arXiv subjects

Vincent K. N. Lau

Publications and source records attributed to Vincent K. N. Lau.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

arXiv2021

Over-the-Air Aggregation for Federated Learning: Waveform Superposition and Prototype Validation

In this paper, we develop an orthogonal-frequency-division-multiplexing (OFDM)-based over-the-air (OTA) aggregation solution for wireless federated learning (FL). In particular, the local gradients in massive IoT devices are modulated by an analog waveform and are then transmitted using the same wireless resources. To this end, achieving perfect waveform superposition is the key challenge, which is difficult due to the existence of frame timing offset (TO) and carrier frequency offset (CFO). In order to address these issues, we propose a two-stage waveform pre-equalization technique with a customized multiple access protocol that can estimate and then mitigate the TO and CFO for the OTA aggregation. Based on the proposed solution, we develop a hardware transceiver and application software to train a real-world FL task, which learns a deep neural network to predict the received signal strength with global positioning system information. Experiments verify that the proposed OTA aggregation solution can achieve comparable performance to offline learning procedures with high prediction accuracy.

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arXiv2021

Cascaded Channel Estimation for Intelligent Reflecting Surface Assisted Multiuser MISO Systems

This paper investigates the uplink cascaded channel estimation for intelligent-reflecting-surface (IRS)-assisted multi-user multiple-input-single-output systems. We focus on a sub-6 GHz scenario where the channel propagation is not sparse and the number of IRS elements can be larger than the number of BS antennas. A novel channel estimation protocol without the need of on-off amplitude control to avoid the reflection power loss is proposed. In addition, the pilot overhead is substantially reduced by exploiting the common-link structure to decompose the cascaded channel coefficients by the multiplication of the common-link variables and the user-specific variables. However, these two types of variables are highly coupled, which makes them difficult to estimate. To address this issue, we formulate an optimization-based joint channel estimation problem, which only utilizes the covariance of the cascaded channel. Then, we design a low-complexity alternating optimization algorithm with efficient initialization for the non-convex optimization problem, which achieves a local optimum solution. To further enhance the estimation accuracy, we propose a new formulation to optimize the training phase shifting configuration for the proposed protocol, and then solve it using the successive convex approximation algorithm. Comprehensive simulations verify that the proposed algorithm has supreme performance compared to various state-of-the-art baseline schemes.

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arXiv2021

Dynamic RAT Selection and Transceiver Optimization for Mobile Edge Computing Over Multi-RAT Heterogeneous Networks

Mobile edge computing (MEC) integrated with multiple radio access technologies (RATs) is a promising technique for satisfying the growing low-latency computation demand of emerging intelligent internet of things (IoT) applications. Under the distributed MapReduce framework, this paper investigates the joint RAT selection and transceiver design for over-the-air (OTA) aggregation of intermediate values (IVAs) in wireless multiuser MEC systems, while taking into account the energy budget constraint for the local computing and IVA transmission per wireless device (WD). We aim to minimize the weighted sum of the computation mean squared error (MSE) of the aggregated IVA at the RAT receivers, the WDs' IVA transmission cost, and the associated transmission time delay, which is a mixed-integer and non-convex problem. Based on the Lagrange duality method and primal decomposition, we develop a low-complexity algorithm by solving the WDs' RAT selection problem, the WDs' transmit coefficients optimization problem, and the aggregation beamforming problem. Extensive numerical results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness and merit of our proposed algorithm as compared with other existing schemes.

