Current crowd counting models often rely on single-modal information, such as visual images or wireless signal data, leading to potential information loss and unsatisfactory recognition outcomes. To address this issue, we proposes a multimodal fusion-based crowd counting model, WiViFormer. Leveraging the strengths of Transformer networks, this model achieves fusion between Channel State Information (CSI) and visual image data. To overcome Transformer networks’ limitation of extracting only global features without capturing finer-grained characteristics, this study integrates Convolutional Neural Networks to extract local features. Moreover, owing to the computational complexity of Transformers, resulting in longer training and inference times, we introduces Linear Attention as an optimization to the original attention mechanism, reducing model complexity and enhancing training efficiency. To validate the effectiveness of the WiViFormer model, extensive experimental evaluations are conducted. The experimental results demonstrate that the model yields minimal errors while maintaining high efficiency. The code is available at https://github.com/zhecui-zc/WiViFormer_Crowd-Counting .

Serverless edge computing enables low-latency Internet of Things (IoT) services but faces scalability challenges due to complex concurrency and resource management. While existing approaches address function initialization and edge-cloud offloading, they often overlook the joint optimization of serverless concurrency and physical-layer resources, leading to potential service degradation and increased costs. To tackle this, we propose OPLA, a novel cross-layer framework for joint latency and concurrency optimization, designed to minimize end-to-end latency while optimizing concurrent serverless functions. OPLA models interactions between physical-layer resources (e.g., bandwidth, transmission power, offloading ratios) and application-layer concurrency decisions. The formulated problem is a highly non-convex mixed-integer nonlinear program (MINLP), which we prove to be at leastNP-complete in certain cases. To approximate its optimal solution efficiently, we propose an iterative exploration-exploitation procedure (EEP). The exploration phase, which is embarrassingly parallelizable, balances solution quality and efficiency with single parameter tuning. The exploitation phase is just a simple successive convex approximation to OPLA. Moreover, we also develop a presolve-postsolve heuristic with deterministic rounding to ensure feasibility for OPLA. Numerical results demonstrate that EEP consistently achieves solutions within a 6% optimality gap relative to a global solver across a wide range of network scales and workloads, confirming its effectiveness and scalability for real-world serverless edge deployments.

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) have huge potential to improve spectral and energy efficiency in future wireless systems at a minimal cost. However, early prototype results indicate that deploying hundreds or thousands of reflective elements is necessary for significant performance gains. Motivated by this, our study focuses onlarge-scaleRIS-assisted multi-user (MU) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. In this context, we propose an efficient algorithm to jointly design the precoders at the base station (BS) and the phase shifts at the RIS to maximize the weighted sum rate (WSR). In particular, leveraging an equivalent lower-dimensional reformulation of the WSR maximization problem, we derive a closed-form solution to optimize the precoders using the successive convex approximation (SCA) framework. While the equivalent reformulation proves to be efficient for the precoder optimization, we offer numerical insights into why the original formulation of the WSR optimization problem is better suited for the phase shift optimization. Subsequently, we develop a scaled projected gradient method (SPGM) and a novel line search procedure to optimize RIS phase shifts. Notably, we show that the complexity of the proposed methodscales linearly with the number of BS antennas and RIS reflective elements. Extensive numerical experiments demonstrate that the proposed algorithm significantly reduces both time and computational complexity while achieving higher WSR compared to baseline algorithms.

We present the first-of-a-kind closed-loop$2 \times 4$MIMO implementation for the downlink of 5G Open RAN using OpenAirInterface (OAI), which is capable of transmitting up to two transmission layers. Our implementation is a fully functional 5G New Radio (5G NR) system, including the 5G Core Network (5G CN), 5G Radio Access Network (5G RAN), as well as 5G NR User Equipment (UEs). This serves as a foundational framework for further advancements in the context of emerging Open RAN (O-RAN) development. A key feature of our implementation is the enhanced Channel State Information (CSI) reporting procedure at the UE, which includes Rank Indicator (RI), Precoding Matrix Indicator (PMI), and Channel Quality Indicator (CQI). It is adjusted for the extended configuration to maximize data rates. To demonstrate the performance of our implementation, we measure the downlink data rates using iperf3 in two scenarios: (i) fixed channels to assess two-layer data transmission and (ii) Rice1 channels for general transmission analysis. The obtained simulation results demonstrate that, compared to the existing$2 \times 2$MIMO configuration in the OAI, our implementation improves the data rates in almost all scenarios, especially at the high Signal-to-Noise-Ratios (SNRs).

We present a low-complexity algorithm for jointly designing active and passive beamforming to maximize the weighted sum-rate (WSR) in downlink RIS-assisted communication systems. We exploit an equivalent, lower-dimensional reformulation of the WSR maximization problem to derive a closed-form solution for active beamforming optimization using the successive convex approximation (SCA) framework. For passive beamforming, we propose a scaled projected gradient method (SPGM) algorithm and a novel line search technique to improve performance. Notably, we demonstrate that the complexity of the proposed method scales linearly with the number of BS antennas and RIS reflective elements. Extensive numerical experiments demonstrate that our proposed algorithm significantly reduces both run time and computational complexity, while enhancing WSR performance over known benchmarks.

Eavesdroppers of wireless signals want to infer as much as possible regarding the transmitter (Tx). Popular methods to minimize information leakage to the eavesdropper include covert communication, directional modulation, and beamforming with nulling. In this paper we do not attempt to prevent information leakage to the eavesdropper like the previous methods. Instead we propose to beamform the wireless signal at the$\mathbf{T x}$in such a way that it incorporates deceptive information. The beamformed orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signal includes a deceptive value for the Doppler (velocity) and range of the Tx. To design the optimal baseband waveform with these characteristics, we define and solve an optimization problem for power-efficient deceptive wireless beamforming (DWB). The relaxed convex Quadratic Program (QP) is solved using a heuristic algorithm. Our simulation results indicate that our DWB scheme can successfully inject deceptive information with low power consumption, while preserving the shape of the created beam.

Current crowd-counting models often rely on single-modal inputs, such as visual images or wireless signal data, which can result in significant information loss and suboptimal recognition performance. To address these shortcomings, we propose TransFusion, a novel multimodal fusion-based crowd-counting model that integrates Channel State Information (CSI) with image data. By leveraging the powerful capabilities of Transformer networks, TransFusion effectively combines these two distinct data modalities, enabling the capture of comprehen-sive global contextual information that is critical for accurate crowd estimation. However, while transformers are well capable of capturing global features, they potentially fail to identify finer-grained, local details essential for precise crowd counting. To mitigate this, we incorporate Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN s) into the model architecture, enhancing its ability to extract detailed local features that complement the global context provided by the Transformer. Extensive experimental evaluations demonstrate that TransFusion achieves high accuracy with minimal counting errors while maintaining superior efficiency.

This paper studies cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (CF-mMIMO) systems that underpin simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) for separate information users (IUs) and energy users (EUs) in Internet of Things (IoT) networks. We propose a joint access point (AP) operation mode selection and power control design, wherein certain APs are designated for energy transmission to EUs, while others are dedicated to information transmission to IUs. The performance of the system, from both a spectral efficiency (SE) and energy efficiency (EE) perspective, is comprehensively analyzed. Specifically, we formulate two mixed-integer nonconvex optimization problems for maximizing the average sum-SE and EE, under realistic power consumption models and constraints on the minimum individual SE requirements for individual IUs, minimum HE for individual EUs, and maximum transmit power at each AP. The challenging optimization problems are solved using successive convex approximation (SCA) techniques. The proposed framework design is further applied to the average sum-HE maximization and energy harvesting fairness problems. Our numerical results demonstrate that the proposed joint AP operation mode selection and power control algorithm can achieve EE performance gains of up to 4-fold and 5-fold over random AP operation mode selection, with and without power control respectively.

With its privacy preservation and communication efficiency, federated learning (FL) has emerged as a promising learning framework for beyond 5G wireless networks. It is anticipated that future wireless networks will jointly serve both FL and downlink non-FL user groups in the same time-frequency resource. While in the downlink of each FL iteration, both groups simultaneously receive data from the base station in the same time-frequency resource, the uplink of each FL iteration requires bidirectional communication to support uplink transmission for FL users and downlink transmission for non-FL users. To overcome this challenge, we present half-duplex (HD) and full-duplex (FD) communication schemes to serve both groups. More specifically, we adopt the massive multiple-input multiple-output technology and aim to maximize the minimum effective rate of non-FL users under a quality of service (QoS) latency constraint for FL users. Since the formulated problem is nonconvex, we propose a power control algorithm based on successive convex approximation to find a stationary solution. Numerical results show that the proposed solutions perform significantly better than the considered baselines schemes. Moreover, the FD-based scheme outperforms the HD-based counterpart in scenarios where the self-interference is small or moderate and/or the size of FL model updates is large.

