arXiv subjects

Bruno Clerckx

Publications and source records attributed to Bruno Clerckx.

At least 163 records · Page 9Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Rate-Splitting Multiple Access for 6G -- Part III: Interplay with Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces

This letter is the third part of a three-part tutorial that focuses on rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) for 6G. As Part III of the tutorial, this letter provides an overview of integrating RSMA and reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS). We first introduce two potential PHY layer techniques, namely, RSMA and RIS, including the need for integrating RSMA with RIS and how they could help each other. Next, we provide a general model of an RIS-aided RSMA system and summarize some key performance metrics. Then, we discuss the major advantages of RIS-aided RSMA networks, and illustrate the rate region of RIS-aided RSMA for both perfect and imperfect channel conditions. Finally, we summarize the research challenges and open problems for RIS-aided RSMA systems. In conclusion, RSMA is a promising technology for next generation multiple access (NGMA) and future networks such as 6G and beyond.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2022

Beyond Diagonal Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces: From Transmitting and Reflecting Modes to Single-, Group-, and Fully-Connected Architectures

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are envisioned as a promising technology for future wireless communications. With various hardware realizations, RISs can work under different modes (reflective/transmissive/hybrid) or have different architectures (single/group/fully-connected). However, most existing research focused on single-connected reflective RISs, mathematically characterized by diagonal phase shift matrices, while there is a lack of a comprehensive study for RISs unifying different modes/architectures. In this paper, we solve this issue by analyzing and proposing a general RIS-aided communication model. Specifically, we establish an RIS model not limited to diagonal phase shift matrices, a novel branch referred to as beyond diagonal RIS (BD-RIS), unifying modes and architectures. With the proposed model, we develop efficient algorithms to jointly design transmit precoder and BDRIS matrix to maximize the sum-rate for RIS-aided systems. We also provide simulation results to compare the performance of BD-RISs with different modes/architectures. Simulation results show that under the same mode, fully- and group-connected RIS can effectively increase the sum-rate performance compared with single-connected RIS, and that hybrid RIS outperforms reflective/transmissive RIS with the same architecture.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2022

Rate-Splitting Multiple Access for Quantized Multiuser MIMO Communications

This paper investigates the sum spectral efficiency maximization problem in downlink multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems with low-resolution quantizers at an access point (AP) and users. In particular, we consider rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) to enhance spectral efficiency by offering opportunities to boost achievable degrees of freedom. Optimizing RSMA precoders, however, is highly challenging due to the minimum rate constraint when determining the rate of the common stream. The quantization errors coupled with the precoders further make the problem more complicated and difficult to solve. In this paper, we develop a novel RSMA precoding algorithm incorporating quantization errors for maximizing the sum spectral efficiency. To this end, we first obtain an approximate spectral efficiency in a smooth function. Subsequently, we derive the first-order optimality condition in the form of the nonlinear eigenvalue problem (NEP). We propose a computationally efficient algorithm to find the principal eigenvector of the NEP as a sub-optimal solution. Simulation results validate the superior spectral efficiency of the proposed method. The key benefit of using RSMA over spatial division multiple access (SDMA) comes from the ability of the common stream to balance between the channel gain and quantization error in multiuser MIMO systems with different quantization resolutions.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2022

Rate-Splitting Multiple Access in Multi-cell Dense Networks: A Stochastic Geometry Approach