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arXiv2021

Multi-Level Over-the-Air Aggregation of Mobile Edge Computing over D2D Wireless Networks

In this paper, we consider a wireless multihop device-to-device (D2D) based mobile edge computing (MEC) system, where the destination wireless device (WD) is scheduled to compute nomographic functions. Under the MapReduce framework and motivated by reducing communication resource overhead, we propose a new multi-level over-the-air (OTA) aggregation scheme for the destination WD to collect the individual partially aggregated intermediate values (IVAs) for reduction from multiple source WDs in the data shuffling phase. For OTA aggregation per level, the source WDs employ a channel inverse structure multiplied by their individual transmit coefficients in transmission over the same time frequency resource blocks, and the destination WD finally uses a receive filtering factor to construct the aggregated IVA. Under this setup, we develop a unified transceiver design framework that minimizes the mean squared error (MSE) of the aggregated IVA at the destination WD subject to the source WDs' individual power constraints, by jointly optimizing the source WDs' individual transmit coefficients and the destination WD's receive filtering factor. First, based on the primal decomposition method, we derive the closed-form solution under the special case of a common transmit coefficient. It shows that all the source WDs' common transmit is determined by the minimal transmit power budget among the source WDs. Next, for the general case, we transform the original problem into a quadratic fractional programming problem, and then develop a low-complexity algorithm to obtain the (near-) optimal solution by leveraging Dinkelbach's algorithm along with the Gaussian randomization method.

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arXiv2021

Deploying Federated Learning in Large-Scale Cellular Networks: Spatial Convergence Analysis

The deployment of federated learning in a wireless network, called federated edge learning (FEEL), exploits low-latency access to distributed mobile data to efficiently train an AI model while preserving data privacy. In this work, we study the spatial (i.e., spatially averaged) learning performance of FEEL deployed in a large-scale cellular network with spatially random distributed devices. Both the schemes of digital and analog transmission are considered, providing support of error-free uploading and over-the-air aggregation of local model updates by devices. The derived spatial convergence rate for digital transmission is found to be constrained by a limited number of active devices regardless of device density and converges to the ground-true rate exponentially fast as the number grows. The population of active devices depends on network parameters such as processing gain and signal-to-interference threshold for decoding. On the other hand, the limit does not exist for uncoded analog transmission. In this case, the spatial convergence rate is slowed down due to the direct exposure of signals to the perturbation of inter-cell interference. Nevertheless, the effect diminishes when devices are dense as interference is averaged out by aggressive over-the-air aggregation. In terms of learning latency (in second), analog transmission is preferred to the digital scheme as the former dramatically reduces multi-access latency by enabling simultaneous access.

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arXiv2020

MIMO Amplify-and-Forward Precoding for Networked Control Systems

In this paper, we consider a MIMO networked control system (NCS) in which a sensor amplifies and forwards the observed MIMO plant state to a remote controller via a MIMO fading channel. We focus on the MIMO amplify-and-forward (AF) precoding design at the sensor to minimize a weighted average state estimation error at the remote controller subject to an average communication power gain constraint of the sensor. The MIMO AF precoding design is formulated as an infinite horizon average cost Markov decision process (MDP). To deal with the curse of dimensionality associated with the MDP, we propose a novel continuous-time perturbation approach and derive an asymptotically optimal closed-form priority function for the MDP. Based on this, we derive a closed-form first-order optimal dynamic MIMO AF precoding solution, and the solution has an event-driven control structure. Specifically, the sensor activates the strongest eigenchannel to deliver a dynamically weighted combination of the plant states to the controller when the accumulated state estimation error exceeds a dynamic threshold. We further establish technical conditions for ensuring the stability of the MIMO NCS, and show that the mean square error of the plant state estimation is $\mathcal{O}\left(\frac{1}{\bar{F}}\right)$, where $\bar{F}$ is the maximum AF gain of the MIMO AF precoding.

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arXiv2019

Robust Sub-Meter Level Indoor Localization With a Single WiFi Access Point-Regression Versus Classification

Precise indoor localization is an increasingly demanding requirement for various emerging applications, like Virtual/Augmented reality and personalized advertising. Current indoor environments are equipped with pluralities of WiFi access points (APs), whose deployment is expected to be massive in the future enabling highly precise localization approaches. Though the conventional model-based localization schemes have achieved sub-meter level accuracy by fusing multiple channel state information (CSI) observations, the corresponding computational overhead is usually significant, especially in the current multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (MIMO-OFDM) systems. In order to address this issue, model-free localization techniques using deep learning frameworks have been lately proposed, where mainly classification methods were applied. In this paper, instead of classification based mechanism, we propose a logistic regression based scheme with the deep learning framework, combined with Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRLB) assisted robust training, which achieves more robust sub-meter level accuracy (0.97m median distance error) in the standard laboratory environment and maintains reasonable online prediction overhead under the single WiFi AP settings.

