Large optical reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (ORISs) are proposed for employment on building rooftops to facilitate free-space quantum key distribution (QKD) between highaltitude platforms (HAPs) and low-altitude platforms (LAPs). Due to practical constraints, the communication terminals can only be positioned beneath the LAPs, preventing direct upward links to HAPs. By deploying ORISs on rooftops to reflect the beam arriving from HAPs towards LAPs from below, reliable HAP-to-LAP links can be established. To accurately characterize the optical beam propagation, we develop an analytical channel model based on extended Huygens-Fresnel principles for representing both the atmospheric turbulence effects and the hovering fluctuations of LAPs. This model facilitates adaptive ORIS beam-width control through linear, quadratic, and focusing phase shifts, which are capable of effectively mitigating the detrimental effects of beam broadening and pointing errors (PE). Consequently, the information-theoretic bound of the secret key rate and the security performance of a decoy-state QKD protocol are analyzed. Our findings demonstrate that quadratic phase shifts enhance the SKR at high HAP-ORIS zenith angles or mild PE conditions by narrowing the beam to optimal sizes. By contrast, linear phase shifts are advantageous at low HAP-ORIS zenith angles or moderate-to-high PE by diverging the beam to mitigate LAP fluctuations.

Visible Light Positioning and Communication (VLPC) is a promising candidate for implementing Integrated Sensing And Communication (ISAC) in the unlicensed 400 THz to 800 THz band. The current Visible Light Positioning (VLP) systems mainly operate based on the Received Signal Strength (RSS) of the Line-of-Sight (LoS) path. However, its accuracy is degraded by interferences from Non-LoS (NLoS) paths. Furthermore, in Visible Light Communication (VLC) systems, the estimation of Channel State Information (CSI) also becomes challenging, when the optical channel becomes dispersive. Against this background, we propose a new VLPC scheme using Direct Current (DC) biased Optical Orthogonal Frequency-Division Multiplexing (VLPC-DCO-OFDM), where OFDM-based sensing is applied for the sake of improving the resolution of the estimated Channel Impulse Response (CIRs) exploited for positioning functionality. The CIRs estimated by sensing are further exploited to provide enhanced CSI for communication data detection. Moreover, we propose a hybrid Radar-RSS based solution, where the conventional RSS-aided VLP method is invoked for the sake of refining OFDM radar. Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed VLPC-DCO-OFDM scheme – which simultaneously supports the triple functionalities of illumination, bi-static sensing and communication – is capable of achieving centimeter-level positioning accuracy and Giga-bits-per-second data rate.

Intelligent metasurfaces may be harnessed for realizing efficient holographic multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) systems, at a low hardware-cost and high energy-efficiency. As part of this family, we propose a hybrid beamforming design for stacked intelligent metasurfaces (SIM) aided wideband wireless systems relying on the near-field channel model. Specifically, the holographic beamformer is designed based on configuring the phase shifts in each layer of the SIM for maximizing the sum of the baseband eigen-channel gains of all users. To optimize the SIM phase shifts, we propose a layer-by-layer iterative algorithm for optimizing the phase shifts in each layer alternately. Then, the minimum mean square error (MMSE) transmit precoding method is employed for the digital beamformer to support multi-user access. Furthermore, the mitigation of the SIM phase tuning error is also taken into account in the digital beamformer by exploiting its statistics. The power sharing ratio of each user is designed based on the iterative waterfilling power allocation algorithm. Additionally, our analytical results indicate that the spectral efficiency attained saturates in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) region due to the phase tuning error resulting from the imperfect SIM hardware quality. The simulation results show that the SIM-aided holographic MIMO outperforms the state-of-the-art (SoA) single-layer holographic MIMO in terms of its achievable rate. We further demonstrate that the near-field channel model allows the SIM-based transceiver design to support multiple users, since the spatial resources represented both by the angle domain and the distance domain can be exploited.

The feasibility of continuous variable quantum key distribution (CV-QKD) is considered in the Terahertz (THz) band, experiencing time-varying and frequency-selective fading. Advanced multi-carrier modulation is required for improving the secret key rate (SKR). However, the hostile quantum channel requires powerful classical channel coding schemes for maintaining an adequate reconciliation performance. Against this background, for the first time in the open literature, we propose a multi-carrier quantum transmission regime that incorporates both orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) transmission over doubly selective fading THz channels. Furthermore, we propose a modified multi-dimensional reconciliation algorithm for CV-QKD, facilitating the integration of OFDM/OTFS quantum transmission with low-density parity check (LDPC) coded key reconciliation. Moreover, we harness multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) beamforming for mitigating the severe THz path loss. Our SKR analysis results demonstrate that the proposed OTFS-based and LDPC-assisted CV-QKD system is capable of outperforming its OFDM counterpart in mobile wireless scenarios. Moreover, we also demonstrate that increasing the MIMO dimension reduces the transmission power required for achieving the secure transmission distance target.

Continuous-variable quantum key distribution (CV-QKD) maps information onto the quadrature components of electromagnetic waves, so that off-the-shelf wireless transceivers can be utilized. This motivates the move from optical to Terahertz (THz) bands. However, wireless THz channels suffer from severe path loss, while the mobility of wireless users imposes doubly selective fading. Against this background, we propose a new CV-QKD regime that relies on hybrid beamforming (HBF) assisted multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) system, where the channel’s transmissivity and robustness against double selectivity are overcome by HBF and OTFS, respectively. Secondly, in order to provide channel state information (CSI) for both the transmitter (CSI-T) and receiver (CSI-R), practical channel estimation methods are conceived. They operate in the time-frequency domain for OFDM and in the delay-Doppler domain for OTFS. Thirdly, soft-decision detection is devised for our MIMO OFDM/OTFS aided multi-dimensional reconciliation (MDR) scheme. Low-density parity-check (LDPC) coding is invoked for further improving secure CV-QKD transmission distance in the THz band. Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed HBF MIMO OTFS-based CV-QKD system relying on realistic estimated CSI is capable of achieving an adequate secret key rate (SKR) and secure transmission distance in hostile doubly selective THz channels.

Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite networks are capable of improving the global Internet service coverage. In this context, we propose a hybrid beamforming design for holographic metasurface based terrestrial users in multi-altitude LEO satellite networks. Firstly, the holographic beamformer is optimized by maximizing the downlink channel gain from the serving satellite to the terrestrial user. Then, the digital beamformer is designed by conceiving a minimum mean square error (MMSE) based detection algorithm for mitigating the interference arriving from other satellites. To dispense with excessive overhead of full channel state information (CSI) acquisition of all satellites, we propose a low-complexity MMSE beamforming algorithm that only relies on the distribution of the LEO satellite constellation harnessing stochastic geometry, which can achieve comparable throughput to that of the algorithm based on the full CSI in the case of a dense LEO satellite deployment. Furthermore, it outperforms the maximum ratio combining (MRC) algorithm, thanks to its inter-satellite interference mitigation capacity. The simulation results show that our proposed holographic metasurface based hybrid beamforming architecture is capable of outperforming the state-of-the-art antenna array architecture in terms of its throughput, given the same physical size of the transceivers. Moreover, we demonstrate that the beamforming performance attained can be substantially improved by taking into account the mutual coupling effect, imposed by the dense placement of the holographic metasurface elements.

We demonstrate that the proposed optical orthogonal time frequency space (O-OTFS) is capable of improving the bandwidth-/power-/energy-efficiencies of optical orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (O-OFDM). The bandwidth-efficiency is improved because only a single cyclic prefix (CP) is needed for an entire O-OTFS frame. The power-efficiency is enhanced thanks to the diversity gain achieved by its symplectic finite Fourier transform (SFFT), which also leads to a reduced peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR), hence improving its energy-efficiency. These features are facilitated by the proposed layered asymmetrically clipped O-OTFS (LACO-OTFS), which is capable of removing the direct current (DC) bias while retaining the full optical throughput. Nonetheless, there exists an inherent trade-off, where increasing the O-OTFS frame size leads to a commensurately reduced CP percentage at the cost of an increased PAPR. In order to mitigate this, we propose to perform discrete Fourier transform based spreading (DFT-S) in the delay-Doppler (DD)-domain. Furthermore, we demonstrate that regardless of the choice of domain in which the information is modulated (i.e. O-OFDM/O-OTFS with/without DFT-S), the frequency-selectivity of the quasi-static but dispersive optical channel can always be equalized by single-tap frequency-domain equalization (FDE). Moreover, the channel estimation techniques are conceived to operate in the time-/frequency-/DD-domains for both O-OFDM and O-OTFS. Our simulation results demonstrate that for a multi-user optical wireless system associated withM= 64 subcarriers and the OTFS frame length ofN= 64, LACO-OTFS is capable of achieving a 7 dB power-efficiency gain over LACO-OFDM, where the CP overhead is reduced by a factor ofN= 64. DFT-S-LACO-OTFS is also capable of providing a 7 dB power-efficiency gain over DFT-S-LACO-OFDM, where the low PAPR of single-carrier transmission is retained.

Large-scale multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) systems are capable of achieving high date rate. However, given the high hardware cost and excessive power consumption of massive MIMO systems, as a remedy, intelligent metasurfaces have been designed for efficient holographic MIMO (HMIMO) systems. In this paper, we propose a HMIMO architecture based on stacked intelligent metasurfaces (SIM) for the uplink of cell-free systems, where the SIM is employed at the access points (APs) for improving the spectral- and energy-efficiency. Specifically, we conceive distributed beamforming for SIM-assisted cell-free networks, where both the SIM coefficients and the local receiver combiner vectors of each AP are optimized based on the local channel state information (CSI) for the local detection of each user equipment (UE) information. Afterward, the central processing unit (CPU) fuses the local detections gleaned from all APs to detect the aggregate multi-user signal. Specifically, to design the SIM coefficients and the combining vectors of the APs, a low-complexity layer-by-layer iterative optimization algorithm is proposed for maximizing the equivalent gain of the channel spanning from the UEs to the APs. At the CPU, the weight vector used for combining the local detections from all APs is designed based on the minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion, where the hardware impairments (HWIs) are also taken into consideration based on their statistics. The simulation results show that the SIM-based HMIMO outperforms the conventional single-layer HMIMO in terms of the achievable rate. We demonstrate that both the HWI of the radio frequency (RF) chains at the APs and the UEs limit the achievable rate in the high signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) region.

The recently-developed orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) modulation is capable of transforming the time-varying fading of the time-frequency (TF) domain into the time-invariant fading representations of the delay-Doppler (DD) domain. The OTFS system using orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) as inner core naturally requires the subcarrier spacing (SCS) Δfto be larger than the maximum Doppler frequency ϑmax, i.e. Δf> ϑmax, when perfect channel state information (CSI) knowledge is assumed. However, for the first time in literature, we explicitly demonstrate that the practical OFDM-based OTFS systems have to double their SCS in order to facilitate CSI estimation, requiring Δf′ = 2Δf> 2ϑmax. In order to mitigate this loss, we propose a novel noncoherent OTFS system, which is capable of operating at Δf> ϑmax. The major challenge in this context is the mitigation of the DD-domain interference without CSI. Against this background, we draw an analogy between the input-output model of OTFS and that of V-BLAST, where V-BLAST’s blind inter-antenna interference mitigation technique is invoked. Moreover, we propose to partition the DD-domain modulated symbols into groups, where space-time block coding is invoked in order to eliminate the DD-domain interference within each group. Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed noncoherent OTFS is capable of substantially outperforming its coherent counterparts relying on CSI estimation.

