Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) emerges as a promising technology for the next generation networks. In this paper, we utilize the tools from stochastic geometry to study the performance of a RIS-assisted millimeter wave (mmWave) cellular network. Specifically, the locations of the base stations (BSs) and the midpoints of the blockages are modeled as two independent Poisson point processes (PPP) where the blockages are modeled by line boolean model and a fraction of the blockages are coated with RISs. The distinguish characteristics of mmWave communications, i.e., the directional beamforming and different path loss laws for line-of-sight (LOS) and non-line-of-sight (NLOS), are incorporated into the analysis. We derive the expressions of the coverage probability and the area spectral efficiency. The coverage probability under the special case where the blockage parameter is sufficiently small is also derived. Numerical results demonstrate that better coverage performance and higher energy efficiency can be achieved by the large-scale deployment of RISs. In addition, the tradeoff between the BS and RIS densities is investigated and the results show that the RISs are excellent supplementary for the traditional networks to improve the coverage probability with limited power consumption.
The large spectrum available in the millimeter-Wave (mmWave) band has emerged as a promising solution for meeting the huge capacity requirements of the 5th generation (5G) wireless networks. However, to fully harness the potential of mmWave communications, obstacles such as severe path loss, channel sparsity and hardware complexity should be overcome. In this paper, we introduce a generalized reconfigurable antenna multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) architecture that takes advantage of lens-based reconfigurable antennas. The considered antennas can support multiple radiation patterns simult…
The highly sparse nature of propagation channels and the restricted use of radio frequency (RF) chains at transceivers limit the performance of millimeter wave (mmWave) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. Introducing reconfigurable antennas to mmWave can offer an additional degree of freedom on designing mmWave MIMO systems. This paper provides a theoretical framework for studying the mmWave MIMO with reconfigurable antennas. We present an architecture of reconfigurable mmWave MIMO with beamspace hybrid analog-digital beamformers and reconfigurable antennas at both the transmitter a…
The performance of millimeter wave (mmWave) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems is limited by the sparse nature of propagation channels and the restricted number of radio frequency (RF) chains at transceivers. The introduction of reconfigurable antennas offers an additional degree of freedom on designing mmWave MIMO systems. This paper provides a theoretical framework for studying the mmWave MIMO with reconfigurable antennas. Based on the virtual channel model, we present an architecture of reconfigurable mmWave MIMO with beamspace hybrid analog-digital beamformers and reconfigurable…
The key obstacle to achieving the full potential of the millimeter wave (mmWave) band has been the poor propagation characteristics of wireless signals in this band. One approach to overcome this issue is to use antennas that can support higher gains while providing beam adaptability and diversity, i.e., reconfigurable antennas. In this article, we present a new architecture for mmWave multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications that uses a new class of reconfigurable antennas. More specifically, the proposed lens-based antennas can support multiple radiation patterns while using a si…
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…
This paper aims to realize a new multiple access technique based on recently proposed millimeter-wave reconfigurable antenna architectures. To this end, first we show that integration of the existing reconfigurable antenna systems with the well-known non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) technique causes a significant degradation in sum rate due to the inevitable power division in reconfigurable antennas. To circumvent this fundamental limit, a new multiple access technique is proposed. The technique which is called reconfigurable antenna multiple access (RAMA) transmits only each user's inten…
In this work, we consider the deployment of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) to extend the coverage of a millimeter-wave (mmWave) network in indoor dense spaces. We first integrate RIS into ray-tracing simulations to realistically capture the propagation characteristics, then formulate a non-convex optimization problem that minimizes the number of RISs under rate constraints. We propose a feasible point pursuit and successive convex approximation-based algorithm, which solves the problem by jointly selecting the RIS locations, optimizing the RIS phase-shifts, and allocating time reso…
Millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication is one of the key enablers of the fifth-generation cellular networks (5G). However, one of the fundamental challenges of mmWave communication is the susceptibility to blockage effects. One way to alleviate this effect is the use of Intelligent Reflecting Surface (IRS). Nevertheless, due to the large number of the reflecting elements on IRS, the channel estimation turns out to be a challenging problem. This paper proposes a low-complexity channel information acquisition method for IRS-assisted mmWave communication system. Our idea consists in exploiting th…
