arXiv subjects

Ying-Chang Liang

Publications and source records attributed to Ying-Chang Liang.

At least 55 records · Page 3Linked to original sources

arXiv2023

Channel Estimation and Training Design for Active RIS Aided Wireless Communications

Active reconfigurable intelligent surface (ARIS) is a newly emerging RIS technique that leverages radio frequency (RF) reflection amplifiers to empower phase-configurable reflection elements (REs) in amplifying the incident signal. Thereby, ARIS can enhance wireless communications with the strengthened ARIS-aided links. In this letter, we propose exploiting the signal amplification capability of ARIS for channel estimation, aiming to improve the estimation precision. Nevertheless, the signal amplification inevitably introduces the thermal noise at the ARIS, which can hinder the acquisition of accurate channel state information (CSI) with conventional channel estimation methods based on passive RIS (PRIS). To address this issue, we further investigate this ARIS-specific channel estimation problem and propose a least-square (LS) based channel estimator, whose performance can be further improved with the design on ARIS reflection patterns at the channel training phase. Based on the proposed LS channel estimator, we optimize the training reflection patterns to minimize the channel estimation error variance. Extensive simulation results show that our proposed design can achieve accurate channel estimation in the presence of the ARIS noises.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2023

Pilot Design and Signal Detection for Symbiotic Radio over OFDM Carriers

Symbiotic radio (SR) is a promising solution to achieve high spectrum- and energy-efficiency due to its spectrum sharing and low-power consumption properties, in which the secondary system achieves data transmissions by backscattering the signal originating from the primary system. In this paper, we are interested in the pilot design and signal detection when the primary transmission adopts orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). In particular, to preserve the channel orthogonality among the OFDM sub-carriers, each secondary symbol is designed to span an entire OFDM symbol. The comb-type pilot structure is employed by the primary transmission, while the preamble pilot structure is used by the secondary transmission. With the designed pilot structures, the primary signal can be detected via the conventional methods by treating the secondary signal as a part of the composite channel, i.e., the effective channel of the primary transmission. Furthermore, the secondary signal can be extracted from the estimated composite channel with the help of the detected primary signal. The bit error rate (BER) performance with both perfect and estimated CSI, the diversity orders of the primary and secondary transmissions, and the sensitivity to symbol synchronization error are analyzed. Simulation results show that the performance of the primary transmission is enhanced thanks to the backscatter link established by the secondary transmission. More importantly, even without the direct link, the primary and secondary transmissions can be supported via only the backscatter link.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2023

Deep Learning-Empowered Semantic Communication Systems with a Shared Knowledge Base

Deep learning-empowered semantic communication is regarded as a promising candidate for future 6G networks. Although existing semantic communication systems have achieved superior performance compared to traditional methods, the end-to-end architecture adopted by most semantic communication systems is regarded as a black box, leading to the lack of explainability. To tackle this issue, in this paper, a novel semantic communication system with a shared knowledge base is proposed for text transmissions. Specifically, a textual knowledge base constructed by inherently readable sentences is introduced into our system. With the aid of the shared knowledge base, the proposed system integrates the message and corresponding knowledge from the shared knowledge base to obtain the residual information, which enables the system to transmit fewer symbols without semantic performance degradation. In order to make the proposed system more reliable, the semantic self-information and the source entropy are mathematically defined based on the knowledge base. Furthermore, the knowledge base construction algorithm is developed based on a similarity-comparison method, in which a pre-configured threshold can be leveraged to control the size of the knowledge base. Moreover, the simulation results have demonstrated that the proposed approach outperforms existing baseline methods in terms of transmitted data size and sentence similarity.

cs.AI↗

arXiv2023

Multiple Access Design for Symbiotic Radios: Facilitating Massive IoT Connections with Cellular Networks

