arXiv subjects

Yuanwei Liu

Publications and source records attributed to Yuanwei Liu.

At least 325 records · Page 18Linked to original sources

arXiv2022

Security Enhancement for Coupled Phase-Shift STAR-RIS Networks

The secure transmission of the simultaneously transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS) aided communication system is investigated. Considering the coupled phase shifts of STAR-RISs and the fair secrecy requirement of users, a novel secure beamforming design is proposed for addressing the unique full-space mutual eavesdropping of STAR-RIS aided communication. In particular, a penalty based secrecy beamforming algorithm is developed to solve the resulting non-convex optimization problem, where the closed-form solutions of the coupled transmission/reflection coefficients are obtained in each iteration. Numerical results demonstrate that 1) the proposed scheme achieves higher secrecy capacity than conventional RIS; 2) 4-bit discrete phase shifters are sufficient for secrecy guarantee.

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arXiv2022

Integrated Sensing and Communications: A Mutual Information-Based Framework

Integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) is potentially capable of circumventing the limitations of existing frequency-division sensing and communications (FDSAC) techniques. Hence, it has recently attracted significant attention. This article aims to propose a unified analytical framework for ISAC from a mutual information (MI) perspective. Based on the proposed framework, the sensing performance and the communication performance are evaluated by the sensing MI and the communication MI, respectively. The unity of this framework is originated from the fact that the sensing and communication (S\&C) performance metrics, i.e., the S\&C MI, have the similar physical and mathematical properties as well as the same unit of measurement. Based on this framework, the S\&C performance of downlink and uplink ISAC systems is investigated and compared with that of FDSAC systems. Along each considered system settings, numerical results are provided to demonstrate the superiority of ISAC over conventional FDSAC designs. Finally, promising open research directions are provided in the context of MI-based ISAC.

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arXiv2022

Cluster-Free NOMA Communications Towards Next Generation Multiple Access

A generalized downlink multi-antenna non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) transmission framework is proposed with the novel concept of cluster-free successive interference cancellation (SIC). In contrast to conventional NOMA approaches, where SIC is successively carried out within the same cluster, the key idea is that the SIC can be flexibly implemented between any arbitrary users to achieve efficient interference elimination. Based on the proposed framework, a sum rate maximization problem is formulated for jointly optimizing the transmit beamforming and the SIC operations between users, subject to the SIC decoding conditions and users' minimal data rate requirements. To tackle this highly-coupled mixed-integer nonlinear programming problem, an alternating direction method of multipliers-successive convex approximation (ADMM-SCA) algorithm is developed. The original problem is first reformulated into a tractable biconvex augmented Lagrangian (AL) problem by handling the non-convex terms via SCA. Then, this AL problem is decomposed into two subproblems that are iteratively solved by the ADMM to obtain the stationary solution. Moreover, to reduce the computational complexity and alleviate the parameter initialization sensitivity of ADMM-SCA, a Matching-SCA algorithm is proposed. The intractable binary SIC operations are solved through an extended many-to-many matching, which is jointly combined with an SCA process to optimize the transmit beamforming. The proposed Matching-SCA can converge to an enhanced exchange-stable matching that guarantees the local optimality. Numerical results demonstrate that: i) the proposed Matching-SCA algorithm achieves comparable performance and a faster convergence compared to ADMM-SCA; ii) the proposed generalized framework realizes scenario-adaptive communications and outperforms traditional multi-antenna NOMA approaches in various communication regimes.

