Information Theory (cs.IT)

Abstract: In this paper, we investigate the reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) assisted space shift keying (SSK) downlink communication systems under the imperfect channel state information (CSI), where the channel between the base station to RIS follows the Rayleigh fading, while the channel between the RIS to user equipment obeys the Rician fading. Based on the maximum likelihood detector, the conditional pairwise error probability of the composite channel is derived. Then, the probability density function for a non-central chi-square distribution with one degree of freedom is derived. Based on this, the closed-form analytical expression of the RIS-SSK scheme with imperfect CSI is derived. To gain more valuable insights, the asymptotic ABEP expression is also given. Finally, we validate the derived closed-form and asymptotic expressions by Monte Carlo simulations.

Abstract: As Internet of Things (IoT) devices proliferate, sustainable methods for powering them are becoming indispensable. The wireless provision of power enables battery-free operation and is crucial for complying with weight and size restrictions. For the energy harvesting components of these devices to be small, a high operating frequency is necessary. In conjunction with an electrically large antenna, the receivers may be located in the radiating near-field (Fresnel) region, e.g., in indoor scenarios. In this paper, we propose a wireless power transfer system to ensure a reliable supply of power to an arbitrary number of mobile, low-power, and single-antenna receivers, which are located in a three-dimensional cuboid room. To this end, we formulate a max-min optimisation problem to determine the optimal allocation of transmit power among an infinite number of radiating elements of the system's transmit antenna array. Thereby, the optimal deployment, i.e, the set of transmit antenna positions that are allocated non-zero transmit power according to the optimal allocation, is obtained implicitly. Generally, the set of transmit antenna positions corresponding to the optimal deployment has Lebesgue measure zero and the closure of the set has empty interior. Moreover, for a one-dimensional transmit antenna array, the set of transmit antenna positions is proven to be finite. The proposed optimal solution is validated through simulation. Simulation results indicate that the optimal deployment requires a finite number of transmit antennas and depends on the geometry of the environment and the dimensionality of the transmit antenna array. The robustness of the solution, which is obtained under a line-of-sight (LoS) assumption between the transmitter and receiver, is assessed in an isotropic scattering environment containing a strong LoS component.

Abstract: Kolam is a ritual art form practised by people in South India and consists of rule-bound geometric patterns of dots and lines. Single loop Kolams are mathematical closed loop patterns drawn over a grid of dots and conforming to certain heuristics. In this work, we propose a novel encoding scheme where we map the angular movements of Kolam at lattice points into sequences containing $4$ distinct symbols. This is then used to simulate single loop Kolam procedure via turtle moves in accordance with the desired angular direction at specific points. We thus obtain sequential codes for Kolams, unique up to cyclic permutations. We specify the requirements for the algorithm and indicate the general methodology. We demonstrate a sample of Kolams using our algorithm with a software implementation in Python.

Abstract: This paper studies a multi-intelligent-reflecting-surface-(IRS)-enabled integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) system, in which multiple IRSs are installed to help the base station (BS) provide ISAC services at separate line-of-sight (LoS) blocked areas. We focus on the scenario with semi-passive uniform linear array (ULA) IRSsfor sensing, in which each IRS is integrated with dedicated sensors for processing echo signals, and each IRS simultaneously serves one sensing target and one communication user (CU) in its coverage area. In particular, we suppose that the BS sends combined information and dedicated sensing signals for ISAC, and we consider two cases with point and extended targets, in which each IRS aims to estimate the direction-of-arrival (DoA) of the corresponding target and the complete target response matrix, respectively. Under this setup, we first derive the closed-form Cram{\'e}r-Rao bounds (CRBs) for parameters estimation under the two target models. For the point target case, the CRB for AoA estimation is shown to be inversely proportional to the cubic of the number of sensors at each IRS, while for the extended target case, the CRB for target response matrix estimation is proportional to the number of IRS sensors. Next, we consider two different types of CU receivers that can and cannot cancel the interference from dedicated sensing signals prior to information decoding. To achieve fair and optimized sensing performance, we minimize the maximum CRB at all IRSs for the two target cases, via jointly optimizing the transmit beamformers at the BS and the reflective beamformers at the multiple IRSs, subject to the minimum signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) constraints at individual CUs, the maximum transmit power constraint at the BS, and the unit-modulus constraints at the multiple IRSs.

