To ensure future high-quality and reliable massive communication during 6G uplink transmissions, we propose a conditional diffusion model-driven massive MIMO detector, which can iteratively estimate channels and detect data for the uplink multiuser access. This approach utilizes a generative diffusion model to learn the score function of the joint posterior by integrating the prior distribution with the likelihood derived from the transmission model. The prior distribution is obtained either by learning from channel statistics or through analytical derivation from the symbol constellation. By employing noise matching initialization and an asynchronous annealed Langevin dynamics (ALD) sampling scheme, the receiver alternates efficiently between score-based channel estimation and data detection, thus avoiding traps of local minima. Simulation results demonstrate that this iterative diffusion process outperforms Bayesian-based and existing synchronous ALD channel estimation and data detection schemes in multiuser uplink scenarios.

Driven by the ultra-high throughput requirements of 6G, wireless communications are migrating to centimeter wave (cmWave) bands to overcome the limitations of current spectral resources. Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems aim to achieve high spectral efficiency in cmWave regimes but are often constrained by the heavy overhead of downlink channel state information (CSI) feedback. This paper proposes a deep learning scheme based on the multi-axis multi-layer perceptron for image processing (MAXIM) architecture for joint semantic CSI feedback and hybrid beamforming in multi-user cmWave MIMO-OFDM systems, which maximizes the downlink sum rate by end-to-end optimization. Specifically, distributed encoders at multiple user equipments (UEs) perform limited CSI feedback, while the decoder at the base station (BS) jointly designs the hybrid beamforming matrices without explicit CSI reconstruction. The uplink transmission is implemented via deep joint source–channel coding (DJSCC) to enhance CSI compression efficiency and noise robustness. Furthermore, considering the high correlation between vertical and horizontal polarization channels in dual-polarized massive MIMO systems, a cross-polarization interaction module is introduced at the UEs to exploit polarization correlations for joint CSI compression. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method improves the downlink sum rate under various signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions with a limited number of feedback symbols, validating its robustness and superiority in multi-user dual-polarized cmWave MIMO-OFDM systems.

The boom in telemedicine and digital healthcare has spurred a surge in demand for medical image transmission, especially in remote areas with limited bandwidth, imposing a heavy burden on communication systems. To address the challenge of efficient transmission of massive medical images, this paper proposes a semantic communication-based solution called medical image joint source channel coding (Med-JSCC). Our motivation stems from the fact that during clinical diagnosis, medical professionals predominantly focus on regions of interest (ROI), i.e., critical regions, while paying relatively less attention to non-region of interest (NROI). This inspires us to adopt a differentiated processing strategy. Specifically, we first design a mask-guided feature processing module, where the mask generated by the large medical image segmentation model (e.g., MedSAM-2) identifies ROI-relevant and ROI-irrelevant semantic features. On this basis, a differentiated processing strategy is proposed to balance transmission efficiency and diagnostic reliability. Furthermore, the proposed Med-JSCC integrates an adaptive transmission module, including variable-length coding and a channel adaptive unit (CAU). The former can assign transmission rates to semantic features based on a learned entropy model, while the latter improves the robustness against channel variations by recalibrating semantic features based on channel parameters. Experimental results on dental and chest X-ray datasets demonstrate that our method effectively improves transmission efficiency while preserving diagnostically critical information in medical images.

The widespread use of uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) has propelled the development of advanced techniques on countering unauthorized UAV flights. However, the resistance of legal UAVs to illegal interference remains under-addressed. This paper proposes radiation pattern reconfigurable fluid antenna systems (RPR-FAS)-empowered interference-resilient UAV communication scheme. This scheme integrates the reconfigurable pixel antenna technology, which provides each antenna with an adjustable radiation pattern. Therefore, RPR-FAS can enhance the angular resolution of a UAV with a limited number of antennas, thereby improving spectral efficiency (SE) and interference resilience. Specifically, we first design dedicated radiation pattern adapted from 3GPP-TR-38.901, where the beam direction and half power beamwidth are tailored for UAV communications. Furthermore, we propose a low-storage-overhead orthogonal matching pursuit multiple measurement vectors algorithm, which accurately estimates the angle-of-arrival (AoA) of the communication link, even in the single antenna case. Particularly, by utilizing the Fourier transform to the radiation pattern gain matrix, we design a dimension-reduction technique to achieve 1–2 order-of-magnitude reduction in storage requirements. Meanwhile, we propose a maximum likelihood interference AoA estimation method based on the law of large numbers, so that the SE can be further improved. Finally, alternating optimization is employed to obtain the optimal uplink radiation pattern and combiner, while an exhaustive search is applied to determine the optimal downlink pattern, complemented by the water-filling algorithm for beamforming. Comprehensive simulations demonstrate that the proposed schemes outperform traditional methods in terms of angular sensing precision and spectral efficiency1.

This paper investigates multimodal semantic non-orthogonal transmission and fusion in hybrid analog-digital massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO). A Transformer-based cross-modal source-channel semantic-aware network (CSC-SA-Net) framework is conceived, where channel state information (CSI) reference signal (RS), feedback, analog-beamforming/combining, and baseband semantic processing are data-driven end-to-end (E2E) optimized at the base station (BS) and user equipments (UEs). CSC-SA-Net comprises five sub-networks: BS-side CSI-RS network (BS-CSIRS-Net), UE-side channel semantic-aware network (UE-CSANet), BS-CSANet, UE-side multimodal semantic fusion network (UE-MSFNet), and BS-MSFNet. Specifically, we firstly E2E train BS-CSIRS-Net, UE-CSANet, and BS-CSANet to jointly design CSIRS, feedback, analog-beamforming/combining with maximumphysical-layer’sspectral-efficiency. Meanwhile, we E2E train UE-MSFNet and BS-MSFNet for optimizingapplication-layer’ssource semantic downstream tasks. On these pre-trained models, we further integrate application-layer semantic processing with physical-layer tasks to E2E train five subnetworks. Extensive simulations show that the proposed CSC-SA-Net outperforms traditional separated designs, revealing the advantage of cross-modal channel-source semantic fusion.

In this paper, we study a sampling-based detection strategy for massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, driven by a modified discrete diffusion model formulated as an analytical, non-learning sampling process. Built upon this framework, the proposed discrete diffusion-based sampling (DDS) algorithm improves decoding performance by leveraging residual-dependent sampling, compared to the independent randomized successive interference cancellation (SIC). Specifically, the modified diffusion model incorporates a shortcut perturbation toward the SIC solution, a forward diffusion step to enhance diversity, and step-wise alignment with the perturbed received signal. Within this framework, the DDS algorithm further adopts one-dimensional discrete Gaussian distribution, involving a reformulated discrete Gaussian noise and an explicitly characterized sampling range, but retains computational complexity amenable to practical deployment. Moreover, we theoretically demonstrate an improved expected decoding radius over randomized SIC. Finally, simulation results based on massive MIMO detection are presented to confirm performance gain of the proposed DDS algorithm.

The soft-output successive cancellation list (SOSCL) decoder provides a methodology for estimating the aposteriori probability log-likelihood ratios by only leveraging the conventional SCL decoder of polar codes. However, the sequential decoding nature of SCL introduces high decoding latency to SOSCL. In this paper, we incorporate node-based fast decoding into the SO-SCL framework. After addressing the challenge of soft output extraction in special node decoding, we proposed the soft-output fast SCL (SO-FSCL) decoding algorithm, along with its log-domain implementation and hardware-friendly version. The proposed SO-FSCL decoder can be regarded as an addon extension to FSCL decoder, enabling us to autonomously choose whether to output only hard decisions like FSCL or to provide additional soft outputs. Latency and complexity analyses demonstrate that SO-FSCL can significantly reduce, for example, decoding time steps by 81.8% (with unlimited resources), the number of additions by 41.3%, and the number of comparisons by 46.4%. Meanwhile, simulation results indicate that SO-FSCL delivers almost the same soft-output performance as SO-SCL, outperforming other soft-output polar decoders, especially in scenarios involving iterative decoding.

Accurate channel state information (CSI) acquisition for massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems is essential for future mobile communication networks. Channel fingerprint (CF), also referred to as channel knowledge map, is a key enabler for intelligent environment-aware communication and can facilitate CSI acquisition. However, due to the cost limitations of practical sensing nodes and test vehicles, the resulting CF is typically coarse-grained, making it insufficient for wireless transceiver design. In this work, we introduce the concept of CF twins and design aconditionalgenerative diffusion model (CGDM) with strong implicit prior learning capabilities as the computational core of the CF twin to establish the connection between coarse- and fine-grained CFs. Specifically, we employ a variational inference technique to derive the evidence lower bound (ELBO) for the log-marginal distribution of the observed fine-grained CFconditionedon the coarse-grained CF, enabling the CGDM to learn the complicated distribution of the target data. During the denoising neural network optimization, the coarse-grained CF is introduced asside informationto accurately guide the conditioned generation of the CGDM. To make the proposed CGDM lightweight, we further leverage the additivity of output distortion and introduce a one-shot pruning approach along with a multi-objective knowledge distillation technique. Experimental results show that the proposed approach exhibits significant improvement in reconstruction performance compared to the baselines. Additionally, zero-shot testing on reconstruction tasks with different magnification factors further demonstrates the scalability and generalization ability of the proposed approach.

This paper introduces a sensing-centric joint communication and millimeter-wave radar paradigm to facilitate collaboration among intelligent vehicles. We first propose a chirp waveform-based delay-Doppler quadrature amplitude modulation (DD-QAM) that modulates data across delay, Doppler, and amplitude dimensions. Building upon this modulation scheme, we derive its achievable rate to quantify the communication performance. We then introduce an extended Kalman filter-based scheme for four-dimensional (4D) parameter estimation in dynamic environments, enabling the active vehicles to accurately estimate orientation and tangential-velocity beyond traditional 4D radar systems. Furthermore, in terms of communication, we propose a dual-compensation-based demodulation and tracking scheme that allows the passive vehicles to effectively demodulate data without compromising their sensing functions. Simulation results underscore the feasibility and superior performance of our proposed methods, marking a significant advancement in the field of autonomous vehicles. Simulation codes are provided to reproduce the results in this paper: https://github.com/LiZhuoRan0.

