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Chau Yuen

Publications and source records attributed to Chau Yuen.

At least 199 records · Page 11Linked to original sources

FAS vs. ARIS: Which Is More Important for FAS-ARIS Communication Systems?

In this paper, we investigate the question of which technology, fluid antenna systems (FAS) or active reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (ARIS), plays a more crucial role in FAS-ARIS wireless communication systems. To address this, we develop a comprehensive system model and explore the problem from an optimization perspective. We introduce an alternating optimization (AO) algorithm incorporating majorization-minimization (MM), successive convex approximation (SCA), and sequential rank-one constraint relaxation (SRCR) to tackle the non-convex challenges inherent in these systems. Specifically, for the transmit beamforming of the BS optimization, we propose a closed-form rank-one solution with low-complexity. For the optimization the positions of fluid antennas (FAs) of the BS, the Taylor expansions and MM algorithm are utilized to construct the effective lower bounds and upper bounds of the objective function and constraints, transforming the non-convex optimization problem into a convex one. Furthermore, we use the SCA and SRCR to optimize the reflection coefficient matrix of the ARIS and effectively solve the rank-one constraint. Simulation results reveal that the relative importance of FAS and ARIS varies depending on the scenario: FAS proves more critical in simpler models with fewer reflecting elements or limited transmission paths, while ARIS becomes more significant in complex scenarios with a higher number of reflecting elements or transmission paths. Ultimately, the integration of both FAS and ARIS creates a win-win scenario, resulting in a more robust and efficient communication system. This study underscores the importance of combining FAS with ARIS, as their complementary use provides the most substantial benefits across different communication environments.

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Movable Antenna-Enhanced Wireless Communications: General Architectures and Implementation Methods

Movable antennas (MAs), traditionally explored in antenna design, have recently garnered significant attention in wireless communications due to their ability to dynamically adjust the antenna positions to changes in the propagation environment. However, previous research has primarily focused on characterizing the performance limits of various MA-assisted wireless communication systems, with less emphasis on their practical implementation. To address this gap, in this article, we propose several general MA architectures that extend existing designs by varying several key aspects to cater to different application scenarios and tradeoffs between cost and performance. Additionally, we draw from fields such as antenna design and mechanical control to provide an overview of candidate implementation methods for the proposed MA architectures, utilizing either direct mechanical or equivalent electronic control. Simulation results are finally presented to support our discussion.

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Near-Field Mobile Tracking: A Framework of Using XL-RIS Information

This paper introduces a novel mobile tracking framework leveraging the high-dimensional signal received from extremely large-scale (XL) reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS). This received signal, named XL-RIS information, has a much larger data dimension and therefore offers a richer feature set compared to the traditional base station (BS) received signal, i.e., BS information, enabling more accurate tracking of mobile users (MUs). As the first step, we present an XL-RIS information reconstruction (XL-RIS-IR) algorithm to reconstruct the high-dimensional XL-RIS information from the low-dimensional BS information. Building on this, this paper proposes a comprehensive framework for mobile tracking, consisting of a Feature Extraction Module and a Mobile Tracking Module. The Feature Extraction Module incorporates a convolutional neural network (CNN) extractor for spatial features, a time and frequency (T$\&$F) extractor for domain features, and a near-field angles of arrival (AoAs) extractor for capturing AoA features within the XL-RIS. These features are combined into a comprehensive feature vector, forming a time-varying sequence fed into the Mobile Tracking Module, which employs an Auto-encoder (AE) with a stacked bidirectional long short-term memory (Bi-LSTM) encoder and a standard LSTM decoder to predict MUs' positions in the upcoming time slot. Simulation results confirm that the tracking accuracy of our proposed framework is significantly enhanced by using reconstructed XL-RIS information and exhibits substantial robustness to signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) variations.

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Enhancing Spatial Multiplexing and Interference Suppression for Near- and Far-Field Communications with Sparse MIMO

