arXiv subjects

Amirhossein Azarbahram

Publications and source records attributed to Amirhossein Azarbahram.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Power from Space: Coordinated Satellite Charging for Off-Grid Wireless Systems

Satellite-enabled wireless power transfer (WPT) may be a transformative solution for charging Internet of Things (IoT) devices in off-grid scenarios where traditional technologies struggle to efficiently meet urgent energy demands. In this article, we review the advantages and limitations of microwave-based long-distance charging for satellite-enabled WPT. We then introduce our vision of coordinated space-based WPT, where multiple satellites jointly serve networks of ground devices. Potential use cases are presented highlighting application requirements. We evaluate the average received power at the target locations using two coordination schemes and perform a statistical characterization of the power spillover on undesired locations. We also shed light on the performance of inter-satellite laser WPT for different operating distances and transmit-receive apertures of the peer satellites. Moreover, we explore the integration of metasurfaces on satellite apertures and ground networks to boost energy conversion efficiency, scalability, and beam management. Finally, we outline relevant challenges and research directions towards implementing our vision.

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arXiv2026

Robust Near-Field Beam Focusing Under Imperfect Localization

The transition to 6G-and-beyond wireless systems with large-scale antenna arrays and high-frequency deployments significantly extends the near-field region, where channels exhibit a strong dependence on user location. While this enables location-based beam focusing as a low-overhead alternative to conventional channel estimation, its performance is highly sensitive to localization errors. In this paper, we study robust near-field beam focusing under imperfect user localization. We explicitly characterize the impact of localization errors on the line-of-sight-dominated channel by deriving a tractable uncertainty model via a first-order Taylor approximation, which captures the coupled effects of distance and angle in near-field propagation. Building on this model, we formulate a max-min signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio optimization problem that guarantees performance under worst-case channel realizations induced by bounded localization errors. The resulting problem is reformulated into a feasibility problem using semidefinite relaxation. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed robust design significantly improves the worst-user rate compared to non-robust beam focusing, particularly under high total transmit power levels and large localization error ranges.

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arXiv2026

Holographic Beamforming for Range-Doppler Sidelobe Suppression in OFDM-ISAC

This paper investigates range--Doppler (RD) sidelobe suppression in an integrated sensing and communications system with a reconfigurable holographic surface (RHS). We jointly design the digital feed precoders and RHS amplitudes to minimize the integrated RD sidelobe level subject to transmit-power, target-illumination, and communication constraints. For this, we develop an alternating successive convex approximation method updating both variable blocks through quadratic subproblems. Numerical results reveal diminishing returns from additional feeds, while increasing the aperture remains more effective and allows the RHS design to reduce sidelobe level.

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arXiv2026

Beam Selection for Delay-Doppler Visibility in Multi-Target MIMO-OFDM Sensing

This paper studies leakage-aware beam selection for multi-target multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO)-orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) sensing. We focus on ensuring that each hypothesized target remains detectable at its own delay-Doppler (DD) bin despite leakage from other targets. For this, we derive a visibility metric that separates the desired focused power from pairwise leakage caused by the finite-grid OFDM ambiguity kernel, receive angular coupling, and transmit codebook gains. Then, we formulate a max-min beam-selection and power-allocation problem in which the sensing signal over the fixed OFDM time-frequency grid is transmitted by a limited number of selected beams. The resulting problem is solved via a bisection-based mixed-integer successive convex approximation framework. A time-sharing formulation is also presented as a globally solvable benchmark. Numerical results show that the proposed pairwise leakage-aware design achieves higher worst-target visibility than the time-sharing, global leakage-suppression, illumination-based, and random beam-selection baselines, especially when targets are close in angle or DD.

