In the intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-enhanced wireless communication system, channel state information (CSI) is of paramount importance for achieving the passive beamforming gain of IRS, ...which, however, is a practically challenging task due to its massive number of passive elements without transmitting/receiving capabilities. In this letter, we propose a practical transmission protocol to execute channel estimation and reflection optimization successively for an IRS-enhanced orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system. Under the unit-modulus constraint, a novel reflection pattern at the IRS is designed to aid the channel estimation at the access point (AP) based on the received pilot signals from the user, for which the channel estimation error is derived in closed-form. With the estimated CSI, the reflection coefficients are then optimized by a low-complexity algorithm based on the resolved strongest signal path in the time domain. Simulation results corroborate the effectiveness of the proposed channel estimation and reflection optimization methods.
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is an enabling technology to engineer the radio signal propagation in wireless networks. By smartly tuning the signal reflection via a large number of low-cost ...passive reflecting elements, IRS is capable of dynamically altering wireless channels to enhance the communication performance. It is thus expected that the new IRS-aided hybrid wireless network comprising both active and passive components will be highly promising to achieve a sustainable capacity growth cost-effectively in the future. Despite its great potential, IRS faces new challenges to be efficiently integrated into wireless networks, such as reflection optimization, channel estimation, and deployment from communication design perspectives. In this paper, we provide a tutorial overview of IRS-aided wireless communications to address the above issues, and elaborate its reflection and channel models, hardware architecture and practical constraints, as well as various appealing applications in wireless networks. Moreover, we highlight important directions worthy of further investigation in future work.
Orthogonal frequency division multiplexing with index modulation (OFDM-IM) performs transmission by considering two modes over OFDM subcarriers, which are the null and the conventional M-ary signal ...constellation. The spectral efficiency (SE) of the system, however, is limited, since the null mode itself does not carry any information and the number of subcarrier activation patterns increases combinatorially. In this paper, a novel IM scheme, called multiple-mode OFDM-IM (MM-OFDM-IM), is proposed for OFDM systems to improve the SE by conveying information through multiple distinguishable modes and their full permutations. A practical and efficient mode selection strategy, which is constrained on the phase shift keying/quadrature amplitude modulation constellations, is designed. Two efficient detectors that provide different tradeoffs between the error performance and detection complexity are also proposed. The principle of MM-OFDM-IM is further extended to the in-phase and quadrature components of OFDM signals, and the method of generating multiple modes from the M-ary pulse amplitude modulation constellation for this modified scheme is also introduced. Bit error rate (BER) analyses are provided for the proposed schemes. Monte Carlo simulations on BER corroborate the analyses and show that the proposed schemes appear as promising multi-carrier transmission alternatives by outperforming the existing OFDM-IM counterparts.
Multiple-input multiple-output orthogonal frequency division multiplexing with index modulation (MIMO-OFDM-IM), which provides a flexible trade-off between spectral efficiency and error performance, ...is recently proposed as a promising transmission technique for energy-efficient 5G wireless communications systems. However, due to the dependence of subcarrier symbols within each subblock and the strong interchannel interference, it is challenging to detect the transmitted data effectively while imposing low computational burden to the receiver. In this paper, we propose two types of low-complexity detectors based on the sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) theory for the detection of MIMO-OFDM-IM signals. The first detector draws samples independently at the subblock level, while the second detector draws samples at the subcarrier level with further reduced complexity. To meet the constraint of the subcarrier combinations within each subblock, the second detector is further coupled with a carefully designed legality examination method. Attributed to the effectiveness of legality examination and deterministic SMC sampling, both proposed detectors achieve near-optimal error performance for the MIMO-OFDM-IM system.
In this paper, we develop a non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA)-based multi-pair two-way relay (TWR) network, in which a rate splitting scheme and a successive group decoding strategy are employed. ...By exploiting the interference signals received from neighbor users with the leverage of the full-duplex technique, we enhance the decoding ability of each user and further achieve an effective multiuser interference management for the network. We propose different decoding strategies for different types of nodes by processing the received signals with only local incoming channel state information in different manners. Moreover, under the limited group decoding size, each individual node decodes its own desired messages along with a fraction of the interference successively. We further investigate the joint uplink and downlink fair rate allocation problem based on the max-min criterion, and the solution to which also contains the optimal group decoding schedule. Simulation results in terms of ergodic rate and outrage probability corroborate the superiority of our NOMA-based multi-pair TWR network over the OMA-based counterpart.
Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) have recently emerged as an innovative technology for improving the coverage, throughput, and energy/spectrum efficiency of future wireless communications. ...In this paper, we propose a new transmission protocol for wideband RIS-assisted single-input multiple-output (SIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) communication systems, where each transmission frame is divided into multiple sub-frames to execute channel estimation simultaneously with passive beamforming. As the training symbols are discretely distributed over multiple sub-frames, the channel state information (CSI) associated with RIS cannot be estimated at once. As such, we propose a new channel estimation method to progressively estimate the associated CSI over consecutive sub-frames, based on which the passive beamforming at the RIS is fine-tuned to improve the achievable rate for data transmission. In particular, during the channel training, the RIS plays two roles of embedding training reflection states for progressive channel estimation and performing passive beamforming for data transmission on the data tones. Based on the estimated CSI in each sub-frame, we formulate an optimization problem to maximize the average achievable rate by designing the passive beamforming at the RIS, which needs to balance the received signal power over different sub-carriers and different receive antennas. As the formulated problem is non-convex and thus difficult to solve optimally, we propose two efficient algorithms to find high-quality solutions. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed channel estimation and beamforming optimization methods. It is shown that the proposed joint channel estimation and passive beamforming scheme is able to drastically improve the average achievable rate and reduce the delay for data transmission as compared to existing schemes.
