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Arumugam Nallanathan

Publications and source records attributed to Arumugam Nallanathan.

At least 73 records · Page 4Linked to original sources

Pinching Antenna System (PASS) Enhanced Covert Communications: Against Warden via Sensing

A sensing-aided covert communication network empowered by pinching antenna systems (PASS) is proposed in this work. Unlike conventional fixed-position MIMO arrays, PASS dynamically reconfigures its pinching antennas (PAs) closer to the legitimate user, substantially enhancing covertness. To further secure the adversary's channel state information (CSI), a sensing function is leveraged to track the malicious warden's movements. In particular, this paper first proposes an extended Kalman filter (EKF) based approach to fulfilling the tracking function. Building on this, a covert communication problem is formulated with a joint design of beamforming, artificial noise (AN) signals, and the position of PAs. Then, the beamforming and AN design subproblems are resolved jointly with a subspace approach, while the PA position optimization subproblem is handled by a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) approach by treating the evolution of the warden's mobility status as a temporally corrected process. Numerical results are presented and demonstrate that: i) the EKF approach can accurately track the warden's CSI with low complexity, ii) the effectiveness of the proposed solution is verified by its outperformance over the greedy and searching-based benchmarks, and iii) with new design degrees of freedom (DoFs), the performance of PASS is superior to the conventional fully-digital MIMO systems.

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Reducing AoI and Improving Throughput for NOMA-assisted SGF Systems: A Hierarchical Learning Approach

A non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) assisted semi-grant-free (SGF) framework is proposed to enable channel access for grant-free users (GFUs) by using residual resources from grant-based users. Under this framework, the problem of joint beamforming design and transmission scheduling is formulated to improve the system throughput and reduce the age-of-information of GFUs. The aforementioned problem is transferred into a Markov Decision Process to model the changing environment with the transmission/ waiting/ retransmission of GFUs. In an effort to solve the pertinent problem, firstly, a deep reinforcement learning (DRL) based transmission scheduling approach is proposed for determining the optimal transmission probability based on the available transmission slots and transmission status of GFUs. Secondly, a hierarchical learning algorithm is proposed to analyze the channel state information of GBUs and the transmission status of GFUs, and to train an upper-level policy based on this analysis for beamforming to achieve efficient grant-based transmission, while a lower-level policy adapts to maximize the utilization of transmission slots allocated by the upper-level agent. The two policies interact to improve channel access and avoid collisions. Numerical results reveal that 1) The DRL based transmission scheduling outperforms existing adaptive and state-dependent baselines in AoI reduction, where an average three-time-slots-earlier-transmission can be obtained compared to the state-dependent choice, and five time slots earlier can be achieved when comparing to the adaptive choice; 2) The hierarchical learning algorithm is able to achieve approximately a 31.82% gain while maintaining the average AoI of GFUs within 1.5 time slots. 3) The effectiveness of the hierarchical learning scheme in NOMA-assisted SGF system is validated across scenarios with GFUs counts from 1-5 times of GBUs.

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Pinching-Antenna Systems (PASS)-based Indoor Positioning

Pinching antenna (PA), a flexible waveguide integrated with dielectric particles, intelligently reconstructs line-of-sight channels. Utilizing its geometric deterministic model and meter-level reconstruction, PA systems (PASS) are applied to uplink indoor positioning. In this paper, the uplink positioning system model for PASS is firstly proposed. A PASS-based received signal strength indication (RSSI) method is proposed to measure the distance from the users to each PA, which is efficient and suitable for PASS. PASS-based weighted least squares (WLS) algorithm is designed to calculate the two-dimensional coordinates of the users. Several critical observations can be drawn from our results: i) More PAs on the waveguide improves the positioning accuracy and robustness. ii) When the number of PAs exceeds a certain threshold, the performance gain becomes marginal. iii) User locations between and near PAs yield superior positioning accuracy.