As a promising 6G enabler beyond conventional bit-level transmission, semantic communication can considerably reduce required bandwidth resources, while its combination with multiple access requires further exploration. This paper proposes a knowledge distillation-driven and diffusion-enhanced (KDD) semantic non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), named KDD-SemNOMA, for multi-user uplink wireless image transmission. Specifically, to ensure robust feature transmission across diverse transmission conditions, we firstly develop a ConvNeXt-based deep joint source and channel coding architecture with enhanced adaptive feature module. This module incorporates signal-to-noise ratio and channel state information to dynamically adapt to additive white Gaussian noise and Rayleigh fading channels. Furthermore, to improve image restoration quality without inference overhead, we introduce a two-stage knowledge distillation strategy, i.e., a teacher model, trained on interference-free orthogonal transmission, guides a student model via feature affinity distillation and cross-head prediction distillation. Moreover, a diffusion model-based refinement stage leverages generative priors to transform initial SemNOMA outputs into high-fidelity images with enhanced perceptual quality. Extensive experiments on CIFAR-10 and FFHQ-256 datasets demonstrate superior performance over state-of-the-art methods, delivering satisfactory reconstruction performance even at extremely poor channel conditions. These results highlight the advantages in both pixel-level accuracy and perceptual metrics, effectively mitigating interference and enabling high-quality image recovery.

Massive random access is an important technology for achieving ultra-massive connectivity in next-generation wireless communication systems. It aims to address key challenges during the initial access phase, including active user detection (AUD), channel estimation (CE), and data detection (DD). This paper examines massive access in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, where deep learning is used to tackle the challenging AUD, CE, and DD functions. First, we introduce a Transformer-AUD scheme tailored for variable pilot-length access. This approach integrates pilot length information and a spatial correlation module into a Transformer-based detector, enabling a single model to generalize across various pilot lengths and antenna numbers. Next, we propose a generative diffusion model (GDM)-driven iterative CE and DD framework. The GDM employs a score function to capture the posterior distributions of massive MIMO channels and data symbols. Part of the score function is learned from the channel dataset via neural networks, while the remaining score component is derived in a closed form by applying the symbol prior constellation distribution and known transmission model. Utilizing these posterior scores, we design an asynchronous alternating CE and DD framework that employs a predictor-corrector sampling technique to iteratively generate channel estimation and data detection results during the reverse diffusion process. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed approaches significantly outperform baseline methods with respect to AUD, CE, and DD.

The Society of Automotive Engineers (SAE) J2954 Differential Inductive Positioning System (DIPS) is a ground breaking technology introduced to enable positioning technique for electric vehicle (EV) wireless power transfer (WPT). This technology and its related standard have great potential to bring EV wireless charging to mass production and opens the doors for commercializing autonomous vehicles. Although the DIPS standard has defined the hardware requirements [1], the positioning algorithm design has not been addressed in the literature. In this paper, we introduce the industry's first algorithm for DIPS. We mathematically derive the signal model and parameters estimation algorithm, then evaluate the estimation accuracy of the proposed algorithm using Monte Carlo simulations. The evaluation results have shown the algorithm can achieve centimeter-level accuracy and approach the Cramér-Rao bound.

Abstract Driven by the vision of ubiquitous connectivity and wireless intelligence, the evolution of ultra-dense constellation-based satellite-integrated Internet is underway, now taking preliminary shape. Nevertheless, the entrenched institutional silos and limited, nonrenewable heterogeneous network resources leave current satellite systems struggling to accommodate the escalating demands of next-generation intelligent applications. In this context, the distributed satellite information networks (DSIN), exemplified by the cohesive clustered satellites (CCS) system, have emerged as an innovative architecture, bridging information gaps across diverse satellite systems, such as communication, navigation, and remote sensing, and establishing a unified, open information network paradigm to support resilient space information services. This survey first provides a profound discussion about innovative network architectures of DSIN, encompassing distributed regenerative satellite network architecture, distributed satellite computing network architecture, and reconfigurable satellite formation flying, to enable flexible and scalable communication, computing and control, fundamentally enhancing network resilience. The DSIN faces challenges from network heterogeneity, unpredictable channel dynamics, sparse resources, and decentralized collaboration frameworks. To address these issues, a series of enabling technologies is identified, including channel modeling and estimation, cloud-native distributed MIMO cooperation, new waveform design, grant-free massive access, nonorthogonal multicast, distributed phased array antennas, high-speed inter-satellite communication, network routing, and the proper combination of all these diversity techniques. Furthermore, to heighten the overall resource efficiency, the cross-layer optimization techniques are further developed to meet upper-layer deterministic, adaptive and secure information services requirements. In addition, emerging research directions and new opportunities are highlighted on the way to achieving the DSIN vision.

To ensure the thriving development of low-altitude economy, countering unauthorized uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) is an essential task. The existing widely deployed base stations hold great potential for joint communication and jamming (JCJ). In the light of this, this article investigates the joint design of beamforming to simultaneously support communication with legitimate users and countermeasure against unauthorized UAVs based on dual-functional multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) cellular systems. We first formulate a JCJ problem, relaxing it through semi-definite relaxation (SDR) to obtain a tractable semi-definite programming (SDP) problem, with SDR providing an essential step toward simplifying the complex JCJ design. Although the solution to the relaxed SDP problem cannot directly solve the original problem, it offers valuable insights for further refinement. Based on these insights, we design a novel constraint specifically tailored to the structure of the SDP problem, ensuring that the solution adheres to the rank-1 constraint of the original problem. Finally, we validate effectiveness of the proposed JCJ scheme through extensive simulations. The results confirm that the proposed JCJ scheme can operate effectively when the total number of legitimate users and unauthorized UAVs exceeds the number of antennas. Simulation codes are provided to reproduce the results in this article:https://github.com/LiZhuoRan0.

The advent of ultra-massive multiple-input-multiple-output (UM-MIMO) systems holds great promise for next-generation communications, yet their channels exhibit hybrid far- and near- field beam-squint (HFBS) effect. In this paper, we not only overcome but also harness the HFBS effect to propose an integrated location sensing and communication (ILSC) framework. During the uplink training stage, user terminals (UTs) transmit reference signals for simultaneous channel estimation and location sensing. This stage leverages an elaborately designed hybrid-field projection matrix to overcome the HFBS effect and estimate the channel in compressive manner. Subsequently, the scatterers’ locations can be sensed from the spherical wavefront based on the channel estimation results. By treating the sensed scatterers as virtual anchors, we employ a weighted least-squares approach to derive the UT’s location. Moreover, we propose an iterative refinement mechanism, which utilizes the accurately estimated time difference of arrival (TDoA) of multipath components to enhance location sensing precision. In the following downlink data transmission stage, we leverage the acquired location information to further optimize the hybrid beamformer, which combines the beam broadening and focusing to mitigate the spectral efficiency degradation resulted from the HFBS effect. Extensive simulation experiments demonstrate that the proposed ILSC scheme has superior location sensing and communication performance than conventional methods.

Future sixth-generation (6G) systems are expected to leverage extremely large-scale multiple-input multiple-output (XL-MIMO) technology, which significantly expands the range of the near-field region. The spherical wavefront characteristics in the near field introduce additional degrees of freedom (DoFs), namely distance and angle, into the channel model, which leads to unique challenges in channel estimation (CE). In this paper, we propose a new sensing-enhanced uplink CE scheme for near-field XL-MIMO, which notably reduces the required quantity of baseband samples and the dictionary size. In particular, we first propose a sensing method that can be accomplished in a single time slot. It employs power sensors embedded within the antenna elements to measure the received power pattern rather than baseband samples. A time inversion algorithm is then proposed to precisely estimate the locations of users and scatterers, which offers a substantially lower computational complexity. Based on the estimated locations from sensing, a novel dictionary is then proposed by considering the eigen-problem based on the near-field transmission model, which facilitates efficient near-field CE with less baseband sampling and a more lightweight dictionary. Moreover, we derive the general form of the eigenvectors associated with the near-field channel matrix, revealing their noteworthy connection to the discrete prolate spheroidal sequence (DPSS). Simulation results unveil that the proposed time inversion algorithm achieves accurate localization with power measurements only, and remarkably outperforms various widely-adopted algorithms in terms of computational complexity. Furthermore, the proposed eigen-dictionary considerably improves the accuracy in CE with a compact dictionary size and a drastic reduction in baseband samples by up to 66%.

Near-space airship-borne communication network is recognized to be an indispensable component of the future integrated ground-air-space network thanks to airships’ advantage of long-term residency at stratospheric altitudes, but it urgently needs reliable and efficient Airship-to-X link. To improve the transmission efficiency and capacity, this paper proposes to integrate semantic communication with massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) technology. Specifically, we propose a deep joint semantic coding and beamforming (JSCBF) scheme for airship-based massive MIMO image transmission network in space, in which semantics from both source and channel are fused to jointly design the semantic coding and physical layer beamforming. First, we design two semantic extraction networks to extract semantics from image source and channel state information, respectively. Then, we propose a semantic fusion network that can fuse these semantics into complex-valued semantic features for subsequent physical-layer transmission. To efficiently transmit the fused semantic features at the physical layer, we then propose the hybrid data and model-driven semantic-aware beamforming networks. At the receiver, a semantic decoding network is designed to reconstruct the transmitted images. Finally, we perform end-to-end deep learning to jointly train all the modules, using the image reconstruction quality at the receivers as a metric. The proposed deep JSCBF scheme fully combines the efficient source compressibility and robust error correction capability of semantic communication with the high spectral efficiency of massive MIMO, achieving a significant performance improvement over existing approaches.

Joint source-channel coding (JSCC) is a promising paradigm for next-generation communication systems, particularly in challenging transmission environments. In this paper, we propose a novel standard-compatible JSCC framework for the transmission of images over multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels. Different from the existing end-to-end AI-based DeepJSCC schemes, our framework consists of learnable modules that enable communication using conventional separate source and channel codes (SSCC), which makes it amenable for easy deployment on legacy systems. Specifically, the learnable modules involve a preprocessing-empowered network (PPEN) for preserving essential semantic information, and a precoder & combiner-enhanced network (PCEN) for efficient transmission over a resource-constrained MIMO channel. We treat existing compression and channel coding modules as non-trainable blocks. Since the parameters of these modules are non-differentiable, we employ a proxy network that mimics their operations when training the learnable modules. Numerical results demonstrate that our scheme can save more than 29% of the channel bandwidth, and requires lower complexity compared to the constrained baselines. We also show its generalization capability to unseen datasets and tasks through extensive experiments.

