No Arabic abstract
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 Cramer-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 based estimator is utilized to carry out the signal recovery task. We show that, through both mathematical proofs and numerical simulations, the solution proposed in this letter can in fact asymptotically achieve the CRLB.
In this paper, the minimum mean square error (MMSE) channel estimation for intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) assisted wireless communication systems is investigated. In the considered setting, each row vector of the equivalent channel matrix from the base station (BS) to the users is shown to be Bessel $K$ distributed, and all these row vectors are independent of each other. By introducing a Gaussian scale mixture model, we obtain a closed-form expression for the MMSE estimate of the equivalent channel, and determine analytical upper and lower bounds on the mean square error. Using the central limit theorem, we conduct an asymptotic analysis of the MMSE estimate, and show that the upper bound on the mean square error of the MMSE estimate is equal to the asymptotic mean square error of the MMSE estimation when the number of reflecting elements at the IRS tends to infinity. Numerical simulations show that the gap between the upper and lower bounds are very small, and they almost overlap with each other at medium signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) levels and moderate number of elements at the IRS.
Channel reciprocity greatly facilitates downlink precoding in time-division duplexing (TDD) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications without the need for channel state information (CSI) feedback. Recently, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) emerge as a promising technology to enhance the performance of future wireless networks. However, since the artificial electromagnetic characteristics of RISs do not strictly follow the normal laws of nature, it brings up a question: does the channel reciprocity hold in RIS-assisted TDD wireless networks? After briefly reviewing the reciprocity theorem, in this article, we show that there still exists channel reciprocity for RIS-assisted wireless networks satisfying certain conditions. We also experimentally demonstrate the reciprocity at the sub-6 GHz and the millimeter-wave frequency bands by using two fabricated RISs. Furthermore, we introduce several RIS-assisted approaches to realizing nonreciprocal channels. Finally, potential opportunities brought by reciprocal/nonreciprocal RISs and future research directions are outlined.
In wireless systems aided by reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs), channel state information plays a pivotal role in achieving the performance gain of RISs. Mobility renders accurate channel estimation (CE) more challenging due to the Doppler effect. In this letter, we propose two practical wideband CE schemes incorporating Doppler shift adjustment (DSA) for multi-path and single-path propagation environments, respectively, for RIS-assisted communication with passive reflecting elements. For the multi-path scenario, ordinary CE is first executed assuming quasi-static channels, followed by DSA realized via joint RIS reflection pattern selection and transformations between frequency and time domains. The proposed CE necessitates only one more symbol incurring negligible extra overhead compared with the number of symbols required for the original CE. For the single-path case which is especially applicable to millimeter-wave and terahertz systems, a novel low-complexity CE method is devised capitalizing on the form of the array factors at the RIS. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms yield high CE accuracy and achievable rate with low complexity, and outperform representative benchmark schemes.
Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) is envisioned to be a promising green technology to reduce the energy consumption and improve the coverage and spectral efficiency of massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) wireless networks. In a RIS-aided MIMO system, the acquisition of channel state information (CSI) is important for achieving passive beamforming gains of the RIS, but is also challenging due to the cascaded property of the transmitter-RIS-receiver channel and the lack of signal processing capability of the passive RIS elements. The state-of-the-art approach for CSI acquisition in such a system is a pure training-based strategy that depends on a long sequence of pilot symbols. In this paper, we investigate semi-blind cascaded channel estimation for RIS-aided massive MIMO systems, in which the receiver simultaneously estimates the channel coefficients and the partially unknown transmit signal with a small number of pilot sequences. Specifically, we formulate the semi-blind cascaded channel estimation as a trilinear matrix factorization task. Under the Bayesian inference framework, we develop a computationally efficient iterative algorithm using the approximate message passing principle to resolve the trilinear inference problem. Meanwhile, we present an analytical framework to characterize the theoretical performance bound of the proposed approach in the large-system limit via the replica method developed in statistical physics. Extensive simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed semi-blind cascaded channel estimation algorithm.
Thanks to the line-of-sight (LoS) transmission and flexibility, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) effectively improve the throughput of wireless networks. Nevertheless, the LoS links are prone to severe deterioration by complex propagation environments, especially in urban areas. Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs), as a promising technique, can significantly improve the propagation environment and enhance communication quality by intelligently reflecting the received signals. Motivated by this, the joint UAV trajectory and RISs passive beamforming design for a novel RIS-assisted UAV communication system is investigated to maximize the average achievable rate in this letter. To tackle the formulated non-convex problem, we divide it into two subproblems, namely, passive beamforming and trajectory optimization. We first derive a closed-form phase-shift solution for any given UAV trajectory to achieve the phase alignment of the received signals from different transmission paths. Then, with the optimal phase-shift solution, we obtain a suboptimal trajectory solution by using the successive convex approximation (SCA) method. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm can considerably improve the average achievable rate of the system.