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Arumugam Nallanathan

Arumugam Nallanathan contributes to research discovery and scholarly infrastructure.

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Published work

35 published item(s)

preprint2026arXiv

Spectral- and Energy-efficient Multi-BS Multi-RIS Pinching-antenna Systems: A GNN-based Approach

This paper investigates coordinated downlink transmission in a multi-base station (multi-BS) multi-reconfigurable intelligent surface (multi-RIS)-assisted pinching-antenna (PA) system, where each user equipment (UE) is associated with a single BS and each BS is equipped with movable PAs deployed on parallel waveguides. We formulate sum rate (SR) and energy efficiency (EE) maximization problems by jointly optimizing PA placement, RIS phase shifts, transmit beamforming, and BS-UE association under constraints of inter-PA spacing, power budget, and unit-modulus phase shift. To address the resulting highly coupled mixed-variable problem, we propose a three-stage graph neural network (GNN) that integrates heterogeneous and homogeneous graph representations and is trained end-to-end in an unsupervised manner. Extensive numerical results demonstrate that the proposed three-stage GNN consistently outperforms representative system and learning baselines, generalizes well to unseen numbers of UEs, RISs, and BSs, and maintains millisecond-level inference time. Besides, the results validate the effectiveness of the proposed design from both system and architectural perspectives. Moreover, PAs are shown to enhance SR and EE, and the performance gain is enlarged with increasing number of PAs.

preprint2022arXiv

A Novel Resource Allocation for Anti-jamming in Cognitive-UAVs: an Active Inference Approach

This work proposes a novel resource allocation strategy for anti-jamming in Cognitive Radio using Active Inference ($\textit{AIn}$), and a cognitive-UAV is employed as a case study. An Active Generalized Dynamic Bayesian Network (Active-GDBN) is proposed to represent the external environment that jointly encodes the physical signal dynamics and the dynamic interaction between UAV and jammer in the spectrum. We cast the action and planning as a Bayesian inference problem that can be solved by avoiding surprising states (minimizing abnormality) during online learning. Simulation results verify the effectiveness of the proposed $\textit{AIn}$ approach in minimizing abnormalities (maximizing rewards) and has a high convergence speed by comparing it with the conventional Frequency Hopping and Q-learning.

preprint2022arXiv

A Power-Pool-Based Power Control in Semi-Grant-Free NOMA Transmission

In this paper, we generate a transmit power pool (PP) for Internet of things (IoT) networks with semi-grant-free non-orthogonal multiple access (SGF-NOMA) via multi-agent deep reinforcement learning (MA-DRL) to enable open loop power control (PC). The PP is mapped with each resource block (RB) to achieve distributed power control (DPC). We first formulate the resource allocation problem as stochastic Markov game, and then solve it using two MA-DRL algorithms, namely double deep Q network (DDQN) and Dueling DDQN. Each GF user as an agent tries to find out the optimal transmit power level and RB to form the desired PP. With the aid of dueling processes, the learning process can be enhanced by evaluating the valuable state without considering the effect of each action at each state. Therefore, DDQN is designed for communication scenarios with a small-size action-state space, while Dueling DDQN is for a large-size case. Moreover, to decrease the training time, we reduce the action space by eliminating invalid actions. To control the interference and guarantee the quality-of-service requirements of grant-based users, we determine the optimal number of GF users for each sub-channel. We show that the PC approach has a strong impact on data rates of both grant-based and GF users. We demonstrate that the proposed algorithm is computationally scalable to large-scale IoT networks and produce minimal signalling overhead. Our results show that the proposed MA-Dueling DDQN based SGF-NOMA with DPC outperforms the existing SGF-NOMA system and networks with pure GF protocols with 17.5\% and 22.2\% gain in terms of the system throughput, respectively. Finally, we show that our proposed algorithm outperforms the conventional open loop PC mechanism.

preprint2022arXiv

A Reliable Reinforcement Learning for Resource Allocation in Uplink NOMA-URLLC Networks

In this paper, we propose a deep state-action-reward-state-action (SARSA) $λ$ learning approach for optimising the uplink resource allocation in non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) aided ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC). To reduce the mean decoding error probability in time-varying network environments, this work designs a reliable learning algorithm for providing a long-term resource allocation, where the reward feedback is based on the instantaneous network performance. With the aid of the proposed algorithm, this paper addresses three main challenges of the reliable resource sharing in NOMA-URLLC networks: 1) user clustering; 2) Instantaneous feedback system; and 3) Optimal resource allocation. All of these designs interact with the considered communication environment. Lastly, we compare the performance of the proposed algorithm with conventional Q-learning and SARSA Q-learning algorithms. The simulation outcomes show that: 1) Compared with the traditional Q learning algorithms, the proposed solution is able to converges within \myb{200} episodes for providing as low as $10^{-2}$ long-term mean error; 2) NOMA assisted URLLC outperforms traditional OMA systems in terms of decoding error probabilities; and 3) The proposed feedback system is efficient for the long-term learning process.

