Semantic Satellite Communications Based on Generative Foundation Model

Satellite communications can provide massive connections and seamless coverage, but they also face several challenges, such as rain attenuation, long propagation delays, and co-channel interference. To improve transmission efficiency and address severe scenarios, semantic communication has become a popular choice, particularly when equipped with foundation models (FMs). In this study, we introduce an FM-based semantic satellite communication framework, termed FMSAT. This framework leverages FM-based segmentation and reconstruction to significantly reduce bandwidth requirements and accurately recover semantic features under high noise and interference. Considering the high speed of satellites, an adaptive encoder-decoder is proposed to protect important features and avoid frequent retransmissions. Meanwhile, a well-received image can provide a reference for repairing damaged images under sudden attenuation. Since acknowledgment feedback is subject to long propagation delays when retransmission is unavoidable, a novel error detection method is proposed to roughly detect semantic errors at the regenerative satellite. With the proposed detectors at both the satellite and the gateway, the quality of the received images can be ensured. The simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method can significantly reduce bandwidth requirements, adapt to complex satellite scenarios, and protect semantic information with an acceptable transmission delay.

Decision Transformer for Wireless Communications: A New Paradigm of Resource Management

As the next generation of mobile systems evolves, artificial intelligence (AI) is expected to deeply integrate with wireless communications for resource management in variable environments. In particular, deep reinforcement learning (DRL) is an important tool for addressing stochastic optimization issues of resource allocation. However, DRL has to start each new training process from the beginning once the state and action spaces change, causing low sample efficiency and poor generalization ability. Moreover, each DRL training process may take a large number of epochs to converge, which is unacceptable for time-sensitive scenarios. In this paper, we adopt an alternative AI technology, namely, the Decision Transformer (DT), and propose a DT-based adaptive decision architecture for wireless resource management. This architecture innovates through constructing pre-trained models in the cloud and then fine-tuning personalized models at the edges. By leveraging the power of DT models learned over extensive datasets, the proposed architecture is expected to achieve rapid convergence with many fewer training epochs and higher performance in a new context, e.g., similar tasks with different state and action spaces, compared with DRL. We then design DT frameworks for two typical communication scenarios: Intelligent reflecting surfaces-aided communications and unmanned aerial vehicle-aided edge computing. Simulations demonstrate that the proposed DT frameworks achieve over $3$-$6$ times speedup in convergence and better performance relative to the classic DRL method, namely, proximal policy optimization.

Fourier Transform-based Wavenumber Domain 3D Imaging in RIS-aided Communication Systems

Radio imaging is rapidly gaining prominence in the design of future communication systems, with the potential to utilize reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) as imaging apertures. Although the sparsity of targets in three-dimensional (3D) space has led most research to adopt compressed sensing (CS)-based imaging algorithms, these often require substantial computational and memory burdens. Drawing inspiration from conventional Fourier transform (FT)-based imaging methods, our research seeks to accelerate radio imaging in RIS-aided communication systems. To begin, we introduce a two-stage wavenumber domain 3D imaging technique: first, we modify RIS phase shifts to recover the equivalent channel response from the user equipment to the RIS array, subsequently employing traditional FT-based wavenumber domain methods to produce target images. We also determine the diffraction resolution limits of the system through k-space analysis, taking into account factors including system bandwidth, transmission direction, operating frequency, and the angle subtended by the RIS. Addressing the challenge of limited pilots in communication systems, we unveil an innovative algorithm that merges the strengths of both FT- and CS-based techniques by substituting the expansive sensing matrix with FT-based operators. Our simulation outcomes confirm that our proposed FT-based methods achieve high-quality images while demanding few time, memory, and communication resources.

