture. An efficient DLDUNN is designed based on unfolding the iterative PDD algorithm into a layer-wise structure. We also introduce some trainable parameters in place of the high-complexity operations. Simulation results show that the DLDUNN presents the performance of the PDD algorithm with remarkably reduced complexity.

The millimeter wave (mmWave) multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) systems with discrete lens arrays (DLA) have received great attention due to their simple hardware implementation and excellent performance. In this work, we investigate the joint design of beam selection and digital precoding matrices for mmWave MU-MIMO systems with DLA to maximize the sum-rate subject to the transmit power constraint and the constraints of the selection matrix structure. The investigated non-convex problem with discrete variables and coupled constraints is challenging to solve and an efficient framework of joint neural network (NN) design is proposed to tackle it. Specifically, the proposed framework consists of a deep reinforcement learning (DRL)-based NN and a deep-unfolding NN, which are employed to optimize the beam selection and digital precoding matrices, respectively. As for the DRL-based NN, we formulate the beam selection problem as a Markov decision process and a double deep Q-network algorithm is developed to solve it. The base station is considered to be an agent, where the state, action, and reward function are carefully designed. Regarding the design of the digital precoding matrix, we develop an iterative weighted minimum mean-square error algorithm induced deep-unfolding NN, which unfolds this algorithm into a layer-wise structure with introduced trainable parameters. Simulation results verify that this jointly trained NN remarkably outperforms the existing iterative algorithms with reduced complexity and stronger robustness.

Optimization theory assisted algorithms have received great attention for precoding design in multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) systems. Although the resultant optimization algorithms are able to provide excellent performance, they generally require considerable computational complexity, which gets in the way of their practical application in real-time systems. In this work, in order to address this issue, we first propose a framework for deep-unfolding, where a general form of iterative algorithm induced deep-unfolding neural network (IAIDNN) is developed in matrix form to better solve the problems in communication systems. Then, we implement the proposed deep-unfolding framework to solve the sum-rate maximization problem for precoding design in MU-MIMO systems. An efficient IAIDNN based on the structure of the classic weighted minimum mean-square error (WMMSE) iterative algorithm is developed. Specifically, the iterative WMMSE algorithm is unfolded into a layer-wise structure, where a number of trainable parameters are introduced to replace the high-complexity operations in the forward propagation. To train the network, a generalized chain rule of the IAIDNN is proposed to depict the recurrence relation of gradients between two adjacent layers in the back propagation. Moreover, we discuss the computational complexity and generalization ability of the proposed scheme. Simulation results show that the proposed IAIDNN efficiently achieves the performance of the iterative WMMSE algorithm with reduced computational complexity.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been applied in many different communication scenarios due to their mobility and manipuility. In this paper, we investigate a UAV-aided relay network, where a number of ground users in the urban area with many obstructions need to collect data from a base station (BS), and a UAV could fly around above the users and serve as a decode-and-forward (DF) mobile relay to improve the transmission coverage and performance. In this situation, channel can be represented by the segmented ray-tracing model. To ensure fairness, we aim to maximize the minimum throughput among all the users by jointly optimizing the three-dimensional (3D) UAV trajectory, user scheduling, and bandwidth allocation. To tackle the non-convex objective function and coupling constraints, we first construct surrogate functions, and then approximate the problem into a convex one and develop a constrained successive convex approximation (CSCA) algorithm. In particular, through insightful auxiliary variables and linearly coupled equality (LCE) constraints, we propose a low-complexity algorithm based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) to solve the approximated convex problem in the iteration of the proposed CSCA algorithm. Furthermore, we prove the convergence of the proposed algorithm and analyze its complexity. The proposed algorithm can be easily extended to the multi-UAV scenario. Simulation results show that the proposed design significantly outperforms the existing schemes.

In this paper, we study a UAV-aided relay network, where a number of ground users need to collect data from a base station (BS), and a UAV could fly around above the users and serve as a decode-and-forward (DF) mobile relay to improve the performance. Firstly, we develop a novel UAV-relay model, which maximizes the minimum throughput among users by optimizing the UAV trajectory, the user scheduling and bandwidth allocation. Moreover, we adopt the segmented ray- tracing channel model to characterize the practical urban channel. Then, by constructing surrogate functions of the nonconvex constraints, we approximate the problem into a convex one and develop a block successive convex approximation (BSCA) algorithm to solve it. In particular, through insightful auxiliary variables and linearly coupled equality constraints, we propose a low-complexity algorithm to solve the key subproblem in the iteration of the proposed BSCA algorithm. Finally, simulation results show that the proposed design significantly outperforms the existing algorithms.

In the paper, an inverse discrete Fourier transform-based Vandermonde-subspace frequency division multiplexing (IDFT-VFDM) waveform is proposed for the new radio (NR) supplementary uplink (SUL) to share the same time and frequency resources with the frequency division duplex (FDD) based long-term evolution (LTE) network. To avoid the co-channel interference to the LTE user equipment (UE) uplink transmission, the interference channel state information (CSI) is necessary for the NR UE to design the interference-free precoder. Since the operating band used for NR SUL corresponds to LTE FDD mode, the channel reciprocity condition in the time division duplex (TDD) mode is no longer held. To deal with it, the reciprocity on the channel related parameters for each path, i.e. amplitude, initial phase, propagation distance, angle of arrival, angle of departure, is exploited to estimate the uplink CSI from the NR UE to the LTE base station (BS) via the downlink CSI. Accordingly, the uplink waveform is designed for the NR UE to guarantee the absence of interference towards the LTE BS with the knowledge of uplink CSI. Numerical results are presented to validate the accuracy of the CSI estimation and the merit of the IDFT-VFDM as a potential waveform to achieve the LTE FDD-NR SUL co-existence.

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been considered in wireless communication systems to provide high-quality services for their low cost and high maneuverability. This paper addresses a UAV-aided mobile edge computing system, where a number of ground users are served by a moving UAV equipped with computing resources. Each user has computing tasks to complete, which can be separated into two parts: one portion is offloaded to the UAV and the remaining part is implemented locally. The UAV moves around above the ground users and provides computing service in an orthogonal multiple access manner over time. For each time period, we aim to minimize the sum of the maximum delay among all the users in each time slot by jointly optimizing the UAV trajectory, the ratio of offloading tasks, and the user scheduling variables, subject to the discrete binary constraints, the energy consumption constraints, and the UAV trajectory constraints. This problem has highly nonconvex objective function and constraints. Therefore, we equivalently convert it into a better tractable form based on introducing the auxiliary variables, and then propose a novel penalty dual decomposition-based algorithm to handle the resulting problem. Furthermore, we develop a simplified l0-norm algorithm with much reduced complexity. Besides, we also extend our algorithm to minimize the average delay. Simulation results illustrate that the proposed algorithms significantly outperform the benchmarks.