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS)-assisted massive multiple-input multiple-output (mMIMO) is a promising technology for applications in next-generation networks. However, reflecting-only RIS provides limited coverage compared to a simultaneously transmitting and reflecting RIS (STAR-RIS). Hence, in this paper, we focus on the downlink achievable rate and its optimization of a STAR-RIS-assisted mMIMO system. Contrary to previous works on STAR-RIS, we consider mMIMO, correlated fading, and multiple user equipments (UEs) at both sides of the RIS. In particular, we introduce an estimation approach of the aggregated channel with the main benefit of reduced overhead links instead of estimating the individual channels. Next, leveraging channel hardening in mMIMO and the use-and-forget bounding technique, we obtain an achievable rate in closed-form that only depends on statistical channel state information (CSI). To optimize the amplitudes and phase shifts of the STAR-RIS, we employ a projected gradient ascent method (PGAM) that simultaneously adjusts the amplitudes and phase shifts for both energy splitting (ES) and mode switching (MS) STAR-RIS operation protocols. By considering large-scale fading, the proposed optimization can be performed every several coherence intervals, which can significantly reduce overhead. Considering that STAR-RIS has twice the number of controllable parameters compared to conventional reflecting-only RIS, this accomplishment offers substantial practical benefits. Simulations are carried out to verify the analytical results, reveal the interplay of the achievable rate with fundamental parameters, and show the superiority of STAR-RIS regarding its achievable rate compared to its reflecting-only counterpart.

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is expected to be offered as a fundamental service in the upcoming sixth-generation (6G) communications standard. However, due to the exposure of information-bearing signals to the sensing targets, ISAC poses unique security challenges. In recent years, intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) have emerged as a novel hardware technology capable of enhancing the physical layer security of wireless communication systems. Therefore, in this paper, we consider the problem of transmit and reflective beamforming design in a secure IRS-enabled ISAC system to maximize the beampattern gain at the target. The formulated non-convex optimization problem is challenging to solve due to the intricate coupling between the design variables. Moreover, alternating optimization (AO) based methods are inefficient in finding a solution in such scenarios, and convergence to a stationary point is not theoretically guaranteed. Therefore, we propose a novel successive convex approximation (SCA)-based second-order cone programming (SOCP) scheme in which all of the design variables are updated simultaneously in each iteration. The proposed SCA-based method significantly outperforms a penalty-based benchmark scheme previously proposed in this context. Moreover, we also present a detailed complexity analysis of the proposed scheme, and show that despite having slightly higher per-iteration complexity than the benchmark approach the average problem-solving time of the proposed method is notably lower than that of the benchmark scheme.

This paper studies cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (CF-mMIMO) systems incorporating simultane-ous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) for separate information users (IUs) and energy users (EUs) in Internet of Things (IoT) networks. To optimize both the spectral efficiency (SE) of IUs and harvested energy (HE) of EUs, we propose a joint access point (AP) operation mode selection and power control design, wherein certain APs are designated for energy transmission to EUs, while others are dedicated to information transmission to IUs. We investigate the problem of maximizing the total HE for EUs, considering constraints on SE for individual IUs and minimum HE for individual EUs. Our numerical results showcase that the proposed AP operation mode selection algorithm can provide up to 76% and 130% performance gains over random AP operation mode selection with and without power control, respectively,

This paper focuses on the fundamental problem of maximizing the achievable weighted sum rate (WSR) at information receivers (IRs) in an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted simultaneous wireless information and power transfer system under a multiple-input multiple-output (SWIPT-MIMO) setting, subject to a quality-of-service (QoS) constraint at the energy receivers (ERs). Notably, due to the coupling between the transmit precoding matrix and the passive beamforming vector in the QoS constraint, the formulated non-convex optimization problem is challenging to solve. We first decouple the design variables in the constraints following a penalty dual decomposition method, and then apply an alternating gradient projection algorithm to achieve a stationary solution to the reformulated optimization problem. The proposed algorithm nearly doubles the WSR compared to that achieved by a block-coordinate descent (BCD) based benchmark scheme. At the same time, the complexity of the proposed scheme grows linearly with the number of IRS elements while that of the benchmark scheme is proportional to the cube of the number of IRS elements.

Federated learning (FL) can empower Internet-of-Vehicles (IoV) networks by leveraging smart vehicles (SVs) to participate in the learning process with minimum data exchanges and privacy disclosure. The collected data and learned knowledge can help the vehicular service provider (VSP) improve the global model accuracy, e.g., for road safety as well as better profits for both VSP and participating SVs. Nonetheless, there exist major challenges when implementing the FL in IoV networks, such as dynamic activities and diverse quality-of-information (QoI) from a large number of SVs, VSP's limited payment budget, and profit competition among SVs. In this paper, we propose a novel dynamic FL-based economic framework for an IoV network to address these challenges. Specifically, the VSP first implements an SV selection method to determine a set of the best SVs for the FL process according to the significance of their current locations and information history at each learning round. Then, each selected SV can collect on-road information and propose a payment contract to the VSP based on its collected QoI. For that, we develop a multi-principal one-agent contract-based policy to maximize the profits of the VSP and learning SVs under the VSP's limited payment budget and asymmetric information between the VSP and SVs. Through experimental results using real-world on-road datasets, we show that our framework can converge 57% faster (even with only 10% of active SVs in the network) and obtain much higher social welfare of the network (up to 27.2 times) compared with those of other baseline FL methods.

Intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) have shown huge advantages in many potential use cases and thus have been considered a promising candidate for next-generation wireless systems. In this paper, we consider an IRS-assisted multigroup multicast (IRS-MGMC) system in a multiple-input single-output (MISO) scenario, for which the related existing literature is rather limited. In particular, we aim to jointly design the transmit beamformers and IRS phase shifts to maximize the sum rate of the system under consideration. In order to obtain a numerically efficient solution to the formulated non-convex optimization problem, we propose an alternating projected gradient (APG) method where each iteration admits a closed-form and is shown to be superior to a known solution that is derived from the majorization-minimization (MM) method in terms of both achievable sum rate and required complexity, i.e., run time. In particular, we show that the complexity of the proposed APG method grows linearly with the number of IRS tiles, while that of the known solution in comparison grows with the third power of the number of IRS tiles. The numerical results reported in this paper extend our understanding on the achievable rates of large-scale IRS-assisted multigroup multicast systems.

Security and energy efficiency have become crucial features in the modern-era wireless communication. In this paper, we consider an energy-efficient design for intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted multiple-input multiple-output multiple-eavesdropper (MIMOME) wiretap channels (WTC). Our objective is to jointly optimize the transmit covariance matrix and the IRS phase-shifts to maximize the secrecy energy efficiency (SEE) of the considered system subject to a secrecy rate constraint at the legitimate receiver. To tackle this challenging non-convex problem in which the design variables are coupled in the objective and the constraint, we propose a penalty dual decomposition based alternating gradient projection (PDDAPG) method to obtain an efficient solution. We also show that the computational complexity of the proposed algorithm grows only linearly with the number of reflecting elements at the IRS, as well as with the number of antennas at transmitter/receivers’ nodes. Our results confirm that using an IRS is helpful to improve the SEE of MIMOME WTC compared to its no-IRS counterpart only when the power consumption at IRS is small. In particular, and a large-sized IRS is not always beneficial for the SEE of a MIMOME WTC.

This paper considers the fundamental power allocation problem in cell-free massive mutiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) systems which aims at maximizing the total energy efficiency (EE) under a sum power constraint at each access point (AP) and a quality-of-service (QoS) constraint at each user. Existing solutions for this optimization problem are based on solving a sequence of second-order cone programs (SOCPs), whose computational complexity scales dramatically with the network size. Therefore, they are not implementable for practical large-scale cell-free massive MIMO systems. To tackle this issue, we propose an iterative power control algorithm based on the frame work of an accelerated projected gradient (APG) method. In particular, each iteration of the proposed method is done by simple closed-form expressions, where a penalty method is applied to bring constraints into the objective in the form of penalty functions. Finally, the convergence of the proposed algorithm is analytically proved and numerically compared to the known solution based on SOCP. Simulations results demonstrate that our proposed power control algorithm can achieve the same EE as the existing SOCPs-based method, but more importantly, its run time is much lower (one to two orders of magnitude reduction in run time, compared to the SOCPs-based approaches).

