arXiv subjects

Renato L. G. Cavalcante

Publications and source records attributed to Renato L. G. Cavalcante.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Uplink Multi-User MIMO Implementation in OpenAirInterface

Cell-Free Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) and Open Radio Access Network (O-RAN) have been active research topics in the wireless communication community in recent years. As an open-source software implementation of the 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) 5th Generation (5G) protocol stack, OpenAirInterface (OAI) has become a valuable tool for deploying and testing new ideas in wireless communication systems. In this paper, we present our OAI-based real-time uplink Multi-User MIMO (MU-MIMO) testbed developed at Fraunhofer HHI. As a part of our Cell-Free MIMO testbed development, we built a 2x2 MU-MIMO system using general purpose computers and commercially available software defined radios (SDRs). Using a modified OAI next-Generation Node-B (gNB) and two unmodified OAI user equipment (UE), we show that it is feasible to use Sounding Reference Signal (SRS) channel estimates to compute uplink combiners. Our results verify that this method can be used to separate and decode signals from two users transmitting in non-orthogonal time-frequency resources. This work serves as an important verification step to build a complete Cell-Free MU-MIMO system that leverages time domain duplexing (TDD) reciprocity to perform downlink beamforming over multiple cells

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arXiv2026

Performance Analysis of Cell-Free Massive MIMO under Imperfect LoS Phase Tracking

We study the impact of imperfect line-of-sight (LoS) phase tracking on the uplink performance of cell-free massive MIMO networks. Unlike prior works that assume perfectly known or completely unknown phases, we consider a realistic regime where LoS phases are estimated with residual uncertainty due to hardware impairments, mobility, and synchronization errors. To this end, we propose a Rician fading model where LoS components are rotated by imperfect phase estimates and attenuated by a deterministic \textit{phase-error penalty factor}. We derive a linear MMSE channel estimator that accounts for statistical phase errors and unifies prior results, reducing to the Bayesian MMSE estimator when phase is perfectly known and to a zero-mean model when no phase information is available. To address the non-Gaussian setting, we introduce a virtual uplink model that preserves second-order statistics of channel estimation, enabling the derivation of tractable virtual centralized and distributed MMSE beamformers. To ensure fair assessment of network performance, we apply these virtual beamformers to the operational uplink model that reflects the actual physical channel and compute the spectral efficiency bounds available in the literature. Numerical results show that our framework bridges idealized assumptions and practical tracking limitations, providing rigorous performance benchmarks and design insights for 6G cell-free networks.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2025

CISSIR: Beam Codebooks with Self-Interference Reduction Guarantees for Integrated Sensing and Communication Beyond 5G

We propose a beam codebook design for integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) that reduces self-interference (SI) to alleviate analog distortion. Our optimization framework, which considers either tapered beamforming or phased arrays for both analog and hybrid schemes, modifies given reference codebooks such that a certain SI power level is achieved. In contrast to other low-SI codebooks, which often rely on hardly interpretable optimization parameters, we provide design guidelines to obtain sensing performance guarantees by deriving analytical bounds on saturation and analog-to-digital quantization in relation to the multipath SI level. By selecting standard reference codebooks in our simulations, we show how our method substantially improves the signal-to-noise ratio for sensing with little impact on 5G-NR communication.

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arXiv2025

Digital Post-Distortion Architectures for Nonlinear Power Amplifiers: Volterra and Kernel Methods

In modern 5G user equipments (UEs), the power amplifier (PA) contributes significantly to power consumption during uplink transmissions, especially in cell-edge scenarios. While reducing power backoff can enhance PA efficiency, it introduces nonlinear distortions that degrade signal quality. Existing solutions, such as digital pre-distortion, require complex feedback mechanisms for optimal performance, leading to increased UE complexity and power consumption. Instead, in this study we explore digital post-distortion (DPoD) techniques, which compensate for these distortions at the base station, leveraging its superior computational resources. In this study, we conduct an comprehensive study concerning the challenges and advantages associated with applying DPoD in time-domain, frequency-domain, and DFT-s-domain. Our findings suggest that implementing DPoD in the time-domain, complemented by frequency-domain channel equalization, strikes a good balance between low computational complexity and efficient nonlinearity compensation. In addition, we demonstrate that memory has to be taken into account regardless of the memory of the PA. Subsequently, we show how to pose the complex-valued problem of nonlinearity compensation in a real Hilbert space, emphasizing the potential performance enhancements as a result. We then discuss the traditional Volterra series and show an equivalent kernel method that can reduce algorithmic complexity. Simulations validate the results of our analysis and show that our proposed algorithm can significantly improve performance compared to state-of-the-art algorithms.