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arXiv2022

Distributed Intelligence in Wireless Networks

The cloud-based solutions are becoming inefficient due to considerably large time delays, high power consumption, security and privacy concerns caused by billions of connected wireless devices and typically zillions bytes of data they produce at the network edge. A blend of edge computing and Artificial Intelligence (AI) techniques could optimally shift the resourceful computation servers closer to the network edge, which provides the support for advanced AI applications (e.g., video/audio surveillance and personal recommendation system) by enabling intelligent decision making on computing at the point of data generation as and when it is needed, and distributed Machine Learning (ML) with its potential to avoid the transmission of large dataset and possible compromise of privacy that may exist in cloud-based centralized learning. Therefore, AI is envisioned to become native and ubiquitous in future communication and networking systems. In this paper, we conduct a comprehensive overview of recent advances in distributed intelligence in wireless networks under the umbrella of native-AI wireless networks, with a focus on the basic concepts of native-AI wireless networks, on the AI-enabled edge computing, on the design of distributed learning architectures for heterogeneous networks, on the communication-efficient technologies to support distributed learning, and on the AI-empowered end-to-end communications. We highlight the advantages of hybrid distributed learning architectures compared to the state-of-art distributed learning techniques. We summarize the challenges of existing research contributions in distributed intelligence in wireless networks and identify the potential future opportunities.

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arXiv2022

Exploiting Sensing Signal in ISAC: A NOMA Inspired Scheme

A non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA)-inspired integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) framework is proposed, where a dual-functional base station (BS) transmits the composite communication and sensing signals. In contrast to treating the sensing signal as a harmful interference to communication, in this work, multiple beams of the sensing signal are exploited to convey extra information streams based on the concept of NOMA. Then, each communication user detects the extra information streams and the existing legacy information streams with the aid of successive interference cancellation (SIC). Based on the proposed framework, a multiple-objective optimization problem (MOOP) is formulated to characterize the trade-off between the communication throughput and sensing beampattern accuracy. For the general multiple-user scenario, the formulated MOOP is firstly converted to a single-objective optimization problem via the e-constraint method. Then, a double-layer block coordinate descent (BCD) algorithm is proposed by employing fractional programming and successive convex approximation to find a high-quality sub-optimal solution. For the special single-user scenario, the globally optimal solution can be obtained by transforming the MOOP into a convex quadratic semidefinite program. Moreover, it is rigorously proved that 1) in the multiple-user scenario, the proposed NOMA-inspired ISAC framework always outperforms the state-of-the-art sensing-interference-cancellation (SenIC) ISAC frameworks by further exploiting sensing signals for delivering extra information streams; 2) in the special single-user scenario, the proposed NOMA-inspired ISAC framework achieves the same performance as the existing SenIC ISAC frameworks, which reveals that the coordination of sensing interference is not necessarily required in this case. Numerical results verify the theoretical results.

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arXiv2022

Ergodic Rate Analysis of STAR-RIS Aided NOMA Systems

This letter analyzes the ergodic rates of a simultaneously transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS) aided non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system, where the direct links from the base station to cell-edge users are non-line-of-sight due to obstacles, and STAR-RIS is used to provide line-of-sight links to these cell-edge users. By fitting the distribution of the composite channel power gain to a gamma distribution, we derive the closed-form expressions of ergodic rates and high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) slopes for cell-edge users. Numerical results reveal that 1) the ergodic rates increase with the number of STAR-RIS elements, and the high SNR slopes are fixed as constants; 2) STAR-RIS aided NOMA systems achieve higher ergodic rates than conventional RIS aided NOMA systems.

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arXiv2022

Intelligent Omni-Surfaces: Reflection-Refraction Circuit Model, Full-Dimensional Beamforming, and System Implementation

The intelligent omni-surface (IOS) is a dynamic metasurface that has recently been proposed to achieve full-dimensional communications by realizing the dual function of anomalous reflection and anomalous refraction. Existing research works provide only simplified models for the reflection and refraction responses of the IOS, which do not explicitly depend on the physical structure of the IOS and the angle of incidence of the electromagnetic (EM) wave. Therefore, the available reflection-refraction models are insufficient to characterize the performance of full-dimensional communications. In this paper, we propose a complete and detailed circuit-based reflection-refraction model for the IOS, which is formulated in terms of the physical structure and equivalent circuits of the IOS elements, as well as we validate it against full-wave EM simulations. Based on the proposed circuit-based model for the IOS, we analyze the asymmetry between the reflection and transmission coefficients. Moreover, the proposed circuit-based model is utilized for optimizing the hybrid beamforming of IOS-assisted networks and hence improving the system performance. To verify the circuit-based model, the theoretical findings, and to evaluate the performance of full-dimensional beamforming, we implement a prototype of IOS and deploy an IOS-assisted wireless communication testbed to experimentally measure the beam patterns and to quantify the achievable rate. The obtained experimental results validate the theoretical findings and the accuracy of the proposed circuit-based reflection-refraction model for IOSs.