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have brought a lot of flexibility in the network deployment. However, UAVs suffer from the high mobility and instability. To improve the capacity and reliability of the UAV networks, millimeter-wave (mmWave) and reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) can be used in the system. In this paper, we consider an RIS-assisted mmWave UAV wireless cellular network, where UAVs serve several users with the help of multiple RISs. We jointly optimize the deployment, user scheduling, beamforming vector, and RIS phases to maximize the sum-rate, with the constraints of the …
Millimeter wave (mmWave) full-duplex (FD) is a promising technique for improving capacity by maximizing the utilization of both time and the rich mmWave frequency resources. Still, it has restrictions due to FD self-interference (SI) and mmWave's limited coverage. Therefore, this study dives into FD mmWave MIMO with the assistance of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) for capacity improvement. First, we demonstrate the angular-domain reciprocity of FD antenna arrays under the far-field planar wavefront assumption. Accordingly, a strategy for joint downlink-uplink (DL-UL) channel estimat…
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted communication appears as one of the potential enablers for sixth generation (6G) wireless networks by providing a new degree of freedom in the system design to telecom operators. Particularly, RIS-empowered millimeter wave (mmWave) communication systems can be a remedy to provide broadband and ubiquitous connectivity. This paper aims to fill an important gap in the open literature by providing a physical, accurate, open-source, and widely applicable RIS channel model for mmWave frequencies. Our model is not only applicable in various indoor and…
Indoor millimeter-wave (mmWave) environment channels are typically sparsely-scattered and dominated by a strong line-of-sight (LOS) path. Therefore, communication over such channels is in general extremely difficult when the LOS path is not present. However, the recent introduction of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs), which have the potential to influence the propagation environment in a controlled manner, has the potential to change the previous paradigm. Motivated by this, we study the channel capacity optimization utilizing RISs in indoor mmWave environments where no LOS path is p…
The advent of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs) in wireless communication networks unlocks the way to support high frequency radio access (e.g. in millimeter wave) while overcoming their sensitivity to the presence of deep fading and blockages. In support of this vision, this work exhibits the forward-looking perception of using RIS to enhance the connectivity of the communication links in edge computing scenarios, to support computation offloading services. We consider a multi-user MIMO system, and we formulate a long-term optimization problem aiming to ensure a bounded end-to-end de…
In this paper, a novel communication framework that uses an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-carried intelligent reflector (IR) is proposed to enhance multi-user downlink transmissions over millimeter wave (mmWave) frequencies. In order to maximize the downlink sum-rate, the optimal precoding matrix (at the base station) and reflection coefficient (at the IR) are jointly derived. Next, to address the uncertainty of mmWave channels and maintain line-of-sight links in a real-time manner, a distributional reinforcement learning approach, based on quantile regression optimization, is proposed to lear…
Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces have emerged as a promising technology for future wireless networks. Given that a large number of reflecting elements is typically used, and that the surface has no signal processing capabilities, a major challenge is to cope with the overhead that is required to estimate the channel state information and to report the optimized phase shifts to the surface. This issue has not been addressed by previous works, which do not explicitly consider the overhead during the resource allocation phase. This work aims at filling this gap, developing an overhead-aware re…
This work considers a point-to-point link where a reconfigurable intelligent surface assists the communication between transmitter and receiver. The system rate, energy efficiency, and their trade-off are optimized with respect to the number of individually tunable elements of the intelligent surface. The resource allocation accounts for the communication phase and for the overhead due to channel estimation and to reporting the optimized resource allocation to the intelligent surface. Numerical results confirm the optimality of the proposed methods and show the potential gains of reconfigurabl…
As communication systems that employ millimeter wave (mmWave) frequency bands must use large antenna arrays to overcome the severe propagation loss of mmWave signals, hybrid beamforming has been considered as an integral component of mmWave communications. Recently, intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has been proposed as an innovative technology that can significantly improve the performance of mmWave communication systems through the use of low-cost passive reflecting elements. In this paper, we study IRS-aided mmWave multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems with hybrid beamforming arc…
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…
In this paper, the problem of training signal design for intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication under a sparse channel model is considered. The problem is approached based on the Cram$\acute{\text{e}}$r-Rao lower bound (CRB) on the mean-square error (MSE) of channel estimation. By exploiting the sparse structure of mmWave channels, the CRB for the channel parameter composed of path gains and path angles is derived in closed form under Bayesian and hybrid parameter assumptions. Based on the derivation and analysis, an IRS reflection pattern design m…
