arXiv subjects

Richard Demo Souza

Publications and source records attributed to Richard Demo Souza.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Energy-Neutral Coverage Optimization by Joint Deployment and Scheduling in Ambient IoT Devices with Directional Sensing

Ambient IoT (A-IoT) devices rely on energy harvesting and duty cycling to sustain operation, thereby fundamentally changing collaborative sensing compared with traditional always-ON sensor networks. In this paper, we study the joint deployment and sensing scheduling of A-IoT devices equipped with directional sensing. We explore four solution strategies: (i) a grid deployment with static duty cycling, (ii) a centralized policy-gradient reinforcement learning (RL) approach that begins with a grid deployment and learns energy-aware device relocation and duty-cycling policies, (iii) a mixed-integer linear programming (LP) approach that couples static deployment design with duty-cycle allocation, and (iv) a hybrid LP+RL that combines optimization-based initialization with learning-based refinement. Using representative A-IoT use cases, we evaluate coverage as a function of device density, field-of-view, and maximum feasible duty cycle, determined by harvested energy and device consumption. Numerical results indicate that the proposed LP+RL and RL policies consistently outperform both the grid baseline and the LP-based method, achieving up to 2x higher mean effective coverage in low and medium energy harvesting (EH) regimes. In contrast, the standalone LP method remains limited by its conservative static duty cycle allocation under tight EH constraints. Moreover, the structured initialization of the LP+RL method substantially accelerates convergence, reducing the total offline optimization time by up to 10x compared to the standalone RL.

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arXiv2026

EH-FedSAG: Variance-Reduced Federated Learning with Energy-Aware Participation in Energy-Harvesting IoT

Federated learning (FL) in energy-harvesting (EH) networks is challenged by intermittent and stochastic energy arrivals that lead to unstable device participation across training rounds, and by high communication costs under limited energy budgets, reducing overall training efficiency. This paper studies FL under a slot-based EH model and proposes EH-FedSAG, a server-memory-based variance-reduced method. We compare EH-FedSAG with vanilla EH-FedAvg under the same multi-channel orthogonal multiple-access uplink model and within a unified simulation framework that captures battery charging, local computation cost, and transmission cost under different energy-arrival probabilities. Performance is assessed in terms of test accuracy over training rounds for both homogeneous and heterogeneous data distributions. The results show that EH-FedSAG consistently achieves higher test accuracy than EH-FedAvg in the considered settings, while exhibiting substantially lower training variance. The advantage of EH-FedSAG is more pronounced under scarce energy availability and non-independent/identically-distributed data.

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arXiv2026

Active IoT User Detection in Near-Field with Location Information

In this paper, we address active users detection (AUD) in near-field Internet of Things (IoT) networks by exploring prior knowledge of users' locations. We consider a scenario where users are distributed in a semi-circular area within the Rayleigh distance of a multi-antenna base station (BS). We propose the BS to use location estimates of the users to reconstruct their line-of-sight (LoS) channel components, hence assisting the AUD process. For this, the BS combines these reconstructed channels with users' pilot sequences, enhancing the correlation between received signals and active users. We formulate the location-aided AUD as a convex optimization problem, solved via the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM). {Our proposal has a higher computational complexity compared to the baseline ADMM approach where location information is not used. Moreover, the proposal requires location information of users, which can be readily informed if users are static, or inferred via established localization algorithms if they are mobile.} Simulation results compare our proposal against the baseline across varying systems parameters, such as number of users, pilot length and LoS component strength. We demonstrate that under perfect location estimation and strong LoS, our proposed method significantly outperforms the baseline. Furthermore, robustness analysis shows that performance gains persist under imperfect location estimation, provided the estimation error remains within bounds determined by the system parameters.

