This paper considers reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted point-to-point multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication systems, where a transmitter communicates with a receiver through an RIS. Based on the main target of reducing the bit error rate (BER) and therefore enhancing the communication reliability, we study different model-based and data-driven (autoencoder) approaches. In particular, we consider a model-based approach that optimizes both active and passive optimization variables. We further propose a novel end-to-end data-driven framework, which leverages the recent advances in machine learning. The neural networks presented for conventional signal processing modules are jointly trained with the channel effects to minimize the bit error detection. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed data-driven approach can learn to encode the transmitted signal via different channel realizations dynamically. In addition, the data-driven approach not only offers a significant gain in the BER performance compared to the other state-of-the-art benchmarks but also guarantees the performance when perfect channel information is unavailable.
In this letter, we propose an autoencoder (AE) for designing Grassmannian constellations in noncoherent (NC) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. To guarantee the properties of Grassmannian constellations, the proposed AE constructs the transmitted symbols following an unitary space-time modulation. It penalizes the difference between input and output symbols in terms of cross entropy during the training, which is regarded as a generic optimization method. The constellations learned by the proposed AE have substantial symbol error rate (SER) performance gains compared to the non-Gras…
Using a deep autoencoder (DAE) for end-to-end communication in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems is a novel concept with significant potential. DAE-aided MIMO has been shown to outperform singular-value decomposition (SVD)-based precoded MIMO in terms of bit error rate (BER). This paper proposes embedding left- and right-singular vectors of the channel matrix into DAE encoder and decoder to further improve the performance of the MIMO DAE. SVDembedded DAE largely outperforms theoretic linear precoding in terms of BER. This is remarkable since it demonstrates that DAEs have significa…
Wireless links using massive MIMO transceivers are vital for next generation wireless communications networks networks. Precoding in Massive MIMO transmission requires accurate downlink channel state information (CSI). Many recent works have effectively applied deep learning (DL) to jointly train UE-side compression networks for delay domain CSI and a BS-side decoding scheme. Vitally, these works assume that the full delay domain CSI is available at the UE, but in reality, the UE must estimate the delay domain based on a limited number of frequency domain pilots. In this work, we propose a lin…
This paper investigates a novel method for designing linear precoders with finite alphabet inputs based on autoencoders (AE) without the knowledge of the channel model. By model-free training of the autoencoder in a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system, the proposed method can effectively solve the optimization problem to design the precoders that maximize the mutual information between the channel inputs and outputs, when only the input-output information of the channel can be observed. Specifically, the proposed method regards the receiver and the precoder as two independent paramete…
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…
We address the problem of interference leakage (IL) minimization in the $K$-user multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) interference channel (IC) assisted by a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS). We describe an iterative algorithm based on block coordinate descent to minimize the IL cost function. A reformulation of the problem provides a geometric interpretation and shows interesting connections with envelope precoding and phase-only zero-forcing beamforming problems. As a result of this analysis, we derive a set of necessary (but not sufficient) conditions for a phase-optimized RIS to b…
Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) have attracted great attention as a potential beyond 5G technology. These surfaces consist of many passive elements of metamaterials whose impedance can be controllable to change the phase, amplitude, or other characteristics of wireless signals impinging on them. Channel estimation is a critical task when it comes to the control of a large RIS when having a channel with a large number of multipath components. In this paper, we propose a novel channel estimation scheme that exploits spatial correlation characteristics at both the massive multiple-inpu…
Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) signaling is one of the key technologies of current mobile communication systems. However, the complex and expensive radio frequency (RF) chains have always limited the increase of MIMO scale. In this paper, we propose a MIMO transmission architecture based on a dual-polarized reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), which can directly achieve modulation and transmission of multichannel signals without the need for conventional RF chains. Compared with previous works, the proposed architecture can improve the integration of RIS-based transmission systems.…