preprint2022arXiv

Antenna Array Enabled Space/Air/Ground Communications and Networking for 6G

Antenna arrays have a long history of more than 100 years and have evolved closely with the development of electronic and information technologies, playing an indispensable role in wireless communications and radar. With the rapid development of electronic and information technologies, the demand for all-time, all-domain, and full-space network services has exploded, and new communication requirements have been put forward on various space/air/ground platforms. To meet the ever increasing requirements of the future sixth generation (6G) wireless communications, such as high capacity, wide coverage, low latency, and strong robustness, it is promising to employ different types of antenna arrays with various beamforming technologies in space/air/ground communication networks, bringing in advantages such as considerable antenna gains, multiplexing gains, and diversity gains. However, enabling antenna array for space/air/ground communication networks poses specific, distinctive and tricky challenges, which has aroused extensive research attention. This paper aims to overview the field of antenna array enabled space/air/ground communications and networking. The technical potentials and challenges of antenna array enabled space/air/ground communications and networking are presented first. Subsequently, the antenna array structures and designs are discussed. We then discuss various emerging technologies facilitated by antenna arrays to meet the new communication requirements of space/air/ground communication systems. Enabled by these emerging technologies, the distinct characteristics, challenges, and solutions for space communications, airborne communications, and ground communications are reviewed. Finally, we present promising directions for future research in antenna array enabled space/air/ground communications and networking.

preprint2022arXiv

Dynamic Task Software Caching-assisted Computation Offloading for Multi-Access Edge Computing

In multi-access edge computing (MEC), most existing task software caching works focus on statically caching data at the network edge, which may hardly preserve high reusability due to the time-varying user requests in practice. To this end, this work considers dynamic task software caching at the MEC server to assist users' task execution. Specifically, we formulate a joint task software caching update (TSCU) and computation offloading (COMO) problem to minimize users' energy consumption while guaranteeing delay constraints, where the limited cache size and computation capability of the MEC server, as well as the time-varying task demand of users are investigated. This problem is proved to be non-deterministic polynomial-time hard, so we transform it into two sub-problems according to their temporal correlations, i.e., the real-time COMO problem and the Markov decision process-based TSCU problem. We first model the COMO problem as a multi-user game and propose a decentralized algorithm to address its Nash equilibrium solution. We then propose a double deep Q-network (DDQN)-based method to solve the TSCU policy. To reduce the computation complexity and convergence time, we provide a new design for the deep neural network (DNN) in DDQN, named state coding and action aggregation (SCAA). In SCAA-DNN, we introduce a dropout mechanism in the input layer to code users' activity states. Additionally, at the output layer, we devise a two-layer architecture to dynamically aggregate caching actions, which is able to solve the huge state-action space problem. Simulation results show that the proposed solution outperforms existing schemes, saving over 12% energy, and converges with fewer training episodes.

preprint2022arXiv

Joint Resource Allocation and Cache Placement for Location-Aware Multi-User Mobile Edge Computing

With the growing demand for latency-critical and computation-intensive Internet of Things (IoT) services, the IoT-oriented network architecture, mobile edge computing (MEC), has emerged as a promising technique to reinforce the computation capability of the resource-constrained IoT devices. To exploit the cloud-like functions at the network edge, service caching has been implemented to reuse the computation task input/output data, thus effectively reducing the delay incurred by data retransmissions and repeated execution of the same task. In a multi-user cache-assisted MEC system, users' preferences for different types of services, possibly dependent on their locations, play an important role in joint design of communication, computation and service caching. In this paper, we consider multiple representative locations, where users at the same location share the same preference profile for a given set of services. Specifically, by exploiting the location-aware users' preference profiles, we propose joint optimization of the binary cache placement, the edge computation resource and the bandwidth allocation to minimize the expected sum-energy consumption, subject to the bandwidth and the computation limitations as well as the service latency constraints. To effectively solve the mixed-integer non-convex problem, we propose a deep learning (DL)-based offline cache placement scheme using a novel stochastic quantization based discrete-action generation method. The proposed hybrid learning framework advocates both benefits from the model-free DL approach and the model-based optimization. The simulations verify that the proposed DL-based scheme saves roughly 33% and 6.69% of energy consumption compared with the greedy caching and the popular caching, respectively, while achieving up to 99.01% of the optimal performance.

preprint2022arXiv

Low-Complexity Beamforming Design for IRS-Aided NOMA Communication System with Imperfect CSI

Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) as a promising technology rendering high throughput in future communication systems is compatible with various communication techniques such as non-orthogonal multiple-access (NOMA). In this paper, the downlink transmission of IRS-assisted NOMA communication is considered while undergoing imperfect channel state information (CSI). Consequently, a robust IRS-aided NOMA design is proposed by solving the sum-rate maximization problem to jointly find the optimal beamforming vectors for the access point and the passive reflection matrix for the IRS, using the penalty dual decomposition (PDD) scheme. This problem can be solved through an iterative algorithm, with closed-form solutions in each step, and it is shown to have very close performance to its upper bound obtained from perfect CSI scenario. We also present a trellis-based method for optimal discrete phase shift selection of IRS which is shown to outperform the conventional quantization method. Our results show that the proposed algorithms, for both continuous and discrete IRS, have very low computational complexity compared to other schemes in the literature. Furthermore, we conduct a performance comparison from achievable sum-rate standpoint between IRS-aided NOMA and IRS-aided orthogonal multiple access (OMA), which demonstrates superiority of NOMA compared to OMA in case of a tolerated channel uncertainty.

preprint2022arXiv

Performance Analysis and Power Allocation of Joint Communication and Sensing Towards Future Communication Networks