In this article, a cooperative communication network based on energy-harvesting (EH) decode-and-forward (DF) relays that harvest energy from the ambience using buffers with the harvest-store-use (HSU) architecture is considered. An opportunistic routing (OR) protocol, which selects the transmission path of packet based on the node transmission priority, is proposed to improve data delivery in this network. Additionally, an algorithm based on the state transition matrix (STM) is proposed to obtain the probability distribution of the candidate broadcast node set. Based on the probability distribution, the existence conditions and the theoretical expressions for the limiting distribution of energy in energy buffers using a discrete-time continuous-state space Markov chain (DCSMC) model are derived. Furthermore, the closed-form expressions for network outage probability and throughput are obtained with the help of the limiting distributions of energy stored in buffers. Numerous experiments have been performed to validate the derived theoretical expressions of the performance of this cooperative communication network.

The physical-layer security (PLS) of a space–ground communication system is examined. To improve the security performance, a pair of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) is integrated into the system and benchmarked against a scheme, where there is only a single RIS close to the ground station. As for the double-RIS scenario, we formulate a secrecy rate maximization problem, and then propose an alternating optimization (AO) algorithm for jointly optimizing three vectors, namely, the beamformer of the ground station and the reflecting vectors of two different RISs. Similarly, as for the single-RIS case, we also propose another AO algorithm for optimizing a pair of vectors, namely, the beamformer of the ground station and the reflecting vector of the single RIS. Both the double-RIS and the single-RIS AO algorithms are developed on the basis of the first-order Taylor expansion and Dinkelbach’s method, which allow us to approximate nonconvex optimization problems by convex ones. Our results demonstrate that the proposed double-RIS scheme outperforms the single-RIS benchmark scheme in terms of its security.

The recently developed reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are capable of improving the coverage of space–air–ground integrated networks (SAGINs), where the signals can be reflected in the desired direction without relying on power-thirsty radio-frequency (RF) chains. However, in the face of the substantially increased Doppler frequency, the classic orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) becomes inadequate in supporting RIS for the following reasons. First, the detrimental doubly selective fading leads to intersymbol interference (ISI) and intercarrier interference (ICI), which result in error floors for OFDM operating in the time–frequency (TF) domain. Second, it is far from trivial to configure RIS based on the time-varying fading channels. Third, the interpolation-based TF-domain channel estimation methods become impractical for the high-Doppler and high-dimensional RIS systems. Against this background, in this article, we propose the powerful 2-D orthogonal time–frequency space (OTFS) modulation for RIS-aided SAGINs, which transforms the time-varying fading encountered in the TF-domain to the time-invariant fading in the delay-Doppler (DD) domain. More explicitly, first, for the first time in the literature, we devise the DD-domain channel model of RIS-assisted SAGINs in the face of doubly selective fading. Second, in order to facilitate the RIS configuration in the DD-domain, we propose to create “virtual” Doppler frequencies that guide the phase changes at the RIS, even though the RIS phase rotations do not suffer from Doppler effects. Third, we conceive an attractive DD-domain RIS channel estimation method that can support both OFDM and OTFS, where the TF-domain interpolation is eliminated. Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed DD-domain RIS configuration and channel estimation methods for both OFDM and OTFS are capable of mitigating the error floors encountered in the TF-domain. Furthermore, our simulation results confirm that OTFS-based RIS-assisted SAGIN systems are capable of outperforming their OFDM counterparts and exhibit excellent performance across a wide range of SAGIN channel parameters including the Ricean K factor, Doppler frequency, delay spread, coverage distance, and carrier frequency.

A revolutionary technology relying on Stacked Intelligent Metasurfaces (SIM) is capable of carrying out advanced signal processing directly in the native electromagnetic (EM) wave regime. An SIM is fabricated by a sophisticated amalgam of multiple stacked metasurface layers, which may outperform its single-layer metasurface counterparts, such as reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) and metasurface lenses. We harness this new SIM for implementing holographic multiple-input multiple-output (HMIMO) communications without requiring excessive radio-frequency (RF) chains, which is a substantial benefit compared to existing implementations. First of all, we propose an HMIMO communication system based on a pair of SIM at the transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX), respectively. In sharp contrast to the conventional MIMO designs, SIM is capable of automatically accomplishing transmit precoding and receiver combining, as the EM waves propagate through them. As such, each spatial stream can be directly radiated and recovered from the corresponding transmit and receive port. Secondly, we formulate the problem of minimizing the error between the actual end-to-end channel matrix and the target diagonal one, representing a flawless interference-free system of parallel subchannels. This is achieved by jointly optimizing the phase shifts associated with all the metasurface layers of both the TX-SIM and RX-SIM. We then design a gradient descent algorithm to solve the resultant non-convex problem. Furthermore, we theoretically analyze the HMIMO channel capacity bound and provide some fundamental insights. Finally, extensive simulation results are provided for characterizing our SIM-aided HMIMO system, which quantifies its substantial performance benefits, e.g., 150% capacity improvement over both conventional MIMO and its RIS-aided counterparts.

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is capable of improving the wireless system performance by steering the reflected signal in the desired direction. One of the major challenges is that both the transceiver and RIS have to be jointly optimized, where the optimization problems have to be reformulated for different system models and scenarios. To circumvent this challenge, new low-complexity antenna selection (AS) algorithms for transceiver-agnostic RIS configuration are proposed. Given a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel, the proposed RIS-AS opts for accurately aligning the RIS both with the transmit antenna (TA) and receive antenna (RA) for the sake of maximizing the MIMO channel’s overall output power. The proposed RIS-AS only has to configure the RIS alone, i.e. without iterations with the transceiver optimization. As a result, the proposed RIS-AS has the compelling benefit that they are generically applicable, regardless of the specific transceiver architecture. Our simulation results confirm that the proposed RIS-AS is capable of supporting any MIMO configuration, regardless of their closed/open-loop, single-/ full-RF and multiplexing-/diversity-oriented setups.