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arXiv2026

Toward Proactive RF Charging Scheduling: Generative AI for Decision Support

Radio frequency wireless power transfer (RF-WPT) is an enabling technology for supporting uninterrupted communications in future Internet of Things systems by reducing the need for battery replacement and mitigating battery-waste-related issues. For large-scale RF-WPT deployment, one of the main challenges is the scheduler-level resource allocation. Specifically, the transmitter must decide how much energy to deliver, when, and to whom, under limited charging resources, incomplete receiver-side information, and uncertain near-future charging conditions. This article positions generative artificial intelligence (GenAI) as a promising tool for this setting because it can foresee multiple plausible charging scenarios conditioned on coarse operational context and receiver-side information. We propose GenAI to act as an uncertainty-aware support layer for the RF-WPT scheduler rather than as a standalone forecasting or decision-making tool. To this end, we first revisit the main challenges of RF-WPT scheduling, and discuss how major GenAI families can support uncertainty-aware charging decisions by generating scenario-based inputs for downstream tasks. We then present a warehouse-style case study showing that preserving uncertainty through the sampling capability of generative models can improve robust charging decisions compared with deterministic prediction and simple non-learning baselines, especially under risk-sensitive objectives. Finally, we identify key open challenges and present some directions for future research.

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arXiv2026

Sequential Monte Carlo for Resilient Networks: Assessment, Mitigation, and Generative Modeling

Resilience is becoming crucial for future wireless networks, which must withstand, adapt to, and recover from rare but potentially cascading disruptions. This paper develops a sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) simulation framework for such systems, in which resilience failures are formulated as path-dependent rare events arising from staged degradation and delayed recovery, and are decomposed into semantically interpretable levels defined by a reaction coordinate. Building on this structure, we present a fixed-level splitting approach with budget-aware population control, enabling efficient estimation of rare non-recovery probabilities. We discuss the potential reuse of SMC checkpoints as representative near-critical states for policy evaluation and simulation-based selection. We further extend the methodology to learned stochastic simulation by using generative sequence models as restartable surrogates within data-driven digital twins. We showcase the framework in a delay-critical wireless network use case, where SMC substantially improves over standard Monte Carlo in rare-event regimes with both physical and learned simulators.

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arXiv2026

Discrete Diffusion for Codebook-Based Beam Candidate Generation

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication enables high data rates through large bandwidths and highly directional beamforming, but its sensitivity to blockage and mobility makes reliable beam alignment a central challenge. Limited-probing beam management is a fundamental problem in codebook-based mmWave systems, where only a small subset of beams can be evaluated simultaneously, and the serving decision is restricted to the probed set. Under mobility and noisy feedback, this leads to a sequential and partially observable decision problem in which performance depends critically on the quality of the proposed beam candidates. In this paper, we consider limited-probing beam management and develop a history-conditioned discrete denoising diffusion probabilistic model for beam candidate generation. The proposed method learns from logged probing histories a conditional distribution over promising beam indices, which is then used to construct probing candidates online. Numerical analysis shows that the proposed approach consistently achieves better signal-to-noise ratio, beam-miss probability, and conditional probe regret under tight probing budgets compared with strong learning-based and discriminative baselines. The gains are especially pronounced in low-probing regimes, where accurate candidate generation is most critical.

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arXiv2026

Beamforming and Waveform Optimization for RF Wireless Power Transfer with Beyond Diagonal Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces

Radio frequency (RF) wireless power transfer (WPT) is a promising technology to seamlessly charge low-power devices, but its low end-to-end power transfer efficiency remains a critical challenge. To address the latter, low-cost transmit/radiating architectures, e.g., based on reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs), have shown great potential. Beyond diagonal (BD) RIS is a novel branch of RIS offering enhanced performance over traditional diagonal RIS (D-RIS) in wireless communications, but its potential gains in RF-WPT remain unexplored. Motivated by this, we analyze a BD-RIS-assisted single-antenna RF-WPT system to charge a single rectifier, and formulate a joint beamforming and multi-carrier waveform optimization problem aiming to maximize the harvested power. We propose two solutions relying on semi-definite programming for fully connected BD-RIS, a successive convex approximation (SCA)-based beamforming approach, and an efficient low-complexity iterative method relying on SCA. Numerical results show that the proposed algorithms converge and that adding transmit sub-carriers or RIS elements improves the harvesting performance. We show that the transmit power budget impacts the relative power allocation among different sub-carriers depending on the rectifier's operating regime, while BD-RIS shapes the cascade channel differently for frequency-selective and flat scenarios. Finally, we verify by simulation that BD-RIS and D-RIS achieve the same performance under pure far-field line-of-sight conditions (in the absence of mutual coupling). Meanwhile, BD-RIS outperforms D-RIS as the non-line-of-sight components of the channel become dominant.