Reconfigurable massive multiple-input multiple-output (RmMIMO) technology, as an electronically-controlled fluid antenna system, offers increased flexibility for future communication systems by exploiting previously untapped degrees of freedom in the electromagnetic (EM) domain. The representation of the traditional spatial domain channel state information (sCSI) limits the insights into the potential of EM domain channel properties, constraining the base station’s (BS) utmost capability for precoding design. This paper leverages the EM domain channel state information (eCSI) for antenna radiation pattern design at the BS. We develop an orthogonal decomposition method based on spherical harmonic functions to decompose the radiation pattern into a linear combination of orthogonal bases. By formulating the radiation pattern design as an optimization problem for the projection coefficients over these bases, we develop a manifold optimization-based method for iterative radiation pattern and digital precoder design. To address the eCSI estimation problem, we capitalize on the inherent structure of the channel. Specifically, we propose a subspace-based scheme to reduce the pilot overhead for wideband sCSI estimation. Given the estimated full-band sCSI, we further employ parameterized methods for angle of arrival estimation. Subsequently, the complete eCSI can be reconstructed after estimating the equivalent channel gain via the least squares method. Simulation results demonstrate that, in comparison to traditional mMIMO systems with fixed antenna radiation patterns, the proposed RmMIMO architecture offers significant throughput gains for multi-user transmission at a low channel estimation overhead.

Recent progress in unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) facilitates the promising low-altitude air city transport, which has high potential to alleviate traffic congestion but simultaneously triggers security-related issues. However, it is challenging to obtain reliable drone detection and identification (DDI) due to the uncertainties introduced by complicated urban environment, small inter/intra category differences, etc. In this work, we propose a causality-enhanced DDI method based on the radio frequency (RF) signal. First, causal chains are built with the signal’s statistical characteristics on time/frequency domain, quality index, and uncertainties (i.e., synchronization error and co-channel interference). Then, an agent-based modeling and simulation (ABMS) is utilized to obtain the parameters of those uncertainty factors. Finally, classification results of learning based method are further modified pairwise and online via the Bayesian network model (BNM), which is trained offline by the dataset with the constructed causal chains. In addition, we analyze the proposed method’s performance under different interferences, lightweighting strategies, etc. The proposed method has been deployed on edge device, whilst classification accuracy of vision-RF fusion has also been compared. Results of comprehensive experiments validate the superiority and effectiveness of the proposed causality-enhanced DDI method.

In this paper, we propose the decentralized likelihood ascent search (DLAS)-aided detection for the distributed large-scale multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems to achieve more remarkable performance gains. With the help of DLAS, traditional distributed iterative methods are able to achieve better performance than the linear detection schemes such as ZF and MMSE. According to analysis, we derive the equivalent noise and the post-processing SNR for DLAS. More importantly, based on them, we demonstrate that the proposed DLAS-aided detection achieves the full received diversity. To further facilitate its implementation in practice, we design the decentralized effective ring (DER) architecture with significantly reduced bandwidth requirement and better parallel computation. Finally, simulation results demonstrate that the proposed DLAS-aided detection attains the same received diversity as ML detection while surpassing state-of-the-art decentralized schemes in terms of BER performance, with reduced complexity and bandwidth costs.

The low earth orbit (LEO) satellite communication network has attracted extensive attention owing to its advantages of seamless coverage and low propagation delays, which provides a promising solution to realize massive access for Internet of Things (IoT) devices. In this paper, we study cooperative grant free random access (GF-RA) in LEO satellite communication systems. Specifically, we investigate the joint activity detection and channel estimation (JADCE) problem for multi-input multi-output (MIMO) based massive connectivity. First, we analyze the channel characteristics, and reveal the low-rank and row-sparsity properties of the channel impulse response (CIR) matrix. Accordingly, we transfer the JADCE problem into a low-rank matrix completion problem and a compressive sensing problem, which are solved by a two-stage algorithm efficiently. In the first stage, we design the principal component analysis with adaptive signal space detection (PCA-AASD) algorithm to perform low-rank matrix completion. In the second stage, we employ a sequential sparse Bayesian learning with multiple measurement vector (MMV) algorithm to perform active terminal detection and channel estimation. Finally, a majority voting scheme is utilized to estimate the active terminals by aggregating the estimation of multiple satellites. Simulation results validate that the proposed method achieves lower activity detection error probability and better channel estimation performance than other baseline methods in the literature.

Future sixth-generation (6G) systems are expected to leverage extremely large-scale multiple-input multiple-output (XL-MIMO) technology, which significantly expands the range of the near-field region. While accurate channel estimation is essential for beamforming and data detection, the unique characteristics of near-field channels pose additional challenges to the effective acquisition of channel state information. In this paper, we propose a novel codebook design, which allows efficient near-field channel estimation with significantly reduced codebook size. Specifically, we consider the eigen-problem based on the near-field electromagnetic wave transmission model. Moreover, we derive the general form of the eigenvectors associated with the near-field channel matrix, revealing their noteworthy connection to the discrete prolate spheroidal sequence (DPSS). Based on the proposed near-field codebook design, we further introduce a two-step channel estimation scheme. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed codebook design not only achieves superior sparsification performance of near-field channels with a lower leakage effect, but also significantly improves the accuracy in compressive sensing channel estimation.

Radio Access Network (RAN) deployments are evolving quickly owing to the innovative approaches of the Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) Alliance. Specifically, they are moving away from closed, customized hardware implementations and toward virtualized instances operating on shared platforms. Future successful and affordable RAN deployments are made possible by this paradigm change, which is characterised by the separation of radio software components from hardware. Real-time network parameter configuration, sufficient computing resources for virtualized RAN (vRAN) deployment, and dependable processing unit sharing among numerous vRAN instances are some of the obstacles still standing in the way of successful O-RAN network implementations. Thus, this paper explored and compared the effectiveness of diverse optimization algorithms for minimising the number of resource blocks (nRBS), including machine learning (RandomForestRegressor), heuristic, and mathematical methods. Moreover, it investigates the lessons learned and the limitations of the proposed system. It demonstrates the practical success of a heuristic approach in O-RAN optimization, achieving significant reductions in resource blocks based on the Throughput-to-Bandwidth Ratio. It also provided insights into challenges with the RandomForestRegressor model, highlighted the importance of considering real-world network dynamics, and offered valuable lessons for future research, emphasizing the need for adaptive solutions and exploring hybrid optimization approaches, ultimately contributing to an enhanced understanding of O-RAN optimization.

With the anticipation of sixth-generation (6G) networks escalating, the integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) and millimeter-wave (mmWave) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communications emerge as the key focus areas. This paper presents an innovative approach to ISAC waveform design tailored for mmWave UAV communications. The orthogonal chirp division multiplexing (OCDM), characterized by a brunch of orthogonal chirp signals, is firstly introduced in UAV scenarios to offer dual sensing and communication functionalities.We propose an holistic waveform design which incorporates OCDM with the state-of-the-art mmWave frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) radar. Specifically, one subcarrier in OCDM is chosen as the dedicated sensing signal to facilitate the FMCW processing at the UAV receiver, while the rest of OCDM subcarriers can be used to enhance communication data rate. Such OCDM-FMCW scheme significantly reduces the required hardware complexity, particularly in analog-to-digital converter, which provides an energy-efficient ISAC solution for the resource-constraint UAVs. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed scheme. It can surpass traditional methods like OFDM and OTFS, by trading off the sensing performance, communication performance, and hardware complexity.

The Extremely-large Aperture Reconfigurable In-telligent Surface (RIS) stands out as a promising technology for future 6G communications. However, existing far-field or near-field channel models struggle to adapt effectively to channel estimation in the context of Extremely-large Aperture RIS-assisted wireless communication under a hybrid field. To address this challenge, this paper introduces an efficient hybrid-field channel estimation scheme tailored for Extremely-large Aperture RIS-assisted wireless communication. In this scheme, we initially extend the one-dimensional polar coordinate dictionary to a full-dimensional spherical coordinate dictionary to achieve a more uniform distribution of grid points in the spherical coordinate-domain. Subsequently, we propose a hybrid passive/active RIS architecture, utilizing a limited number of Radio Frequency (RF) chains to acquire channel observations. Finally, we introduce a hybrid-field channel estimation scheme designed to estimate both far-field and near-field components. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms purely far-field or near-field schemes.

The envisioned sixth-generation (6G) of wireless communications is expected to give rise to the necessity of connecting very large quantities of heterogeneous wireless devices, which requires advanced system capabilities far beyond existing network architectures. In particular, such massive communication has been recognized as a prime driver that can empower the 6G vision of future ubiquitous connectivity, supporting Internet of Human-Machine-Things (IoHMT) for which massive access is critical. This article surveys the most recent advances toward massive access in both academic and industrial communities, focusing primarily on the promising compressive sensing (CS)-based grant-free massive access (GFMA) paradigm. We first specify the limitations of existing random access schemes and reveal that the practical implementation of massive communication relies on a dramatically different random access paradigm from the current ones mainly designed for human-centric communications. Then, a CS-based GFMA roadmap is presented, where the evolutions from single-antenna to large-scale antenna array-based base stations, from single-station to cooperative massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) systems, and from unsourced to sourced random access scenarios are detailed. Finally, we discuss key challenges and open issues to indicate potential future research directions in GFMA.

This article proposes a novel media access control (MAC) mechanism, called the robust preamble-based MAC mechanism (R-PMAC), which can be applied to power line communication (PLC) networks in the context of the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT). Compared with other MAC mechanisms, such as P-MAC and the MAC layer of IEEE1901.1, R-PMAC has higher networking speed. Besides, it supports whitelist authentication and functions properly in the presence of data frame loss. First, we outline three basic mechanisms of R-PMAC, containing precise time difference calculation, preambles generation, and short ID allocation. Second, we elaborate its networking process of single layer and multiple layers. Third, we illustrate its robust mechanisms, including collision handling and data retransmission. Moreover, a low-cost hardware platform is established to measure the time of connecting hundreds of PLC nodes for the R-PMAC, P-MAC, and IEEE1901.1 mechanisms in a real power line environment. The experiment results show that R-PMAC outperforms the other mechanisms by achieving a 50% reduction in networking time. These findings indicate that the R-PMAC mechanism holds great potential for quickly and effectively building a PLC network in actual industrial scenarios.

