ISAC Prototype System for Multi-Domain Cooperative Communication Networks

Future wireless networks are poised to transform into integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) networks, unlocking groundbreaking services such as digital twinning. To harness the full potential of ISAC networks, it is essential to experimentally validate their sensing capabilities and the role of sensing in boosting communication. However, current prototype systems fall short in supporting multiple sensing functions or validating sensing-assisted communication. In response, we have developed an advanced ISAC prototype system that incorporates monostatic, bistatic, and network sensing modes. This system supports multimodal data collection and synchronization, ensuring comprehensive experimental validation. On the communication front, it excels in sensing-aided beam tracking and real-time high-definition video transmission. For sensing applications, it provides precise angle and range measurements, real-time angle-range imaging, and radio-based simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM). Our prototype aligns with the 5G New Radio standard, offering scalability for up to 16 user equipments (UEs) in uplink transmission and 10 UEs in downlink transmission. Real-world tests showcase the system's superior accuracy, with root mean square errors of 2.3 degrees for angle estimation and 0.3 meters (m) for range estimation. Additionally, the estimation errors for multimodal-aided real-time radio SLAM localization and mapping are 0.25 m and 0.8 m, respectively.

Joint User Scheduling and Precoding for RIS-Aided MU-MISO Systems: A MADRL Approach

With the increasing demand for spectrum efficiency and energy efficiency, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) have attracted massive attention due to its low-cost and capability of controlling wireless environment. However, there is still a lack of treatments to deal with the growth of the number of users and RIS elements, which may incur performance degradation or computational complexity explosion. In this paper, we investigate the joint optimization of user scheduling and precoding for distributed RIS-aided communication systems. Firstly, we propose an optimization-based numerical method to obtain suboptimal solutions with the aid of the approximation of ergodic sum rate. Secondly, to reduce the computational complexity caused by the high dimensionality, we propose a data-driven scalable and generalizable multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (MADRL) framework with the aim to maximize the ergodic sum rate approximation through the cooperation of all agents. Further, we propose a novel dynamic working process exploiting the trained MADRL algorithm, which enables distributed RISs to configure their own passive precoding independently. Simulation results show that our algorithm substantially reduces the computational complexity by a time reduction of three orders of magnitude at the cost of 3% performance degradation, compared with the optimization-based method, and achieves 6% performance improvement over the state-of-the-art MADRL algorithms.

Position-Aided Semantic Communication for Efficient Image Transmission: Design, Implementation, and Experimental Results

Semantic communication, augmented by knowledge bases (KBs), offers substantial reductions in transmission overhead and resilience to errors. However, existing methods predominantly rely on end-to-end training to construct KBs, often failing to fully capitalize on the rich information available at communication devices. Motivated by the growing convergence of sensing and communication, we introduce a novel Position-Aided Semantic Communication (PASC) framework, which integrates localization into semantic transmission. This framework is particularly designed for position-based image communication, such as real-time uploading of outdoor camera-view images. By utilizing the position, the framework retrieves corresponding maps, and then an advanced foundation model (FM)-driven view generator is employed to synthesize images closely resembling the target images. The PASC framework further leverages the FM to fuse the synthesized image with deviations from the real one, enhancing semantic reconstruction. Notably, the framework is highly flexible, capable of adapting to dynamic content and fluctuating channel conditions through a novel FM-based parameter optimization strategy. Additionally, the challenges of real-time deployment are addressed, with the development of a hardware testbed to validate the framework. Simulations and real-world tests demonstrate that the proposed PASC approach not only significantly boosts transmission efficiency, but also remains robust in diverse and evolving transmission scenarios.

Electromagnetic Property Sensing and Channel Reconstruction Based on Diffusion Schrödinger Bridge in ISAC

Integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) has emerged as a transformative paradigm for next-generation wireless systems. In this paper, we present a novel ISAC scheme that leverages the diffusion Schrodinger bridge (DSB) to realize the sensing of electromagnetic (EM) property of a target as well as the reconstruction of the wireless channel. The DSB framework connects EM property sensing and channel reconstruction by establishing a bidirectional process: the forward process transforms the distribution of EM property into the channel distribution, while the reverse process reconstructs the EM property from the channel. To handle the difference in dimensionality between the high-dimensional sensing channel and the lower-dimensional EM property, we generate latent representations using an autoencoder network. The autoencoder compresses the sensing channel into a latent space that retains essential features, which incorporates positional embeddings to process spatial context. The simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed DSB framework, which achieves superior reconstruction of the targets shape, relative permittivity, and conductivity. Moreover, the proposed method can also realize high-fidelity channel reconstruction given the EM property of the target. The dual capability of accurately sensing the EM property and reconstructing the channel across various positions within the sensing area underscores the versatility and potential of the proposed approach for broad application in future ISAC systems.

Efficient Deep Learning-based Cascaded Channel Feedback in RIS-Assisted Communications

In the realm of reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted communication systems, the connection between a base station (BS) and user equipment (UE) is formed by a cascaded channel, merging the BS-RIS and RIS-UE channels. Due to the fixed positioning of the BS and RIS and the mobility of UE, these two channels generally exhibit different time-varying characteristics, which are challenging to identify and exploit for feedback overhead reduction, given the separate channel estimation difficulty. To address this challenge, this letter introduces an innovative deep learning-based framework tailored for cascaded channel feedback, ingeniously capturing the intrinsic time variation in the cascaded channel. When an entire cascaded channel has been sent to the BS, this framework advocates the feedback of an efficient representation of this variation within a subsequent period through an extraction-compression scheme. This scheme involves RIS unit-grained channel variation extraction, followed by autoencoder-based deep compression to enhance compactness. Numerical simulations confirm that this feedback framework significantly reduces both the feedback and computational burdens.

