This paper presents a spectral attention-driven reinforcement learning based intelligent method for effective and efficient detection of important signals in a wideband spectrum. In the work presented in this paper, it is assumed that the modulation technique used is available as a priori knowledge of the targeted important signal. The proposed spectral attention-driven intelligent method is consists of two main components, a spectral correlation function (SCF) based spectral visualization scheme and a spectral attention-driven reinforcement learning mechanism that adaptively selects the spectrum range and implements the intelligent signal detection. Simulations illustrate that the proposed method can achieve high accuracy of signal detection while observation of spectrum is limited to few ranges via effectively selecting the spectrum ranges to be observed. Furthermore, the proposed spectral attention-driven machine learning method can lead to an efficient adaptive intelligent spectrum sensor designs in cognitive radio (CR) receivers.
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has emerged as a revolutionizing solution to enhance wireless communications by intelligently changing the propagation environment. Prior studies on IRS are based on an ideal reflection model with a constant amplitude and a variable phase shift. However, it is difficult and unrealistic to implement an IRS satisfying such ideal reflection model in practical applications. In this letter, we aim to investigate the phase-amplitude-frequency relationship of the reflected signals and propose a practical model of reflection coefficient for an IRS-aided wideband sy…
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is envisioned as a revolutionary technology for future wireless communication systems since it can intelligently change radio environment and integrate it into wireless communication optimization. However, most existing works adopted an ideal IRS reflection model, which is impractical and can cause significant performance degradation in realistic wideband systems. To address this issue, we first study the dual phase- and amplitude-squint effect of reflected signals and present a simplified practical IRS reflection model for wideband signals. Then, an IRS en…
The emergence of beyond-licensed spectrum sharing in FR1 (0.45-6 GHz) and FR2 (24 - 52 GHz) along with the multi-antenna narrow-beam based directional transmissions demand a wideband spectrum sensing in temporal as well as spatial domains. We referred to it as ultra-wideband angular spectrum sensing (UWAS), and it consists of digitization followed by characterization of the wideband spectrum. In this paper, we design and develop state-of-the-art UWAS prototype using USRPs and LabVIEW NXG for the validation in the real-radio environment. Since 5G is expected to co-exist with LTE, the transmitte…
In this paper, we study the performance of wideband terahertz (THz) communications assisted by an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS). Specifically, we first introduce a generalized channel model that is suitable for electrically large THz IRSs operating in the near-field. Unlike prior works, our channel model takes into account the spherical wavefront of the emitted electromagnetic waves and the spatial-wideband effect. We next show that conventional frequency-flat beamfocusing significantly reduces the power gain due to beam squint, and hence is highly suboptimal. More importantly, we analy…
Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) are passive or semi-passive heterogeneous metasurfaces and consist of many tunable elements. RIS is gaining momentum as a promising new technology to enable transforming the propagation environment into controllable parameters. In this paper, we investigate the co-design of per-subcarrier power allocation matrices and multielement RIS phase shifts in downlink wideband MIMO transmission using 28 GHz frequency bands. Our contributions in improving RIS-aided links include (1) enhanced system modeling with pathloss and blockage modeling, and uniform rectan…
Recent developments in Phased Array direct positioning methods have improved accuracy for passively geo-locating multiple radio frequency-emitting signal sources. However, the number of geo-localisable signal sources is still limited by the number of antenna elements at each node. This is the limitation for methods based on MUSIC, otherwise known as signal subspace identification. This paper attempts to exploit properties of wideband signal sources to compartmentalise signals into their respective Time Differences of Arrival. By performing direct positioning after the compartmentalisation proc…
Thanks to the strong ability against the inter-cell interference, cell-free network has been considered as a promising technique to improve the network capacity of future wireless systems. However, for further capacity enhancement, it requires to deploy more base stations (BSs) with high cost and power consumption. To address the issue, inspired by the recently proposed technique called reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), we propose the concept of RIS-aided cell-free network to improve the network capacity with low cost and power consumption. Then, for the proposed RIS-aided cell-free ne…