Multiple-input multiple-output has been a key technology for wireless systems for decades. For typical MIMO communication systems, antenna array elements are usually separated by half of the carrier wavelength, thus termed as conventional MIMO. In this paper, we investigate the performance of multi-user MIMO communication, with sparse arrays at both the transmitter and receiver side, i.e., the array elements are separated by more than half wavelength. Given the same number of array elements, the performance of sparse MIMO is compared with conventional MIMO. On one hand, sparse MIMO has a larger aperture, which can achieve narrower main lobe beams that make it easier to resolve densely located users. Besides, increased array aperture also enlarges the near-field communication region, which can enhance the spatial multiplexing gain, thanks to the spherical wavefront property in the near-field region. On the other hand, element spacing larger than half wavelength leads to undesired grating lobes, which, if left unattended, may cause severe inter-user interference. To gain further insights, we first study the spatial multiplexing gain of the basic single-user sparse MIMO communication system, where a closed-form expression of the near-field effective degree of freedom is derived. The result shows that the EDoF increases with the array sparsity for sparse MIMO before reaching its upper bound, which equals to the minimum value between the transmit and receive antenna numbers. Furthermore, the scaling law for the achievable data rate with varying array sparsity is analyzed and an array sparsity-selection strategy is proposed. We then consider the more general multi-user sparse MIMO communication system. It is shown that sparse MIMO is less likely to experience severe IUI than conventional MIMO.

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Robust Millimeter Beamforming via Self-Supervised Hybrid Deep Learning

Beamforming with large-scale antenna arrays has been widely used in recent years, which is acknowledged as an important part in 5G and incoming 6G. Thus, various techniques are leveraged to improve its performance, e.g., deep learning, advanced optimization algorithms, etc. Although its performance in many previous research scenarios with deep learning is quite attractive, usually it drops rapidly when the environment or dataset is changed. Therefore, designing effective beamforming network with strong robustness is an open issue for the intelligent wireless communications. In this paper, we propose a robust beamforming self-supervised network, and verify it in two kinds of different datasets with various scenarios. Simulation results show that the proposed self-supervised network with hybrid learning performs well in both classic DeepMIMO and new WAIR-D dataset with the strong robustness under the various environments. Also, we present the principle to explain the rationality of this kind of hybrid learning, which is instructive to apply with more kinds of datasets.

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Robust Beamforming with Gradient-based Liquid Neural Network

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication with the advanced beamforming technologies is a key enabler to meet the growing demands of future mobile communication. However, the dynamic nature of cellular channels in large-scale urban mmWave MIMO communication scenarios brings substantial challenges, particularly in terms of complexity and robustness. To address these issues, we propose a robust gradient-based liquid neural network (GLNN) framework that utilizes ordinary differential equation-based liquid neurons to solve the beamforming problem. Specifically, our proposed GLNN framework takes gradients of the optimization objective function as inputs to extract the high-order channel feature information, and then introduces a residual connection to mitigate the training burden. Furthermore, we use the manifold learning technique to compress the search space of the beamforming problem. These designs enable the GLNN to effectively maintain low complexity while ensuring strong robustness to noisy and highly dynamic channels. Extensive simulation results demonstrate that the GLNN can achieve 4.15% higher spectral efficiency than that of typical iterative algorithms, and reduce the time consumption to only 1.61% that of conventional methods.

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Innovative RIS Prototyping Enhancing Wireless Communication with Real-Time Spot Beam Tracking and OAM Wavefront Manipulation

This paper presents a sophisticated reconfigurable metasurface architecture that introduces an advanced concept of flexible full-array space-time wavefront manipulation with enhanced dynamic capabilities. The practical 2-bit phase-shifting unit cell on the RIS is distinguished by its ability to maintain four stable phase states, each with ${90^ \circ }$ differences, and features an insertion loss of less than 0.6 dB across a bandwidth of 200 MHz. All reconfigurable units are equipped with meticulously designed control circuits, governed by an intelligent core composed of multiple Micro-Controller Units (MCUs), enabling rapid control response across the entire RIS array. Owing to the capability of each unit cell on the metasurface to independently switch states, the entire RIS is not limited to controlling general beams with specific directional patterns, but also generates beams with more complex structures, including multi-focus 3D spot beams and vortex beams. This development substantially broadens its applicability across various industrial wireless transmission scenarios. Moreover, by leveraging the rapid-respond space-time coding and the full-array independent programmability of the RIS prototyping operating at 10.7 GHz, we have demonstrated that: 1) The implementation of 3D spot beams scanning facilitates dynamic beam tracking and real-time communication under the indoor near-field scenario; 2) The rapid wavefront rotation of vortex beams enables precise modulation of signals within the Doppler domain, showcasing an innovative approach to wireless signal manipulation; 3) The beam steering experiments for blocking users under outdoor far-field scenarios, verifying the beamforming capability of the RIS board.