To mitigate the radar and communication frequency overlapping caused by massive devices access, we propose a novel joint communication and sensing (JCS) system in this paper, where a micro base station (MiBS) can realize target sensing and cooperative communication simultaneously. Concretely, the MiBS, as the sensing equipment, can also serve as a full-duplex (FD) decode-and-forward (DF) relay to assist the end-to-end communication. To further improve the spectrum utilization, non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is adopted such that the communication between the macro base station (MaBS) and the Internet-of-Things (IoT) devices. To facilitate the performance evaluation, the exact and asymptotic outage probabilities, ergodic rates, sensing probability of the system are characterized. Subsequently, two optimal power allocation (OPA) problems of maximizing the received signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio of sensing signal and maximizing the sum rate for communication are designed that are solved by means of the Lagrangian method and function monotonicity. The simulation results demonstrate that: 1) the proposed JCS NOMA system can accomplish both communication enhancement and sensing function under the premise of the same power consumption as non-cooperative NOMA; 2) the proposed OPA schemes manifest superiorities over a random power allocation scheme.

preprint2022arXiv

STAR-RIS Aided NOMA in Multi-Cell Networks: A General Analytical Framework with Gamma Distributed Channel Modeling

The simultaneously transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS) is capable of providing full-space coverage of smart radio environments. This work investigates STAR-RIS aided downlink non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) multi-cell networks, where the energy of incident signals at STAR-RISs is split into two portions for transmitting and reflecting. We first propose a fitting method to model the distribution of composite small-scale fading power as the tractable Gamma distribution. Then, a unified analytical framework based on stochastic geometry is provided to capture the random locations of RIS-RISs, base stations (BSs), and user equipments (UEs). Based on this framework, we derive the coverage probability and ergodic rate of both the typical UE and the connected UE. In particular, we obtain closed-form expressions of the coverage probability in interference-limited scenarios. We also deduce theoretical expressions in conventional RIS aided networks for comparison. The analytical results show that optimal energy splitting coefficients of STAR-RISs exist to simultaneously maximize the system coverage and ergodic rate. The numerical results demonstrate that: 1) STAR-RISs are able to meet different demands of UEs located on different sides; 2) STAR-RISs with appropriate energy splitting coefficients outperform conventional RISs in the coverage and the rate performance.

preprint2022arXiv

Task Offloading with Multi-Tier Computing Resources in Next Generation Wireless Networks

With the development of next-generation wireless networks, the Internet of Things (IoT) is evolving towards the intelligent IoT (iIoT), where intelligent applications usually have stringent delay and jitter requirements. In order to provide low-latency services to heterogeneous users in the emerging iIoT, multi-tier computing was proposed by effectively combining edge computing and fog computing. More specifically, multi-tier computing systems compensate for cloud computing through task offloading and dispersing computing tasks to multi-tier nodes along the continuum from the cloud to things. In this paper, we investigate key techniques and directions for wireless communications and resource allocation approaches to enable task offloading in multi-tier computing systems. A multi-tier computing model, with its main functionality and optimization methods, is presented in details. We hope that this paper will serve as a valuable reference and guide to the theoretical, algorithmic, and systematic opportunities of multi-tier computing towards next-generation wireless networks.

preprint2022arXiv

Towards Optimally Efficient Search with Deep Learning for Large-Scale MIMO Systems

This paper investigates the optimal signal detection problem with a particular interest in large-scale multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. The problem is NP-hard and can be solved optimally by searching the shortest path on the decision tree. Unfortunately, the existing optimal search algorithms often involve prohibitively high complexities, which indicates that they are infeasible in large-scale MIMO systems. To address this issue, we propose a general heuristic search algorithm, namely, hyper-accelerated tree search (HATS) algorithm. The proposed algorithm employs a deep neural network (DNN) to estimate the optimal heuristic, and then use the estimated heuristic to speed up the underlying memory-bounded search algorithm. This idea is inspired by the fact that the underlying heuristic search algorithm reaches the optimal efficiency with the optimal heuristic function. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm reaches almost the optimal bit error rate (BER) performance in large-scale systems, while the memory size can be bounded. In the meanwhile, it visits nearly the fewest tree nodes. This indicates that the proposed algorithm reaches almost the optimal efficiency in practical scenarios, and thereby it is applicable for large-scale systems. Besides, the code for this paper is available at \url{https://github.com/skypitcher/hats}.

preprint2021arXiv

Deep Reinforcement Learning Based Dynamic Trajectory Control for UAV-assisted Mobile Edge Computing

In this paper, we consider a platform of flying mobile edge computing (F-MEC), where unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) serve as equipment providing computation resource, and they enable task offloading from user equipment (UE). We aim to minimize energy consumption of all the UEs via optimizing the user association, resource allocation and the trajectory of UAVs. To this end, we first propose a Convex optimizAtion based Trajectory control algorithm (CAT), which solves the problem in an iterative way by using block coordinate descent (BCD) method. Then, to make the real-time decision while taking into account the dynamics of the environment (i.e., UAV may take off from different locations), we propose a deep Reinforcement leArning based Trajectory control algorithm (RAT). In RAT, we apply the Prioritized Experience Replay (PER) to improve the convergence of the training procedure. Different from the convex optimization based algorithm which may be susceptible to the initial points and requires iterations, RAT can be adapted to any taking off points of the UAVs and can obtain the solution more rapidly than CAT once training process has been completed. Simulation results show that the proposed CAT and RAT achieve the similar performance and both outperform traditional algorithms.

