Next Generation Multiple Access for IMT Towards 2030 and Beyond

Multiple access techniques are fundamental to the design of wireless communication systems, since many crucial components of such systems depend on the choice of the multiple access technique. Because of the importance of multiple access, there has been an ongoing quest during the past decade to develop next generation multiple access (NGMA). Among those potential candidates for NGMA, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has received significant attention from both the industrial and academic research communities, and has been highlighted in the recently published International Mobile Telecommunications (IMT)-2030 Framework. However, there is still no consensus in the research community about how exactly NOMA assisted NGMA should be designed. This perspective is to outline three important features of NOMA assisted NGMA, namely multi-domain utilization, multi-mode compatibility, and multi-dimensional optimality, where important directions for future research into the design of NOMA assisted NGMA are also discussed.

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.

New Lower Bounds on Aperiodic Ambiguity Function of Unimodular Sequences

This paper presents new aperiodic ambiguity function (AF) lower bounds of unimodular sequences under certain low ambiguity zone. Our key idea, motivated by the Levenshtein correlation bound, is to introduce two weight vectors associated to the delay and Doppler shifts, respectively, and then exploit the upper and lower bounds on the Frobenius norm of the weighted auto- and cross-AF matrices to derive these bounds. Furthermore, the inherent structure properties of aperiodic AF are also utilized in our derivation. The derived bounds are useful design guidelines for optimal AF shaping in modern communication and radar systems.

From OTFS to DD-ISAC: Integrating Sensing and Communications in the Delay Doppler Domain

Next-generation vehicular networks are expected to provide the capability of robust environmental sensing in addition to reliable communications to meet intelligence requirements. A promising solution is the integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) technology, which performs both functionalities using the same spectrum and hardware resources. Most existing works on ISAC consider the Orthogonal Frequency Division Multiplexing (OFDM) waveform. Nevertheless, vehicle motion introduces Doppler shift, which breaks the subcarrier orthogonality and leads to performance degradation. The recently proposed Orthogonal Time Frequency Space (OTFS) modulation, which exploits various advantages of Delay Doppler (DD) channels, has been shown to support reliable communication in high-mobility scenarios. Moreover, the DD waveform can directly interact with radar sensing parameters, which are actually delay and Doppler shifts. This paper investigates the advantages of applying the DD communication waveform to ISAC. Specifically, we first provide a comprehensive overview of implementing DD communications, based on which several advantages of DD-ISAC over OFDM-based ISAC are revealed, including transceiver designs and the ambiguity function. Furthermore, a detailed performance comparison are presented, where the target detection probability and the mean squared error (MSE) performance are also studied. Finally, some challenges and opportunities of DD-ISAC are also provided.

Novel Power-Imbalanced Dense Codebooks for Reliable Multiplexing in Nakagami Channels

This paper studies enhanced dense code multiple access (DCMA) system design for downlink transmission over the Nakagami-$m$ fading channels. By studying the DCMA pairwise error probability (PEP) in a Nakagami-$m$ channel, a novel design metric called minimum logarithmic sum distance (MLSD) is first derived. With respect to the proposed MLSD, we introduce a new family of power-imbalanced dense codebooks by deleting certain rows of a special non-unimodular circulant matrix. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed dense codebooks lead to both larger minimum Euclidean distance and MLSD, thus yielding significant improvements of error performance over the existing sparse code multiple access and conventional unimodular DCMA schemes in Nakagami-$m$ fading channels under different overloading factors.

Low-complexity Resource Allocation for User Paired RSMA in Future 6G Wireless Networks

Rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) uplink requires optimization of decoding order and power allocation, while decoding order is a discrete variable, and it is very complex to find the optimal decoding order if the number of users is large enough. This letter proposes a low-complexity user pairing-based resource allocation algorithm with the objective of minimizing the maximum latency, which significantly reduces the computational complexity and also achieves similar performance to unpaired uplink RSMA. A closed-form expression for power and bandwidth allocation is first derived, and then a bisection method is used to determine the optimal resource allocation. Finally, the proposed algorithm is compared with unpaired RSMA, paired NOMA and unpaired NOMA. The results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.