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Generative AI-Empowered Secure Communications in Space-Air-Ground Integrated Networks: A Survey and Tutorial

Space-air-ground integrated networks (SAGINs) face unprecedented security challenges due to their inherent characteristics, such as multidimensional heterogeneity and dynamic topologies. These characteristics fundamentally undermine conventional security methods and traditional artificial intelligence (AI)-driven solutions. Generative AI (GAI) is a transformative approach that can safeguard SAGIN security by synthesizing data, understanding semantics, and making autonomous decisions. This survey fills existing review gaps by examining GAI-empowered secure communications across SAGINs. First, we introduce secured SAGINs and highlight GAI's advantages over traditional AI for security defenses. Then, we explain how GAI mitigates failures of authenticity, breaches of confidentiality, tampering of integrity, and disruptions of availability across the physical, data link, and network layers of SAGINs. Three step-by-step tutorials discuss how to apply GAI to solve specific problems using concrete methods, emphasizing its generative paradigm beyond traditional AI. Finally, we outline open issues and future research directions, including lightweight deployment, adversarial robustness, and cross-domain governance, to provide major insights into GAI's role in shaping next-generation SAGIN security.

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Latency Minimization Oriented Radio and Computation Resource Allocations for 6G V2X Networks with ISCC

Incorporating mobile edge computing (MEC) and integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) has emerged as a promising technology to enable integrated sensing, communication, and computing (ISCC) in the sixth generation (6G) networks. ISCC is particularly attractive for vehicle-to-everything (V2X) applications, where vehicles perform ISAC to sense the environment and simultaneously offload the sensing data to roadside base stations (BSs) for remote processing. In this paper, we investigate a particular ISCC-enabled V2X system consisting of multiple multi-antenna BSs serving a set of single-antenna vehicles, in which the vehicles perform their respective ISAC operations (for simultaneous sensing and offloading to the associated BS) over orthogonal sub-bands. With the focus on fairly minimizing the sensing completion latency for vehicles while ensuring the detection probability constraints, we jointly optimize the allocations of radio resources (i.e., the sub-band allocation, transmit power control at vehicles, and receive beamforming at BSs) as well as computation resources at BS MEC servers. To solve the formulated complex mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem, we propose an alternating optimization algorithm. In this algorithm, we determine the sub-band allocation via the branch-and-bound method, optimize the transmit power control via successive convex approximation (SCA), and derive the receive beamforming and computation resource allocation at BSs in closed form based on generalized Rayleigh entropy and fairness criteria, respectively. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed joint resource allocation design significantly reduces the maximum task completion latency among all vehicles. Furthermore, we also demonstrate several interesting trade-offs between the system performance and resource utilizations.

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Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface aided Integrated-Navigation-and-Communication in Urban Canyons: A Satellite Selection Approach

This study investigates the application of a simultaneous transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS)-aided medium-Earth-orbit (MEO) satellite network for providing both global positioning services and communication services in the urban canyons, where the direct satellite-user links are obstructed. Superposition coding (SC) and successive interference cancellation (SIC) techniques are utilized for the integrated navigation and communication (INAC) networks, and the composed navigation and communication signals are reflected or transmitted to ground users or indoor users located in urban canyons. To meet diverse application needs, navigation-oriented (NO)-INAC and communication-oriented (CO)-INAC have been developed, each tailored according to distinct power allocation factors. We then proposed two algorithms, namely navigation-prioritized-algorithm (NPA) and communication-prioritized-algorithm (CPA), to improve the navigation or communication performance by selecting the satellite with the optimized position dilution of precision (PDoP) or with the best channel gain. The effectiveness of the proposed STAR-RIS-aided INAC network is quantified by analyzing the positioning error for navigation services and by evaluating communication performance through achievable ergodic rate metrics. Our satellite selection approach indicates that: the positioning services at the urban canyon users can be completed with the aid of STAR-RIS. 2) Additionally, it is observed that while a single STAR-RIS array can extend the navigational link, it fails to serve users in indoor scenarios, highlighting a limitation in the current system design.