Over-the-air computation (AirComp) is a promising technology converging communication and computation over wireless networks, which can be particularly effective in model training, inference, and more emerging edge intelligence applications. AirComp relies on uncoded transmission of individual signals, which are added naturally over the multiple access channel thanks to the superposition property of the wireless medium. Despite significantly improved communication efficiency, how to accommodate AirComp in the existing and future digital communication networks, that are based on discrete modulation schemes, remains a challenge. This paper proposes a massive digital AirComp (MD-AirComp) scheme, that leverages an unsourced massive access protocol, to enhance compatibility with both current and next-generation wireless networks. MD-AirComp utilizes vector quantization to reduce the uplink communication overhead, and employs shared quantization and modulation codebooks. At the receiver, we propose a near-optimal approximate message passing-based algorithm to compute the model aggregation results from the superposed sequences, which relies on estimating the number of devices transmitting each code sequence, rather than trying to decode the messages of individual transmitters. We apply MD-AirComp to federated edge learning (FEEL), and show that it significantly accelerates FEEL convergence compared to state-of-the-art while using the same amount of communication resources.

This paper proposes a grant-free massive access scheme based on the millimeter wave (mmWave) extra-large-scale multiple-input multiple-output (XL-MIMO) to support massive Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices with low latency, high data rate, and high localization accuracy in the upcoming sixth-generation (6G) networks. The XL-MIMO consists of multiple antenna subarrays that are widely spaced over the service area to ensure line-of-sight (LoS) transmissions. First, we establish the XL-MIMO-based massive access model considering the near-field spatial non-stationary (SNS) property. Then, by exploiting the block sparsity of subarrays and the SNS property, we propose a structured block orthogonal matching pursuit algorithm for efficient active user detection (AUD) and channel estimation (CE). Furthermore, different sensing matrices are applied in different pilot subcarriers for exploiting the diversity gains. Additionally, a multi-subarray collaborative localization algorithm is designed for localization. In particular, the angle of arrival (AoA) and time difference of arrival (TDoA) of the LoS links between active users and related subarrays are extracted from the estimated XL-MIMO channels, and then the coordinates of active users are acquired by jointly utilizing the AoAs and TDoAs. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithms outperform existing algorithms in terms of AUD and CE performance and can achieve centimeter-level localization accuracy.

This work explores the fundamental problem of the recoverability of a sparse tensor being reconstructed from its compressed embodiment. We present a generalized model of block-sparse tensor recovery as a theoretical foundation, where concepts involving a holistic mutual incoherence property (MIP) of the measurement matrix set are defined. A representative algorithm based on the orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) framework, called tensor generalized block OMP (T-GBOMP), is applied to the theoretical framework for analyzing both noiseless and noisy recovery conditions. Specifically, we present an exact recovery condition (ERC) and sufficient conditions for establishing it with consideration of different degrees of restriction. Reliable reconstruction conditions, in terms of the residual convergence, the estimated error and a signal-to-noise ratio bound, are established to reveal the computable theoretical interpretability based on the newly defined MIP. The flexibility of tensor recovery is highlighted, i.e., the reliable recovery can be guaranteed by optimizing the MIP of the measurement matrix set. Analytical comparisons demonstrate that the theoretical results developed are tighter and less restrictive than existing ones (if any). Further discussions provide tensor extensions for several classic greedy algorithms, indicating that the results derived are universal and applicable to all these tensorized variants.

This paper studies the affine frequency division multiplexing (AFDM)-empowered sparse code multiple access (SCMA) system, referred to as AFDM-SCMA, for supporting massive connectivity in high-mobility environments. First, by placing the sparse codewords on the AFDM chirp subcarriers, the input-output (I/O) relation of AFDM-SCMA systems is presented. Next, we delve into the generalized receiver design, chirp rate selection, and error rate performance of the proposed AFDM-SCMA. The proposed AFDM-SCMA is shown to provide a general framework and subsume the existing OFDM-SCMA as a special case. Third, for efficient transceiver design, we further propose a class of sparse codebooks for simplifying the I/O relation, referred to as I/O relation-inspired codebook design in this paper. Building upon these codebooks, we propose a novel iterative detection and decoding scheme with linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) estimator for both downlink and uplink channels based on orthogonal approximate message passing principles. Our numerical results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed AFDM-SCMA systems over OFDM-SCMA systems in terms of the error rate performance. We show that the proposed receiver can significantly enhance the error rate performance while reducing the detection complexity.

Acquiring accurate channel state information (CSI) at an access point (AP) is challenging for wideband millimeter wave (mmWave) ultra-massive multiple-input and multiple-output (UM-MIMO) systems, due to the high-dimensional channel matrices, hybrid near- and far- field channel feature, beam squint effects, and imperfect hardware constraints, such as low-resolution analog-to-digital converters, and in-phase and quadrature imbalance. To overcome these challenges, this paper proposes an efficient downlink channel estimation (CE) and CSI feedback approach based on knowledge and data dual-driven deep learning (DL) networks. Specifically, we first propose a data-driven residual neural network de-quantizer (ResNet-DQ) to pre-process the received pilot signals at user equipment (UEs), where the noise and distortion brought by imperfect hardware can be mitigated. A knowledge-driven generalized multiple measurement vector learned approximate message passing (GMMV-LAMP) network is then developed to jointly estimate the channels by exploiting the approximately same physical angle shared by different subcarriers. In particular, two wideband redundant dictionaries (WRDs) are proposed such that the measurement matrices of the GMMV-LAMP network can accommodate the far-field and near-field beam squint effect, respectively. Finally, we propose an encoder at the UEs and a decoder at the AP by a data-driven CSI residual network (CSI-ResNet) to compress the CSI matrix into a low-dimensional quantized bit vector for feedback, thereby reducing the feedback overhead substantially. Simulation results show that the proposed knowledge and data dual-driven approach outperforms conventional downlink CE and CSI feedback methods, especially in the case of low signal-to-noise ratios.

Reconfigurable massive multiple-input multiple-output (RmMIMO) is expected to unlock the unexplored degrees of freedom in the electromagnetic (EM) domain, offering more flexibility to the design of communication systems. Specifically, optimizing the delicate EM properties such as radiation pattern depends on detailed domain knowledge. Traditional spatial domain channel state information (sCSI) has obscured the underlying EM domain information of the channel, thereby hindering the base station's efforts in exploring the EM properties of the channel for precoding optimization. This paper exploits the detailed EM domain channel state information (eCSI) for radiation pattern design at the base station. Using the orthogonal decomposition method on the spherical harmonics bases, the radiation pattern is decomposed into the linear combination of these orthogonal bases. We then formulate the pattern design problem as a problem of optimizing projection coefficients on these bases. Specifically, we propose a manifold optimization-based method that can alternatively optimize the radiation pattern design and the digital precoder. Simulation results demonstrate that, in comparison to traditional mMIMO systems with fixed antenna radiation patterns, RmMIMO architecture induces significant throughput gain for downlink transmission.

Over-the-air computation (OAC) is a promising technique to achieve fast model aggregation across multiple devices in federated edge learning (FEEL). In addition to the analog schemes, one-bit digital aggregation (OBDA) scheme was proposed to adapt OAC to modern digital wireless systems. However, one-bit quantization in OBDA can result in a serious information loss and slower convergence of FEEL. To overcome this limitation, this paper proposes an unsourced massive access (UMA)-based generalized digital OAC (GD-OAC) scheme. Specifically, at the transmitter, all the devices share the same non-orthogonal UMA codebook for uplink transmission. The local model update of each device is quantized based on the same quantization codebook. Then, each device transmits a sequence selected from the UMA codebook based on the quantized elements of its model update. At the receiver, we propose an approximate message passing-based algorithm for efficient UMA detection and model aggregation. Simulation results show that the proposed GD-OAC scheme significantly accelerates the FEEL convergences compared with the state-of-the-art OBDA scheme while using the same uplink communication resources.

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) extra-large scale multiple-input-multiple-output (XL-MIMO) is a promising technique for achieving high data rates in the upcoming sixth-generation communication networks. This paper considers an indoor massive Internet-of-Things (IoT) access scenario served by mmWave XL-MIMO, where the wireless channels exhibit spatial non-stationarity and the coexistence of far-field and near-field communication. By analyzing and exploiting such mmWave XL-MIMO channels, we propose a low-latency grant-free massive IoT access scheme based on joint active user detection (AUD) and channel estimation (CE). Specifically, by exploiting the common user activity in different pilot subcarriers and the block sparsity of the angular-domain XL-MIMO channels, we propose a low-complexity generalized multiple measurement vector-joint AUD and CE algorithm for efficient indoor massive access. Simulation results verify that the proposed solutions outperform the state-of-the-art greedy compressive sensing-based schemes in terms of AUD and CE performance.

This paper proposes a unified semi-blind detection framework for sourced and unsourced random access (RA), which enables next-generation ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC) with a massive number of devices. Specifically, the active devices transmit their uplink access signals in a grant-free manner to realize ultra-low access latency. Meanwhile, the base station aims to achieve ultra-reliable data detection under severe inter-device interference without exploiting explicit channel state information (CSI). We first propose an efficient transmitter design, where a small amount of reference information (RI) is embedded in the access signal to resolve the inherent ambiguities incurred by the unknown CSI. At the receiver, we further develop a successive interference cancellation-based semi-blind detection scheme, where a bilinear generalized approximate message passing algorithm is utilized for joint channel and signal estimation (JCSE), while the embedded RI is exploited for ambiguity elimination. Particularly, a rank selection approach and a RI-aided initialization strategy are incorporated to reduce the algorithmic computational complexity and to enhance the JCSE reliability, respectively. Besides, four enabling techniques are integrated to satisfy the stringent latency and reliability requirements of massive URLLC. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed semi-blind detection framework offers a better scalability-latency-reliability tradeoff than the state-of-the-art detection schemes dedicated to sourced or unsourced RA.

