Future Wireless Communication Research Articles

Physically Encrypted Wireless Transmission Based on XOR between Two Data in Terahertz Beams

Future wireless communications require higher security as well as a higher data rate. We have been studying physically secured wireless transmission systems and previously proposed encryption/decryption techniques based on the AND operation caused by coherent detection between two encrypted data sequences on two different terahertz carriers. Furthermore, we suggested that by employing the XOR operation as the decryption, the proposed system can be made more secure because XOR increases the computational complexity for eavesdroppers to recover the plaintext. In this paper, we propose the XOR operation between two data sequences on FSK-modulated terahertz waves. By constructing the XOR encryption transmitters/receivers, which consisted of high-speed wavelength tunable lasers and arrayed uni-traveling-carrier photodiodes (UTC-PDs), we successfully demonstrated the XOR operation between two data sequences on 200 GHz waves from the two transmitters.

Performance Analysis of a Drone-Assisted FSO Communication System over Málaga Turbulence under AoA Fluctuations

Future wireless communications have been envisaged to benefit from integrating drones and free space optical (FSO) communications, which would provide links with line-of-sight propagation and large communication capacity. The theoretical performance analysis for a drone-assisted downlink FSO system is investigated. Furthermore, this paper utilizes the Málaga distribution to characterize the effect of atmospheric turbulence on the optical signal for the drone–terrestrial user link, taking into account atmospheric attenuation, pointing errors, and angle-of-arrival fluctuations. The probability density function and cumulative distribution function are then expressed in closed-form using the heterodyne detection and indirect modulation/direct detection techniques, respectively. Thereafter, the analytical expressions including the average bit error rate (BER) and the ergodic capacity are given. Particularly, the asymptotic behavior of the average BER of the considered system is presented using heterodyne detection at high optical power. The Monte Carlo simulation results certify the theoretical analytical results. Correspondingly, the field-of-view of the receiver is analyzed for optimal communication performance.

60 Gbps real-time wireless communications at 300 GHz carrier using a Kerr microcomb-based source

Future wireless communication infrastructure will rely on terahertz systems that can support an increasing demand for large-bandwidth, ultra-fast wireless data transfer. In order to satisfy this demand, compact, low-power, and low noise sources of terahertz radiation are being developed. A promising route to achieving this goal is combining photonic-integrated optical frequency combs with fast photodiodes for difference frequency generation in the THz. Here, we demonstrate wireless communications using a 300 GHz carrier wave generated via photomixing of two optical tones originating from diode lasers that are injection locked to a dissipative Kerr soliton frequency microcomb. We achieve transfer rates of 80 Gbps using homodyne detection and 60 Gbps transmitting simultaneously both data and clock signals in a dual-path wireless link. This experimental demonstration paves a path toward low-noise and integrated photonic millimeter-wave transceivers for future wireless communication systems.

Towards 6G Internet of Things: Recent advances, use cases, and open challenges

Smart services based on the Internet of Everything (IoE) are gaining considerable popularity due to the ever-increasing demands of wireless networks. This demands the appraisal of the wireless networks with enhanced properties as next-generation communication systems. Although 5G networks show great potential to support numerous IoE based services, it is not adequate to meet the complete requirements of the new smart applications. Therefore, there is an increased demand for envisioning the 6G wireless communication systems to overcome the major limitations in the existing 5G networks. Moreover, incorporating artificial intelligence in 6G will provide solutions for very complex problems relevant to network optimization. Furthermore, to add further value to the future 6G networks, researchers are investigating new technologies, such as THz and quantum communications. The requirements of future 6G wireless communications demand to support massive data-driven applications and the increasing number of users. Unlike existing works, this paper highlights the recent activities and trends toward 6G technology, network requirement, essential enabling technologies for 6G networks, and a detailed use case analysis between 5G and 6G networks. Moreover, this paper surveys emerging 6G connectivity solutions, such as holographic beamforming, artificial intelligence-enabled IoT networks, edge computing, and backscatter communications to serve smart communities. Furthermore, several future research directions to accomplish 6G-based IoT networks are also highlighted.