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) assisted radio is considered as an enabling technology with great potential for the sixth-generation (6G) wireless communications standard. The achievable secrecy rate (ASR) is one of the most fundamental metrics to evaluate the capability of facilitating secure communication for RIS-assisted systems. However, the definition of ASR is based on Shannon's information theory, which generally requires long codewords and thus fails to quantify the secrecy of emerging delay-critical services. Motivated by this, in this paper we investigate the problem of maximizing the secrecy rate under a delay-limited quality-of-service (QoS) constraint, termed as the effective secrecy rate (ESR), for an RIS-assisted multiple-input single-output (MISO) wiretap channel subject to a transmit power constraint. We propose an iterative method to find a stationary solution to the formulated non-convex optimization problem using a block coordinate ascent method (BCAM), where both the beamforming vector at the transmitter as well as the phase shifts at the RIS are obtained in closed forms in each iteration. We also present a convergence proof, an efficient implementation, and the associated complexity analysis for the proposed method. Our numerical results demonstrate that the proposed optimization algorithm converges significantly faster that an existing solution. The simulation results also confirm that the secrecy rate performance of the system with stringent delay requirements reduces significantly compared to the system without any delay constraints, and that this reduction can be significantly mitigated by an appropriately placed large-size RIS.

We consider the problem of max-min fairness for uplink cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output which is a potential technology for beyond 5G networks. More specifically, we aim to maximize the minimum spectral efficiency of all users subject to the per-user power constraint, assuming linear receive combining technique at access points. The considered problem can be further divided into two subproblems: the receiver filter coefficient design and the power control problem. While the receiver coefficient design turns out to be a generalized eigenvalue problem and thus admits a closed-form solution, the power control problem is numerically troublesome. To solve the power control problem, existing approaches rely on geometric programming (GP) which is not suitable for large-scale systems. To overcome the high-complexity issue of the GP method, we first reformulate the power control problem into a convex program, and then apply a smoothing technique in combination with an accelerated projected gradient method to solve it. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed solution can achieve almost the same objective but in much lesser time than the existing GP-based method.

This paper presents two different low-complexity methods for obtaining the secrecy capacity of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wiretap channel subject to a sum power constraint (SPC). The challenges in deriving computationally efficient solutions to the secrecy capacity problem are due to the fact that the secrecy rate is a difference of convex functions (DC) of the transmit covariance matrix, for which its convexity is only known for the degraded case. In the first method, we capitalize on the accelerated DC algorithm, which requires solving a sequence of convex subproblems. In particular, we show that each subproblem indeed admits a water-filling solution. In the second method, based on the equivalent convex-concave reformulation of the secrecy capacity problem, we develop a so-called partial best response algorithm (PBRA). Each iteration of the PBRA is also done in closed form. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed methods.

In this paper we consider the problem of computing the capacity of multi-user Gaussian MIMO systems under multiple linear transmit covariance constraints (LTCCs). These LTCCs are general enough to include many transmit power constraints such as sum power constraint (SPC) or per-antenna power constraint (PAPC) as special cases. For the considered MIMO systems with multiple LTCCs, existing solutions are based on subgradient or gradient descent methods, which are known to have slow convergence in general and are therefore not applicable to massive MIMO systems. In contrast, we propose a low-complexity semi-closed-form approach to computing the MIMO capacity for the system of interest. To this end, the considered problem in the broadcast channel is transformed into an equivalent minimax problem in the multiple access channel. The special structure of the minimax problem allows us to derive water-filling-like algorithms based on a novel combination of alternating optimization and concave-convex procedure. For the important case of joint SPC and PAPC, we also propose analytical expressions to find the optimal covariance matrix. Extensive analytical and numerical results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach under various massive MIMO system settings.

We consider utility maximization problems in the downlink cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) whereby a large number of access points (APs) simultaneously serve a group of users. Four fundamental maximization objectives are of interest: (i) average spectral efficiency (SE), (ii) proportional fairness, (iii) harmonic-rate, and (iv) minimum SE of all users, subject to a sum power constraint at each AP. As considered problems are non-convex, existing solutions normally rely on successive convex approximation (SCA) and use off-the-shelf convex solvers, which implement an interior-point algorithm, to solve derived convex problems. The complexity of such methods scales quickly with the problem size. Therefore, we propose an accelerated projected gradient method to solve the considered problems. Particularly, each iteration of the proposed solution is given in a closed form and only requires the first order oracle of the objective, rather than the Hessian matrix as in known solutions, and thus is much more memory efficient. Numerical results demonstrate that our proposed solution achieves the same utility performance but with far less run-time, compared to the SCA method. Simulation results show that large-scale cell-free massive MIMO has the intrinsic user fairness, i.e. the four utility functions can deliver nearly uniformed services to all users.

This paper presents novel numerical approaches to finding the secrecy capacity of the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wiretap channel subject to multiple linear transmit covariance constraints, including sum power constraint, per antenna power constraints and interference power constraint. An analytical solution to this problem is not known and existing numerical solutions suffer from slow convergence rate and/or high per-iteration complexity. Deriving computationally efficient solutions to the secrecy capacity problem is challenging since the secrecy rate is expressed as a difference of convex functions (DC) of the transmit covariance matrix, for which its convexity is only known for some special cases. In this paper we propose two low-complexity methods to compute the secrecy capacity along with a convex reformulation for degraded channels. In the first method we capitalize on the accelerated DC algorithm which requires solving a sequence of convex subproblems, for which we propose an efficient iterative algorithm where each iteration admits a closed-form solution. In the second method, we rely on the concave-convex equivalent reformulation of the secrecy capacity problem which allows us to derive the so-called partial best response algorithm to obtain an optimal solution. Notably, each iteration of the second method can also be done in closed form. The simulation results demonstrate a faster convergence rate of our methods compared to other known solutions. We carry out extensive numerical experiments to evaluate the impact of various parameters on the achieved secrecy capacity.

We consider the downlink of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) assisted cellular network consisting of multiple cooperative UAVs, whose operations are coordinated by a central ground controller using wireless fronthaul links, to serve multiple ground user equipments (UEs). A problem of jointly designing UAVs’ positions, transmit beamforming, as well as UAV-UE association is formulated in the form of mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) to maximize the sum UEs’ achievable rate subject to limited fronthaul capacity constraints. Solving the considered problem is hard owing to its non-convexity and the unavailability of channel state information (CSI) due to the movement of UAVs. To tackle these effects, we propose a novel algorithm comprising of two distinguishing features: (i) exploiting a deep Q-learning approach to tackle the issue of CSI unavailability for determining UAVs’ positions, (ii) developing a difference of convex algorithm (DCA) to efficiently solve for the UAV’s transmit beamforming and UAV-UE association. The proposed algorithm recursively solves the problem of interest until convergence, where each recursion executes two steps. In the first step, the deep Q-learning (DQL) algorithm allows UAVs to learn the overall network state and account for the joint movement of all UAVs to adapt their locations. In the second step, given the determined UAVs’ positions from the DQL algorithm, the DCA iteratively solves a convex approximate subproblem of the original non-convex MINLP problem with the updated parameters, where the problem’s variables are transmit beamforming and UAV-UE association. Numerical results show that our design outperforms the existing algorithms in terms of algorithmic convergence and network performance with a gain of up to 70%.

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) represent a new technology that can shape the radio wave propagation in wireless networks and offers a great variety of possible performance and implementation gains. Motivated by this, we study the achievable rate optimization for multi-stream multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems equipped with an RIS, and formulate a joint optimization problem of the covariance matrix of the transmitted signal and the RIS elements. To solve this problem, we propose an iterative optimization algorithm that is based on the projected gradient method (PGM). We derive the step size that guarantees the convergence of the proposed algorithm and we define a backtracking line search to improve its convergence rate. Furthermore, we introduce the total free space path loss (FSPL) ratio of the indirect and direct links as a first-order measure of the applicability of RISs in the considered communication system. Simulation results show that the proposed PGM achieves the same achievable rate as a state-of-the-art benchmark scheme, but with a significantly lower computational complexity. In addition, we demonstrate that the RIS application is particularly suitable to increase the achievable rate in indoor environments, as even a small number of RIS elements can provide a substantial achievable rate gain.

We consider uplink multiuser wireless communications systems, where the base station (BS) receiver is equipped with a large-scale antenna array and resolution adaptive analog-to-digital converters (ADCs). The aim is to maximize the energy efficiency (EE) at the BS subject to constraints on the users' quality-of-service. The approach is to jointly optimize both the number of quantization bits at the ADCs and the on/off modes of the radio frequency (RF) processing chains. The considered problem is a discrete nonlinear program, the optimal solution of which is difficult to find. We develop an efficient algorithm based on the discrete branch-reduce-and-bound (DBRnB) framework. It finds the globally optimal solutions to the problem. In particular, we make some modifications, which significantly improve the convergence performance. The numerical results demonstrate that optimizing jointly the number of quantization bits and on/off mode can achieve remarkable EE gains compared to only optimizing the number of quantization bits.