Deep learning-aided optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (O-OFDM) is proposed for intensity modulated direct detection transmissions, which is termed as O-OFDMNet. In particular, O-OFDMNet employs deep neural networks (DNNs) for converting a complex-valued signal into a non-negative signal in the time-domain at the transmitter and vice versa at the receiver. The associated frequency-domain signal processing remains the same as in conventional radio frequency (RF) OFDM. As a result, our scheme achieves the same spectral efficiency as the RF scheme, which has never been attained by the existing O-OFDM schemes, because they have relied on the Hermitian symmetry of the spectral-domain signal to guarantee that the time-domain signal becomes real-valued. We show that O-OFDMNet can be viewed as an autoencoder architecture, which can be trained in an end-to-end manner in order to simultaneously improve both the bit error ratio (BER) and the peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) for transmission over both additive white Gaussian noise and frequency-selective channels. Furthermore, we intrinsically integrate a soft-decision aided channel decoder with our O-OFDMNet and investigate its coded performance relying on both convolutional and polar codes. The simulation results show that our scheme improves both the uncoded and coded BER as well as a reducing the PAPR compared to the benchmarks at the cost of a moderate additional DNN complexity. Furthermore, our scheme is capable of approaching the throughput of RF-OFDM, which is notably higher than that of conventional O-OFDM. Finally, our complexity analysis shows that O-OFDMNet is suitable for real-time operation.

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are capable of enhancing the capacity of wireless networks at a low cost. In practical RIS-assisted communication systems, the acquisition of channel state information (CSI) and RIS reflection optimization constitute a pair of challenges. In this paper, a low-complexity channel estimation and passive beamforming design is proposed.First of all, we conceive a low-complexity framework for maximizing the achievable rate of RIS-assisted multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems having discrete phase shifts at each RIS element. In contrast to existing solutions, the proposed arrangement partitions the channel training stage into several phases, where the RIS reflection coefficients are pre-designed and the effective superposed channel is estimated instead of separately training the source-destination and source-RIS-destination links. Based on this, the active beamformer can be designed at low complexity and the RIS reflection optimization is performed by selecting that one from the pre-designed training set which maximizes the achievable rate.Secondly, we propose novel techniques for generating the training set of RIS reflection coefficients. The theoretical performance of the proposed scheme is analyzed and compared to the optimal RIS configuration.Finally, our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed framework is more competitive than its existing counterparts when relying on imperfect CSI, especially for rapidly time-varying channels having short channel coherence time.

An edge-cancellation-aided iterative detection and decoding (EC-IDD) algorithm is proposed for polar-coded sparse code multiple access (SCMA), which jointly performs Gaussian-approximated message passing (GA-MP) detection of SCMA supported by the soft list decoding (SLD) of polar codes. A reduced-edge factor graph is formulated in each consecutive iteration with the aid of the cyclic redundancy check (CRC) and EC. Based on the simplified factor graph, the EC-IDD gradually reduces its complexity in each subsequent iteration, while improving the bit error rate (BER) performance, compared to the state-of-the-art joint detection and decoding (JDD) of polar-coded SCMA. Furthermore, an embedded decision-directed channel estimator (DD-CE) is proposed for our polar-coded SCMA system under realistic imperfect channel state information (CSI). Our simulation results demonstrate that the proposed EC-IDD achieves better BER performance than the state-of-the-art JDD under both perfect and imperfect CSI, despite achieving a complexity reduction of 92%. Finally, the BER of the proposed joint DD-CE and EC-IDD algorithm under imperfect CSI converges to that of EC-IDD operating under perfect CSI.

As the enabling technologies move up to the mmWave and even to the TeraHertz bands for the next-generation wireless systems, the signal processing of high-bandwidth orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) becomes increasingly power-thirsty, owing to the following OFDM deficiencies: (1) the high peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR); (2) the bandwidth efficiency loss due to the cyclic prefix (CP) overhead; (3) the sensitivity to carrier frequency offset; (4) the complex out-of-band (OOB) filtering. Over the past six decades, a variety of waveforms have been developed in order to mitigate these deficiencies, which are generally achieved at the cost of compromising some of OFDM’s beneficial properties, such as its subcarrier (SC) orthogonality, its high throughput and its straighforward adoption to multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. Against this background, we propose a new waveform termed as multi-band discrete Fourier transform spread-OFDM with index modulation (MB-DFT-S-OFDM-IM), where the component multi-carrier techniques are conceived to constructively function together in order to mitigate the OFDM deficiencieswithout compromising the beneficial OFDM properties. More explicitly, first of all, the PAPR is reduced by the DFT-precoding. Secondly, thanks to the IM design, MB-DFT-S-OFDM-IM is capable of achieving a high throughput that is strictly equal to or higher than the OFDM throughput. Thirdly, MB-DFT-S-OFDM-IM achieves a beneficial frequency diversity gain, which leads to a higher tolerance to carrier frequency offset. Fourthly, the OOB filters are placed in each sub-band before DFT, so that the SC orthogonality remains intact, which is unique to the proposed MB-DFT-S-OFDM-IM structure. Last but not least, we extend the proposed MB-DFT-S-OFDM-IM to support a variety of MIMO schemes, where the IM philosophy is integrated with the space-, time- and frequency-domains within a singleunifiedplatform.

In this paper, Generalized Space-Time Block Coded Spatial Modulation (GSTBC-SM) is proposed for Multiple-Input and Multiple-Output (MIMO) system, which can be extended into an arbitrary even number of Transmit Antennas (TAs). The proposed GSTBC-SM scheme employs the hybrid concepts of Generalized Space-Time Block Coding (GSTBC) and Spatial Modulation (SM) to further exploit the diversity benefits of GSTBC using sparse Radio Frequency (RF) chains. To be more specific, the information bits are divided into Nugroups and each group is modulated by SM scheme. Finally, the Nusymbols are invoked for GSTBC structure. In order to demonstrated the advantages of our proposed GSTBC-SM schemes, the theoretical Average Bit Error Probability (ABEP) of our proposed GSTBC-SM is derived. Both our analytical and simulation results demonstrated that the proposed GSTBC-SM scheme is capable of providing considerable performance gains over the corresponding GSTBC schemes at the same transmit rate associated with the same number of RF chains.

