We address the client-selection problem in federated learning over wireless networks under data heterogeneity. Existing client-selection methods often rely on server-side knowledge of client-specific information, thus compromising privacy. To overcome this issue, we propose a client self-selection strategy based solely on the comparison between locally computed training losses and a centrally updated selection threshold. Furthermore, to support robust aggregation of clients' updates over wireless channels, we integrate this client self-selection strategy into the recently proposed type-based unsourced multiple-access framework over distributed multiple-input multiple-output (D-MIMO) networks. The resulting scheme is completely unsourced: the server does not need to know the identity of the clients. Moreover, no channel state information is required, neither at the clients nor at the server side. Simulation results conducted over a D-MIMO wireless network show that the proposed self-selection strategy matches the performance of a comparable state-of-the-art server-side selection method and consistently outperforms random client selection.

We derive finite-blocklength bounds on the minimum achievable energy per bit over a Gaussian unsourced multiple access (UMA) channel in the presence of heterogeneous path-loss conditions. We consider a setting in which the path loss is known to the users, which enables the use of location-based codebook partitioning [Çakmak et al., 2025]. Through numerical simulations and a large-system analysis based on the replica method, we quantify the performance gain of this strategy relative to the conventional UMA approach in which all users employ a common codebook.

Reciprocity-based, joint coherent downlink beamforming from multiple access points (APs) in distributed multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) with independent local oscillators (LOs) requires the APs to be periodically phase-calibrated (a.k.a. phase-synchronized or phase-aligned). Such phase calibration can be accomplished by bidirectional over-the-air measurements between the APs. In this paper, we show how such over-the-air measurements can be integrated into the time-division duplexing (TDD) flow by appropriately shifting the uplink/downlink switching points of the TDD slot structure, creating short time segments during which APs can measure on one another. We also show how this technique scales to large networks. Furthermore, we analytically characterize the tradeoff between the amount of resources spent on calibration measurements and the resulting spectral efficiency of the system, when conjugate beamforming or zero-forcing beamforming is used. The results demonstrate the feasibility of distributed MIMO with phase-calibration through over-the-air inter-AP measurements integrated into the TDD flow, and the advantage of this design over schemes with dedicated calibration slots.

We investigate accuracy and freshness of status updates from a large number of energy-harvesting devices that monitor two-state Markov processes and access the medium using slotted ALOHA without feedback. Using a Markovian framework, we analyze the average value of a generic state-dependent penalty function that grows whenever there is a state estimation error. The age of incorrect information (AoII) is an example of such penalty function. We propose an accurate and easy-to-compute approximation for the average penalty. Numerical results show the benefits of optimizing the transmission probabilities according to the process state transitions and current battery levels to minimize the average penalty. Minimizing a state-independent penalty function can be highly suboptimal when one of the process states is critical, i.e., entails a high penalty if wrongly estimated. Furthermore, minimizing the average penalty does not guarantee a low probability of misdetecting a critical state period.

Phase synchronization between distributed antenna arrays requires measurements that break the standard time-division duplex (TDD) operation. We present a feasibility study on implementing such synchronization and analyze its impact on the quality of service. Considering two antenna arrays with independent local oscillators (LOs), we propose a modified TDD flow to accommodate the transmission of phase synchronization signals, formulate the phase estimation and compensation problem, and derive the achievable downlink spectral efficiency (SE). Numerical results show that frequent re-estimation of the inter-array phase disparity is essential for maximizing SE in systems with low-quality LOs. Furthermore, applying a Kalman filter for phase tracking substantially improves the SE, especially if phase estimation errors are large compared to LOs phase drifts.

We derive an achievability bound to quantify the performance of a type-based unsourced multiple access system—an information-theoretic model for grant-free multiple access with correlated messages. The bound extends available achievability results for the per-user error probability in the unsourced multiple access framework, where, different from our setup, message collisions are treated as errors. Specifically, we provide an upper bound on the total variation distance between the type (i.e., the empirical probability mass function) of the transmitted messages and its estimate over a Gaussian multiple access channel. Through numerical simulations, we illustrate that our bound can be used to determine the message type that is less efficient to transmit, because more difficult to detect. We finally show that a practical scheme for type estimation, based on coded compressed sensing with approximate message passing, operates approximately 3 dB away from the bound, for the parameters considered in the paper.

