NYU Tandon School of Engineering
Abstract:Accurate indoor localization is essential for emerging applications in robotic navigation and search and rescue. While classical methods typically focus on single-point estimates, complex indoor environments with heavy blockage and multipath propagation often lead to multimodal likelihood surfaces where a single estimate is insufficient. This paper proposes LOCUS-DT (Localization via Observation-Conditioned Uncertainty Scoring with Digital Twins), a framework that treats snapshot localization as posterior inference over the transmitter location. By leveraging a ray-tracing-based digital twin (DT) of the known environment, LOCUS-DT generates synthetic multipath profiles for candidate locations and compares them against the measured channel profile. Central to our approach is a novel learned scoring function designed to compare a fixed number of dominant specular paths, providing robustness against errors in both the DT environment model and the physical channel estimation. Importantly, LOCUS-DT is trained over an ensemble of environments to ensure generalization to unseen layouts. We evaluate the system using a Sionna-based ray-tracing backend, demonstrating that LOCUS-DT captures the sharp, multimodal posterior structures inherent in indoor settings more accurately than standard Gaussian or Gaussian-mixture benchmarks.
Abstract:Terrestrial--satellite coexistence in the upper mid-band is challenging when a terrestrial base station has limited prior information about non-terrestrial receivers and their uplink transmissions. This paper studies noncoherent victim sensing and interference nulling, where uplink sensing snapshots are observed while the transmitted waveform is treated as unknown. For a single victim, we show that the generalized likelihood-ratio test reduces to a principal-eigenvector estimator of the sample covariance. For multiple victims, we combine MDL-based model-order selection with MUSIC to recover anonymous direction and power information that is sufficient for beam design without pilot knowledge or user identities. These estimates are then used in a nulling beamformer that preserves the intended terrestrial link while reducing leakage toward detected victims. We further analyze the single-victim estimator in the large-matrix regime and show that estimation accuracy improves with sensing SNR, which reveals the observed interplay between path loss and estimation quality. Site-specific ray-tracing results show significant reduction of NTN INR with only modest degradation of TN SINR.
Abstract:Spectrum sensing is a fundamental problem in the upper mid-band, where spectrum resources are shared with incumbent systems. This paper considers frequency-domain occupancy estimation when the number of primary user signals, their bandwidths, and their signal-to-noise ratios are all unknown. We develop a generalized likelihood ratio test and a computationally efficient search procedure that combines binary search with dynamic programming to select the set of intervals maximizing the sum of log-likelihoods. The proposed method is validated through both simulation data and over-the-air experimental data using an upper mid-band software-defined radio (SDR), demonstrating its practical applicability.
Abstract:This paper presents a theoretical framework for multi-band localization for a single-path single-input multiple-output (SIMO) system. We derive closed-form Cramer-Rao bounds (CRBs) for angle-of-arrival (AoA) and distance for uniform linear arrays (ULAs), and an intermediate matrix-form formulation for arbitrary array shapes. We also develop benchmark single- and multi-band maximum-likelihood (ML) estimators for AoA-Distance, leveraging a structured Levenberg-Marquardt (LM) refinement procedure. A key contribution is an analytical characterization of the threshold SNR (TSNR) for the proposed estimators. This is the SNR threshold at which the estimator transitions from "off the chart" to CRB-approaching performance, for both TDoA and distance estimation. Numerical simulations confirm that the proposed single- and multi-band estimators achieve the CRB at SNRs above the predicted TSNR, and that multi-band processing simultaneously improves estimation accuracy and reduces SNR requirements. The resulting framework provides a rigorous foundation for next-generation multi-band localization and can be readily extended to elevation estimation, distributed arrays, and multi-path environments.
Abstract:The ever-growing demand for mobile data necessitates a transport network architecture that can withstand the 5G-and-beyond multi-Gbps traffic requirements. To cater for such unprecedented demand, studies are being conducted to incorporate TeraHertz (THz) communications in future mobile networks. In this paper, we consider an urban environment and evaluate the feasibility of THz wireless midhaul links for the transport networks between the Central Units (CU) and Distributed Units (DU) in a disaggregated 5G network architecture with functional splits. Our goal is to study the feasibility of midhaul links at 140 GHz by minimizing the number of required CUs to serve all the DUs. To this end, we define several policies for selecting CU and DU nodes in order to determine the peak data rate that can be supported over each link between a CU and DU. Our numerical results based on ray-tracing suggest that wireless links at 140 GHz with 3GPP option 2 as High Layer Split (HLS) represents a promising technology for midhaul transport networks.