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arXiv2019

Majorization-Minimization Aided Hybrid Transceivers for MIMO Interference Channels

The potential of deploying large-scale antenna arrays in future wireless systems has stimulated extensive research on hybrid transceiver designs aiming to approximate the optimal fully-digital schemes with much reduced hardware cost and signal processing complexity. Generally, this hybrid transceiver structure requires a joint design of analog and digital processing to enable both beamsteering and spatial multiplexing gains. In this paper, we develop various weighted mean-square-error minimization (WMMSE) based hybrid transceiver designs over multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) interference channels at both millimeter wave (mmWave) and microwave frequencies. Firstly, a heuristic joint design of hybrid precoder and combiner using alternating optimization is proposed, in which the majorization-minimization (MM) method is utilized to design the analog precoder and combiner with unit-modulus constraints. It is validated that this scheme achieves the comparable performance to the WMMSE fully-digital solution. To further reduce the complexity, a phase projection-based two-stage scheme is proposed to decouple the designs of analog and digital precoder combiner. Secondly, inspired by the fully-digital solutions based on the block-diagonalization zero-forcing (BD-ZF) and signal-to-leakage-plus-noise ratio (SLNR) criteria, low-complexity MMbased BD-ZF and SLNR hybrid designs are proposed to well approximate the corresponding fully-digital solutions. Thirdly, the partially-connected hybrid structure for reducing system hardware cost and power consumption is considered, for which the MM-based alternating optimization still works. Numerical results demonstrate the similar or superior performance of all the above proposed schemes over the existing benchmarks.

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arXiv2019

Closed-Form Delay-Optimal Computation Offloading in Mobile Edge Computing Systems

Mobile edge computing (MEC) has recently emerged as a promising technology to release the tension between computation-intensive applications and resource-limited mobile terminals (MTs). In this paper, we study the delay-optimal computation offloading in computation-constrained MEC systems. We consider the computation task queue at the MEC server due to its constrained computation capability. In this case, the task queue at the MT and that at the MEC server are strongly coupled in a cascade manner, which creates complex interdependencies and brings new technical challenges. We model the computation offloading problem as an infinite horizon average cost Markov decision process (MDP), and approximate it to a virtual continuous time system (VCTS) with reflections. Different to most of the existing works, we develop the dynamic instantaneous rate estimation for deriving the closed-form approximate priority functions in different scenarios. Based on the approximate priority functions, we propose a closed-form multi-level water-filling computation offloading solution to characterize the influence of not only the local queue state information (LQSI) but also the remote queue state information (RQSI). A extension is provided from single MT single MEC server scenarios to multiple MTs multiple MEC servers scenarios and several insights are derived. Finally, the simulation results show that the proposed scheme outperforms the conventional schemes.

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arXiv2018

Joint Channel Estimation and User Grouping for Massive MIMO Systems

This paper addresses the problem of joint downlink channel estimation and user grouping in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems, where the motivation comes from the fact that the channel estimation performance can be improved if we exploit additional common sparsity among nearby users. In the literature, a commonly used group sparsity model assumes that users in each group share a uniform sparsity pattern. In practice, however, this oversimplified assumption usually fails to hold, even for physically close users. Outliers deviated from the uniform sparsity pattern in each group may significantly degrade the effectiveness of common sparsity, and hence bring limited (or negative) gain for channel estimation. To better capture the group sparse structure in practice, we provide a general model having two sparsity components: commonly shared sparsity and individual sparsity, where the additional individual sparsity accounts for any outliers. Then, we propose a novel sparse Bayesian learning (SBL)-based framework to address the joint channel estimation and user grouping problem under the general sparsity model. The framework can fully exploit the common sparsity among nearby users and exclude the harmful effect from outliers simultaneously. Simulation results reveal substantial performance gains over the existing state-of-the-art baselines.