preprint2021arXiv

Learning based signal detection for MIMO systems with unknown noise statistics

This paper aims to devise a generalized maximum likelihood (ML) estimator to robustly detect signals with unknown noise statistics in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. In practice, there is little or even no statistical knowledge on the system noise, which in many cases is non-Gaussian, impulsive and not analyzable. Existing detection methods have mainly focused on specific noise models, which are not robust enough with unknown noise statistics. To tackle this issue, we propose a novel ML detection framework to effectively recover the desired signal. Our framework is a fully probabilistic one that can efficiently approximate the unknown noise distribution through a normalizing flow. Importantly, this framework is driven by an unsupervised learning approach, where only the noise samples are required. To reduce the computational complexity, we further present a low-complexity version of the framework, by utilizing an initial estimation to reduce the search space. Simulation results show that our framework outperforms other existing algorithms in terms of bit error rate (BER) in non-analytical noise environments, while it can reach the ML performance bound in analytical noise environments. The code of this paper is available at https://github.com/skypitcher/manfe.

preprint2021arXiv

Resource Allocation in Uplink NOMA-IoT Networks: A Reinforcement-Learning Approach

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) exploits the potential of the power domain to enhance the connectivity for the Internet of Things (IoT). Due to time-varying communication channels, dynamic user clustering is a promising method to increase the throughput of NOMA-IoT networks. This paper develops an intelligent resource allocation scheme for uplink NOMA-IoT communications. To maximise the average performance of sum rates, this work designs an efficient optimization approach based on two reinforcement learning algorithms, namely deep reinforcement learning (DRL) and SARSA-learning. For light traffic, SARSA-learning is used to explore the safest resource allocation policy with low cost. For heavy traffic, DRL is used to handle traffic-introduced huge variables. With the aid of the considered approach, this work addresses two main problems of fair resource allocation in NOMA techniques: 1) allocating users dynamically and 2) balancing resource blocks and network traffic. We analytically demonstrate that the rate of convergence is inversely proportional to network sizes. Numerical results show that: 1) Compared with the optimal benchmark scheme, the proposed DRL and SARSA-learning algorithms have lower complexity with acceptable accuracy and 2) NOMA-enabled IoT networks outperform the conventional orthogonal multiple access based IoT networks in terms of system throughput.

preprint2020arXiv

A Decoupled Learning Strategy for Massive Access Optimization in Cellular IoT Networks

Cellular-based networks are expected to offer connectivity for massive Internet of Things (mIoT) systems. However, their Random Access CHannel (RACH) procedure suffers from unreliability, due to the collision from the simultaneous massive access. Despite that this collision problem has been treated in existing RACH schemes, these schemes usually organize IoT devices' transmission and re-transmission along with fixed parameters, thus can hardly adapt to time-varying traffic patterns. Without adaptation, the RACH procedure easily suffers from high access delay, high energy consumption, or even access unavailability. With the goal of improving the RACH procedure, this paper targets to optimize the RACH procedure in real-time by maximizing a long-term hybrid multi-objective function, which consists of the number of access success devices, the average energy consumption, and the average access delay. To do so, we first optimize the long-term objective in the number of access success devices by using Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) algorithms for different RACH schemes, including Access Class Barring (ACB), Back-Off (BO), and Distributed Queuing (DQ). The converging capability and efficiency of different DRL algorithms including Policy Gradient (PG), Actor-Critic (AC), Deep Q-Network (DQN), and Deep Deterministic Policy Gradients (DDPG) are compared. Inspired by the results from this comparison, a decoupled learning strategy is developed to jointly and dynamically adapt the access control factors of those three access schemes. This decoupled strategy first leverage a Recurrent Neural Network (RNN) model to predict the real-time traffic values of the network environment, and then uses multiple DRL agents to cooperatively configure parameters of each RACH scheme.

preprint2020arXiv

Analysis of Random Access in NB-IoT Networks with Three Coverage Enhancement Groups: A Stochastic Geometry Approach

NarrowBand-Internet of Things (NB-IoT) is a new 3GPP radio access technology designed to provide better coverage for Low Power Wide Area (LPWA) networks. To provide reliable connections with extended coverage, a repetition transmission scheme and up to three Coverage Enhancement (CE) groups are introduced into NB-IoT during both Random Access CHannel (RACH) procedure and data transmission procedure, where each CE group is configured with different repetition values and transmission resources. To characterize the RACH performance of the NB-IoT network with three CE groups, this paper develops a novel traffic-aware spatio-temporal model to analyze the RACH success probability, where both the preamble transmission outage and the collision events of each CE group jointly determine the traffic evolution and the RACH success probability. Based on this analytical model, we derive the analytical expression for the RACH success probability of a randomly chosen IoT device in each CE group over multiple time slots with different RACH schemes, including baseline, back-off (BO), access class barring (ACB), and hybrid ACB and BO schemes (ACB&BO). Our results have shown that the RACH success probabilities of the devices in three CE groups outperform that of a single CE group network but not for all the groups, which is affected by the choice of the categorizing parameters.This mathematical model and analytical framework can be applied to evaluate the performance of multiple group users of other networks with spatial separations.

