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Zan Li

Publications and source records attributed to Zan Li.

At least 37 records · Page 2Linked to original sources

RadioDiff-Inverse: Diffusion Enhanced Bayesian Inverse Estimation for ISAC Radio Map Construction

Radio maps (RMs) are essential for environment-aware communication and sensing, providing location-specific wireless channel information. Existing RM construction methods often rely on precise environmental data and base station (BS) locations, which are not always available in dynamic or privacy-sensitive environments. While sparse measurement techniques reduce data collection, the impact of noise in sparse data on RM accuracy is not well understood. This paper addresses these challenges by formulating RM construction as a Bayesian inverse problem under coarse environmental knowledge and noisy sparse measurements. Although maximum a posteriori (MAP) filtering offers an optimal solution, it requires a precise prior distribution of the RM, which is typically unavailable. To solve this, we propose RadioDiff-Inverse, a diffusion-enhanced Bayesian inverse estimation framework that uses an unconditional generative diffusion model to learn the RM prior. This approach not only reconstructs the spatial distribution of wireless channel features but also enables environmental structure perception, such as building outlines, and location of BS just relay on pathloss, through integrated sensing and communication (ISAC). Remarkably, RadioDiff-Inverse is training-free, leveraging a pre-trained model from Imagenet without task-specific fine-tuning, which significantly reduces the training cost of using generative large model in wireless networks. Experimental results demonstrate that RadioDiff-Inverse achieves state-of-the-art performance in accuracy of RM construction and environmental reconstruction, and robustness against noisy sparse sampling.

cs.AI↗

Temporal Spectrum Cartography in Low-Altitude Economy Networks: A Generative AI Framework with Multi-Agent Learning

This paper introduces a two-stage generative AI (GenAI) framework tailored for temporal spectrum cartography in low-altitude economy networks (LAENets). LAENets, characterized by diverse aerial devices such as UAVs, rely heavily on wireless communication technologies while facing challenges, including spectrum congestion and dynamic environmental interference. Traditional spectrum cartography methods have limitations in handling the temporal and spatial complexities inherent to these networks. Addressing these challenges, the proposed framework first employs a Reconstructive Masked Autoencoder (RecMAE) capable of accurately reconstructing spectrum maps from sparse and temporally varying sensor data using a novel dual-mask mechanism. This approach significantly enhances the precision of reconstructed radio frequency (RF) power maps. In the second stage, the Multi-agent Diffusion Policy (MADP) method integrates diffusion-based reinforcement learning to optimize the trajectories of dynamic UAV sensors. By leveraging temporal-attention encoding, this method effectively manages spatial exploration and exploitation to minimize cumulative reconstruction errors. Extensive numerical experiments validate that this integrated GenAI framework outperforms traditional interpolation methods and deep learning baselines by achieving 57.35% and 88.68% reconstruction error reduction, respectively. The proposed trajectory planner substantially improves spectrum map accuracy, reconstruction stability, and sensor deployment efficiency in dynamically evolving low-altitude environments.

eess.SP↗

A Hybrid Transmitting and Reflecting Beyond Diagonal Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface with Independent Beam Control and Power Splitting

A hybrid transmitting and reflecting beyond diagonal reconfigurable intelligent surface (BD-RIS) design is proposed. Operating in the same aperture, frequency band and polarization, the proposed BD-RIS features independent beam steering control of its reflected and transmitted waves. In addition it provides a hybrid mode with both reflected and transmitted waves using tunable power splitting between beams. The BD-RIS comprises two phase reconfigurable antenna arrays interconnected by an array of tunable two-port power splitters. The two-port power splitter in each BD-RIS cell is built upon a varactor in parallel with a bias inductor to exert tunable impedance variations on transmission lines. Provided with variable reverse DC voltages, the two-port power splitter can control the power ratio of S11 over S21 from -20 dB to 20 dB, thus allowing tunable power splitting. Each antenna is 2-bit phase reconfigurable with 200 MHz bandwidth at 2.4 GHz so that each cell of BD-RIS can also achieve independent reflection and transmission phase control. To characterize and optimize the electromagnetic response of the proposed BD-RIS design, a Thévenin equivalent model and corresponding analytical method is provided. A BD-RIS with 4 by 4 cells was also prototyped and tested. Experiments show that in reflection and transmission mode, the fabricated BD-RIS can realize beam steering in reflection and transmission space, respectively. It is also verified that when operating in hybrid mode, the BD-RIS enables independent beam steering of the reflected and transmitted waves. This work helps fill the gap between realizing practical hardware design and establishing an accurate physical model for the hybrid transmitting and reflecting BD-RIS, enabling hybrid transmitting and reflecting BD-RIS assisted wireless communications.

