Analysis of Scalable Anomalous Reflectors through Ray Tracing and Measurements

In this study, we elaborate on the concept of scalable anomalous reflector (AR) to analyze the angular response, frequency response, and spatial scalability of a designed AR across a broad range of angles and frequencies. We utilize theoretical models and ray tracing simulations to investigate the communication performance of two different-sized scalable finite ARs, one smaller configuration with 48 x 48 array of unit cells and the other constructed by combining four smaller ARs to form a larger array with 96 x 96 unit cells. To validate the developed theoretical approach, we conducted measurements in an auditorium to evaluate the received power through an AR link at different angles and frequencies. In addition, models of scalable deflectors are implemented in the MATLAB ray tracer to simulate the measurement scenario. The results from theoretical calculations and ray tracing simulations achieve good agreement with measurement results.

Modeling RIS from Electromagnetic Principles to Communication Systems--Part II: System-Level Simulation, Ray Tracing, and Measurement

In this paper, we systematically study the electromagnetic (EM) and communication aspects of an RIS through EM simulations, system-level and ray-tracing simulations, and finally measurements. We simulate a nearly perfect, lossless RIS, and a realistic lossy anomalous reflector (AR) in different ray tracers and analyze the large-scale fading of simple RIS-assisted links. We also compare the results with continuous and quantized unit cell reflection phases with one to four-bit resolutions. Finally, we perform over-the-air communication link measurements in an indoor setting with a manufactured sample of a wide-angle AR. The EM, system-level, and ray-tracing simulation results show good agreement with the measurement results. It is proved that the introduced macroscopic model of RIS from the EM aspects is consistent with our proposed communication models, both for an ideal RIS and a realistic AR.

Self-Supervised and Invariant Representations for Wireless Localization

In this work, we present a wireless localization method that operates on self-supervised and unlabeled channel estimates. Our self-supervising method learns general-purpose channel features robust to fading and system impairments. Learned representations are easily transferable to new environments and ready to use for other wireless downstream tasks. To the best of our knowledge, the proposed method is the first joint-embedding self-supervised approach to forsake the dependency on contrastive channel estimates. Our approach outperforms fully-supervised techniques in small data regimes under fine-tuning and, in some cases, linear evaluation. We assess the performance in centralized and distributed massive MIMO systems for multiple datasets. Moreover, our method works indoors and outdoors without additional assumptions or design changes.

Attention Aided CSI Wireless Localization

Deep neural networks (DNNs) have become a popular approach for wireless localization based on channel state information (CSI). A common practice is to use the raw CSI in the input and allow the network to learn relevant channel representations for mapping to location information. However, various works show that raw CSI can be very sensitive to system impairments and small changes in the environment. On the contrary, hand-designing features may hinder the limits of channel representation learning of the DNN. In this work, we propose attention-based CSI for robust feature learning. We evaluate the performance of attended features in centralized and distributed massive MIMO systems for ray-tracing channels in two non-stationary railway track environments. By comparison to a base DNN, our approach provides exceptional performance.

Impact of Channel Correlation on Subspace-Based Activity Detection in Grant-Free NOMA

In this paper, we consider the problem of activity detection in grant-free code-domain non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA). We focus on performing activity detection via subspace methods under a setup where the data and pilot spreading signatures are of different lengths, and consider a realistic frame-structure similar to existing mobile networks. We investigate the impact of channel correlation on the activity detection performance; first, we consider the case where the channel exhibits high correlation in time and frequency and show how it can heavily deteriorate the performance. To tackle that, we propose to apply user-specific masking sequences overlaid on top of the pilot signatures. Second, we consider the other extreme with the channel being highly selective, and show that it can also negatively impact the performance. We investigate possible pilots' reallocation strategies that can help reduce its impact.

Learning-based Remote Radio Head Selection and Localization in Distributed Antenna System

In this work, we consider estimating user positions in a spatially distributed antenna system (DAS) from the uplink channel state information (CSI). However, with the increased number of remote radio heads (RRHs), collecting CSI at a central unit (CU) can significantly increase the fronthaul overhead and computational complexity of the CU. This problem can be mitigated by selecting a subset of RRHs. Thus, we present a deep learning-based approach to select a subset of RRHs for wireless localization. We employ an RRH selection layer that is jointly trained with the rest of the network and learn the model parameters as well as the set of selected RRHs. We show that the selection strategy comes at a relatively small cost of localization performance. Nonetheless, by comparison to a trivial approach based on the maximization of the channel gain, we show that the proposed method leads to significant performance gains in a propagation environment dominated by non-line-of-sight.

Towards Scalable Uncertainty Aware DNN-based Wireless Localisation

Existing deep neural network (DNN) based wireless localization approaches typically do not capture uncertainty inherent in their estimates. In this work, we propose and evaluate variational and scalable DNN approaches to measure the uncertainty as a result of changing propagation conditions and the finite number of training samples. Furthermore, we show that data uncertainty is sufficient to capture the uncertainty due to non-line-of-sight (NLOS) and, model uncertainty improves the overall reliability. To assess the robustness due to channel conditions and out-of-set regions, we evaluate the methods on challenging massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) scenarios.

RIS-Assisted Code-Domain MIMO-NOMA

We consider the combination of uplink code-domain non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) with massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs). We assume a setup in which the base station (BS) is capable of forming beams towards the RISs under line-of-sight conditions, and where each RIS is covering a cluster of users. In order to support multi-user transmissions within a cluster, code-domain NOMA via spreading is utilized. We investigate the optimization of the RIS weights such that a large number of users is supported. As it turns out, it is a coupled optimization problem that depends on the detection order under interference cancellation and the applied filtering at the BS. We propose to decouple those variables by using sum-rate optimized weights as the initial solution, allowing us to obtain a decoupled estimate of those variables. Then, in order to determine the final weights, the problem is relaxed into a semidefinite program that can be solved efficiently via convex optimization algorithms. Simulation results show the effectiveness of our approach in improving the detectability of the users.

Outage Analysis of Uplink IRS-Assisted NOMA under Elements Splitting

In this paper, we investigate the outage performance of an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) uplink, in which a group of the surface reflecting elements are configured to boost the signal of one of the user equipments (UEs), while the remaining elements are used to boost the other UE. By approximating the received powers as Gamma random variables, tractable expressions for the outage probability under NOMA interference cancellation are obtained. We evaluate the outage over different splits of the elements and varying pathloss differences between the two UEs. The analysis shows that for small pathloss differences, the split should be chosen such that most of the IRS elements are configured to boost the stronger UE, while for large pathloss differences, it is more beneficial to boost the weaker UE. Finally, we investigate a robust selection of the elements' split under the criterion of minimizing the maximum outage between the two UEs.

On the Parametrization and Statistics of Propagation Graphs

Propagation graphs (PGs) serve as a frequency-selective, spatially consistent channel model suitable for fast channel simulations in a scattering environment. So far, however, the parametrization of the model, and its consequences, have received little attention. In this contribution, we propose a new parametrization for PGs that adheres to the doubly exponentially decaying cluster structure of the Saleh-Valenzuela (SV) model. We show how to compute the newly proposed internal model parameters based on an approximation of the $K$-factor and the two decay rates from the SV model. Furthermore, via the singular values of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channels, we compare the degrees of freedom (DoF) between our new and another frequently used parametrization. Specifically, we compare the DoF loss when the distance between antennas within the transmitter and receiver arrays or the average distance between scatterers decreases. Based on this comparison, it is shown that, in contrast to the typical parametrization, our newly proposed parametrization loses DoF in both scenarios, as one would expect from a spatially consistent channel model.