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arXiv2022

STAR-RIS Integrated Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access and Over-the-Air Federated Learning: Framework, Analysis, and Optimization

This paper integrates non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and over-the-air federated learning (AirFL) into a unified framework using one simultaneous transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS). The STAR-RIS plays an important role in adjusting the decoding order of hybrid users for efficient interference mitigation and omni-directional coverage extension. To capture the impact of non-ideal wireless channels on AirFL, a closed-form expression for the optimality gap (a.k.a. convergence upper bound) between the actual loss and the optimal loss is derived. This analysis reveals that the learning performance is significantly affected by the active and passive beamforming schemes as well as wireless noise. Furthermore, when the learning rate diminishes as the training proceeds, the optimality gap is explicitly shown to converge with linear rate. To accelerate convergence while satisfying quality-of-service requirements, a mixed-integer non-linear programming (MINLP) problem is formulated by jointly designing the transmit power at users and the configuration mode of STAR-RIS. Next, a trust region-based successive convex approximation method and a penalty-based semidefinite relaxation approach are proposed to handle the decoupled non-convex subproblems iteratively. An alternating optimization algorithm is then developed to find a suboptimal solution for the original MINLP problem. Extensive simulation results show that i) the proposed framework can efficiently support NOMA and AirFL users via concurrent uplink communications, ii) our algorithms achieve faster convergence rate on IID and non-IID settings compared to existing baselines, and iii) both the spectrum efficiency and learning performance is significantly improved with the aid of the well-tuned STAR-RIS.

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arXiv2022

Integrating Over-the-Air Federated Learning and Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access: What Role can RIS Play?

With the aim of integrating over-the-air federated learning (AirFL) and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) into an on-demand universal framework, this paper proposes a novel reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided hybrid network by leveraging the RIS to flexibly adjust the signal processing order of heterogeneous data. The objective of this work is to maximize the achievable hybrid rate by jointly optimizing the transmit power, controlling the receive scalar, and designing the phase shifts. Since the concurrent transmissions of all computation and communication signals are aided by the discrete phase shifts at the RIS, the considered problem (P0) is a challenging mixed integer programming problem. To tackle this intractable issue, we decompose the original problem (P0) into a non-convex problem (P1) and a combinatorial problem (P2), which are characterized by the continuous and discrete variables, respectively. For the transceiver design problem (P1), the power allocation subproblem is first solved by invoking the difference-of-convex programming, and then the receive control subproblem is addressed by using the successive convex approximation, where the closed-form expressions of simplified cases are derived to obtain deep insights. For the reflection design problem (P2), the relaxation-then-quantization method is adopted to find a suboptimal solution for striking a trade-off between complexity and performance. Afterwards, an alternating optimization algorithm is developed to solve the non-linear and non-convex problem (P0) iteratively. Finally, simulation results reveal that 1) the proposed RIS-aided hybrid network can support the on-demand communication and computation efficiently, 2) the performance gains can be improved by properly selecting the location of the RIS, and 3) the designed algorithms are also applicable to conventional networks with only AirFL or NOMA users.

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arXiv2022

Two-Timescale Design for STAR-RIS Aided NOMA Systems

Simultaneously transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (STAR-RISs) have emerged as a promising technology for achieving full-space coverage. Prior works on STAR-RISs mostly assumed the full and instantaneous channel state information (CSI) is available, which, however, is practically difficult to obtain due to the large number of elements. To address it, we investigate STAR-RIS aided NOMA systems, where two efficient two-timescale transmission protocols are proposed for different channel setups to maximize the average sum-rate. Specifically, 1) for line-of-sight (LoS) dominant channels, we propose the beamforming-then-estimate (BTE) Protocol, where the long-term STAR-RIS coefficients are optimized based on the statistical CSI, while the short-term power allocation at the base station (BS) is designed based on the effective channels; 2) for the rich scattering environment, we propose an alternative partition-then-estimate (PTE) Protocol, where the BS determines the long-term STAR-RIS surface-partition strategy; then the BS estimates the instantaneous subsurface channels and designs its power allocation and STAR-RIS phase-shifts accordingly. Simulation results validate the superiority of our proposed transmission protocols as compared to various benchmarks. It is shown that the BTE Protocol outperforms the PTE Protocol when the number of STAR-RIS elements is large and/or the LoS channel components are dominant, and vice versa.

