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Lipeng Zhu

Publications and source records attributed to Lipeng Zhu.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

Movable Antenna-Enhanced Secure Communication: Opportunities, Challenges, and Solutions

The broadcast nature of wireless communication renders it inherently vulnerable to security threats such as jamming and eavesdropping. While traditional array beamforming techniques help to mitigate these threats, they usually incur high hardware and processing costs, particularly in large-scale arrays with fixed-position antennas (FPAs). In contrast, movable antenna (MA) arrays can fully exploit the channel variation in spatial regions by enabling flexible antenna movement, which has emerged as a promising technology for secure communications. This article provides a magazine-type overview of MA-aided secure communications. Specifically, we first illuminate the promising application scenarios for MA-enhanced secure communication systems. Then, we examine the security advantages of MAs over conventional FPA systems, fundamentally stemming from their ability to adjust channel correlations between legitimate users, eavesdroppers, and jammers. Furthermore, we discuss important technical challenges and their potential solutions related to MA hardware architecture, channel acquisition, and antenna position optimization to realize secure transmissions. Finally, several promising directions for MA-aided secure communications are presented to inspire future research.

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Movable Antenna Empowered Secure Near-Field MIMO Communications

This paper investigates movable antenna (MA) empowered secure transmission in near-field multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems, where the base station (BS) equipped with an MA array transmits confidential information to a legitimate user under the threat of a potential eavesdropper. To enhance physical layer security (PLS) of the considered system, we aim to maximize the secrecy rate by jointly designing the hybrid digital and analog beamformers, as well as the positions of MAs at the BS. To solve the formulated non-convex problem with highly coupled variables, an alternating optimization (AO)-based algorithm is introduced by decoupling the original problem into two separate subproblems. Specifically, for the subproblem of designing hybrid beamformers, a semi-closed-form solution for the fully-digital beamformer is first derived by a weighted minimum mean-square error (WMMSE)-based algorithm. Subsequently, the digital and analog beamformers are determined by approximating the fully-digital beamformer through the manifold optimization (MO) technique. For the MA positions design subproblem, we utilize the majorization-minimization (MM) algorithm to iteratively optimize each MA's position while keeping others fixed. Extensive simulation results validate the considerable benefits of the proposed MA-aided near-field beam focusing approach in enhancing security performance compared to the traditional far-field and/or the fixed position antenna (FPA)-based systems. In addition, the proposed scheme can realize secure transmission even if the eavesdropper is located in the same direction as the user and closer to the BS.

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A Deep Learning Framework for Joint Channel Acquisition and Communication Optimization in Movable Antenna Systems

This paper presents an end-to-end deep learning framework in a movable antenna (MA)-enabled multiuser communication system. In contrast to the conventional works assuming perfect channel state information (CSI), we address the practical CSI acquisition issue through the design of pilot signals and quantized CSI feedback, and further incorporate the joint optimization of channel estimation, MA placement, and precoding design. The proposed mechanism enables the system to learn an optimized transmission strategy from imperfect channel data, overcoming the limitations of conventional methods that conduct channel estimation and antenna position optimization separately. To balance the performance and overhead, we further extend the proposed framework to optimize the antenna placement based on the statistical CSI. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach consistently outperforms traditional benchmarks in terms of achievable sum-rate of users, especially under limited feedback and sparse channel environments. Notably, it achieves a performance comparable to the widely-adopted gradient-based methods with perfect CSI, while maintaining significantly lower CSI feedback overhead. These results highlight the effectiveness and adaptability of learning-based MA system design for future wireless systems.

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Towed Movable Antenna (ToMA) Array for Ultra Secure Airborne Communications

This paper proposes a novel towed movable antenna (ToMA) array architecture to enhance the physical layer security of airborne communication systems. Unlike conventional onboard arrays with fixed-position antennas (FPAs), the ToMA array employs multiple subarrays mounted on flexible cables and towed by distributed drones, enabling agile deployment in three-dimensional (3D) space surrounding the central aircraft. This design significantly enlarges the effective array aperture and allows dynamic geometry reconfiguration, offering superior spatial resolution and beamforming flexibility. We consider a secure transmission scenario where an airborne transmitter communicates with multiple legitimate users in the presence of potential eavesdroppers. To ensure security, zero-forcing beamforming is employed to nullify signal leakage toward eavesdroppers. Based on the statistical distributions of locations of users and eavesdroppers, the antenna position vector (APV) of the ToMA array is optimized to maximize the users' ergodic achievable rate. Analytical results for the case of a single user and a single eavesdropper reveal the optimal APV structure that minimizes their channel correlation. For the general multiuser scenario, we develop a low-complexity alternating optimization algorithm by leveraging Riemannian manifold optimization. Simulation results confirm that the proposed ToMA array achieves significant performance gains over conventional onboard FPA arrays, especially in scenarios where eavesdroppers are closely located to users under line-of-sight (LoS)-dominant channels.