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) can significantly enhance the service coverage of Tera-Hertz massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems. However, obtaining accurate high-dimensional channel state information (CSI) with limited pilot and feedback signaling overhead is challenging, severely degrading the performance of conventional spatial division multiple access. To improve the robustness against CSI imperfection, this paper proposes a deep learning (DL)-based rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) scheme for RIS-aided Tera-Hertz multi-user MIMO systems. Specifically, we first propose a hybrid data-model driven DL-based RSMA precoding scheme, including the passive precoding at the RIS as well as the analog active precoding and the RSMA digital active precoding at the base station (BS). To realize the passive precoding at the RIS, we propose a Transformer-based data-driven RIS reflecting network (RRN). As for the analog active precoding at the BS, we propose a match-filter based analog precoding scheme considering that the BS and RIS adopt the LoS-MIMO antenna array architecture. As for the RSMA digital active precoding at the BS, we propose a low-complexity approximate weighted minimum mean square error (AWMMSE) digital precoding scheme, and further design a model-driven deep unfolding active precoding network (DFAPN) by combining the proposed AWMMSE scheme with DL. Then, to acquire accurate CSI at the BS for the investigated RSMA precoding scheme to achieve higher spectral efficiency, we propose a CSI acquisition network (CAN) with low pilot and feedback signaling overhead. The proposed DL-based RSMA scheme for RIS-aided Tera-Hertz multi-user MIMO systems can exploit the advantages of RSMA and DL to improve the robustness against CSI imperfection, thus achieving higher spectral efficiency with lower signaling overhead.

Low earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellation-enabled communication networks are expected to be an important part of many Internet of Things (IoT) deployments due to their unique advantage of providing seamless global coverage. In this paper, we investigate the random access problem in massive multiple-input multiple-output-based LEO satellite systems, where the multi-satellite cooperative processing mechanism is considered. Specifically, at edge satellite nodes, we conceive a training sequence padded multi-carrier system to overcome the issue of imperfect synchronization, where the training sequence is utilized to detect the devices’ activity and estimate their channels. Considering the inherent sparsity of terrestrial-satellite links and the sporadic traffic feature of IoT terminals, we utilize the orthogonal approximate message passing-multiple measurement vector algorithm to estimate the delay coefficients and user terminal activity. To further utilize the structure of the receive array, a two-dimensional estimation of signal parameters via rotational invariance technique is performed for enhancing channel estimation. Finally, at the central server node, we propose a majority voting scheme to enhance activity detection by aggregating backhaul information from multiple satellites. Moreover, multi-satellite cooperative linear data detection and multi-satellite cooperative Bayesian dequantization data detection are proposed to cope with perfect and quantized backhaul, respectively. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of our proposed schemes in terms of channel estimation, activity detection, and data detection for quasi-synchronous random access in satellite systems.

In this paper, rapidly converging low-complexity iterative transmit precoding (TPC) techniques are proposed for the massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) downlink. First of all, the proposed random block-based iterative TPC (RBI-TPC) algorithm performs its iterations by updating multiple rather than a single component at each instant, where the updating order of each block containing multiple components relies on the samples randomly sampled from a discrete distribution. Based on the analytically derived convergence rate, we demonstrate that improved convergence is achieved by the block-based update mechanism conceived since the correlation between multiple components can be beneficially exploited. Then, the random sampling that determines the updating order is studied. By applying conditional random sampling, the updating order is optimized based on the latest updates for attaining more rapid convergence. We also demonstrate that the associated updating order may become deterministic under specific conditions so that a fixed but optimized updating order can be used for facilitating the practical implementations, which paves the way for conceiving the ordered block-based iterative TPC (OBI-TPC) algorithm. Finally, the concept of successive over-relaxation (SOR) is adopted for further convergence improvement and simulations are presented to illustrate the performance improvements of the proposed RBI and OBI TPC algorithms compared to the existing low-complexity iterative TPC schemes.

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) has opened up numerous game-changing opportunities for realizing future wireless systems. In this paper, we propose an ISAC processing framework relying on millimeter-wave (mmWave) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. Specifically, we provide a compressed sampling (CS) perspective to facilitate ISAC processing, which can not only recover the high-dimensional channel state information or/and radar imaging information, but also significantly reduce pilot overhead. First, an energy-efficient widely spaced array (WSA) architecture is tailored for the radar receiver, which enhances the angular resolution of radar sensing at the cost of angular ambiguity. Then, we propose an ISAC frame structure for time-varying ISAC systems considering different timescales. The pilot waveforms are judiciously designed by taking into account both CS theories and hardware constraints induced by hybrid beamforming (HBF) architecture. Next, we design the dedicated dictionary for WSA that serves as a building block for formulating the ISAC processing as sparse signal recovery problems. The orthogonal matching pursuit with support refinement (OMP-SR) algorithm is proposed to effectively solve the problems in the existence of the angular ambiguity. We also provide a framework for estimating the Doppler frequencies during payload data transmission to guarantee communication performances. Simulation results demonstrate the good performances of both communications and radar sensing under the proposed ISAC framework.

This paper investigates the massive connectivity of low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite-based Internet-of-Things (IoT) for seamless global coverage. We propose to integrate the grant-free non-orthogonal multiple access (GF-NOMA) paradigm with the emerging orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) modulation to accommodate the massive IoT access, and mitigate the long round-trip latency and severe Doppler effect of terrestrial–satellite links (TSLs). On this basis, we put forward a two-stage successive active terminal identification (ATI) and channel estimation (CE) scheme as well as a low-complexity multi-user signal detection (SD) method. Specifically, at the first stage, the proposed training sequence aided OTFS (TS-OTFS) data frame structure facilitates the joint ATI and coarse CE, whereby both the traffic sparsity of terrestrial IoT terminals and the sparse channel impulse response are leveraged for enhanced performance. Moreover, based on the single Doppler shift property for each TSL and sparsity of delay-Doppler domain channel, we develop a parametric approach to further refine the CE performance. Finally, a least square based parallel time domain SD method is developed to detect the OTFS signals with relatively low complexity. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed methods over the state-of-the-art solutions in terms of ATI, CE, and SD performance confronted with the long round-trip latency and severe Doppler effect.

Maintaining freshness of data collection in Internet-of-Things (IoT) networks has attracted increasing attention. By taking into account age-of-information (AoI), we investigate the trajectory planning problem of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that is used to aid a cluster-based IoT network. An optimization problem is formulated to minimize the total AoI of the collected data by the UAV from the ground IoT network. Since the total AoI of the IoT network depends on the flight time of the UAV and the data collection time at hovering points, we jointly optimize the selection of hovering points and the visiting order to these points. We exploit the state-of-the-art transformer and the weighted A*, which is a path search algorithm, to design a machine learning algorithm to solve the formulated problem. The whole UAV-IoT system is fed into the encoder network of the proposed algorithm, and the algorithm’s decoder network outputs the visiting order to ground clusters. Then, the weighted A* is used to find the hovering point for each cluster in the ground IoT network. Simulation results show that the trained model by the proposed algorithm has a good generalization ability to generate solutions for IoT networks with different numbers of ground clusters, without the need to retrain the model. Furthermore, results show that our proposed algorithm can find better UAV trajectories with the minimum total AoI when compared to other algorithms.

This paper studies the reliable support for massive machine-type communications and proposes an efficient semi-blind detection scheme for grant-free massive connectivity. In the proposed scheme, each active device directly transmits a very short reference signal along with its payload data in the uplink, without any access scheduling in advance. At the base station (BS), we develop a successive interference cancellation (SIC)-based semi-blind detection algorithm to detect active devices and their payload data. Specifically, benefitting from the large spatial dimensionality of the BS antenna array, the bilinear generalized approximate message passing algorithm is employed for joint channel and signal estimation (JCSE). In particular, we introduce an a priori refining strategy to leverage the structured sparsity of the massive access channel matrix for improved JCSE performance. Moreover, the inserted reference signal is utilized to resolve the inherent phase and permutation ambiguities. Besides, the idea of SIC is adopted for further improved detection accuracy, where the cyclic redundancy check and soft pilot-based channel refining are incorporated to prevent error propagation. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed semi-blind detection scheme outperforms the state-of-the-art training-based coherent detection scheme when the same number of physical resources are occupied.

This paper proposes a model-driven deep learning based channel feedback and multi-user precoding scheme for cell-free massive MIMO systems, where the downlink pilot signals, CSI compressor (from received pilots to quantized bits) at user equipments (UEs), CSI reconstruction at BSs, and multi-user precoding are designed. Specifically, based on the proposed Transformer-based auto-encoder, the non-orthogonal downlink pilots from different BSs, the CSI compressor at UEs, and the CSI reconstruction (from bits to CSI matrix) at different BSs are end-to-end trained in a distributed manner. Moreover, by utilizing the angular-domain reciprocity of downlink/uplink channels, the CSI reconstruction at the BSs can be further improved with the aid of uplink CSI, which can be easily obtained at the UEs' initial access stage. Additionally, we propose a model-driven deep unfolding based multi-user precoding by unfolding the conventional zero-forcing algorithm and integrating learnable parameters, which substantially reduces the computational complexity and improves the robustness to imperfect CSI.

In this paper, we study the application of integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) to unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) networks aided by millimeter-wave (mmWave) massive multiple-input multiple-output (mMIMO). To reduce the pilot overhead for joint channel estimation (CE) and radar sensing, the state-of-the-art compressive sensing (CS) is applied to ISAC processing in UAV networks. Specifically, we proposed a full duplex terrestrial station architecture with hybrid beamforming (HBF), which can simultaneously communicates with UAVs and senses the surrounding environment to avoid UAV collisions. Given that the switch of phase shifter will take non-negligible reconfiguring time in HBF architecture, we propose a pilot waveform design which takes into account both CS theories and hardware constraints. We also design the mixed-resolution (MR) dictionaries that serve as the building block for formulating the joint CE and radar sensing as sparse signal recovery problems. On this basis, the MR orthogonal matching pursuit (MR-OMP) algorithm is utilized to effectively solve the problems. Simulation results demonstrate the good performances of both CE and radar sensing under the proposed ISAC framework.

The explosion in the number of smartphones and wearable devices brings the challenge of high achievable rate (AR) requirement, and D2D communications become the critical technology to solve this challenge. However, the co-channel interference caused by spectrum reusing and low delay requirement restrict D2D communications performance improvements. In this paper, we consider the cases of no time delay constraint and time delay constraint respectively, and design a joint power control and resource allocation scheme based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL) to maximize the AR of cellular users (CUEs) and D2D users (DUEs). Specifically, D2D pairs are considered multiple agents for reusing CUE spectrum, each agent can independently select spectrum resources and power without any prior information to ease interference. Furthermore, a double deep Q-network with priority sampling (Pr-DDQN) distributed algorithm is proposed, which helps agents to learn more dominant features during experience replay. Simulation results indicate that Pr-DDQN algorithm can obtain a higher AR than the present DRL algorithms. In particular, the probability of selecting low power of agents enlarges as the increase of the remaining transmission time, which demonstrates that the agents can successfully learn and perceive the implicit relationship of time delay constraint.