eess.SP↗

RadioDiff: An Effective Generative Diffusion Model for Sampling-Free Dynamic Radio Map Construction

Radio map (RM) is a promising technology that can obtain pathloss based on only location, which is significant for 6G network applications to reduce the communication costs for pathloss estimation. However, the construction of RM in traditional is either computationally intensive or depends on costly sampling-based pathloss measurements. Although the neural network (NN)-based method can efficiently construct the RM without sampling, its performance is still suboptimal. This is primarily due to the misalignment between the generative characteristics of the RM construction problem and the discrimination modeling exploited by existing NN-based methods. Thus, to enhance RM construction performance, in this paper, the sampling-free RM construction is modeled as a conditional generative problem, where a denoised diffusion-based method, named RadioDiff, is proposed to achieve high-quality RM construction. In addition, to enhance the diffusion model's capability of extracting features from dynamic environments, an attention U-Net with an adaptive fast Fourier transform module is employed as the backbone network to improve the dynamic environmental features extracting capability. Meanwhile, the decoupled diffusion model is utilized to further enhance the construction performance of RMs. Moreover, a comprehensive theoretical analysis of why the RM construction is a generative problem is provided for the first time, from both perspectives of data features and NN training methods. Experimental results show that the proposed RadioDiff achieves state-of-the-art performance in all three metrics of accuracy, structural similarity, and peak signal-to-noise ratio. The code is available at https://github.com/UNIC-Lab/RadioDiff.

cs.LG↗

Novel Subsampling Strategies for Heavily Censored Reliability Data

Computational capability often falls short when confronted with massive data, posing a common challenge in establishing a statistical model or statistical inference method dealing with big data. While subsampling techniques have been extensively developed to downsize the data volume, there is a notable gap in addressing the unique challenge of handling extensive reliability data, in which a common situation is that a large proportion of data is censored. In this article, we propose an efficient subsampling method for reliability analysis in the presence of censoring data, intending to estimate the parameters of lifetime distribution. Moreover, a novel subsampling method for subsampling from severely censored data is proposed, i.e., only a tiny proportion of data is complete. The subsampling-based estimators are given, and their asymptotic properties are derived. The optimal subsampling probabilities are derived through the L-optimality criterion, which minimizes the trace of the product of the asymptotic covariance matrix and a constant matrix. Efficient algorithms are proposed to implement the proposed subsampling methods to address the challenge that optimal subsampling strategy depends on unknown parameter estimation from full data. Real-world hard drive dataset case and simulative empirical studies are employed to demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed methods.

stat.ME↗

Orbital-Angular-Momentum Embedded Massive MIMO: Achieving Multiplicative Spectrum-Efficiency for mmWave Communications