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arXiv2022

Joint Location and Beamforming Design for STAR-RIS Assisted NOMA Systems

Simultaneously transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS) assisted non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) communication systems are investigated in its vicinity, where a STAR-RIS is deployed within a predefined region for establishing communication links for users. Both beamformer-based NOMA and cluster-based NOMA schemes are employed at the multi-antenna base station (BS). For each scheme, the STAR-RIS deployment location, the passive transmitting and reflecting beamforming (BF) of the STAR-RIS, and the active BF at the BS are jointly optimized for maximizing the weighted sum-rate (WSR) of users. To solve the resultant non-convex problems, an alternating optimization (AO) algorithm is proposed, where successive convex approximation (SCA) and semi-definite programming (SDP) methods are invoked for iteratively addressing the non-convexity of each sub-problem. Numerical results reveal that 1) the WSR performance can be significantly enhanced by optimizing the specific deployment location of the STAR-RIS; 2) both beamformer-based and cluster-based NOMA prefer asymmetric STAR-RIS deployment.

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arXiv2022

STAR-RIS Aided NOMA in Multi-Cell Networks: A General Analytical Framework with Gamma Distributed Channel Modeling

The simultaneously transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS) is capable of providing full-space coverage of smart radio environments. This work investigates STAR-RIS aided downlink non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) multi-cell networks, where the energy of incident signals at STAR-RISs is split into two portions for transmitting and reflecting. We first propose a fitting method to model the distribution of composite small-scale fading power as the tractable Gamma distribution. Then, a unified analytical framework based on stochastic geometry is provided to capture the random locations of RIS-RISs, base stations (BSs), and user equipments (UEs). Based on this framework, we derive the coverage probability and ergodic rate of both the typical UE and the connected UE. In particular, we obtain closed-form expressions of the coverage probability in interference-limited scenarios. We also deduce theoretical expressions in conventional RIS aided networks for comparison. The analytical results show that optimal energy splitting coefficients of STAR-RISs exist to simultaneously maximize the system coverage and ergodic rate. The numerical results demonstrate that: 1) STAR-RISs are able to meet different demands of UEs located on different sides; 2) STAR-RISs with appropriate energy splitting coefficients outperform conventional RISs in the coverage and the rate performance.

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arXiv2022

WiFi-based Spatiotemporal Human Action Perception

WiFi-based sensing for human activity recognition (HAR) has recently become a hot topic as it brings great benefits when compared with video-based HAR, such as eliminating the demands of line-of-sight (LOS) and preserving privacy. Making the WiFi signals to 'see' the action, however, is quite coarse and thus still in its infancy. An end-to-end spatiotemporal WiFi signal neural network (STWNN) is proposed to enable WiFi-only sensing in both line-of-sight and non-line-of-sight scenarios. Especially, the 3D convolution module is able to explore the spatiotemporal continuity of WiFi signals, and the feature self-attention module can explicitly maintain dominant features. In addition, a novel 3D representation for WiFi signals is designed to preserve multi-scale spatiotemporal information. Furthermore, a small wireless-vision dataset (WVAR) is synchronously collected to extend the potential of STWNN to 'see' through occlusions. Quantitative and qualitative results on WVAR and the other three public benchmark datasets demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach on both accuracy and shift consistency.

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arXiv2022

Performance of Downlink and Uplink Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC) Systems

This letter analyzes the fundamental performance of integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) systems. For downlink and uplink ISAC, the diversity orders are analyzed to evaluate the communication rate (CR) and the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) slopes are unveiled for the CR as well as the sensing rate (SR). Furthermore, the achievable downlink and uplink CR-SR regions are characterized. It is shown that ISAC can provide more degrees of freedom for both the CR and the SR than conventional frequency-division sensing and communications systems where isolated frequency bands are used for sensing and communications, respectively.