We consider a secure transmission including a transmitter, a receiver and an eavesdropper, each being equipped with multiple antennas. The aim is to develop a low-complexity and scalable method to find a globally optimal solution to the problem of secrecy rate maximization under a total power constraint at the transmitter. In principle, the original formulation of the problem is nonconvex. However, it can be equivalently translated into finding a saddle point of a minimax convex-concave program. An existing approach finds the saddle point using the Newton method, whose computational cost increases quickly with the number of transmit antennas, making it unsuitable for large scale antenna systems. To this end, we propose an iterative algorithm based on alternating optimization, which is guaranteed to converge to a saddle point, and thus achieves a globally optimal solution to the considered problem. In particular, each subproblem of the proposed iterative method admits a closed-form solution. We analytically show that the iteration cost of our proposed method is much cheaper than that of the known solution. As a result, numerical results demonstrate that the proposed method remarkably outperforms the existing one in terms of the overall run time.

We consider the downlink of a cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system where large number of access points (APs) simultaneously serve a group of users. Two fundamental problems are of interest, namely (i) to maximize the total spectral efficiency (SE), and (ii) to maximize the minimum SE of all users. As the considered problems are non-convex, existing solutions rely on successive convex approximation to find a sub-optimal solution. The known methods use off-the-shelf convex solvers, which basically implement an interior-point algorithm, to solve the derived convex problems. The main issue of such methods is that their complexity does not scale favorably with the problem size, limiting previous studies to cell-free massive MIMO of moderate scales. Thus the potential of cell-free massive MIMO has not been fully understood. To address this issue, we propose an accelerated projected gradient method to solve the considered problems. Particularly, the proposed solution is found in closed-form expressions and only requires the first order information of the objective, rather than the Hessian matrix as in known solutions, and thus is much more memory efficient. Numerical results demonstrate that our proposed solution achieves far less run-time, compared to other second-order methods.

We present the design and implementation of a low-cost, accurate and non-invasive wireless fall detection system utilising commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) 802.11n WLAN network interface cards (NICs). The system utilises the channel state information (CSI) of the wireless channel between a transmitter and a receiver. Notably, in addition to the CSI amplitude, the proposed system exploits the phase difference over 2 receiving antennas to detect patterns uniquely attributed to a human falling. Our extensive experimental results show that the CSI phase difference is a more granular measure at 5 GHz rather than the amplitude. The proposed method for fall detection consists of two stages. In the first stage, we quickly segment two types of actions, fall-like activities and falling activities to reduce the computational power required. In the second stage, we build a classification algorithm with newly defined features to detect three types of falls, namely walking-falls, standing-falls and sitting-falls. The concept of a sitting-fall is introduced whereby a person falls as they are standing up or sitting down. This is much more subtle than a walking-fall or standing-fall. To this end we introduce new features for signal classification such as the velocity of change of the standard deviation of the CSI phase difference. We also improve on existing features such as TimeLag proposed in [1]. We carry out extensive experiments to evaluate the performance of the proposed fall detection system. Particularly, the results demonstrate a balanced accuracy of 96 % for the proposed system, compared to 91 % for the top state-of-the-art solution [1].

Low latency communications is one of the key design targets in future wireless networks. We propose a queue aware algorithm to optimize resources guaranteeing low latency in multiple-input single-output (MISO) networks. Proposed system model is based on dynamic network architecture (DNA), where some terminals can be configured as temporary access points (APs) on demand when connected to the Internet. Therein, we jointly optimize the user-AP association and queue weighted sum rate of the network, subject to limitations of total transmit power of the APs and minimum delay requirements of the users. The user-AP association is viewed as finding a sparsity constrained solution to the problem of minimizing ℓq-norm of the difference between queue and service rate of users. Finally, the efficacy of the proposed algorithm in terms of network latency and its fast convergence are demonstrated using numerical experiments. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm yields up to two-fold latency reductions compared to the state-of-the-art techniques.

We investigate the coordinated multi-point noncoherent joint transmission (JT) in dense small cell networks. The goal is to design beamforming vectors for macro cell and small cell base stations (BSs) such that the weighted sum rate of the system is maximized, subject to a total transmit power at individual BSs. The optimization problem is inherently nonconvex and intractable, making it difficult to explore the full potential performance of the scheme. To this end, we first propose an algorithm to find a globally optimal solution based on the generic monotonic branch reduce and bound optimization framework. Then, for a more computationally efficient method, we adopt the inner approximation (InAp) technique to efficiently derive a locally optimal solution, which is numerically shown to achieve near-optimal performance. In addition, for decentralized networks such as those comprising of multi-access edge computing servers, we develop an algorithm based on the alternating direction method of multipliers, which distributively implements the InAp-based solution. Our main conclusion is that the noncoherent JT is a promising transmission scheme for dense small cell networks, since it can exploit the densitification gain, outperforms the coordinated beamforming, and is amenable to distributed implementation.

Beamforming design for downlink coordinated multi-point (CoMP) transmission of dense small cell networks is considered. The goal is to maximize the weighted sum rate of the system subject to constraints on maximum transmit power at macro cell and small cell base stations (BSs). Here we focus on the noncoherent joint transmission technique, since it does not require tight network synchronization, and thus is more practically appealing. The considered optimization problem is intractable, thus we adopt the inner approximation (IA) to efficiently derive a locally optimal solution. Then, we develop a distributed implementation of the proposed IA based algorithm, based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). More explicitly, in the distributed algorithm, the convex approximate subproblems obtained by the IA principles are solved by the ADMM procedure. As the result, the beamforming vectors are computed locally at the BSs. Numerical results are provided to confirm the validity of the proposed algorithms.

In this paper, we study the sum rate maximization for a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system with successive zero-forcing dirty-paper coding (SZFDPC) and per-antenna power constraint (PAPC). Although SZFDPC is a low-complexity alternative to the optimal dirty paper coding, efficient algorithms to compute its sum rate are still open problems especially under practical PAPC. The existing solution to the considered problem is computationally inefficient due to employing high-complexity interior-point method. In this study, we propose two novel low-complexity approaches to this important problem. More specifically, the first algorithm achieves the optimal solution by transforming the original problem in the broadcast channel into an equivalent problem in the multiple access channel, then the resulting problem is solved by alternating optimization together with successive convex approximation. We also derive a suboptimal solution based on machine learning to which simple linear regressions are applicable. The approaches are analyzed and validated extensively to demonstrate their superiors over the existing approach.

We consider a multi-pair amplify-and-forward relay network where the energy-constrained relays adopting the time-switching protocol harvest energy from the radio-frequency signals transmitted by the users for assisting user data transmission. Both one-way and two-way relaying techniques are investigated. Aiming at energy efficiency (EE) fairness among the user pairs, we construct an energy consumption model incorporating rate-dependent signal processing power, the dependence on output power level of power amplifiers' efficiency, and nonlinear energy harvesting (EH) circuits. Then, we formulate the max-min EE fairness problems in which the data rates, users' transmit power, relays' processing coefficient, and EH time are jointly optimized under the constraints on the quality of service and users' maximum transmit power. To achieve efficient suboptimal solutions to these nonconvex problems, we devise monotonic descent algorithms based on the inner approximation (IA) framework, which solve a second-order-cone program in each iteration. To further simplify the designs, we propose an approach combining IA and zero-forcing beamforming, which eliminates inter-pair interference and reduces the numbers of variables and required iterations. Finally, extensive numerical results are presented to validate the proposed approaches. More specifically, the results demonstrate that ignoring the realistic aspects of power consumption might degrade the performance remarkably, and jointly designing parameters involved could significantly enhance the EE.

We proposed several energy-efficient resource allocation algorithms for the downlink of an orthogonal frequency-division-multiple-access (OFDMA) based femtocell heterogeneous networks (HetNets). Heterogeneous QoS and fairness in rate are investigated in the proposed resource allocation problem. A dense deployment of femtocells in the coverage area of a central macrocell is considered and energy usage of both femtocell and macrocell users are optimized simultaneously. We aim to maximize the weighted sum of the individual energy efficiencies (WSEEMax) and the network energy efficiency (NEEMax) while satisfying the following: (1) minimum throughput for delay-sensitive (DS) users, (2) fairness constraint for delay-tolerant (DT) users, (3) required constraints of OFDMA systems. The problem is formulated in three different forms: mixed 0-1 integer programming formulation, time-sharing formulation and sparsity-inducing formulation. The proposed resource block (RB) and power optimization problems are combinatorial and highly non-convex due to the fractional form of the objective function, the integer constraint of OFDMA RBs and non-affine fairness. We adopt the successive convex approximation (SCA) approach and transform the problems into a sequence of convex subproblems. With the proposed algorithms, we show that the overall joint RB and power allocation schemes converge to suboptimal solutions. Numerical examples confirm the merits of the proposed algorithms.