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ASTARS empowered Satellite Positioning Approach for Urban Canyons and Indoor Environments

To mitigate the loss of satellite navigation signals in urban canyons and indoor environments, we propose an active simultaneous transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (ASTARS) empowered satellite positioning approach. Deployed on building structures, ASTARS reflects navigation signals to outdoor receivers in urban canyons and transmits signals indoors to bypass obstructions, providing high-precision positioning services to receivers in non-line-of-sight (NLoS) areas. The path between ASTARS and the receiver is defined as the extended line-of-sight (ELoS) path and an improved carrier phase observation equation is derived to accommodate that. The receiver compensates for its clock bias through network time synchronization, corrects the actual signal path distance to the satellite-to-receiver distance through a distance correction algorithm, and determines its position by using the least squares (LS) method. Mathematical modeling of the errors introduced by the proposed method is conducted, followed by simulation analysis to assess their impact. Simulation results show that: 1) in areas where GNSS signals are blocked, with time synchronization accuracy within a 10 ns error range, the proposed method provides positioning services with errors not exceeding 4 m for both indoor and outdoor receivers, outperforming conventional NLoS methods with positioning errors of more than 7 m; 2) the additional errors introduced by the proposed method do not exceed 3 m for time synchronization errors within 10 ns, which includes the phase shift, beamwidth error, time synchronization errors, and satellite distribution errors, outperforming traditional NLoS methods, which typically produce positioning errors greater than 5 m.

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Near-Field Sensing Enabled Predictive Beamforming: Fundamentals, Framework, and Opportunities

The article proposes a novel near-field predictive beamforming framework for high-mobility wireless networks. Specifically, due to the spherical waves and non-uniform Doppler frequencies brought by the near-field region, the new ability of full-dimensional location and velocity sensing is characterized. Building on this foundation, the near-field predictive beamforming framework is proposed to proactively design beamformers for mobility users following arbitrary trajectories. Compared to the conventional far-field counterpart, the near-field predictive beamforming stands out due to: i) Prior-Knowledge-Free Prediction, and ii) Low-Complexity and Generalizable System Design. To realize these advantages, the implementation methods are discussed, followed by a case study confirming the benefits of the proposed framework. Finally, the article highlights promising research opportunities inspired by the proposed framework.

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Performance Analysis of Fluid Antenna System under Spatially-Correlated Rician Fading Channels

Fluid antenna systems (FAS) are among the most promising technologies for the sixth generation (6G) mobile communication networks. Unlike traditional fixed-position multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, a FAS possesses position reconfigurability to switch on-demand among $N$ predefined ports over a prescribed space. This paper explores the performance of a single-input single-output (SISO) model with a fixed-position antenna transmitter and a single-antenna FAS receiver, referred to as the Rx-SISO-FAS model, under spatially-correlated Rician fading channels. Our contributions include exact expressions and closed-form bounds for the outage probability of the Rx-SISO-FAS model, as well as exact and closed-form lower bounds for the ergodic rate. Importantly, we also analyze the performance considering both uniform linear array (ULA) and uniform planar array (UPA) configurations for the ports of the FAS. To gain insights, we evaluate the diversity order of the proposed model and our analytical results indicate that with a fixed overall system size, increasing the number of ports, $N$, significantly decreases the outage performance of FAS under different Rician fading factors. Our numerical results further demonstrate that: $i)$ the Rx-SISO-FAS model can enhance performance under spatially-correlated Rician fading channels over the fixed-position antenna counterpart; $ii)$ the Rician factor negatively impacts performance in the low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime; $iii$) FAS can outperform an $L$ branches maximum ratio combining (MRC) system under Rician fading channels; and $iv)$ when the number of ports is identical, UPA outperforms ULA.

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Wireless Sensing via Pinching-Antenna Systems

A wireless sensing architecture via pinching antenna systems is proposed. Compared to conventional wireless systems, PASS offers flexible antenna deployment and improved probing performance for wireless sensing by leveraging dielectric waveguides and pinching antennas (PAs). To enhance signal reception, leaky coaxial (LCX) cables are used to uniformly collect echo signals over a wide area. The Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) for multi-target sensing is derived and then minimized through the joint optimization of the transmit waveform and the positions of PAs. To solve the resulting highly coupled, non-convex problem, a two-stage particle swarm optimization (PSO)-based algorithm is proposed. Numerical results demonstrate significant gains in sensing accuracy and robustness over conventional sensing systems, highlighting the benefits of integrating LCX-based reception with optimized PASS configurations.