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Near-Orthogonal Overlay Communications in LoS Channel Enabled by Novel OAM Beams without Central Energy Voids: An Experimental Study

This paper introduces a groundbreaking Line-of-Sight (LoS) Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) communication architecture leveraging non-traditional Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) beams. Challenging the conventional paradigm of hollow-emitting OAM beams, this study presents an innovative OAM transmitter design that produces directional OAM beams without central energy voids, aligning their radiation patterns with those of conventional planar wave horn antennas. Within the main lobe of these antennas, the phase variation characteristics inherent to OAM beams are ingeniously maintained, linking different OAM modes to the linear wavefront variation gradients, thereby reducing channel correlation in LoS scenarios and significantly augmenting the channel capacity of LoS-MIMO frameworks. Empirical validations conducted through a meticulously designed LoS-MIMO experimental platform reveal significant improvements in channel correlation coefficients, communication stability, and Bit Error Rate (BER) compared to systems utilizing traditional planar wave antennas. The experiment results underscore the potential of the novel OAM-based system to improve current LoS-MIMO communication protocols, and offer both academic and engineering guidance for the construction of practical communication infrastructures. Beyond its immediate contributions, this paper underscores a pivotal shift in the field of communications, pointing out that traditional communication algorithms have primarily focused on baseband signal processing while often overlooking the electromagnetic characteristics of the physical world.

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Robust Beamforming for RIS-aided Communications: Gradient-based Manifold Meta Learning

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) has become a promising technology to realize the programmable wireless environment via steering the incident signal in fully customizable ways. However, a major challenge in RIS-aided communication systems is the simultaneous design of the precoding matrix at the base station (BS) and the phase shifting matrix of the RIS elements. This is mainly attributed to the highly non-convex optimization space of variables at both the BS and the RIS, and the diversity of communication environments. Generally, traditional optimization methods for this problem suffer from the high complexity, while existing deep learning based methods are lack of robustness in various scenarios. To address these issues, we introduce a gradient-based manifold meta learning method (GMML), which works without pre-training and has strong robustness for RIS-aided communications. Specifically, the proposed method fuses meta learning and manifold learning to improve the overall spectral efficiency, and reduce the overhead of the high-dimensional signal process. Unlike traditional deep learning based methods which directly take channel state information as input, GMML feeds the gradients of the precoding matrix and phase shifting matrix into neural networks. Coherently, we design a differential regulator to constrain the phase shifting matrix of the RIS. Numerical results show that the proposed GMML can improve the spectral efficiency by up to 7.31\%, and speed up the convergence by 23 times faster compared to traditional approaches. Moreover, they also demonstrate remarkable robustness and adaptability in dynamic settings.

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Fluid Antenna-Assisted Simultaneous Wireless Information and Power Transfer Systems

This paper examines a fluid antenna (FA)-assisted simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) system. Unlike traditional SWIPT systems with fixed-position antennas (FPAs), our FA-assisted system enables dynamic reconfiguration of the radio propagation environment by adjusting the positions of FAs. This capability enhances both energy harvesting and communication performance. The system comprises a base station (BS) equipped with multiple FAs that transmit signals to an energy receiver (ER) and an information receiver (IR), both equipped with a single FA. Our objective is to maximize the communication rate between the BS and the IR while satisfying the harvested power requirement of the ER. This involves jointly optimizing the BS's transmit beamforming and the positions of all FAs. To address this complex convex optimization problem, we employ an alternating optimization (AO) approach, decomposing it into three sub-problems and solving them iteratively using first and second-order Taylor expansions. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of our proposed FA-assisted SWIPT system, demonstrating significant performance improvements over traditional FPA-based systems.

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A Framework of FAS-RIS Systems: Performance Analysis and Throughput Optimization

In this paper, we investigate reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted communication systems which involve a fixed-antenna base station (BS) and a mobile user (MU) that is equipped with fluid antenna system (FAS). Specifically, the RIS is utilized to enable communication for the user whose direct link from the base station is blocked by obstacles. We propose a comprehensive framework that provides transmission design for both static scenarios with the knowledge of channel state information (CSI) and harsh environments where CSI is hard to acquire. It leads to two approaches: a CSI-based scheme where CSI is available, and a CSI-free scheme when CSI is inaccessible. Given the complex spatial correlations in FAS, we employ block-diagonal matrix approximation and independent antenna equivalent models to simplify the derivation of outage probabilities in both cases. Based on the derived outage probabilities, we then optimize the throughput of the FAS-RIS system. For the CSI-based scheme, we first propose a gradient ascent-based algorithm to obtain a near-optimal solution. Then, to address the possible high computational complexity in the gradient algorithm, we approximate the objective function and confirm a unique optimal solution accessible through a bisection search method. For the CSI-free scheme, we apply the partial gradient ascent algorithm, reducing complexity further than full gradient algorithms. We also approximate the objective function and derive a locally optimal closed-form solution to maximize throughput. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed framework for the transmission design in FAS-RIS systems.