In this paper, we analyze the error probability of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS)-enabled communication systems with quantized channel phase compensation over Rayleigh fading channels. The probability density and characteristic functions of the received signal amplitude are derive dand used to compute exact expressions for the bit error rate(BER). The resulting expressions are general, as they hold for an arbitrary number of reflecting elements N, and quantization levels, L. We introduce an exact asymptotic analysis in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime, from which we demon…
We investigate a multi-user multiple-input multiple-output interference network in the presence of multiple reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs). The entire system is described by using a circuit-based model for the transmitters, receivers, and RISs. This is obtained by leveraging the electromagnetic tool of mutual impedances, which accounts for the signal propagation and the mutual coupling among closely-spaced scattering elements. An iterative and provably convergent optimization algorithm that maximizes the sum-rate of RIS-assisted multi-user interference channels is introduced. Numer…
Cooperative rate splitting (CRS), built upon rate splitting multiple access (RSMA) and opportunistic user relaying, has been recognized as a promising transmission strategy to enhance the user fairness and spectral efficiency in multiantenna broadcast channels. To further boost its performance, the interplay of CRS and reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is investigated in this work. Specifically, a novel RIS-aided CRS transmission framework is proposed and the corresponding resource allocation problem to maximize the minimum rate among users is investigated. An alternative optimization a…
In this report, we summarize the end-to-end signal-to-noise ratio and the rate of half-duplex, full-duplex, amplify-and-forward, and decode-and-forward relay-aided communications, and well as the signal-to-noise ratio and the rate of the emerging technology known as reconfigurable intelligent surfaces.
The performance of cooperative ambient backscatter communications (CABC) can be enhanced by employing reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) to assist backscatter transmitters. Since the RIS power consumption is a non-negligible issue, we consider a RIS assisted CABC system where the RIS with energy harvesting circuit can not only reflect signal but also harvest wireless energy. We study a transmission design problem to minimize the RIS power consumption with the quality of service constraints for both active and backscatter transmissions. The optimization problem is a mixed-integer non-conv…
In this paper, we examine the potential for a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) to be powered by energy harvested from information signals. This feature might be key to reap the benefits of RIS technology's lower power consumption compared to active relays. We first identify the main RIS power-consuming components and then propose an energy harvesting and power consumption model. Furthermore, we formulate and solve the problem of the optimal RIS placement together with the amplitude and phase response adjustment of its elements in order to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) while …
The potential advantages of intelligent wireless communications with millimeter wave (mmWave) and massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) are based on the availability of instantaneous channel state information (CSI) at the base station (BS). However, no existence of channel reciprocity leads to the difficult acquisition of accurate CSI at the BS in frequency division duplex (FDD) systems. Many researchers explored effective architectures based on deep learning (DL) to solve this problem and proved the success of DL-based solutions. However, existing schemes focused on the acquisition of…
Millimeter wave (mmWave) band, or high frequencies such as THz, has large undeveloped band of spectrum. However, wireless channels over the mmWave band usually have one or two paths only due to the severe attenuation. The channel property restricts its development in the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system, which can improve throughput by increasing the spectral efficiency. Recent development in reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) provides new opportunities to mmWave communications. In this study, we propose a mmWave system, which used low-precision analog-to-digital converters (…
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is considered as an extraordinarily promising technology to solve the blockage problem of millimeter wave (mmWave) communications owing to its capable of establishing a reconfigurable wireless propagation. In this paper, we focus on a RIS-assisted mmWave communication network consisting of multiple base stations (BSs) serving a set of user equipments (UEs). Considering the BS-RIS-UE association problem which determines that the RIS should assist which BS and UEs, we joint optimize BS-RIS-UE association and passive beamforming at RIS to maximize the sum-…
This letter focuses on the secure transmission for an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted millimeter-wave (mmWave) and terahertz (THz) systems, in which a base station (BS) communicates with its destination via an IRS, in the presence of a passive eavesdropper. To maximize the system secrecy rate, the transmit beamforming at the BS and the reflecting matrix at the IRS are jointly optimized with transmit power and discrete phase-shift constraints. It is first proved that the beamforming design is independent of the phase shift design under the rank-one channel assumption. The formulat…
A reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) enhanced non-orthogonal multiple access assisted backscatter communication (RIS-NOMABC) system is considered. A joint optimization problem over power reflection coefficients and phase shifts is formulated. To solve this non-convex problem, a low complexity algorithm is proposed by invoking the alternative optimization, successive convex approximation and manifold optimization algorithms. Numerical results corroborate that the proposed RIS-NOMABC system outperforms the conventional non-orthogonal multiple access assisted backscatter communication (NOMA…
Large intelligent surface (LIS) has recently emerged as a potential low-cost solution to reshape the wireless propagation environment for improving the spectral efficiency. In this paper, we consider a downlink millimeter-wave (mmWave) multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) system, where an LIS is deployed to assist the downlink data transmission from a base station (BS) to a user equipment (UE). Both the BS and the UE are equipped with a large number of antennas, and a hybrid analog/digital precoding/combining structure is used to reduce the hardware cost and energy consumption. We aim to maxi…
This paper investigates the maximal achievable rate for a given average error probability and blocklength for the reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) assisted multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) system. The result consists of a finite blocklength channel coding achievability bound and a converse bound based on the Berry-Esseen theorem, the Mellin transform and the mutual information. Numerical evaluation shows fast speed of convergence to the maximal achievable rate as the blocklength increases and also proves that the channel variance is a sound measurement of the backoff from the …
Outdoor-to-indoor communications in millimeter-wave (mmWave) cellular networks have been one challenging research problem due to the severe attenuation and the high penetration loss caused by the propagation characteristics of mmWave signals. We propose a viable solution to implement the outdoor-to-indoor mmWave communication system with the aid of an active intelligent transmitting surface (active-ITS), where the active-ITS allows the incoming signal from an outdoor base station (BS) to pass through the surface and be received by the indoor user-equipments (UEs) after shifting its phase and m…
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-based transmission technology offers a promising solution to enhance wireless communication performance cost-effectively through properly adjusting the parameters of a large number of passive reflecting elements. This letter proposes a cosine similarity theorem-based low-complexity algorithm for adapting the phase shifts of an RIS that assists a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) transmission system. A semi-analytical probabilistic approach is developed to derive the theoretical average bit error probability (ABEP) of the system. Furthermore, the val…
We propose a novel reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) encoded information transmission scheme for a line-of-sight environment. A RIS fed with data modulates the information on impinging waves emitted from an external source in the states of polarization (SoP) of the scattered waves by performing a novel differential polarization shift keying. In particular, the information is encoded in the change of the SoP over two successive scattering slots. The proposed scheme is immune to the SoP fluctuations in the wireless channel which allows for non-coherent detection at the receiver.
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…
In this letter, we investigate the robust and secure beamforming (RSBF) in an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) aided millimeter wave (mmWave) multiple input single output (MISO) system, where multiple single antenna eavesdroppers (Eves) are arbitrarily distributed nearby the legitimate receiver. Considering the channel state information (CSI) of Eves' channels is imperfectly known at the legitimate transmitter, the RSBF design problems to maximize the worst case of achievable secrecy rate (ASR) are formulated under the total transmission power and unit-modulus constraints. Since the proble…
What is a reconfigurable intelligent surface? What is a smart radio environment? What is a metasurface? How do metasurfaces work and how to model them? How to reconcile the mathematical theories of communication and electromagnetism? What are the most suitable uses and applications of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces in wireless networks? What are the most promising smart radio environments for wireless applications? What is the current state of research? What are the most important and challenging research issues to tackle? These are a few of the many questions that we investigate in this …
Chongqing University of Posts and Telecommunications（重庆邮电大学）；University of Electronic Science and Technology of China（电子科技大学）；University of Macau（澳门大学）；University of Glasgow（格拉斯哥大学）；Southwest Jiaotong University（西南交通大学）
Deploying ultra-dense networks that operate on millimeter wave (mmWave) band is a promising way to address the tremendous growth on mobile data traffic. However, one key challenge of ultra-dense mmWave network (UDmmN) is beam management due to the high propagation delay, limited beam coverage as well as numerous beams and users. In this paper, a novel systematic beam control scheme is presented to tackle the beam management problem which is difficult due to the nonconvex objective function. We employ double deep Q-network (DDQN) under a federated learning (FL) framework to address the above op…
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…
This work investigates the effect of double intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) in improving the spectrum efficient of multi-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) network operating in the millimeter wave (mmWave) band. Specifically, we aim to solve a weighted sum rate maximization problem by jointly optimizing the digital precoding at the transmitter and the analog phase shifters at the IRS, subject to the minimum achievable rate constraint. To facilitate the design of an efficient solution, we first reformulate the original problem into a tractable one by exploiting the majorization-min…
