The success of full-stack full-duplex communication systems depends on how effectively one can achieve digital self-interference cancellation (SIC). Towards this end, in this paper, we consider unlimited sensing framework (USF) enabled full-duplex system. We show that by injecting folding non-linearities in the sensing pipeline, one can not only suppress self-interference but also recover the signal of interest (SoI). This approach leads to novel design of the receiver architecture that is complemented by a modulo-domain channel estimation method. Numerical experiments show that the USF enabled receiver structure can achieve up to 40 dB digital SIC by using as few as 4-bits per sample. Our method outperforms the previous approach based on adaptive filters when it comes to SoI reconstruction, detection, and digital SIC performance.
Non-orthogonal unicast multicast (NOUM) is a variant of multi-antenna multi-user communications where the users desire a shared message (multicast) in addition to their respective unique messages (unicast). The multicast rate is capped in many emerging NOUM applications, such as live-event broadcasting, location-based services and vehicular communications. Given this constraint, we experimentally show that when the user channels are highly correlated, Rate-Splitting Multiple Access (RSMA)-based NOUM can meet the multicast rate while supporting a larger unicast sum rate than conventional multi-user linear precoding (MULP)-based NOUM.
Beyond diagonal reconfigurable intelligent surface (BD-RIS) is a new advance and generalization of the RIS technique. BD-RIS breaks through the isolation between RIS elements by creatively introducing inter-element connections, thereby enabling smarter wave manipulation and enlarging coverage. However, exploring proper channel estimation schemes suitable for BD-RIS aided communication systems still remains an open problem. In this paper, we study channel estimation and beamforming design for BD-RIS aided multi-antenna systems. We first describe the channel estimation strategy based on the least square (LS) method, derive the mean square error (MSE) of the LS estimation, and formulate the joint pilot sequence and BD-RIS design problem with unique constraints induced by BD-RIS architectures. Specifically, we propose an efficient pilot sequence and BD-RIS design which theoretically guarantees to achieve the minimum MSE. With the estimated channel, we then consider two BD-RIS scenarios and propose beamforming design algorithms. Finally, we provide simulation results to verify the effectiveness of the proposed channel estimation scheme and beamforming design algorithms. We also show that more interelement connections in BD-RIS improves the performance while increasing the training overhead for channel estimation.
This work studies the wideband modeling and beamforming design of beyond diagonal reconfigurable intelligent surface (BD-RIS), which generalizes and goes beyond conventional RIS with diagonal phase shift matrices to achieve enhanced channel gain. Specifically, we investigate the response of BD-RIS in wideband systems by going back to its hardware circuit realizations. We propose a novel wideband model which has simple expressions while capturing the response variations of BD-RIS for signals with different frequencies. With this wideband model, we propose a BD-RIS design algorithm for an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing system to maximize the average rate over all subcarriers. Finally, we provide simulation results to evaluate the performance of the proposed design and show the importance of wideband modeling for BD-RIS.
Beyond diagonal reconfigurable intelligent surface (BD-RIS) extends conventional RIS through novel architectures, such as group-connected RIS, with scattering matrix not restricted to being diagonal. However, it remains unexplored how to optimally group the elements in group-connected RISs to maximize the performance while maintaining a low-complexity circuit. In this study, we propose and model BD-RIS with a static grouping strategy optimized based on the channel statistics. After formulating the corresponding problems, we design the grouping in single- and multi-user systems. Numerical results reveal the benefits of grouping optimization, i.e., up to 60% sum rate improvement, especially in highly correlated channels.
Stacked intelligent metasurface (SIM) has emerged as a technology enabling wave domain beamforming through multiple stacked reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs). SIM has been implemented so far with diagonal RIS (D-RIS), while SIM implemented with beyond diagonal RIS (BD-RIS) remains unexplored. Furthermore, a model of SIM accounting for mutual coupling is not yet available. To fill these gaps, we derive a physically consistent channel model for SIM-aided systems and clarify the assumptions needed to obtain the simplified model used in related works. Using this model, we show that 1-layer SIM implemented with BD-RIS achieves the performance upper bound with limited complexity.