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Redefining Information Freshness: AoGI for Generative AI in 6G Networks

Generative Artificial Intelligence (GenAI) is playing an increasingly important role in enriching and facilitating human life by generating various useful information, of which real-time GenAI is a significant part and has great potential in applications such as real-time robot control, automated driving, augmented reality, etc. There are a variety of information updating processes in real-time GenAI, and the age of information (AoI) is an effective metric for evaluating information freshness. However, due to the diversity and generativity of information in real-time GenAI, it may be incompatible to directly use existing information aging metrics to assess its timeliness. In this article, we introduce a new concept called Age of Generative Information (AoGI) to evaluate the freshness of generative information, which takes into account the information delay caused not only by sampling and transmission, but also by computation. Furthermore, since real-time GenAI services are often supported by mobile-edge-cloud (MEC) collaborative computing in 6G networks and some of the generated information is privacy sensitive, it is recommended that the identities of edge and cloud should always be verified in a zero-trust manner. We introduce the concept of Age of Trust (AoT) to characterise the decay process of their trust level. We also discuss the optimisations of these evolved information aging metrics, focusing on the impact of dynamic external conditions, including wireless environments and limited computational resources. Finally, we highlight several open challenges in providing timeliness guarantees for real-time GenAI services.

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On the Performance of Uplink Pinching Antenna Systems (PASS)

Pinching antenna (PA) is a flexible antenna composed of a waveguide and multiple dielectric particles, which is capable of reconfiguring wireless channels intelligently in line-of-sight links. By leveraging the unique features of PAs, we exploit the uplink (UL) transmission in pinching antenna systems (PASS). To comprehensively evaluate the performance gains of PASS in UL transmissions, three scenarios, multiple PAs for a single user (MPSU), a single PA for a single user (SPSU), and a single PA for multiple users (SPMU) are considered. The positions of PAs are optimized to obtain the maximal channel gains in the considered scenarios. For the MPSU and SPSU scenarios, by applying the optimized position of PAs, closed-form expressions for analytical, asymptotic and approximated ergodic rate are derived. As the further advance, closed-form expressions of approximated ergodic rate is derived when a single PA is fixed in the SPMU scenario. Our results demonstrate the following key insights: i) The proposed PASS significantly outperforms conventional Multiple-input Single-output networks by exploiting the flexibility of PAs; ii) The PA distribution follows an asymmetric non-uniform distribution in the MPSU scenario; iii) Optimizing PA positions significantly enhances the ergodic sum rate performance.

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GPASS: Deep Learning for Beamforming in Pinching-Antenna Systems (PASS)

A novel GPASS architecture is proposed for jointly learning pinching beamforming and transmit beamforming in pinching antenna systems (PASS). The GPASS is with a staged architecture, where the positions of pinching antennas are first learned by a sub-GNN. Then, the transmit beamforming is learned by another sub-GNN based on the antenna positions. The sub-GNNs are incorporated with the permutation property of the beamforming policy, which helps improve the learning performance. The optimal solution structure of transmit beamforming is also leveraged to simplify the mappings to be learned. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed architecture can achieve a higher SE than a heuristic baseline method with low inference complexity.

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Diffusion Model for Multiple Antenna Communications

The potential of applying diffusion models (DMs) for multiple antenna communications is discussed. A unified framework of applying DM for multiple antenna tasks is first proposed. Then, the tasks are innovatively divided into two categories, i.e., decision-making tasks and generation tasks, depending on whether an optimization of system parameters is involved. For each category, it is conceived 1) how the framework can be used for each task and 2) why the DM is superior to traditional artificial intelligence (TAI) and conventional optimization tasks. It is highlighted that the DMs are well-suited for scenarios with strong interference and noise, excelling in modeling complex data distribution and exploring better actions. A case study of learning beamforming with a DM is then provided, to demonstrate the superiority of the DMs with simulation results. Finally, the applications of DM for emerging multiple antenna technologies and promising research directions are discussed.

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Vehicular Multi-Tier Distributed Computing with Hybrid THz-RF Transmission in Satellite-Terrestrial Integrated Networks

In this paper, we propose a Satellite-Terrestrial Integrated Network (STIN) assisted vehicular multi-tier distributed computing (VMDC) system leveraging hybrid terahertz (THz) and radio frequency (RF) communication technologies. Task offloading for satellite edge computing is enabled by THz communication using the orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) technique. For terrestrial edge computing, we employ non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and vehicle clustering to realize task offloading. We formulate a non-convex optimization problem aimed at maximizing computation efficiency by jointly optimizing bandwidth allocation, task allocation, subchannel-vehicle matching and power allocation. To address this non-convex optimization problem, we decompose the original problem into four sub-problems and solve them using an alternating iterative optimization approach. For the subproblem of task allocation, we solve it by linear programming. To solve the subproblem of sub-channel allocation, we exploit many-to-one matching theory to obtain the result. The subproblem of bandwidth allocation of OFDMA and the subproblem of power allocation of NOMA are solved by quadratic transformation method. Finally, the simulation results show that our proposed scheme significantly enhances the computation efficiency of the STIN-based VMDC system compared with the benchmark schemes.