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arXiv2025

Two-timescale joint power control and beamforming design with applications to cell-free massive MIMO

In this study we derive novel optimal algorithms for joint power control and beamforming design in modern large-scale MIMO systems, such as those based on the cell-free massive MIMO and XL-MIMO concepts. In particular, motivated by the need for scalable system architectures, we formulate and solve nontrivial two-timescale extensions of the classical uplink power minimization and max-min fair resource allocation problems. In our formulations, we let the beamformers be functions mapping partial instantaneous channel state information (CSI) to beamforming weights, and we jointly optimize these functions and the power control coefficients based on long-term statistical CSI. This long-term approach mitigates the severe scalability issues of competing short-term iterative algorithms in the literature, where a central controller endowed with global instantaneous CSI must solve a complex optimization problem for every channel realization, hence imposing very demanding requirements in terms of computational complexity and signaling overhead. Moreover, our approach outperforms the available long-term approaches, which do not jointly optimize powers and beamformers. The obtained optimal long-term algorithms are then illustrated and compared against existing short-term and long-term algorithms via numerical simulations in a cell-free massive MIMO setup with different levels of cooperation.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2024

Localization in Dynamic Indoor MIMO-OFDM Wireless Systems using Domain Adaptation

We propose a method for predicting the location of user equipment (UE) using wireless fingerprints in dynamic indoor non-line-of-sight (NLoS) environments. In particular, our method copes with the challenges posed by the drift, birth, and death of scattering clusters resulting from dynamic changes in the wireless environment. Prominent examples of such dynamic wireless environments include factory floors or offices, where the geometry of the environment undergoes changes over time. These changes affect the distribution of wireless fingerprints, demonstrating some similarity between the distributions before and after the change. Consequently, the performance of a location estimator initially designed for a specific environment may degrade significantly when applied after changes have occurred in that environment. To address this limitation, we propose a domain adaptation framework that utilizes neural networks to align the distributions of wireless fingerprints collected both before and after environmental changes. By aligning these distributions, we design an estimator capable of predicting UE locations from their wireless fingerprints in the new environment. Experiments validate the effectiveness of the proposed methods in localizing UEs in dynamic wireless environments.

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arXiv2024

Positive concave deep equilibrium models

Deep equilibrium (DEQ) models are widely recognized as a memory efficient alternative to standard neural networks, achieving state-of-the-art performance in language modeling and computer vision tasks. These models solve a fixed point equation instead of explicitly computing the output, which sets them apart from standard neural networks. However, existing DEQ models often lack formal guarantees of the existence and uniqueness of the fixed point, and the convergence of the numerical scheme used for computing the fixed point is not formally established. As a result, DEQ models are potentially unstable in practice. To address these drawbacks, we introduce a novel class of DEQ models called positive concave deep equilibrium (pcDEQ) models. Our approach, which is based on nonlinear Perron-Frobenius theory, enforces nonnegative weights and activation functions that are concave on the positive orthant. By imposing these constraints, we can easily ensure the existence and uniqueness of the fixed point without relying on additional complex assumptions commonly found in the DEQ literature, such as those based on monotone operator theory in convex analysis. Furthermore, the fixed point can be computed with the standard fixed point algorithm, and we provide theoretical guarantees of its geometric convergence, which, in particular, simplifies the training process. Experiments demonstrate the competitiveness of our pcDEQ models against other implicit models.

cs.LG↗

arXiv2024

Fixed points of nonnegative neural networks

We use fixed point theory to analyze nonnegative neural networks, which we define as neural networks that map nonnegative vectors to nonnegative vectors. We first show that nonnegative neural networks with nonnegative weights and biases can be recognized as monotonic and (weakly) scalable mappings within the framework of nonlinear Perron-Frobenius theory. This fact enables us to provide conditions for the existence of fixed points of nonnegative neural networks having inputs and outputs of the same dimension, and these conditions are weaker than those recently obtained using arguments in convex analysis. Furthermore, we prove that the shape of the fixed point set of nonnegative neural networks with nonnegative weights and biases is an interval, which under mild conditions degenerates to a point. These results are then used to obtain the existence of fixed points of more general nonnegative neural networks. From a practical perspective, our results contribute to the understanding of the behavior of autoencoders, and we also offer valuable mathematical machinery for future developments in deep equilibrium models.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2024

Inverse Feasibility in Over-the-Air Federated Learning

We introduce the concept of inverse feasibility for linear forward models as a tool to enhance OTA FL algorithms. Inverse feasibility is defined as an upper bound on the condition number of the forward operator as a function of its parameters. We analyze an existing OTA FL model using this definition, identify areas for improvement, and propose a new OTA FL model. Numerical experiments illustrate the main implications of the theoretical results. The proposed framework, which is based on inverse problem theory, can potentially complement existing notions of security and privacy by providing additional desirable characteristics to networks.