preprint2020arXiv

Analyzing Grant-Free Access for URLLC Service

5G New Radio (NR) is expected to support new ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) service targeting at supporting the small packets transmissions with very stringent latency and reliability requirements. Current Long Term Evolution (LTE) system has been designed based on grantbased (GB) (i.e., dynamic grant) random access, which can hardly support the URLLC requirements. Grant-free (GF) (i.e., configured grant) access is proposed as a feasible and promising technology to meet such requirements, especially for uplink transmissions, which effectively saves the time of requesting/waiting for a grant. While some basic GF access features have been proposed and standardized in NR Release-15, there is still much space to improve. Being proposed as 3GPP study items, three GF access schemes with Hybrid Automatic Repeat reQuest (HARQ) retransmissions including Reactive, K-repetition, and Proactive, are analyzed in this paper. Specifically, we present a spatiotemporal analytical framework for the contention-based GF access analysis. Based on this framework, we define the latent access failure probability to characterize URLLC reliability and latency performances. We propose a tractable approach to derive and analyze the latent access failure probability of the typical UE under three GF HARQ schemes. Our results show that under shorter latency constraints, the Proactive scheme provides the lowest latent access failure probability, whereas, under longer latency constraints, the K-repetition scheme achieves the lowest latent access failure probability, which depends on K. If K is overestimated, the Proactive scheme provides lower latent access failure probability than the K-repetition scheme.

preprint2020arXiv

Artificial-Noise-Aided Secure MIMO Wireless Communications via Intelligent Reflecting Surface

This paper considers a MIMO secure wireless communication system aided by the physical layer security technique of sending artificial noise (AN). To further enhance the system security performance, the advanced intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is invoked in the AN-aided communication system, where the base station (BS), legitimate information receiver (IR) and eavesdropper (Eve) are equipped with multiple antennas. With the aim for maximizing the secrecy rate (SR), the transmit precoding (TPC) matrix at the BS, covariance matrix of AN and phase shifts at the IRS are jointly optimized subject to constrains of transmit power limit and unit modulus of IRS phase shifts. Then, the secrecy rate maximization (SRM) problem is formulated, which is a non-convex problem with multiple coupled variables. To tackle it, we propose to utilize the block coordinate descent (BCD) algorithm to alternately update the TPC matrix, AN covariance matrix, and phase shifts while keeping SR non-decreasing. Specifically, the optimal TPC matrix and AN covariance matrix are derived by Lagrangian multiplier method, and the optimal phase shifts are obtained by Majorization-Minimization (MM) algorithm. Since all variables can be calculated in closed form, the proposed algorithm is very efficient. We also extend the SRM problem to the more general multiple-IRs scenario and propose a BCD algorithm to solve it. Finally, simulation results validate the effectiveness of system security enhancement via an IRS.

preprint2020arXiv

Cache-enabling UAV Communications: Network Deployment and Resource Allocation

In this article, we investigate the content distribution in the hotspot area, whose traffic is offloaded by the combination of the unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) communication and edge caching. In cache-enabling UAV-assisted cellular networks, the network deployment and resource allocation are vital for quality of experience (QoE) of users with content distribution applications. We formulate a joint optimization problem of UAV deployment, caching placement and user association for maximizing QoE of users, which is evaluated by mean opinion score (MOS). To solve this challenging problem, we decompose the optimization problem into three sub-problems. Specifically, we propose a swap matching based UAV deployment algorithm, then obtain the near-optimal caching placement and user association by greedy algorithm and Lagrange dual, respectively. Finally, we propose a low complexity iterative algorithm for the joint UAV deployment, caching placement and user association optimization, which achieves good computational complexity-optimality tradeoff. Simulation results reveal that: i) the MOS of the proposed algorithm approaches that of the exhaustive search method and converges within several iterations; and ii) compared with the benchmark algorithms, the proposed algorithm achieves better performance in terms of MOS, content access delay and backhaul traffic offloading.

preprint2020arXiv

Caching Placement and Resource Allocation for Cache-Enabling UAV NOMA Networks

This article investigates the cache-enabling unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) cellular networks with massive access capability supported by non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA). The delivery of a large volume of multimedia contents for ground users is assisted by a mobile UAV base station, which caches some popular contents for wireless backhaul link traffic offloading. In cache-enabling UAV NOMA networks, the caching placement of content caching phase and radio resource allocation of content delivery phase are crucial for network performance. To cope with the dynamic UAV locations and content requests in practical scenarios, we formulate the long-term caching placement and resource allocation optimization problem for content delivery delay minimization as a Markov decision process (MDP). The UAV acts as an agent to take actions for caching placement and resource allocation, which includes the user scheduling of content requests and the power allocation of NOMA users. In order to tackle the MDP, we propose a Q-learning based caching placement and resource allocation algorithm, where the UAV learns and selects action with \emph{soft ${\varepsilon}$-greedy} strategy to search for the optimal match between actions and states. Since the action-state table size of Q-learning grows with the number of states in the dynamic networks, we propose a function approximation based algorithm with combination of stochastic gradient descent and deep neural networks, which is suitable for large-scale networks. Finally, the numerical results show that the proposed algorithms provide considerable performance compared to benchmark algorithms, and obtain a trade-off between network performance and calculation complexity.

preprint2020arXiv

Intelligent Reflecting Surface Aided MIMO Broadcasting for Simultaneous Wireless Information and Power Transfer

An intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is invoked for enhancing the energy harvesting performance of a simultaneous wireless information and power transfer (SWIPT) aided system. Specifically, an IRS-assisted SWIPT system is considered, where a multi-antenna aided base station (BS) communicates with several multi-antenna assisted information receivers (IRs), while guaranteeing the energy harvesting requirement of the energy receivers (ERs). To maximize the weighted sum rate (WSR) of IRs, the transmit precoding (TPC) matrices of the BS and passive phase shift matrix of the IRS should be jointly optimized. To tackle this challenging optimization problem, we first adopt the classic block coordinate descent (BCD) algorithm for decoupling the original optimization problem into several subproblems and alternatively optimize the TPC matrices and the phase shift matrix. For each subproblem, we provide a low-complexity iterative algorithm, which is guaranteed to converge to the Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) point of each subproblem. The BCD algorithm is rigorously proved to converge to the KKT point of the original problem. We also conceive a feasibility checking method to study its feasibility. Our extensive simulation results confirm that employing IRSs in SWIPT beneficially enhances the system performance and the proposed BCD algorithm converges rapidly, which is appealing for practical applications.

preprint2020arXiv

Intelligent Reflecting Surface Aided Multigroup Multicast MISO Communication Systems

Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has recently been envisioned to offer unprecedented massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO)-like gains by deploying large-scale and low-cost passive reflection elements. By adjusting the reflection coefficients, the IRS can change the phase shifts on the impinging electromagnetic waves so that it can smartly reconfigure the signal propagation environment and enhance the power of the desired received signal or suppress the interference signal. In this paper, we consider downlink multigroup multicast communication systems assisted by an IRS. We aim for maximizing the sum rate of all the multicasting groups by the joint optimization of the precoding matrix at the base station (BS) and the reflection coefficients at the IRS under both the power and unit-modulus constraint. To tackle this non-convex problem, we propose two efficient algorithms under the majorization--minimization (MM) algorithm framework. Specifically, a concave lower bound surrogate objective function of each user's rate has been derived firstly, based on which two sets of variables can be updated alternately by solving two corresponding second-order cone programming (SOCP) problems. Then, in order to reduce the computational complexity, we derive another concave lower bound function of each group's rate for each set of variables at every iteration, and obtain the closed-form solutions under these loose surrogate objective functions. Finally, the simulation results demonstrate the benefits in terms of the spectral and energy efficiency of the introduced IRS and the effectiveness in terms of the convergence and complexity of our proposed algorithms.

preprint2020arXiv

IRS-aided Large-Scale MIMO Systems with Passive Constant Envelope Precoding

In this paper, an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-aided large-scale MIMO system is investigated in which constant envelope precoding (CEP) is utilized at each base station (BS). It is both cost-effective and energy-efficient to implement CEP in a large-scale antenna array. We aim to optimize the discrete phase shifts at both the BS and the IRS to minimize the sum power of multi-user interference (MUI) in the system via our proposed three algorithms. For the sake of simplicity, a simple single-cell scenario is considered, where the optimization of the BS and IRS phase shifts is solved by a low-complexity trellis-based algorithm. Then, this algorithm is extended to a multi-cell scenario, where the precoding operation in each BS is performed individually. With the aid of stochastic optimization method, a low-overhead trellis-based solution is proposed which has better performance than the first one. Finally, we solve the optimization problem via the semi-definite relaxation (SDR) scheme, to serve as a performance benchmark for the proposed algorithms. Meanwhile, interference and complexity analysis is provided for the proposed algorithms. Numerical results demonstrate that while the performance of the trellis-based algorithms is negligibly lower than that of the continuous-phase SDR-based solution, the computational complexity and the implementation cost of the former is much lower than the latter, which is appealing for practical applications.

preprint2020arXiv

Joint Transmit Power and Placement Optimization for URLLC-enabled UAV Relay Systems

This letter considers an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled relay communication system for delivering latency-critical messages with ultra-high reliability, where the relay is operating under amplifier-and-forward (AF) mode. We aim to jointly optimize the UAV location and power to minimize decoding error probability while guaranteeing the latency constraints. Both the free-space channel model and three-dimensional (3-D) channel model are considered. For the first model, we propose a low-complexity iterative algorithm to solve the problem, while globally optimal solution is derived for the case when the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is extremely high. For the second model, we also propose a low-complexity iterative algorithm to solve the problem. Simulation results confirm the performance advantages of our proposed algorithms.

preprint2020arXiv

Latency Minimization for Intelligent Reflecting Surface Aided Mobile Edge Computing

Computation off-loading in mobile edge computing (MEC) systems constitutes an efficient paradigm of supporting resource-intensive applications on mobile devices. However, the benefit of MEC cannot be fully exploited, when the communications link used for off-loading computational tasks is hostile. Fortunately, the propagation-induced impairments may be mitigated by intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRS), which are capable of enhancing both the spectral- and energy-efficiency. Specifically, an IRS comprises an IRS controller and a large number of passive reflecting elements, each of which may impose a phase shift on the incident signal, thus collaboratively improving the propagation environment. In this paper, the beneficial role of IRSs is investigated in MEC systems, where single-antenna devices may opt for off-loading a fraction of their computational tasks to the edge computing node via a multi-antenna access point with the aid of an IRS. Pertinent latency-minimization problems are formulated for both single-device and multi-device scenarios, subject to practical constraints imposed on both the edge computing capability and the IRS phase shift design. To solve this problem, the block coordinate descent (BCD) technique is invoked to decouple the original problem into two subproblems, and then the computing and communications settings are alternatively optimized using low-complexity iterative algorithms. It is demonstrated that our IRS-aided MEC system is capable of significantly outperforming the conventional MEC system operating without IRSs. Quantitatively, about $20~\%$ computational latency reduction is achieved over the conventional MEC system in a single cell of a $300~\rm{m}$ radius and $5$ active devices, relying on a $5$-antenna access point.