Type-based unsourced multiple access (TUMA) is a recently proposed framework for type-based estimation in massive uncoordinated access networks. We extend the existing design of TUMA, developed for an additive white Gaussian channel, to a more realistic environment with fading and multiple antennas. Specifically, we consider a cell-free massive multipleinput multiple-output system and exploit spatial diversity to estimate the set of transmitted messages and the number of users transmitting each message. Our solution relies on a locationbased codeword partition and on the use at the receiver of a multisource approximate message passing algorithm in both centralized and distributed implementations. The proposed TUMA framework results in a robust and scalable architecture for massive machine-type communications.

We develop practical and theoretically grounded membership inference attacks (MIAs) against both independent and identically distributed (i.i.d.) data and graph-structured data. Building on the Bayesian decision-theoretic framework of Sabrayolles et al., we derive the Bayes-optimal membership inference rule for node-level MIAs against graph neural networks, addressing key open questions about optimal query strategies in the graph setting. We introduce BASE and G-BASE, tractable approximations of the Bayes-optimal membership inference. G-BASE achieves superior performance compared to previously proposed classifier-based node-level MIA attacks. BASE, which is also applicable to non-graph data, matches or exceeds the performance of prior state-of-the-art MIAs, such as LiRA and RMIA, at a significantly lower computational cost. Finally, we show that BASE and RMIA are equivalent under a specific hyperparameter setting, providing a principled, Bayes-optimal justification for the RMIA attack.

We investigate an internet-of-things system where energy-harvesting devices send status updates to a common receiver using the irregular repetition slotted ALOHA (IRSA) protocol. Energy shortages in these devices may lead to transmission failures that are unknown to the receiver, disrupting the decoding process. To address this issue, we propose a method for the receiver to perfectly identify such failures. Furthermore, we optimize the degree distribution of the protocol to enhance the freshness of the status updates. Our optimized degree distribution mitigates the adverse effects of potential transmission failures. Numerical results demonstrate that, despite energy-harvesting constraints, IRSA can achieve a level of information freshness comparable to systems with unlimited energy.

We investigate the age of information (AoI) in a scenario where energy-harvesting devices send status updates to a gateway following the slotted ALOHA protocol and receive no feedback. We let the devices adjust the transmission probabilities based on their current battery level. Using a Markovian approach, we derive analytically the average AoI. We further provide an approximate analysis for accurate and easy-to-compute approximations of both the average AoI and the age-violation probability (AVP), i.e., the probability that the AoI exceeds a given threshold. We also analyze the average throughput. Via numerical results, we investigate two baseline strategies: transmit a new update whenever possible to exploit every opportunity to reduce the AoI, and transmit only when sufficient energy is available to increase the chance of successful decoding. The two strategies are beneficial for low and high update-generation rates, respectively. We show that an optimized policy that balances the two strategies outperforms them significantly in terms of both AoI metrics and throughput. Finally, we show the benefit of decoding multiple packets in a slot using successive interference cancellation and adapting the transmission probability based on both the current battery level and the time elapsed since the last transmission.

Local mutual-information privacy (LMIP) is a privacy notion that aims to quantify the reduction of uncertainty about the input data when the output of a privacy-preserving mechanism is revealed. We study the relation of LMIP with local differential privacy (LDP)-the de facto standard notion of privacy in context-independent scenarios-, and with local information privacy (LIP)-the state-of-the-art notion for context-dependent settings. We establish explicit conversion rules, i.e., bounds on the privacy parameters for a LMIP mechanism to also satisfy LDPILIP, and vice versa. We use our bounds to formally verify that LMIP is a weak privacy notion. We also show that uncorrelated Gaussian noise is the best-case noise in terms of context-independent LMIP if both the input data and the noise are subject to an average power constraint.

We investigate the coexistence of massive and critical Internet of Things (IoT) services in the context of the unsourced multiple access (UMA) framework introduced by Polyanskiy (2017), where all users employ a common codebook and the receiver returns an unordered list of decoded codewords. This setup is suitably modified to introduce heterogeneous traffic. Specifically, to model the massive IoT service, we assume that a standard message originates independently from each IoT device as in the standard UMA setup. To model the critical IoT service, we assume the generation of alarm messages that are common for all devices. This setup requires a significant redefinition of the error events, i.e., misdetections and false positives. We further assume that the number of active users in each transmission attempt is random and unknown. We derive a random-coding achievability bound on the misdetection and false positive probabilities of both standard and alarm messages on the Gaussian multiple access channel. Using our bound, we demonstrate that orthogonal network slicing enables massive and critical IoT to coexist under the requirement of high energy efficiency. On the contrary, we show that nonorthogonal network slicing is energy inefficient due to the residual interference from the alarm signal when decoding the standard messages.