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arXiv2025

Echo-Conditioned Denoising Diffusion Probabilistic Models for Multi-Target Tracking in RF Sensing

In this paper, we consider a dynamic radio frequency sensing system aiming to spatially track multiple targets over time. We develop a conditional denoising diffusion probabilistic model (C-DDPM)-assisted framework that learns the temporal evolution of target parameters by leveraging the noisy echo observations as conditioning features. The proposed framework integrates a variational autoencoder (VAE) for echo compression and utilizes classifier-free guidance to enhance conditional denoising. In each transmission block, VAE encodes the received echo into a latent representation that conditions DDPM to predict future target states, which are then used for codebook beam selection. Simulation results show that the proposed approach outperforms classical signal processing, filtering, and deep learning benchmarks. The C-DDPM-assisted framework achieves significantly lower estimation errors in both angle and distance tracking, demonstrating the potential of generative models for integrated sensing and communications.

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arXiv2025

On the Deployment of Multiple Radio Stripes for Large-Scale Near-Field RF Wireless Power Transfer

This paper investigates the deployment of radio stripe systems for indoor radio-frequency (RF) wireless power transfer (WPT) in line-of-sight near-field scenarios. The focus is on environments where energy demand is concentrated in specific areas, referred to as 'hotspots', spatial zones with higher user density or consistent energy requirements. We formulate a joint clustering and radio stripe deployment problem that aims to maximize the minimum received power across all hotspots. To address the complexity, we decouple the problem into two stages: i) clustering for assigning radio stripes to hotspots based on their spatial positions and near-field propagation characteristics, and ii) antenna element placement optimization. In particular, we propose four radio stripe deployment algorithms. Two are based on general successive convex approximation (SCA) and signomial programming (SGP) methods. The other two are shape-constrained solutions where antenna elements are arranged along either straight lines or regular polygons, enabling simpler deployment. Numerical results show that the proposed clustering method converges effectively, with Chebyshev initialization significantly outperforming random initialization. The optimized deployments consistently outperform baseline benchmarks across a wide range of frequencies and radio stripe lengths, while the polygon-shaped deployment achieves better performance compared to other approaches. Meanwhile, the line-shaped deployment demonstrates an advantage under high boresight gain settings, benefiting from increased spatial diversity and broader angular coverage.

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arXiv2025

Sense-then-Charge: Wireless Power Transfer to Unresponsive Devices with Unknown Location

This paper explores a multi-antenna dual-functional radio frequency (RF) wireless power transfer (WPT) and radar system to charge multiple unresponsive devices. We formulate a beamforming problem to maximize the minimum received power at the devices without prior location and channel state information (CSI) knowledge. We propose dividing transmission blocks into sensing and charging phases. First, the location of the devices is estimated by sending sensing signals and performing multiple signal classification and least square estimation on the received echo. Then, the estimations are used for CSI prediction and RF-WPT beamforming. Simulation results reveal that there is an optimal number of blocks allocated for sensing and charging depending on the system setup. Our sense-then-charge (STC) protocol can outperform CSI-free benchmarks and achieve near-optimal performance with a sufficient number of receive antennas and transmit power. However, STC struggles if using insufficient antennas or power as device numbers grow.