Two decades of full-diversity high-rate MIMO research has created perfect Space-Time Block Codes (STBCs), including the Golden code. However, the major stumbling block of their wide-spread employment is their limited energy-efficiency. On one hand, the superposition of their signals results in a high Peak-to-Average Power Ratio (PAPR). On the other hand, the total number of equivalent Inter-Antenna Interference (IAI) contributions that the receiver has to deal with is increased to IAI = M2upon using M Transmit Antennas (TAs), which is a substantial extra price compared to the IAI = M of V-BLAST. Against this background, we propose a new family of Finite-Cardinality Generalized Space-Time Shift Keying (FC-GSTSK). More explicitly, the proposed FC-GSTSK is capable of outperforming both V-BLAST and STBC, which is the ultimate objective of full-diversity high-rate MIMO design. Furthermore, following the index modulation philosophy, the proposed FC-GSTSK replaces the signal-additions by the data-carrying signal-selection process. As a benefit, the FC-GSTSK substantially reduces the PAPR of signal transmission. As a further advantage, the equivalent IAI imposed on signal detection is reduced back to the same level as that of the V-BLAST. Moreover, the proposed FC-GSTSK is even capable of consistently outperforming the perfect STBCs in terms of its Peak Signal to Noise-power Ratio (PSNR) that takes into account the power consumption at the transmitter. As a further advance, the reduced-RF-chain based version of FC-GSTSK is also capable of outperforming both Generalized Spatial Modulation (GSM) and Space-Time Block Coded Spatial Modulation (STBC-SM) without increasing the PAPR and the equivalent IAI.

In this treatise, first of all, we conceive a generic multiple-symbol differential sphere detection (MSDSD) solution for both single- and multiple-antenna-based noncoherent schemes in both uncoded and coded scenarios, where the high-mobility aeronautical Ricean fading features are taken into account. The bespoke design is the first MSDSD solution in the open literature that is applicable to the generic differential space-time modulation (DSTM) for transmission over Ricean fading. In the light of this development, the recently developed differential spatial modulation and its diversity counterpart of differential space-time block coding using index shift keying are specifically recommended for aeronautical applications owing to their low-complexity single-RF and finite-cardinality features. Moreover, we further devise a noncoherent decision-feedback differential detection and a channel-state information estimation aided coherent detection, which also take into account the same Ricean features. Finally, the advantages of the proposed techniques in different scenarios lead us to propose for the aeronautical systems to adaptively: 1) switch between coherent and non-coherent schemes; 2) switch between single- and multiple-antenna-based schemes as well as; and 3) switch between high-diversity and high-throughput DSTM schemes.

The matrix-based differential encoding invoked by Differential Space-Time Modulation (DSTM) typically results in an infinite-cardinality of arbitrary signals, despite the fact that the transmit antennas (TAs) can only radiate a limited number of patterns. As a remedy, the recently developed differential spatial modulation (DSM) is capable of avoiding this problem by conceiving a beneficial sparse signal matrix design, which also facilitates low-complexity single-RF signal transmission. Inspired by this development, the differential space-time block code using index shift keying (DSTBC-ISK) further introduces a beneficial diversity gain without compromising the DSM's appealingly low transceiver complexity. However, the DSTBC-ISK's performance advantage tends to diminish as the throughput increases, especially when an increased number of Receive Antennas (RAs) is used. By contrast, the classic Differential Group Code (DGC) that actively maximizes its diversity gain for different multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) system setups is capable of achieving a superior performance, but its detection complexity grows exponentially with the throughput. Against this background, we propose the differential space-time shift keying using Diagonal Algebraic Space-Time scheme, which is the first DSTM that is capable of achieving the DGC's superior diversity gain at high throughputs without compromising the DSM's low transceiver complexity. As a further advance, we also conceive a new differential space-time shift keying using Threaded Algebraic Space-Time arrangement, which is capable of achieving an even further improved diversity gain at a substantially reduced signal detection complexity compared to the best DGCs. Furthermore, in order to strike a practical tradeoff, we develop a generic multi-element and multi-level-ring Amplitude Phase Shift Keying design, and we also arrange for multiple reduced-size DSTM sub-blocks to be transmitted in a permuted manner, which exhibits an improved diversity-throughput tradeoff.

In this paper, we propose a simple yet powerful mapping scheme that converts any conventional square-matrix-based differential space-time coding (DSTC) into a nonsquare-matrix-based DSTC. This allows DSTC schemes to be used practically in open-loop large-scale multiple-input multiple-output scenarios. Our proposed scheme may be viewed as the differential counterpart of coherent spatial modulation (SM), of the generalized SM, of Bell Laboratories layered space-time architecture, and of subcarrier-index modulation. The fundamental impediment of the existing DSTC schemes is the excessive complexity imposed by the unitary constraint. Specifically, the transmission rate of conventional DSTC schemes decays as the number of transmit antennas increases. Our proposed scheme eliminates this impediment and thus achieves a significantly higher transmission rate. We introduce four novel construction methods for the nonsquare codewords, some of which include an arbitrary number of nonzero elements in each codeword column. Our analysis shows that the proposed encoding technique reduces the complexity of both the inverse Fourier transform and the detection processes. Our proposed scheme is shown to approach the performance of its coherent counterpart for low-mobility scenarios, where the number of transmit antennas is increased up to 256.