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Sum-Rate Maximization for Movable-Antenna Array Enhanced Downlink NOMA Systems

Movable antenna (MA) systems have recently attracted significant attention in the field of wireless communications owing to their exceptional capability to proactively reconfigure wireless channels via flexible antenna movements. In this paper, we investigate the resource allocation design for an MA array-enhanced downlink non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system, where a base station deploys multiple MAs to serve multiple single-antenna users. Our goal is to maximize the sum rate of all users by jointly optimizing the transmit beamforming, positions of MAs, successive interference cancellation (SIC) decoding order, and users' corresponding decoding indicator matrix, while adhering to constraints on the maximum transmit power and finite MA moving region. The formulated problem is inherently highly non-convex, rendering it challenging to acquire a globally optimal solution. As a compromise, we propose a low-complexity two-stage optimization algorithm to obtain an effective suboptimal solution. Specifically, in stage one, the SIC decoding order is first determined by solving a channel gain maximization problem. Then, in stage two, with the given SIC decoding order, the beamforming vectors, MA positions, and users' decoding indicator matrix are iteratively optimized by capitalizing on alternating optimization, successive convex approximation (SCA), and genetic algorithm (GA). Simulation results unveil that the sum-rate performance of the proposed MA-enabled downlink NOMA system significantly outperforms that of conventional fixed-position antenna (FPA) systems. Moreover, the results also show that the antenna position optimization in the proposed algorithm can further enhance the advantages of NOMA over space division multiple access (SDMA).

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Wideband Coverage Enhancement for IRS-Aided Wireless Networks Based on Power Measurement

By applying tunable phase shifts to incident waves via passive signal reflection, intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) can offer significant performance improvement for wireless communication systems. To reap such performance gain, channel knowledge for IRS-cascaded links is generally required, which is practically challenging to acquire due to their high-dimensional and time-varying characteristics. Conventional pilot-based channel estimation incurs excessive overhead due to the large number of reflecting elements, thus undermining the IRS efficiency, especially for wideband systems with frequency-selective fading channels. To tackle this issue, we propose in this letter a power-measurement-based channel autocorrelation matrix estimation and coverage enhancement approach for IRS-aided orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. Specifically, by estimating equivalent channel autocorrelation matrices of IRS-cascaded OFDM channels based on receive signal power and optimizing the IRS reflection vector based on them, the average coverage performance in the IRS-aided region is enhanced without the need for frequent reconfiguration of IRS reflection coefficients based on user instantaneous channels. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach for improving the average channel gain over the coverage region.

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Movable-Antenna Array Enhanced Downlink NOMA

Movable antenna (MA) has gained increasing attention in the field of wireless communications due to its exceptional capability to proactively reconfigure wireless channels via localized antenna movements. In this paper, we investigate the resource allocation design for an MA array-enabled base station serving multiple single-antenna users in a downlink non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system. We aim to maximize the sum rate of all users by jointly optimizing the transmit beamforming and the positions of all MAs at the BS, subject to the constraints of transmit power budget, finite antenna moving region, and the conditions for successive interference cancellation decoding rate. The formulated problem, inherently highly non-convex, is addressed by successive convex approximation (SCA) and alternating optimization methods to obtain a high-quality suboptimal solution. Simulation results unveil that the proposed MA-enhanced downlink NOMA system can significantly improve the sum rate performance compared to both the fixed-position antenna (FPA) system and the traditional orthogonal multiple access (OMA) system.