preprint2020arXiv

Multicell MIMO Communications Relying on Intelligent Reflecting Surface

Intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) constitute a disruptive wireless communication technique capable of creating a controllable propagation environment. In this paper, we propose to invoke an IRS at the cell boundary of multiple cells to assist the downlink transmission to cell-edge users, whilst mitigating the inter-cell interference, which is a crucial issue in multicell communication systems. We aim for maximizing the weighted sum rate (WSR) of all users through jointly optimizing the active precoding matrices at the base stations (BSs) and the phase shifts at the IRS subject to each BS's power constraint and unit modulus constraint. Both the BSs and the users are equipped with multiple antennas, which enhances the spectral efficiency by exploiting the spatial multiplexing gain. Due to the non-convexity of the problem, we first reformulate it into an equivalent one, which is solved by using the block coordinate descent (BCD) algorithm, where the precoding matrices and phase shifts are alternately optimized. The optimal precoding matrices can be obtained in closed form, when fixing the phase shifts. A pair of efficient algorithms are proposed for solving the phase shift optimization problem, namely the Majorization-Minimization (MM) Algorithm and the Complex Circle Manifold (CCM) Method. Both algorithms are guaranteed to converge to at least locally optimal solutions. We also extend the proposed algorithms to the more general multiple-IRS and network MIMO scenarios. Finally, our simulation results confirm the advantages of introducing IRSs in enhancing the cell-edge user performance.

preprint2020arXiv

Outage Behaviors of NOMA-based Satellite Network over Shadowed-Rician Fading Channels

This paper investigates the application of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) to satellite communication network over Shadowed-Rician fading channels. The impact of imperfect successive interference cancellation (ipSIC) on NOMA-based satellite network is taken into consideration from the perspective of practical scenarios. We first derive new exact expressions of outage probability for the p-th terrestrial user and provide the corresponding asymptotic analysis results. The diversity order of zero and p are achieved by the p-th terrestrial user with ipSIC and perfect successive interference cancellation (pSIC), respectively. Finally, the presented simulation results show that: 1) On the condition of pSIC, the outage behaviors of NOMA-based satellite network are superior to that of orthogonal multiple access; 2) With the value of residual interference increasing, the outage performance of terrestrial users with ipSIC is becoming worse seriously; and 3) Infrequent light shadowing of Shadowed-Rician fading brings the better outage probability compared to frequent heavy and average shadowing.

preprint2020arXiv

Resource Allocation for Intelligent Reflecting Surface Aided Wireless Powered Mobile Edge Computing in OFDM Systems

Wireless powered mobile edge computing (WP-MEC) has been recognized as a promising technique to provide both enhanced computational capability and sustainable energy supply to massive low-power wireless devices. However, its energy consumption becomes substantial, when the transmission link used for wireless energy transfer (WET) and for computation offloading is hostile. To mitigate this hindrance, we propose to employ the emerging technique of intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) in WP-MEC systems, which is capable of providing an additional link both for WET and for computation offloading. Specifically, we consider a multi-user scenario where both the WET and the computation offloading are based on orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. Built on this model, an innovative framework is developed to minimize the energy consumption of the IRS-aided WP-MEC network, by optimizing the power allocation of the WET signals, the local computing frequencies of wireless devices, both the sub-band-device association and the power allocation used for computation offloading, as well as the IRS reflection coefficients. The major challenges of this optimization lie in the strong coupling between the settings of WET and of computing as well as the unit-modules constraint on IRS reflection coefficients. To tackle these issues, the technique of alternative optimization is invoked for decoupling the WET and computing designs, while two sets of locally optimal IRS reflection coefficients are provided for WET and for computation offloading separately relying on the successive convex approximation method. The numerical results demonstrate that our proposed scheme is capable of monumentally outperforming the conventional WP-MEC network without IRSs.

preprint2020arXiv

Resource Allocation for Secure URLLC in Mission-Critical IoT Scenario

Ultra-reliable low latency communication (URLLC) is one of three primary use cases in the fifth-generation (5G) networks, and its research is still in its infancy due to its stringent and conflicting requirements in terms of extremely high reliability and low latency. To reduce latency, the channel blocklength for packet transmission is finite, which incurs transmission rate degradation and higher decoding error probability. In this case, conventional resource allocation based on Shannon capacity achieved with infinite blocklength codes is not optimal. Security is another critical issue in mission-critical internet of things (IoT) communications, and physical-layer security is a promising technique that can ensure the confidentiality for wireless communications as no additional channel uses are needed for the key exchange as in the conventional upper-layer cryptography method. This paper is the first work to study the resource allocation for a secure mission-critical IoT communication system with URLLC. Specifically, we adopt the security capacity formula under finite blocklength and consider two optimization problems: weighted throughput maximization problem and total transmit power minimization problem. Each optimization problem is non-convex and challenging to solve, and we develop efficient methods to solve each optimization problem. Simulation results confirm the fast convergence speed of our proposed algorithm and demonstrate the performance advantages over the existing benchmark algorithms.