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arXiv2026

On the Value of Base Station Motion Knowledge for Goal-Oriented Remote Monitoring with Energy-Harvesting Sensors

This paper investigates goal-oriented remote monitoring of an unobservable Markov source using energy-harvesting sensors that communicate with a mobile receiver, such as a Low Earth Orbit (LEO) satellite or Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV). Unlike conventional systems that assume stationary base stations, the proposed framework explicitly accounts for receiver mobility, which induces time-varying channel characteristics modeled as a finite-state Markov process. The remote monitoring problem is formulated as a partially observable Markov decision process (POMDP), which is transformed into a tractable belief-state MDP and solved using relative value iteration to obtain optimal sampling and transmission policies. Two estimation strategies are considered: Maximum Likelihood (ML) and Minimum Mean Distortion (MMD). Numerical results demonstrate that incorporating receiver mobility and channel state information into the optimization reduces the average distortion by 10% to 42% compared to baseline policies and constant-channel assumptions, highlighting the importance of base station motion knowledge for effective goal-oriented communication.

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arXiv2025

Wireless Energy Transfer Beamforming Optimization for Intelligent Transmitting Surface

Radio frequency (RF) wireless energy transfer (WET) is a promising technology for powering the growing ecosystem of Internet of Things (IoT) using power beacons (PBs). Recent research focuses on efficient PB architectures that can support numerous antennas. In this context, PBs equipped with intelligent surfaces present a promising approach, enabling physically large, reconfigurable arrays. Motivated by these advantages, this work aims to minimize the power consumption of a PB equipped with a passive intelligent transmitting surface (ITS) and a collocated digital beamforming-based feeder to charge multiple single-antenna devices. To model the PB's power consumption accurately, we consider power amplifiers nonlinearities, ITS control power, and feeder-to-ITS air interface losses. The resulting optimization problem is highly nonlinear and nonconvex due to the high-power amplifier (HPA), the received power constraints at the devices, and the unit-modulus constraint imposed by the phase shifter configuration of the ITS. To tackle this issue, we apply successive convex approximation (SCA) to iteratively solve convex subproblems that jointly optimize the digital precoder and phase configuration. Given SCA's sensitivity to initialization, we propose an algorithm that ensures initialization feasibility while balancing convergence speed and solution quality. We compare the proposed ITS-equipped PB's power consumption against benchmark architectures featuring digital and hybrid analog-digital beamforming. Results demonstrate that the proposed architecture efficiently scales with the number of RF chains and ITS elements. We also show that nonuniform ITS power distribution influences beamforming and can shift a device between near- and far-field regions, even with a constant aperture.

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arXiv2025

Movable Antennas-aided Wireless Energy Transfer for the Internet of Things

Recent advancements in movable antennas (MAs) technology create new opportunities for 6G and beyond wireless systems. MAs are promising for radio frequency wireless energy transfer because they can dynamically adjust antenna positions, improving energy efficiency and scalability. This work aims to minimize the power consumed by an analog beamforming power beacon equipped with independently-controlled MAs (IMAs) for charging multiple single-antenna devices. To this end, we enforce a minimum separation among antennas and a minimum received power at the devices. The resulting optimization problem is nonlinear and nonconvex due to interdependencies among the variables. To tackle this, we propose a semidefinite program guided particle swarm optimization (SgPSO) algorithm where each particle represents an antenna configuration, and the fitness function optimizes the corresponding power allocation. SgPSO is utilized for configuring the MAs largely outperforming fixed array implementations, particularly with more antennas or devices. We also present an alternative implementation using uniformly-spaced MAs, whose performance closely approaches that of the IMAs, with the gap widening only as the number of devices grows. We also examine how increasing the number of antennas promotes near-field conditions, which decrease as devices become more widely distributed.

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arXiv2025

Doppler Estimation and Compensation Techniques in LoRa Direct-to-Satellite Communications

Within the LPWAN framework, the LoRa modulation adopted by LoRaWAN technology has garnered significant interest as a connectivity solution for IoT applications due to its ability to offer low-cost, low-power, and long-range communications. One emerging use case of LoRa is DtS connectivity, which extends coverage to remote areas for supporting IoT operations. The satellite IoT industry mainly prefers LEO because it has lower launch costs and less path loss compared to Geostationary orbit. However, a major drawback of LEO satellites is the impact of the Doppler effect caused by their mobility. Earlier studies have confirmed that the Doppler effect significantly degrades the LoRa DtS performance. In this paper, we propose four frameworks for Doppler estimation and compensation in LoRa DtS connectivity and numerically compare the performance against the ideal scenario without the Doppler effect. Furthermore, we investigate the trade-offs among these frameworks by analyzing the interplay between spreading factor, and other key parameters related to the Doppler effect. The results provide insights into how to achieve robust LoRa configurations for DtS connectivity.

