We investigate a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided multi-user massive multiple-input multi-output (MIMO) system where low-resolution digital-analog converters (DACs) are configured at the base station (BS) in order to reduce the cost and power consumption. An approximate analytical expression for the downlink achievable rate is derived based on maximum ratio transmission (MRT) and additive quantization noise model (AQNM), and the rate maximization problem is solved by particle swarm optimization (PSO) method under both continuous phase shifts (CPSs) and discrete phase shifts (DPSs) at the RIS. Simulation results show that the downlink sum achievable rate tends to a constant with the increase of the number of quantization bits of DACs, and four quantization bits are enough to capture a large portion of the performance of the ideal perfect DACs case.
By activating blocked users and altering successive interference cancellation (SIC) sequences, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) become promising for enhancing non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) systems. This work investigates the downlink performance of RIS-aided NOMA networks via stochastic geometry. We first introduce the unique path loss model for RIS reflecting channels. Then, we evaluate the angle distributions based on a Poisson cluster process (PCP) framework, which theoretically demonstrates that the angles of incidence and reflection are uniformly distributed. Lastly, we …
Current scene depth estimation approaches mainly rely on optical sensing, which carries privacy concerns and suffers from estimation ambiguity for distant, shiny, and transparent surfaces/objects. Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) provide a path for employing a massive number of antennas using low-cost and energy-efficient architectures. This has the potential for realizing RIS-aided wireless sensing with high spatial resolution. In this paper, we propose to employ RIS-aided wireless sensing systems for scene depth estimation. We develop a comprehensive framework for building accurate…
A two-user downlink network aided by a reconfigurable intelligent surface is considered. The weighted sum signal to interference plus noise ratio maximization and the sum rate maximization models are presented, where the precoding vectors and the RIS matrix are jointly optimized. Since the optimization problem is non-convex and difficult, new approximation models are proposed. The upper bounds of the corresponding objective functions are derived and maximized. Two new algorithms based on the alternating direction method of multiplier are proposed. It is proved that the proposed algorithms conv…
We consider a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided massive multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication system with transceiver hardware impairments (HWIs) and RIS phase noise. Different from the existing contributions, the phase shifts of the RIS are designed based on the long-term angle informations. Firstly, an approximate analytical expression of the uplink achievable rate is derived. Then, we use genetic algorithm (GA) to maximize the sum rate and the minimum date rate. Finally, we show that it is crucial to take HWIs into account when designing the phase shift…
This paper investigates the performance of reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems with direct links, and the phase shifts of the RIS are designed based on the statistical channel state information (CSI). We first derive the closed-form expression of the uplink ergodic data rate. Then, based on the derived expression, we use the genetic algorithm (GA) to solve the sum data rate maximization problem. With low-complexity maximal-ratio combination (MRC) and low-overhead statistical CSI-based scheme, we validate that the RIS can still br…
In this letter, we investigate joint application of reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) and vertical beamforming in cognitive radio networks (CRN). After properly modeling the network, an optimization problem is formed to jointly design the beamforming vector and tilt angle at the secondary base station (BS) as well as the phase shifts at the RIS with the objective of maximizing spectral efficiency of the secondary network. The optimization problem is non-convex; thus, we propose an efficient solution method for it. Numerical results show that adding a RIS and optimizing the radiation ori…
Millimeter wave (mmWave) communication has been regarded as one of the most promising technologies for the future generation wireless networks because of its advantages of providing a ultra-wide new spectrum and ultra-high data transmission rate. To reduce the power consumption and circuit cost for mmWave systems, hybrid digital and analog (HDA) architecture is preferred in such a scenario. In this paper, an artificial-noise (AN) aided secure HDA beamforming scheme is proposed for mmWave MISO system with low resolution digital-to-analog converters (DACs) and finite-quantized phase shifters on …
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided networks have been investigated for the purpose of improving the system performance. However, the introduced unit modulus phase shifts and coupling characteristic bring enormous challenges to the optimization in the RIS-aided networks. Many efforts have been made to jointly optimize phase shift vector and other parameters. This article intends to survey the latest research results about the optimization in RIS-aided networks. A taxonomy is devised to categorize the existing literatures based on optimization types, phase shift form, and decoupling …
The reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) has arose an upsurging research interest recently due to its promising outlook in 5G-and-beyond wireless networks. With the assistance of RIS, the wireless propagation environment is no longer static and could be customized to support diverse service requirements. In this paper, we will approach the rate maximization problems in RIS-aided wireless networks by considering the beamforming and reflecting design jointly. Three representative design problems from different system settings are investigated based on a proposed unified algorithmic framework…
