Multiple Importance Sampling for Symbol Error Rate Estimation of Maximum-Likelihood Detectors in MIMO Channels

In this paper we propose a multiple importance sampling (MIS) method for the efficient symbol error rate (SER) estimation of maximum likelihood (ML) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) detectors. Given a transmitted symbol from the input lattice, obtaining the SER requires the computation of an integral outside its Voronoi region in a high-dimensional space, for which a closed-form solution does not exist. Hence, the SER must be approximated through crude or naive Monte Carlo (MC) simulations. This practice is widely used in the literature despite its inefficiency, particularly severe at high signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) or for systems with stringent SER requirements. It is well-known that more sophisticated MC-based techniques such as MIS, when carefully designed, can reduce the variance of the estimators in several orders of magnitude with respect to naive Monte Carlo in rare-event estimation, or equivalently, they need significantly less samples for attaining a desired performance. The proposed MIS method provides unbiased SER estimates by sampling from a mixture of components that are carefully chosen and parametrized. The number of components, the parameters of the components, and their weights in the mixture, are automatically chosen by the proposed method. As a result, the proposed method is flexible, easy-to-use, theoretically sound, and presents a high performance in a variety of scenarios. We show in our simulations that SERs lower than 10?8 can be accurately estimated with just 104 random samples.The work of V. Elvira was supported by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche of France under PISCES project (ANR-17-CE40-0031-01). The work of I. Santamaria was supported by Ministerio de Ciencia, Innovación y Universidades and AEI/FEDER funds of the E.U., under grant PID2019-104958RB-C43 (ADELE). A short preliminary version of this paper was presented at the 2019 Asilomar Conference on Signals, Systems, and Computers

Energy-efficient Rate Splitting for MIMO STAR-RIS-assisted Broadcast Channels with I/Q Imbalance

This paper proposes an energy-efficient scheme for multicell multiple-input, multiple-output (MIMO) simultaneous transmit and reflect (STAR) reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS)-assisted broadcast channels by employing rate splitting (RS) and improper Gaussian signaling (IGS). Regular RISs can only reflect signals. Thus, a regular RIS can assist only when the transmitter and receiver are in the reflection space of the RIS. However, a STAR-RIS can simultaneously transmit and reflect, thus providing a 360-degrees coverage. In this paper, we assume that transceivers may suffer from I/Q imbalance (IQI). To compensate for IQI, we employ IGS. Moreover, we employ RS to manage intracell interference. We show that RIS can significantly improve the energy efficiency (EE) of the system when RIS components are carefully optimized. Additionally, we show that STAR-RIS can significantly outperform a regular RIS when the regular RIS cannot cover all the users. We also show that RS can highly increase the EE comparing to treating interference as noise.Comment: Accepted at the 31st European Signal Processing Conference (EUSIPCO 2023

Spectral and Energy Efficiency Maximization of MISO STAR-RIS-assisted URLLC Systems

This paper proposes a general optimization framework to improve the spectral and energy efficiency (EE) of ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) simultaneous-transfer-and-receive (STAR) reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted interference-limited systems with finite block length (FBL). This framework can solve a large variety of optimization problems in which the objective and/or constraints are linear functions of the rates and/or EE of users. Additionally, the framework can be applied to any interference-limited system with treating interference as noise as the decoding strategy at receivers. We consider a multi-cell broadcast channel as an example and show how this framework can be specialized to solve the minimum-weighted rate, weighted sum rate, global EE and weighted EE of the system. We make realistic assumptions regarding the (STAR-)RIS by considering three different feasibility sets for the components of either regular RIS or STAR-RIS. Our results show that RIS can substantially increase the spectral and EE of URLLC systems if the reflecting coefficients are properly optimized. Moreover, we consider three different transmission strategies for STAR-RIS as energy splitting (ES), mode switching (MS), and time switching (TS). We show that STAR-RIS can outperform a regular RIS when the regular RIS cannot cover all the users. Furthermore, it is shown that the ES scheme outperforms the MS and TS schemes.Comment: Accepted at IEEE ACCES

SNR Maximization in Beyond Diagonal RIS-assisted Single and Multiple Antenna Links