Spatial-multiplexing aided spatial modulation (SMx-SM) is proposed, which intrinsically amalgamates the concept of vertical bell labs space-time (V-BLAST) and SM to attain a high transmission rate, despite its low number of radio frequency (RF) chains at the transmitter. Specifically, in the SMx-SM scheme, the transmit antennas are partitioned into groups and the SM technique is applied individually to each group. Furthermore, low-complexity threshold-aided compressive sensing-based and message passing-based detectors are derived for our SMx-SM system. Our simulation results show that the proposed SMx-SM system exhibits a better performance despite its lower complexity than the conventional generalized spatial modulation system. More importantly, the proposed SMx-SM system is capable of providing considerable performance gains over the V-BLAST system at the same number of RF chains and throughput. Finally, an upper bound is derived for the average bit error probability, which is confirmed by our simulation results.

We show that certain signal constellations invoked for classic differential encoding result in a phenomenon we term as the unbounded differential constellation size (UDCS). Various existing differential transmission schemes that suffer from this issue are identified. Then, we propose an enhanced algebraic field extension-based differential spatial modulation (AFE-DSM) scheme and its enhanced counterpart that strikes a diversityrate tradeoff (AFE-DSM-DR), both of which overcome the UDCS issue without compromising its full transmit diversity advantage. Furthermore, the proposed schemes are extended to incorporate amplitude and phase shift keying (APSK) in order to exploit all the available degrees of freedom. Additionally, we propose a pair of detection schemes specially designed for APSK-aided differential transmission schemes. Explicitly, we conceive the buffered minimum mean squared error (B-MMSE) detector and buffered maximum likelihood (B-ML) detector, which exploit the knowledge of previously detected symbols in order to further improve the detection performance. Our simulation results have shown that the proposed detectors are capable of bridging the performance gap between the conventional differential detector (CDD) and the coherent detector that has full channel state information. Specifically, when employing the proposed APSKaided AFE-DSM scheme operating at a rate of 2 b per channel use, the B-MMSE and B-ML detectors are observed to give about 3and 3.5-dB signal-to-noise ratio gain with respect to their CDD counterpart at a bit error ratio of 10-5.

Turbo detection performed by exchanging extrinsic information between the soft-decision QAM detector and the channel decoder is beneficial for the sake of exploring the bit dependency imposed both by modulation and by channel coding. However, when the soft-decision coherent QAM detectors are provided with imperfect channel estimates in rapidly fading channels, they tend to produce potentially unreliable LLRs that deviate from the true probabilities, which degrades the turbo detection performance. Against this background, in this paper, we propose a range of new soft-decision multiple-symbol differential sphere detection (MSDSD) and decision-feedback differential detection (DFDD) solutions for differential QAM (DQAM), which dispense with channel estimation in the face of rapidly fading channels. Our proposed design aims for solving the two inherent problems in soft-decision DQAM detection design, which have also been the most substantial obstacle in the way of offering a solution for turbo detected MSDSD aided differential MIMO schemes using QAM: 1) how to facilitate the soft-decision detection of the DQAM's amplitudes, which-in contrast to the DPSK phases-do not form a unitary matrix, and 2) how to separate and streamline the DQAM's soft-decision amplitude and phase detectors. Our simulation results demonstrate that our proposed MSDSD aided DQAM solution is capable of substantially outperforming its MSDSD aided DPSK counterpart in coded systems without imposing a higher complexity. Moreover, our proposed DFDD aided DQAM solution is shown to outperform the conventional solutions in literature. Our discussions on the important subject of coherent versus noncoherent schemes suggest that compared to coherent square QAM relying on realistic imperfect channel estimation, MSDSD aided DQAM may be deemed as a better candidate for turbo detection assisted coded systems operating at high Doppler frequencies.

Unlike a generic PSK/QAM detector, which may visit a constellation diagram only once, a depth-first Sphere Decoder (SD) has to re-visit the same constellation diagram multiple times. Therefore, in order to prevent the SD from repeating the detection operations, the Schnorr-Euchner search strategy of Schnorr and Euchner may be invoked for optimizing the nodes' search-order, where the ideal case is for the SD to visit the constellation nodes in a zigzag fashion. However, when the hard-decision Multiple-Symbol Differential Sphere Detection (MSDSD) of Lampe et al. is invoked for using multiple receive antennas NR≥ 1, the Schnorr-Euchner search strategy has to visit and sort all the MPSK constellation points. A similar situation is encountered for the soft-decision MSDSD of Pauli et al., when the a priori LLRs gleaned from the channel decoder are taken into account. In order to tackle these open problems, in this paper, we propose a correlation process for the hard-decision MSDSD of Lampe et al. and a reduced-complexity design for the soft-decision MSDSD of Pauli et al., so that the Schnorr-Euchner search strategy always opts for visiting the MPSK constellation points in a zigzag fashion. Our simulation results demonstrate that a substantial complexity reduction is achieved by our reduced-complexity design without imposing any performance loss. Explicitly, up to 88.7% complexity reduction is attained for MSDSD (Nw= 4) aided D16PSK. This complexity reduction is quite substantial, especially when the MSDSD is invoked several times during turbo detection. Furthermore, in order to offer an improved solution and a comprehensive study for the soft-decision MSDSD, we also propose to modify the output of the SD to harmonize its operation with the near-optimum Approx-Log-MAP. Then the important subject of coherent versus noncoherent is discussed in the context of coded systems, which suggests that MSDSD aided DPSK is an eminently suitable candidate for turbo detection assisted coded systems operating at high Doppler frequencies.

In this paper, we propose to reduce the complexity of both the Approx-Log-MAP algorithm as well as of the Max-Log-MAP algorithm conceived for generalized PSK/QAM detection, where only a reduced-size subset of the PSK/QAM constellation points is taken into account for producing a single soft-bit output. Although the detectors of Gray-labelled low-order PSK/QAM schemes generally produce near-horizontal EXIT curves, our proposed detectors exploit the a priori LLRs gleaned from a channel decoder in order to retain the optimum detection capability for all PSK/QAM constellations. Furthermore, we demonstrate in this paper that the widely applied MIMO schemes including V-BLAST and STBC, which invoke the proposed soft PSK/QAM detectors may also benefit from our reduced-complexity design. Our simulation results confirm that a near-capacity performance may be achieved by the proposed detectors at a substantially reduced detection complexity.