Thanks to the strong ability against the inter-cell interference, cell-free network is considered as a promising technique to improve network capacity. However, further capacity improvement requires to deploy more base stations (BSs) with high cost and power consumption. To address this issue, inspired by the recently developed reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) technique, we propose the concept of RIS-aided cell-free network to improve the capacity with low cost and power consumption. The key idea is to replace some of the required BSs by low-cost and energy-efficient RISs. Then, in a w…
The deployment of cellular spectrum in licensed, shared and unlicensed spectrum demands wideband sensing over non-contiguous sub-6 GHz spectrum. To improve the spectrum and energy efficiency, beamforming and massive multi-antenna systems are being explored which demand spatial sensing i.e. blind identification of vacant frequency bands and direction-of-arrival (DoA) of the occupied bands. We propose a reconfigurable architecture to perform spatial sensing of multi-band spectrum digitized via wideband radio front-end comprising of the sparse antenna array (SAA) and Sub-Nyquist Sampling (SNS). T…
With the rapid development of the Internet of Things (IoT), Indoor Positioning System (IPS) has attracted significant interest in academic research. Ultra-Wideband (UWB) is an emerging technology that can be employed for IPS as it offers centimetre-level accuracy. However, the UWB system still faces several technical challenges in practice, one of which is Non-Line-of-Sight (NLoS) signal propagation. Several machine learning approaches have been applied for the NLoS component identification. However, when the data contains a very small amount of NLoS components it becomes very difficult for ex…
This study presents the progress of our recent research regarding wireless measurements of the human body. First, we explain radar imaging algorithms for screening passengers at security checkpoints that can process data faster than existing algorithms to generate accurate and high-resolution images of human bodies. Second, we introduce signal processing techniques for accurately measuring radar micro-Doppler signals associated with human motions and activities. Finally, we present radar signal processing algorithms for measuring human respiration, heartbeat, and other types of motion. Such al…
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is a promising technological enabler for the 6th generation (6G) of wireless systems with applications in localization and communication. In this paper, we consider the problem of positioning a single-antenna user in 3D space based on the received signal from a single-antenna base station and reflected signal from an RIS by taking into account the mobility of the user and spatial-wideband (WB) effects. To do so, we first derive the spatial-WB channel model under the far-field assumption, for orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing signal transmission…
Penetrating detection and recognition of behind wall indoor human activities has drawn great attentions from social security and emergency service department in recent years since intelligent surveillance aforehand could avail the proper decision making before operations being carried out. However, due to the influence of the wall effects, the obtained micro-Doppler signatures would be severely degenerated by strong near zero-frequency DC components, which would inevitably smear the detailed characteristic features of different behind wall motions in time-frequency (TF) map and further hinder …
Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces for THz Communications: Fundamentals, Key Solutions, and System Prototyping
Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学）；University of Macau（澳门大学）；Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications（北京邮电大学）；Zhengzhou University（郑州大学）；Shanghai University（上海大学）；Henan University of Technology（河南工业大学）；Hubei University（湖北大学）
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is deemed as a promising and revolutionizing technology for future wireless communication systems owing to its capability to intelligently change the propagation environment and introduce a new dimension into wireless communication optimization. Most existing studies on IRS are based on an ideal reflection model. However, it is difficult to implement an IRS which can simultaneously realize any adjustable phase shift for the signals with different frequencies. Therefore, the practical phase shift model, which can describe the difference of IRS phase shift re…
Introduction of spectrum-sharing in 5G and subsequent generation networks demand base-station(s) with the capability to characterize the wideband spectrum spanned over licensed, shared and unlicensed non-contiguous frequency bands. Spectrum characterization involves the identification of vacant bands along with center frequency and parameters (energy, modulation, etc.) of occupied bands. Such characterization at Nyquist sampling is area and power-hungry due to the need for high-speed digitization. Though sub-Nyquist sampling (SNS) offers an excellent alternative when the spectrum is sparse, it…
An intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) can greatly improve the channel quality over a frequency-flat channel, if it is configured to reflect the incident signal as a beam towards the receiver. However, the fundamental limitations of the IRS technology become apparent over practical frequency-selective channels, where the same configuration must be used over the entire bandwidth. In this paper, we consider a wideband orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) system that is supported by a fairly realistic IRS setup with two unbalanced states per element and also mutual coupling. We desc…