We study the downlink of a limited fronthaul capacity cloud-radio access networks (C-RANs). Three energy efficiency metrics, namely, global energy efficiency (GEE), weighted sum energy efficiency (WSEE), and energy efficiency fairness (EEF) are maximized by jointly designing transmit beamforming, remote radio head (RRH) selection, and RRH-user association. Furthermore, we incorporate a rate-dependent fronthaul power model, in which the fronthaul power consumption is proportional to the user sum rate. The formulated problems are difficult to solve. Our first contribution is to customize a branch and reduce and bound (BRB) method based on monotonic optimization to find globally optimal solutions for the three energy efficiency maximization problems. Subsequently, for a more practical approach, we propose a unified framework based on successive convex approximation (SCA) method that can be applied to all the considered problems. Our novelty lies in the equivalent transformations leading to more tractable problems that are amenable to the SCA. Specifically, appropriate continuous relaxation and convex approximation techniques are employed to arrive at a sequence of second-order cone programs (SOCPs) for which dedicated solvers are available. Then, a post-processing algorithm is devised to obtain a high-performance feasible solution from the continuous relaxation. The numerical results demonstrate that the proposed SCA-based algorithms converge rapidly and achieve near-optimal performance as well as outperform the known methods. They also highlight the importance of the rate dependent fronthaul power model in designing the energy efficient C-RANs.

In this paper, we revisit the fundamental problem of computing MIMO capacity under per-antenna power constraint (PAPC). Unlike the sum power constraint counterpart which likely admits water-filling-like solutions, MIMO capacity with PAPC has been largely studied under the framework of generic convex optimization. The two main shortcomings of these approaches are 1) their complexity scales quickly with the problem size, which is not appealing for large-scale antenna systems and/or 2) their convergence properties are sensitive to the problem data. As a starting point, we first consider a single user MIMO scenario and propose two provably-convergent iterative algorithms to find its capacity, the first method based on fixed-point iteration and the other based on alternating optimization and minimax duality. In particular, the two proposed methods can leverage the water-filling algorithm in each iteration and converge faster, compared with current methods. We then extend the proposed solutions to multiuser MIMO systems with dirty paper coding-based transmission strategies. In this regard, capacity regions of Gaussian broadcast channels with PAPC are also computed using closed-form expressions. Numerical results are provided to demonstrate the outperformance of the proposed solutions over existing approaches.

A joint beamforming and remote radio head (RRH)-user association design for downlink of cloud radio access networks (CRANs) is considered. The aim is to maximize the system energy efficiency subject to constraints on users' quality-of-service, capacity of front haul links and transmit power. Different to the conventional power consumption models, we embrace the dependence of baseband signal processing power on the data rate, and the dynamics of the power amplifiers' efficiency. The considered problem is a mixed Boolean nonconvex program whose optimal solution is difficult to find. As our main contribution, we provide a discrete branch-reduce-and-bound (DBRnB) approach to solve the problem globally. We also make some modifications to the standard DBRnB procedure. Those remarkably improve the convergence performance. Numerical results are provided to confirm the validity of the proposed method.

In this paper, an efficient approach for weighted sum rate maximization (WSRMax) for zero-forcing (ZF) methods with general linear transmit covariance constraints (LTCCs) is proposed. This problem has been extensively studied separately for some special cases such as for sum power or per-antenna power constraint (PAPC). Due to some practical and regulatory requirements, these power constraints alone are not in general sufficient, which motivates the consideration of general LTCCs. On the other hand, the zero-forcing (ZF) is a simple linear precoding technique to mitigate inter-user interference. The problem of WSRMax for ZF methods with LTCCs was studied previously using a gradient descent algorithm with barrier functions, but this method was also shown to converge slowly. To derive an efficient solution to this problem, we first reformulate it as an equivalent minimax problem using Lagrangian duality. The obtained result in fact resembles BC-MAC duality but is specialized for ZF methods. We then combine alternating optimization and concave-convex procedure to efficiently compute a saddle point of the minimax problem. The proposed method is numerically shown to converge very fast and its complexity scales linearly with the number of users.

We consider the downlink virtualized cloud-radio access networks (C-RANs) with limited capacity fronthaul. A novel virtual computing resource allocation (VCRA) which can dynamically split the users workload into smaller fragments to be served by virtual machines is presented. Under the proposed scheme, we aim at maximizing the network energy efficiency (EE) by a joint design of virtual computing resources, transmit beamforming, remote radio head (RRH) selection, and RRH-user association, considering rate dependent fronthaul power consumption model. The formulated problem is generally combinatorial and NP-hard. For an appealing solution approach, we resort to the difference of convex algorithm (DCA) to solve the continuous relaxed problem. In particular, Lipschitz continuity is derived for non-convex parts to arrive at a sequence of convex quadratic programs, which can be solved efficiently by modern convex solvers. Finally, a post-processing procedure is proposed to obtain a high-performance feasible solution from the continuous relaxation. Numerical results show that the proposed algorithms converge rapidly and the proposed scheme significantly improves the network EE compared to the existing schemes.

This paper presents an efficient approach to computing the capacity of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels under multiple linear transmit covariance constraints (LTCCs). LTCCs are general enough to include several special types of power constraints as special cases such as the sum power constraint (SPC), per-antenna power constraint (PAPC), or a combination thereof. Despite its importance and generality, most of the existing literature considers either SPC or PAPC independently. Efficient solutions to the computation of the MIMO capacity with a combination of SPC and PAPC have been recently reported, but were only dedicated to multiple-input single-output (MISO) systems. For the general case of LTCCs, we propose a low-complexity semi-closed-form approach to the computation of the MIMO capacity. Specifically, a modified minimax duality is first invoked to transform the considered problem in the broadcast channel into an equivalent minimax problem in the dual multiple access channel. Then alternating optimization and concave-convex procedure are utilized to derive water-filling-based algorithms to find a saddle point of the minimax problem. This is different from the state-of-the-art solutions to the considered problem, which are based on interior-point or subgradient methods. Analytical and numerical results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed low-complexity solution under various MIMO scenarios.

Dynamic network architectures (DNAs) have been developed under the assumption that some terminals can be converted into temporary access points (APs) anytime when connected to the Internet. In this paper, we consider the problem of assigning a group of users to a set of potential APs with the aim to maximize the downlink system throughput of DNA networks, subject to total transmit power and users' quality of service (QoS) constraints. In our first method, we relax the integer optimization variables to be continuous. The resulting non-convex continuous optimization problem is solved using successive convex approximation framework to arrive at a sequence of second-order cone programs (SOCPs). In the next method, the selection process is viewed as finding a sparsity constrained solution to our problem of sum rate maximization. It is demonstrated in numerical results that while the first approach has better data rates for dense networks, the sparsity oriented method has a superior speed of convergence. Moreover, for the scenarios considered, in addition to comprehensively outperforming some well-known approaches, our algorithms yield data rates close to those obtained by branch and bound method.

We consider the virtualization technique in the downlink transmission of limited fronthaul capacity cloud-radio access networks. A novel virtual computing resource allocation (VCRA) method which can dynamically split the users workload into smaller fragments to be served by virtual machines is presented. Under the proposed scheme, we aim at maximizing the network energy efficiency by a joint design of virtual computing resources, transmit beamforming, remote radio head (RRH) selection, and RRH-user association. Moreover, we construct a more realistic fronthaul power consumption model, which is directly proportional to users' rate transmitted by the corresponding RRHs. The formulated problem is combinatorial and difficult to solve in general. Our first contribution is to customize a branch-and-reduce-and-bound method to attain a globally optimal solution. To compute a high-quality approximate solution, a standard routine is used to deal with the continuous relaxation of the original problem. However, the proposed continuous relaxation is non-convex which implies another challenge. For a practically appealing solution approach, we resort to a local optimization method, namely the difference of convex algorithm. Our second contribution is on the use of Lipschitz continuity to arrive at a sequence of convex quadratic programs, which can be solved efficiently by modern convex solvers. Finally, a post-processing procedure is proposed to obtain a high-performance feasible solution from the continuous relaxation. Extensive numerical results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms converge rapidly and achieve near-optimal performance as well as outperform other known methods. Moreover, we numerically show that the VCRA scheme significantly improves the system energy efficiency compared to the existing schemes.