stat.ML↗

arXiv2024

UL-DL duality for cell-free massive MIMO with per-AP power and information constraints

We derive a novel uplink-downlink duality principle for optimal joint precoding design under per-transmitter power and information constraints in fading channels. The information constraints model limited sharing of channel state information and data bearing signals across the transmitters. The main application is to cell-free networks, where each access point (AP) must typically satisfy an individual power constraint and form its transmit signal using limited cooperation capabilities. Our duality principle applies to ergodic achievable rates given by the popular hardening bound, and it can be interpreted as a nontrivial generalization of a previous result by Yu and Lan for deterministic channels. This generalization allows us to study involved information constraints going beyond the simple case of cluster-wise centralized precoding covered by previous techniques. Specifically, we show that the optimal joint precoders are, in general, given by an extension of the recently developed team minimum mean-square error method. As a particular yet practical example, we then solve the problem of optimal local precoding design in user-centric cell-free massive MIMO networks subject to per-AP power constraints.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2024

Optimized Detection with Analog Beamforming for Monostatic Integrated Sensing and Communication

In this paper, we formalize an optimization framework for analog beamforming in the context of monostatic integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), where we also address the problem of self-interference in the analog domain. As a result, we derive semidefinite programs to approach detection-optimal transmit and receive beamformers, and we devise a superiorized iterative projection algorithm to approximate them. Our simulations show that this approach outperforms the detection performance of well-known design techniques for ISAC beamforming, while it achieves satisfactory self-interference suppression.

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arXiv2024

Towards Bridging the Gap between Near and Far-Field Characterizations of the Wireless Channel

The "near-field" propagation modeling of wireless channels is necessary to support sixth-generation (6G) technologies, such as intelligent reflecting surface (IRS), that are enabled by large aperture antennas and higher frequency carriers. As the conventional far-field model proves inadequate in this context, there is a pressing need to explore and bridge the gap between near and far-field propagation models. Although far-field models are simple and provide computationally efficient solutions for many practical applications, near-field models provide the most accurate representation of wireless channels. This paper builds upon the foundations of electromagnetic wave propagation theory to derive near and far-field models as approximations of the Green's function (Maxwell's equations). We characterize the near and far-field models both theoretically and with the help of simulations in a line-of-sight (LOS)-only scenario. In particular, for two key applications in multiantenna systems, namely, beamforming and multiple-access, we showcase the advantages of using the near-field model over the far-field, and present a novel scheduling scheme for multiple-access in the near-field regime. Our findings offer insights into the challenge of incorporating near-field models in practical wireless systems, fostering enhanced performance in future communication technologies.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2024

Distributed fixed-point algorithms for dynamic convex optimization over decentralized and unbalanced wireless networks

We consider problems where agents in a network seek a common quantity, measured independently and periodically by each agent through a local time-varying process. Numerous solvers addressing such problems have been developed in the past, featuring various adaptations of the local processing and the consensus step. However, existing solvers still lack support for advanced techniques, such as superiorization and over-the-air function computation (OTA-C). To address this limitation, we introduce a comprehensive framework for the analysis of distributed algorithms by characterizing them using the quasi-Fejér type algorithms and an extensive communication model. Under weak assumptions, we prove almost sure convergence of the algorithm to a common estimate for all agents. Moreover, we develop a specific class of algorithms within this framework to tackle distributed optimization problems with time-varying objectives, and, assuming that a time-invariant solution exists, prove its convergence to a solution. We also present a novel OTA-C protocol for consensus step in large decentralized networks, reducing communication overhead and enhancing network autonomy as compared to the existing protocols. The effectiveness of the algorithm, featuring superiorization and OTA-C, is demonstrated in a real-world application of distributed supervised learning over time-varying wireless networks, highlighting its low-latency and energy-efficiency compared to standard approaches.