In this work, we consider the target detection problem in a sensing architecture where the radar is aided by a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), that can be modeled as an array of sub-wavelength small reflective elements capable of imposing a tunable phase shift to the impinging waves and, ultimately, of providing the radar with an additional echo of the target. A theoretical analysis is carried out for closely- and widely-spaced (with respect to the target) radar and RIS and for different beampattern configurations, and some examples are provided to show that large gains can be achiev…
This paper presents a quantified assessment of the physical layer security capabilities of reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided wireless systems under eavesdropping. Specifically, we derive a closed-form expression for the ergodic secrecy capacity (ESC) that is adaptable to different types of fading and RIS size. The channels between the transmitter (TX) and RIS, the RIS and legitimate receiver as well as the TX and eavesdropper are assumed to follow independent mixture Gamma (MG) distributions. Note that MG is capable of modeling a large variety of well-known distributions, includin…
In this paper, we propose and investigate an aerial reconfigurable intelligent surface (aerial-RIS)-aided wireless communication system. Specifically, considering practical composite fading channels, we characterize the air-to-ground (A2G) links by Namkagami-m small-scale fading and inverse-Gamma large-scale shadowing. To investigate the delay-limited performance of the proposed system, we derive a tight approximate closed-form expression for the end-to-end outage probability (OP). Next, considering a mobile environment, where performance analysis is intractable, we rely on machine learning-ba…
Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) have emerged as a promising technique to enhance the system spectral efficiency. This paper investigates the ergodic channel capacity (ECC) of an RIS-aided multiple-input multiple-output channel under the assumption that the transmitter-RIS, RIS-receiver, and transmitter-receiver channels contain deterministic line-of-sight paths. Novel expressions are derived to characterize the upper and lower bounds of the ECC. To unveil more system insights, asymptotic analyses are performed to the system ECC in the limit of large signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and n…
This letter investigates the reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems with a two-timescale design. First, the zero-forcing (ZF) detector is applied at the base station (BS) based on instantaneous aggregated CSI, which is the superposition of the direct channel and the cascaded user-RIS-BS channel. Then, by leveraging the channel statistical property, we derive the closed-form ergodic achievable rate expression. Using a gradient ascent method, we design the RIS passive beamforming only relying on the long-term statistical CSI. We prove…
This paper focuses on studying orthogonal and non-orthogonal multiple access in intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-aided systems. Unlike most prior works assuming continuous phase shifts, we employ the practical setup where only a finite number of discrete phase shifts are available. To maximize the sum rate, active beamforming and discrete reflection need to be jointly optimized. We therefore propose an alternative optimization method to get the optimal continuous phase shifts iteratively, and then quantize each phase shift to its nearest discrete value. The sum-rate maximization of differe…
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided wireless communications have drawn significant attention recently. We study the physical layer security of the downlink RIS-aided transmission framework for randomly located users in the presence of a multi-antenna eavesdropper. To show the advantages of RIS-aided networks, we consider two practical scenarios: Communication with and without RIS. In both cases, we apply the stochastic geometry theory to derive exact probability density function (PDF) and cumulative distribution function (CDF) of the received signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio.…
This article aims to reduce huge pilot overhead when estimating the reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) relayed wireless channel. Motivated by the compelling grasp of deep learning in tackling nonlinear mapping problems, the proposed approach only activates a part of RIS elements and utilizes the corresponding cascaded channel estimate to predict another part. Through a synthetic deep neural network (DNN), the direct channel and active cascaded channel are first estimated sequentially, followed by the channel prediction for the inactive RIS elements. A three-stage training strategy is dev…
This paper proposes a novel relay-aided intelligent reconfigurable surface (IRS) architecture for future wireless communication systems. The proposed architecture, which consists of two side-by-side intelligent surfaces connected via a full-duplex relay, has the potential of achieving the promising gains of intelligent surfaces while requiring much smaller numbers of reflecting elements. Consequently, the proposed IRS architecture needs significantly less channel estimation and beam training overhead and provides higher robustness compared to classical IRS approaches. Further, thanks to dividi…