This paper exploits the potential of reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) to improve radar sensing in a non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) empowered integrated sensing and communication (NOMA-ISAC) network. The objective is to maximize the minimum radar beampattern gain by jointly optimizing the active beamforming, power allocation coefficients and passive beamforming. To tackle the formulated non-convex problem, we propose an efficient joint optimization algorithm by invoking alternating optimization, successive convex approximation (SCA) and sequential rank-one constraint relaxation (…
We propose a novel binary polarization shift keying modulation scheme for a line-of-sight environment by exploiting the polarization control ability of the reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS). The RIS encodes the information data in terms of the polarization states of either the reflected wave from the RIS or the composite wireless channel between an RF source and receiver. In the first case, polarization mismatch correction becomes essential at the receiver. In the second case, the RIS pre-codes the reflected wave to compensate for the polarization mismatch which allows non-coherent demo…
The extra degrees of freedom resulting from the consideration of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs) for smart signal propagation can be exploited for high accuracy localization and tracking. In this paper, capitalizing on a recent RIS hardware architecture incorporating a single receive Radio Frequency (RF) chain for measurement collection, we present a user localization method with multiple RISs. The proposed method includes an initial step for direction estimation at each RIS, followed by maximum likelihood position estimation, which is initialized with a least squares line intersect…
Reconfigurable intelligent surface~(RIS) has drawn a great attention worldwide as it can create favorable propagation conditions by controlling the phase shifts of the reflected signals at the surface to enhance the communication quality. However, the practical RIS only has limited phase shifts, which will lead to the performance degradation. In this letter, we evaluate the performance of an uplink RIS assisted communication system by giving an approximation of the achievable data rate, and investigate the effect of limited phase shifts on the data rate. In particular, we derive the required n…
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is an emerging technique employing metasurface to reflect the signal from the source node to the destination node. By smartly reconfiguring the electromagnetic (EM) properties of the metasurface and adjusting the EM parameters of the reflected radio waves, RIS can turn the uncontrollable propagation environment into an artificially reconfigurable space, and thus, can significantly increase the communications capacity and improve the coverage of the system. In this paper, we investigate the far field channel in which the line-of-sight (LOS) propagation i…
Beijing Institute of Technology（北京理工大学）；CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）；CentraleSupélec（中央理工-高等电力学院）；Université Paris-Saclay（巴黎-萨克雷大学）；King Abdullah University of Science and Technology（阿卜杜拉国王科技大学）
Integrating large intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRS) into millimeter-wave (mmWave) massive multi-input-multi-ouput (MIMO) has been a promising approach for improved coverage and throughput. Most existing work assumes the ideal channel estimation, which can be challenging due to the high-dimensional cascaded MIMO channels and passive reflecting elements. Therefore, this paper proposes a deep denoising neural network assisted compressive channel estimation for mmWave IRS systems to reduce the training overhead. Specifically, we first introduce a hybrid passive/active IRS architecture, where v…
Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are regarded as a promising emerging hardware technology to improve the spectrum and energy efficiency of wireless networks by artificially reconfiguring the propagation environment of electromagnetic waves. Due to the unique advantages in enhancing wireless channel capacity, RISs have recently become a hot research topic. In this article, we focus on three fundamental physical-layer challenges for the incorporation of RISs into wireless networks, namely, channel state information acquisition, passive information transfer, and low-complexity robust sy…
Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are typically used in multi-user systems to mitigate interference among active transmitters. In contrast, this paper studies a setting with a conventional active encoder as well as a passive encoder that modulates the reflection pattern of the RIS. The RIS hence serves the dual purpose of improving the rate of the active encoder and of enabling communication from the second encoder. The capacity region is characterized, and information-theoretic insights regarding the trade-offs between the rates of the two encoders are derived by focusing on the high…
A realistic performance assessment of any wireless technology requires the use of a channel model that reflects its main characteristics. The independent and identically distributed Rayleigh fading channel model has been (and still is) the basis of most theoretical research on multiple antenna technologies in scattering environments. This letter shows that such a model is not physically appearing when using a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) with rectangular geometry and provides an alternative physically feasible Rayleigh fading model that can be used as a baseline when evaluating RIS…