We examine the age of information (AoI) of a status update system that incorporates energy harvesting and uses the slotted ALOHA protocol. We derive analytically the average AoI and the probability that the AoI exceeds a given threshold. Via numerical results, we investigate two strategies to minimize the age of information (AoI): transmitting a new update whenever possible to exploit every chance to reduce the AoI, and transmitting only when sufficient energy is available to increase the chance of successful delivery. The two strategies are beneficial for low and high update generation rates, respectively. However, an optimized approach that balances the two strategies outperforms them significantly in terms of both AoI and throughput.

We propose an irregular repetition slotted ALOHA (IRSA) based random-access protocol for the binary adder channel (BAC). The BAC captures important physical-layer concepts, such as packet generation, per-slot decoding, and information rate, which are neglected in the commonly considered collision channel model. We divide a frame into slots and let users generate a packet, to be transmitted over a slot, from a given codebook. In a state-of-the-art scheme proposed by Paolini et al. (2022), the codebook is constructed as the parity-check matrix of a BCH code. Here, we construct the codebook from independent and identically distributed binary symbols to obtain a random-coding achievability bound. Our per-slot decoder progressively discards incompatible codewords from a list of candidate codewords, and can be improved by shrinking this list across iterations. In a regime of practical interests, our scheme can resolve more colliding users in a slot and thus achieves a higher average sum rate than the scheme in Paolini et al. (2022).

To account for the massive uncoordinated random access scenario, which is relevant for the Internet of Things, Polyanskiy et al. (2017) proposed a novel formulation of the multiple-access problem, commonly referred to as unsourced multiple access, where all users employ a common codebook and the receiver decodes up to a permutation of the messages. In this paper, we extend this seminal work to the case where the number of active users is random and unknowna priori. We define a random-access code accounting for both misdetection (MD) and false alarm (FA), and derive a random-coding achievability bound for the Gaussian multiple access channel. Our bound captures the fundamental trade-off between MD and FA probabilities. It suggests that the lack of knowledge of the number of active users entails a small penalty in energy efficiency when the target MD and FA probabilities are high. However, as the target MD and FA probabilities decrease, the energy efficiency penalty becomes more significant. For example, in a typical IoT scenario with framelength 19200 complex channel uses and 25–300 active users in average, the required energy per bit to achieve both MD and FA probabilities below$10^{-1}$, predicted by our bound, is only 0.5–0.7 dB higher than that predicted by the bound in Polyanskiy et al. (2017) for a known number of active users. This gap increases to 3–4 dB when the target MD probability and/or FA probability is below$10^{-3}$. Taking both MD and FA into account, we use our bound to benchmark the energy efficiency of slotted-ALOHA with multi-packet reception, of a decoder that simply treats interference as noise, and of some recently proposed unsourced multiple access schemes. Numerical results suggest that, when the target MD and FA probabilities are high, it is effective to estimate the number of active users, then treat this estimate as the true value, and use a coding scheme that performs well for the case of known number of active users. However, this approach becomes energy inefficient when the requirements on MD and FA probabilities are stringent.

We consider the joint constellation design problem for the noncoherent multiple-input multiple-output multiple-access channel (MAC). By analyzing the noncoherent maximum-likelihood detection error, we propose novel design criteria so as to minimize the error probability. As a baseline approach, we adapt several existing design criteria for the point-to-point channel to the MAC. Furthermore, we propose new design criteria. Our first proposed design metric is the dominating term in nonasymptotic lower and upper bounds on the pairwise error probability exponent. We give a geometric interpretation of the bound using Riemannian distance in the manifold of Hermitian positive definite matrices. From an analysis of this metric at high signal-to-noise ratio, we obtain further simplified metrics. For any given set of constellation sizes, the proposed metrics can be optimized over the set of constellation symbols. Motivated by the simplified metric, we propose a simple constellation construction consisting inpartitioninga single-user constellation. We also provide a generalization of our previously proposed construction based onprecodingindividual constellations of lower dimensions. For a fixed joint constellation, the design metrics can be further optimized over the per-user transmit power, especially when the users transmit at different rates. Considering unitary space-time modulation, we investigate the option of building each individual constellation as a set of truncated unitary matrices scaled by the respective transmit power. Numerical results show that our proposed metrics are meaningful, and can be used as objectives to generate constellations through numerical optimization that perform better, for the same transmission rate and power constraint, than a common pilot-based scheme and the constellations optimized with existing metrics.

