Joint Design Problem Research Articles

Design an intermediary mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) platform using many-to-many stable matching framework

Mobility-as-a-service (MaaS) provides seamless door-to-door trips by integrating different transport modes. Although many MaaS platforms have emerged in recent years, most of them remain at a limited integration level. This study investigates the assignment and pricing problem for a MaaS platform as an intermediary in a multi-modal transportation network, which purchases capacity from service operators and sells multi-modal trips to travelers. The analysis framework of many-to-many stable matching is adopted to decompose the joint design problem and to derive the stability condition such that both operators and travelers are willing to participate in the MaaS system. To maximize the flexibility in route choice and remove boundaries between modes, we design an origin–destination pricing scheme for MaaS trips. On the supply side, we propose a wholesale purchase price for service capacity. Accordingly, the assignment problem is reformulated and solved as a bi-level program, where MaaS travelers make multi-modal trips to minimize their travel costs meanwhile interacting with non-MaaS travelers in the multi-modal transport system. We prove that, under the proposed pricing scheme, there always exists a stable outcome to the overall many-to-many matching problem. Further, given an optimal assignment and under some mild conditions, a unique optimal pricing scheme is ensured. Numerical experiments conducted on the extended Sioux Falls network also demonstrate that the proposed MaaS system could create a win-win-win situation—the MaaS platform is profitable and both traveler welfare and transit operator revenues increase from a baseline scenario without MaaS.

Hybrid/Reflective Beamforming for IRS-Assisted Dual-Function Radar-Communication System

This paper investigates the joint design problem of the hybrid/reflective beamforming for the dual-function radar-communication (DRC) system with the help of an intelligent reconfigurable surface (IRS). The degrees of freedom for beamformer design are the analog and digital beamformers at the base station (BS), and the reflective beamformer at the IRS. To begin with, we formulate the beamformer design problem as a weighted sum-rate (WSR) maximization problem subject to the transmit power and similarity between the designed beamformer and the reference one with desired beampattern property. Then, utilizing equivalent reformulation of the preceding design problem, we conceive an alternating direction sequential programming (ADSP) based algorithm that iteratively updates the following low-complexity subproblems: 1) digital beamformer at the BS through the Powell-Hestenes-Rockafellar (PHR) method; 2) analog beamformer at the BS using the riemannian conjugate gradient method; and 3) reflective beamformer at the IRS by the successive convex approximation (SCA) technique. The convergence is ensured by analytically offering the non-decreasing and boundary of the WSR value. Finally, numerical results verify the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, which achieves superior WSR performance while ensuring the radar requirement.

RIS-Aided MIMO Systems With Hardware Impairments: Robust Beamforming Design and Analysis

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) has been anticipated to be a novel cost-effective technology to improve the performance of future wireless systems. In this paper, we investigate a practical RIS-aided multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) system in the presence of transceiver hardware impairments, RIS phase noise and imperfect channel state information (CSI). Joint design of the MIMO transceiver and RIS reflection matrix to minimize the total average mean-square-error (MSE) of all data streams is particularly considered. This joint design problem is non-convex and challenging to solve due to the newly considered practical imperfections. To tackle the issue, we first analyze the total average MSE by incorporating the impacts of the above system imperfections. Then, in order to handle the tightly coupled optimization variables and non-convex NP-hard constraints, an efficient iterative algorithm based on alternating optimization (AO) framework is proposed with guaranteed convergence, where each subproblem admits a closed-form optimal solution by leveraging the majorization-minimization (MM) technique. Moreover, via exploiting the special structure of the unit-modulus constraints, we propose a modified Riemannian gradient ascent (RGA) algorithm for the discrete RIS phase shift optimization. Furthermore, the optimality of the proposed algorithm is validated under line-of-sight (LoS) channel conditions, and the irreducible MSE floor effect induced by imperfections of both hardware and CSI is also revealed in the high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) regime. Numerical results show the superior MSE performance of our proposed algorithm over the adopted benchmark schemes, and demonstrate that increasing the number of RIS elements is not always beneficial under the above system imperfections.