Outage Performance and Ergodic Capacity of User Pairing in Downlink MIMO-NOMA systems with Imperfect SIC Over Nakagami-m Fading Channels

Non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) has been envisaged as a key driving scheme for future wireless communication systems because of its huge connecting ability and superior spectrum efficiency. Integrating the concepts of Multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) into NOMA enhance the system capacity at the cost of hardware complexity. In this article, we consider an MIMO-NOMA-based system in which the users are partitioned to form a cluster. A beamforming vector that helps to maximize the channel gain has been designed to remove the inter-cluster interference. This work presents the effect of user pairing in downlink MIMO-NOMA systems. User pairing has a significant impact on the performance of MIMO-NOMA systems. Outage probability and Ergodic Capacity (EC) are analyzed for MIMO-NOMA systems. Exact outage probability expressions are provided for user pairing to reveal some useful insights that pairing two users with dissimilar channel conditions increases the probability that NOMA achieves a larger sum rate than traditional orthogonal multiple access (OMA) systems. This mathematical investigation is carried out by considering Nakagami-m fading channel. Furthermore, this notion of user pairing is presented for imperfect successive interference cancellation (SIC). Diversity order is also derived for the strong and weak users. Extensive simulation results are provided to validate the derived analytic expressions. Furthermore, it is also demonstrated that the EC of MIMO-NOMA systems is improved significantly when compared with traditional OMA systems.

Eavesdropping Measurements for Applications in Office Environments at Low THz Frequencies

Low terahertz (THz) frequencies are promising candidates for future wireless communication systems. Due to high path losses at those frequencies, highly directive antennas can be used to compensate the path losses thus making eavesdropping challenging. However, previous work has shown that eavesdropping is still possible even if antennas with pencil beams are used. In this article, eavesdropping possibilities are evaluated with respect to common objects in office environments–a coffee cup, a thermos, and a laptop–by investigating the scattering properties of these objects. For the coffee cup and the thermos, angle-independent reflection losses are given. The laptop has the lowest reflection losses of approximately 5 dB if it is placed to reflect the signal in a specular way. Furthermore, the results are analyzed in terms of secrecy capacity and blockage, revealing good eavesdropping opportunities when the thermos is used. If the object is placed outside of the line-of-sight path, the blockage drops down to zero. However, especially for the thermos the secrecy capacity is still below 0.8 in this case. For the other objects, a direct eavesdropping where Eve is directly oriented toward Alice results in a lower secrecy capacity in most of the cases.

Sensing RISs: Enabling Dimension-Independent CSI Acquisition for Beamforming

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are envisioned as a potentially transformative technology for future wireless communications. However, RISs' inability to process signals and the attendant increased channel dimension have brought new challenges to RIS-assisted systems, including significantly increased pilot overhead required for channel estimation. To address these problems, several prior contributions that enhance the hardware architecture of RISs or develop algorithms to exploit the channels' mathematical properties have been made, where the required pilot overhead is reduced to be proportional to the number of RIS elements. In this paper, we propose a dimension-independent channel state information (CSI) acquisition approach in which the required pilot overhead is independent of the number of RIS elements. Specifically, in contrast to traditional signal transmission methods, where signals from the base station (BS) and the users are transmitted in different time slots, we propose a novel method in which signals are transmitted from the BS and the user simultaneously during CSI acquisition. With this method, an electromagnetic interference random field (IRF) will be induced on the RIS, and we propose the structure of sensing RIS to capture its features. Moreover, we develop three algorithms for parameter estimation in this system, in which one of the proposed vM-EM algorithm is analyzed with the fixed-point perturbation method to obtain an asymptotic achievable bound. In addition, we also derive the Cram\'er-Rao lower bound (CRLB) and an asymptotic expression for characterizing the best possible performance of the proposed algorithms. Simulation results verify that our proposed signal transmission method and the corresponding algorithms can achieve dimension-independent CSI acquisition for beamforming.

Low-Profile Polarization-Twisting Cassegrain Antenna for Generating Dual Circularly Polarized Multibeam Radiation in Ku-Band

In this paper, a low-profile polarization-twisting Cassegrain antenna (LPPTCA) is proposed to generate dual circularly polarized (CP) multi-beam radiation by integrating multifunctional metasurface (MM), polarization conversion metasurface (PCM), and multiple microstrip feeds. Considering that the LPPTCA removes the occlusion effect from the traditional Cassegrain antenna, the profile height of LPPTCA will be chosen as 1/3 focal length of PCM and can also be freely adjusted when employing corresponding phase gradient over the MM to mimic the hyperbolic reflector of the traditional Cassegrain antenna. The MM is capable of achieving the functionality of reflecting co-LP waves with performing diverged wave-fronts and transmitting cross-LP waves with linear-to-dual-circular polarization conversion. Based on the MM and PCM, the LPPTCA is designed and fabricated, then measurement results illustrate that the LPPTCA is capable of realizing dual CP multi-beam radiation in the range of 13.7 - 14.7 GHz when employing multiple microstrip antennas as feeds. In the meanwhile, the scanning range of multi-beams is ±20° with the minimum feed isolation of 15 dB. The proposed dual CP multi-beam LPPTCA integrating the MM and PCM should thus pave the way for building up current and future wireless communication systems with millimeter-wave MIMO applications in Ku-band.