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arXiv2018

Cost Efficiency Optimization of 5G Wireless Backhaul Networks

The wireless backhaul network provides an attractive solution for the urban deployment of fifth generation (5G) wireless networks that enables future ultra dense small cell networks to meet the ever-increasing user demands. Optimal deployment and management of 5G wireless backhaul networks is an interesting and challenging issue. In this paper we propose the optimal gateways deployment and wireless backhaul route schemes to maximize the cost efficiency of 5G wireless backhaul networks. In generally, the changes of gateways deployment and wireless backhaul route are presented in different time scales. Specifically, the number and locations of gateways are optimized in the long time scale of 5G wireless backhaul networks. The wireless backhaul routings are optimized in the short time scale of 5G wireless backhaul networks considering the time-variant over wireless channels. Numerical results show the gateways and wireless backhaul route optimization significantly increases the cost efficiency of 5G wireless backhaul networks. Moreover, the cost efficiency of proposed optimization algorithm is better than that of conventional and most widely used shortest path (SP) and Bellman-Ford (BF) algorithms in 5G wireless backhaul networks.

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arXiv2018

Joint Frequency Reuse and Cache Optimization in Backhaul-Limited Small-Cell Wireless Networks

Caching at base stations (BSs) is a promising approach for supporting the tremendous traffic growth of content delivery over future small-cell wireless networks with limited backhaul. This paper considers exploiting spatial caching diversity (i.e., caching different subsets of popular content files at neighboring BSs) that can greatly improve the cache hit probability, thereby leading to a better overall system performance. A key issue in exploiting spatial caching diversity is that the cached content may not be located at the nearest BS, which means that to access such content, a user needs to overcome strong interference from the nearby BSs; this significantly limits the gain of spatial caching diversity. In this paper, we consider a joint design of frequency reuse and caching, such that the benefit of an improved cache hit probability induced by spatial caching diversity and the benefit of interference coordination induced by frequency reuse can be achieved simultaneously. We obtain a closed-form characterization of the approximate successful transmission probability for the proposed scheme and analyze the impact of key operating parameters on the performance. We design a low-complexity algorithm to optimize the frequency reuse factor and the cache storage allocation. Simulations show that the proposed scheme achieves a higher successful transmission probability than existing caching schemes.

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arXiv2018

FDD Massive MIMO Channel Estimation with Arbitrary 2D-Array Geometry

This paper addresses the problem of downlink channel estimation in frequency-division duplexing (FDD) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. The existing methods usually exploit hidden sparsity under a discrete Fourier transform (DFT) basis to estimate the cdownlink channel. However, there are at least two shortcomings of these DFT-based methods: 1) they are applicable to uniform linear arrays (ULAs) only, since the DFT basis requires a special structure of ULAs, and 2) they always suffer from a performance loss due to the leakage of energy over some DFT bins. To deal with the above shortcomings, we introduce an off-grid model for downlink channel sparse representation with arbitrary 2D-array antenna geometry, and propose an efficient sparse Bayesian learning (SBL) approach for the sparse channel recovery and off-grid refinement. The main idea of the proposed off-grid method is to consider the sampled grid points as adjustable parameters. Utilizing an in-exact block majorization-minimization (MM) algorithm, the grid points are refined iteratively to minimize the off-grid gap. Finally, we further extend the solution to uplink-aided channel estimation by exploiting the angular reciprocity between downlink and uplink channels, which brings enhanced recovery performance.