Joint Trajectories and Resource Allocation Design for Multi-UAV-Assisted Wireless Power Transfer with Nonlinear Energy Harvesting

In this work, we explore a multi-UAV-assisted wireless power transfer (WPT) network, where multiple UAVs are deployed to provide WPT services to multiple ground devices (GDs) in order to extend their lifespan. To enhance the WPT efficiency while considering fairness, we investigate the joint trajectories and transmit power design. For fairness-aware consideration, our objective is to maximize the harvested energy of the GD with the worst condition, taking into account UAV mobility, anti-collision, and power budget constraints. Unlike previous works that focus on the simplified linear energy harvesting (EH) model, a more accurate multi-source nonlinear EH model is, for the first time, adopted to formulate the problem. Given the highly non-convex nature of the original problem due to the presence of coupled variables, we leverage the convexity of the multi-source nonlinear EH model and introduce a convex approximation method, which enables us to construct a tightly convex problem in each iteration for the original joint design problem, thereby obtaining a high-quality solution. Finally, we present numerical results to showcase the convergence of our algorithm and validate the performance advantages of the proposed multi-UAV WPT scheme with a nonlinear EH model versus benchmarks.

Energy Optimized Task Mapping for Reliable and Real-Time Networked Systems

Energy efficiency, real-time response, and data transmission reliability are important objectives during networked systems design. This paper aims to develop an efficient task mapping scheme to balance these important but conflicting objectives. To achieve this goal, tasks are triplicated to enhance reliability and mapped on the wireless nodes of the networked systems with Dynamic Voltage and Frequency Scaling (DVFS) capabilities to reduce energy consumption while still meeting real-time constraints. Our contributions include the mathematical formulation of this task mapping problem as mixed-integer programming that balances node energy consumption, enhancing data reliability, under real-time and energy constraints. Compared with the State-of-the-Art (SoA) , a joint-design problem is considered in this paper, where DVFS, task triplication, task allocation, and task scheduling are optimized concurrently. To find the optimal solution, the original problem is linearized, and a decomposition-based method is proposed. The optimality of the proposed method is proved rigorously. Furthermore, a heuristic based on the greedy algorithm is designed to reduce the computation time. The proposed methods are evaluated and compared through a series of simulations. The results show that the proposed triplication-based task mapping method on average achieves 24.84% runtime reduction and 28.62% energy saving compared to the SoA methods.

Distributed Auto-Learning GNN for Multi-Cell Cluster-Free NOMA Communications

A multi-cell cluster-free NOMA framework is proposed, where both intra-cell and inter-cell interference are jointly mitigated via flexible cluster-free successive interference cancellation (SIC) and coordinated beamforming design. The joint design problem is formulated to maximize the system sum rate while satisfying the SIC decoding requirements and users’ minimum data rate requirements. To address this highly complex and coupling non-convex mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP), a novel distributed auto-learning graph neural network (AutoGNN) architecture is proposed to alleviate the overwhelming information exchange burdens among base stations (BSs). The proposed AutoGNN can train the GNN model weights whilst automatically optimizing the GNN architecture, namely the GNN network depth and message embedding sizes, to achieve communication-efficient distributed scheduling. Based on the proposed architecture, a bi-level AutoGNN learning algorithm is further developed to efficiently approximate the hypergradient in model training. It is theoretically proved that the proposed bi-level AutoGNN learning algorithm can converge to a stationary point. Numerical results reveal that: 1) the proposed cluster-free NOMA framework outperforms the conventional cluster-based NOMA framework in the multi-cell scenario; and 2) the proposed AutoGNN architecture significantly reduces the computation and communication overheads compared to the conventional convex optimization-based methods and the conventional GNNs with fixed architectures.

Joint Transceiver and Intelligent Reflecting Surface Design for mmWave Massive MIMO Systems

This article aims to maximize the spectral efficiency of an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted hybrid millimeter-wave massive multiple-input–multiple-output system by jointly optimizing the hybrid precoding at the base station, hybrid combining at the user equipment, and reflecting beamforming at the IRS, where the reflecting beamforming and analog precoding/combining are implemented with finite-resolution phase shifters. This joint design problem can be decoupled into reflecting beamforming and hybrid precoding/combining design problems. However, such a decoupled approach experiences difficulties in solving the reflecting beamforming design problem. A known solution further reformulates the reflecting beamforming design problem into a more tractable problem addressed by a Riemannian manifold optimization (RMO)-based algorithm. However, the application of the RMO-based algorithm to solve the reformulated problem may lead to performance degradation given that the reformulated problem differs from the original one. Moreover, the RMO-based algorithm is tailored for the IRS with infinite-resolution phase shifters rather than practical finite-resolution phase shifters. Furthermore, the complexity of the RMO-based algorithm remains high. Therefore, we propose two coordinate descent method-based algorithms to tackle these issues. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms compared with the state-of-the-art RMO-based algorithm.