In this paper, the potential benefits of applying the Rate-Splitting Multiple Access (RSMA) in multi-cell dense networks are explored. Using tools of stochastic geometry, the sum-rate of RSMA-enhanced multi-cell dense networks is evaluated mathematically based on a Moment Generating Function (MGF) based framework to prove that RSMA is a general and powerful strategy for multi-antenna downlink systems. Further elaboration of the systematic performance metrics is undertaken by developing analytical expressions for area spectral efficiency and sum-rate in the RSMA-enhanced multi-cell dense networks. Based on the tractable expressions, we then offer an optimization framework for energy efficiency in terms of the number of antennas. Additionally, simulation results are shown to verify the accuracy of our analytical results and provide some insightful insights into system design. Analytically, it has been shown that: 1) the sum-rate of RSMA-enhanced multi-cell dense networks is significantly influenced by the power splitting ratio, and there is a unique value that maximizes the sum-rate; 2) the RSMA-enhanced multi-cell dense networks transmission scheme has superior sum-rate performance compared with Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) and Space-Division Multiple Access (SDMA) in a wide range of power splitting ratio; 3) By increasing the number of antennas and BS density in an RSMA-enhanced multi-cell dense network, the area spectral efficiency can be substantially enhanced; 4) As for energy efficiency, there exists an optimal antenna number for maximizing this performance metric.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2022

Learning Representations for CSI Adaptive Quantization and Feedback

In this work, we propose an efficient method for channel state information (CSI) adaptive quantization and feedback in frequency division duplexing (FDD) systems. Existing works mainly focus on the implementation of autoencoder (AE) neural networks (NNs) for CSI compression, and consider straightforward quantization methods, e.g., uniform quantization, which are generally not optimal. With this strategy, it is hard to achieve a low reconstruction error, especially, when the available number of bits reserved for the latent space quantization is small. To address this issue, we recommend two different methods: one based on a post training quantization and the second one in which the codebook is found during the training of the AE. Both strategies achieve better reconstruction accuracy compared to standard quantization techniques.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2022

Rate-Splitting Multiple Access with Finite Blocklength for Short-Packet and Low-Latency Downlink Communications

Rate-Splitting Multiple Access (RSMA) is an emerging flexible and powerful multiple access for downlink multiantenna networks. In this paper, we introduce the concept of RSMA into short-packet downlink communications. We design optimal linear precoders that maximize the sum rate with Finite Blocklength (FBL) constraints. The relations between the sum rate and blocklength of RSMA are investigated for a wide range of network loads and user deployments. Numerical results demonstrate that RSMA can achieve the same transmission rate as Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) and Space Division Multiple Access (SDMA) with shorter blocklengths (and therefore lower latency), especially in overloaded multi-antenna networks. Hence, we conclude that RSMA is a promising multiple access for low-latency communications.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2022

Energy Efficient Dual-Functional Radar-Communication: Rate-Splitting Multiple Access, Low-Resolution DACs, and RF Chain Selection

Dual-Functional Radar-Communication systems enhance the benefits of communications and radar sensing by jointly implementing these on the same hardware platform and using the common RF resources. An important and latest concern to be addressed in designing such Dual-Functional Radar-Communication systems is maximizing the energy-efficiency. In this paper, we consider a Dual-Functional Radar-Communication system performing simultaneous multi-user communications and radar sensing, and investigate the energy-efficiency behaviour with respect to active transmission elements. Specifically, we formulate a problem to find the optimal precoders and the number of active RF chains for maximum energy-efficiency by taking into consideration the power consumption of low-resolution Digital-to-Analog Converters on each RF chain under communications and radar performance constraints. We consider Rate-Splitting Multiple Access to perform multi-user communications with perfect and imperfect Channel State Information at Transmitter. The formulated non-convex optimization problem is solved by means of a novel algorithm. We demonstrate by numerical results that Rate Splitting Multiple Access achieves an improved energy-efficiency by employing a smaller number of RF chains compared to Space Division Multiple Access, owing to its generalized structure and improved interference management capabilities.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2022

Rate-Splitting assisted Massive Machine-Type Communications in Cell-Free Massive MIMO

This letter focuses on integrating rate-splitting multiple-access (RSMA) with time-division-duplex Cell-free Massive MIMO (multiple-input multiple-output) for massive machine-type communications. Due to the large number of devices, their sporadic access behaviour and limited coherence interval, we assume a random access strategy with all active devices utilizing the same pilot for uplink channel estimation. This gives rise to a highly pilot-contaminated scenario, which inevitably deteriorates channel estimates. Motivated by the robustness of RSMA towards imperfect channel state information, we propose a novel RSMA-assisted downlink transmission framework for cell-free massive MIMO. On the basis of the downlink achievable spectral efficiency of the common and private streams, we devise a heuristic common precoder design and propose a novel max-min power control method for the proposed RSMA-assisted scheme. Numerical results show that RSMA effectively mitigates the effect of pilot contamination in the downlink and achieves a significant performance gain over a conventional cell-free massive MIMO network.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2022