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When xURLLC Meets NOMA: A Stochastic Network Calculus Perspective

The advent of next-generation ultra-reliable and low-latency communications (xURLLC) presents stringent and unprecedented requirements for key performance indicators (KPIs). As a disruptive technology, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) harbors the potential to fulfill these stringent KPIs essential for xURLLC. However, the immaturity of research on the tail distributions of these KPIs significantly impedes the application of NOMA to xURLLC. Stochastic network calculus (SNC), as a potent methodology, is leveraged to provide dependable theoretical insights into tail distribution analysis and statistical QoS provisioning (SQP). In this article, we develop a NOMA-assisted uplink xURLLC network architecture that incorporates an SNC-based SQP theoretical framework (SNC-SQP) to support tail distribution analysis in terms of delay, age-of-information (AoI), and reliability. Based on SNC-SQP, an SQP-driven power optimization problem is proposed to minimize transmit power while guaranteeing xURLLC's KPIs on delay, AoI, reliability, and power consumption. Extensive simulations validate our proposed theoretical framework and demonstrate that the proposed power allocation scheme significantly reduces uplink transmit power and outperforms conventional schemes in terms of SQP performance.

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Unveiling the Potential of NOMA: A Journey to Next Generation Multiple Access

Revolutionary sixth-generation wireless communications technologies and applications, notably digital twin networks (DTN), connected autonomous vehicles (CAVs), space-air-ground integrated networks (SAGINs), zero-touch networks, industry 5.0, and healthcare 5.0, are driving next-generation wireless networks (NGWNs). These technologies generate massive data, requiring swift transmission and trillions of device connections, fueling the need for sophisticated next-generation multiple access (NGMA) schemes. NGMA enables massive connectivity in the 6G era, optimizing NGWN operations beyond current multiple access (MA) schemes. This survey showcases non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) as NGMA's frontrunner, exploring What has NOMA delivered?, What is NOMA providing?, and What lies ahead?. We present NOMA variants, fundamental operations, and applicability in multi-antenna systems, machine learning, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS), cognitive radio networks (CRN), integrated sensing and communications (ISAC), terahertz networks, and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs). Additionally, we explore NOMA's interplay with state-of-the-art wireless technologies, highlighting its advantages and technical challenges. Finally, we unveil NOMA research trends in the 6G era and provide design recommendations and future perspectives for NOMA as the leading NGMA solution for NGWNs.

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Deep Learning for Beamforming in Multi-User Continuous Aperture Array (CAPA) Systems

A DeepCAPA (Deep Learning for Continuous Aperture Array (CAPA)) framework is proposed to learn beamforming in CAPA systems. The beamforming optimization problem is firstly formulated, and it is mathematically proved that the optimal beamforming lies in the subspace spanned by users' conjugate channel responses. Two challenges are encountered when directly applying deep neural networks (DNNs) for solving the formulated problem, i) both the input and output spaces are infinite-dimensional, which are not compatible with DNNs. The finite-dimensional representations of inputs and outputs are derived to address this challenge. ii) A closed-form loss function is unavailable for training the DNN. To tackle this challenge, two additional DNNs are trained to approximate the operations without closed-form expressions for expediting gradient back-propagation. To improve learning performance and reduce training complexity, the permutation equivariance properties of the mappings to be learned are mathematically proved. As a further advance, the DNNs are designed as graph neural networks to leverage the properties. Numerical results demonstrate that: i) the proposed DeepCAPA framework achieves higher spectral efficiency and lower inference complexity compared to match-filtering and state-of-art Fourier-based discretization method, and ii) DeepCAPA approaches the performance upper bound of optimizing beamforming in the spatially discrete array-based system as the number of antennas in a fixed-sized area tends toward infinity.

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