arXiv subjects

Emil Bjornson

Publications and source records attributed to Emil Bjornson.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Movable Antenna Arrays with Imperfect Channel State Information in Rich Scattering Environments

The growing demand for high spectral efficiency in 6G and beyond has driven research into adaptive antenna architectures capable of exploiting the spatial structure of multipath propagation channels. Conventional base station arrays are deployed with fixed element positions and cannot adapt to the instantaneous spatial structure of the propagation channel. In contrast, movable antenna (MA) systems enable dynamic reconfiguration of antenna positions, allowing the array geometry to track the channel characteristics of the current user set. While prior MA studies have demonstrated significant gains under perfect or statistical channel state information (CSI) assumptions, the interplay between imperfect instantaneous CSI, antenna placement optimization, and precoder design has received limited attention. This paper addresses this gap by proposing a practical end-to-end framework encompassing uplink pilot transmission, MMSE channel estimation under a clustered multipath model, and downlink ZF precoding designed from estimated CSI. Antenna positions are optimized via particle swarm optimization under two objectives: sum-rate maximization and max-min fairness. Simulation results show that MA gains are most pronounced under sparse, near-LoS propagation and diminish as channel richness increases. Furthermore, we reveal a fundamental coupling between array geometry and precoder design: a fairness-oriented antenna geometry encodes spatial fairness information that is only recoverable when evaluated with a compatible power allocation strategy. A mismatched precoder can completely mask the geometric advantage, leading to misleading conclusions about the robustness of antenna placement to the choice of optimization objective. These findings provide practically relevant guidance for the design and evaluation of movable antenna systems under realistic operating conditions.

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arXiv2026

Interplay between VAoI, Packet Error Rate, and Delay for Energy-Efficient Remote Monitoring

This letter studies energy optimization of short-packet transmission for event-triggered remote monitoring over finite-blocklength wireless links. A wireless sensor node generates updates only when the source state changes, and freshness is measured by the Version Age of Information (VAoI). We model the VAoI evolution as a Markov chain and show its coupling with the packet error rate, characterized by decoding error probability, and average delay. Then, we formulate a transmit-power allocation problem that minimizes the long-term average energy consumption under a VAoI constraint and solve it using a low-complexity search method. Numerical results show that the update arrival probability and blocklength strongly affect the energy--VAoI tradeoff, and that optimizing long-term energy consumption can substantially reduce energy compared with minimizing the energy per transmission.

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arXiv2026

Cramer-Rao Bound Analysis of Bistatic ISAC Under Partial Symbol Knowledge and Clutter

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems rely on communication waveforms to perform sensing tasks, thus making their sensing performance strongly dependent on the level of communication symbol knowledge available to the sensing receivers. However, the existing literature fails to capture this dependency, often relying on assumptions of full symbol knowledge. In this paper, we present a Cramer Rao bound (CRB) analysis of a bistatic ISAC network with heterogeneous uplink and downlink illumination and structured clutter. We consider different symbol knowledge regimes by modeling unknown communication symbols as nuisance parameters. Assuming a temporal evolution of the communication channel, we derive a correlation aware channel estimator and an expression for the UEs uplink spectral efficiency. Numerical results show the CRB degradation induced by clutter and symbol uncertainty and how this can affect resource allocation policies. We also show the performance gain of our channel estimator over conventional block fading architectures.

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arXiv2026

Beam-Coherence-Aware Two-Stage Digital Combining for mmWave MU-MIMO Systems

This paper considers a wideband millimeter-wave MIMO system with fully digital transceivers at both the base station and the user equipment (UE), focusing on mobile scenarios. To reduce the baseband processing burden at the UE, we propose a two-stage digital combining architecture, where the received signals are compressed from $K$ antennas to dimension $N_{\mathrm c}$ before baseband processing. The first-stage combining matrix exploits channel geometry and is updated on the beam-coherence timescale, which is longer than the channel coherence time, while the second stage is updated per channel coherence time. We develop a pilot-based channel estimation framework tailored to the proposed two-stage digital combining architecture, leveraging maximum likelihood estimation. Furthermore, we propose a time-domain method that exploits the finite delay spread to reconstruct the full channel from a reduced number of pilot subcarriers. Precoding and combining schemes are designed accordingly, and spectral efficiency expressions with imperfect channel state information are derived. Numerical results show that the proposed time-domain approach outperforms hybrid beamforming while reducing pilot overhead. We further demonstrate that the framework extends to multi-user MIMO and retains its performance advantages. These results highlight the potential of two-stage fully digital transceivers for future wideband systems.

