Integrated Sensing and Communication Under DISCO Physical-Layer Jamming Attacks

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems traditionally presuppose that sensing and communication (S&C) channels remain approximately constant during their coherence time. However, a "DISCO" reconfigurable intelligent surface (DRIS), i.e., an illegitimate RIS with random, time-varying reflection properties that acts like a "disco ball," introduces a paradigm shift that enables active channel aging more rapidly during the channel coherence time. In this letter, we investigate the impact of DISCO jamming attacks launched by a DRISbased fully-passive jammer (FPJ) on an ISAC system. Specifically, an ISAC problem formulation and a corresponding waveform optimization are presented in which the ISAC waveform design considers the trade-off between the S&C performance and is formulated as a Pareto optimization problem. Moreover, a theoretical analysis is conducted to quantify the impact of DISCO jamming attacks. Numerical results are presented to evaluate the S&C performance under DISCO jamming attacks and to validate the derived theoretical analysis.

Movable-Antenna Position Optimization: A Graph-based Approach

Fluid antennas (FAs) and movable antennas (MAs) have emerged as promising technologies in wireless communications, which offer the flexibility to improve channel conditions by adjusting transmit/receive antenna positions within a spatial region. In this letter, we focus on an MA-enhanced multiple-input single-output (MISO) communication system, aiming to optimize the positions of multiple transmit MAs to maximize the received signal power. Unlike the prior works on continuously searching for the optimal MA positions, we propose to sample the transmit region into discrete points, such that the continuous antenna position optimization problem is transformed to a discrete sampling point selection problem based on the point-wise channel information. However, such a point selection problem is combinatory and challenging to be optimally solved. To tackle this challenge, we ingeniously recast it as an equivalent fixed-hop shortest path problem in graph theory and propose a customized algorithm to solve it optimally in polynomial time. To further reduce the complexity, a linear-time sequential update algorithm is also proposed to obtain a high-quality suboptimal solution. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms can yield considerable performance gains over the conventional fixed-position antennas with/without antenna selection.

Intelligent Surfaces Empowered Wireless Network: Recent Advances and The Road to 6G

Intelligent surfaces (ISs) have emerged as a key technology to empower a wide range of appealing applications for wireless networks, due to their low cost, high energy efficiency, flexibility of deployment and capability of constructing favorable wireless channels/radio environments. Moreover, the recent advent of several new IS architectures further expanded their electromagnetic functionalities from passive reflection to active amplification, simultaneous reflection and refraction, as well as holographic beamforming. However, the research on ISs is still in rapid progress and there have been recent technological advances in ISs and their emerging applications that are worthy of a timely review. Thus, we provide in this paper a comprehensive survey on the recent development and advances of ISs aided wireless networks. Specifically, we start with an overview on the anticipated use cases of ISs in future wireless networks such as 6G, followed by a summary of the recent standardization activities related to ISs. Then, the main design issues of the commonly adopted reflection-based IS and their state-of-theart solutions are presented in detail, including reflection optimization, deployment, signal modulation, wireless sensing, and integrated sensing and communications. Finally, recent progress and new challenges in advanced IS architectures are discussed to inspire futrue research.

Intelligent Surfaces Empowered Wireless Network:Recent Advances and The Road to 6G

Intelligent surfaces (ISs) have emerged as a key technology to empower a wide range of appealing applications for wireless networks, due to their low cost, high energy efficiency, flexibility of deployment and capability of constructing favorable wireless channels/radio environments. Moreover, the recent advent of several new IS architectures further expanded their electromagnetic functionalities from passive reflection to active amplification, simultaneous reflection and refraction, as well as holographic beamforming. However, the research on ISs is still in rapid progress and there have been recent technological advances in ISs and their emerging applications that are worthy of a timely review. Thus, we provide in this paper a comprehensive survey on the recent development and advances of ISs aided wireless networks. Specifically, we start with an overview on the anticipated use cases of ISs in future wireless networks such as 6G, followed by a summary of the recent standardization activities related to ISs. Then, the main design issues of the commonly adopted reflection-based IS and their state-of-theart solutions are presented in detail, including reflection optimization, deployment, signal modulation, wireless sensing, and integrated sensing and communications. Finally, recent progress and new challenges in advanced IS architectures are discussed to inspire futrue research.