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Extremely Large-Scale Movable Antenna-Enabled Multiuser Communications: Modeling and Optimization

Movable antenna (MA) has been recognized as a promising technology to improve communication performance in future wireless networks such as 6G. To unleash its potential, this paper proposes a novel architecture, namely extremely large-scale MA (XL-MA), which allows flexible antenna/subarray positioning over an extremely large spatial region for effectively enhancing near-field effects and spatial multiplexing performance. In particular, this paper studies an uplink XL-MA-enabled multiuser system, where single-antenna users distributed in a coverage area are served by a base station (BS) equipped with multiple movable subarrays. We begin by presenting a spatially non-stationary channel model to capture the near-field effects, including positiondependent large-scale channel gains and line-of-sight visibility. To evaluate system performance, we further derive a closedform approximation of the expected weighted sum rate under maximum ratio combining (MRC), revealing that optimizing XLMA placement enhances user channel power gain to increase desired signal power and reduces channel correlation to decreases multiuser interference. Building upon this, we formulate an antenna placement optimization problem to maximize the expected weighted sum rate, leveraging statistical channel conditions and user distribution. To efficiently solve this challenging non-linear binary optimization problem, we propose a polynomial-time successive replacement algorithm. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed XL-MA placement strategy achieves nearoptimal performance, significantly outperforming benchmark schemes based on conventional fixed-position antennas.

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Joint Antenna Position and Beamforming Optimization with Self-Interference Mitigation in MA-ISAC System

Movable antennas (MAs) have demonstrated significant potential in enhancing the performance of integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems. However, the application in the integrated and cost-effective full-duplex (FD) monostatic systems remains underexplored. To address this research gap, we develop an MA-ISAC model within a monostatic framework, where the self-interference channel is modeled in the near field and characterized by antenna position vectors. This model allows us to investigate the use of MAs with the goal of maximizing the weighted sum of communication capacity and sensing mutual information. The resulting optimization problem is non-convex making it challenging to solve optimally. To overcome this, we employ fractional programming (FP) to propose an alternating optimization (AO) algorithm that jointly optimizes the beamforming and antenna positions for both transceivers. Specifically, closed-form solutions for the transmit and receive beamforming matrices are derived using the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions, and a novel coarse-to-fine grained search (CFGS) approach is employed to determine the high-quality sub-optimal antenna positions. Numerical results demonstrate that with strong self-interference cancellation (SIC) capabilities, MAs significantly enhance the overall performance and reliability of the ISAC system when utilizing our proposed algorithm, compared to conventional fixed-position antenna designs.

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Modeling Multi-Hop Semantic Paths for Recommendation in Heterogeneous Information Networks

This study focuses on the problem of path modeling in heterogeneous information networks and proposes a multi-hop path-aware recommendation framework. The method centers on multi-hop paths composed of various types of entities and relations. It models user preferences through three stages: path selection, semantic representation, and attention-based fusion. In the path selection stage, a path filtering mechanism is introduced to remove redundant and noisy information. In the representation learning stage, a sequential modeling structure is used to jointly encode entities and relations, preserving the semantic dependencies within paths. In the fusion stage, an attention mechanism assigns different weights to each path to generate a global user interest representation. Experiments conducted on real-world datasets such as Amazon-Book show that the proposed method significantly outperforms existing recommendation models across multiple evaluation metrics, including HR@10, Recall@10, and Precision@10. The results confirm the effectiveness of multi-hop paths in capturing high-order interaction semantics and demonstrate the expressive modeling capabilities of the framework in heterogeneous recommendation scenarios. This method provides both theoretical and practical value by integrating structural information modeling in heterogeneous networks with recommendation algorithm design. It offers a more expressive and flexible paradigm for learning user preferences in complex data environments.

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A Tutorial on Six-Dimensional Movable Antenna for 6G Networks: Synergizing Positionable and Rotatable Antennas

Six-dimensional movable antenna (6DMA) is a new and revolutionary technique that fully exploits the wireless channel spatial variations at the transmitter/receiver by flexibly adjusting the three-dimensional (3D) positions and/or 3D rotations of antennas/antenna surfaces (sub-arrays), thereby improving the performance of wireless networks cost-effectively without the need to deploy additional antennas. It is thus expected that the integration of new 6DMAs into future sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks will fundamentally enhance antenna agility and adaptability, and introduce new degrees of freedom (DoFs) for system design. Despite its great potential, 6DMA faces new challenges to be efficiently implemented in wireless networks, including corresponding architectures, antenna position and rotation optimization, channel estimation, and system design from both communication and sensing perspectives. In this paper, we provide a tutorial on 6DMA-enhanced wireless networks to address the above issues by unveiling associated new channel models, hardware implementations and practical position/rotation constraints, as well as various appealing applications in wireless networks. Moreover, we discuss two special cases of 6DMA, namely, rotatable 6DMA with fixed antenna position and positionable 6DMA with fixed antenna rotation, and highlight their respective design challenges and applications. We further present prototypes developed for 6DMA-enhanced communication along with experimental results obtained with these prototypes. Finally, we outline promising directions for further investigation.