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) has recently drawn intensive attention due to its potential of simultaneously realizing high spectral and energy efficiency in a sustainable way. This paper focuses on the design of efficient transmission methods to maximize the uplink sum throughput in a RIS-aided multi-user multi-input multi-output (MU-MIMO) system. To provide an insightful basis, the channel capacity of RIS-aided MU-MIMO is theoretically analyzed. Then, the conventional transmission schemes based on orthogonal multiple access are presented as the baseline. From the information-theore…
This paper considers an antenna structure where a (non-large) array of radiating elements is placed at short distance in front of a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS). We propose a channel estimation procedure using different configurations of the RIS elements and derive a closed-form expression for an achievable downlink spectral efficiency by using the popular hardening lower-bound. Next, we formulate an optimization problem, with respect to the phase shifts of the RIS, aimed at minimizing the channels cross-correlations while preserving the channels individual norms. The numerical ana…
Channel estimation in reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) assisted multiple input multiple output (MIMO) communication systems is challenging as pilots cannot be decoded at or transmitted from a RIS with only passive elements. We assume an angular model for the line-of-sight channel between the user equipment (UE) and the RIS and between the RIS and the base station (BS) with no direct path between the UE and BS. In this letter, assuming that we can compute the RIS-BS channel (up to a complex path gain) from their known locations, we first discuss the ambiguity involved in estimating the …
Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs) are one of the key emerging 6th Generation (6G) technologies that are expected to improve the link budgets between transmitters and receivers by adding artificial propagation paths. In such re-configured propagation environment, Downlink (DL) Multi-User Multi-Input Multi-Output (MU-MIMO) brings capacity improvement to cellular networks. It benefits from the spatial dimension offered by MIMO systems to enable simultaneous transmission of independent data streams to multiple users on the same radio resources by applying appropriate Beamforming (BF) sche…
The accurate estimation of Channel State Information (CSI) is of crucial importance for the successful operation of Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) communication systems, especially in a Multi-User (MU) time-varying environment and when employing the emerging technology of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs). Their predominantly passive nature renders the estimation of the channels involved in the user-RIS-base station link a quite challenging problem. Moreover, the time-varying nature of most of the realistic wireless channels drives up the cost of real-time channel tracking sign…
In this paper, we study surface-based communication systems based on different levels of channel state information for system optimization. We analyze the system performance in terms of rate and degrees of freedom (DoF). We show that the deployment of a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) results in increasing the number of DoF, by extending the near-field region. Over Rician fading channels, we show that an RIS can be efficiently optimized only based on the positions of the transmitting and receiving surfaces, while providing good performance if the Rician fading factor is not too small.
We consider a multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) channel in the presence of a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS). Specifically, our focus is on analyzing the spatial multiplexing gains in line-of-sight and low-scattering MIMO channels in the near field. We prove that the channel capacity is achieved by diagonalizing the end-to-end transmitter-RIS-receiver channel, and applying the water-filling power allocation to the ordered product of the singular values of the transmitter-RIS and RIS-receiver channels. The obtained capacity-achieving solution requires an RIS with a non-diagonal mat…
Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) is one of the key technologies for the upcoming 6th Generation (6G) communications, which can improve the signal strength at the receivers by adding artificial propagation paths. In the context of Downlink (DL) Multi-User Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MU-MIMO) communications, designing an appropriate Beamforming (BF) scheme to take full advantage of this reconfigured propagation environment and improve the network capacity is a major challenge. Due to the spatial dimension provided by MIMO systems, independent data streams can be transmitted to multip…
In this paper, we study the achievable rate region of 1-layer rate splitting (RS) in the presence of hardware impairment (HWI) and improper Gaussian signaling (IGS) for a single-cell reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) assisted broadcast channel (BC). We assume that the transceivers may suffer from an imbalance in in-band and quadrature signals, which is known as I/Q imbalance (IQI). The received signal and noise can be improper when there exists IQI. Therefore, we employ IGS to compensate for IQI as well as to manage interference. Our results show that RS and RIS can significantly enlarg…
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 paper proposes a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided and angular-based hybrid beamforming (AB-HBF) technique for the millimeter wave (mmWave) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. The proposed RIS-AB-HBF architecture consists of three stages: (i) RF beamformer, (ii) baseband (BB) precoder/combiner, and (iii) RIS phase shift design. First, in order to reduce the number of RF chains and the channel estimation overhead, RF beamformers are designed based on the 3D geometry-based mmWave channel model using slow time-varying angular parameters of the channel. Second,…