Abstract: In this paper, a hybrid non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) framework for the simultaneous transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS) enhanced cell-edge communication is investigated. Specifically, one transmitted user and one reflected user are paired as one NOMA-pair, while multiple NOMA-pairs are served via time division multiple access (TDMA). The objective is to maximize the minimum downlink rate by jointly optimizing the user pairing, decoding order, passive beamforming, power and time allocation. A novel two-layer iterative algorithm is proposed to solve the highly coupled problem. Simulation results show that: 1) the proposed framework outperforms the conventional reflecting-only-RIS-based and the OMA-based frameworks; 2) the beamforming design and power allocation dominate the achieved performance; 3) increasing the number of passive elements and shortening the distance between BS and STAR-RIS are two effective ways to further improve the performance.

Abstract: Physical layer approaches for generating secret encryption keys for wireless systems using channel information have attracted increased interest from researchers in recent years. This paper presents a new approach for calculating log-likelihood ratios (LLRs) for secret key generation that is based on one-bit quantization of channel measurements and the difference between channel estimates at legitimate reciprocal nodes. The studied secret key agreement approach, which implements advantage distillation along with information reconciliation using Slepian-Wolf low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes, is discussed and illustrated with numerical results obtained from simulations. These results show the probability of bit disagreement for keys generated using the proposed LLR calculations compared with alternative LLR calculation methods for key generation based on channel state information. The proposed LLR calculations are shown to be an improvement to the studied approach of physical layer secret key agreement.

Abstract: Database alignment is a variant of the graph alignment problem: Given a pair of anonymized databases containing separate yet correlated features for a set of users, the problem is to identify the correspondence between the features and align the anonymized user sets based on correlation alone. This closely relates to planted matching, where given a bigraph with random weights, the goal is to identify the underlying matching that generated the given weights. We study an instance of the database alignment problem with multivariate Gaussian features and derive results that apply both for database alignment and for planted matching, demonstrating the connection between them. The performance thresholds for database alignment converge to that for planted matching when the dimensionality of the database features is \(\omega(\log n)\), where \(n\) is the size of the alignment, and no individual feature is too strong. The maximum likelihood algorithms for both planted matching and database alignment take the form of a linear program and we study relaxations to better understand the significance of various constraints under various conditions and present achievability and converse bounds. Our results show that the almost-exact alignment threshold for the relaxed algorithms coincide with that of maximum likelihood, while there is a gap between the exact alignment thresholds. Our analysis and results extend to the unbalanced case where one user set is not fully covered by the alignment.

Abstract: We consider a setting of non-cooperative communication where a receiver wants to recover randomly generated sequences of symbols that are observed by a strategic sender. The sender aims to maximize an average utility that may not align with the recovery criterion of the receiver, whereby the received signals may not be truthful. We pose this problem as a sequential game between the sender and the receiver with the receiver as the leader and determine `achievable strategies' for the receiver that attain arbitrarily small probability of error for large blocklengths. We show the existence of such achievable strategies under a sufficient condition on the utility of the sender. For the case of the binary alphabet, this condition is also necessary, in the absence of which, the probability of error goes to one for all choices of strategies of the receiver. We show that for reliable recovery, the receiver chooses to correctly decode only a subset of messages received from the sender and deliberately makes an error on messages outside this subset. Due to this decoding strategy, despite a clean channel, our setting exhibits a notion of maximum rate of communication above which the probability of error may not vanish asymptotically and in certain cases, may even tend to one. For the case of the binary alphabet, the maximum rate may be strictly less than unity for certain classes of utilities.

Abstract: Connected and autonomous vehicles (CAVs) can reduce human errors in traffic accidents, increase road efficiency, and execute various tasks ranging from delivery to smart city surveillance. Reaping these benefits requires CAVs to autonomously navigate to target destinations. To this end, each CAV's navigation controller must leverage the information collected by sensors and wireless systems for decision-making on longitudinal and lateral movements. However, enabling autonomous navigation for CAVs requires a convergent integration of communication, control, and learning systems. The goal of this article is to explicitly expose the challenges related to this convergence and propose solutions to address them in two major use cases: Uncoordinated and coordinated CAVs. In particular, challenges related to the navigation of uncoordinated CAVs include stable path tracking, robust control against cyber-physical attacks, and adaptive navigation controller design. Meanwhile, when multiple CAVs coordinate their movements during navigation, fundamental problems such as stable formation, fast collaborative learning, and distributed intrusion detection are analyzed. For both cases, solutions using the convergence of communication theory, control theory, and machine learning are proposed to enable effective and secure CAV navigation. Preliminary simulation results are provided to show the merits of proposed solutions.