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Multiuser Communications Aided by Cross-Linked Movable Antenna Array: Architecture and Optimization

Movable antenna (MA) has been regarded as a promising technology to enhance wireless communication performance by enabling flexible antenna movement. However, the hardware cost of conventional MA systems scales with the number of movable elements due to the need for independently controllable driving components. To reduce hardware cost, we propose in this paper a novel architecture named cross-linked MA (CL-MA) array, which enables the collective movement of multiple antennas in both horizontal and vertical directions. To evaluate the performance benefits of the CL-MA array, we consider an uplink multiuser communication scenario. Specifically, we aim to minimize the total transmit power while satisfying a given minimum rate requirement for each user by jointly optimizing the horizontal and vertical antenna position vectors (APVs), the receive combining at the base station (BS), and the transmit power of users. A globally lower bound on the total transmit power is derived, with closed-form solutions for the APVs obtained under the condition of a single channel path for each user. For the more general case of multiple channel paths, we develop a low-complexity algorithm based on discrete antenna position optimization. Additionally, to further reduce antenna movement overhead, a statistical channel-based antenna position optimization approach is proposed, allowing for unchanged APVs over a long time period. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed CL-MA schemes significantly outperform conventional fixed-position antenna (FPA) systems and closely approach the theoretical lower bound on the total transmit power. Compared to the instantaneous channel-based CL-MA optimization, the statistical channel-based approach incurs a slight performance loss but achieves significantly lower movement overhead, making it an appealing solution for practical wireless systems.

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Three-Stage Composite Outlier Identification of Wind Power Data: Integrating Physical Rules with Regression Learning and Mathematical Morphology

Existing studies on identifying outliers in wind speed-power datasets are often challenged by the complicated and irregular distributions of outliers, especially those being densely stacked yet staying close to normal data. This could degrade their identification reliability and robustness in practice. To address this defect, this paper develops a three-stage composite outlier identification method by systematically integrating three complementary techniques, i.e., physical rule-based preprocessing, regression learning-enabled detection, and mathematical morphology-based refinement. Firstly, the raw wind speed-power data are preprocessed via a set of simple yet efficient physical rules to filter out some outliers obviously going against the physical operating laws of practical wind turbines. Secondly, a robust wind speed-power regression learning model is built upon the random sample consensus algorithm. This model is able to reliably detect most outliers with the help of an adaptive threshold automatically set by the interquartile range method. Thirdly, by representing the wind speed-power data distribution with a two-dimensional image, mathematical morphology operations are applied to perform refined outlier identification from a data distribution perspective. This technique can identify outliers that are not effectively detected in the first two stages, including those densely stacked ones near normal data points. By integrating the above three techniques, the whole method is capable of identifying various types of outliers in a reliable and adaptive manner. Numerical test results with wind power datasets acquired from distinct wind turbines in practice and from simulation environments extensively demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method as well as its potential in enhancing wind power prediction.

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A Demo of Radar Sensing Aided Rotatable Antenna for Wireless Communication System

Rotatable antenna (RA) represents a novel antenna architecture that enhances wireless communication system performance by independently or collectively adjusting each antenna's boresight/orientation. In this demonstration, we develop a prototype of radar sensing-aided rotatable antenna that integrates radar sensing with dynamic antenna orientation to enhance wireless communication performance while maintaining low hardware costs. The proposed prototype consists of a transmitter (TX) module and a receiver (RX) module, both of which employ universal software radio peripherals (USRPs) for transmitting and receiving signals. Specifically, the TX utilizes a laser radar to detect the RX's location and conveys the angle of arrival (AoA) information to its antenna servo, which enables the RA to align its boresight direction with the identified RX. Experimental results examine the effectiveness of the proposed prototype and indicate that the RA significantly outperforms the traditional fixed-antenna system in terms of increasing received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).

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Rotatable Antenna Enabled Wireless Communication System with Visual Recognition: A Prototype Implementation

Rotatable antenna (RA) is an emerging technology that has great potential to exploit additional spatial degrees of freedom (DoFs) by flexibly altering the three-dimensional (3D) orientation/boresight of each antenna. In this demonstration, we present a prototype of the RA-enabled wireless communication system with a visual recognition module to evaluate the performance gains provided by the RA in practical environments. In particular, a mechanically-driven RA is developed by integrating a digital servo motor, a directional antenna, and a microcontroller, which enables the dynamic adjustment of the RA orientation. Moreover, the orientation adjustment of the RA is guided by the user's direction information provided by the visual recognition module, thereby significantly enhancing system response speed and self-orientation accuracy. The experimental results demonstrate that the RA-enabled communication system achieves significant improvement in communication coverage performance compared to the conventional fixed antenna system.