We consider a fully digital massive multiple-input multiple-output architecture with low-resolution analog-to-digital/digital-to-analog converters (ADCs/DACs) at the base station (BS) and analyze the performance trade-off between the number of BS antennas, the resolution of the ADCs/DACs, and the bandwidth. Assuming a hardware power consumption constraint, we determine the relationship between these design parameters by using a realistic model for the power consumption of the ADCs/DACs and the radio frequency chains. Considering uplink pilot-aided channel estimation, we build on the Bussgang d…
In this paper, we investigate the physical layer security in the reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided cell-free networks. A maximum weighted sum secrecy rate problem is formulated by jointly optimizing the active beamforming (BF) at the base stations and passive BF at the RISs. To handle this non-trivial problem, we adopt the alternating optimization to decouple the original problem into two sub-ones, which are solved using the semidefinite relaxation and continuous convex approximation theory. To decrease the complexity for obtaining overall channel state information (CSI), we exten…
This article focuses on the exploitation of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) in multi-user networks employing orthogonal multiple access (OMA) or non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), with an emphasis on investigating the interplay between NOMA and RIS. Depending on whether the RIS reflection coefficients can be adjusted only once or multiple times during one transmission, we distinguish between static and dynamic RIS configurations. In particular, the capacity region of RIS aided single-antenna NOMA networks is characterized and compared with the OMA rate region from an information…
This letter considers the secure communication in a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) aided full duplex (FD) system. An FD base station (BS) serves an uplink (UL) user and a downlink (DL) user simultaneously over the same time-frequency dimension assisted by a RIS in the presence of an eavesdropper. In addition, the artificial noise (AN) is also applied to interfere the eavesdropper's channel. We aim to maximize the sum secrecy rate of UL and DL users by jointly optimizing the transmit beamforming, receive beamforming and AN covariance matrix at the BS, and passive beamforming at the RI…
The design of feedback channels in frequency division duplex (FDD) systems is a major challenge because of the limited available feedback bits. We consider non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) systems that incorporate reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs). In limited feedback RIS-aided NOMA systems, the RIS-aided channel and the direct channel gains should be quantized and fed back to the transmitter. This paper investigates the rate loss of the overall RIS-aided NOMA systems suffering from quantization errors. We first consider random vector quantization for the overall RIS-aided channe…
Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) have attracted increasing interest due to their ability to improve the coverage, reliability, and energy efficiency of millimeter wave (mmWave) communication systems. However, designing the RIS beamforming typically requires large channel estimation or beam training overhead, which degrades the efficiency of these systems. In this paper, we propose to equip the RIS surfaces with visual sensors (cameras) that obtain sensing information about the surroundings and user/basestation locations, guide the RIS beam selection, and reduce the beam training over…
This letter is the third part of a three-part tutorial that focuses on rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) for 6G. As Part III of the tutorial, this letter provides an overview of integrating RSMA and reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS). We first introduce two potential PHY layer techniques, namely, RSMA and RIS, including the need for integrating RSMA with RIS and how they could help each other. Next, we provide a general model of an RIS-aided RSMA system and summarize some key performance metrics. Then, we discuss the major advantages of RIS-aided RSMA networks, and illustrate the rat…
Cell-free systems can effectively eliminate the inter-cell interference by enabling multiple base stations (BSs) to cooperatively serve users without cell boundaries at the expense of high costs of hardware and power sources due to the large-scale deployment of BSs. To tackle this issue, the low-cost reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) can serve as a promising technique to improve the energy efficiency of cell-free systems. In this paper, we consider an RIS aided cell-free MIMO system where multiple RISs are deployed around BSs and users to create favorable propagation conditions via reco…
In reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) aided communications, the existing passive beamforming (PB) design involves polynomial complexity in the number of reflecting elements, and thus is difficult to implement due to a massive number of reflecting elements. To overcome this difficulty, we propose a reflection-angle-based cascaded channel model by adopting the generalized Snell's law, in which the dimension of the variable space involved in optimization is significantly reduced, resulting in a simplified hierarchical passive beamforming (HPB) design. We develop an efficient two-stage HPB…
Channel Estimation for Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface-Aided Multiuser Communication Systems Exploiting Statistical CSI of Correlated RIS-User Channels
In this work, we consider a single input single output (SISO) system for Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) assisted mmWave communication. We consider Rician channel models over user node to RIS and RIS to Access Point (AP). We obtain closed form expressions for capacity with channel state information (CSI) and without CSI at the transmitter. Newly derived capacity expressions are closed form expressions in a very compact form. We also simplified the closed form expressions for average symbol error probability. We also characterize the impacts of key parameters Rician factor K and number…
New reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) based amplitude and phase modulation schemes are proposed as an evolution how the phase-only modulation schemes available in the literature. Explicitly, both the amplitude-phase shift keying (A-PSK) and quadrature amplitude-phase shift keying (QA-PSK) are conceived, where the RIS is assumed to be part of a transmitter to deliver information to the multi-antenna aided downlink receiver. In the proposed design, the RIS is partitioned into multiple blocks, and the information bits are conveyed by controlling both the ON-OFF state and the phase shift of…
LUNA: Luneburg-Lens-Aided Reconfigurable Array for 6G-and-Advanced Wireless Networks
Beijing Institute of Technology（北京理工大学）；Nanyang Technological University（南洋理工大学）；Queen’s University Belfast（贝尔法斯特女王大学）；Tsinghua University（清华大学）；University of Southampton（南安普顿大学）
We consider reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) aided sixth-generation (6G) terahertz (THz) communications for indoor environment in which a base station (BS) wishes to send independent messages to its serving users with the help of multiple RISs. For indoor environment, various obstacles such as pillars, walls, and other objects can result in no line-of-sight signal path between the BS and a user, which can significantly degrade performance. To overcome such limitation of indoor THz communication, we firstly optimize the placement of RISs to maximize the coverage area. Under the optimize…
Rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) has been recognized as a promising and powerful multiple access (MA) scheme, non-orthogonal transmission framework and interference management strategy for 6G. Inspired by the appealing spectral efficiency gain achieved by RSMA over conventional MA schemes in multi-user multi-antenna transmission, in this paper we introduce RSMA to reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided multiple-input single-out (MISO) broadcast channel (BC). To further enhance the spectral efficiency, a more generalized RIS architecture called fully connected RIS is considered. By…
Channel estimation is challenging for the reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided wireless communications. Since the number of coefficients of the cascaded channel among the base station (BS), the RIS and the user equipments (UEs) is the product of the number of BS antennas, the number of RIS elements, and the number of UEs, the pilot overhead can be prohibitively high. In this paper, we propose a two-timescale channel estimation framework to exploit the property that the BS-RIS channel is high-dimensional but quasi-static, while the RIS-UE channel is mobile but low-dimensional. Specifi…
This paper investigates the reconfigurable reflecting surface (RIS)-aided multiple-input-single-output (MISO) systems with imperfect channel state information (CSI), where RIS-related channels are modeled by Rician fading. Considering the overhead and complexity in practical systems, we employ the low-complexity maximum ratio combining (MRC) beamforming at the base station (BS), and configure the phase shifts of the RIS based on long-term statistical CSI. Specifically, we first estimate the overall channel matrix based on the linear minimum mean square error (LMMSE) estimator, and evaluate the…
Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) become promising for enhancing non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) systems, i.e., enhancing the channel quality and altering the SIC orders. Invoked by stochastic geometry methods, we investigate the downlink coverage performance of RIS-aided multi-cell NOMA networks. We first derive the RIS-aided channel model, concluding the direct and reflecting links. The analytical results demonstrate that the RIS-aided channel model can be closely modeled as a Gamma distribution. Additionally, interference from other cells is analyzed. Lastly, we derive closed…
Considering the spectrum sharing system (SSS) coexisting with multiple primary networks, we have employed a well-designed reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) to control the radio environments of wireless channels and relieve the scarcity of the spectrum resource in this work. Specifically, the enhancement of the spectral efficiency of the secondary user in the considered SSS is decomposed into two subproblems which are a second-order cone programming (SOCP) and a fractional programming of the convex quadratic form (CQFP), respectively, to optimize alternatively the beamforming vector at t…
TeraHertz (THz) communications can satisfy the high data rate demand with massive bandwidth. However, severe path attenuation and hardware imperfection greatly alleviate its performance. Therefore, we utilize the reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) technology and investigate the RIS-aided THz communications. We first prove that the small-scale amplitude fading of THz signals can be accurately modeled by the fluctuating two-ray distribution based on two THz signal measurement experiments conducted in a variety of different scenarios. To optimize the phase-shifts at the RIS elements, we pro…
Over-the-air computation (AirComp) is a promising technology that is capable of achieving fast data aggregation in Internet of Things (IoT) networks. The mean-squared error (MSE) performance of AirComp is bottlenecked by the unfavorable channel conditions. This limitation can be mitigated by deploying a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), which reconfigures the propagation environment to facilitate the receiving power equalization. The achievable performance of RIS relies on the availability of accurate channel state information (CSI), which however is generally difficult to be obtained.…