Deep Learning of Near Field Beam Focusing in Terahertz Wideband Massive MIMO Systems

Employing large antenna arrays and utilizing large bandwidth have the potential of bringing very high data rates to future wireless communication systems. However, this brings the system into the near-field regime and also makes the conventional transceiver architectures suffer from the wideband effects. To address these problems, in this paper, we propose a low-complexity frequency-aware beamforming solution that is designed for hybrid time-delay and phase-shifter based RF architectures. To reduce the complexity, the joint design problem of the time delays and phase shifts is decomposed into two subproblems, where a signal model inspired online learning framework is proposed to learn the shifts of the quantized analog phase shifters, and a low-complexity geometry-assisted method is leveraged to configure the delay settings of the time-delay units. Simulation results highlight the efficacy of the proposed solution in achieving robust performance across a wide frequency range for large antenna array systems.

Joint Design of Transmit Sequence and Receive Filter Based on Riemannian Manifold of Gaussian Mixture Distribution for MIMO Radar

To improve target detection performance in non-Gaussian backgrounds, the joint design of transmit sequence and receive filter for multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) radar is studied. By approximating the probability density function of observed non-Gaussian data with the Gaussian mixture model, a Riemannian manifold of Gaussian mixture distribution is developed to depict the complicated background first. Then, maximizing the geometric distance on manifolds, which is converted by maximizing the discrimination between the target and clutter, is proposed as the criterion for the joint design of transmit sequence and receive filter. Thereby, under the constant-modulus constraint, the joint design problem can be transformed into an optimization problem. However, the proposed optimization problem is non-convex and constrained. To solve this problem, a Riemannian optimization framework is provided. By taking the advantage of the underlying geometric and algebraic structure of the constraint space, the original constrained optimization problem in Euclidean space can be transformed into the unconstraint optimization problem over Riemannian product manifolds. Moreover, to obtain the global optimal solution, the Riemannian gradient of the geometric distance cost is derived for the conjugate gradient algorithm. Experiments demonstrate that the proposed method shows advantages in detection performance compared with competitive methods.

Joint Design Methods of Unimodular Sequences and Receiving Filters With Good Correlation Properties and Doppler Tolerance

Sequence set design with good correlation properties and Doppler tolerance has been a classic and important problem in many multichannel systems, including but not limited to the multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and simultaneous polarimetric radar systems. In this article, we first consider the problem of jointly designing Doppler resilient unimodular sequences and receiving filters to minimize the metric weighted integrated sidelobe level (WISL), which can be used to construct sequence sets with “thumbtack” co-channel and zero cross-channel ambiguity functions (AFs). To control the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) loss caused by the mismatched filter, a peak constraint function is added to the objective function based on the penalty function method. An algorithm based on the alternatively iterative scheme and general majorization-minimization (MM) method is developed to tackle the constrained joint design problem. Moreover, the proposed algorithm is then extended to optimize the <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${l_{p}}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -norm of sidelobes of AFs, which gives a way to optimize the weighted peak sidelobe level (WPSL) metric. Due to the use of the fast Fourier transform (FFT) algorithm and a general acceleration scheme, the proposed algorithm can be realized efficiently. A number of simulations are provided to demonstrate the excellent performance of the proposed sequence set synthesis algorithms. Besides, an application of using the designed Doppler resilient sequence set on the simultaneous polarimetric radar to detect multiple moving targets in a strong clutter scene is given via simulation, which further verifies the practicability of the proposed algorithm.

Joint design of the transmit and receive weights for coherent FDA radar

Frequency diverse array (FDA) differs from conventional array techniques in that it imposes an additional frequency offset (FO) across the array elements. The use of FO provides the FDA with the controllable degree of freedom in range dimension, offering preferable performance in joint angle and range localization, range-ambiguous clutter suppression, and low probability of intercept, as compared to its phased-array or multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) counterparts. In particular, the FO of the coherent FDA is much smaller than the bandwidth of the baseband waveform, capable of obtaining higher transmit gain and output signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR). In this paper, we investigate the problem of joint design of the transmit and receive weights for coherent FDA radar systems. The design problem is formulated as the maximization of the ratio of the power in the desired two-dimensional range-angle space to the power in the entire area, subject to an energy constraint that limits the emitted energy of each transmit antenna and a similarity constraint such that a good transmit beampattern can be guaranteed. Due to the resultant problem is NP-hard, therefore, a sequential optimization method based on semidefinite relaxation (SDR) technique is developed. Numerical simulations are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

Joint design of detecting and screening waveforms against interrupted sampling repeater jamming with inaccurate jamming knowledge