Rate-Splitting Multiple Access for 6G -- Part II: Interplay with Integrated Sensing and Communications

This letter is the second part of a three-part tutorial focusing on rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) for 6G. As Part II of the tutorial, this letter addresses the interplay between RSMA and integrated radar sensing and communications (ISAC). In particular, we introduce a general RSMAassisted ISAC architecture, where the ISAC platform has a dual capability to simultaneously communicate with downlink users and probe detection signals to a moving target. Then, the metrics of radar sensing and communications are respectively introduced, followed by a RSMA-assisted ISAC waveform design example which jointly minimizes the Cramer-Rao bound (CRB) of target estimation and maximizes the minimum fairness rate (MFR) amongst communication users subject to the per-antenna power constraint. The superiority of RSMA-assisted ISAC is verifed through simulation results in both terrestrial and satellite scenarios. RSMA is demonstrated to be a powerful multiple access and interference management strategy for ISAC, and provides a better communication-sensing trade-off compared with the conventional benchmark strategies. Consequently, RSMA is a promising technology for next generation multiple access (NGMA) and future networks such as 6G and beyond.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2022

Antenna Array Enabled Space/Air/Ground Communications and Networking for 6G

Antenna arrays have a long history of more than 100 years and have evolved closely with the development of electronic and information technologies, playing an indispensable role in wireless communications and radar. With the rapid development of electronic and information technologies, the demand for all-time, all-domain, and full-space network services has exploded, and new communication requirements have been put forward on various space/air/ground platforms. To meet the ever increasing requirements of the future sixth generation (6G) wireless communications, such as high capacity, wide coverage, low latency, and strong robustness, it is promising to employ different types of antenna arrays with various beamforming technologies in space/air/ground communication networks, bringing in advantages such as considerable antenna gains, multiplexing gains, and diversity gains. However, enabling antenna array for space/air/ground communication networks poses specific, distinctive and tricky challenges, which has aroused extensive research attention. This paper aims to overview the field of antenna array enabled space/air/ground communications and networking. The technical potentials and challenges of antenna array enabled space/air/ground communications and networking are presented first. Subsequently, the antenna array structures and designs are discussed. We then discuss various emerging technologies facilitated by antenna arrays to meet the new communication requirements of space/air/ground communication systems. Enabled by these emerging technologies, the distinct characteristics, challenges, and solutions for space communications, airborne communications, and ground communications are reviewed. Finally, we present promising directions for future research in antenna array enabled space/air/ground communications and networking.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2022

Rate-Splitting Multiple Access for Dual-Functional Radar-Communication Satellite Systems

In this paper, we consider a multi-antenna dual-functional radar-communication (DFRC) satellite system, where the satellite has a dual capability to simultaneously communicate with downlink satellite users (SUs) and probe detection signals to a moving target. To design an appropriate DFRC waveform, we investigate the rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA)-assisted DFRC beamfoming, and employ the Cramer-Rao bound (CRB) as a radar performance metric, which represents a lower bound on the variance of unbiased estimators. The beamforming is optimized to minimize the CRB subject to quality of service (QoS) constraints of SUs and a per-feed transmit power budget. Satellite communication and detecting ground/ sea objects in a bistatic mode are accomplished simultaneously using the DFRC waveform we designed. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed RSMA-assisted DFRC beamforming outperforms the conventional space-division multiple access (SDMA) strategy in terms of the communication-sensing trade-off and target estimation performance in a multibeam satellite system.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2022

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces Relying on Non-Diagonal Phase Shift Matrices