Symbiotic radio (SR) has emerged as a spectrum- and energy-efficient paradigm to support massive Internet of Things (IoT) connections. Two multiple access schemes are proposed in this paper to facilitate the massive IoT connections using the cellular network based on the SR technique, namely, the simultaneous access (SA) scheme and the selection diversity access (SDA) scheme. In the SA scheme, the base station (BS) transmits information to the receiver while multiple IoT devices transmit their information simultaneously by passively backscattering the BS signal to the receiver, while in the SDA scheme, only the IoT device with the strongest backscatter link transmits information to the receiver. In both of the schemes, the receiver jointly decodes the information from the BS and the IoT devices. To evaluate the above two schemes, in this paper, we have derived the closed-form expressions of the ergodic rates and the outage probabilities for the cellular and IoT transmissions. Finally, numerical results are provided to verify the theoretical analysis and compare the two proposed multiple access schemes. When the number of IoT devices is small, the SDA scheme is more appealing since it can significantly reduce the computational complexity while achieving equivalent performance to the SA scheme. When the number of IoT devices is large, the SA scheme is preferable since it guarantees a significantly better rate performance and a lower outage probability.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2023

Deep Reinforcement Learning for Distributed Dynamic Coordinated Beamforming in Massive MIMO Cellular Networks

To accommodate the explosive wireless traffics, massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is regarded as one of the key enabling technologies for next-generation communication systems. In massive MIMO cellular networks, coordinated beamforming (CBF), which jointly designs the beamformers of multiple base stations (BSs), is an efficient method to enhance the network performance. In this paper, we investigate the sum rate maximization problem in a massive MIMO mobile cellular network, where in each cell a multi-antenna BS serves multiple mobile users simultaneously via downlink beamforming. Although existing optimization-based CBF algorithms can provide near-optimal solutions, they require realtime and global channel state information (CSI), in addition to their high computation complexity. It is almost impossible to apply them in practical wireless networks, especially highly dynamic mobile cellular networks. Motivated by this, we propose a deep reinforcement learning based distributed dynamic coordinated beamforming (DDCBF) framework, which enables each BS to determine the beamformers with only local CSI and some historical information from other BSs.Besides, the beamformers can be calculated with a considerably lower computational complexity by exploiting neural networks and expert knowledge, i.e., a solution structure observed from the iterative procedure of the weighted minimum mean square error (WMMSE) algorithm. Moreover, we provide extensive numerical simulations to validate the effectiveness of the proposed DRL-based approach. With lower computational complexity and less required information, the results show that the proposed approach can achieve comparable performance to the centralized iterative optimization algorithms.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2023

Impact of Channel Aging on Dual-Function Radar-Communication Systems: Performance Analysis and Resource Allocation

In conventional dual-function radar-communication (DFRC) systems, the radar and communication channels are routinely estimated at fixed time intervals based on their worst-case operation scenarios. Such situation-agnostic repeated estimations cause significant training overhead and dramatically degrade the system performance, especially for applications with dynamic sensing/communication demands and limited radio resources. In this paper, we leverage the channel aging characteristics to reduce training overhead and to design a situation-dependent channel re-estimation interval optimization-based resource allocation for performance improvement in a multi-target tracking DFRC system. Specifically, we exploit the channel temporal correlation to predict radar and communication channels for reducing the need of training preamble retransmission. Then, we characterize the channel aging effects on the Cramer-Rao lower bounds (CRLBs) for radar tracking performance analysis and achievable rates with maximum ratio transmission (MRT) and zero-forcing (ZF) transmit beamforming for communication performance analysis. In particular, the aged CRLBs and achievable rates are derived as closed-form expressions with respect to the channel aging time, bandwidth, and power. Based on the analyzed results, we optimize these factors to maximize the average total aged achievable rate subject to individual target tracking precision demand, communication rate requirement, and other practical constraints. Since the formulated problem belongs to a non-convex problem, we develop an efficient one-dimensional search based optimization algorithm to obtain its suboptimal solutions. Finally, simulation results are presented to validate the correctness of the derived theoretical results and the effectiveness of the proposed allocation scheme.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2023

Channel Estimation for Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface Aided Multi-User mmWave MIMO Systems