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arXiv2025

Federated Learning-Distillation Alternation for Resource-Constrained IoT

Federated learning (FL) faces significant challenges in Internet of Things (IoT) networks due to device limitations in energy and communication resources, especially when considering the large size of FL models. From an energy perspective, the challenge is aggravated if devices rely on energy harvesting (EH), as energy availability can vary significantly over time, influencing the average number of participating users in each iteration. Additionally, the transmission of large model updates is more susceptible to interference from uncorrelated background traffic in shared wireless environments. As an alternative, federated distillation (FD) reduces communication overhead and energy consumption by transmitting local model outputs, which are typically much smaller than the entire model used in FL. However, this comes at the cost of reduced model accuracy. Therefore, in this paper, we propose FL-distillation alternation (FLDA). In FLDA, devices alternate between FD and FL phases, balancing model information with lower communication overhead and energy consumption per iteration. We consider a multichannel slotted-ALOHA EH-IoT network subject to background traffic/interference. In such a scenario, FLDA demonstrates higher model accuracy than both FL and FD, and achieves faster convergence than FL. Moreover, FLDA achieves target accuracies saving up to 98% in energy consumption, while also being less sensitive to interference, both relative to FL.

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arXiv2025

Age of Information in Multi-Relay Networks with Maximum Age Scheduling

We propose and evaluate age of information (AoI)-aware multiple access mechanisms for the Internet of Things (IoT) in multi-relay two-hop networks. The network considered comprises end devices (EDs) communicating with a set of relays in ALOHA fashion, with new information packets to be potentially transmitted every time slot. The relays, in turn, forward the collected packets to an access point (AP), the final destination of the information generated by the EDs. More specifically, in this work we investigate the performance of four age-aware algorithms that prioritize older packets to be transmitted, namely max-age matching (MAM), iterative max-age scheduling (IMAS), age-based delayed request (ABDR), and buffered ABDR (B-ABDR). The former two algorithms are adapted into the multi-relay setup from previous research, and achieve satisfactory average AoI and average peak AoI performance, at the expense of a significant amount of information exchange between the relays and the AP. The latter two algorithms are newly proposed to let relays decide which one(s) will transmit in a given time slot, requiring less signaling than the former algorithms. We provide an analytical formulation for the AoI lower bound performance, compare the performance of all algorithms in this set-up, and show that they approach the lower bound. The latter holds especially true for B-ABDR, which approaches the lower bound the most closely, tilting the scale in its favor, as it also requires far less signaling than MAM and IMAS.

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arXiv2025

Assessment of the Sparsity-Diversity Trade-offs in Active Users Detection for mMTC with the Orthogonal Matching Pursuit

Wireless communication systems must increasingly support a multitude of machine-type communications (MTC) devices, thus calling for advanced strategies for active user detection (AUD). Recent literature has delved into AUD techniques based on compressed sensing, highlighting the critical role of signal sparsity. This study investigates the relationship between frequency diversity and signal sparsity in the AUD problem. Single-antenna users transmit multiple copies of non-orthogonal pilots across multiple frequency channels and the base station independently performs AUD in each channel using the orthogonal matching pursuit algorithm. We note that, although frequency diversity may improve the likelihood of successful reception of the signals, it may also damage the channel sparsity level, leading to important trade-offs. We show that a sparser signal significantly benefits AUD, surpassing the advantages brought by frequency diversity in scenarios with limited temporal resources and/or high numbers of receive antennas. Conversely, with longer pilots and fewer receive antennas, investing in frequency diversity becomes more impactful, resulting in a tenfold AUD performance improvement.

