Energy-Efficient System Design for Future Wireless Communications

The exponential growth of wireless data traffic has caused a significant increase in the power consumption of wireless communications systems due to the higher complexity of the transceiver structures required to establish the communication links. For this reason, in this Thesis we propose and characterize technologies for improving the energy efficiency of multiple-antenna wireless communications. This Thesis firstly focuses on energy-efficient transmission schemes and commences by introducing a scheme for alleviating the power loss experienced by the Tomlinson-Harashima precoder, by aligning the interference of a number of users with the symbols to transmit. Subsequently, a strategy for improving the performance of space shift keying transmission via symbol pre-scaling is presented. This scheme re-formulates complex optimization problems via semidefinite relaxation to yield problem formulations that can be efficiently solved. In a similar line, this Thesis designs a signal detection scheme based on compressive sensing to improve the energy efficiency of spatial modulation systems in multiple access channels. The proposed technique relies on exploiting the particular structure and sparsity that spatial modulation systems inherently possess to enhance performance. This Thesis also presents research carried out with the aim of reducing the hardware complexity and associated power consumption of large scale multiple-antenna base stations. In this context, the employment of incomplete channel state information is proposed to achieve the above-mentioned objective in correlated communication channels. The candidate’s work developed in Bell Labs is also presented, where the feasibility of simplified hardware architectures for massive antenna systems is assessed with real channel measurements. Moreover, a strategy for reducing the hardware complexity of antenna selection schemes by simplifying the design of the switching procedure is also analyzed. Overall, extensive theoretical and simulation results support the improved energy efficiency and complexity of the proposed schemes, towards green wireless communications systems

1-D broadside-radiating leaky-wave antenna based on a numerically synthesized impedance surface

A newly-developed deterministic numerical technique for the automated design of metasurface antennas is applied here for the first time to the design of a 1-D printed Leaky-Wave Antenna (LWA) for broadside radiation. The surface impedance synthesis process does not require any a priori knowledge on the impedance pattern, and starts from a mask constraint on the desired far-field and practical bounds on the unit cell impedance values. The designed reactance surface for broadside radiation exhibits a non conventional patterning; this highlights the merit of using an automated design process for a design well known to be challenging for analytical methods. The antenna is physically implemented with an array of metal strips with varying gap widths and simulation results show very good agreement with the predicted performance

Beam scanning by liquid-crystal biasing in a modified SIW structure

A fixed-frequency beam-scanning 1D antenna based on Liquid Crystals (LCs) is designed for application in 2D scanning with lateral alignment. The 2D array environment imposes full decoupling of adjacent 1D antennas, which often conflicts with the LC requirement of DC biasing: the proposed design accommodates both. The LC medium is placed inside a Substrate Integrated Waveguide (SIW) modified to work as a Groove Gap Waveguide, with radiating slots etched on the upper broad wall, that radiates as a Leaky-Wave Antenna (LWA). This allows effective application of the DC bias voltage needed for tuning the LCs. At the same time, the RF field remains laterally confined, enabling the possibility to lay several antennas in parallel and achieve 2D beam scanning. The design is validated by simulation employing the actual properties of a commercial LC medium

Terahertz Communications and Sensing for 6G and Beyond: A Comprehensive View

The next-generation wireless technologies, commonly referred to as the sixth generation (6G), are envisioned to support extreme communications capacity and in particular disruption in the network sensing capabilities. The terahertz (THz) band is one potential enabler for those due to the enormous unused frequency bands and the high spatial resolution enabled by both short wavelengths and bandwidths. Different from earlier surveys, this paper presents a comprehensive treatment and technology survey on THz communications and sensing in terms of the advantages, applications, propagation characterization, channel modeling, measurement campaigns, antennas, transceiver devices, beamforming, networking, the integration of communications and sensing, and experimental testbeds. Starting from the motivation and use cases, we survey the development and historical perspective of THz communications and sensing with the anticipated 6G requirements. We explore the radio propagation, channel modeling, and measurements for THz band. The transceiver requirements, architectures, technological challenges, and approaches together with means to compensate for the high propagation losses by appropriate antenna and beamforming solutions. We survey also several system technologies required by or beneficial for THz systems. The synergistic design of sensing and communications is explored with depth. Practical trials, demonstrations, and experiments are also summarized. The paper gives a holistic view of the current state of the art and highlights the issues and challenges that are open for further research towards 6G.Comment: 55 pages, 10 figures, 8 tables, submitted to IEEE Communications Surveys & Tutorial

Rate-splitting multiple access for non-terrestrial communication and sensing networks

Rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) has emerged as a powerful and flexible non-orthogonal transmission, multiple access (MA) and interference management scheme for future wireless networks. This thesis is concerned with the application of RSMA to non-terrestrial communication and sensing networks. Various scenarios and algorithms are presented and evaluated. First, we investigate a novel multigroup/multibeam multicast beamforming strategy based on RSMA in both terrestrial multigroup multicast and multibeam satellite systems with imperfect channel state information at the transmitter (CSIT). The max-min fairness (MMF)-degree of freedom (DoF) of RSMA is derived and shown to provide gains compared with the conventional strategy. The MMF beamforming optimization problem is formulated and solved using the weighted minimum mean square error (WMMSE) algorithm. Physical layer design and link-level simulations are also investigated. RSMA is demonstrated to be very promising for multigroup multicast and multibeam satellite systems taking into account CSIT uncertainty and practical challenges in multibeam satellite systems. Next, we extend the scope of research from multibeam satellite systems to satellite- terrestrial integrated networks (STINs). Two RSMA-based STIN schemes are investigated, namely the coordinated scheme relying on CSI sharing and the co- operative scheme relying on CSI and data sharing. Joint beamforming algorithms are proposed based on the successive convex approximation (SCA) approach to optimize the beamforming to achieve MMF amongst all users. The effectiveness and robustness of the proposed RSMA schemes for STINs are demonstrated. Finally, we consider RSMA for a multi-antenna integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) system, which simultaneously serves multiple communication users and estimates the parameters of a moving target. Simulation results demonstrate that RSMA is beneficial to both terrestrial and multibeam satellite ISAC systems by evaluating the trade-off between communication MMF rate and sensing Cramer-Rao bound (CRB).Open Acces

Metamaterials and Metasurfaces

Ye

Investigating the data rate in reconfigurable intelligent surfaces assisted wireless communication

In the realm of wireless communications, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) offer network providers the capability to manage the behaviour of electromagnetic signals, encompassing their scattering, reflection, and refraction properties. Numerous research findings have underscored RIS’s effectiveness in controlling wireless wave attributes, such as amplitude and phase, without necessitating intricate equalization and decoding at the receiver’s end. However, it’s crucial to note that configuring the surface in practical scenarios with frequency-selective fading channels should be carefully addressed across the entire bandwidth. This entails considering a wideband orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) communication system that is based on a practical RIS configuration, involving distinct phase shifts for each element on the surface. In this thesis, we propose a communication setup to investigate the user data rate enhancement with the aid of RIS surface using practical phase shift model for multi-bit RIS phase resolutions. It is observed that the achievable data rate enhances with higher bit resolutions but the cost of hardware complexity. The effects of mutual coupling (MC) due to the large RIS surface and the electromagnetic interference (EMI) due to the unavoidable signals from external sources are well investigated on the performance data rate. The MC and EMI degrade the achievable rate so, the RIS must be aware of such signal impairment parameters. Furthermore, we have extended the study of the performance of the achievable data rate for multi-users in single-input-single-output (SISO) wideband based-RIS system with single antenna at the access point (AP) and each user. The propagation environment was assumed to have both line-of-sight (LoS) and non-line-of-sight (NLoS) channels so, it is more realistic and practical. Different RIS algorithms are studied in both LoS and NLoS channels scenarios taking into considerations the computational complexity and run time. The semidefinite relaxation scheme shows higher performance than the other schems but at the cost of computational complexity and run time consequently, the thesis proposes low complex with comparable performance iterative power method that adopts codebook approach. The RIS demonstrated significant performance data rate not only in communication but also in localization. The RIS-enabled localization has been investigated in the near and far-field regimes using realistic RIS phase shift model that considers the phase and amplitude variations. We introduced an analysis of Fisher information using a straightforward expression for the Fisher information matrix (FIM), illustrating how the position error bound (PEB) is influenced by the phase profiles of RIS. We employed three types of RIS phase profiles—random, directional, and positional configurations—to showcase the impact of RIS on localization and communication within the near-field range. These profiles were designed considering both the amplitude and phase responses of the RIS, utilizing a practical phase-dependent amplitude model. The random profile ensures a uniform signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) across the deployment area, while the directional and positional profiles enhance SNR towards the user’s location. Additionally, we devised a straightforward localization scheme to simplify the maximum likelihood (ML) estimator’s complexity. In the near-field region, the achievable data rate diminishes with distance, mirroring the gradual increase in localization error as distance from the RIS grows. Both the achievable data rate and localization error exhibit subpar performance when employing the RIS phase-dependent amplitude model with amplitude values less than one. Consequently, the widespread assumption of unity amplitude in the RIS phase shift model, as commonly seen in literature, leads to overly optimistic and inaccurate results in localization and communication performance. Simulation results have shown the importance of utilizing RIS technology in both communication and localization. Finally, we have carried out RIS measurements field in the mast lab to configure the test bed hardware of 64×64 RIS elements in order to show the capability of such new technology in improving the signal strength and coverage