We extend the seminal work by Polyanskiy (2017) on massive uncoordinated access to the case where the number of active users is random and unknown a priori. We define a random-access code accounting for both misdetection (MD) and false-alarm (FA), and derive a random-coding achievability bound for the Gaussian multiple access channel. Our bound captures the fundamental trade-off between MD and FA probabilities. It suggests that lack of knowledge of the number of active users entails a small penalty in power efficiency. For a typical scenario, to achieve both MD and FA probabilities below 0.1, the required energy per bit predicted by our bound is 0.5–0.7 dB higher than that predicted by the bound in Polyanskiy (2017) for a known number of active users. Taking both MD and FA into account, we use our bound to benchmark the energy efficiency of some recently proposed massive random access schemes.

We propose a class of parametric channel models that we call generalized Gaussian model (GGM). In particular, given the input, the output is Gaussian with both mean and covariance depending on the input. More general than the conventionallinear model, the GGM can capture nonlinearities and self-interference present in more and more wireless communication systems. We focus on three key problems. First, we propose a data-driven model identification algorithm that uses training data to fit the underlying channel with a GGM. This is a generalization of the conventional channel estimation procedure. Second, for an identified GGM, we investigate the receiver design problem and propose several detection metrics. Third, we are interested in the capacity bounds of the GGM. Both the mismatched lower bound and duality upper bound are proposed. Finally, we apply the GGM to fit the multiple-input multiple-output phase-noise channel. Numerical results show the near optimality of the model identification and detection algorithms.

In a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) broad-cast channel (BC), the difference in spatial transmit correlation matrices of different users is called transmit correlation diversity. Recently, several works have extended this concept beyond its original scope, to include channels whose transmit correlation matrices have non-overlapping eigenspaces. In contrast to earlier analyses of overlapping eigenspaces that were mostly described in terms of degrees-of-freedom, this work presents achievable rate regions. These achievable regions are derived by rate-splitting, product superposition, or a combination thereof. Our rate expressions make explicit the contribution of the common parts and individual (non-overlapping) parts of the correlation eigenspaces toward the achievable rate region. As a by-product, a result of Hassibi and Hochwald on MIMO channel training is extended to channels with spatial correlation.

The high-SNR capacity of the noncoherent MIMO channel has been derived for the case of independent and identically distributed (IID) Rayleigh block fading by exploiting the Gaussianity of the channel matrix. This implies the optimal degrees of freedom (DoF), i.e., the capacity pre-log factor. Nevertheless, as far as the optimal DoF is concerned, IID Rayleigh fading is apparently a sufficient but not necessary condition. In this paper, we show that the optimal DoF for the IID Rayleigh block fading channel is also the optimal DoF for a more general class of generic block fading channels, in which the random channel matrix has finite power and finite differential entropy. Our main contribution is a novel converse proof based on the duality approach.

We consider the joint constellation design problem for noncoherent multiple-input multiple-output multiple-access channels. By analyzing the noncoherent maximum-likelihood detection error, we propose novel design criteria so as to minimize the error probability. For any given set of constellation sizes, the proposed metrics can be optimized over the set of signal matrices. Based on these criteria, we propose a simple and efficient construction consisting in partitioning a single-user constellation. Numerical results show that our proposed metrics are meaningful, and can be used as objectives to generate constellations through numerical optimization that perform better, for the same transmission rate and power constraint, than a common pilot-based scheme and the constellations optimized with existing metrics.