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Movable Antenna Aided Multiuser Communications: Antenna Position Optimization Based on Statistical Channel Information

The movable antenna (MA) technology has attracted great attention recently due to its promising capability in improving wireless channel conditions by flexibly adjusting antenna positions. To reap maximal performance gains of MA systems, existing works mainly focus on MA position optimization to cater to the instantaneous channel state information (CSI). However, the resulting real-time antenna movement may face challenges in practical implementation due to the additional time overhead and energy consumption required, especially in fast time-varying channel scenarios. To address this issue, we propose in this paper a new approach to optimize the MA positions based on the users' statistical CSI over a large timescale. In particular, we propose a general field response based statistical channel model to characterize the random channel variations caused by the local movement of users. Based on this model, a two-timescale optimization problem is formulated to maximize the ergodic sum rate of multiple users, where the precoding matrix and the positions of MAs at the base station (BS) are optimized based on the instantaneous and statistical CSI, respectively. To solve this non-convex optimization problem, a log-barrier penalized gradient ascent algorithm is developed to optimize the MA positions, where two methods are proposed to approximate the ergodic sum rate and its gradients with different complexities. Finally, we present simulation results to evaluate the performance of the proposed design and algorithms based on practical channels generated by ray-tracing. The results verify the performance advantages of MA systems compared to their fixed-position antenna (FPA) counterparts in terms of long-term rate improvement, especially for scenarios with more diverse channel power distributions in the angular domain.

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A Tutorial on Movable Antennas for Wireless Networks

Movable antenna (MA) has been recognized as a promising technology to enhance the performance of wireless communication and sensing by enabling antenna movement. Such a significant paradigm shift from conventional fixed antennas (FAs) to MAs offers tremendous new opportunities towards realizing more versatile, adaptive and efficient next-generation wireless networks such as 6G. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive tutorial on the fundamentals and advancements in the area of MA-empowered wireless networks. First, we overview the historical development and contemporary applications of MA technologies. Next, to characterize the continuous variation in wireless channels with respect to antenna position and/or orientation, we present new field-response channel models tailored for MAs, which are applicable to narrowband and wideband systems as well as far-field and near-field propagation conditions. Subsequently, we review the state-of-the-art architectures for implementing MAs and discuss their practical constraints. A general optimization framework is then formulated to fully exploit the spatial degrees of freedom (DoFs) in antenna movement for performance enhancement in wireless systems. In particular, we delve into two major design issues for MA systems. First, we address the intricate antenna movement optimization problem for various communication and/or sensing systems to maximize the performance gains achievable by MAs. Second, we deal with the challenging channel acquisition issue in MA systems for reconstructing the channel mapping between arbitrary antenna positions inside the transmitter and receiver regions. Moreover, we show existing prototypes developed for MA-aided communication/sensing and the experimental results based on them. Finally, the extension of MA design to other wireless systems and its synergy with other emerging wireless technologies are discussed.

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Power-Measurement-Based Channel Autocorrelation Estimation for IRS-Assisted Wideband Communications

Channel state information (CSI) is essential to the performance optimization of intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-aided wireless communication systems. However, the passive and frequency-flat reflection of IRS, as well as the high-dimensional IRS-reflected channels, have posed practical challenges for efficient IRS channel estimation, especially in wideband communication systems with significant multi-path channel delay spread. To tackle the above challenge, we propose a novel neural network (NN)-empowered IRS channel estimation and passive reflection design framework for the wideband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) communication system based only on the user's reference signal received power (RSRP) measurements with time-varying random IRS training reflections. In particular, we show that the average received signal power over all OFDM subcarriers at the user terminal can be represented as the prediction of a single-layer NN composed of multiple subnetworks with the same structure, such that the autocorrelation matrix of the wideband IRS channel can be recovered as their weights via supervised learning. To exploit the potential sparsity of the channel autocorrelation matrix, a progressive training method is proposed by gradually increasing the number of subnetworks until a desired accuracy is achieved, thus reducing the training complexity. Based on the estimates of IRS channel autocorrelation matrix, the IRS passive reflection is then optimized to maximize the average channel power gain over all subcarriers. Numerical results indicate the effectiveness of the proposed IRS channel autocorrelation matrix estimation and passive reflection design under wideband channels, which can achieve significant performance improvement compared to the existing IRS reflection designs based on user power measurements.

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