Exploiting NOMA Transmissions in Multi-UAV-assisted Wireless Networks: From Aerial-RIS to Mode-switching UAVs

In this paper, we consider an aerial reconfigurable intelligent surface (ARIS)-assisted wireless network, where multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) collect data from ground users (GUs) by using the non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) method. The ARIS provides enhanced channel controllability to improve the NOMA transmissions and reduce the co-channel interference among UAVs. We also propose a novel dual-mode switching scheme, where each UAV equipped with both an ARIS and a radio frequency (RF) transceiver can adaptively perform passive reflection or active transmission. We aim to maximize the overall network throughput by jointly optimizing the UAVs' trajectory planning and operating modes, the ARIS's passive beamforming, and the GUs' transmission control strategies. We propose an optimization-driven hierarchical deep reinforcement learning (O-HDRL) method to decompose it into a series of subproblems. Specifically, the multi-agent deep deterministic policy gradient (MADDPG) adjusts the UAVs' trajectory planning and mode switching strategies, while the passive beamforming and transmission control strategies are tackled by the optimization methods. Numerical results reveal that the O-HDRL efficiently improves the learning stability and reward performance compared to the benchmark methods. Meanwhile, the dual-mode switching scheme is verified to achieve a higher throughput performance compared to the fixed ARIS scheme.

Detecting and Classifying Defective Products in Images Using YOLO

With the continuous advancement of industrial automation, product quality inspection has become increasingly important in the manufacturing process. Traditional inspection methods, which often rely on manual checks or simple machine vision techniques, suffer from low efficiency and insufficient accuracy. In recent years, deep learning technology, especially the YOLO (You Only Look Once) algorithm, has emerged as a prominent solution in the field of product defect detection due to its efficient real-time detection capabilities and excellent classification performance. This study aims to use the YOLO algorithm to detect and classify defects in product images. By constructing and training a YOLO model, we conducted experiments on multiple industrial product datasets. The results demonstrate that this method can achieve real-time detection while maintaining high detection accuracy, significantly improving the efficiency and accuracy of product quality inspection. This paper further analyzes the advantages and limitations of the YOLO algorithm in practical applications and explores future research directions.

Channel Estimation for XL-IRS Assisted Wireless Systems with Double-sided Visibility Regions

In this paper, we study efficient channel estimation design for an extremely large-scale intelligent reflecting surface (XL-IRS) assisted multi-user communication systems, where both the base station (BS) and users are located in the near-field region of the XL-IRS. Two unique channel characteristics of XL-IRS are considered, namely, the near-field spherical wavefronts and double-sided visibility regions (VRs) at the BS and users, which render the channel estimation for XL-IRS highly challenging. To address this issue, we propose in this paper an efficient three-step XL-IRS channel estimation method. Specifically, in the first step, an anchor node is delicately deployed near the XL-IRS to estimate the cascaded BS-IRS-anchor channel. Then, an efficient VR detection method is devised to estimate the VR information between the BS and XL-IRS. In this way, only the channels from the visible XL-IRS elements to the BS are estimated, thereby reducing the dimension of the cascaded BS-IRS-users channels to be estimated. Third, by leveraging the common BS-IRS channel, the cascaded channels for all users are consecutively estimated accounting for the VRs of the IRS-user channels. Finally, numerical results are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of our proposed channel estimation scheme as compared to various benchmark schemes.

Movable Antenna Enabled Symbiotic Radio Systems: An Opportunity for Mutualism

In this letter, we propose a new movable antenna (MA) enabled symbiotic radio (SR) system that leverages the movement of MAs to maximize both the primary and secondary rates, thereby promoting their mutualism. Specifically, the primary transmitter (PT) equipped with MAs utilizes a maximum ratio transmission (MRT) beamforming scheme to ensure the highest primary rate at the primary user (PU). Concurrently, the backscatter device (BD) establishes the secondary transmission by overlaying onto the primary signal. The utilization of MAs aims to enhance the secondary rate by optimizing the positions of MAs to improve the beam gain at the BD. Accordingly, the beam gains for both MA and fixed-position antenna (FPA) scenarios are analyzed, confirming the effectiveness of the MA scheme in achieving the highest primary and secondary rates. Numerical results verity the superiority of our proposed MA enabled scheme.

Secure Transmission for Movable Antennas Empowered Cell-Free Symbiotic Radio Communications

In this paper, a novel movable antenna (MA) empowered secure transmission scheme is designed for cell-free symbiotic radio (SR) systems in the presence of an eavesdropper (Eve). Specifically, multiple distributed access points (APs) equipped with MAs collaboratively transmit confidential information to the primary user (PU), in the meanwhile the backscatter device (BD) transmits its own information to the secondary user (SU) by reflecting incident signals from the APs. The MAs deployed at the APs can adjust their positions flexibly to improve channel conditions between the APs and the PU/SU/BD and suppress the eavesdropping from the Eve on confidential information at the PU. Under this setup, we maximize the secrecy rate of primary transmission through jointly optimizing the APs' transmission beamforming vectors and the positions of the MAs, while adhering to the quality of service constraints at the SU. To address the challenges caused by the non-convexity and find a near-optimal solution, an alternating optimization (AO) framework is proposed, utilizing the successive convex approximation method, the semi-definite relaxation technology and a genetic algorithm modified particle swarm optimization (GA-PSO) algorithm. Numerical results demonstrate the secrecy rate enhancement provided by utilizing the MAs and show the impact of the GA-PSO algorithm for improving the solving accuracy.