By enabling very high bandwidth for radio communications, the millimeter-wave (mmWave), which can easily be integrated with massive-multiple-input-multiple-output (massive-MIMO) due to small antenna size, has been attracting growing attention as a candidate for the fifth-generation (5G) and 5G-beyond wireless communications networks. On the other hand, the communication over the orthogonal states/modes of orbital angular momentum (OAM) is a subset of the solutions offered by massive-MIMO communications. Traditional massive-MIMO based mmWave communications did not concern the potential spectrum-efficiency-gain (SE-gain) offered by orthogonal states of OAM. However, the highly expecting maximum SE-gain for OAM and massive-MIMO communications is the product of SE-gains offered by OAM and multiplexing-MIMO. In this paper, we propose the OAM-embedded-MIMO (OEM) communication framework to obtain the multiplicative SE-gain for joint OAM and massive-MIMO based mmWave wireless communications. We design the parabolic antenna for each uniform circular array antenna to converge OAM signals. Then, we develop the mode-decomposition and multiplexing-detection scheme to obtain the transmit signal on each OAM-mode of each transmit antenna. Also, we develop the OEM-water-filling power allocation policy to achieve the maximum multiplicative SE-gain for OEM communications. The extensive simulations obtained validate and evaluate our developed parabolic antenna based converging method, mode-decomposition and multiplexing-detection scheme, and OEM-water-filling policy, showing that our proposed OEM mmWave communications can significantly increase the spectrum-efficiency as compared with traditional massive-MIMO based mmWave communications.

eess.SP↗

Achieving Practical OAM Based Wireless Communications With Misaligned Transceiver

Orbital angular momentum (OAM) has attracted much attention for radio vortex wireless communications due to the orthogonality among different OAM-modes. To maintain the orthogonality among different OAM modes at the receiver, the strict alignment between transmit and receive antennas is highly demanded. However, it is not practical to guarantee the transceiver alignment in wireless communications. The phase turbulence, resulting from the misaligned transceivers, leads to serious inter-mode interference among different OAM modes and therefore fail for signals detection of multiple OAM modes at the receiver. To achieve practical OAM based wireless communications, in this paper we investigate the radio vortex wireless communications with misaligned transmit and receive antennas. We propose a joint Beamforming and Pre-detection (BePre) scheme, which uses two unitary matrices to convert the channel matrix into the equivalent circulant matrix for keeping the orthogonality among OAM-modes at the receiver. Then, the OAM signals can be detected with the mode-decomposition scheme at the misaligned receiver. Extensive simulations obtained validate and evaluate that our developed joint BePre scheme can efficiently detect the signals of multiple OAM-modes for the misaligned transceiver and can significantly increase the spectrum efficiency.

eess.SP↗

Concentric UCAs Based Low-Order OAM for High Capacity in Radio Vortex Wireless Communications

Due to the potential capacity-boosting for wireless communications, the Radio vOrtex Wireless COMMunication (RowComm) over orthogonal states/modes of Orbital Angular Momentum (OAM) has been paid much attention in recent years. Uniform circular array (UCA), as an efficient and convenient antenna structure, can transmit/receive multiple OAM beams with different OAM-modes simultaneously when the transmitter and receiver are aligned. However, for high-order OAM-modes, the OAM beams are divergent accompanied by severe attenuations. Thus, it is difficult to directly use high-order OAM-modes to achieve high capacity for RowComms. To obtain high capacity potentially offered by OAM-modes, in this paper we transform the singular UCA into the concentric UCAs, where high capacity can be achieved using multiple parallel low-order OAM-modes instead of all high-order OAM-modes, to increase the capacity of transmitter-receiver aligned RowComms. In particular, we study two cases: 1). Concentric UCAs based RowComms without co-mode interference; 2). Concentric UCAs based RowComms with co-mode interference. We propose a co-mode-interference-free and a co-mode-interference-contained mode-decomposition schemes to recover transmit signals for these two cases, respectively. Also, we develop the optimal power allocation schemes to maximize the capacity for these two cases. Numerical simulations are presented to validate and evaluate that our developed concentric UCAs based low-order RowComms can significantly increase the capacity as compared with that of singular UCA based RowComms.

eess.SP↗

Movable Frequency Diverse Array-Assisted Covert Communication With Multiple Wardens