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arXiv2024

On the Spectral Efficiency of Indoor Wireless Networks with a Rotary Uniform Linear Array

Contemporary wireless communication systems rely on Multi-User Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MU-MIMO) techniques. In such systems, each Access Point (AP) is equipped with multiple antenna elements and serves multiple devices simultaneously. Notably, traditional systems utilize fixed antennas, i.e., antennas without any movement capabilities, while the idea of movable antennas has recently gained traction among the research community. By moving in a confined region, movable antennas are able to exploit the wireless channel variation in the continuous domain. This additional degree of freedom may enhance the quality of the wireless links, and consequently the communication performance. However, movable antennas for MU-MIMO proposed in the literature are complex, bulky, expensive and present a high power consumption. In this paper, we propose an alternative to such systems that has lower complexity and lower cost. More specifically, we propose the incorporation of rotation capabilities to APs equipped with Uniform Linear Arrays (ULAs) of antennas. We consider the uplink of an indoor scenario where the AP serves multiple devices simultaneously. The optimal rotation of the ULA is computed based on estimates of the positions of the active devices and aiming at maximizing the per-user mean achievable Spectral Efficiency (SE). Adopting a spatially correlated Rician channel model, our numerical results show that the rotation capabilities of the AP can bring substantial improvements in the SE in scenarios where the line-of-sight component of the channel vectors is strong. Moreover, our proposed system is robust against imperfect positioning estimates.

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arXiv2024

On the Spectral Efficiency of Movable and Rotary Antenna Arrays under Rician Fading

Most works evaluating the performance of Multi-User Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MU-MIMO) systems consider Access Points (APs) with fixed antennas, that is, without any movement capability. Recently, the idea of APs with antenna arrays that are able to move have gained traction among the research community. Many works evaluate the communications performance of Movable Antenna Arrays (MAAs) that can move on the horizontal plane. However, they require a very bulky, complex and expensive movement system. In this work, we propose a simpler and cheaper alternative: the utilization of Rotary Antenna Arrays (RAA)s, i.e. antenna arrays that can rotate. We also analyze the performance of a system in which the array is able to both move and rotate. The movements and/or rotations of the array are computed in order to maximize the mean per-user achievable spectral efficiency, based on estimates of the locations of the active devices and using particle swarm optimization. We adopt a spatially correlated Rician fading channel model, and evaluate the resulting optimized performance of the different setups in terms of mean per-user achievable spectral efficiencies. Our numerical results show that both the optimal rotations and movements of the arrays can provide substantial performance gains when the line-of-sight components of the channel vectors are strong. Moreover, the simpler RAAs can outperform the MAAs when their movement area is constrained.

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arXiv2024

Probabilistic Allocation of Payload Code Rate and Header Copies in LR-FHSS Networks

We evaluate the performance of the LoRaWAN Long-Range Frequency Hopping Spread Spectrum (LR-FHSS) technique using a device-level probabilistic strategy for code rate and header replica allocation. Specifically, we investigate the effects of different header replica and code rate allocations at each end-device, guided by a probability distribution provided by the network server. As a benchmark, we compare the proposed strategy with the standardized LR-FHSS data rates DR8 and DR9. Our numerical results demonstrate that the proposed strategy consistently outperforms the DR8 and DR9 standard data rates across all considered scenarios. Notably, our findings reveal that the optimal distribution rarely includes data rate DR9, while data rate DR8 significantly contributes to the goodput and energy efficiency optimizations.

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arXiv2024

Reinforcenment Learning-Aided NOMA Random Access: An AoI-Based Timeliness Perspective

In this paper, we investigate the age-of-information (AoI) of a power domain non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) network, where multiple internet-of-things (IoT) devices transmit to a common gateway in a grant-free random fashion. More specifically, we consider a framed setup composed of multiple time slots, and resort to the $Q$-learning algorithm to properly define, in a distributed manner, the time slot and the power level each IoT device transmits within a frame. In the proposed AoI-QL-NOMA scheme, the $Q$-learning reward is adapted with the aim of minimizing the average AoI of the network, while only requiring a single feedback bit per time slot, in a frame basis. Our results show that AoI-QL-NOMA significantly improves the AoI performance compared to some recently proposed schemes, without significantly reducing the network throughput.