Low earth orbit (LEO) satellite systems with sensing functionality is envisioned to facilitate global-coverage service and emerging applications in 6G. Currently, two fundamental challenges, namely, inter-beam interference among users and power limitation at the LEO satellites, limit the full potential of the joint design of sensing and communication. To effectively control the interference, rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) scheme is employed as the interference management strategy in the system design. On the other hand, to address the limited power supply at the LEO satellites, we consider low-resolution quantization digital-to-analog converters (DACs) at the transmitter to reduce power consumption, which grows exponentially with the number of quantization bits. Additionally, optimizing the total energy efficiency (EE) of the system is a common practice to save the power. However, this metric lacks fairness among users. To ensure this fairness and further enhance EE, we investigate the max-min fairness EE of the RSMA-assisted integrated sensing and communications (ISAC)-LEO satellite system. In this system, the satellite transmits a quantized dual-functional signal serving downlink users while detecting a target. Specifically, we optimize the precoders for maximizing the minimal EE among all users, considering the power consumption of each radio frequency (RF) chain under communication and sensing constraints. To tackle this optimization problem, we proposed an iterative algorithm based on successive convex approximation (SCA) and Dinkelbach's method. Numerical results illustrate that the proposed design outperforms the strategies that aim to maximize the total EE of the system and conventional space-division multiple access (SDMA) in terms of max-min fairness EE and the communication-sensing trade-off.
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is a key technology to control the communication environment in future wireless networks. Recently, beyond diagonal RIS (BD-RIS) emerged as a generalization of RIS achieving larger coverage through additional tunable impedance components interconnecting the RIS elements. However, conventional RIS and BD-RIS can effectively serve only users in their proximity, resulting in limited coverage. To overcome this limitation, in this paper, we investigate distributed RIS, whose elements are distributed over a wide region, in opposition to localized RIS commonly considered in the literature. The scaling laws of distributed BD-RIS reveal that it offers significant gains over distributed conventional RIS and localized BD-RIS, enabled by its interconnections allowing signal propagation within the BD-RIS. To assess the practical performance of distributed BD-RIS, we model and optimize BD-RIS with lossy interconnections through transmission line theory. Our model accounts for phase changes and losses over the BD-RIS interconnections arising when the interconnection lengths are not much smaller than the wavelength. Numerical results show that the performance of localized BD-RIS is only slightly impacted by losses, given the short interconnection lengths. Besides, distributed BD-RIS can achieve orders of magnitude of gains over conventional RIS, even in the presence of low losses.
Multiple access (MA) is a crucial part of any wireless system and refers to techniques that make use of the resource dimensions to serve multiple users/devices/machines/services, ideally in the most efficient way. Given the needs of multi-functional wireless networks for integrated communications, sensing, localization, computing, coupled with the surge of machine learning / artificial intelligence (AI) in wireless networks, MA techniques are expected to experience a paradigm shift in 6G and beyond. In this paper, we provide a tutorial, survey and outlook of past, emerging and future MA techniques and pay a particular attention to how wireless network intelligence and multi-functionality will lead to a re-thinking of those techniques. The paper starts with an overview of orthogonal, physical layer multicasting, space domain, power domain, ratesplitting, code domain MAs, and other domains, and highlight the importance of researching universal multiple access to shrink instead of grow the knowledge tree of MA schemes by providing a unified understanding of MA schemes across all resource dimensions. It then jumps into rethinking MA schemes in the era of wireless network intelligence, covering AI for MA such as AI-empowered resource allocation, optimization, channel estimation, receiver designs, user behavior predictions, and MA for AI such as federated learning/edge intelligence and over the air computation. We then discuss MA for network multi-functionality and the interplay between MA and integrated sensing, localization, and communications. We finish with studying MA for emerging intelligent applications before presenting a roadmap toward 6G standardization. We also point out numerous directions that are promising for future research.
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is an emerging paradigm able to control the propagation environment in wireless systems. Most of the research on RIS has been dedicated to system-level optimization and, with the advent of beyond diagonal RIS (BD-RIS), to RIS architecture design. However, developing general and unified electromagnetic (EM)-compliant models for RIS-aided systems remains an open problem. In this study, we propose a universal framework for the multiport network analysis of RIS-aided systems. With our framework, we model RIS-aided systems and RIS architectures through impedance, admittance, and scattering parameter analysis. Based on these analyses, three equivalent models are derived accounting for the effects of impedance mismatching and mutual coupling. The three models are then simplified by assuming large transmission distances, perfect matching, and no mutual coupling to understand the role of the RIS in the communication model. The derived simplified models are consistent with the model used in related literature, although we show that an additional approximation is commonly considered in the literature. We discuss the benefits of each analysis in characterizing and optimizing the RIS and how to select the most suitable parameters according to the needs. Numerical results provide additional evidence of the equivalence of the three analyses.