The frequency diverse array (FDA) is highly promising for improving covert communication performance by adjusting the frequency of each antenna at the transmitter. However, when faced with the cases of multiple wardens and highly correlated channels, FDA is limited by the frequency constraint and cannot provide satisfactory covert performance. In this paper, we propose a novel movable FDA (MFDA) antenna technology where positions of the antennas can be dynamically adjusted in a given finite region. Specifically, we aim to maximize the covert rate by jointly optimizing the antenna beamforming vector, antenna frequency vector and antenna position vector. To solve this non-convex optimization problem with coupled variables, we develop a two-stage alternating optimization (AO) algorithm based on the block successive upper-bound minimization (BSUM) method. Moreover, considering the challenge of obtaining perfect channel state information (CSI) at multiple wardens, we study the case of imperfect CSI. Simulation results demonstrate that MFDA can significantly enhance covert performance compared to the conventional FDA. In particular, when the frequency constraint is strict, MFDA can further increase the covert rate by adjusting the positions of antennas instead of the frequencies.

eess.SP↗

Movable Frequency Diverse Array for Wireless Communication Security

Frequency diverse array (FDA) is a promising antenna technology to achieve physical layer security by varying the frequency of each antenna at the transmitter. However, when the channels of the legitimate user and eavesdropper are highly correlated, FDA is limited by the frequency constraint and cannot provide satisfactory security performance. In this paper, we propose a novel movable FDA (MFDA) antenna technology where the positions of antennas can be dynamically adjusted in a given finite region. Specifically, we aim to maximize the secrecy capacity by jointly optimizing the antenna beamforming vector, antenna frequency vector and antenna position vector. To solve this non-convex optimization problem with coupled variables, we develop a two-stage alternating optimization (AO) algorithm based on block successive upper-bound minimization (BSUM) method. Moreover, to evaluate the security performance provided by MFDA, we introduce two benchmark schemes, i.e., phased array (PA) and FDA. Simulation results demonstrate that MFDA can significantly enhance security performance compared to PA and FDA. In particular, when the frequency constraint is strict, MFDA can further increase the secrecy capacity by adjusting the positions of antennas instead of the frequencies.

eess.SP↗

Toward Enhanced Reinforcement Learning-Based Resource Management via Digital Twin: Opportunities, Applications, and Challenges

This article presents a digital twin (DT)-enhanced reinforcement learning (RL) framework aimed at optimizing performance and reliability in network resource management, since the traditional RL methods face several unified challenges when applied to physical networks, including limited exploration efficiency, slow convergence, poor long-term performance, and safety concerns during the exploration phase. To deal with the above challenges, a comprehensive DT-based framework is proposed to enhance the convergence speed and performance for unified RL-based resource management. The proposed framework provides safe action exploration, more accurate estimates of long-term returns, faster training convergence, higher convergence performance, and real-time adaptation to varying network conditions. Then, two case studies on ultra-reliable and low-latency communication (URLLC) services and multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV) network are presented, demonstrating improvements of the proposed framework in performance, convergence speed, and training cost reduction both on traditional RL and neural network based Deep RL (DRL). Finally, the article identifies and explores some of the research challenges and open issues in this rapidly evolving field.

eess.SY↗

A Pixel-based Reconfigurable Antenna Design for Fluid Antenna Systems

Fluid Antenna Systems (FASs) have recently been proposed for enhancing the performance of wireless communication. Previous antenna designs to meet the requirements of FAS have been based on mechanically movable or liquid antennas and therefore have limited reconfiguration speeds. In this paper, we propose a design for a pixel-based reconfigurable antenna (PRA) that meets the requirements of FAS and the required switching speed. It can provide 12 FAS ports across 1/2 wavelength and consists of an E-slot patch antenna and an upper reconfigurable pixel layer with 6 RF switches. Simulation and experimental results from a prototype operating at 2.5 GHz demonstrate that the design can meet the requirements of FAS including port correlation with matched impedance.

eess.SP↗

A Shared-Aperture Dual-Band sub-6 GHz and mmWave Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface With Independent Operation