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arXiv2025

Beyond Diagonal Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces for Multi-Carrier RF Wireless Power Transfer

Radio frequency (RF) wireless power transfer (WPT) is promising for promoting sustainability in future wireless systems, but its low end-to-end power transfer efficiency is a critical challenge. For this, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) can be leveraged to enhance efficiency by providing nearly passive beamforming gains. Beyond diagonal (BD) RIS is a new RIS variant offering greater performance benefits than traditional diagonal RIS (D-RIS), though its potential for RF-WPT remains unexplored. Motivated by this, we consider a single-input single-output BD-RIS-aided RF-WPT system and we formulate a joint beamforming and waveform optimization problem aiming to maximize the harvested power at the receiver. We propose an optimization framework relying on successive convex approximation, alternating optimization, and semi-definite relaxation. Numerical results show that increasing the number of transmit sub-carriers or RIS elements improves the harvested power. We verify by simulation that BD-RIS leads to the same performance as D-RIS under far-field line-of-sight conditions (in the absence of mutual coupling), while it outperforms D-RIS as the non-line-of-sight components become dominant.

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arXiv2024

Waveform Optimization and Beam Focusing for Near-field Wireless Power Transfer with Dynamic Metasurface Antennas and Non-linear Energy Harvesters

Radio frequency (RF) wireless power transfer (WPT) is a promising technology for future wireless systems. However, the low power transfer efficiency (PTE) is a critical challenge for practical implementations. One of the main inefficiency sources is the power consumption and loss introduced by key components such as high-power amplifier (HPA) and rectenna, thus they must be carefully considered for PTE optimization. Herein, we consider a near-field RF-WPT system with a dynamic metasurface antenna (DMA) at the transmitter and non-linear energy harvesters. We provide a mathematical framework to calculate the power consumption and harvested power from multi-tone signal transmissions. Based on this, we propose an approach relying on alternating optimization and successive convex approximation for waveform optimization and beam focusing to minimize power consumption while meeting energy harvesting requirements. Numerical results show that increasing the number of transmit tones reduces the power consumption by leveraging the rectifier's non-linearity more efficiently. Moreover, they demonstrate that increasing the antenna length improves the performance, while DMA outperforms fully-digital architecture in terms of power consumption. Finally, our results verify that the transmitter focuses the energy on receivers located in the near-field, while energy beams are formed in the receivers' direction in the far-field region.

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arXiv2024

End-to-End Waveform and Beamforming Optimization for RF Wireless Power Transfer

Radio frequency (RF) wireless power transfer (WPT) is a key technology for future low-power wireless systems. However, the inherently low end-to-end power transfer efficiency (PTE) is challenging for practical applications. The main factors contributing to it are the channel losses, transceivers' power consumption, and losses related, e.g., to the digital-to-analog converter (DAC), high-power amplifier, and rectenna. Optimizing PTE requires careful consideration of these factors, motivating the current work. Herein, we consider an analog multi-antenna power transmitter that aims to charge a single energy harvester. We first provide a mathematical framework to calculate the harvested power from multi-tone signal transmissions and the system power consumption. Then, we formulate the joint waveform and analog beamforming design problem to minimize power consumption and meet the charging requirements. Finally, we propose an optimization approach relying on swarm intelligence to solve the specified problem. Simulation results quantify the power consumption reduction as the DAC, phase shifters resolution, and antenna length are increased, while it is seen that increasing system frequency results in higher power consumption.

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arXiv2024

Deep Reinforcement Learning for Multi-User RF Charging with Non-linear Energy Harvesters

Radio frequency (RF) wireless power transfer (WPT) is a promising technology for sustainable support of massive Internet of Things (IoT). However, RF-WPT systems are characterized by low efficiency due to channel attenuation, which can be mitigated by precoders that adjust the transmission directivity. This work considers a multi-antenna RF-WPT system with multiple non-linear energy harvesting (EH) nodes with energy demands changing over discrete time slots. This leads to the charging scheduling problem, which involves choosing the precoders at each slot to minimize the total energy consumption and meet the EH requirements. We model the problem as a Markov decision process and propose a solution relying on a low-complexity beamforming and deep deterministic policy gradient (DDPG). The results show that the proposed beamforming achieves near-optimal performance with low computational complexity, and the DDPG-based approach converges with the number of episodes and reduces the system's power consumption, while the outage probability and the power consumption increase with the number of devices.