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arXiv2024

Distributed MIMO Networks with Rotary ULAs for Indoor Scenarios under Rician Fading

The Fifth-Generation (5G) wireless communications networks introduced native support for Machine-Type Communications (MTC) use cases. Nevertheless, current 5G networks cannot fully meet the very stringent requirements regarding latency, reliability, and number of connected devices of most MTC use cases. Industry and academia have been working on the evolution from 5G to Sixth Generation (6G) networks. One of the main novelties is adopting Distributed Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (D-MIMO) networks. However, most works studying D-MIMO consider antenna arrays with no movement capabilities, even though some recent works have shown that this could bring substantial performance improvements. In this work, we propose the utilization of Access Points (APs) equipped with Rotary Uniform Linear Arrays (RULAs) for this purpose. Considering a spatially correlated Rician fading model, the optimal angular position of the RULAs is jointly computed by the central processing unit using particle swarm optimization as a function of the location of the active devices. Considering the impact of imperfect location estimates, our numerical results show that the RULAs's optimal rotation brings substantial performance gains in terms of mean per-user spectral efficiency. The improvement grows with the strength of the line-of-sight components of the channel vectors. Given the total number of antenna elements, we study the trade-off between the number of APs and the number of antenna elements per AP, revealing an optimal number of APs for the cases of APs equipped with static ULAs and RULAs.

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arXiv2024

On the Spectral Efficiency of D-MIMO Networks under Rician Fading

Contemporary wireless communications systems adopt the Multi-User Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MU-MIMO) technique: a single base station or Access Point (AP) equipped with multiple antenna elements serves multiple active users simultaneously. Aiming at providing a more uniform wireless coverage, industry and academia have been working towards the evolution from centralized MIMO to Distributed-MIMO. That is, instead of having all the antenna elements co-located at a single AP, multiple APs, each equipped with a few or a single antenna element, jointly cooperate to serve the active users in the coverage area. In this work, we evaluate the performance of different D-MIMO setups under Rician fading, and considering different receive combining schemes. Note that the Rician fading model is convenient for MU-MIMO performance assessment, as it encompasses a wide variety of scenarios. Our numerical results show that the correlation among the channel vectors of different users increases with the Rician factor, which leads to a reduction on the achievable Spectral Efficiency (SE). Moreover, given a total number of antenna elements, there is an optimal number of APs and antenna elements per AP that provides the best performance. This "sweet spot" depends on the Rician factor and on the adopted receive combining scheme.

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arXiv2024

Non-Orthogonal Multiple-Access Strategies for Direct-to-Satellite IoT Networks

Direct-to-Satellite IoT (DtS-IoT) has the potential to support multiple verticals, including agriculture, industry, smart cities, and environmental disaster prevention. This work introduces two novel DtS-IoT schemes using power domain NonOrthogonal Multiple Access (NOMA) in the uplink with either fixed (FTP) or controlled (CTP) transmit power. We consider that the IoT devices use LoRa technology to transmit data packets to the satellite in orbit, equipped with a Successive Interference Cancellation (SIC)-enabled gateway. We also assume the IoT devices are empowered with a predictor of the satellite orbit. Using real geographic location and trajectory data, we evaluate the performance of the average number of successfully decoded transmissions, goodput (bytes/lap), and energy consumption (bytes/Joule) as a function of the number of network devices. Numerical results show the trade-off between goodput and energy efficiency for both proposed schemes. Comparing FTP and CTP with regular ALOHA for 100 (600) devices, we find goodput improvements of 65% (29%) and 52% (101%), respectively. Notably, CTP effectively leverages transmission opportunities as the network size increases, outperforming the other strategies. Moreover, CTP shows the best performance in energy efficiency compared to FTP and ALOHA.

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arXiv2024

LR-FHSS-Sim: A Discrete-Event Simulator for LR-FHSS Networks

This work presents the LR-FHSS-Sim, a free and open-source discrete-event simulator for LR-FHSS networks. We highlight the importance of network modeling for IoT coverage, especially when it is needed to capture dynamic network behaviors. Written in Python, we present the LR-FHSS-Sim main structure, procedures, and extensions. We discuss the importance of a modular code, which facilitates the creation of algorithmic strategies and signal-processing techniques for LR-FHSS networks. Moreover, we showcase how to achieve results when considering different packet generation traffic patterns and with a previously published extension. Finally, we discuss our thoughts on future implementations and what can be achieved with them.

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