This paper considers a multicell downlink channel in which multiple base stations (BSs) cooperatively serve users by jointly precoding shared data transported from a central processor over limited-capacity backhaul links. We jointly design the beamformers and BS-user link selection so as to maximize the sum rate subject to user-specific signal-to-interference-noise (SINR) requirements, per-BS backhaul capacity and per-BS power constraints. As existing solutions for the considered problem are suboptimal and their optimality remains unknown due to the lack of globally optimal solutions, we characterized this gap by proposing an globally optimal algorithm for the problem of interest. Specifically, the proposed method is customized from a generic framework of a branch and bound algorithm applied to discrete monotonic optimization. We show that the proposed algorithm converges after a finite number of iterations, and can serve as a benchmark for existing suboptimal solutions and those that will be developed for similar contexts in the future. In this regard, we numerically compare the proposed optimal solution to a current state-of-the-art, which show that this suboptimal method only attains 70% to 90% of the optimal performance.

This paper considers the downlink transmission of cloud-radio access networks with limited fronthaul capacity constraint. Unlike the existing approaches where power of fronthaul is a quadratic or linear function of respective variables, we consider a more practical model where the power consumed by fronthaul depends on the rate served by the corresponding remote radio head (RRH). Then, we formulate a joint design of RRH selection, RRH-user association, and transmit beamforming for the problem of energy efficiency maximization. The formulated problem is a mixed-integer nonconvex program, which is generally NP-hard. For this nonconvex program, we leverage successive convex approximation (SCA) method to develop efficient iterative algorithms to find a high performance. Particularly, we iteratively approximate the continuous nonconvex constraints by conic ones so that the problem obtained at each iteration is a mixed-integer second order cone programming (MI-SOCP) for which dedicated solvers are available. To further reduce the computational complexity, an algorithm based on continuous relaxation and post-processing is proposed. Results show that our proposed algorithms converge faster and outperform known solutions.

This paper considers the downlink transmission of cloud-radio access networks (C-RANs) with limited fronthaul capacity. We formulate a joint design of remote radio head (RRH) selection, RRH-user association, and transmit beamforming for simultaneously optimizing the achievable sum rate and total power consumption, using the multi-objective optimization concept. Due to the non-convexity of per-fronthaul capacity constraints and introduced binary selection variables, the formulated problem is combinatorial and nonconvex, which is generally NP-hard. To deal with this difficulty, we develop a new framework which iteratively approximates the continuous non-convex constraints by convex ones in the form of second order cones. The problem arrived at each iteration is a mixed integer second order cone programming which can be solve optimally and efficiently. Numerical results show that our proposed algorithms converge rapidly and outperform the existing solutions.

This paper considers a downlink transmission of cloud radio access network (C-RAN) in which precoded baseband signals at a common baseband unit are compressed before being forwarded to radio units (RUs) through limited fronthaul capacity links. We investigate the joint design of precoding, multivariate compression and RU-user selection which maximizes the energy efficiency of downlink C-RAN networks. The considered problem is inherently a rank-constrained mixed Boolean nonconvex program for which a globally optimal solution is difficult and computationally expensive to find. In order to derive practically appealing solutions, we invoke some useful relaxation and transformation techniques to arrive at a more tractable (but still nonconvex) continuous program. To solve the relaxation problem, we propose an iterative procedure based on DC algorithms which is provably convergent. Numerical results demonstrate the superior of the proposed solution in terms of achievable energy efficiency compared to existing schemes.

This paper characterizes the capacity region of Gaussian MIMO broadcast channels (BCs) with per-antenna power constraint (PAPC). While the capacity region of MIMO BCs with a sum power constraint (SPC) was extensively studied, that under PAPC has received less attention. A reason is that efficient solutions for this problem are hard to find. The goal of this paper is to devise an efficient algorithm for determining the capacity region of Gaussian MIMO BCs subject to PAPC, which is scalable to the problem size. To this end, we first transform the weighted sum capacity maximization problem, which is inherently nonconvex with the input covariance matrices, into a convex formulation in the dual multiple access channel by minimax duality. Then we derive a computationally efficient algorithm combining the concept of alternating optimization and successive convex approximation. The proposed algorithm achieves much lower complexity compared to an existing interiorpoint method. Moreover, numerical results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm converges very fast under various scenarios.

This paper proposes two low-complexity iterative algorithms to compute the capacity of a single-user multiple-input multiple-output channel with per-antenna power constraint. The first method results from manipulating the optimality conditions of the considered problem and applying fixed-point iteration. In the second approach, we transform the considered problem into a minimax optimization program using the well-known MAC- BC duality, and then solve it by a novel alternating optimization method. In both proposed iterative methods, each iteration involves an optimization problem which can be efficiently solved by the water-filling algorithm. The proposed iterative methods are provably convergent. Complexity analysis and extensive numerical experiments are carried out to demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed algorithms over an existing approach known as the mode-dropping algorithm.

This paper aims at guaranteeing the achievable energy efficiency (EE) fairness in a multicell multiuser multiple-input single-output downlink system. The design objective is to maximize the minimum EE among all base stations (BSs) subject to per-BS power constraints. This results in a max-min fractional program and as such is difficult to solve in general. Our goal is to develop decentralized algorithms for the max-min EE problem based on combining the successive convex approximation (SCA) framework and the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMMs). Specifically, leveraging the SCA principle, we iteratively approximate the nonconvex design problem by a sequence of convex programs for which two decentralized algorithms are then proposed. In the first approach, the convex program obtained at each step of the SCA procedure is solved optimally by allowing the BSs to exchange the required information until the ADMM converges. The convergence of the first method is analytically guaranteed but the amount of backhaul signaling can be noticeable in some realistic settings. To reduce the backhaul overhead, the second method performs an abstract version of the ADMM where only one variables update is carried out. Numerical results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the two proposed decentralized algorithms.

This paper studies the fairness of achievable energy efficiency (EE) in a multicell multiuser multiple-input single-output downlink. The objective is to maximize the minimum EE among all base stations (BSs) subject to per-BS power constraints. The resulting optimization problem is a max-min fractional program, and, thus, difficult to solve in general. Our goal is to develop a decentralized algorithm for the max-min EE problem which solves the problem locally. The idea behind the proposed method is to combine the framework of successive convex approximation (SCA) and alternative direction method of multipliers (ADMM). We transform the convex program obtained at each step of the SCA procedure into a form that lends itself to the ADMM. The resulting formulation is solved optimally by allowing the BSs to exchange the required information until the ADMM converges. In addition to further reduce the backhaul overhead, the proposed algorithm is modified to enhance the convergence speed. Numerical results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.

This paper considers the power minimization problem in downlink of cloud radio access networks with limited fronthaul capacity. A joint design of beamforming, remote radio head (RRH) selection and RRH-user association that explicitly takes into account per- fronthaul capacity constraints is considered. The problem of interest is in fact a combinatorial program which is generally NP- hard. We naturally write the considered problem as a mixed integer program by introducing binary selection variables. The challenge is that even if these binary selection variables are relaxed to be continuous, the resulting problem is still nonconvex. For such a problem, finding a high- quality solution, rather than an optimal one, is a more realistic goal. Towards this end we propose two iterative algorithms to deal with combinatorial nature of the joint design problem. In the first method, by novel transformations, we iteratively approximate the continuous nonconvex constraints by convex conic ones using successive convex approximation framework. More explicitly the problem arrived at each iteration of the first method is a mixed-integer second order cone program (MISOCP) for which dedicated solvers are available. The second method is a simplified variant of the first one where we further relax the binary variables in each iteration to be continuous. That is to say, the second method merely requires solving a sequence of SOCPs. After convergence, we then perform a postprocessing procedure on the relaxed selection variables to search for a high-performance solution. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed algorithms over existing methods based on sparse-inducing norm.

We consider small-cell networks with multiple-antenna transceivers and base stations (BSs) cooperating to jointly design linear precoders to maximize the network energy efficiency, subject to a sum power and per-antenna power constraints at individual BSs, as well as user-specific quality of service (QoS) requirements. Assuming zero-forcing precoding, we formulate the problem of interest as a concave-convex fractional program to which we proposed a centralized optimal solution based on the prevailing Dinkelbach algorithm. To facilitate distributed implementations, we transform the design problem into an equivalent convex program using Charnes-Cooper's transformation. Then, based on the framework of alternative direction method of multipliers (ADMM), we develop a decentralized algorithm, which is numerically shown to achieve fast convergence. Since BSs are generally power-hungry, it may be more energy-efficient if some BSs can be shut down, while still satisfying the QoS constraints. Toward this end, we investigate the problem of joint precoder design and BS selection, which is a mixed Boolean nonlinear program, and then provide an optimal solution by customizing the branch-and-bound method. For real-time applications, we propose a greedy algorithm which achieves near-optimal performance in polynomial time. Numerical results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms.