Abstract:Long-term beamforming substantially reduces the channel estimation and inversion overhead of conventional massive MU-MIMO receivers; yet, its construction still hinges on the inversion of a large Hermitian matrix, whose condition number deteriorates with the per-user SNR dynamic range. When this inversion is approximated in hardware via the conjugate gradient (CG) algorithm, the deterioration directly inflates the iteration count and, consequently, the energy and latency budget. We propose a hardware-friendly low-rank preconditioning framework that targets exactly this bottleneck. The preconditioner is constructed from the top eigenpairs of the long-term covariance matrix through a randomized complex eigenvalue decomposition (RC-EVD), whose inner QR factorizations are realized via a Cholesky-based scheme (QRC), confining the dominant cost to generalized matrix multiplication (GEMM) and small triangular solves that map naturally onto systolic arrays. We further show that performing the preconditioned CG inversion in the beamspace domain induces sparsification of the system matrix and provides additional convergence acceleration at negligible transformation cost. Ray-tracing simulations confirm that the joint scheme reduces the required CG iteration count by two to three while matching the post-equalization SINR of the exact inversion.
Abstract:The integration of accurate and reproducible wireless network simulations is a key enabler for research on open, virtualized, and intelligent communication systems. Network Digital Twins (NDTs) provide a scalable alternative to costly and time-consuming measurement campaigns, while enabling controlled experimentation and data generation for data-driven network design. In this paper, we present an open and user-friendly NDT framework that integrates controllable vehicular mobility with the site-specific ray tracer Sionna and the discrete-event ns-3 network simulator, enabling virtualized end-to-end modeling of wireless networks across the radio, network, and application layers. The proposed framework is particularly well-suited for dynamic vehicular networks and urban deployments, supporting realistic mobility, traffic dynamics, and the extraction of cross-layer metrics. To promote open-source initiatives, we release both the NDT implementation and a representative dataset generated from realistic vehicular and urban scenarios. The framework and dataset facilitate reproducible experimentation and benchmarking of machine learning-based quality of service prediction, network optimization, and intelligent network management algorithms, lowering the entry barrier for research on virtual and open wireless network services.
Abstract:Long-term beamforming (LTBF) is a widely-used scalable alternative to instantaneous multi-user MIMO processing that leverages slowly varying spatial channel statistics. VLSI implementations require matrix inversion that become computationally challenging for massive MIMO systems with large number of antennas. In this work, we show that dominant interferers significantly degrade the numerical conditioning of the LTBF covariance matrix, leading to severe performance loss in finite-precision implementations of polynomial and conjugate gradient (CG) based inversion methods. To address this issue, we propose a subspace nulling approach that operates solely on long-term channel statistics and acts as an implicit preconditioning step for LTBF. By projecting the received signal onto the orthogonal complement of the dominant interference subspace, the proposed method reduces the eigenvalue spread of the covariance matrix and improves numerical stability. Through ray-tracing simulations in a realistic 5G scenario, we demonstrate that the proposed method substantially reduces the number of CG iterations required to achieve near-optimal performance across floating-point and fixed-point implementations while preserving the low-overhead nature of LTBF.
Abstract:Null forming is increasingly essential in modern wireless systems for spectrum-sharing, anti-jamming, and covert communications in contested and congested environments. Achieving deep nulls, however, is far more demanding than conventional beam steering: nulls are intrinsically narrow, and even small phase, timing, or gain mismatches across RF chains can significantly degrade suppression. This work develops and validates a self-calibrating SDR architecture tailored for high-fidelity null forming using a compact reference transmitter directionally coupled to the antenna feeds. We demonstrate the effectiveness of the approach through simulation and experimental measurements on an SDR platform operating from 3.0 to 3.5GHz, a band of growing importance for Department of Defense spectrum-sharing initiatives.
Abstract:Ray tracing is increasingly utilized in wireless system simulations to estimate channel paths. In large-scale simulations with complex environments, ray tracing at high resolution can be computationally demanding. To reduce the computation, this paper presents a novel method for conducting ray tracing at a coarse set of reference points and interpolating the channels at other locations. The key insight is to interpolate the images of reflected points. In addition to the computational savings, the method directly captures the spherical nature of each wavefront enabling fast and accurate computation of channels using line-of-sight MIMO and other wide aperture techniques. Through empirical validation and comparison with exhaustive ray tracing, we demonstrate the efficacy and practicality of our approach in achieving high-fidelity channel predictions with reduced computational resources.