Reconfigurable intelligent surface with 6G for industrial revolution: Potential applications and research challenges

Abstract With proper tuning in the phase shift of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) or intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs), which consist of huge number of passive reflecting elements, are the most promising and transforming technology to reconfigure the wireless propagation ecosystems to improve the “spectral-and energy-efficiency” for the future generation wireless communication system. This article presents a systematic review of RIS/IRS technology and conceptualizes the prospective requirement, operations, and application. Further, we have presented its capability for execution in a forthcoming smart industrial ecosystem to assist the development of Industry 5.0 with a series of emerging applications. Finally, we discuss the potential, open research challenges, and prospects of RIS technology in the emerging intelligent manufacturing industry to encourage future research in this area.

Selected Aspects of Non orthogonal Multiple Access for Future Wireless Communications

In this paper overview of recent selected works that deal with novel directions in which Non orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) research is progressing is presented. These include the cell-free NOMA, deep learning extensions and optimizations of NOMA, energy optimization and task offloading with mobile-edge computing, NOMA and physical layer security, as well as virtualization, centralized-RAN aspects. All these are hot issues towards deployments of NOMA in the designs of beyond 5G and 6th generation (6G) wireless communication networks. Even though 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) has not yet made the decision regarding which NOMA techniques should be adopted, it seems like researchers already indicate clearly that NOMA has important place in the future network deployments based on ultra-density, novel 5G use-cases (massive machine type communications, ultra-reliable low latency communications). This paper highlights the most promising directions for NOMA research. The paper is summarized with necessary steps that are required to get NOMA into practical usage.

Terahertz Meets AI: The State of the Art.

Terahertz (THz) is a promising technology for future wireless communication networks, particularly for 6G and beyond. The ultra-wide THz band, ranging from 0.1 to 10 THz, can potentially address the limited capacity and scarcity of spectrum in current wireless systems such as 4G-LTE and 5G. Furthermore, it is expected to support advanced wireless applications requiring high data transmission and quality services, i.e., terabit-per-second backhaul systems, ultra-high-definition streaming, virtual/augmented reality, and high-bandwidth wireless communications. In recent years, artificial intelligence (AI) has been used mainly for resource management, spectrum allocation, modulation and bandwidth classification, interference mitigation, beamforming, and medium access control layer protocols to improve THz performance. This survey paper examines the use of AI in state-of-the-art THz communications, discussing the challenges, potentials, and shortcomings. Additionally, this survey discusses the available platforms, including commercial, testbeds, and publicly available simulators for THz communications. Finally, this survey provides future strategies for improving the existing THz simulators and using AI methods, including deep learning, federated learning, and reinforcement learning, to improve THz communications.

Tunable Properties of Graphene Antenna Affected by Curing Temperature and Exposure Time for Future Application

AbstractThis paper proposes a tunable antenna based on graphene for future wireless communication technology. The proposed antenna that is made by graphene/polyimide film able to tune the frequency using thermal that is exposed on it. The approach is investigated since it able to work as the other reconfiguration technique but cannot be adjustable likes diodes and liquid crystal. The antenna is fabricated into fifteen similar pieces and are separately cured at different temperature and exposure time; 250 °C, 300 °C, and 350 °C, for 20 minutes, 30 minutes, 1 hour, 2 hours, and 3 hours. The fabricated antennas are measured its S‐parameter as well as the characterisation of relative complex permittivity, sheet resistance, conductivity, surface morphology, and structure analysis. The measured results indicate that the frequency is tuned to lower within 4.1 GHz at 250 °C, 5.5 GHz at 300 °C, and 400 MHz at 350 °C. Looking into the future, even though this work is not using the same antenna, but it will lead to the proof of concept for tunable graphene antenna using thermal at fifth generation (5G) and next generation.

