Near-Field Beamforming for Stacked Intelligent Metasurfaces-assisted MIMO Networks

Stacked intelligent metasurfaces (SIMs) have recently gained significant interest since they enable precoding in the wave domain that comes with increased processing capability and reduced energy consumption. The study of SIMs and high frequency propagation make the study of the performance in the near field of crucial importance. Hence, in this work, we focus on SIM-assisted multiuser multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems operating in the near field region. To this end, we formulate the weighted sum rate maximisation problem in terms of the transmit power and the phase shifts of the SIM. By applying a block coordinate descent (BCD)-relied algorithm, numerical results show the enhanced performance of the SIM in the near field with respect to the far field.

Achievable Rate Optimization for Large Stacked Intelligent Metasurfaces Based on Statistical CSI

Stacked intelligent metasurface (SIM) is an emerging design that consists of multiple layers of metasurfaces. A SIM enables holographic multiple-input multiple-output (HMIMO) precoding in the wave domain, which results in the reduction of energy consumption and hardware cost. On the ground of multiuser beamforming, this letter focuses on the downlink achievable rate and its maximization. Contrary to previous works on multiuser SIM, we consider statistical channel state information (CSI) as opposed to instantaneous CSI to overcome challenges such as large overhead. Also, we examine the performance of large surfaces. We apply an alternating optimization (AO) algorithm regarding the phases of the SIM and the allocated transmit power. Simulations illustrate the performance of the considered large SIM-assisted design as well as the comparison between different CSI considerations.