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) architectures not limited to diagonal phase shift matrices have recently been considered to increase their flexibility in shaping the wireless channel. One of these beyond-diagonal RIS or BD-RIS architectures leads to a unitary and symmetric RIS matrix. In this letter, we consider the problem of maximizing the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) in single and multiple antenna links assisted by a BD-RIS. The Max-SNR problem admits a closed-form solution based on the Takagi factorization of a certain complex and symmetric matrix. This allows us to solve the max-SNR problem for SISO, SIMO, and MISO channels.Comment: 5 pages, 2 figure

Optimization of Rate-Splitting Multiple Access in Beyond Diagonal RIS-assisted URLLC Systems

This paper proposes a general optimization framework for rate splitting multiple access (RSMA) in beyond diagonal (BD) reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) assisted ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC) systems. This framework can solve a large family of optimization problems in which the objective and/or constraints are linear functions of the rates and/or energy efficiency (EE) of users. Using this framework, we show that RSMA and RIS can be mutually beneficial tools when the system is overloaded, i.e., when the number of users per cell is higher than the number of base station (BS) antennas. Additionally, we show that the benefits of RSMA increase when the packets are shorter and/or the reliability constraint is more stringent. Furthermore, we show that the RSMA benefits increase with the number of users per cell and decrease with the number of BS antennas. Finally, we show that RIS (either diagonal or BD) can highly improve the system performance, and BD-RIS outperforms regular RIS.Comment: submitted to at IEEE journa

Non-oxidative methane conversion in microwave-assisted structured reactors

The main problem to be addressed in the valorization of methane under non-oxidative conditions (MNOC) is to reduce or even avoid coke formation. In this work we report the use of microwave-assisted heating for MNOC. We have developed a system able to heat-up a Mo-ZSM5 catalyst coated on silicon carbide monolith that could operate stable for at least 19¿h at reaction conditions, 700°C. We demonstrate that under MW-heating the selectivity shifts to C2s and benzene. In contrast, the operation under conventional heating (CH) produces more coke and polyaromatics. The selective microwave heating has two effects in this reaction: i) during the activation of the catalyst the formation of the active catalytic species of Mo2C inside the microporous support is different affecting the selectivity and product distribution; ii) a gas-solid temperature gradient is established that prevents the formation of coke from PAHs in the gas phase. The MNOC process under controlled MW heating at high space velocity (3000¿mL/gcat·h) gives a hydrocarbon yield of around 6% with a very low deactivation rate. These results open up new possibilities for process intensification using alternative sources of energy, as is the case of microwaves, for heating structured catalytic reactors

Information-theoretic analysis of a family of improper discrete constellations

Non-circular or improper Gaussian signaling has proven beneficial in several interference-limited wireless networks. However, all implementable coding schemes are based on finite discrete constellations rather than Gaussian signals. In this paper, we propose a new family of improper constellations generated by widely linear processing of a square M-QAM (quadrature amplitude modulation) signal. This family of discrete constellations is parameterized by κ, the circularity coefficient and a phase ϕ. For uncoded communication systems, this phase should be optimized as ϕ∗(κ) to maximize the minimum Euclidean distance between points of the improper constellation, therefore minimizing the bit error rate (BER). For the more relevant case of coded communications, where the coded symbols are constrained to be in this family of improper constellations using ϕ∗(κ), it is shown theoretically and further corroborated by simulations that, except for a shaping loss of 1.53 dB encountered at a high signal-to-noise ratio (snr), there is no rate loss with respect to the improper Gaussian capacity. In this sense, the proposed family of constellations can be viewed as the improper counterpart of the standard proper M-QAM constellations widely used in coded communication systems.The work of Pedro M. Crespo and Ignacio Santamaria has been partially supported by the Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) of Spain and Agencia Estatal de Investigación (AEI)/(European Fund for Economic and Regional Development) FEDER funds of the E.U., under Grants TEC2013-47141-C4-R (RACHEL), TEC2016-75067-C4-4-R (CARMEN). The work of Christian Lameiro and Peter J. Schreier was supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG) under Grants LA 4107/1-1 and SCHR 1384/6-1