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arXiv2024

Zero-energy Devices for 6G: Technical Enablers at a Glance

Low-cost, resource-constrained, maintenance-free, and energy-harvesting (EH) Internet of Things (IoT) devices, referred to as zero-energy devices (ZEDs), are rapidly attracting attention from industry and academia due to their myriad of applications. To date, such devices remain primarily unsupported by modern IoT connectivity solutions due to their intrinsic fabrication, hardware, deployment, and operation limitations, while lacking clarity on their key technical enablers and prospects. Herein, we address this by discussing the main characteristics and enabling technologies of ZEDs within the next generation of mobile networks, specifically focusing on unconventional EH sources, multi-source EH, power management, energy storage solutions, manufacturing material and practices, backscattering, and low-complexity receivers. Moreover, we highlight the need for lightweight and energy-aware computing, communication, and scheduling protocols, while discussing potential approaches related to TinyML, duty cycling, and infrastructure enablers like radio frequency wireless power transfer and wake-up protocols. Challenging aspects and open research directions are identified and discussed in all the cases. Finally, we showcase an experimental ZED proof-of-concept related to ambient cellular backscattering.

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arXiv2023

Energy Beamforming for RF Wireless Power Transfer with Dynamic Metasurface Antennas

Radio frequency (RF) wireless power transfer (WPT) is a promising technology for charging the Internet of Things. Practical RF-WPT systems usually require energy beamforming (EB), which can compensate for the severe propagation loss by directing beams toward the devices. The EB flexibility depends on the transmitter architecture, existing a trade-off between cost/complexity and degrees of freedom. Thus, simpler architectures such as dynamic metasurface antennas (DMAs) are gaining attention. Herein, we consider an RF-WPT system with a transmit DMA for meeting the energy harvesting requirements of multiple devices and formulate an optimization problem for the minimum-power design. First, we provide a mathematical model to capture the frequency-dependant signal propagation effect in the DMA architecture. Next, we propose a solution based on semi-definite programming and alternating optimization. Results show that a DMA-based structure can outperform a fully-digital implementation and that the required transmit power decreases with the antenna array size, while it increases and remains almost constant with frequency in DMA and FD, respectively.

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arXiv2023

On the Radio Stripe Deployment for Indoor RF Wireless Power Transfer

One of the primary goals of future wireless systems is to foster sustainability, for which, radio frequency (RF) wireless power transfer (WPT) is considered a key technology enabler. The key challenge of RF-WPT systems is the extremely low end-to-end efficiency, mainly due to the losses introduced by the wireless channel. Distributed antenna systems are undoubtedly appealing as they can significantly shorten the charging distances, thus, reducing channel losses. Interestingly, radio stripe systems provide a cost-efficient and scalable way to deploy a distributed multi-antenna system, and thus have received a lot of attention recently. Herein, we consider an RF-WPT system with a transmit radio stripe network to charge multiple indoor energy hotspots, i.e., spatial regions where the energy harvesting devices are expected to be located, including near-field locations. We formulate the optimal radio stripe deployment problem aimed to maximize the minimum power received by the users and explore two specific predefined shapes, namely the straight line and polygon-shaped configurations. Then, we provide efficient solutions relying on geometric programming to optimize the location of the radio stripe elements. The results demonstrate that the proposed radio stripe deployments outperform a central fully-digital square array with the same number of elements and utilizing larger radio stripe lengths can enhance the performance, while increasing the system frequency may degrade it.

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