Channel acquisition is one of the main challenges for the deployment of reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) aided communication systems. This is because an RIS has a large number of reflective elements, which are passive devices with no active transmitting/receiving abilities. In this paper, we study the channel estimation problem for the RIS aided multi-user millimeter-wave (mmWave) multi-input multi-output (MIMO) system. Specifically, we propose a novel channel estimation protocol for the above system to estimate the cascaded channels, which are the products of the channels from the base station (BS) to the RIS and from the RIS to the users. Further, since the cascaded channels are typically sparse, this allows us to formulate the channel estimation problem as a sparse recovery problem using compressive sensing (CS) techniques, thereby allowing the channels to be estimated with less training overhead. Moreover, the sparse channel matrices of the cascaded channels of all users have a common block sparsity structure due to the common channel between the BS and the RIS. To take advantage of the common sparsity pattern, we propose a two-step multi-user joint channel estimation procedure. In the first step, we make use of the common column-block sparsity and project the received signals onto the common column subspace. In the second step, we make use of the row-block sparsity of the projected signals and propose a multi-user joint sparse matrix recovery algorithm that takes into account the common channel between the BS and the RIS.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2022

Blockchain-Assisted Intelligent Symbiotic Radio in Space-Air-Ground Integrated Networks

In a space-air-ground integrated network (SAGIN), managing resources for the growing number of highly-dynamic and heterogeneous radios is a challenging task. Symbiotic communication (SC) is a novel paradigm, which leverages the analogy of the natural ecosystem in biology to create a radio ecosystem in wireless networks that achieves cooperative service exchange and resource sharing, i.e., service/resource trading, among numerous radios. As a result, the potential of symbiotic communication can be exploited to enhance resource management in SAGIN. Despite the fact that different radio resource bottlenecks can complement each other via symbiotic relationships, unreliable information sharing among heterogeneous radios and multi-dimensional resources managing under diverse service requests impose critical challenges on trusted trading and intelligent decision-making. In this article, we propose a secure and smart symbiotic SAGIN (S^4) framework by using blockchain for ensuring trusted trading among heterogeneous radios and machine learning (ML) for guiding complex service/resource trading. A case study demonstrates that our proposed S^4 framework provides better service with rational resource management when compared with existing schemes. Finally, we discuss several potential research directions for future symbiotic SAGIN.

cs.NI↗

arXiv2022

Reinforcement Learning-Empowered Mobile Edge Computing for 6G Edge Intelligence

Mobile edge computing (MEC) is considered a novel paradigm for computation-intensive and delay-sensitive tasks in fifth generation (5G) networks and beyond. However, its uncertainty, referred to as dynamic and randomness, from the mobile device, wireless channel, and edge network sides, results in high-dimensional, nonconvex, nonlinear, and NP-hard optimization problems. Thanks to the evolved reinforcement learning (RL), upon iteratively interacting with the dynamic and random environment, its trained agent can intelligently obtain the optimal policy in MEC. Furthermore, its evolved versions, such as deep RL (DRL), can achieve higher convergence speed efficiency and learning accuracy based on the parametric approximation for the large-scale state-action space. This paper provides a comprehensive research review on RL-enabled MEC and offers insight for development in this area. More importantly, associated with free mobility, dynamic channels, and distributed services, the MEC challenges that can be solved by different kinds of RL algorithms are identified, followed by how they can be solved by RL solutions in diverse mobile applications. Finally, the open challenges are discussed to provide helpful guidance for future research in RL training and learning MEC.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2021

Optimization for Master-UAV-powered Auxiliary-Aerial-IRS-assisted IoT Networks: An Option-based Multi-agent Hierarchical Deep Reinforcement Learning Approach

This paper investigates a master unmanned aerial vehicle (MUAV)-powered Internet of Things (IoT) network, in which we propose using a rechargeable auxiliary UAV (AUAV) equipped with an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) to enhance the communication signals from the MUAV and also leverage the MUAV as a recharging power source. Under the proposed model, we investigate the optimal collaboration strategy of these energy-limited UAVs to maximize the accumulated throughput of the IoT network. Depending on whether there is charging between the two UAVs, two optimization problems are formulated. To solve them, two multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (DRL) approaches are proposed, which are centralized training multi-agent deep deterministic policy gradient (CT-MADDPG) and multi-agent deep deterministic policy option critic (MADDPOC). It is shown that the CT-MADDPG can greatly reduce the requirement on the computing capability of the UAV hardware, and the proposed MADDPOC is able to support low-level multi-agent cooperative learning in the continuous action domains, which has great advantages over the existing option-based hierarchical DRL that only support single-agent learning and discrete actions.