The interrupted sampling repeater jamming (ISRJ) is a coherent interference, and it will result in a large amount of intra-pulse false targets in pulse compression (PC) radar. If the intercepted slices of the ISRJ, named as the screening waveform (SW), are orthogonal to the un-intercepted transmit waveform, named as the detection waveform (DW), the ISRJ can be suppressed by filtering with DW. In this paper, we investigate the problem of ISRJ suppression by jointly designing the DW and SW. Based on the inaccuracy of ISRJ parameter estimation, the joint design problem is formulated by minimizing the integrated sidelobe level (ISL) of the cross-correlation between the ISRJ and DW. The resulting design problem, which involves constraints of constant modulus and orthogonality, is NP-hard, and an alternating optimization like (AltOpt-like) algorithm is developed. Concretely, the SW is first obtained with the aid of the block coordinate descent (BCD) method, then the DW is optimized based on the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) framework. Moreover, in the ADMM framework, low complexity algorithms are devised to solve the subproblems of the primal variables. Numerical simulations are provided to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

Joint Design Method of Transmit-Receive for Airborne MIMO Radar Based on Feasible Point Pursuit

Consider the moving target detection performance degradation of airborne multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar in the presence of inaccurate target prior information. This paper proposes a joint design method of transmit waveform and receive filter bank of airborne MIMO radar based on feasible point pursuit successive convex approximation (FPP-SCA). Firstly, a set of receive filter banks is designed in the region where the target may appear on the angle-Doppler plane, and the worst-case output signal-to-clutter-plus-noise ratio (SCNR) is maximized as the optimization criterion. Secondly, considering the energy constraint and similarity on the transmit waveform, the maximin joint design problem is formulated to improve the robustness of the MIMO space-time adaptive processing (STAP) radar against the uncertainty of target parameters. Finally, an FPP-SCA algorithm is employed to solve the maximin nonconvex joint design problem. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method in terms of better output SCNR, lower computational load, and more robustness against the errors of target parameters.

A Learning Approach for Joint Design of Event-Triggered Control and Power-Efficient Resource Allocation

In emerging Industrial Cyber-Physical Systems (ICPSs), the joint design of communication and control sub-systems is essential, as these sub-systems are interconnected. In this paper, we study the joint design problem of an event-triggered control and an energy-efficient resource allocation in a fifth generation (5G) wireless network. We formally state the problem as a multi-objective optimization one, aiming to minimize the number of updates on the actuators' input and the power consumption in the downlink transmission. To address the problem, we propose a model-free hierarchical reinforcement learning approach \textcolor{blue}{with uniformly ultimate boundedness stability guarantee} that learns four policies simultaneously. These policies contain an update time policy on the actuators' input, a control policy, and energy-efficient sub-carrier and power allocation policies. Our simulation results show that the proposed approach can properly control a simulated ICPS and significantly decrease the number of updates on the actuators' input as well as the downlink power consumption.

Covert Rate Optimization of Millimeter Wave Full-Duplex Communications

In this paper, we consider the problem of full-duplex covert millimeter wave (mmWave) communications, where a mmWave transmitter (Alice) sends information signals to its intended receiver (Bob) covertly in the presence of a watchful warden (Willie). For covering the presence of Alice, Bob operates in the full-duplex mode and generates jamming signals with a time-varying power. We investigate the covert rate optimization for both the single data stream case and the multiple data streams case under the constraints of the detection error probability at Willie. Specifically, for the single data stream case, we analytically characterize the minimum detection error probability at Willie and establish a framework for optimizing the analog beamforming, transmit power, and analog jamming jointly. As for the case of multiple data streams, we derive a tractable lower bound of the minimum detection error probability at Willie and formulate a joint optimization of the hybrid precoder and analog jamming design problem for the maximization of the achievable covert rate. Although the joint design problem is nonconvex, we adopt the penalty decomposition technique to handle the effect of the coupling between the analog precoder and digital precoder paving the way for the development of an iterative algorithm to locate its Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) solution. Finally, we show that our proposed joint design algorithm can be adapted to handle the multi-antenna Willie scenario and simulation results show that our proposed joint design algorithms can achieve significantly better performance as compared with some benchmark schemes.

Joint waveform and precoding design for coexistence of MIMO radar and MU‐MISO communication

The joint design problem for the coexistence of multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) radar and multi-user multiple-input-single-output (MU-MISO) communication is investigated. Different from the conventional design schemes, which require defining the primary function, we consider designing the transmit waveform, precoding matrix and receive filter to maximize the radar SINR and the minimal SINR of communication users, simultaneously. By doing so, the promising overall performance for both sensing and communication is achieved without requiring parameter tuning for the threshold of communication or radar. However, the resulting optimization problem which contains the maximin objective function and the unit sphere constraint, is highly nonconvex and hence difficult to attain the optimal solution directly. Towards this end, the epigraph-form reformulation is first adopted, and then an alternating maximisation (AM) method is devised, in which the Dinkelbach’s algorithm is used to tackle the nonconvex fractional-programing subproblem. Simulation results indicate that the proposed method can achieve improved performance compared with the benchmarks.