As an emerging multi-carrier transmission scheme, multiple-mode orthogonal frequency division multiplexing with index modulation (MM-OFDM-IM) conveys information through multiple distinguishable ...constellations (or modes, alternatively) and their full permutations, increasing the spectral efficiency of OFDM-IM and classical OFDM. However, both MM-OFDM-IM and its extension, that is, MM-OFDM with in-phase/quadrature index modulation (MM-OFDM-IM-IQ), cannot provide any transmit diversity gain, which may be critical for ultra-reliable communications. In this paper, aiming at enhancing the diversity gain of MM-OFDM-IM(-IQ) schemes, coordinate interleaved (CI-)MM-OFDM-IM and linear constellation precoded (LCP-) MM-OFDM-IM-IQ are proposed, both of which achieve a diversity order of two without loss of spectral efficiency. The optimal rotation angle for CI-MM-OFDM-IM and the optimal precoding matrix for LCP-MM-OFDM-IM-IQ, in the sense of maximizing their coding gains, are derived in closed form. Computer simulations corroborate the advantages of the proposed schemes in terms of diversity and bit error rate performance toward next-generation wireless networks.
Generalized spatial modulation (GSM) is a relatively new multi-input multi-output transmission technique that enables a flexible trade-off between the achievable transmission rate and the cost of ...radio frequency chains. However, due to the constraint of transmit antenna combination and the variation of interchannel interference, the efficient low-complexity demodulation of GSM signals is challenging, especially when soft demodulation is needed. In this paper, we propose two low-complexity algorithms based on the deterministic sequential Monte Carlo (SMC) technique for the demodulation of GSM. The type-I SMC demodulator, which uses the conventional successive interference cancellation as the kernel and draws antenna-wise samples from the extended constellation, is proposed for the overdetermined GSM system. The type-II SMC demodulator, which consists of two stages and uses the orthogonal matching pursuit as the kernel in the first stage, is proposed for the underdetermined GSM system. A key component in both algorithms is an efficient online scheme to eliminate the illegal samples during the sampling process. Both proposed algorithms achieve near-optimal performances with complexity linear in terms of the antenna size. Moreover, owing to their soft-input soft-output nature, they can be employed in a turbo receiver for a coded GSM system.
Due to the interchannel interference and the varying active antennas in generalized spatial modulation (GSM), it is challenging to detect the transmitted data effectively while imposing low ...computational burden to the receiver. In this paper, we propose a novel algorithm based on the K-best sphere decoding for the soft detection of the GSM signal, which performs the breadth-first tree search in two stages sequentially. By exploiting the null space of the GSM channel, the inactive antenna searching is carried out antennawise in the first stage, in which a recursive algorithm for updating the QL decomposition (a decomposition of a matrix into a product of an orthogonal matrix and a lower triangular matrix) is proposed to calculate the branch metrics and an effective examination scheme is developed to prune those illegal or repetitive child nodes. Based on the available QL decomposition structure that has been updated recursively during the first stage, the second stage of the proposed detector is then readily concatenated to search for the modulated symbols carried on the active antennas in a one-by-one manner. Moreover, owing to the soft-input soft-output nature, the proposed detector can be applied in a turbo decoder for a coded GSM system. Both complexity analysis and simulation results corroborate the superiority of the proposed soft detector for the GSM system.
Prior studies on intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) have mostly assumed perfect channel state information (CSI) available for designing the IRS passive beamforming as well as the continuously ...adjustable phase shift at each of its reflecting elements, which, however, have simplified two challenging issues for implementing IRS in practice, namely, its channel estimation and passive beamforming designs both under the constraint of discrete phase shifts. To address them, we consider in this paper an IRS-aided single-user communication system and design the IRS training reflection matrix for channel estimation as well as the passive beamforming for data transmission, both subject to the new constraint of discrete phase shifts. We show that the training reflection matrix design with discrete phase shifts greatly differs from that with continuous phase shifts, and the corresponding passive beamforming design should take into account the correlated IRS channel estimation errors due to discrete phase shifts. Moreover, a novel hierarchical training reflection design is proposed to progressively estimate IRS elements' channels over multiple time blocks by exploiting the IRS-elements grouping and partition. Based on the resolved IRS channels in each block, we further design the progressive passive beamforming at the IRS with discrete phase shifts to improve the achievable rate for data transmission over the blocks. Extensive numerical results are presented, which demonstrate the significant performance improvement of proposed channel estimation and passive beamforming designs as compared to various benchmark schemes.
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