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arXiv2017

On the Design of Secure Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access Systems

This paper proposes a new design of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) under secrecy considerations. We focus on a NOMA system where a transmitter sends confidential messages to multiple users in the presence of an external eavesdropper. The optimal designs of decoding order, transmission rates, and power allocated to each user are investigated. Considering the practical passive eavesdropping scenario where the instantaneous channel state of the eavesdropper is unknown, we adopt the secrecy outage probability as the secrecy metric. We first consider the problem of minimizing the transmit power subject to the secrecy outage and quality of service constraints, and derive the closed-form solution to this problem. We then explore the problem of maximizing the minimum confidential information rate among users subject to the secrecy outage and transmit power constraints, and provide an iterative algorithm to solve this problem. We find that the secrecy outage constraint in the studied problems does not change the optimal decoding order for NOMA, and one should increase the power allocated to the user whose channel is relatively bad when the secrecy constraint becomes more stringent. Finally, we show the advantage of NOMA over orthogonal multiple access in the studied problems both analytically and numerically.

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arXiv2017

Artificial Noise Injection for Securing Single-Antenna Systems

We propose a novel artificial noise (AN) injection scheme for wireless systems over quasi-static fading channels, in which a single-antenna transmitter sends confidential messages to a half-duplex receiver in the presence of an eavesdropper. Different from classical AN injection schemes, which rely on a multi-antenna transmitter or external helpers, our proposed scheme is applicable to the scenario where the legitimate transceivers are very simple. We analyze the performance of the proposed scheme and optimize the design of the transmission. Our results highlight that perfect secrecy is always achievable by properly designing the AN injection scheme.

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arXiv2017

Hybrid Beamforming via the Kronecker Decomposition for the Millimeter-Wave Massive MIMO Systems

Despite its promising performance gain, the realization of mmWave massive MIMO still faces several practical challenges. In particular, implementing massive MIMO in the digital domain requires hundreds of RF chains matching the number of antennas. Furthermore, designing these components to operate at the mmWave frequencies is challenging and costly. These motivated the recent development of hybrid-beamforming where MIMO processing is divided for separate implementation in the analog and digital domains, called the analog and digital beamforming, respectively. Analog beamforming using a phase array introduces uni-modulus constraints on the beamforming coefficients, rendering the conventional MIMO techniques unsuitable and call for new designs. In this paper, we present a systematic design framework for hybrid beamforming for multi-cell multiuser massive MIMO systems over mmWave channels characterized by sparse propagation paths. The framework relies on the decomposition of analog beamforming vectors and path observation vectors into Kronecker products of factors being uni-modulus vectors. Exploiting properties of Kronecker mixed products, different factors of the analog beamformer are designed for either nulling interference paths or coherently combining data paths. Furthermore, a channel estimation scheme is designed for enabling the proposed hybrid beamforming. The scheme estimates the AoA of data and interference paths by analog beam scanning and data-path gains by analog beam steering. The performance of the channel estimation scheme is analyzed. In particular, the AoA spectrum resulting from beam scanning, which displays the magnitude distribution of paths over the AoA range, is derived in closed-form. It is shown that the inter-cell interference level diminishes inversely with the array size, the square root of pilot sequence length and the spatial separation between paths.

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arXiv2016

On Covert Communication with Noise Uncertainty

Prior studies on covert communication with noise uncertainty adopted a worst-case approach from the warden's perspective. That is, the worst-case detection performance of the warden is used to assess covertness, which is overly optimistic. Instead of simply considering the worst limit, in this work, we take the distribution of noise uncertainty into account to evaluate the overall covertness in a statistical sense. Specifically, we define new metrics for measuring the covertness, which are then adopted to analyze the maximum achievable rate for a given covertness requirement under both bounded and unbounded noise uncertainty models.

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arXiv2016

Networked Control Systems over Correlated Wireless Fading Channels

In this paper, we consider a networked control system (NCS) in which an dynamic plant system is connected to a controller via a temporally correlated wireless fading channel. We focus on communication power design at the sensor to minimize a weighted average state estimation error at the remote controller subject to an average transmit power constraint of the sensor. The power control optimization problem is formulated as an infinite horizon average cost Markov decision process (MDP). We propose a novel continuous-time perturbation approach and derive an asymptotically optimal closed-form value function for the MDP. Under this approximation, we propose a low complexity dynamic power control solution which has an event- driven control structure. We also establish technical conditions for asymptotic optimality, and sufficient conditions for NCS stability under the proposed scheme.

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