Multi-Passive/Active-IRS Enhanced Wireless Coverage: Deployment Optimization and Cost-Performance Trade-off

Both passive and active intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) can be deployed in complex environments to enhance wireless network coverage by creating multiple blockage-free cascaded line-of-sight (LoS) links. In this paper, we study a multi-passive/active-IRS (PIRS/AIRS) aided wireless network with a multi-antenna base station (BS) in a given region. First, we divide the region into multiple non-overlapping cells, each of which may contain one candidate location that can be deployed with a single PIRS or AIRS. Then, we show several trade-offs between minimizing the total IRS deployment cost and enhancing the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) performance over all cells via direct/cascaded LoS transmission with the BS. To reconcile these trade-offs, we formulate a joint multi-PIRS/AIRS deployment problem to select an optimal subset of all candidate locations for deploying IRS and also optimize the number of passive/active reflecting elements deployed at each selected location to satisfy a given SNR target over all cells, such that the total deployment cost is minimized. However, due to the combinatorial optimization involved, the formulated problem is difficult to be solved optimally. To tackle this difficulty, we first optimize the reflecting element numbers with given PIRS/AIRS deployed locations via sequential refinement, followed by a partial enumeration to determine the PIRS/AIRS locations. Simulation results show that our proposed algorithm achieves better cost-performance trade-offs than other baseline deployment strategies.

User Power Measurement Based IRS Channel Estimation via Single-Layer Neural Network

One main challenge for implementing intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) aided communications lies in the difficulty to obtain the channel knowledge for the base station (BS)-IRS-user cascaded links, which is needed to design high-performance IRS reflection in practice. Traditional methods for estimating IRS cascaded channels are usually based on the additional pilot signals received at the BS/users, which increase the system training overhead and also may not be compatible with the current communication protocols. To tackle this challenge, we propose in this paper a new single-layer neural network (NN)-enabled IRS channel estimation method based on only the knowledge of users' individual received signal power measurements corresponding to different IRS random training reflections, which are easily accessible in current wireless systems. To evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed channel estimation method, we design the IRS reflection for data transmission based on the estimated cascaded channels in an IRS-aided multiuser communication system. Numerical results show that the proposed IRS channel estimation and reflection design can significantly improve the minimum received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) among all users, as compared to existing power measurement based designs.

Joint Beam Routing and Resource Allocation Optimization for Multi-IRS-Reflection Wireless Power Transfer

Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) can be densely deployed in complex environments to create cascaded line-of-sight (LoS) links between base stations (BSs) and users, which significantly enhance the signal coverage. In this paper, we consider the wireless power transfer (WPT) from a multi-antenna BS to multiple energy users (EUs) by exploiting the signal beam routing via multi-IRS reflections. First, we present a baseline beam routing scheme with each IRS serving at most one EU, where the BS transmits wireless power to all EUs simultaneously while the signals to different EUs undergo disjoint sets of multi-IRS reflection paths. Under this setup, we aim to tackle the joint beam routing and resource allocation optimization problem by jointly optimizing the reflection paths for all EUs, the active/passive beamforming at the BS/each involved IRS, as well as the BS's power allocation for different EUs to maximize the minimum received signal power among all EUs. Next, to further improve the WPT performance, we propose two new beam routing schemes, namely dynamic beam routing and subsurface-based beam routing, where each IRS can serve multiple EUs via different time slots and different subsurfaces, respectively. In particular, we prove that dynamic beam routing outperforms subsurface-based beam routing in terms of minimum harvested power among all EUs. In addition, we show that the optimal performance of dynamic beam routing is achieved by assigning all EUs with orthogonal time slots for WPT. A clique-based optimization approach is also proposed to solve the joint beam routing and resource allocation problems for the baseline beam routing and proposed dynamic beam routing schemes. Numerical results are finally presented, which demonstrate the superior performance of the proposed dynamic beam routing scheme to the baseline scheme.