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arXiv2026

Joint Uplink-Downlink Fronthaul Bit Allocation in Fronthaul-Limited Massive MU-MIMO Systems

This paper optimizes the fronthaul bit allocation in massive multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) systems operating with limited-capacity fronthaul links. We consider an advanced antenna system (AAS) controlled by a centralized baseband unit (BBU). In the AAS, multiple antenna elements together with their radio units are integrated into a single unit. In this setup, a key challenge is allocating fronthaul bits between uplink channel state information (CSI) quantization and downlink precoding matrix quantization. We formulate the problem of maximizing the sum spectral efficiency (SE) for a given fronthaul capacity. We develop an SE expression for this scenario based on the hardening bound. We compute the expression in closed form for maximum ratio transmission, which reveals the relative impact of the two types of quantization distortion. We then formulate a bit split optimization problem and propose an algorithm that exactly solves it. Numerical results demonstrate how the relative importance of assigning bits to CSI and precoding varies depending on the signal-to-noise ratio.

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arXiv2026

Splitting Precoding with Subspace Selection and Quantized Refinement for Massive MIMO

Limited fronthaul capacity is a practical bottleneck in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) 5G architectures, where a base station (BS) consists of an advanced antenna system (AAS) connected to a baseband unit (BBU). Conventional downlink designs place the entire precoding computation at the BBU and transmit a high-dimensional precoding matrix over the fronthaul, resulting in substantial quantization losses and signaling overhead. This letter proposes a splitting precoding architecture that separates the design between the AAS and BBU. The AAS performs a local subspace selection to reduce the channel dimensionality, while the BBU computes an optimized quantized refinement precoding based on the resulting effective channel. The numerical results show that the proposed splitting precoding strategy achieves higher sum spectral efficiency than conventional one-stage precoding.

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arXiv2025

Precoding for Uplink RIS-Assisted Cell-Free MIMO-OFDM Systems with Hardware Impairments

This paper studies a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (CF-mMIMO) system with multiple RISs. Joint design of transmit precoding, RIS coefficients, and receive combining is investigated for uplink sum-rate maximization under in-phase and quadrature phase imbalance (IQI) at user equipments (UEs) and access points (APs). A weighted minimum mean squared error (WMMSE) based block coordinate descent (BCD) approach is proposed, where novel iterative methods are developed to efficiently solve the BCD subproblems. The efficiency of proposed approaches is demonstrated relative to heuristic methods via extensive simulations.

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arXiv2025

Port-LLM: A Port Prediction Method for Fluid Antenna based on Large Language Models

The objective of this study is to address the mobility challenges faced by user equipment (UE) through the implementation of fluid antenna (FA) on the UE side. This approach aims to maintain the time-varying channel in a relatively stable state by strategically relocating the FA to an appropriate port. To the best of our knowledge, this paper introduces, for the first time, the application of large language models (LLMs) in the prediction of FA ports, presenting a novel model termed Port-LLM. Our proposed method for predicting the moving port of the FA is a two-step prediction method. To enhance the learning efficacy of our proposed Port-LLM model, we integrate low-rank adaptation (LoRA) fine-tuning technology. Additionally, to further exploit the natural language processing capabilities of pre-trained LLMs, we propose a framework named Prompt-Port-LLM, which is constructed upon the Port-LLM architecture and incorporates prompt fine-tuning techniques along with a specialized prompt encoder module. The simulation results show that our proposed models all exhibit strong generalization ability and robustness under different numbers of base station antennas and medium-to-high mobility speeds of UE. In comparison to existing methods, the performance of the port predicted by our models demonstrates superior efficacy. Moreover, both of our proposed models achieve millimeter-level inference speed.

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arXiv2025

Fluid Antenna Port Prediction based on Large Language Models

This study seeks to utilize large language models (LLMs) to forecast the moving ports of fluid antenna (FA). By repositioning the antenna to the locations identified by our proposed model, we intend to address the mobility challenges faced by user equipment (UE). To the best of our knowledge, this paper introduces, for the first time, the application of LLMs in the prediction of FA ports, presenting a novel model termed Port-LLM. The architecture of our model is based on the pre-trained GPT-2 framework. We designed specialized data preprocessing, input embedding, and output projection modules to effectively bridge the disparities between the wireless communication data and the data format utilized by the pre-trained LLM. Simulation results demonstrate that our model exhibits superior predictive performance under different numbers of base station (BS) antennas and varying UE speeds, indicating strong generalization and robustness ability. Furthermore, the spectral efficiency (SE) attained by our model surpasses that achieved by traditional methods in both medium and high-speed mobile environments.