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) have been actively researched as a potential technique for future wireless communications, which intelligently ameliorate the signal propagation environment. In the conventional design, each RIS element configures and reflects its received signal independently of all other RIS elements, which results in a diagonal phase shift matrix. By contrast, we propose a novel RIS architecture, where the incident signal impinging on one element can be reflected from another element after an appropriate phase shift adjustment, which increases the flexibility in the design of RIS phase shifts, hence, potentially improving the system performance. The resultant RIS phase shift matrix also has off-diagonal elements, as opposed to the pure diagonal structure of the conventional design. Compared to the state-of-art fully-connected/group-connected RIS structures, our proposed RIS architecture has lower complexity, while attaining a higher channel gain than the group-connected RIS structure, and approaching that of the fully-connected RIS structure. We formulate and solve the problem of maximizing the achievable rate of our proposed RIS architecture by jointly optimizing the transmit beamforming and the non-diagonal phase shift matrix based on alternating optimization and semi-define relaxation (SDR) methods. Moreover, the closed-form expressions of the channel gain, the outage probability and bit error ratio (BER) are derived. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed RIS architecture results in an improved performance in terms of the achievable rate compared to the conventional architecture, both in single-user as well as in multi-user scenarios.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2022

Fully Connected Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface Aided Rate-Splitting Multiple Access for Multi-User Multi-Antenna Transmission

Rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) has been recognized as a promising and powerful multiple access (MA) scheme, non-orthogonal transmission framework and interference management strategy for 6G. Inspired by the appealing spectral efficiency gain achieved by RSMA over conventional MA schemes in multi-user multi-antenna transmission, in this paper we introduce RSMA to reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided multiple-input single-out (MISO) broadcast channel (BC). To further enhance the spectral efficiency, a more generalized RIS architecture called fully connected RIS is considered. By jointly optimizing the scattering matrix of the fully connected RIS and the transmit beamformers to maximize the sum-rate, we show that the proposed fully connected RIS aided RSMA transmission scheme significantly improves the spectral efficiency compared with the conventional single connected RIS schemes and the schemes without RIS. It acts as a new benchmark for linearly precoded multi-user multi-antenna networks.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2022

Weighted Sum-Rate Maximization for Rate-Splitting Multiple Access Based Secure Communication

As investigations on physical layer security evolve from point-to-point systems to multi-user scenarios, multi-user interference (MUI) is introduced and becomes an unavoidable issue. Different from treating MUI totally as noise in conventional secure communications, in this paper, we propose a rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA)-based secure beamforming design, where user messages are split and encoded into common and private streams. Each user not only decodes the common stream and the intended private stream, but also tries to eavesdrop the private streams of other users. We formulate a weighted sum-rate (WSR) maximization problem subject to the secrecy rate requirements of all users. To tackle the non-convexity of the formulated problem, a successive convex approximation (SCA)-based approach is adopted to convert the original non-convex and intractable problem into a low-complexity suboptimal iterative algorithm. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed secure beamforming scheme outperforms the conventional multi-user linear precoding (MULP) technique in terms of the WSR performance while ensuring user secrecy rate requirements.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2022

Rate-Splitting Multiple Access for Communications and Jamming in Multi-Antenna Multi-Carrier Cognitive Radio Systems

With the increasing number of wireless communication systems and the demand for bandwidth, the wireless medium has become a congested and contested environment. Operating under such an environment brings several challenges, especially for military communication systems, which need to guarantee reliable communication while avoiding interfering with other friendly or neutral systems and denying the enemy systems of service. In this work, we investigate a novel application of Rate-Splitting Multiple Access(RSMA) for joint communications and jamming with a Multi-Carrier(MC) waveform in a multiantenna Cognitive Radio(CR) system. RSMA is a robust multiple access scheme for downlink multi-antenna wireless networks. RSMA relies on multi-antenna Rate-Splitting (RS) at the transmitter and Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC) at the receivers. Our aim is to simultaneously communicate with Secondary Users(SUs) and jam Adversarial Users(AUs) to disrupt their communications while limiting the interference to Primary Users(PUs) in a setting where all users perform broadband communications by MC waveforms in their respective networks. We consider the practical setting of imperfect CSI at transmitter(CSIT) for the SUs and PUs, and statistical CSIT for AUs. We formulate a problem to obtain optimal precoders which maximize the mutual information under interference and jamming power constraints. We propose an Alternating Optimization-Alternating Direction Method of Multipliers(AOADMM) based algorithm for solving the resulting non-convex problem. We perform an analysis based on Karush-Kuhn-Tucker conditions to determine the optimal jamming and interference power thresholds that guarantee the feasibility of problem and propose a practical algorithm to calculate the interference power threshold. By simulations, we show that RSMA achieves a higher sum-rate than Space Division Multiple Access(SDMA).