Device-to-device (D2D) communication is regarded as a promising technology to support spectral-efficient Internet of Things (IoT) in beyond fifth-generation (5G) and sixth-generation (6G) networks. This article investigates the spectrum access problem for D2D-assisted cellular networks based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL), which can be applied to both the uplink and downlink scenarios. Specifically, we consider a time-slotted cellular network, where D2D nodes share the cellular spectrum resources (CUEs) with cellular users in a time-splitting manner. Besides, D2D nodes could reuse time slots preoccupied by CUEs according to a location-based spectrum access (LSA) strategy on the premise of cellular communication quality. The key challenge lies in that D2D nodes have no information on the LSA strategy and the access principle of CUEs. Thus, we design a DRL-based spectrum access scheme such that the D2D nodes can autonomously acquire an optimal strategy for efficient spectrum access without any prior knowledge to achieve a specific objective such as maximizing the normalized sum throughput. Moreover, we adopt a generalized double deep$Q$-network (DDQN) algorithm and extend the objective function to explore the resource allocation fairness for D2D nodes. The proposed scheme is evaluated under various conditions and our simulation results show that it can achieve the near-optimal throughput performance with different objectives compared to the benchmark, which is the theoretical throughput upper bound derived from a genius-aided scheme with complete system knowledge available.

In this article, we investigate an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted Internet of Things (IoT) system in a sophisticated 3-D environment, where the UAV’s trajectory is optimized to efficiently collect data from multiple IoT ground nodes. Unlike existing approaches focusing only on a simplified 2-D scenario and the availability of perfect channel state information (CSI), this article considers a practical 3-D urban environment with imperfect CSI, where the UAV’s trajectory is designed to minimize data collection completion time subject to practical throughput and flight movement constraints. Specifically, inspired by the state-of-the-art deep reinforcement learning approaches, we leverage the twin-delayed deep deterministic policy gradient (TD3) to design the UAV’s trajectory and we present a TD3-based trajectory design for completion time minimization (TD3-TDCTM) algorithm. In particular, we set an additional information, i.e., the merged pheromone, to represent the state information of the UAV and environment as a reference of reward which facilitates the algorithm design. By taking the service statuses of the IoT nodes, the UAV’s position, and the merged pheromone as input, the proposed algorithm can continuously and adaptively learn how to adjust the UAV’s movement strategy. By interacting with the external environment in the corresponding Markov decision process, the proposed algorithm can achieve a near-optimal navigation strategy. Our simulation results show the superiority of the proposed TD3-TDCTM algorithm over three conventional nonlearning-based baseline methods.

In an aerial hybrid massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system, how to design a spectral-efficient broadband multi-user hybrid beamforming with a limited pilot and feedback overhead is challenging. To this end, by modeling the key transmission modules as an end-to-end (E2E) neural network, this paper proposes a data-driven deep learning (DL)-based unified hybrid beamforming framework for both the time division duplex (TDD) and frequency division duplex (FDD) systems with implicit channel state information (CSI). For TDD systems, the proposed DL-based approach jointly models the uplink pilot combining and downlink hybrid beamforming modules as an E2E neural network. While for FDD systems, we jointly model the downlink pilot transmission, uplink CSI feedback, and downlink hybrid beamforming modules as an E2E neural network. Different from conventional approaches separately processing different modules, the proposed solution simultaneously optimizes all modules with the sum rate as the optimization object. Therefore, by perceiving the inherent property of air-to-ground massive MIMO-OFDM channel samples, the DL-based E2E neural network can establish the mapping function from the channel to the beamformer, so that the explicit channel reconstruction can be avoided with reduced pilot and feedback overhead. Besides, practical low-resolution phase shifters (PSs) introduce the quantization constraint, leading to the intractable gradient backpropagation when training the neural network. To mitigate the performance loss caused by the phase quantization error, we adopt the transfer learning strategy to further fine-tune the E2E neural network based on a pre-trained network that assumes the ideal infinite-resolution PSs. Numerical results show that our DL-based schemes have considerable advantages over state-of-the-art schemes.

International audience

Massive machine-type communications (mMTC) are poised to provide ubiquitous connectivity for billions of Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. However, the required low-latency massive access necessitates a paradigm shift in the design of random access schemes, which invokes a need of efficient joint activity and data detection (JADD) algorithms. By exploiting the feature of sporadic traffic in massive access, a beacon-aided slotted grant-free massive access solution is proposed. Specifically, we spread the uplink access signals in multiple subcarriers with pre-equalization processing and formulate the JADD as a multiple measurement vectors (MMV) compressive sensing problem. Moreover, to leverage the structured sparsity of uplink massive access signals among multiple time slots, we develop two computationally efficient detection algorithms, which are termed as orthogonal approximate message passing (OAMP)-MMV algorithm with simplified structure learning (SSL) and accurate structure learning (ASL). To achieve accurate detection, the expectation maximization algorithm is exploited for learning the sparsity ratio and the noise variance. To further improve the detection performance, channel coding is applied and successive interference cancellation (SIC)-based OAMP-MMV-SSL and OAMP-MMV-ASL algorithms are developed, where the likelihood ratio obtained in the soft-decision can be exploited for refining the activity identification. Finally, the state evolution of the proposed OAMP-MMV-SSL and OAMP-MMV-ASL algorithms is derived to predict the performance theoretically. Simulation results verify that the proposed solutions outperform various state-of-the-art baseline schemes, enabling low-latency random access and high-reliable massive IoT connectivity with overloading.

The massive machine-type communications (mMTC) paradigm based on media modulation in conjunction with massive multi-input multi-output base stations (BSs) is emerging as a viable solution to support the massive connectivity for the future Internet-of-Things, in which the inherent massive access at the BSs poses significant challenges for device activity and data detection (DADD). This paper considers the DADD problem for both uncoded and coded media modulation based mMTC with a slotted access frame structure, where the device activity remains unchanged within one frame. Specifically, due to the slotted access frame structure and the adopted media modulated symbols, the access signals exhibit adoubly structured sparsityin both the time domain and the modulation domain. Inspired by this, a doubly structured approximate message passing (DS-AMP) algorithm is proposed for reliable DADD in the uncoded case. Also, we derive the state evolution of the DS-AMP algorithm to theoretically characterize its performance. As for the coded case, we develop a bit-interleaved coded media modulation scheme and propose an iterative DS-AMP (IDS-AMP) algorithm based on successive inference cancellation (SIC), where the signal components associated with the detected active devices are successively subtracted to improve the data decoding performance. In addition, the channel estimation problem for media modulation based mMTC is discussed and an efficient data-aided channel state information (CSI) update strategy is developed to reduce the training overhead in block fading channels. Finally, simulation results and computational complexity analysis verify the superiority of the proposed DS-AMP algorithm over state-of-the-art algorithms in the uncoded case. Also, our results confirm that the proposed SIC-based IDS-AMP algorithm can enhance the data decoding performance in the coded case and verify the validity of the proposed data-aided CSI update strategy.

This article studies massive access in cell-free massive multi-input multi-output (MIMO)-based Internet of Things and solves the challenging active user detection (AUD) and channel estimation (CE) problems. For the uplink transmission, we propose an advanced frame structure design to reduce the access latency. Moreover, by considering the cooperation of all access points (APs), we investigate two processing paradigms at the receiver for massive access: cloud computing and edge computing. For cloud computing, all APs are connected to a centralized processing unit (CPU), and the signals received at all APs are centrally processed at the CPU. While for edge computing, the central processing is offloaded to part of APs equipped with distributed processing units, so that the AUD and CE can be performed in a distributed processing strategy. Furthermore, by leveraging the structured sparsity of the channel matrix, we develop a structured sparsity-based generalized approximated message passing (SS-GAMP) algorithm for reliable joint AUD and CE, where the quantization accuracy of the processed signals is taken into account. Based on the SS-GAMP algorithm, a successive interference cancellation-based AUD and CE scheme is further developed under two paradigms for reduced access latency. Simulation results validate the superiority of the proposed approach over the state-of-the-art baseline schemes. Besides, the results reveal that the edge computing can achieve the similar massive access performance as the cloud computing, and the edge computing is capable of alleviating the burden on CPU, having a faster access response, and supporting more flexible AP cooperation.

The emerging space-air-ground integrated network has attracted intensive research and necessitates reliable and efficient aeronautical communications. This paper investigates terahertz Ultra-Massive (UM)-MIMO-based aeronautical communications and proposes an effective channel estimation and tracking scheme, which can solve the performance degradation problem caused by the uniquetriple delay-beam-Doppler squint effectsof aeronautical terahertz UM-MIMO channels. Specifically, based on the rough angle estimates acquired from navigation information, an initial aeronautical link is established, where the delay-beam squint at transceiver can be significantly mitigated by employing a Grouping True-Time Delay Unit (GTTDU) module (e.g., the designedRotman lens-based GTTDU module). According to the proposed prior-aided iterative angle estimation algorithm, azimuth/elevation angles can be estimated, and these angles are adopted to achieve precise beam-alignment and refine GTTDU module for further eliminating delay-beam squint. Doppler shifts can be subsequently estimated using the proposed prior-aided iterative Doppler shift estimation algorithm. On this basis, path delays and channel gains can be estimated accurately, where the Doppler squint can be effectively attenuated via compensation process. For data transmission, a data-aided decision-directed based channel tracking algorithm is developed to track the beam-aligned effective channels. When the data-aided channel tracking is invalid, angles will be re-estimated at the pilot-aided channel tracking stage with an equivalent sparse digital array, where angle ambiguity can be resolved based on the previously estimated angles. The simulation results and the derived Cramér-Rao lower bounds verify the effectiveness of our solution.