Target-Mounted Intelligent Reflecting Surface for Joint Location and Orientation Estimation

Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has been widely recognized as an efficient technique to reconfigure the electromagnetic environment in favor of wireless communication performance. In this paper, we propose a new application of IRS for device-free target sensing via joint location and orientation estimation. In particular, different from the existing works that use IRS as an additional anchor node for localization/sensing, we consider mounting IRS on the sensing target, whereby estimating the IRS's location and orientation as that of the target by leveraging IRS's controllable signal reflection. To this end, we first propose a tensor-based method to acquire essential angle information between the IRS and the sensing transmitter as well as a set of distributed sensing receivers. Next, based on the estimated angle information, we formulate two optimization problems to estimate the location and orientation of the IRS/target, respectively, and obtain the locally optimal solutions to them by invoking two iterative algorithms, namely, gradient descent method and manifold optimization. In particular, we show that the orientation estimation problem admits a closed-form solution in a special case that usually holds in practice. Furthermore, theoretical analysis is conducted to draw essential insights into the proposed sensing system design and performance. Simulation results verify our theoretical analysis and demonstrate that the proposed methods can achieve high estimation accuracy which is close to the theoretical bound.

Multi-Active/Passive-IRS Enabled Wireless Information and Power Transfer: Active IRS Deployment and Performance Analysis

Intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs), active and/or passive, can be densely deployed in complex environments to significantly enhance wireless network coverage for both wireless information transfer (WIT) and wireless power transfer (WPT). In this letter, we study the downlink WIT/WPT from a multi-antenna base station to a single-antenna user over a multi-active/passive IRS (AIRS/PIRS)-enabled wireless link. In particular, we aim to optimize the location of the AIRS with those of the other PIRSs being fixed to maximize the received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and signal power at the user in the cases of WIT and WPT, respectively. We derive the optimal solutions for these two cases in closed-form, which reveals that the optimal AIRS deployment is generally different for WIT versus WPT. Furthermore, both analytical and numerical results are provided to show the conditions under which the proposed AIRS deployment strategy yields superior performance to other baseline deployment strategies as well as the conventional all- PIRS enabled WIT/WPT.

Joint Base Station and IRS Deployment for Enhancing Network Coverage: A Graph-Based Modeling and Optimization Approach

Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) can be densely deployed in complex environment to create cascaded line-of-sight (LoS) paths between multiple base stations (BSs) and users via tunable IRS reflections, thereby significantly enhancing the coverage performance of wireless networks. To achieve this goal, it is vital to optimize the deployed locations of BSs and IRSs in the wireless network, which is investigated in this paper. Specifically, we divide the coverage area of the network into multiple non-overlapping cells and decide whether to deploy a BS/IRS in each cell given a total number of BSs/IRSs available. We show that to ensure the network coverage/communication performance, i.e., each cell has a direct/cascaded LoS path with at least one BS, as well as such LoS paths have the average number of IRS reflections less than a given threshold, there is a fundamental trade-off with the deployment cost or the number of BSs/IRSs needed. To optimally characterize this trade-off, we formulate a joint BS and IRS deployment problem based on graph theory, which, however, is difficult to be optimally solved due to the combinatorial optimization involved. To circumvent this difficulty, we first consider a simplified problem with given BS deployment and propose the optimal as well as an efficient suboptimal IRS deployment solution to it, by applying the branch-and-bound method and iteratively removing IRSs from the candidate locations, respectively. Next, an efficient sequential update algorithm is proposed for solving the joint BS and IRS deployment problem. Numerical results are provided to show the efficacy of the proposed design approach and optimization algorithms for the joint BS and IRS deployment. The trade-off between the network coverage performance and the number of deployed BSs/IRSs with different cost ratios is also unveiled.