cs.IT↗

arXiv2022

Sequential Parametric Optimization for Rate-Splitting Precoding in Non-Orthogonal Unicast and Multicast Transmissions

This paper investigates rate-splitting (RS) precoding for non-orthogonal unicast and multicast (NOUM) transmissions using fully-digital and hybrid precoders. We study the nonconvex weighted sum-rate (WSR) maximization problem subject to a multicast requirement. We propose FALCON, an approach based on sequential parametric optimization, to solve the aforementioned problem. We show that FALCON converges to a local optimum without requiring judicious selection of an initial feasible point. Besides, we show through simulations that by leveraging RS, hybrid precoders can attain nearly the same performance as their fully-digital counterparts under certain specific settings.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2022

Rate-Splitting Multiple Access for Multi-Antenna Joint Radar and Communications with Partial CSIT: Precoder Optimization and Link-Level Simulations

Dual-Functional Radar-Communication (DFRC) systems have been investigated to manage the inter-system interference between radar and communication systems. However, the studies in literature often assume that the DFRC possesses perfect Channel State Information at the Transmitter (CSIT), which is an unrealistic assumption due to the inevitable CSIT errors in practical deployments. In this work, we aim to design a DFRC system under the practical assumption of partial CSIT. To achieve this, the proposed DFRC marries the capabilities of a Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) radar with Rate-Splitting Multiple Access (RSMA). RSMA is a powerful downlink communication scheme based on linearly precoded Rate-Splitting (RS) that partially decodes multi-user interference (MUI) and partially treats it as noise and is inherently robust to partial CSIT. Using RSMA, the DFRC precoders are optimized in the presence of partial CSIT to simultaneously maximize the Average Weighted Sum-Rate (AWSR) under Quality-of-Service (QoS) constraints and minimize the DFRC beampattern Mean Squared Error (MSE) against an ideal MIMO radar beampattern. Simulation results demonstrate that the RSMA-based DFRC largely outperforms DFRCs based on other commonly used strategies such as Space Division Multiple Access (SDMA) and Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA). Specifically, the common stream unique in the RSMA-based DFRC allows for flexible rate partitioning to guarantee user rate fairness with partial CSIT while also being the main contributor to generating a directional beampattern for effective radar sensing. The practical performance of the DFRC is then further assessed through Link-Level simulations (LLS) to take into account the effects of coding and modulation in the finite length regime as well as the channel aging due to mobility and latency, where the superiority of RSMA is again corroborated.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2021

Dynamic RF Combining for Multi-Antenna Ambient Energy Harvesting

Ambient radio frequency (RF) energy harvesting (EH) technology is key to realize self-sustainable, always-on, low-power, massive Internet of Things networks. Typically, rigid (non-adaptable to channel fluctuations) multi-antenna receive architectures are proposed to support reliable EH operation. Herein, we introduce a dynamic RF combining architecture for ambient RF EH use cases, and exemplify the attainable performance gains via three simple phase shifts' exploration mechanisms, namely, brute force (BF), sequential testing (ST) and codebook based (CB). Among the proposed mechanisms, BF demands the highest power consumption, while CB requires the highest-resolution phase shifters, thus tipping the scales in favor of ST. Finally, we show that the performance gains of ST over a rigid RF combining scheme increase with the number of receive antennas and energy transmitters' deployment density.

cs.PF↗