Fast Adaptation for Deep Learning-based Wireless Communications

The integration with artificial intelligence (AI) is recognized as one of the six usage scenarios in next-generation wireless communications. However, several critical challenges hinder the widespread application of deep learning (DL) techniques in wireless communications. In particular, existing DL-based wireless communications struggle to adapt to the rapidly changing wireless environments. In this paper, we discuss fast adaptation for DL-based wireless communications by using few-shot learning (FSL) techniques. We first identify the differences between fast adaptation in wireless communications and traditional AI tasks by highlighting two distinct FSL design requirements for wireless communications. To establish a wide perspective, we present a comprehensive review of the existing FSL techniques in wireless communications that satisfy these two design requirements. In particular, we emphasize the importance of applying domain knowledge in achieving fast adaptation. We specifically focus on multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MU-MIMO) precoding as an examples to demonstrate the advantages of the FSL to achieve fast adaptation in wireless communications. Finally, we highlight several open research issues for achieving broadscope future deployment of fast adaptive DL in wireless communication applications.

Meta-Learning Empowered Graph Neural Networks for Radio Resource Management

In this paper, we consider a radio resource management (RRM) problem in the dynamic wireless networks, comprising multiple communication links that share the same spectrum resource. To achieve high network throughput while ensuring fairness across all links, we formulate a resilient power optimization problem with per-user minimum-rate constraints. We obtain the corresponding Lagrangian dual problem and parameterize all variables with neural networks, which can be trained in an unsupervised manner due to the provably acceptable duality gap. We develop a meta-learning approach with graph neural networks (GNNs) as parameterization that exhibits fast adaptation and scalability to varying network configurations. We formulate the objective of meta-learning by amalgamating the Lagrangian functions of different network configurations and utilize a first-order meta-learning algorithm, called Reptile, to obtain the meta-parameters. Numerical results verify that our method can efficiently improve the overall throughput and ensure the minimum rate performance. We further demonstrate that using the meta-parameters as initialization, our method can achieve fast adaptation to new wireless network configurations and reduce the number of required training data samples.

Rotatable Block-Controlled RIS: Bridging the Performance Gap to Element-Controlled Systems

The passive reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) requires numerous elements to achieve adequate array gain, which linearly increases power consumption (PC) with the number of reflection phases. To address this, this letter introduces a rotatable block-controlled RIS (BC-RIS) that preserves spectral efficiency (SE) while reducing power costs. Unlike the element-controlled RIS (EC-RIS), which necessitates independent phase control for each element, the BC-RIS uses a single phase control circuit for each block, substantially lowering power requirements. In the maximum ratio transmission, by customizing specular reflection channels through the rotation of blocks and coherently superimposing signals with optimized reflection phase of blocks, the BC-RIS achieves the same averaged SE as the EC-RIS. To counteract the added power demands from rotation, influenced by block size, we have developed a segmentation scheme to minimize overall PC. Furthermore, constraints for rotation power-related parameters have been established to enhance the energy efficiency of the BC-RIS compared to the EC-RIS. Numerical results confirm that this approach significantly improves energy efficiency while maintaining performance.

Mid-Band Extra Large-Scale MIMO System: Channel Modeling and Performance Analysis

In pursuit of enhanced quality of service and higher transmission rates, communication within the mid-band spectrum, such as bands in the 6-15 GHz range, combined with extra large-scale multiple-input multiple-output (XL-MIMO), is considered a potential enabler for future communication systems. However, the characteristics introduced by mid-band XL-MIMO systems pose challenges for channel modeling and performance analysis. In this paper, we first analyze the potential characteristics of mid-band MIMO channels. Then, an analytical channel model incorporating novel channel characteristics is proposed, based on a review of classical analytical channel models. This model is convenient for theoretical analysis and compatible with other analytical channel models. Subsequently, based on the proposed channel model, we analyze key metrics of wireless communication, including the ergodic spectral efficiency (SE) and outage probability (OP) of MIMO maximal-ratio combining systems. Specifically, we derive closed-form approximations and performance bounds for two typical scenarios, aiming to illustrate the influence of mid-band XL-MIMO systems. Finally, comparisons between systems under different practical configurations are carried out through simulations. The theoretical analysis and simulations demonstrate that mid-band XL-MIMO systems excel in SE and OP due to the increased array elements, moderate large-scale fading, and enlarged transmission bandwidth.

Generative Diffusion Models for High Dimensional Channel Estimation

Along with the prosperity of generative artificial intelligence (AI), its potential for solving conventional challenges in wireless communications has also surfaced. Inspired by this trend, we investigate the application of the advanced diffusion models (DMs), a representative class of generative AI models, to high dimensional wireless channel estimation. By capturing the structure of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless channels via a deep generative prior encoded by DMs, we develop a novel posterior inference method for channel reconstruction. We further adapt the proposed method to recover channel information from low-resolution quantized measurements. Additionally, to enhance the over-the-air viability, we integrate the DM with the unsupervised Stein's unbiased risk estimator to enable learning from noisy observations and circumvent the requirements for ground truth channel data that is hardly available in practice. Results reveal that the proposed estimator achieves high-fidelity channel recovery while reducing estimation latency by a factor of 10 compared to state-of-the-art schemes, facilitating real-time implementation. Moreover, our method outperforms existing estimators while reducing the pilot overhead by half, showcasing its scalability to ultra-massive antenna arrays.