This paper proposes a hybrid double-threshold based energy detector (HDTED) for cooperative spectrum sensing over imperfect channels in cognitive wireless radio networks (CWRNs). The proposed HDTED improves the sensing reliability in CWRNs by exploiting both local decisions at secondary users (SUs) in either binary or energy values and global binary decisions feedback from fusion centre. Particularly, we consider a practical scenario where all channel links suffer from fading and noise. By deriving closed-form expressions and bounds for the probabilities of missed detection and false alarm, we not only show the improved performance achieved with the HDTED scheme but also validate the effects of the number of the SUs and the fading channels on the overall sensing performance.

A joint power splitting and beamforming design for multiuser multiple-input single-output (MISO) systems where receivers have capability of decoding information and harvesting energy simultaneously from received signals is considered. The objective is to maximize the ratio of the achieved utility to the total power consumption subject to harvested power requirements and power budget at a base station (BS). The utility function of interest combines the sum rate and the total harvested power. The design problem is nonconvex, and thus, global optimality is difficult to achieve. To solve this problem locally we first convert the problem into a more tractable form, and then propose an iterative algorithm which is guaranteed to achieve a Karush-Kuhn-Tucker solution. Numerical results are provided to demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed method.

The paper considers coordinated multi-cell multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) transmission using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) technique for downlink channels. Linear beamforming and receiving are employed at BS and corresponding users, respectively. The design criterion is to minimize the number of queued packets, since the transmission is mainly guided by the backlogged packets. An indirect way to solve this problem is to associate the weights of the traditional weighted sum rate maximization scheme with the current status of the queue size, i.e., the longer queue, the higher priority. We deal with this problem directly by formulating it as a noncovex optimization problem and then applying a sequential convex approximation method to find beamformers. In particular, we propose an efficient resource allocation scheme based on jointly optimizing beamformers over the space and frequency domain. We refer to this scheme as queue minimizing (QM) joint space-frequency resource allocation (JSFRA) scheme. The proposed solutions are compared to the traditional queue weighted sum rate maximization (Q-WSRM) approaches mentioned above in terms of the rate of convergence and the backlogged packets remaining after a scheduling instant.

This paper studies the problem of resource allocation for uplink multi-homing users in heterogeneous network where users can simultaneously transmit data to multiple radio access networks (RANs). The considered design problem is to optimally assign bandwidth and power to each user-RAN connection so as to maximize the overall energy efficiency of the network subject to QoS requirements and resource budgets. By the definition of energy efficiency which is the ratio of the aggregate throughput to the power consumption, the resulting problem is formulated as a fractional program. Then, we propose an energy efficient algorithm using the Dinkelback method that solves a series of convex problems to obtain the optimal design. Particularly, we derive closed-form expressions for the design parameters and provide useful insights into the proposed energy efficient resource allocation algorithm. Numerical results are presented to demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is superior to other resource allocation strategies in terms of energy efficiency.

We study the joint subcarrier allocation and pre-coder design (JSAPD) problem to maximize the sum rate of downlink orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) systems under a sum power constraint. Naturally, this problem belongs to a class of combinatorial optimization problems which are difficult to solve in general. Based on the concept of big-M formulation, and by exploiting its specific structure, we can transform the JSAPD problem into a mixed integer second order cone program (MI-SOCP), which then offers two advantages. Firstly, when the number of subcarriers/users is small, the design problem can be solved to global optimum in reasonable time by dedicated solvers. Secondly, when the number of subcarriers/users is large, near-optimal solutions of the JSAPD problem can be found by considering the continuous convex relaxation of the MI-SOCP. Numerical experiments are carried out to demonstrate the improved performance of the proposed designs compared to known solutions.

We investigate the problem of downlink physical layer multicasting that aims at minimizing the transmit power with a massive antenna array installed at the transmitter site. We take a solution based on semidefinite relaxation (SDR) as our benchmark. It is shown that instead of working on the semidefinite program (SDP) naturally produced by the SDR, the dual counterpart of the same problem may provide a more efficient numerical implementation. Later, by using a successive convex approximation strategy, we arrive at a provably convergent iterative second-order cone programming (SOCP) solution. Our thorough numerical investigations report that the newly proposed SOCP solution offers improved power efficiency and a massively reduced computational complexity. Therefore, the SOCP solution is seen as a suitable candidate for obtaining beamformers that minimize transmit power, especially, when a very large number of antennas is used at the transmitter.

We address the problem of the downlink beamformer design for signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio balancing in a multiuser multicell environment with imperfectly estimated channels at base stations. We first present a semidefinite program (SDP)-based approximate solution to the problem. Then, as our main contribution, by exploiting some properties of the robust counterpart of the optimization problem, we arrive at a second-order cone program (SOCP)-based approximation of the balancing problem. The advantages of the proposed SOCP-based design are twofold. First, it greatly reduces the computational complexity compared to the SDP-based method. Second, it applies to a wide range of uncertainty models. As a case study, we investigate the performance of proposed formulations when the base station is equipped with a massive antenna array. Numerical experiments are carried out to confirm that the proposed robust designs achieve favorable results in scenarios of practical interest.

We investigate the spectral efficiency of full-duplex small cell wireless systems, in which a full-duplex capable base station (BS) is designed to send/receive data to/from multiple half-duplex users on the same system resources. The major hurdle for designing such systems is due to the self-interference at the BS and co-channel interference among users. Hence, we consider a joint beamformer design to maximize the spectral efficiency subject to certain power constraints. The design problem is first formulated as a rank-constrained optimization problem, and the rank relaxation method is then applied. However, the relaxed problem is still nonconvex, and thus, optimal solutions are hard to find. Herein, we propose two provably convergent algorithms to obtain suboptimal solutions. Based on the concept of the Frank-Wolfe algorithm, we approximate the design problem by a determinant maximization program in each iteration of the first algorithm. The second method is built upon the sequential parametric convex approximation method, which allows us to transform the relaxed problem into a semidefinite program in each iteration. Extensive numerical experiments under small cell setups illustrate that the full-duplex system with the proposed algorithms can achieve a large gain over the half-duplex system.

We consider joint optimization of transmit power, serving base station cluster (BSC) for coherent reception, beamforming and subcarrier allocation for the uplink channel of a multicell multicarrier system. The objective is to minimize the sum transmit power subject to user-specific rate constraints. Since the problem is nonconvex and NP-hard, finding the optimal solution is challenging and not practically appealing. We propose two bit loading algorithms, in which the data rate of users is iteratively increased until the rate targets are satisfied. A joint power control, BSC selection and beamforming design problem with fixed rate allocation per subcarrier is optimally solved in every iteration. A bit switching (BSW) algorithm is further proposed in order to search for better rate allocations. The performances of the proposed algorithms are compared to upper and lower bounds achieved by the capacity-achieving scheme and equal rate allocation over subcarriers (ER), respectively. Simulation results show that proposed algorithms achieve significantly better performance than the ER scheme. The performance gains become larger as the number of users is increased.

We consider precoder design for maximizing the weighted sum rate (WSR) of successive zero-forcing dirty paper coding (SZF-DPC). For this problem, the existing precoder designs often assume a sum power constraint (SPC) and rely on the singular value decomposition (SVD). The SVD-based designs are known to be optimal but require high complexity. We first propose a low-complexity optimal precoder design for SZF-DPC under SPC, using the QR decomposition. Then, we propose an efficient numerical algorithm to find the optimal precoders subject to per-antenna power constraints (PAPCs). To this end, the precoder design for PAPCs is formulated as an optimization problem with a rank constraint on the covariance matrices. A well-known approach to solve this problem is to relax the rank constraints and solve the relaxed problem. Interestingly, for SZF-DPC, we are able to prove that the rank relaxation is tight. Consequently, the optimal precoder design for PAPCs is computed by solving the relaxed problem, for which we propose a customized interior-point method that exhibits a superlinear convergence rate. Two suboptimal precoder designs are also presented and compared to the optimal ones. We also show that the proposed numerical method is applicable for finding the optimal precoders for block diagonalization scheme.

We consider the beamformer design for multiple-input multiple-output (MISO) broadcast channels (MISO BCs) using zero-forcing dirty paper coding (ZF-DPC). Assuming a sum power constraint (SPC), most previously proposed beamformer designs are based on the QR decomposition (QRD), which is a natural choice to satisfy the ZF constraints. However, the optimality of the QRD-based design for ZF-DPC has remained unknown. In this paper, first, we analytically establish that the QRD-based design is indeed optimal for any performance measure under a SPC. Then, we propose an optimal beamformer design method for ZF-DPC with per-antenna power constraints (PAPCs), using a convex optimization framework. The beamformer design is first formulated as a rank-1-constrained optimization problem. Exploiting the special structure of the ZF-DPC scheme, we prove that the rank constraint can be relaxed and still provide the same solution. In addition, we propose a fast converging algorithm to the beamformer design problem, under the duality framework between the BCs and multiple access channels (MACs). More specifically, we show that a BC with ZF-DPC has the dual MAC with ZF-based successive interference cancellation (ZF-SIC). In this way, the beamformer design for ZF-DPC is transformed into a power allocation problem for ZF-SIC, which can be solved more efficiently.