A novel dual-band reconfigurable intelligent surface (DBI-RIS) design that combines the functionalities of millimeter-wave (mmWave) and sub-6 GHz bands within a single aperture is proposed. This design aims to bridge the gap between current single-band reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) and wireless systems utilizing sub-6 GHz and mmWave bands that require RIS with independently reconfigurable dual-band operation. The mmWave element is realized by a double-layer patch antenna loaded with 1-bit phase shifters, providing two reconfigurable states. An 8x8 mmWave element array is selectively interconnected using three RF switches to form a reconfigurable sub-6 GHz element at 3.5 GHz. A suspended electromagnetic band gap (EBG) structure is proposed to suppress surface waves and ensure sufficient geometric space for the phase shifter and control networks in the mmWave element. A low-cost planar spiral inductor (PSI) is carefully optimized to connect mmWave elements, enabling the sub-6 GHz function without affecting mmWave operation. Finally, prototypes of the DBI-RIS are fabricated, and experimental verification is conducted using two separate measurement testbeds. The fabricated sub-6 GHz RIS successfully achieves beam steering within the range of -35 to 35 degrees for DBI-RIS with 4x4 sub-6 GHz elements, while the mmWave RIS demonstrates beam steering between -30 to 30 degrees for DBI-RIS with 8x8 mmWave elements, and have good agreement with simulation results.

eess.SP↗

A Data and Model-Driven Deep Learning Approach to Robust Downlink Beamforming Optimization

This paper investigates the optimization of the long-standing probabilistically robust transmit beamforming problem with channel uncertainties in the multiuser multiple-input single-output (MISO) downlink transmission. This problem poses significant analytical and computational challenges. Currently, the state-of-the-art optimization method relies on convex restrictions as tractable approximations to ensure robustness against Gaussian channel uncertainties. However, this method not only exhibits high computational complexity and suffers from the rank relaxation issue but also yields conservative solutions. In this paper, we propose an unsupervised deep learning-based approach that incorporates the sampling of channel uncertainties in the training process to optimize the probabilistic system performance. We introduce a model-driven learning approach that defines a new beamforming structure with trainable parameters to account for channel uncertainties. Additionally, we employ a graph neural network to efficiently infer the key beamforming parameters. We successfully apply this approach to the minimum rate quantile maximization problem subject to outage and total power constraints. Furthermore, we propose a bisection search method to address the more challenging power minimization problem with probabilistic rate constraints by leveraging the aforementioned approach. Numerical results confirm that our approach achieves non-conservative robust performance, higher data rates, greater power efficiency, and faster execution compared to state-of-the-art optimization methods.

cs.IT↗

STAR-RIS Aided Integrated Sensing and Communication over High Mobility Scenario

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) has become a promising technology for future communication system. In this paper, we consider a millimeter wave system over high mobility scenario, and propose a novel simultaneous transmission and reflection reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS) aided ISAC scheme. To improve the communication service of the in-vehicle user equipment (UE) and simultaneously track and sense the vehicle with the help of nearby roadside units (RSUs), a STAR-RIS is equipped on the outside surface of the vehicle. Firstly, an efficient transmission structure is developed, where a number of training sequences with orthogonal precoders and combiners are respectively utilized at BS and RSUs for channel parameter extraction. Then, the near-field static channel model between the STAR-RIS and in-vehicle UE as well as the far-field time-frequency selective BS-RIS-RSUs channel model are characterized. By utilizing the multidimensional orthogonal matching pursuit (MOMP) algorithm, the cascaded channel parameters of the BS-RIS-RSUs links can be obtained at the RSUs. Thus, the vehicle localization and its velocity measurement can be acquired by jointly utilizing these extracted cascaded channel parameters of all RSUs. Note that the MOMP algorithm can be further utilized to extract the channel parameters of the BS-RIS-UE link for communication. With the help of sensing results, the phase shifts of the STAR-RIS are delicately designed, which can significantly improve the received signal strength for both the RSUs and the in-vehicle UE, and can finally enhance the sensing and communication performance. Moreover, the trade-off for sensing and communication is designed by optimizing the energy splitting factors of the STAR-RIS. Finally, simulation results are provided to validate the feasibility and effectiveness of our proposed STAR-RIS aided ISAC scheme.