eess.SY↗

arXiv2021

Convolutional Autoencoder-Based Phase Shift Feedback Compression for Intelligent Reflecting Surface-Assisted Wireless Systems

In recent years, intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has emerged as a promising technology for 6G due to its potential/ability to significantly enhance energy- and spectrum-efficiency. To this end, it is crucial to adjust the phases of reflecting elements of the IRS, and most of the research works focus on how to optimize/quantize the phase for different optimization objectives. In particular, the quantized phase shift (QPS) is assumed to be available at the IRS, which, however, does not always hold and should be fed back to the IRS in practice. Unfortunately, the feedback channel is generally bandwidth-limited, which cannot support a huge amount of feedback overhead of the QPS particularly for a large number of reflecting elements and/or the quantization level of each reflecting element. In order to break this bottleneck, in this letter, we propose a convolutional autoencoder-based scheme, in which the QPS is compressed on the receiver side and reconstructed on the IRS side. In order to solve the problems of mismatched distribution and vanishing gradient, we remove the batch normalization (BN) layers and introduce a denosing module. By doing so, it is possible to achieve a high compression ratio with a reliable reconstruction accuracy in the bandwidth-limited feedback channel, and it is also possible to accommodate existing works assuming available QPS at the IRS. Simulation results confirm the high reconstruction accuracy of the feedback/compressed QPS through a feedback channel, and show that the proposed scheme can significantly outperform the existing compression algorithms.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2021

RIS-Enhanced Spectrum Sensing: How Many Reflecting Elements Are Required to Achieve a Detection Probability Close to 1?

In this paper, we propose an reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) enhanced spectrum sensing system, in which the primary transmitter is equipped with single antenna, the secondary transmitter is equipped with multiple antennas, and the RIS is employed to improve the detection performance. Without loss of generality, we adopt the maximum eigenvalue detection approach, and propose a corresponding analytical framework based on large dimensional random matrix theory, to evaluate the detection probability in the asymptotic regime. Besides, the phase shift matrix of the RIS is designed with only the statistical channel state information (CSI), which is shown to be quite effective when the RIS-related channels are of Rician fading or line-of-sight (LoS). With the designed phase shift matrix, the asymptotic distributions of the equivalent channel gains are derived. Then, we provide the theoretical predictions about the number of reflecting elements (REs) required to achieve a detection probability close to 1. Finally, we present the Monte-Carlo simulation results to evaluate the accuracy of the proposed asymptotic analytical framework for the detection probability and the validity of the theoretical predictions about the number of REs required to achieve a detection probability close to 1. Moreover, the simulation results show that the proposed RIS-enhanced spectrum sensing system can substantially improve the detection performance.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2021

A Trust-Centric Privacy-Preserving Blockchain for Dynamic Spectrum Management in IoT Networks

In this paper, we propose a trust-centric privacy-preserving blockchain for dynamic spectrum access in IoT networks. To be specific, we propose a trust evaluation mechanism to evaluate the trustworthiness of sensing nodes and design a Proof-of-Trust (PoT) consensus mechanism to build a scalable blockchain with high transaction-per-second (TPS). Moreover, a privacy protection scheme is proposed to protect sensors' real-time geolocatioin information when they upload sensing data to the blockchain. Two smart contracts are designed to make the whole procedure (spectrum sensing, spectrum auction, and spectrum allocation) run automatically. Simulation results demonstrate the expected computation cost of the PoT consensus algorithm for reliable sensing nodes is low, and the cooperative sensing performance is improved with the help of trust value evaluation mechanism.In addition, incentivization and security are also analyzed, which show that our design not only can encourage nodes' participation, but also resist to many kinds of attacks which are frequently encountered in trust-based blockchain systems.

cs.CR↗

arXiv2021

Joint Beamforming and Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface Design for Two-Way Relay Networks