In this paper, we propose a practical structured constellation for non-coherent communication with a single transmit antenna over Rayleigh flat and block fading channel without instantaneous channel state information. The constellation symbols belong to the Grassmannian of lines and are defined up to a complex scaling. The constellation is generated by partitioning the Grassmannian of lines into a collection of bent hypercubes and defining a mapping onto each of these bent hypercubes such that the resulting symbols are approximately uniformly distributed on the Grassmannian. With a reasonable choice of parameters, this so-called cube-split constellation has higher packing efficiency, represented by the minimum distance, than the existing structured constellations. Furthermore, exploiting the constellation structure, we propose low-complexity greedy symbol decoder and log-likelihood ratio computation, as well as an efficient way to associate it to a multilevel code with multistage decoding. Numerical results show that the performance of the cube-split constellation is close to that of a numerically optimized constellation and better than other structured constellations. It also outperforms a coherent pilot-based scheme in terms of error probability and achievable data rate in the regime of short coherence time and large constellation size.

We consider the non-coherent single-input multiple-output (SIMO) multiple access channel with general signaling under spatially correlated Rayleigh block fading. We propose a novel soft-output multi-user detector that computes an approximate marginal posterior of each transmitted signal using only the knowledge about the channel distribution. Our detector is based on expectation propagation (EP) approximate inference and has polynomial complexity in the number of users, number of receive antennas and channel coherence time. We also propose two simplifications of this detector with reduced complexity. With Grassmannian signaling, the proposed detectors outperform a state-of-the-art non-coherent detector with projection-based interference mitigation. With pilot-assisted signaling, the EP detector outperforms, in terms of symbol error rate, some conventional coherent pilot-based detectors, including a sphere decoder and a joint channel estimation-data detection scheme. Our EP-based detectors produce accurate approximates of the true posterior leading to high achievable sum-rates. The gains of these detectors are further observed in terms of the bit error rate when using their soft outputs for a turbo channel decoder.

The optimal degree-of-freedom (DoF) region of the non-coherent multiple-access channels is still unknown in general. In this paper, we make some progress by deriving the entire optimal DoF region in the case of the two-user single-input multiple-output (SIMO) generic block fading channels. The achievability is based on a simple training-based scheme. The novelty of our result lies in the converse using a genie-aided bound and the duality upper bound. As a by-product, our result generalizes previous proofs for the single-user Rayleigh block fading channels.

We consider the content delivery problem in a fading multi-input single-output channel with cache-aided users. We are interested in the scalability of the equivalent content delivery rate when the number of users, K, is large. Analytical results show that, using coded caching and wireless multicasting, without channel state information at the transmitter, linear scaling of the content delivery rate with respect to K can be achieved in some different ways. First, if the multicast transmission spans over L independent sub-channels, e.g., in quasi-static fading if L = 1, and in block fading or multi-carrier systems if L 1, linear scaling can be obtained, when the product of the number of transmit antennas and the number of sub-channels scales logarithmically with K. Second, even with a fixed number of antennas, we can achieve the linear scaling with a threshold-based user selection requiring only one-bit feedbacks from the users. When CSIT is available, we propose a mixed strategy that combines spatial multiplexing and multicasting. Numerical results show that, by optimizing the power split between spatial multiplexing and multicasting, we can achieve a significant gain of the content delivery rate with moderate cache size.

We consider content delivery over fading broadcast channels. A server wants to transmit K files to K users, each equipped with a cache of finite size. Using the coded caching scheme of Maddah-Ali and Niesen, we design an opportunistic delivery scheme where the long-term sum content delivery rate scales with the number of users in the system. The proposed delivery scheme combines superposition coding together with appropriate power allocation across sub-files intended to different subsets of users. We analyze the long- term average sum content delivery rate achieved by two special cases of our scheme: 1) a selection scheme that chooses the subset of users with the largest weighted rate, and 2) a baseline scheme that transmits to all K users using the scheme of Maddah-Ali and Niesen. We prove that coded caching with appropriate user selection is scalable since it yields a linear increase of the average sum content delivery rate.

In this paper, we study the two-user non-coherent multiple-input multiple-output broadcast channel with spatially correlated Rayleigh block fading. We propose a scheme to exploit the statistical channel state information (CSI), namely, the knowledge of the covariance matrix, and derive the corresponding achievable degrees of freedom region. The main idea of the proposed scheme is based on rate-splitting, additive superposition coding, and channel training. Our result shows that statistical CSI can play an important role in enhancing the degrees of freedom of a non-coherent broadcast channel.