In this paper, we propose a comprehensive reduced-complexity detector both for hard-decision-aided as well as for the soft-decision-assisted Spatial Modulation (SM)/Space-Time Shift Keying (STSK). More explicitly, the detection of the SM scheme, which activates a single one out of M antennas to transmit a single LPSK/QAM symbol, may be carried out by detecting the antenna activation index m and the LPSK/QAM symbol stseparately, so that the detection complexity may be reduced from the order of O(M · L) to the lower bound of O(M + log2L). However, the QAM aided STSK hard detection proposed in [1] results in a performance loss. Furthermore, the Max-Log-MAP algorithm proposed for soft STSK detection in [2] only takes into account the maximum a posteriori probabilities, which also imposed a performance degradation. Therefore, in this paper, we propose a novel solution for hard-decision-aided SM/STSK detection, which retains its optimal performance, despite its reduced detection complexity, when either LPSK or LQAM is employed. Furthermore, we propose the reduced-complexity Approx-Log-MAP algorithm conceived for the soft-decision-aided SM/STSK detector, in order to replace the suboptimal Max-Log-MAP algorithm.

In this paper, we propose to reduce the complexity of both the Approx-Log-MAP algorithm as well as of the Max-Log-MAP algorithm, which were designed for soft-decision-aided Space-Time Block Code (STBC) detectors. First of all, we review the STBC design, which enables regular L-PSK/QAM detectors to be invoked in order to detect STBCs on a symbol-by-symbol basis. Secondly, we propose to operate the L-PSK/QAM aided STBC detection on a bit-by-bit basis, so that the complexity may be reduced from the order of O(L) to O(BPS = log2L). Our simulation results demonstrate that a near-capacity performance may be achieved by the proposed detectors at a substantially reduced detection complexity. For example, a factor six complexity reduction was achieved by the proposed algorithms, when they were invoked for detecting Alamouti's Square 16QAM aided G2 scheme.

In this paper, we propose to reduce the complexity of both the Approx-Log-MAP algorithm as well as of the Max-Log-MAP algorithm, which were designed for soft-decision aided PSK detectors. First of all, we extend the shown a posteriori PSK symbol probability formula and streamline it by eliminating its unnecessary calculations in the context of the Approx-Log-MAP algorithm. Secondly, we reduce the complexity of the Max-Log-MAP algorithm, where the maximum a posteriori symbol probability may be obtained without evaluating and comparing all the candidate symbol probabilities. Furthermore, we apply our new soft detection arrangement to a variety of coded systems. Our simulation results demonstrate that a significant detection complexity reduction was achieved by our design without any performance loss. For example, a factor two complexity reduction was achieved by the proposed Max-Log-MAP algorithm, when it was invoked for detecting QPSK symbols, which is expected to be significantly higher, when invoked for 16QAM.

Near-capacity Non-coherent Cooperative Network-coding aided Multi-user (NNCNM) systems are designed with the aid of Extrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) charts for the sake of approaching the Differential Discrete-input Continuous-output Memoryless Channel's (D-DCMC) system capacity1. The upper and lower Frame Error Ratio (FER) performance bounds are derived for aiding our network coding design. The outage capacity of the D-DCMC channel is also calculated and used for computing the best-case performance bounds of both the corresponding single-link scheme and of the proposed NNCNM system. Moreover, a new technique referred to as the Pragmatic Algebraic Linear Equation Method (PALEM) was proposed for determining the exact number of information sources that may be recovered from the composite NNCNM stream, which constitutes a lower-complexity evaluation of the attainable FER performance of the NNCNM systems without resorting to high-complexity Monte-Carlo simulations. The NNCNM systems advocated are capable of operating within 0.3-0.5 dB from the corresponding D-DCMC capacity. A joint treatment of channel and network coding is considered in our system2. The design principles presented in this contribution may be extended to a vast range of NNCNM based systems using arbitrary channel coding schemes.

A novel reduced-complexity near-optimal detection algorithm is proposed for enhancing the recent coherently-detected Space-Time Shift Keying (STSK) scheme employing arbitrary constellations, such as L-point Phase-Shift Keying (PSK) and Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM). The proposed detector relies on a modified Matched Filter (MF) concept. More specifically, we exploit both the constellation diagram of the modulation scheme employed as well as the Inter-Element-Interference (IEI)-free STSK architecture. It is revealed that the proposed detector is capable of approaching the optimal Maximum Likelihood (ML) detector's performance, while avoiding the exhaustive ML search.

In this paper, we propose a Cooperative Differential Space-Time Spreading (CDSTS) scheme employing multiple relays, which eliminates the demanding requirement of channel estimation both at the relays and at the destination. More explicitly, the source node employs differential encoding during the first transmission interval, and the multiple relays perform Differential Space-Time Spreading (DSTS) based Amplify-and-Forward (AF) relaying in the second transmission interval. Eliminating high-complexity channel estimation is particularly important at the light-weight shirt-pocket-sized mobile handset based relays, since it is unrealistic to estimate the associated mobile-to-mobile channels, which would also pose a security threat and impose a Doppler-dependent pilot overhead. Finally, it would be prone to a channel-estimation-induced performance degradation, which might be close to the 3 dB non-coherent performance penalty. Loosely Synchronized (LS) CDMA spreading codes were adopted for the asynchronous CDMA uplink for the sake of achieving a near-single-user performance using a low-complexity single-user matched-filter detector. The potential performance degradation of the noncoherent receiver experienced in fast fading channels is mitigated by the proposed Multiple-Symbol Differential Sphere Decoding (MSDSD).