Secure Finite Blocklength Coding Schemes for Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface Aided Wireless Channels With Feedback

Ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) and reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) aided communication are two key technologies in future wireless communications. However, secure URLLC over RIS-adied communication channels receives little attention in the literature. In this paper, we propose finite blocklength (FBL) coding schemes for RIS aided SISO/SIMO/MIMO systems in the presence of an eavesdropper (no direct link between the transceiver), which are based on an existing coding scheme for the point-to-point white Gaussian channel with noiseless feedback. Then, we show that the proposed schemes are self-secure when the blocklengths are larger than certain thresholds. Finally, numerical results show that for given decoding error probability and secrecy level, the required coding blocklengths of our proposed schemes are extremely short, and the secrecy capacities of the RIS-aided systems without channel feedback are significantly enhanced by our feedback schemes.

Secure Transmission for THz-Empowered RIS-Assisted Non-Terrestrial Networks

The non-terrestrial networks (NTNs) are recognized as a key component to provide cost-effective and high-capacity ubiquitous connectivity in the future wireless communications. In this paper, we investigate the secure transmission in a terahertz (THz)-empowered reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted NTN (T-RANTN), which is composed of a low-Earth orbit satellite transmitter, an RIS-installed high-altitude platform (HAP) and two unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) receivers, only one of which is trustworthy. An approximate ergodic secrecy rate (ESR) expression is derived when the atmosphere turbulence and pointing error due to the characteristics of THz as well as the phase errors resulting from finite precision of RIS and imperfect channel estimation are taken into account simultaneously. Furthermore, according to the statistical and perfect channel state information of the untrustworthy receiver, we optimize the phase shifts of RIS to maximize the lower bound of secrecy rate (SR) and instantaneous SR, respectively, by using semidefinite relaxation method. Simulation results show that both the approximate expression for the ESR and the optimization algorithms are serviceable, and even when the jitter standard variance of the trustworthy receiver is greater than that of the untrustworthy one, a positive SR can still be guaranteed.

A Novel Link Selection in Coordinated Direct and Buffer-Aided Relay Transmission

Buffer-aided relay networks provide more reliability and coverage in future wireless communications. Therefore, this paper investigates a buffer-aided cooperative relaying system with <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">K</i> relays and a direct link from the source to the destination, providing a general scenario different from other existing state-of-the-art techniques. In particular, we propose a novel link selection scheme, which adaptively coordinates the selection priorities of the direct and cooperative relay link according to the instantaneous buffer state. The performance of the proposed link selection scheme is analyzed, in terms of outage probability, average packet delay (APD) and diversity order by providing closed-form expressions. For asymptotic analysis, a theoretical framework is presented by dividing all buffer states into different sets, which verifies that the minimum buffer size is just two for achieving the full diversity order of 2 <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">K</i> + 1. We also provide the relationship between the asymptotic APD and diversity order by adjusting predefined target queue lengths, which shows that the diversity order ranges from <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">K</i> + 1 to 2 <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">K</i> + 1 as the asymptotic APD ranges from 0 to <italic xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink">K</i> time slots per packet. Both theoretical and simulation results demonstrate that direct transmission significantly improves the outage and delay performance simultaneously.

Capacity Enhancement for Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface-Aided Wireless Network: From Regular Array to Irregular Array

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 extra spatial degrees of freedom compared with the regular RIS. In this way, the received signal power can be enhanced, and thus the system capacity can be improved. Then, we formulate a joint topology and precoding optimization problem to maximize the capacity for irregular RIS-aided communication systems. Accordingly, a joint optimization algorithm with low complexity is proposed to alternately optimize the RIS topology and the precoding design. Particularly, a tabu search-based method is used to design the irregular RIS topology, and a neighbor extraction-based cross-entropy method is introduced to optimize the precoding design. Simulation results demonstrate that, subject to the constraint of limited RIS elements, the proposed irregular RIS can significantly enhance the system capacity.

Integrated Sensing and Communications With Joint Beam-Squint and Beam-Split for mmWave/THz Massive MIMO

Integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) has attracted tremendous attention for the future 6G wireless communications systems. To improve the transmission rates and sensing accuracy, massive multi-input multi-output (MIMO) technique is leveraged with large transmission bandwidth in millimeter wave (mmWave)/terahertz (THz) band. However, the growing size of antenna array and transmission bandwidth results in the beam-squint effect, which hampers the performance of communications. Moreover, the time overhead of the traditional sensing algorithm is prohibitively high for practical systems. In this paper, instead of alleviating the beam-squint effect, we take advantage of joint beam-squint and beam-split effect and propose a novel integrated sensing and communications scheme for massive MIMO system. Specifically, with the beam-squint effect, the base station (BS) utilizes the true-time-delay (TTD) lines to steer the beams of different OFDM subcarriers towards distributive directions simultaneously. Different users then feedback their respective subcarrier frequency with the maximum array gain to BS, based on which BS could calculate the directions of the users. Moreover, by selecting sub-array with the inter-antenna spacing larger than half-wavelength, the beam-split effect can be introduced and exploited to expand the sensing range. The proposed sensing method operates over frequency-domain, and the intended sensing range is covered by all the subcarriers simultaneously, which significantly reduces the time overhead compared to the conventional sensing scheme. Simulation results have demonstrated the effectiveness as well as the superior performance of the proposed ISAC scheme.

Spectral Efficiency Analysis of Hybrid Relay-Reflecting Intelligent Surface-Assisted Cell-Free Massive MIMO Systems

A cell-free (CF) massive multiple-input-multiple-output (mMIMO) system can provide uniform spectral efficiency (SE) with simple signal processing. On the other hand, a recently introduced technology called hybrid relay-reflecting intelligent surface (HR-RIS) can customize the physical propagation environment by simultaneously reflecting and amplifying radio waves in preferred directions. Thus, it is natural that incorporating HR-RIS into CF mMIMO can be a symbiotic convergence of these two technologies for future wireless communications. This motivates us to consider an HR-RIS-aided CF mMIMO system to utilize their combined benefits. We first model the uplink/downlink channels and derive the minimum-mean-square-error estimate of the effective channels. We then present a comprehensive analysis of SE performance of the considered system. Specifically, we derive closed-form expressions for the uplink and downlink SE. The results reveal important observations on the performance gains achieved by HR-RISs compared to conventional systems. The presented analytical results are also valid for conventional CF mMIMO systems and those aided by passive reconfigurable intelligent surfaces. Such results play an important role in designing new transmission strategies and optimizing HR-RIS-aided CF mMIMO systems. Finally, we provide extensive numerical results to verify the analytical derivations and the effectiveness of the proposed system design under various settings.

Low-Latency Hybrid NOMA-TDMA: QoS-Driven Design Framework

Enabling ultra-reliable and low-latency communication services while providing massive connectivity is one of the major goals to be accomplished in future wireless communication networks. In this paper, we investigate the performance of a hybrid multi-access scheme in the finite blocklength (FBL) regime that combines the advantages of both non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and time-division multiple access (TDMA) schemes. Two latency-sensitive application scenarios are studied, distinguished by whether the queuing behaviour has an influence on the transmission performance or not. In particular, for the latency-critical case with one-shot transmission, we aim at a certain physical-layer quality-of-service (QoS) performance, namely the optimization of the reliability. And for the case in which queuing behaviour plays a role, we focus on the link-layer QoS performance and provide a design that maximizes the effective capacity. For both designs, we leverage the characterizations in the FBL regime to provide the optimal framework by jointly allocating the blocklength and transmit power of each user. In particular, for the reliability-oriented design, the original problem is decomposed and the joint convexity of sub-problems is shown via a variable substitution method. For the effective-capacity-oriented design, we exploit the method of Lagrange multipliers to formulate a solvable dual problem with strong duality to the original problem. Via simulations, we validate our analytical results of convexity/concavity and show the advantage of our proposed approaches compared to other existing schemes.

Rate-Splitting Multiple Access for Uplink Massive MIMO With Electromagnetic Exposure Constraints

Over the past few years, the prevalence of wireless devices has become one of the essential sources of electromagnetic (EM) radiation to the public. Facing with the swift development of wireless communications, people are skeptical about the risks of long-term exposure to EM radiation. As EM exposure is required to be restricted at user terminals, it is inefficient to blindly decrease the transmit power, which leads to limited spectral efficiency and energy efficiency (EE). Recently, rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) has been proposed as an effective way to provide higher wireless transmission performance, which is a promising technology for future wireless communications. To this end, we propose using RSMA to increase the EE of massive MIMO uplink while limiting the EM exposure of users. In particularly, we investigate the optimization of the transmit covariance matrices and decoding order using statistical channel state information (CSI). The problem is formulated as non-convex mixed integer program, which is in general difficult to handle. We first propose a modified water-filling scheme to obtain the transmit covariance matrices with fixed decoding order. Then, a greedy approach is proposed to obtain the decoding permutation. Numerical results verify the effectiveness of the proposed EM exposure-aware EE maximization scheme for uplink RSMA.