Deep CSI Compression for Dual-Polarized Massive MIMO Channels with Disentangled Representation Learning

Channel state information (CSI) feedback is critical for achieving the promised advantages of enhancing spectral and energy efficiencies in massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless communication systems. Deep learning (DL)-based methods have been proven effective in reducing the required signaling overhead for CSI feedback. In practical dual-polarized MIMO scenarios, channels in the vertical and horizontal polarization directions tend to exhibit high polarization correlation. To fully exploit the inherent propagation similarity within dual-polarized channels, we propose a disentangled representation neural network (NN) for CSI feedback, referred to as DiReNet. The proposed DiReNet disentangles dual-polarized CSI into three components: polarization-shared information, vertical polarization-specific information, and horizontal polarization-specific information. This disentanglement of dual-polarized CSI enables the minimization of information redundancy caused by the polarization correlation and improves the performance of CSI compression and recovery. Additionally, flexible quantization and network extension schemes are designed. Consequently, our method provides a pragmatic solution for CSI feedback to harness the physical MIMO polarization as a priori information. Our experimental results show that the performance of our proposed DiReNet surpasses that of existing DL-based networks, while also effectively reducing the number of network parameters by nearly one third.

Fluid Antenna for Mobile Edge Computing

In the evolving environment of mobile edge computing (MEC), optimizing system performance to meet the growing demand for low-latency computing services is a top priority. Integrating fluidic antenna (FA) technology into MEC networks provides a new approach to address this challenge. This letter proposes an FA-enabled MEC scheme that aims to minimize the total system delay by leveraging the mobility of FA to enhance channel conditions and improve computational offloading efficiency. By establishing an optimization problem focusing on the joint optimization of computation offloading and antenna positioning, we introduce an alternating iterative algorithm based on the interior point method and particle swarm optimization (IPPSO). Numerical results demonstrate the advantages of our proposed scheme compared to traditional fixed antenna positions, showing significant improvements in transmission rates and reductions in delays. The proposed IPPSO algorithm exhibits robust convergence properties, further validating the effectiveness of our method.

RIS-aided Single-frequency 3D Imaging by Exploiting Multi-view Image Correlations

Retrieving range information in three-dimensional (3D) radio imaging is particularly challenging due to the limited communication bandwidth and pilot resources. To address this issue, we consider a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided uplink communication scenario, generating multiple measurements through RIS phase adjustment. This study successfully realizes 3D single-frequency imaging by exploiting the near-field multi-view image correlations deduced from user mobility. We first highlight the significance of considering anisotropy in multi-view image formation by investigating radar cross-section properties and diffraction resolution limits. We then propose a novel model for joint multi-view 3D imaging that incorporates occlusion effects and anisotropic scattering. These factors lead to slow image support variation and smooth coefficient evolution, which are mathematically modeled as Markov processes. Based on this model, we employ the Expectation Maximization-Turbo-Generalized Approximate Message Passing algorithm for joint multi-view single-frequency 3D imaging with limited measurements. Simulation results reveal the superiority of joint multi-view imaging in terms of enhanced imaging ranges, accuracies, and anisotropy characterization compared to single-view imaging. Combining adjacent observations for joint multi-view imaging enables a reduction in the measurement overhead by 80%.

Achievable Rate Analysis and Optimization of Double-RIS Assisted Spatially Correlated MIMO with Statistical CSI

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is a novel meta-material which can form a smart radio environment by dynamically altering reflection directions of the impinging electromagnetic waves. In the prior literature, the inter-RIS links which also contribute to the performance of the whole system are usually neglected when multiple RISs are deployed. In this paper we investigate a general double-RIS assisted multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless communication system under spatially correlated non line-of-sight propagation channels, where the cooperation of the double RISs is also considered. The design objective is to maximize the achievable ergodic rate based on full statistical channel state information (CSI). Specifically, we firstly present a closed-form asymptotic expression for the achievable ergodic rate by utilizing replica method from statistical physics. Then a full statistical CSI-enabled optimal design is proposed which avoids high pilot training overhead compared to instantaneous CSI-enabled design. To further reduce the signal processing overhead and lower the complexity for practical realization, a common-phase scheme is proposed to design the double RISs. Simulation results show that the derived asymptotic ergodic rate is quite accurate even for small-sized antenna arrays. And the proposed optimization algorithm can achieve substantial gain at the expense of a low overhead and complexity. Furthermore, the cooperative double-RIS assisted MIMO framework is proven to achieve superior ergodic rate performance and high communication reliability under harsh propagation environment.