eess.SP↗

Reconciling Radio Tomographic Imaging with Phaseless Inverse Scattering

Radio Tomographic Imaging (RTI) is a phaseless imaging approach that can provide shape reconstruction and localization of objects using received signal strength (RSS) measurements. RSS measurements can be straightforwardly obtained from wireless networks such as Wi-Fi and therefore RTI has been extensively researched and accepted as a good indoor RF imaging technique. However, RTI is formulated on empirical models using an assumption of light-of-sight (LOS) propagation that does not account for intricate scattering effects. There are two main objectives of this work. The first objective is to reconcile and compare the empirical RTI model with formal inverse scattering approaches to better understand why RTI is an effective RF imaging technique. The second objective is to obtain straightforward enhancements to RTI, based on inverse scattering, to enhance its performance. The resulting enhancements can provide reconstructions of the shape and also material properties of the objects that can aid image classification. We also provide numerical and experimental results to compare RTI with the enhanced RTI for indoor imaging applications using low-cost 2.4 GHz Wi-Fi transceivers. These results show that the enhanced RTI can outperform RTI while having similar computational complexity to RTI.

physics.app-ph↗

A Cooperative Deception Strategy for Covert Communication in Presence of a Multi-antenna Adversary

Covert transmission is investigated for a cooperative deception strategy, where a cooperative jammer (Jammer) tries to attract a multi-antenna adversary (Willie) and degrade the adversary's reception ability for the signal from a transmitter (Alice). For this strategy, we formulate an optimization problem to maximize the covert rate when three different types of channel state information (CSI) are available. The total power is optimally allocated between Alice and Jammer subject to Kullback-Leibler (KL) divergence constraint. Different from the existing literature, in our proposed strategy, we also determine the optimal transmission power at the jammer when Alice is silent, while existing works always assume that the jammer's power is fixed. Specifically, we apply the S-procedure to convert infinite constraints into linear-matrix-inequalities (LMI) constraints. When statistical CSI at Willie is available, we convert double integration to single integration using asymptotic approximation and substitution method. In addition, the transmission strategy without jammer deception is studied as a benchmark. Finally, our simulation results show that for the proposed strategy, the covert rate is increased with the number of antennas at Willie. Moreover, compared to the benchmark, our proposed strategy is more robust in face of imperfect CSI.

eess.SP↗

RepBNN: towards a precise Binary Neural Network with Enhanced Feature Map via Repeating

Binary neural network (BNN) is an extreme quantization version of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) with all features and weights mapped to just 1-bit. Although BNN saves a lot of memory and computation demand to make CNN applicable on edge or mobile devices, BNN suffers the drop of network performance due to the reduced representation capability after binarization. In this paper, we propose a new replaceable and easy-to-use convolution module RepConv, which enhances feature maps through replicating input or output along channel dimension by $β$ times without extra cost on the number of parameters and convolutional computation. We also define a set of RepTran rules to use RepConv throughout BNN modules like binary convolution, fully connected layer and batch normalization. Experiments demonstrate that after the RepTran transformation, a set of highly cited BNNs have achieved universally better performance than the original BNN versions. For example, the Top-1 accuracy of Rep-ReCU-ResNet-20, i.e., a RepBconv enhanced ReCU-ResNet-20, reaches 88.97% on CIFAR-10, which is 1.47% higher than that of the original network. And Rep-AdamBNN-ReActNet-A achieves 71.342% Top-1 accuracy on ImageNet, a fresh state-of-the-art result of BNNs. Code and models are available at:https://github.com/imfinethanks/Rep_AdamBNN.

cs.CV↗