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arXiv2025

Millimeter-Wave Joint Radar and Communications With an RIS-Integrated Array

In the context of the joint radar and communications (JRC) framework, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) emerged as a promising technology for their ability to shape the propagation environment by adjusting their phase-shift coefficients. However, achieving perfect synchronization and effective collaboration between access points (APs) and RISs is crucial to successful operation. This paper investigates the performance of a bistatic JRC network operating in the millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequency band, where the receiving AP is equipped with an RIS-integrated array. This system simultaneously serves multiple UEs while estimating the position of a target with limited prior knowledge of its position. To achieve this, we optimize both the power allocation of the transmitted waveform and the RIS phase-shift matrix to minimize the position error bound (PEB) of the target. At the same time, we ensure that the UEs achieve an acceptable level of spectral efficiency. The numerical results show that an RIS-integrated array, even with a small number of receiving antennas, can achieve high localization accuracy. Additionally, optimized phase-shifts significantly improve the localization accuracy in comparison to a random phase-shift configuration.

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arXiv2025

Clutter-Aware Target Detection for ISAC in a Millimeter-Wave Cell-Free Massive MIMO System

In this paper, we investigate the performance of an integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system within a cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system. Each access point (AP) operates in the millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequency band. The APs jointly serve the user equipments (UEs) in the downlink while simultaneously detecting a target through dedicated sensing beams, which are directed toward a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS). Although the AP-RIS, RIS-target, and AP-target channels have both line-of-sight (LoS) and non-line-of-sight (NLoS) parts, it is assumed only knowledge of the LoS paths is available. A key contribution of this study is the consideration of clutter, which degrades the target detection if not handled. We propose an algorithm to alternatively optimize the transmit power allocation and the RIS phase-shift matrix, maximizing the target signal-to-clutter-plus-noise ratio (SCNR) while ensuring a minimum signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) for the UEs. Numerical results demonstrate that exploiting clutter subspace significantly enhances detection probability, particularly at high clutter-to-noise ratios, and reveal that an increased number of transmit side clusters impair detection performance. Finally, we highlight the performance gains achieved using a dedicated sensing stream.

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arXiv2025

Destructive and constructive RIS beamforming in an ISAC-multi-user MIMO network

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) has already established itself as a promising solution to the spectrum scarcity problem, even more so when paired with a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), as RISs can shape the propagation environment by adjusting their phase-shift coefficients. Albeit the potential performance gain, a RIS is also a potential security threat to the system. In this paper, we explore both the positive and negative sides of having a RIS in a multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) ISAC network. We first develop an alternating optimization algorithm, obtaining the active and passive beamforming vectors that maximize the sensing signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) under minimum signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) constraints for the communication users and finite power budget. We also investigate the destructive potential of the RIS by devising a RIS phase-shift optimization algorithm that minimizes the sensing SNR while preserving the same minimum communication SINR previously guaranteed by the system. We further investigate the impact of the RIS's individual element failures on the system performance. The simulation results show that the RIS performance-boosting potential is as good as its destructive one and that both of our optimization strategies are hindered by the investigated impairments.

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arXiv2024

Parametric Channel Estimation for RIS-Assisted Wideband Systems

A reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) alters the reflection of incoming signals based on the phase-shift configuration assigned to its elements. This feature can be used to improve the signal strength for user equipments (UEs), expand coverage, and enhance spectral efficiency in wideband communication systems. Having accurate channel state information (CSI) is indispensable to realize the full potential of RIS-aided wideband systems. Unfortunately, CSI is challenging to acquire due to the passive nature of the RIS elements, which cannot perform transmit/receive signal processing. Recently, a parametric maximum likelihood (ML) channel estimator has been developed and demonstrated excellent estimation accuracy. However, this estimator is designed for narrowband systems with no non-line-of-sight (NLOS) paths. In this paper, we develop a novel parametric ML channel estimator for RIS-assisted wideband systems, which can handle line-of-sight (LOS) paths in the base station (BS)-RIS and RIS-UE links as well as NLOS paths between the UE, BS, and RIS. We leverage the reduced subspace representation induced by the array geometry to suppress noise in unused dimensions, enabling accurate estimation of the NLOS paths. Our proposed algorithm demonstrates superior estimation performance for the BS-UE and RIS-UE channels, outperforming the existing ML channel estimator.

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arXiv2024

Malicious Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces: How Impactful can Destructive Beamforming be?

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) have demonstrated significant potential for enhancing communication system performance if properly configured. However, a RIS might also pose a risk to the network security. In this letter, we explore the impact of a malicious RIS on a multi-user multiple-input single-output (MISO) system when the system is unaware of the RIS's malicious intentions. The objective of the malicious RIS is to degrade the \ac{SNR} of a specific \ac{UE}, with the option of preserving the SNR of the other UEs, making the attack harder to detect. To achieve this goal, we derive the optimal RIS phase-shift pattern, assuming perfect channel state information (CSI) at the hacker. We then relax this assumption by introducing CSI uncertainties and subsequently determine the RIS's phase-shift pattern using a robust optimization approach. Our simulations reveal a direct proportionality between the performance degradation caused by the malicious RIS and the number of reflective elements, along with resilience toward CSI uncertainties.