math.OC↗

arXiv2023

Distributed Convex Optimization "Over-the-Air" in Dynamic Environments

This paper presents a decentralized algorithm for solving distributed convex optimization problems in dynamic networks with time-varying objectives. The unique feature of the algorithm lies in its ability to accommodate a wide range of communication systems, including previously unsupported ones, by abstractly modeling the information exchange in the network. Specifically, it supports a novel communication protocol based on the "over-the-air" function computation (OTA-C) technology, that is designed for an efficient and truly decentralized implementation of the consensus step of the algorithm. Unlike existing OTA-C protocols, the proposed protocol does not require the knowledge of network graph structure or channel state information, making it particularly suitable for decentralized implementation over ultra-dense wireless networks with time-varying topologies and fading channels. Furthermore, the proposed algorithm synergizes with the "superiorization" methodology, allowing the development of new distributed algorithms with enhanced performance for the intended applications. The theoretical analysis establishes sufficient conditions for almost sure convergence of the algorithm to a common time-invariant solution for all agents, assuming such a solution exists. Our algorithm is applied to a real-world distributed random field estimation problem, showcasing its efficacy in terms of convergence speed, scalability, and spectral efficiency. Furthermore, we present a superiorized version of our algorithm that achieves faster convergence with significantly reduced energy consumption compared to the unsuperiorized algorithm.

math.OC↗

arXiv2023

Spectral radii of asymptotic mappings and the convergence speed of the standard fixed point algorithm

Important problems in wireless networks can often be solved by computing fixed points of standard or contractive interference mappings, and the conventional fixed point algorithm is widely used for this purpose. Knowing that the mapping used in the algorithm is not only standard but also contractive (or only contractive) is valuable information because we obtain a guarantee of geometric convergence rate, and the rate is related to a property of the mapping called modulus of contraction. To date, contractive mappings and their moduli of contraction have been identified with case-by-case approaches that can be difficult to generalize. To address this limitation of existing approaches, we show in this study that the spectral radii of asymptotic mappings can be used to identify an important subclass of contractive mappings and also to estimate their moduli of contraction. In addition, if the fixed point algorithm is applied to compute fixed points of positive concave mappings, we show that the spectral radii of asymptotic mappings provide us with simple lower bounds for the estimation error of the iterates. An immediate application of this result proves that a known algorithm for load estimation in wireless networks becomes slower with increasing traffic.

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arXiv2022

Superiorized Adaptive Projected Subgradient Method with Application to MIMO Detection

In this paper, we show that the adaptive projected subgradient method (APSM) is bounded perturbation resilient. To illustrate a potential application of this result, we propose a set-theoretic framework for MIMO detection, and we devise algorithms based on a superiorized APSM. Various low-complexity MIMO detection algorithms achieve excellent performance on i.i.d. Gaussian channels, but they typically incur high performance loss if realistic channel models (e.g., correlated channels) are considered. Compared to existing low-complexity iterative detectors such as individually optimal large-MIMO approximate message passing (IO-LAMA), the proposed algorithms can achieve considerably lower symbol error ratios over correlated channels. At the same time, the proposed methods do not require matrix inverses, and their complexity is similar to IO-LAMA.

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arXiv2022

The fixed point iteration of positive concave mappings converges geometrically if a fixed point exists: implications to wireless systems

We prove that the fixed point iteration of arbitrary positive concave mappings with nonempty fixed point set converges geometrically for any starting point. We also show that positivity is crucial for this result to hold, and the concept of (nonlinear) spectral radius of asymptotic mappings provides us with information about the convergence factor. As a practical implication of the results shown here, we rigorously explain why some power control and load estimation algorithms in wireless networks, which are particular instances of the fixed point iteration, have shown geometric convergence in simulations. These algorithms have been typically derived by considering fixed point iterations of the general class of standard interference mappings, so the possibility of sublinear convergence rate could not be ruled out in previous studies, except in special cases that are often more restrictive than those considered here.

math.OC↗

arXiv2022

GPU-accelerated partially linear multiuser detection for 5G and beyond URLLC systems

In this feasibility study, we have implemented a recently proposed partially linear multiuser detection algorithm in reproducing kernel Hilbert spaces (RKHSs) on a GPU-accelerated platform. Partially linear multiuser detection, which combines the robustness of linear detection with the power of nonlinear methods, has been proposed for a massive connectivity scenario with the non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA). This is a promising approach, but detecting payloads within a received orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) radio frame requires the execution of a large number of inner product operations, which are the main computational burden of the algorithm. Although inner-product operations consist of simple kernel evaluations, their vast number poses a challenge in ultra-low latency (ULL) applications, because the time needed for computing the inner products might exceed the sub-millisecond latency requirement. To address this problem, this study demonstrates the acceleration of the inner-product operations through massive parallelization. The result is a GPU-accelerated real-time OFDM receiver that enables sub-millisecond latency detection to meet the requirements of 5th generation (5G) and beyond ultra-reliable and low latency communications (URLLC) systems. Moreover, the parallelization and acceleration techniques explored and demonstrated in this study can be extended to many other signal processing algorithms in Hilbert spaces, such as those based on projection onto convex sets (POCS) and adaptive projected subgradient method (APSM) algorithms. Experimental results and comparisons with the state-of-art confirm the effectiveness of our techniques.

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