In this paper, we consider a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted two-way relay network, in which two users exchange information through the base station (BS) with the help of an RIS. By jointly designing the phase shifts at the RIS and beamforming matrix at the BS, our objective is to maximize the minimum signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) of the two users, under the transmit power constraint at the BS. We first consider the single-antenna BS case, and propose two algorithms to design the RIS phase shifts and the BS power amplification parameter, namely the SNR-upper-bound-maximization (SUM) method, and genetic-SNR-maximization (GSM) method. When there are multiple antennas at the BS, the optimization problem can be approximately addressed by successively solving two decoupled subproblems, one to optimize the RIS phase shifts, the other to optimize the BS beamforming matrix. The first subproblem can be solved by using SUM or GSM method, while the second subproblem can be solved by using optimized beamforming or maximum-ratio-beamforming method. The proposed algorithms have been verified through numerical results with computational complexity analysis.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2021

Recent Advances on Sub-Nyquist Sampling-Based Wideband Spectrum Sensing

Cognitive radio (CR) is a promising technology enabling efficient utilization of the spectrum resource for future wireless systems. As future CR networks are envisioned to operate over a wide frequency range, advanced wideband spectrum sensing (WBSS) capable of quickly and reliably detecting idle spectrum bands across a wide frequency span is essential. In this article, we provide an overview of recent advances on sub-Nyquist sampling-based WBSS techniques, including compressed sensing-based methods and compressive covariance sensing-based methods. An elaborate discussion of the pros and cons of each approach is presented, along with some challenging issues for future research. A comparative study suggests that the compressive covariance sensing-based approach offers a more competitive solution for reliable real-time WBSS.

eess.SP↗

arXiv2021

Hierarchical Passive Beamforming for Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface Aided Communications

In reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) aided communications, the existing passive beamforming (PB) design involves polynomial complexity in the number of reflecting elements, and thus is difficult to implement due to a massive number of reflecting elements. To overcome this difficulty, we propose a reflection-angle-based cascaded channel model by adopting the generalized Snell's law, in which the dimension of the variable space involved in optimization is significantly reduced, resulting in a simplified hierarchical passive beamforming (HPB) design. We develop an efficient two-stage HPB algorithm, which exploits the angular domain property of the channel, to maximize the achievable rate of the target user. Simulation results demonstrate the appealing performance and low complexity of the proposed HPB design.

cs.IT↗

arXiv2021

Large-Dimensional Random Matrix Theory and Its Applications in Deep Learning and Wireless Communications

Large-dimensional random matrix theory, RMT for short, which originates from the research field of quantum physics, has shown tremendous capability in providing deep insights into large dimensional systems. With the fact that we have entered an unprecedented era full of massive amounts of data and large complex systems, RMT is expected to play more important roles in the analysis and design of modern systems. In this paper, we review the key results of RMT and its applications in two emerging fields: wireless communications and deep learning. In wireless communications, we show that RMT can be exploited to design the spectrum sensing algorithms for cognitive radio systems and to perform the design and asymptotic analysis for large communication systems. In deep learning, RMT can be utilized to analyze the Hessian, input-output Jacobian and data covariance matrix of the deep neural networks, thereby to understand and improve the convergence and the learning speed of the neural networks. Finally, we highlight some challenges and opportunities in applying RMT to the practical large dimensional systems.

math.SP↗

arXiv2021

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface Assisted MIMO Symbiotic Radio Networks

In this paper, a novel reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) symbiotic radio (SR) system is proposed, in which an RIS, operating as a secondary transmitter (STx), sends messages to a multi-antenna secondary receiver (SRx) by using cognitive backscattering communication, and simultaneously, it enhances the primary transmission from a multi-antenna primary transmitter (PTx) to a multi-antenna primary receiver (PRx) by intelligently reconfiguring the wireless environment. We are interested in the joint design of active transmit beamformer at the PTx and passive reflecting beamformer at the STx to minimize the total transmit power at the PTx, subject to the signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) constraint for the secondary transmission and the rate constraint for the primary transmission. Due to the non-convexity of the formulated problem, we decouple the original problem into a series of subproblems using the alternating optimization method and then iteratively solve them. The convergence performance and computational complexity of the proposed algorithm are analyzed. Furthermore, we develop a low-complexity algorithm to design the reflecting beamformer by solving a backscatter link enhancement problem through the semi-definite relaxation (SDR) technique. Then, theoretical analysis is performed to reveal the insights of the proposed system. Finally, simulation results are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms and the superiority of the proposed system.

eess.SP↗