Resilient Event-Triggered Control for Networked Cascade Control Systems Under Denial-of-Service Attacks and Actuator Saturation

This article addresses the issues of exponential stabilization and <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$L_2$</tex-math></inline-formula> -gain analysis for networked cascade control systems with aperiodic denial-of-service (DoS) jamming attacks, time delay, actuator saturation, and external disturbances. A resilient event-triggered communication mechanism based on the adaptive threshold technique is proposed to reduce transmission frequency and combat aperiodic DoS attacks. An event-driven cascade control strategy is developed to schedule control process updates and strengthen resistance to DoS attacks. Then, the system is modeled as a switched system closely related to the bounds of DoS frequency and duration. By using Lyapunov stability theory, conditions for the resultant system to be exponentially stable with a desired <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"><tex-math notation="LaTeX">$L_2$</tex-math></inline-formula> -gain performance level are established. A solution to the joint-design problem of controller gains and event-triggered parameters is also provided. A gas-turbine system of a power plant is employed to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Robust Joint Design of Transmit Waveform and Receive Filter for MIMO-STAP Radar Under Target and Clutter Uncertainties

This paper deals with the joint design problem of transmit waveform and receive filter for the robust detection of ground moving target with multiple-input multiple-output Space time adaptive processing (MIMO- STAP) radar in the presence of target and clutter uncertainties. With the prior knowledge of target and clutter statistics, the averaged signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) is formulated as a figure of merit to maximize. The robust joint design problems for the continuous and discrete phase cases, respectively, are formulated with the constant-modulus and similarity constraints. Then, an efficient iterative algorithm is developed for improving the SINR. Specifically, each iteration of the proposed algorithm involves the generalized eigenvalue decomposition to optimize the receive filter, while a nested iterative procedure involving Dinkelbach&#x2019;s framework and alternating direction penalty method (ADPM) algorithm to design transmit waveform. The proposed algorithm can achieve higher SINR with reduced computational load compared to the recently developed ones. Numerical examples demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method for the robust detection of moving target in MIMO-STAP radar.

Joint Design of Radar Waveform and Detector via End-to-End Learning With Waveform Constraints

The problem of data-driven joint design of transmitted waveform and detector in a radar system is addressed in this article. We propose two novel learning-based approaches to waveform and detector design based on end-to-end training of the radar system. The first approach consists of alternating supervised training of the detector for a fixed waveform and reinforcement learning of the transmitter for a fixed detector. In the second approach, the transmitter and the detector are trained simultaneously. Various operational waveform constraints, such as peak-to-average-power ratio and spectral compatibility, are incorporated into the design. Unlike traditional radar design methods that rely on rigid mathematical models, it is shown that radar learning can be robustified to uncertainties about environment by training the detector with synthetic data generated from multiple statistical models of the environment. Theoretical considerations and results show that the proposed methods are capable of adapting the transmitted waveform to environmental conditions while satisfying design constraints.

Jointly Learning Environments and Control Policies with Projected Stochastic Gradient Ascent

We consider the joint design and control of discrete-time stochastic dynamical systems over a finite time horizon. We formulate the problem as a multi-step optimization problem under uncertainty seeking to identify a system design and a control policy that jointly maximize the expected sum of rewards collected over the time horizon considered. The transition function, the reward function and the policy are all parametrized, assumed known and differentiable with respect to their parameters. We then introduce a deep reinforcement learning algorithm combining policy gradient methods with model-based optimization techniques to solve this problem. In essence, our algorithm iteratively approximates the gradient of the expected return via Monte-Carlo sampling and automatic differentiation and takes projected gradient ascent steps in the space of environment and policy parameters. This algorithm is referred to as Direct Environment and Policy Search (DEPS). We assess the performance of our algorithm in three environments concerned with the design and control of a mass-spring-damper system, a small-scale off-grid power system and a drone, respectively. In addition, our algorithm is benchmarked against a state-of-the-art deep reinforcement learning algorithm used to tackle joint design and control problems. We show that DEPS performs at least as well or better in all three environments, consistently yielding solutions with higher returns in fewer iterations. Finally, solutions produced by our algorithm are also compared with solutions produced by an algorithm that does not jointly optimize environment and policy parameters, highlighting the fact that higher returns can be achieved when joint optimization is performed.