Achieving Linear Speedup in Asynchronous Federated Learning with Heterogeneous Clients

Federated learning (FL) is an emerging distributed training paradigm that aims to learn a common global model without exchanging or transferring the data that are stored locally at different clients. The Federated Averaging (FedAvg)-based algorithms have gained substantial popularity in FL to reduce the communication overhead, where each client conducts multiple localized iterations before communicating with a central server. In this paper, we focus on FL where the clients have diverse computation and/or communication capabilities. Under this circumstance, FedAvg can be less efficient since it requires all clients that participate in the global aggregation in a round to initiate iterations from the latest global model, and thus the synchronization among fast clients and straggler clients can severely slow down the overall training process. To address this issue, we propose an efficient asynchronous federated learning (AFL) framework called Delayed Federated Averaging (DeFedAvg). In DeFedAvg, the clients are allowed to perform local training with different stale global models at their own paces. Theoretical analyses demonstrate that DeFedAvg achieves asymptotic convergence rates that are on par with the results of FedAvg for solving nonconvex problems. More importantly, DeFedAvg is the first AFL algorithm that provably achieves the desirable linear speedup property, which indicates its high scalability. Additionally, we carry out extensive numerical experiments using real datasets to validate the efficiency and scalability of our approach when training deep neural networks.

Robust Symbol-Level Precoding for Massive MIMO Communication Under Channel Aging

This paper investigates the robust design of symbol-level precoding (SLP) for multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) downlink transmission with imperfect channel state information (CSI) caused by channel aging. By utilizing the a posteriori channel model based on the widely adopted jointly correlated channel model, the imperfect CSI is modeled as the statistical CSI incorporating the channel mean and channel variance information with spatial correlation. With the signal model in the presence of channel aging, we formulate the signal-to-noise-plus-interference ratio (SINR) balancing and minimum mean square error (MMSE) problems for robust SLP design. The former targets to maximize the minimum SINR across users, while the latter minimizes the mean square error between the received signal and the target constellation point. When it comes to massive MIMO scenarios, the increment in the number of antennas poses a computational complexity challenge, limiting the deployment of SLP schemes. To address such a challenge, we simplify the objective function of the SINR balancing problem and further derive a closed-form SLP scheme. Besides, by approximating the matrix involved in the computation, we modify the proposed algorithm and develop an MMSE-based SLP scheme with lower computation complexity. Simulation results confirm the superiority of the proposed schemes over the state-of-the-art SLP schemes.

Quantized RIS-aided mmWave Massive MIMO Channel Estimation with Uniform Planar Arrays

In this paper, we investigate a cascaded channel estimation method for a millimeter wave (mmWave) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system aided by a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) with the BS equipped with low-resolution analog-to-digital converters (ADCs), where the BS and the RIS are both equipped with a uniform planar array (UPA). Due to the sparse property of mmWave channel, the channel estimation can be solved as a compressed sensing (CS) problem. However, the low-resolution quantization cause severe information loss of signals, and traditional CS algorithms are unable to work well. To recovery the signal and the sparse angular domain channel from quantization, we introduce Bayesian inference and efficient vector approximate message passing (VAMP) algorithm to solve the quantize output CS problem. To further improve the efficiency of the VAMP algorithm, a Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) based fast computation method is derived. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness and the accuracy of the proposed cascaded channel estimation method for the RIS-aided mmWave massive MIMO system with few-bit ADCs. Furthermore, the proposed channel estimation method can reach an acceptable performance gap between the low-resolution ADCs and the infinite ADCs for the low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), which implies the applicability of few-bit ADCs in practice.