We propose a novel near-capacity Multiple-Symbol Differential Decoding (MSDD) aided cooperative Differential Linear Dispersion Code (DLDC), which exhibits a high grade of system design flexibility in terms of the choice of activated relays and the DLDC's rate allocation. More specifically, the system has the freedom to activate a range of DLDCs depending on both the number of relays available in the network, as well as on their position, throughput and complexity considerations.

In this contribution, Near-capacity Non-coherent Cooperative Network-coding aided Multi-user (NNCNM) systems are designed with the aid of Extrinsic Information Transfer (EXIT) charts for the sake of approaching the Differential Discrete-input Continuous-output Memoryless Channel (D-DCMC)-based capacity. The proposed sub-frame-based network coding solution allows the system to significantly mitigate the effects of large-scale fading on each frame. Hence, NNCNM systems operating in large-scale fading environments are capable of approaching the D-DCMC capacity of the less hostile single link channel incurring the small-scale fading, but no shadow fading.

Differential Space-Time Modulation (DSTM) employing multiple antennas provides a diversity advantage in rich scattering environments, whilst the excessive complexity of MIMO channel estimation is avoided. However, due to size, cost or other hardware limitations, the multiple antennas may be in deep fade simultaneously and hence experience spatially correlated fading, which leads to a loss of diversity gain. Hence in this paper, we design an Amplify-and-Forward (AF) relaying aided DSTM scheme, which is capable of attaining a diversity gain even when the source node is in deep fade. Furthermore, Multiple-Symbol Differential Sphere Decoding (MSDSD) is developed for the proposed scheme to avoid the potential performance degradation of the noncoherent receiver in fast fading channels.

Motivated by the recent development of Spatial Modulation (SM) and Differential Space-Time Shift Keying (DSTSK), we propose a reduced-complexity Conventional Differential Detector (CDD) as well as a reduced-complexity Multiple-Symbol Differential Sphere Detector (MSDSD) for DSTSK. Both schemes operate on a symbol-by-symbol basis in order to reduce the complexity of the classic block-by-block-based CDD and MSDSD, whilst still approaching the optimum performance of the full-search-based Maximum Likelihood (ML) detector.

Inspired by the concept of the Space-Time Shift Keying (STSK) modulation, in this paper we proposed the Space-Frequency Shift Keying (SFSK) modulation as well as the Space-Time-Frequency Shift Keying (STFSK) concept which spreads the transmit signal not only across the space and time domains, but also the frequency domain. The performance of STSK modulation is degraded by about 2 dB, when the channel changes from uncorrelated frequency-flat fading to the frequency-selective environment of the 6-tap COST207 model. By contrast, as a benefit of Frequency Shift keying, the SFSK and STFSK schemes are capable of maintaining their performance also in frequency-selective fading environments. Finally, we demonstrate that the STSK and SFSK schemes constitute special cases of the STFSK modulation.

We propose a novel near-capacity Multiple-Symbol Differential Decoding (MSDD) aided cooperative Differential Linear Dispersion Code (DLDC) scheme, which exhibits a high grade of system design flexibility in terms of the choice of activated relays and the DLDC's rate allocation. More specifically, the system has the freedom to activate a range of DLDCs depending on both the number of relays available in the network, as well as on their position, throughput and complexity considerations.

Motivated by the recent development of spatial modulation (SM) and differential space-time shift keying (DSTSK), we propose a reduced-complexity conventional differential detector (CDD) as well as its reduced-complexity multiple-symbol differential sphere detector (MSDSD) counterpart for DSTSK. Both schemes operate on a symbol-by-symbol basis in order to reduce the complexity of the classic block-by-block-based CDD and MSDSD, whilst still attaining the optimum performance of the full-search-based ML detector.

In this letter, we propose to reduce the detection complexity of soft-decision aided Space-Time Shift Keying (STSK). More explicitly, we propose a vector-by-vector based STSK detector, which exhibits a lower complexity compared to the classic block-by-block based Space-Time Modulation (STM) detector. We further operate the STSK detector on a symbol-by-symbol basis, so that a near-capacity performance may be achieved with the aid of channel coding at a reduced complexity.

We propose Multiple-Symbol Differential Detection (MSDD) aided Differential Space-Time Block Codes (DSTBCs) using QAM. Our solution eliminates the requirement of high-complexity MIMO channel estimation and its pilot overhead, while mitigating the potential performance degradation of noncoherent receivers in fast fading channels. Additionally, we develop Multiple-Symbol Differential Sphere Detection (MSDSD) for the QAM aided DSTBC schemes advocated, in order to circumvent their potentially excessive complexity.

A novel reduced-complexity near-optimal detection algorithm is proposed for enhancing the recent Coherently-detected Space-Time Shift Keying (CSTSK) scheme employing arbitrary constellations, such as {\cal L}-point Phase-Shift Keying (PSK) and Quadrature Amplitude Modulation (QAM). The proposed detector relies on a modified Matched Filter (MF) concept. More specifically, we exploit both the constellation diagram of the modulation scheme employed as well as the Inter-Element-Interference (IEI)-free STSK architecture. Furthermore, we generalize the Pulse Amplitude Modulation (PAM)- or PSK-aided Differentially-encoded STSK (DSTSK) concept and conceive its more bandwidth-efficient QAM-aided counterpart. Then, the proposed reduced-complexity CSTSK detector is applied to the QAM-aided DSTSK scheme, which enables us to carry out low-complexity non-coherent detection, while dispensing with channel estimation. It is revealed that the proposed detector is capable of approaching the optimal Maximum Likelihood (ML) detector's performance, while avoiding the exhaustive ML search. Interestingly, our simulation results also demonstrate that the reduced-complexity detector advocated may achieve the same performance as that of the optimal ML detector for the specific STSK scheme's parameters. Another novelty of this paper is that the star-QAM STSK scheme tends to outperform its square-QAM counterpart, especially for high number of dispersion matrices. Furthermore, we provided both the theoretical analysis and the simulations, in order to support this unexpected fact.