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arXiv2022

A Power-Pool-Based Power Control in Semi-Grant-Free NOMA Transmission

In this paper, we generate a transmit power pool (PP) for Internet of things (IoT) networks with semi-grant-free non-orthogonal multiple access (SGF-NOMA) via multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (MA-DRL) to enable open loop power control (PC). The PP is mapped with each resource block (RB) to achieve distributed power control (DPC). We first formulate the resource allocation problem as stochastic Markov game, and then solve it using two MA-DRL algorithms, namely double deep Q network (DDQN) and Dueling DDQN. Each GF user as an agent tries to find out the optimal transmit power level and RB to form the desired PP. With the aid of dueling processes, the learning process can be enhanced by evaluating the valuable state without considering the effect of each action at each state. Therefore, DDQN is designed for communication scenarios with a small-size action-state space, while Dueling DDQN is for a large-size case. Moreover, to decrease the training time, we reduce the action space by eliminating invalid actions. To control the interference and guarantee the quality-of-service requirements of grant-based users, we determine the optimal number of GF users for each sub-channel. We show that the PC approach has a strong impact on data rates of both grant-based and GF users. We demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is computationally scalable to large-scale IoT networks and produce minimal signalling overhead. Our results show that the proposed MA-Dueling DDQN based SGF-NOMA with DPC outperforms the existing SGF-NOMA system and networks with pure GF protocols with 17.5\% and 22.2\% gain in terms of the system throughput, respectively. Finally, we show that our proposed algorithm outperforms the conventional open loop PC mechanism.

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arXiv2022

NOMA for Integrating Sensing and Communications towards 6G: A Multiple Access Perspective

This article focuses on the development of integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) from a multiple access (MA) perspective, where the idea of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is exploited for harmoniously accommodating the sensing and communication functionalities. We first reveal that the developing trend of ISAC is from \emph{orthogonality} to \emph{non-orthogonality}, and introduce the fundamental models of the downlink and uplink ISAC while identifying the design challenges from the MA perspective. (1) For the downlink ISAC, we propose two novel designs, namely \emph{NOMA-empowered} downlink ISAC and \emph{NOMA-inspired} downlink ISAC to effectively coordinate the inter-user interference and the sensing-to-communication interference, respectively. (2) For the uplink ISAC, we first propose a \emph{pure-NOMA-based} uplink ISAC design, where a fixed communication-to-sensing successive interference cancellation order is employed for distinguishing the mixed sensing-communication signal received over the fully shared radio resources. Then, we propose a general \emph{semi-NOMA-based} uplink ISAC design, which includes the conventional orthogonal multiple access-based and pure-NOMA-based uplink ISAC as special cases, thus being capable of providing flexible resource allocation strategies between sensing and communication. Along each proposed NOMA-ISAC design, numerical results are provided for showing the superiority over conventional ISAC designs.

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arXiv2022

On the Performance of Uplink ISAC Systems

This letter analyzes the performance of uplink integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) systems where communication users (CUs) and radar targets (RTs) share the same frequency band. A non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) protocol is adopted in the communication procedure of the ISAC system. Novel expressions are derived to characterize the outage probability, ergodic communication rate, and sensing rate. Besides, the diversity order and high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) slope are unveiled to gain further insights. It is found that when achieving the same communication rate, the ISAC system enjoys a higher sensing rate than the conventional frequency-division sensing and communications (FDSAC) system where CUs and RTs share isolated bands. All the results are validated by numerical simulations and are in excellent agreement.

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arXiv2022

NOMA-ISAC: Performance Analysis and Rate Region Characterization

This paper analyzes the performance of a multiuser integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) system, where nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is exploited to mitigate inter-user interference. Closed-form expressions are derived to evaluate the outage probability, ergodic communication rate, and sensing rate. Furthermore, asymptotic analyses are carried out to unveil diversity orders and high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) slopes of the considered NOMA-ISAC system. As the further advance, the achievable sensing-communication rate region of ISAC is characterized. It is proved that ISAC system is capable of achieving a larger rate region than the conventional frequency-division sensing and communications (FDSAC) system.

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