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Hashing Beam Training for Integrated Ground-Air-Space Wireless Networks

In integrated ground-air-space (IGAS) wireless networks, numerous services require sensing knowledge including location, angle, distance information, etc., which usually can be acquired during the beam training stage. On the other hand, IGAS networks employ large-scale antenna arrays to mitigate obstacle occlusion and path loss. However, large-scale arrays generate pencil-shaped beams, which necessitate a higher number of training beams to cover the desired space. These factors motivate our investigation into the IGAS beam training problem to achieve effective sensing services. To address the high complexity and low identification accuracy of existing beam training techniques, we propose an efficient hashing multi-arm beam (HMB) training scheme. Specifically, we first construct an IGAS single-beam training codebook for the uniform planar arrays. Then, the hash functions are chosen independently to construct the multi-arm beam training codebooks for each AP. All APs traverse the predefined multi-arm beam training codeword simultaneously and the multi-AP superimposed signals at the user are recorded. Finally, the soft decision and voting methods are applied to obtain the correctly aligned beams only based on the signal powers. In addition, we logically prove that the traversal complexity is at the logarithmic level. Simulation results show that our proposed IGAS HMB training method can achieve 96.4% identification accuracy of the exhaustive beam training method and greatly reduce the training overhead.

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Distributed multi-robot potential-field-based exploration with submap-based mapping and noise-augmented strategy

Multi-robot collaboration has become a needed component in unknown environment exploration due to its ability to accomplish various challenging situations. Potential-field-based methods are widely used for autonomous exploration because of their high efficiency and low travel cost. However, exploration speed and collaboration ability are still challenging topics. Therefore, we propose a Distributed Multi-Robot Potential-Field-Based Exploration (DMPF-Explore). In particular, we first present a Distributed Submap-Based Multi-Robot Collaborative Mapping Method (DSMC-Map), which can efficiently estimate the robot trajectories and construct the global map by merging the local maps from each robot. Second, we introduce a Potential-Field-Based Exploration Strategy Augmented with Modified Wave-Front Distance and Colored Noises (MWF-CN), in which the accessible frontier neighborhood is extended, and the colored noise provokes the enhancement of exploration performance. The proposed exploration method is deployed for simulation and real-world scenarios. The results show that our approach outperforms the existing ones regarding exploration speed and collaboration ability.

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RIS-assisted Coverage Enhancement in mmWave Integrated Sensing and Communication Networks

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) has emerged as a promising technology to facilitate high-rate communications and super-resolution sensing, particularly operating in the millimeter wave (mmWave) band. However, the vulnerability of mmWave signals to blockages severely impairs ISAC capabilities and coverage. To tackle this, an efficient and low-cost solution is to deploy distributed reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) to construct virtual links between the base stations (BSs) and users in a controllable fashion. In this paper, we investigate the generalized RIS-assisted mmWave ISAC networks considering the blockage effect, and examine the beneficial impact of RISs on the coverage rate utilizing stochastic geometry. Specifically, taking into account the coupling effect of ISAC dual functions within the same network topology, we derive the conditional coverage probability of ISAC performance for two association cases, based on the proposed beam pattern model and user association policies. Then, the marginal coverage rate is calculated by combining these two cases through the distance-dependent thinning method. Simulation results verify the accuracy of derived theoretical formulations and provide valuable guidelines for the practical network deployment. Specifically, our results indicate the superiority of the RIS deployment with the density of 40 km${}^{-2}$ BSs, and that the joint coverage rate of ISAC performance exhibits potential growth from $67.1\%$ to $92.2\%$ with the deployment of RISs.