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arXiv2024

Secure Spatial Signal Design for ISAC in a Cell-Free MIMO Network

In this paper, we study a cell-free multiple-input multiple-output network equipped with integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) access points (APs). The distributed APs are used to jointly serve the communication needs of user equipments (UEs) while sensing a target, assumed to be an eavesdropper (Eve). To increase the system's robustness towards said Eve, we develop an ISAC waveform model that includes artificial noise (AN) aimed at degrading the Eve channel quality. The central processing unit receives the observations from each AP and calculates the optimal precoding and AN covariance matrices by solving a semi-definite relaxation of a constrained Cramer-Rao bound (CRB) minimization problem. Simulation results highlight an underlying trade-off between sensing and communication performances: in particular, the UEs signal-to-noise and interference ratio and the maximum Eve's signal to noise ratio are directly proportional to the CRB. Furthermore, the optimal AN covariance matrix is rank-1 and has a peak in the eve's direction, leading to a surprising inverse-proportionality between the UEs-Eve distance and optimal-CRB magnitude.

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arXiv2021

Scoring the Terabit/s Goal:Broadband Connectivity in 6G

This paper explores the road to vastly improving the broadband connectivity in future 6G wireless systems. Different categories of use cases are considered, with peak data rates up to 1 Tbps. Several categories of enablers at the infrastructure, spectrum, and protocol/algorithmic levels are required to realize the intended broadband connectivity goals in 6G. At the infrastructure level, we consider ultra-massive MIMO technology (possibly implemented using holographic radio), intelligent reflecting surfaces, user-centric cell-free networking, integrated access and backhaul, and integrated space and terrestrial networks. At the spectrum level, the network must seamlessly utilize sub-6 GHz bands for coverage and spatial multiplexing of many devices, while higher bands will be mainly used for pushing the peak rates of point-to-point links. Finally, at the protocol/algorithmic level, the enablers include improved coding, modulation, and waveforms to achieve lower latency, higher reliability, and reduced complexity.

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arXiv2020

Max-Min Power Control in Downlink Massive MIMO with Distributed Antenna Arrays

In this paper, we investigate optimal downlink power allocation in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) networks with distributed antenna arrays (DAAs) under correlated and uncorrelated channel fading. In DAA massive MIMO, the base station (BS) consists of multiple antenna sub-arrays. Notably, the antenna sub-arrays are deployed in arbitrary locations within a DAA massive MIMO cell. Consequently, the distance-dependent large-scale propagation coefficients are different from a user to these different antenna sub-arrays, which makes power control a challenging problem. We assume that the network operates in time-division duplex mode, where each BS obtains the channel estimates via uplink pilots. Based on the channel estimates, the BSs perform maximum-ratio transmission in the downlink. We then derive a closed-form signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) expression, where the channels are subject to correlated fading. Based on the SINR expression, we propose a networkwide max-min power control algorithm to ensure that each user in the network receives a uniform quality of service. Numerical results demonstrate the performance advantages offered by DAA massive MIMO. For some specific scenarios, DAA massive MIMO can improve the average per-user throughput up to 55%. Furthermore, we demonstrate that channel fading covariance is an important factor in determining the performance of DAA massive MIMO.

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arXiv2020

White Paper on Broadband Connectivity in 6G

This white paper explores the road to implementing broadband connectivity in future 6G wireless systems. Different categories of use cases are considered, from extreme capacity with peak data rates up to 1 Tbps, to raising the typical data rates by orders-of-magnitude, to support broadband connectivity at railway speeds up to 1000 km/h. To achieve these goals, not only the terrestrial networks will be evolved but they will also be integrated with satellite networks, all facilitating autonomous systems and various interconnected structures. We believe that several categories of enablers at the infrastructure, spectrum, and protocol/ algorithmic levels are required to realize the intended broadband connectivity goals in 6G. At the infrastructure level, we consider ultra-massive MIMO technology (possibly implemented using holographic radio), intelligent reflecting surfaces, user-centric and scalable cell-free networking, integrated access and backhaul, and integrated space and terrestrial networks. At the spectrum level, the network must seamlessly utilize sub-6 GHz bands for coverage and spatial multiplexing of many devices, while higher bands will be used for pushing the peak rates of point-to-point links. The latter path will lead to THz communications complemented by visible light communications in specific scenarios. At the protocol/algorithmic level, the enablers include improved coding, modulation, and waveforms to achieve lower latencies, higher reliability, and reduced complexity. Different options will be needed to optimally support different use cases. The resource efficiency can be further improved by using various combinations of full-duplex radios, interference management based on rate-splitting, machine-learning-based optimization, coded caching, and broadcasting.

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