Joint Channel and Symbol Estimation for RIS-Assisted Fluid Antenna Systems

This paper addresses joint channel and symbol estimation in reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided multiuser uplink systems with fluid antennas (FAs) at the base station. We propose the Nested Tucker for Fluid Antenna Systems (NTFAS) protocol, in which FA port selection and user-dependent coding vary across blocks while the transmitted symbol matrix is shared across observations. This structure yields coupled Tucker models with common channel and data factors. A two-stage semi-blind bilinear alternating least squares (BALS) receiver is then developed to estimate the cascaded channel and symbols, and to separate the user-to-RIS and RIS-to-BS channels through the embedded PARAFAC structure. Simulations show that NTFAS improves cascaded-channel NMSE and spectral efficiency (SE) with respect to a competing semi-blind benchmark, while maintaining comparable BER performance.

Channel Estimation for Movable Intelligent Surface

This paper proposes a tensor-based channel estimation framework for an uplink MIMO system assisted by a movable intelligent surface. The considered architecture combines a fixed transmissive metasurface with a smaller movable layer, whose discrete positions create an additional structured training dimension. By jointly exploiting fixed-layer phase patterns and movable-layer positions, the received pilots are modeled as a fourth-order PARAFAC tensor. A trilinear alternating least-squares receiver is then derived to estimate the individual channels and the position-dependent response. Importantly, the proposed method does not require prior knowledge of the movable-layer phase response at the receiver, since this unknown factor is estimated from the tensor structure of the received signal. Simulation results show that increasing the training length improves the NMSE of the estimated factors and the reconstructed cascaded channel.

Semi-Blind Receivers for RIS-Aided Fluid Antenna Systems

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) and fluid antennas (FAs) are key technologies for enhancing spatial degrees of freedom in future wireless networks. However, channel acquisition in RIS-aided FA systems is challenging as cascaded links depend on time-varying antenna-port selections and RIS configurations, leading to high training overhead in conventional pilot-based methods. We propose a semi-blind estimation framework for this joint architecture to estimate channels and symbols concurrently. Two hierarchical transmission protocols are introduced, resulting in distinct tensor models. Protocol 1 uses a two-time-scale structure yielding a PARAFAC (PF) model, while Protocol 2 employs a single-time-scale structure with blockwise spatial variations, leading to a Nested PARAFAC2 (NPF) model. For both, we develop semi-blind receivers based on trilinear alternating least squares to jointly estimate user-to-RIS channels, RIS-to-BS channels, and transmitted symbols by exploiting spatio-temporal diversity from FA and RIS reconfiguration. We derive identifiability conditions and computational complexity, revealing a fundamental trade-off: the PF receiver (Protocol 1) more aggressively exploits joint RIS/FA reconfiguration for stronger robustness, whereas the NPF receiver (Protocol 2) offers a flexible, lower-complexity alternative. Simulations show the proposed receivers achieve accurate recovery with significantly reduced training overhead, demonstrating the effectiveness of tensor-based semi-blind processing for RIS-aided fluid antenna communications.

Joint Channel and Symbol Estimation for Communication Systems with Movable Antennas

Communication systems aided by movable antennas have been the subject of recent research due to their potentially increased spatial degrees of freedom offered by optimizing the antenna positioning at the transmitter and/or receiver. In this context, a topic that deserves attention is channel estimation. Conventional methods reported recently rely on pilot-assisted strategies to estimate the channel coefficients. In this work, we address the joint channel and symbol estimation problem for an uplink multi-user communication system, where the base station is equipped with a movable antenna array. A semi-blind receiver based on the PARAFAC2 model is formulated to exploit the tensor decomposition structure for the received signals, from which channel and symbol estimates can be jointly obtained via an alternating estimation algorithm. Compared with reference schemes, our preliminary numerical simulations yield remarkable results for the proposed method.

Performance Evaluation of Beyond Diagonal RIS under Hardware Impairments

Beyond diagonal reconfigurable intelligent surface (BD-RIS) improves the traditional reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) architecture functionality by interconnecting elements for advanced wave control. However, real-world implementations face hardware imperfections, such as impedance mismatches and varactor nonidealities, which can degrade overall system performance. In this paper, we propose three hardware impairment models that directly affect the BD-RIS scattering matrix structure and evaluate their impact on the channel estimation accuracy using the normalized mean square error (NMSE) as a performance metric. The proposed impairment models consider imperfections affecting self-impedances, mutual impedances, or both. Our results reveal how each impairment type degrades the system performance, allowing us to identify scenarios where the traditional RIS can outperform the BD-RIS.