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Flexible Antenna Arrays for Wireless Communications: Modeling and Performance Evaluation

Flexible antenna arrays (FAAs), distinguished by their rotatable, bendable, and foldable properties, are extensively employed in flexible radio systems to achieve customized radiation patterns. This paper aims to illustrate that FAAs, capable of dynamically adjusting surface shapes, can enhance communication performances with both omni-directional and directional antenna patterns, in terms of multi-path channel power and channel angle Cramér-Rao bounds. To this end, we develop a mathematical model that elucidates the impacts of the variations in antenna positions and orientations as the array transitions from a flat to a rotated, bent, and folded state, all contingent on the flexible degree-of-freedom. Moreover, since the array shape adjustment operates across the entire beamspace, especially with directional patterns, we discuss the sum-rate in the multi-sector base station that covers the $360^\circ$ communication area. Particularly, to thoroughly explore the multi-sector sum-rate, we propose separate flexible precoding (SFP), joint flexible precoding (JFP), and semi-joint flexible precoding (SJFP), respectively. In our numerical analysis comparing the optimized FAA to the fixed uniform planar array, we find that the bendable FAA achieves a remarkable $156\%$ sum-rate improvement compared to the fixed planar array in the case of JFP with the directional pattern. Furthermore, the rotatable FAA exhibits notably superior performance in SFP and SJFP cases with omni-directional patterns, with respective $35\%$ and $281\%$.

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Extremely Large-Scale Dynamic Metasurface Antennas (XL-DMAs): Near-Field Modeling and Channel Estimation

Dynamic metasurface antennas (DMAs) represent a novel transceiver array architecture for extremely large-scale (XL) communications, offering the advantages of reduced power consumption and lower hardware costs compared to conventional arrays. This paper focuses on near-field channel estimation for XL-DMAs. We begin by analyzing the near-field characteristics of uniform planar arrays (UPAs) and introducing the Oblong Approx. model. This model decouples elevation-azimuth (EL-AZ) parameters for XL-DMAs, providing an effective means to characterize the near-field effect. It offers simpler mathematical expressions than the second-order Taylor expansion model, all while maintaining negligible model errors for oblong-shaped arrays. Building on the Oblong Approx. model, we propose an EL-AZ-decoupled estimation framework that involves near- and far-field parameter estimation for AZ/EL and EL/AZ directions, respectively. The former is formulated as a distributed compressive sensing problem, addressed using the proposed off-grid distributed orthogonal least squares algorithm, while the latter involves a straightforward parallelizable search. Crucially, we illustrate the viability of decoupled EL-AZ estimation for near-field UPAs, exhibiting commendable performance and linear complexity correlated with the number of metasurface elements. Moreover, we design an measurement matrix optimization method with the Lorentzian constraint on DMAs and highlight the estimation performance degradation resulting from this constraint.

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Reconfigurable Intelligent Computational Surfaces for MEC-Assisted Autonomous Driving Networks: Design Optimization and Analysis

This paper investigates autonomous driving safety improvement via task offloading from cellular vehicles (CVs) to a multi-access edge computing (MEC) server using vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) links. Considering that the latter links can be reused by vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communications to improve spectrum utilization, the receiver of the V2I link may suffer from severe interference that can cause outages during the task offloading. To tackle this issue, we propose the deployment of a reconfigurable intelligent computational surface (RICS) whose computationally capable metamaterials are leveraged to jointly enable V2I reflective links as well as to implement interference cancellation at the V2V links. We devise a joint optimization formulation for the task offloading ratio between the CVs and the MEC server, the spectrum sharing strategy between V2V and V2I communications, as well as the RICS reflection and refraction matrices to maximize an autonomous driving safety task. Due to the non-convexity of the problem and the coupling among its free variables, we transform it into a more tractable equivalent form, which is then decomposed into three sub-problems solved via an alternate approximation method. Our simulation results showcase that the proposed RICS-assisted offloading framework significantly improves the safety of the considered autonomous driving network, yielding a nearly 34\% improvement in the safety coefficient of the CVs. In addition, it is demonstrated that the V2V data rate can be improved by around 60\% indicating that the RICS-induced adjustment of the signals can effectively mitigate interference at the V2V link.

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Exploiting Structured Sparsity in Near Field: From the Perspective of Decomposition

The structured sparsity can be leveraged in traditional far-field channels, greatly facilitating efficient sparse channel recovery by compressing the complexity of overheads to the level of the scatterer number. However, when experiencing a fundamental shift from planar-wave-based far-field modeling to spherical-wave-based near-field modeling, whether these benefits persist in the near-field regime remains an open issue. To answer this question, this article delves into structured sparsity in the near-field realm, examining its peculiarities and challenges. In particular, we present the key features of near-field structured sparsity in contrast to the far-field counterpart, drawing from both physical and mathematical perspectives. Upon unmasking the theoretical bottlenecks, we resort to bypassing them by decoupling the geometric parameters of the scatterers, termed the triple parametric decomposition (TPD) framework. It is demonstrated that our novel TPD framework can achieve robust recovery of near-field sparse channels by applying the potential structured sparsity and avoiding the curse of complexity and overhead.

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