Millimeter wave (mmWave) massive multiple-input multiple-output (massive MIMO) is one of the most promising technologies for the fifth generation and beyond wireless communication system. However, a large number of antennas incur high power consumption and hardware costs, and high-frequency communications place a heavy burden on the analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) at the base station (BS). Furthermore, it is too costly to equipping each antenna with a high-precision ADC in a large antenna array system. It is promising to adopt low-resolution ADCs to address this problem. In this paper, we …
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) has been recognized as a potential technology for 5G beyond and attracted tremendous research attention. However, channel estimation in RIS-aided system is still a critical challenge due to the excessive amount of parameters in cascaded channel. The existing compressive sensing (CS)-based RIS estimation schemes only adopt incomplete sparsity, which induces redundant pilot consumption. In this paper, we exploit the specific triple-structured sparsity of the cascaded channel, i.e., the common column sparsity, structured row sparsity after offset compensat…
The reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) technology is a promising enabler for millimeter wave (mmWave) wireless communications, as it can potentially provide spectral efficiency comparable to the conventional massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) but with significantly lower hardware complexity. In this paper, we focus on the estimation and projection of the uplink RIS-aided massive MIMO channel, which can be time-varying. We propose to let the user equipments (UE) transmit Zadoff-Chu (ZC) sequences and let the base station (BS) conduct maximum likelihood (ML) estimation of the up…
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…
For downlink massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) operating in time-division duplex protocol, users can decode the signals effectively by only utilizing the channel statistics as long as channel hardening holds. However, in a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted massive MIMO system, the propagation channels may be less hardened due to the extra random fluctuations of the effective channel gains. To address this issue, we propose a learning-based method that trains a neural network to learn a mapping between the received downlink signal and the effective channel gains. The…
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is a new paradigm that has great potential to achieve cost-effective, energy-efficient information modulation for wireless transmission, by the ability to change the reflection coefficients of the unit cells of a programmable metasurface. Nevertheless, the electromagnetic responses of the RISs are usually only phase-adjustable, which considerably limits the achievable rate of RIS-based transmitters. In this paper, we propose an RIS architecture to achieve amplitude-and-phase-varying modulation, which facilitates the design of multiple-input multiple-out…
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 paper, we propose an optimization framework for rate splitting (RS) techniques in multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted systems, possibly with I/Q imbalance (IQI). This framework can be applied to any optimization problem in which the objective and/or constraints are linear functions of the rates and/or transmit covariance matrices. Such problems include minimum-weighted and weighted-sum rate maximization, total power minimization for a target rate, minimum-weighted energy efficiency (EE) and global EE maximization. The framework may be…
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is very promising for wireless networks to achieve high energy efficiency, extended coverage, improved capacity, massive connectivity, etc. To unleash the full potentials of RIS-aided communications, acquiring accurate channel state information is crucial, which however is very challenging. For RIS-aided multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) communications, the existing channel estimation methods have computational complexity growing rapidly with the number of RIS units $N$ (e.g., in the order of $N^2$ or $N^3$) and/or have special requirements on t…
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…
The reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is useful to effectively improve the coverage and data rate of end-to-end communications. In contrast to the well-studied coverage-extension use case, in this paper, multiple RIS panels are introduced, aiming to enhance the data rate of multi-input multi-output (MIMO) channels in presence of insufficient scattering. Specifically, via the operator-valued free probability theory, the asymptotic mutual information of the large-dimensional RIS-assisted MIMO channel is obtained under the Rician fading with Weichselberger's correlation structure, in prese…
We consider the combination of uplink code-domain non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) with massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs). We assume a setup in which the base station (BS) is capable of forming beams towards the RISs under line-of-sight conditions, and where each RIS is covering a cluster of users. In order to support multi-user transmissions within a cluster, code-domain NOMA via spreading is utilized. We investigate the optimization of the RIS phase-shifts such that a large number of users is supported. As it turns out, it is a …
