Information Theory (cs.IT)

Abstract: Deploying active reflecting elements at the intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) increases signal amplification capability but incurs higher power consumption. Therefore, it remains a challenging and open problem to determine the optimal number of active/passive elements for maximizing energy efficiency (EE). To answer this question, we consider a hybrid active-passive IRS (H-IRS) assisted wireless communication system, where the H-IRS consists of both active and passive reflecting elements.Specifically, we study the optimization of the number of active/passive elements at the H-IRS to maximize EE. To this end, we first derive the closed-form expression for a near-optimal solution under the line-of-sight (LoS) channel case and obtain its optimal solution under the Rayleigh fading channel case. Then, an efficient algorithm is employed to obtain a high-quality sub-optimal solution for the EE maximization under the general Rician channel case. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the H-IRS for maximizing EE under different Rician factors and IRS locations.

Abstract: This paper considers a downlink satellite communication system where a satellite cluster, i.e., a satellite swarm consisting of one leader and multiple follower satellites, serves a ground terminal. The satellites in the cluster form either a linear or circular formation moving in a group and cooperatively send their signals by maximum ratio transmission precoding. We first conduct a coordinate transformation to effectively capture the relative positions of satellites in the cluster. Next, we derive an exact expression for the orbital configuration-dependent outage probability under the Nakagami fading by using the distribution of the sum of independent Gamma random variables. In addition, we obtain a simpler approximated expression for the outage probability with the help of second-order moment-matching. We also analyze asymptotic behavior in the high signal-to-noise ratio regime and the diversity order of the outage performance. Finally, we verify the analytical results through Monte Carlo simulations. Our analytical results provide the performance of satellite cluster-based communication systems based on specific orbital configurations, which can be used to design reliable satellite clusters in terms of cluster size, formation, and orbits.

Abstract: For short-packet, low-latency communications over random access channels, piloting overhead significantly reduces spectral efficiency. Therefore, pilotless systems recently gained attraction. While blind phase estimation algorithms such as Viterbi-Viterbi Phase Estimation (VVPE) can correct a phase offset using only payload symbols, a phase ambiguity remains. We first show that the remaining phase rotations in a polar coded quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) transmission with gray labeling are combinations of bit-flips and automorphisms. Therefore, the decoder is equivariant to such phase rotations and, by smartly selecting the frozen bits, one can jointly decode and resolve the phase ambiguity, without the need for pilot symbols or an outer code. Our proposed system outperforms pilot-assisted transmissions by up to 0.8 dB and 2 dB for quaternary phase shift keying (QPSK) and 16-QAM, respectively.

Abstract: In this paper we generalize the notion of low-rank parity check (LRPC) codes by introducing a bilinear product over F^m q based on a generic 3-tensor in Fq^mxmxm, where Fq is the finite field with q elements. The generalized LRPC codes are Fq -linear codes in general and a particular choice of the 3-tensor corresponds to the original Fqm -linear LRPC codes. For the generalized LRPC codes, we propose two probabilistic polynomial-time decoding algorithms by adapting the decoding method for LRPC codes and also show that the proposed algorithms have a decoding failure rate similar to that of decoding LRPC codes

Abstract: Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) represent a pioneering technology to realize smart electromagnetic environments by reshaping the wireless channel. \textcolor[rgb]{0,0,0}{Jointly designing the transceiver and RIS relies on the channel state information (CSI), whose feedback has not been investigated in multi-RIS-assisted frequency division duplexing systems.} In this study, the limited feedback of the RIS-assisted wireless channel is examined by capitalizing on the ability of the RIS in channel customization. \textcolor[rgb]{0,0,0}{By configuring the phase shifters of the surfaces using statistical CSI, we customize a sparse channel in rich-scattering environments, which significantly reduces the feedback overhead in designing the transceiver and RISs. Since the channel is customized in terms of singular value decomposition (SVD) with full-rank, the optimal SVD transceiver can be approached without a matrix decomposition and feeding back the complete channel parameters. The theoretical spectral efficiency (SE) loss of the proposed transceiver and RIS design is derived by considering the limited CSI quantization. To minimize the SE loss, a bit partitioning algorithm that splits the limited number of bits to quantize the CSI is developed.} Extensive numerical results show that the channel customization-based transceiver with reduced CSI can achieve satisfactory performance compared with the optimal transceiver with full CSI. Given the limited number of feedback bits, the bit partitioning algorithm can minimize the SE loss by adaptively allocating bits to quantize the channel parameters.

Abstract: This works explores the correlation between channels in reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided communication systems. In this type of system, an RIS made up of many passive elements with adjustable phases reflects the transmitter's signal to the receiver. Since the transmitter-RIS link may be shared by multiple receivers, the cascade channels of two receivers may experience correlated fading, which can negatively impact system performance. Using the mean correlation coefficient as a metric, we analyze the correlation between two cascade channels and derive an accurate approximation in closed form. We also consider the extreme case of an infinitely large number of RIS elements and obtain a convergence result. Our analysis accuracy is validated by simulation results, which offer insights into the correlation characteristics of RIS-aided fading channels.

Abstract: Multi-robot system for manufacturing is an Industry Internet of Things (IIoT) paradigm with significant operational cost savings and productivity improvement, where Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are employed to control and implement collaborative productions without human intervention. This mission-critical system relies on 3-Dimension (3-D) scene recognition to improve operation accuracy in the production line and autonomous piloting. However, implementing 3-D point cloud learning, such as Pointnet, is challenging due to limited sensing and computing resources equipped with UAVs. Therefore, we propose a Digital Twin (DT) empowered Knowledge Distillation (KD) method to generate several lightweight learning models and select the optimal model to deploy on UAVs. With a digital replica of the UAVs preserved at the edge server, the DT system controls the model sharing network topology and learning model structure to improve recognition accuracy further. Moreover, we employ network calculus to formulate and solve the model sharing configuration problem toward minimal resource consumption, as well as convergence. Simulation experiments are conducted over a popular point cloud dataset to evaluate the proposed scheme. Experiment results show that the proposed model sharing scheme outperforms the individual model in terms of computing resource consumption and recognition accuracy.