We introduce a full duplex multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (FD MU-MIMO) system, and consider the total throughput maximization problem under a sum power constraint in the downlink (DL) channel and per-user power constraints in the uplink (UL) channel. Due to the nature of asymmetric DL/UL capacity, a trivial method to this problem is to optimize the DL and UL channels sequentially. However, when the self-interference (SI) is large, the sum rate of the UL channel in this sequential design is dramatically degraded. Herein, a joint design is proposed, in which the DL and UL channels are optimized simultaneously. Since the objective function of the throughput maximization problem is non-convex, it is difficult to find the optimal solution. Thus, we propose a joint iterative algorithm to find a suboptimal design, using a local optimization strategy. Simulation results demonstrate that the iterative joint design outperforms the sequential design, and the FD MU-MIMO system is superior to the conventional half duplex (HD) system in terms of the total system throughput when the SI is sufficiently small. This makes the FD MU-MIMO techniques promising for small cell deployments where the transmit power is relatively small.

We consider the beamformer design for zero-forcing dirty paper coding (ZF-DPC), a suboptimal transmission technique for MISO broadcast channels (MISO BCs). Beamformers for ZF-DPC are designed to maximize a performance measure, subject to some power constraints and zero-interference constraints. For the sum rate maximization problem under a total power constraint, the existing beamformer designs in the literature are based on the QR decomposition (QRD), which is used to satisfy the ZF constraints. However, the optimality of the QRD-based design is still unknown. First, we prove that the QRD-based design is indeed optimal for ZF-DPC for any performance measure under a sum power constraint. For the per-antenna power constraints, the QRD-based designs become suboptimal, and we propose an optimal design, using a convex optimization framework. Low-complexity suboptimal designs are also presented.

This paper considers the precoder designs for successive zero-forcing dirty paper coding (SZF-DPC), a suboptimal transmission technique for MIMO broadcast channels (MIMO BCs). Existing precoder designs for SZF-DPC often consider a sum power constraint. In this paper, we address the precoder design for SZF-DPC with per-antenna power constraints (PAPCs), which has not been well studied. First, we formulate the precoder design as a rank-constrained optimization problem, which is generally difficult to handle. To solve this problem, we follow a relaxation approach, and prove that the optimal solution of the relaxed problem is also optimal for the original problem. Considering the relaxed problem, we propose a numerically efficient algorithm to find the optimal solution, which exhibits a fast convergence rate. Suboptimal precoder designs, with lower computational complexity, are also presented, and compared with the optimal ones in terms of achievable sum rate and computational complexity.

Successive zero-forcing dirty paper coding (SZF-DPC) is a simplified alternative to DPC for MIMO broadcast channels (MIMO BCs). In the SZF-DPC scheme, the noncausally-known interference is canceled by DPC, while the residual interference is suppressed by the ZF technique. Due to the ZF constraints, the precoders are constrained to lie in the null space of a matrix. For the sum rate maximization problem under a sum power constraint, the existing precoder designs naturally rely on the singular value decomposition (SVD). The SVD-based design is optimal but needs high computational complexity. Herein, we propose two low-complexity optimal precoder designs for SZF-DPC, all based on the QR decomposition (QRD), which requires lower complexity than SVD. The first design method is an iterative algorithm to find an orthonormal basis of the null space of a matrix that has a recursive structure. The second proposed method, which will be shown to require the lowest complexity, results from applying a single QRD to the matrix comprising all users' channel matrices. We analytically and numerically show that the two proposed precoder designs are optimal.

Distributed space-time block codes (DSTBCs) have been developed to exploit diversity gains in cooperative communications systems. In this paper, we propose a new DSTBC based on unique word (UW) extension, referred to as the D-UW-STBC. The D-UW-STBC is devised for wireless relay networks with the amplify-and-forwarcl protocol and frequency selective fading channels. The data is transmitted from the source to the destination by a block-wise manner, resembling the block level of the Alamouti scheme. At the source, a UW is padded to the tail of each data block, which plays as a cyclic prefix, and thus allows for low-complexity implementation in the frequency domain. The additional purpose of using UW in this paper is to estimate the channels. However, the introduction of UWs makes it difficult to decouple the detection of data blocks. To achieve the orthogonality of the equivalent space-time channel, we carefully cancel the interference induced by the UWs. Also, a least square (LS) channel estimation approach is proposed, in which, the relay is transparent to the source and destination. The optimal UWs arc designed to minimise the effect of additive noise. Bit-crror-ratc (BER) performance comparison of various receiver schemes is carried out by computer simulations.

The problem of maximizing weighted sum rates in the downlink of a multicell environment is of considerable interest. Unfortunately, this problem is known to be NP-hard. For the case of multi-antenna base stations and single antenna mobile terminals, we devise a low complexity, fast and provably convergent algorithm that locally optimizes the weighted sum rate in the downlink of the system. In particular, we derive an iterative second-order cone program formulation of the weighted sum rate maximization problem. The algorithm converges to a local optimum within a few iterations. Superior performance of the proposed approach is established by numerically comparing it to other known solutions.

This paper proposes the distributed space-time block code (D-STBC) over frequency selective fading channel that achieves both spatial diversity gain and low decoding complexity with decoupling property in amplify-and-forward (AF) relay networks. These two goals are simultaneously achieved by our proposed code design, where the source permutates and conjugates the transmitted data before sending to the second relay. The diversity gain is investigated by analyzing the pairwise error probability (PEP) of the proposed scheme. In the analysis, we assume that one hop is line-of-sight (LOS) transmission modeled by Rician fading and the other hop is non-line-of-sight (NLOS) transmission experienced by Rayleigh fading. For each case, the PEP is derived based on the corresponding fading channel model.

This paper proposes a new distributed space-time block code (DSTBC) for single-carrier communications systems based on training sequence (TS). The proposed DSTBC is devised for amplify-and-forward (AF) relay networks over frequency selective fading channels. The data is transmitted from the source to the destination by a block-wise manner, resembling the block level of Alamouti scheme. A TS is padded to the tail of each information-bearing data block. The use of TS in this paper is twofold. First, it plays as a cyclic extension, thereby allowing us to construct a low-complexity receiver in the frequency domain. Second, it can be used for channel estimation. In contrast to zero padding technique, the introduction of TS makes it difficult to decouple the detection of data blocks. To recover the orthogonality of the equivalent space-time channel, we carefully treat the interference induced by the training sequences. As the second contribution, a least square (LS) channel estimation approach is also proposed for the proposed DSTBC. The optimal training sequences are designed to minimize the effect of additive noise. Bit-error-rate (BER) performance comparison is carried out by computer simulation.

This letter proposes a hybrid decision-feedback equalizer (HDFE) for DS-CDMA systems. The proposed HDFE is carried out in two stages to improve the accuracy of the feedback signals by exploiting the spreading gain in the feedback filter. The spread signals for a symbol are buffered and then detected, after which re-spreading is applied to generate feedback signals at the chip level. Through the use of symbol detection for feedback filtering, more accurate feedback signals are achieved. Simulation results demonstrate the superior error performance of the proposed scheme over the frequency domain linear equalization (FD-LE) and RAKE schemes in highly dispersive channels.

This paper proposes a novel hybrid decision-feedback equalizer (HDFE) for direct sequence code-division multiple-access (DS-CDMA) systems to improve their performance in highly time-dispersive fading environments. In the proposed scheme, despreading and re-spreading are integrated in the feedback process to improve the accuracy of feedback signals. Instead of performing chip detection to obtain the instantaneous feedback signals as in the conventional HDFE, the authors buffer the spread signals for a symbol, carry out the despreading, and then apply symbol detection to derive the feedback signals. In the feedback process, re-spreading is applied since equalization must be implemented at 'chip-level'. Through the use of symbol detection and re-spreading, more accurate feedback signals are achieved. Additionally, the proposed method effectively mitigates the effect of error propagation that may dramatically degrade the performance of conventional decision-feedback equalization schemes. Simulation results demonstrate the superior error performances of the proposed scheme over the conventional HDFE and RAKE schemes in highly dispersive channels such as those described in the recommendation ITU-M.1225 for mobile communications.