This paper proposes a model-driven deep learning (MDDL)-based channel estimation and feedback scheme for wideband millimeter-wave (mmWave) massive hybrid multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, where the angle-delay domain channels' sparsity is exploited for reducing the overhead. First, we consider the uplink channel estimation for time-division duplexing systems. To reduce the uplink pilot overhead for estimating high-dimensional channels from a limited number of radio frequency (RF) chains at the base station (BS), we propose to jointly train the phase shift network and the channel estimator as an auto-encoder. Particularly, by exploiting the channels' structured sparsity from an a priori model and learning the integrated trainable parameters from the data samples, the proposed multiple-measurement-vectors learned approximate message passing (MMV-LAMP) network with the devised redundant dictionary can jointly recover multiple subcarriers' channels with significantly enhanced performance. Moreover, we consider the downlink channel estimation and feedback for frequency-division duplexing systems. Similarly, the pilots at the BS and channel estimator at the users can be jointly trained as an encoder and a decoder, respectively. Besides, to further reduce the channel feedback overhead, only the received pilots on part of the subcarriers are fed back to the BS, which can exploit the MMV-LAMP network to reconstruct the spatial-frequency channel matrix. Numerical results show that the proposed MDDL-based channel estimation and feedback scheme outperforms state-of-the-art approaches.

Conventional hybrid precoding and combining based transceivers require a large number of high-resolution radio frequency (RF) phase shifters (PSs), which impose prohibitive hardware costs and power consumption. To address the above issue, both partially connected RF PSs and low-resolution PSs have been proposed. However, the performance limits of these low-cost designs have not been investigated theoretically. Furthermore, there is room for improvement in their spectral efficiency. To fill this knowledge gap, we derive the mean square error performance discrepancy between an optimal precoder/combiner and the hybrid analog-digital precoder/combiner under the constraint of 1-bit PSs relying on lattice theory. Then, by observing that this performance gap can be reduced by deactivating parts of the PSs whilst improving both the spectral and energy efficiency, we develop an adaptive RF PS connection network. To resolve the associated hybrid precoding and combining problems, we appropriately adapt Babai's algorithm from the lattice decoding literature. Our simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed scheme both in terms of its spectral and energy efficiency.

We propose a holographic version of a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) and investigate its application to terahertz (THz) massive multiple-input multiple-output systems. Capitalizing on the miniaturization of THz electronic components, RISs can be implemented by densely packing sub-wavelength unit cells, so as to realize continuous or quasi-continuous apertures and to enable holographic communications. In this paper, in particular, we derive the beam pattern of a holographic RIS. Our analysis reveals that the beam pattern of an ideal holographic RIS can be well approximated by that of an ultra-dense RIS, which has a more practical hardware architecture. In addition, we propose a closed-loop channel estimation (CE) scheme to effectively estimate the broadband channels that characterize THz massive MIMO systems aided by holographic RISs. The proposed CE scheme includes a downlink coarse CE stage and an uplink finer-grained CE stage. The uplink pilot signals are judiciously designed for obtaining good CE performance. Moreover, to reduce the pilot overhead, we introduce a compressive sensing-based CE algorithm, which exploits the dual sparsity of THz MIMO channels in both the angular domain and delay domain. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of holographic RISs over the non-holographic ones, and the effectiveness of the proposed CE scheme.

This paper considers the support of grant-free massive access and solves the challenge of active user detection and channel estimation in the case of a massive number of users. By exploiting the sparsity of user activities, the concerned problems are formulated as a compressive sensing problem, whose solution is acquired by approximate message passing (AMP) algorithm. Considering the cooperation of multiple access points, for the deployment of AMP algorithm, we compare two processing paradigms, cloud computing and fog computing, in terms of their effectiveness in guaranteeing ultra reliable low-latency access. For cloud computing, the access points are connected in a cloud radio access network (C-RAN) manner, and the signals received at all access points are concentrated and jointly processed in the cloud baseband unit. While for fog computing, based on fog radio access network (F-RAN), the estimation of user activity and corresponding channels for the whole network is split, and the related processing tasks are performed at the access points and fog processing units in proximity to users. Compared to the cloud computing paradigm based on traditional C-RAN, simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed fog computing deployment based on F-RAN.

This paper investigates the broadband channel estimation (CE) for intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-aided millimeter-wave (mmWave) massive MIMO systems. The CE for such systems is a challenging task due to the large dimension of both the active massive MIMO at the base station (BS) and passive IRS. To address this problem, this paper proposes a compressive sensing (CS)-based CE solution for IRS-aided mmWave massive MIMO systems, whereby the angular channel sparsity of large-scale array at mmWave is exploited for improved CE with reduced pilot overhead. Specifically, we first propose a downlink pilot transmission framework. By designing the pilot signals based on the prior knowledge that the line-of-sight dominated BS-to-IRS channel is known, the high-dimensional channels for BS-to-user and IRS-to-user can be jointly estimated based on CS theory. Moreover, to efficiently estimate broadband channels, a distributed orthogonal matching pursuit algorithm is exploited, where the common sparsity shared by the channels at different subcarriers is utilized. Additionally, the redundant dictionary to combat the power leakage is also designed for the enhanced CE performance. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

Turbo codes are widely used in satellite communications. When a Turbo decoder is implemented on a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) in a space platform, it will suffer Single Event Upsets (SEUs) that can cause failures and disrupt communications. In this paper, the reliability of Turbo decoders implemented on FPGAs is evaluated. The Turbo decoder with Log-MAP algorithm is implemented on an SRAM-FPGA. Then, fault injection experiments are conducted to simulate the effects of SEU on the user memory and on the configuration memory of the Turbo decoder. Experimental results show that, for user memory, the SEU tolerance rate is over 95%, and the effect of SEU is related to the iteration period, bit position and Signal to Noise Ratio (SNR). In particular, SEUs on the control/address registers and on the interleaving table have a larger impact than on other registers or memories. For the configuration memory, the SEU tolerance rate is higher than 86%, and decreases as SNR increases. In general, the Turbo decoder exhibits a high reliability against SEUs, and the user memory is more reliable than the configuration memory.

Hybrid analog-digital precoding is challenging for broadband millimeter-wave (mmWave) massive MIMO systems, since the analog precoder is frequency-flat but the mmWave channels are frequency-selective. In this paper, we propose a principal component analysis (PCA)-based broadband hybrid precoder/combiner design, where both the fully-connected array and partially-connected subarray (including the fixed and adaptive subarrays) are investigated. Specifically, we first design the hybrid precoder/combiner for fully-connected array and fixed subarray based on PCA, whereby a low-dimensional frequency-flat precoder/combiner is acquired based on the optimal high-dimensional frequency-selective precoder/combiner. Meanwhile, the near-optimality of our proposed PCA approach is theoretically proven. Moreover, for the adaptive subarray, a low-complexity shared agglomerative hierarchical clustering algorithm is proposed to group the antennas for the further improvement of spectral efficiency (SE) performance. Besides, we theoretically prove that the proposed antenna grouping algorithm is only determined by the slow time-varying channel parameters in the large antenna limit. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed solution over state-of-the-art schemes in SE, energy efficiency (EE), bit-error-rate performance, and the robustness to time-varying channels. Our work reveals that the EE advantage of adaptive subarray over fully-connected array is obvious for both active and passive antennas, but the EE advantage of fixed subarray only holds for passive antennas.

This paper proposes a closed-loop sparse channel estimation (CE) scheme for wideband millimeter-wave hybrid full-dimensional multiple-input multiple-output and time division duplexing based systems, which exploits the channel sparsity in both angle and delay domains. At the downlink CE stage, random transmit precoding matrix is designed at base station (BS) for channel sounding, and receive combining matrices at user devices (UDs) are designed whereby the hybrid array is visualized as a low-dimensional digital array for facilitating the multi-dimensional unitary ESPRIT (MDU-ESPRIT) algorithm to estimate respective angle-of-arrivals (AoAs). At the uplink CE stage, the estimated downlink AoAs, namely, uplink angle-of-departures (AoDs), are exploited to design multi-beam transmit precoding matrices at UDs to enable BS to estimate the uplink AoAs, i.e., the downlink AoDs, and delays of different UDs, whereby the MDU-ESPRIT algorithm is used based on the designed receive combining matrix at BS. Furthermore, a maximum likelihood approach is proposed to pair the channel parameters acquired at the two stages, and the path gains are then obtained using least squares estimator. According to spectrum estimation theory, our solution can acquire the super-resolution estimations of the AoAs/AoDs and delays of sparse multipath components with low training overhead. Simulation results verify the better CE performance and lower computational complexity of our solution over state-of-the-art approaches.

The integration of non-orthogonal multiple access in millimeter-Wave communications (mm Wave-NOMA) can significantly improve the spectrum efficiency and increase the number of users in the fifth-generation (5G) mobile communication and beyond. In this paper, we consider a downlink mm Wave-NOMA cellular system, where the base station is mounted with an analog beamforming phased array, and multiple users are served in the same time-frequency resource block. To guarantee user fairness, we formulate joint beamforming and power allocation problem to maximize the minimal achievable rate among the users, i.e., we adopt the max–min fairness. As the problem is difficult to solve due to the non-convex formulation and high dimension of the optimization variables, we propose a sub-optimal solution, which makes use of the spatial sparsity in the angle domain of the mm Wave channel. In the solution, the closed-form optimal power allocation is obtained first, which reduces the joint optimization problem into an equivalent beamforming problem. Then, an appropriate beamforming vector is designed. The simulation results show that the proposed solution can achieve a near-upper-bound performance in terms of achievable rate, which is significantly better than that of the conventional mm Wave orthogonal multiple access (mm Wave-OMA) system.

Millimeter-wave massive MIMO with hybrid precoding can significantly reduce the number of required radio frequency (RF) chains. However, due to the limited number of RF chains, the requirement of large pilot overhead will be used to estimate the high-dimensional mmWave massive MIMO channel. To solve this problem, we propose a super-resolution channel estimation scheme based on modified two-dimensional (2D) unitary ESPRIT algorithm in this paper, which can jointly estimate the continuously distributed angle of arrivals/departures (AoAs/AoDs) with high accuracy. Specifically, we first estimate a low-dimensional effective channel by designing the uplink training signals. Then, since the low- dimensional effective channel has the same shift- invariance of array response as the high-dimensional mmWave MIMO channel to be estimated, we jointly estimate the super-resolution estimates of AoAs and AoDs by exploiting the modified 2D unitary ESPRIT algorithm. Furthermore, we can obtain the associated path gains based on the least squares (LS) criterion. Finally, the high-dimensional mmWave MIMO channel will be reconstructed according to the obtained parameters. Simulation results verify that the proposed scheme is more accuracy than conventional schemes, even with a much lower pilot overhead.