Movable Antenna-Enhanced Wireless Powered Mobile Edge Computing Systems

In this paper, we propose a movable antenna (MA) enhanced scheme for wireless powered mobile edge computing (WP-MEC) system, where the hybrid access point (HAP) equipped with multiple MAs first emits wireless energy to charge wireless devices (WDs), and then receives the offloaded tasks from the WDs for edge computing. The MAs deployed at the HAP enhance the spatial degrees of freedom (DoFs) by flexibly adjusting the positions of MAs within an available region, thereby improving the efficiency of both downlink wireless energy transfer (WPT) and uplink task offloading. To balance the performance enhancement against the implementation intricacy, we further propose three types of MA positioning configurations, i.e., dynamic MA positioning, semi-dynamic MA positioning, and static MA positioning. In addition, the non-linear power conversion of energy harvesting (EH) circuits at the WDs and the finite computing capability at the edge server are taken into account. Our objective is to maximize the sum computational rate (SCR) by jointly optimizing the time allocation, positions of MAs, energy beamforming matrix, receive combing vectors, and offloading strategies of WDs. To solve the non-convex problems, efficient alternating optimization (AO) frameworks are proposed. Moreover, we propose a hybrid algorithm of particle swarm optimization with variable local search (PSO-VLS) to solve the sub-problem of MA positioning. Numerical results validate the superiority of exploiting MAs over the fixed-position antennas (FPAs) for enhancing the SCR performance of WP-MEC systems.

Primary Rate Maximization in Movable Antennas Empowered Symbiotic Radio Communications

In this paper, we propose a movable antenna (MA) empowered scheme for symbiotic radio (SR) communication systems. Specifically, multiple antennas at the primary transmitter (PT) can be flexibly moved to favorable locations to boost the channel conditions of the primary and secondary transmissions. The primary transmission is achieved by the active transmission from the PT to the primary user (PU), while the backscatter device (BD) takes a ride over the incident signal from the PT to passively send the secondary signal to the PU. Under this setup, we consider a primary rate maximization problem by jointly optimizing the transmit beamforming and the positions of MAs at the PT under a practical bit error rate constraint on the secondary transmission. Then, an alternating optimization framework with the utilization of the successive convex approximation, semi-definite processing and simulated annealing (SA) modified particle swarm optimization (SA-PSO) methods is proposed to find the solution of the transmit beamforming and MAs' positions. Finally, numerical results are provided to demonstrate the performance improvement provided by the proposed MA empowered scheme and the proposed algorithm.

STAR-RIS Assisted Wireless-Powered and Backscattering Mobile Edge Computing Networks

Wireless powered and backscattering mobile edge computing (WPB-MEC) network is a novel network paradigm to supply energy supplies and computing resource to wireless sensors (WSs). However, its performance is seriously affected by severe attenuations and inappropriate assumptions of infinite computing capability at the hybrid access point (HAP). To address the above issues, in this paper, we propose a simultaneously transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS) aided scheme for boosting the performance of WPB-MEC network under the constraint of finite computing capability. Specifically, energy-constrained WSs are able to offload tasks actively or passively from them to the HAP. In this process, the STAR-RIS is utilized to improve the quantity of harvested energy and strengthen the offloading efficiency by adapting its operating protocols. We then maximize the sum computational bits (SCBs) under the finite computing capability constraint. To handle the solving challenges, we first present interesting results in closed-form and then design a block coordinate descent (BCD) based algorithm, ensuring a near-optimal solution. Finally, simulation results are provided to confirm that our proposed scheme can improve the SCBs by 9.9 times compared to the local computing only scheme.

Transmit Power Minimization for STAR-RIS Empowered Symbiotic Radio Communications

In this paper, we propose a simultaneously transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS) empowered transmission scheme for symbiotic radio (SR) systems to make more flexibility for network deployment and enhance system performance. The STAR-RIS is utilized to not only beam the primary signals from the base station (BS) towards multiple primary users on the same side of the STAR-RIS, but also achieve the secondary transmission to the secondary users on another side. We consider both the broadcasting signal model and unicasting signal model at the BS. For each model, we aim for minimizing the transmit power of the BS by designing the active beamforming and simultaneous reflection and transmission coefficients under the practical phase correlation constraint. To address the challenge of solving the formulated problem, we propose a block coordinate descent based algorithm with the semidefinite relaxation, penalty dual decomposition and successive convex approximation methods, which decomposes the original problem into one sub-problem about active beamforming and the other sub-problem about simultaneous reflection and transmission coefficients, and iteratively solve them until the convergence is achieved. Numerical results indicate that the proposed scheme can reduce up to 150.6% transmit power compared to the backscattering device enabled scheme.

Robust Secure Transmission for Active RIS Enabled Symbiotic Radio Multicast Communications

In this paper, we propose a robust secure transmission scheme for an active reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) enabled symbiotic radio (SR) system in the presence of multiple eavesdroppers (Eves). In the considered system, the active RIS is adopted to enable the secure transmission of primary signals from the primary transmitter to multiple primary users in a multicasting manner, and simultaneously achieve its own information delivery to the secondary user by riding over the primary signals. Taking into account the imperfect channel state information (CSI) related with Eves, we formulate the system power consumption minimization problem by optimizing the transmit beamforming and reflection beamforming for the bounded and statistical CSI error models, taking the worst-case SNR constraints and the SNR outage probability constraints at the Eves into considerations, respectively. Specifically, the S-Procedure and the Bernstein-Type Inequality are implemented to approximately transform the worst-case SNR and the SNR outage probability constraints into tractable forms, respectively. After that, the formulated problems can be solved by the proposed alternating optimization (AO) algorithm with the semi-definite relaxation and sequential rank-one constraint relaxation techniques. Numerical results show that the proposed active RIS scheme can reduce up to 27.0% system power consumption compared to the passive RIS.