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is promising for future 6G wireless communications. However, the increased number of RIS elements results in the high overhead for channel acquisition and the non-negligible power consumption. Therefore, how to improve the system capacity with limited RIS elements is essential. Unlike the classical regular RIS whose elements are arranged on a regular grid, in this paper, we propose an irregular RIS structure to improve the system capacity. The key idea is to irregularly configure a given number of RIS elements on an enlarged surface, which provides extr…
The intrinsic integration of the nonorthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) techniques is envisioned to be a promising approach to significantly improve both the spectrum efficiency and energy efficiency for future wireless communication networks. In this paper, the physical layer security (PLS) for a RIS-aided NOMA 6G networks is investigated, in which a RIS is deployed to assist the two "dead zone" NOMA users and both internal and external eavesdropping are considered. For the scenario with only internal eavesdropping, we consider the worst case that th…
To achieve the joint active and passive beamforming gains in the reconfigurable intelligent surface assisted millimeter wave system, the reflected cascade channel needs to be accurately estimated. Many strategies have been proposed in the literature to solve this issue. However, whether the Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRLB) of such estimation is achievable still remains uncertain. To fill this gap, we first convert the channel estimation problem into a sparse signal recovery problem by utilizing the properties of discrete Fourier transform matrix and Kronecker product. Then, a joint typicality bas…
A reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is a nearly-passive flat layer made of inexpensive elements that can add a tunable phase shift to the impinging electromagnetic wave and are controlled by a low-power electronic circuit. This paper considers the fundamental problem of target detection in a RIS-aided multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar. At first, a general signal model is introduced, which includes the possibility of using up to two RISs (one close to the radar transmitter and one close to the radar receiver) and subsumes both a monostatic and a bistatic radar configuration wit…
Recently, reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), a planar metasurface consisting of a large number of low-cost reflecting elements, has received much attention due to its ability to improve both the spectrum and energy efficiencies by reconfiguring the wireless propagation environment. In this paper, we propose a RIS phase shift and BS beamforming optimization technique that minimizes the uplink transmit power of a RIS-aided IoT network. Key idea of the proposed scheme, referred to as Riemannian conjugate gradient-based joint optimization (RCG-JO), is to jointly optimize the RIS phase shift…
Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is an emerging technology for wireless communication composed of a large number of low-cost passive devices with reconfigurable parameters, which can reflect signals with a certain phase shift and is capable of building programmable communication environment. In this paper, to avoid the high hardware cost and energy consumption in spatial modulation (SM), an IRS-aided hybrid secure SM (SSM) system with a hybrid precoder is proposed. To improve the security performance, we formulate an optimization problem to maximize the secrecy rate (SR) by jointly optimiz…
By activating blocked users and altering successive interference cancellation (SIC) sequences, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) become promising for enhancing non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) systems. The downlink RIS-aided NOMA networks are investigated via stochastic geometry. We first introduce the unique path loss model for RIS reflecting channels. Then, we evaluate the angle distributions based on a Poisson cluster process (PCP) model, which theoretically demonstrates that the angles of incidence and reflection are uniformly distributed. Additionally, we derive closed-form …
Can reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) operate in a standalone mode that is completely transparent to the 3GPP 5G initial access process? Realizing that may greatly simplify the deployment and operation of these surfaces and reduce the infrastructure control overhead. This paper investigates the feasibility of building standalone/transparent RIS systems and shows that one key challenge lies in determining the user equipment (UE)-side RIS beam reflection direction. To address this challenge, we propose to equip the RISs with multi-modal sensing capabilities (e.g., using wireless and vis…
The advantages of millimeter-wave and large antenna arrays technologies for accurate wireless localization received extensive attentions recently. However, how to further improve the accuracy of wireless localization, even in the case of obstructed line-of-sight, is largely undiscovered. In this paper, the reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is introduced into the system to make the positioning more accurate. First, we establish the three-dimensional RIS-assisted wireless localization channel model. After that, we derive the Fisher information matrix and the Cramer-Rao lower bound for eva…
In this paper, we focus our attention on the mitigation of beam squint for reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) aided wideband millimeter wave (mmWave) communications. Due to the intrinsic passive property, the phase shifts of all elements in RIS should be the same for all frequencies. However, in the wideband scenario, beam squint induced distinct path phases require designing different phase shifts for different frequencies. The above irreconcilable contradiction will dramatically affect the system performance, considering the RIS usually consists of enormous elements and the bandwidth o…