Radar Sensing via OTFS Signaling: A Delay Doppler Signal Processing Perspective

The recently proposed orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) modulation multiplexes data symbols in the delay-Doppler (DD) domain. Since the range and velocity, which can be derived from the delay and Doppler shifts, are the parameters of interest for radar sensing, it is natural to consider implementing DD signal processing for radar sensing. In this paper, we investigate the potential connections between the OTFS and DD domain radar signal processing. Our analysis shows that the range-Doppler matrix computing process in radar sensing is exactly the demodulation of OTFS with a rectangular pulse shaping filter. Furthermore, we propose a two-dimensional (2D) correlation-based algorithm to estimate the fractional delay and Doppler parameters for radar sensing. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm can efficiently obtain the delay and Doppler shifts associated with multiple targets.

A Survey on Orthogonal Time Frequency Space: New Delay Doppler Communications Paradigm in 6G era

In 6G era, the space-air-ground integrated networks (SAGIN) are expected to provide global coverage and thus are required to support a wide range of emerging applications in hostile environments with high-mobility. In such scenarios, conventional orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) modulation, which has been widely deployed in the cellular and Wi-Fi communications systems, will suffer from performance degradation due to high Doppler shift. To address this challenge, a new two-dimensional (2D) modulation scheme referred to as orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) was proposed and has been recognized as an enabling technology for future high-mobility scenarios. In particular, OTFS modulates information in the delay-Doppler (DD) domain rather than the time-frequency (TF) domain for OFDM, providing the benefits of Doppler-resilience and delay-resilience, low signaling latency, low peak-to-average ratio (PAPR), and low-complexity implementation. Recent researches also show that the direct interaction of information and physical world in the DD domain makes OTFS an promising waveform for realizing integrated sensing and communications (ISAC). In this article, we will present a comprehensive survey of OTFS technology in 6G era, including the fundamentals, recent advances, and future works. Our aim is that this article could provide valuable references for all researchers working in the area of OTFS.

Joint Channel Estimation and Data Detection for Hybrid RIS aided Millimeter Wave OTFS Systems

For high mobility communication scenario, the recently emerged orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) modulation introduces a new delay-Doppler domain signal space, and can provide better communication performance than traditional orthogonal frequency division multiplexing system. This article focuses on the joint channel estimation and data detection (JCEDD) for hybrid reconfigurable intelligent surface (HRIS) aided millimeter wave (mmWave) OTFS systems. Firstly, a new transmission structure is designed. Within the pilot durations of the designed structure, partial HRIS elements are alternatively activated. The time domain channel model is then exhibited. Secondly, the received signal model for both the HRIS over time domain and the base station over delay-Doppler domain are studied. Thirdly, by utilizing channel parameters acquired at the HRIS, an HRIS beamforming design strategy is proposed. For the OTFS transmission, we propose a JCEDD scheme over delay-Doppler domain. In this scheme, message passing (MP) algorithm is designed to simultaneously obtain the equivalent channel gain and the data symbols. On the other hand, the channel parameters, i.e., the Doppler shift, the channel sparsity, and the channel variance, are updated through expectation-maximization (EM) algorithm. By iteratively executing the MP and EM algorithm, both the channel and the unknown data symbols can be accurately acquired. Finally, simulation results are provided to validate the effectiveness of our proposed JCEDD scheme.

Data-aided Active User Detection with False Alarm Correction in Grant-Free Transmission

In most existing grant-free (GF) studies, the two key tasks, namely active user detection (AUD) and payload data decoding, are handled separately. In this paper, a two-step dataaided AUD scheme is proposed, namely the initial AUD step and the false alarm correction step respectively. To implement the initial AUD step, an embedded low-density-signature (LDS) based preamble pool is constructed. In addition, two message passing algorithm (MPA) based initial estimators are developed. In the false alarm correction step, a redundant factor graph is constructed based on the initial active user set, on which MPA is employed for data decoding. The remaining false detected inactive users will be further recognized by the false alarm corrector with the aid of decoded data symbols. Simulation results reveal that both the data decoding performance and the AUD performance are significantly enhanced by more than 1:5 dB at the target accuracy of 10^3 compared with the traditional compressed sensing (CS) based counterparts