preprint2020arXiv

Robust Beamforming Design for Intelligent Reflecting Surface Aided MISO Communication Systems

Perfect channel state information (CSI) is challenging to obtain due to the limited signal processing capability at the intelligent reflection surface (IRS). In this paper, we study the worst-case robust beamforming design for an IRS-aided multiuser multiple-input single-output (MU-MISO) system under the assumption of imperfect CSI. We aim for minimizing the transmit power while ensuring that the achievable rate of each user meets the quality of service (QoS) requirement for all possible channel error realizations. With unit-modulus and rate constraints, this problem is non-convex. The imperfect CSI further increases the difficulty of solving this problem. By using approximation and transformation techniques, we convert this problem into a squence of semidefinite programming (SDP) subproblems that can be efficiently solved. Numerical results show that the proposed robust beamforming design can guarantee the required QoS targets for all the users.

preprint2020arXiv

Secrecy Analysis of Ambient Backscatter NOMA Systems under I/Q Imbalance

We investigate the reliability and security of the ambient backscatter (AmBC) non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) systems, where the source aims to communication with two NOMA users in the presence of an eavesdropper. We consider a more practical case that nodes and backscatter device (BD) suffer from in-phase and quadrature-phase imbalance (IQI). More specifically, exact analytical expressions for the outage probability (OP) and the intercept probability (IP) are derived in closedform. Moreover, the asymptotic behaviors and corresponding diversity orders for the OP are discussed. Numerical results show that: 1) Although IQI reduces the reliability, it can enhance the security. 2) Compared with the traditional orthogonal multiple access (OMA) system, the AmBC-NOMA system can obtain better reliability when the signal-to-noise (SNR) ratio is low; 3) There are error floors for the OP because of the reflection coefficient \b{eta} .

preprint2020arXiv

Traffic Prediction and Random Access Control Optimization: Learning and Non-learning based Approaches

Random access schemes in modern wireless communications are generally based on the framed-ALOHA (f-ALOHA), which can be optimized by flexibly organizing devices' transmission and re-transmission. However, this optimization is generally intractable due to the lack of information about complex traffic generation statistics and the occurrence of the random collision. In this article, we first summarize the general structure of access control optimization for different random access schemes, and then review the existing access control optimization based on Machine Learning (ML) and non-ML techniques. We demonstrate that the ML-based methods can better optimize the access control problem compared with non-ML based methods, due to their capability in solving high complexity long-term optimization problem and learning experiential knowledge from reality. To further improve the random access performance, we propose two-step learning optimizers for access control optimization, which individually execute the traffic prediction and the access control configuration. In detail, our traffic prediction method relies on online supervised learning adopting Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) that can accurately capture traffic statistics over consecutive frames, and the access control configuration can use either a non-ML based controller or a cooperatively trained Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) based controller depending on the complexity of different random access schemes. Numerical results show that the proposed two-step cooperative learning optimizer considerably outperforms the conventional Deep Q-Network (DQN) in terms of higher training efficiency and better access performance.

preprint2020arXiv

UAV-Aided Multi-Way NOMA Networks with Residual Hardware Impairments

In this paper, we study an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-aided non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) multi-way relaying networks (MWRNs). Multiple terrestrial users aim to exchange their mutual information via an amplify-and-forward (AF) UAV relay. Specifically, the realistic assumption of the residual hardware impairments (RHIs) at the transceivers is taken into account. To evaluate the performance of the considered networks, we derive the analytical expressions for the achievable sum-rate (ASR). In addition, we carry out the asymptotic analysis by invoking the affine expansion of the ASR in terms of \emph{high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) slope} and \emph{high SNR power offset}. Numerical results show that: 1) Compared with orthogonal multiple access (OMA), the proposed networks can significantly improve the ASR since it can reduce the time slots from $\left[ {\left( {M - 1} \right)/2} \right] + 1$ to 2; and 2) RHIs of both transmitter and receiver have the same effects on the ASR of the considered networks.

preprint2019arXiv

Joint Pilot and Payload Power Allocation for Massive-MIMO-enabled URLLC IIoT Networks

The Fourth Industrial Revolution (Industrial 4.0) is coming, and this revolution will fundamentally enhance the way the factories manufacture products. The conventional wired lines connecting central controller to robots or actuators will be replaced by wireless communication networks due to its low cost of maintenance and high deployment flexibility. However, some critical industrial applications require ultra-high reliability and low latency communication (URLLC). In this paper, we advocate the adoption of massive multiple-input multiple output (MIMO) to support the wireless transmission for industrial applications as it can provide deterministic communications similar as wired lines thanks to its channel hardening effects. To reduce the latency, the channel blocklength for packet transmission is finite, and suffers from transmission rate degradation and decoding error probability. Thus, conventional resource allocation for massive MIMO transmission based on Shannon capacity assuming the infinite channel blocklength is no longer optimal. We first derive the closed-form expression of lower bound (LB) of achievable uplink data rate for massive MIMO system with imperfect channel state information (CSI) for both maximum-ratio combining (MRC) and zero-forcing (ZF) receivers. Then, we propose novel low-complexity algorithms to solve the achievable data rate maximization problems by jointly optimizing the pilot and payload transmission power for both MRC and ZF. Simulation results confirm the rapid convergence speed and performance advantage over the existing benchmark algorithms.