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) massive MIMO used for access and backhaul in ultra-dense network (UDN) has been considered as the promising 5G technique. We consider such an heterogeneous network (HetNet) that ultra-dense small base stations (BSs) exploit mmWave massive MIMO for access and backhaul, while macrocell BS provides the control service with low frequency band. However, the channel estimation for mmWave massive MIMO can be challenging, since the pilot overhead to acquire the channels associated with a large number of antennas in mmWave massive MIMO can be prohibitively high. This paper proposes a structured compressive sensing (SCS)-based channel estimation scheme, where the angular sparsity of mmWave channels is exploited to reduce the required pilot overhead. Specifically, since the path loss for non-line-of-sight paths is much larger than that for line-of-sight paths, the mmWave massive channels in the angular domain appear the obvious sparsity. By exploiting such sparsity, the required pilot overhead only depends on the small number of dominated multipath. Moreover, the sparsity within the system bandwidth is almost unchanged, which can be exploited for the further improved performance. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme outperforms its counterpart, and it can approach the performance bound.

Parallel matrix processing is a typical operation in many systems, and in particular matrix-vector multiplication is one of the most common operations in modern digital signal processing and digital communication systems. This paper proposes a fault tolerant design for parallel matrix-vector multiplications. The scheme combines ideas from Error Correction Codes with the self-checking capability of matrix-vector multiplication.

Massive MIMO has become a promising key technology for future 5G wireless communications to increase the channel capacity and link reliability. However, with greatly increased number of transmit antennas at the base station (BS) in massive MIMO systems, the pilot overhead for accurate acquisition of channel state information (CSI) will be prohibitively high. To address this issue, we propose a block iterative support detection (block-ISD) based algorithm for channel estimation to reduce the pilot overhead. The proposed block-ISD algorithm fully exploits the block sparsity inherent in the block-sparse equivalent channel impulse response (CIR) generated by considering the spatial correlations of MIMO channels. Furthermore, unlike conventional greedy compressive sensing (CS) algorithms that rely on prior knowledge of the channel sparsity level, block-ISD relaxes this demanding requirement and is thus more practically appealing. Simulation results demonstrate that block-ISD yields better normalized mean square error (NMSE) performance than classical CS algorithms, and achieve a reduction of 87.5% pilot overhead than conventional channel estimation techniques.

Massive MIMO is a promising technique for future 5G communications due to its high spectrum and energy efficiency. To realize its potential performance gain, accurate channel estimation is essential. However, due to massive number of antennas at the base station (BS), the pilot overhead required by conventional channel estimation schemes will be unaffordable, especially for frequency division duplex (FDD) massive MIMO. To overcome this problem, we propose a structured compressive sensing (SCS)-based spatio-temporal joint channel estimation scheme to reduce the required pilot overhead, whereby the spatio-temporal common sparsity of delay-domain MIMO channels is leveraged. Particularly, we first propose the nonorthogonal pilots at the BS under the framework of CS theory to reduce the required pilot overhead. Then, an adaptive structured subspace pursuit (ASSP) algorithm at the user is proposed to jointly estimate channels associated with multiple OFDM symbols from the limited number of pilots, whereby the spatio-temporal common sparsity of MIMO channels is exploited to improve the channel estimation accuracy. Moreover, by exploiting the temporal channel correlation, we propose a space-time adaptive pilot scheme to further reduce the pilot overhead. Additionally, we discuss the proposed channel estimation scheme in multicell scenario. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can accurately estimate channels with the reduced pilot overhead, and it is capable of approaching the optimal oracle least squares estimator.

Soft errors pose a reliability threat to modern electronic circuits. This makes protection against soft errors a requirement for many applications. Communications and signal processing systems are no exceptions to this trend. For some applications, an interesting option is to use algorithmic-based fault tolerance (ABFT) techniques that try to exploit the algorithmic properties to detect and correct errors. Signal processing and communication applications are well suited for ABFT. One example is fast Fourier transforms (FFTs) that are a key building block in many systems. Several protection schemes have been proposed to detect and correct errors in FFTs. Among those, probably the use of the Parseval or sum of squares check is the most widely known. In modern communication systems, it is increasingly common to find several blocks operating in parallel. Recently, a technique that exploits this fact to implement fault tolerance on parallel filters has been proposed. In this brief, this technique is first applied to protect FFTs. Then, two improved protection schemes that combine the use of error correction codes and Parseval checks are proposed and evaluated. The results show that the proposed schemes can further reduce the implementation cost of protection.

Network coding is an efficient means to improve the spectrum efficiency of satellite communications. However, its resilience to eavesdropping attacks is not well understood. This paper studies the confidentiality issue in a bidirectional satellite network consisting of two mobile users who want to exchange message via a multibeam satellite using the XOR network coding protocol. We aim to maximize the sum secrecy rate by designing the optimal beamforming vector along with optimizing the return and forward link time allocation. The problem is nonconvex, and we find its optimal solution using semidefinite programming together with a 1-D search. For comparison, we also solve the sum secrecy rate maximization problem for a conventional reference scheme without using network coding. Simulation results using realistic system parameters demonstrate that the bidirectional scheme using network coding provides considerably higher secrecy rate compared with that of the conventional scheme.

Digital filters are widely used in signal processing and communication systems. In some cases, the reliability of those systems is critical, and fault tolerant filter implementations are needed. Over the years, many techniques that exploit the filters' structure and properties to achieve fault tolerance have been proposed. As technology scales, it enables more complex systems that incorporate many filters. In those complex systems, it is common that some of the filters operate in parallel, for example, by applying the same filter to different input signals. Recently, a simple technique that exploits the presence of parallel filters to achieve fault tolerance has been presented. In this brief, that idea is generalized to show that parallel filters can be protected using error correction codes (ECCs) in which each filter is the equivalent of a bit in a traditional ECC. This new scheme allows more efficient protection when the number of parallel filters is large. The technique is evaluated using a case study of parallel finite impulse response filters showing the effectiveness in terms of protection and implementation cost.

This paper develops a low-complexity channel estimation (CE) scheme based on compressive sensing (CS) for time-domain synchronous (TDS) orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) to overcome the performance loss under doubly selective fading channels. Specifically, an overlap-add method of the time-domain training sequence is first proposed to obtain the coarse estimates of the channel length, path delays, and path gains of the wireless channel, by exploiting the channel's temporal correlation to improve the robustness of the coarse CE under the severe fading channel with long delay spread. We then propose the priori-information aided (PA) iterative hard threshold (IHT) algorithm, which utilizes the priori information of the acquired coarse estimate for the wireless channel and therefore is capable of obtaining an accurate channel estimate of the doubly selective fading channel. Compared with the classical IHT algorithm whose convergence requires the l2norm of the measurement matrix being less than 1, the proposed PA-IHT algorithm exploits the priori information acquired to remove such a limitation and to reduce the number of required iterations. Compared with the existing CS-based CE method for TDS-OFDM, the proposed PA-IHT algorithm significantly reduces the computational complexity of CE and enhances the CE accuracy. Simulation results demonstrate that, without sacrificing spectral efficiency and changing the current TDS-OFDM signal structure, the proposed scheme performs better than the existing CE schemes for TDS-OFDM in various scenarios, particularly under severely doubly selective fading channels.

In time-domain synchronous OFDM (TDS-OFDM) system for digital television terrestrial multimedia broadcasting (DTMB) standard, the baseband OFDM signal is upsampled and shaping filtered by square root raised cosine (SRRC) filter before digital-to-analog converter (DAC). Much of the work in the area of timing synchronization for TDS-OFDM focuses on frame synchronization and sampling clock frequency offset recovery, which does not consider the sampling clock phase offset due to the upsampling and SRRC filter. This paper evaluates the bit-error-rate (BER) effect of sampling clock phase offset in TDS-OFDM system. First, we provide the BER for M-order quadrature amplitude modulation (M-QAM) in uncoded TDS-OFDM system. Second, under the condition of the optimal BER criterion and additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) channel, we propose a near optimal sampling phase estimation criterion based on frequency-domain response. Simulations demonstrate that the proposed criterion also has good performance in actual TDS-OFDM system with channel coding over multipath channels, and it is superior to the conventional symbol timing recovery methods for TDS-OFDM system.

Satellite and terrestrial integrated mobile communication systems (STICS) is proposed to secure communications services anytime and anywhere. In the case of natural disasters or special event, it is required for satellite systems to allocate the frequency resources to a specific area as much as possible. Dynamic channel assignment is one of the attractive solutions to achieve the flexible and efficient utilization of the frequency resources. Although dynamic channel assignment can increase the bandwidth per satellite cell, smaller frequency reuse factor results in larger inter-cell interference and the link quality degradation. To solve this problem, this paper proposes centralized dynamic channel assignment based on interference measurement with link quality threshold control for multi-beam mobile satellite communications networks. It also shows the performance evaluation results by computer simulations regarding the blocking rate and the link quality.

Approximate Message Passing (AMP) simplified from Loopy Belief Propagation (LBP), is an important algorithm for sparse signal reconstruction in Compressed Sensing (CS). To improve the performance of current AMP algorithms, a weighted-damped AMP algorithm (WDAMP) is derived from a weighted version of BP that adopt probability damping technique. Simulation results show that WDAMP outperforms normal AMP for both 1-D and 2-D signal reconstruction. For 1-D signal reconstruction, probability damping brings most of the improvement. For 2-D signal reconstruction, weighting technique makes the major contribution. In summary, WDAMP outperforms conventional AMP.

In this paper, we propose an improved preamble structure based on distance detection using a pair of training sequences in frequency domain, whereby self-adaptive algorithm is introduced. Guard interval with cyclic prefix (CP) property is used to achieve better signalling transmission performance under frequency selective fading channel. Moreover, delay and differential operation is applied to eliminate continuous wave (CW) interference. Theoretical analyses and simulation results show that the proposed scheme has superior signalling demodulation and synchronization performances to the existing methods.

Relative to the Triple Modular Redundancy (TMR) scheme, the arithmetic residue codes based fault-tolerant DSP design consumes much less resources. However, the price for the low resource consumption is the fault missing problem. The basic tradeoff is that, smaller modulus used for the fault checking consumes fewer resources, but the fault missing rate is higher. The relationship between the value of modulus and the fault missing rate is analyzed theoretically in this paper for fault-tolerant FIR filter design, and the results are verified by FPGA implemented fault injections.