Self-interference Research Articles

Photonics-assisted self-interference cancellation for in-band full-duplex integrated sensing and communication transceiver

In-band full-duplex (IBFD) operation is essential for both sensing-centric and communication-centric integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) systems. Both types require the monostatic transceiver to overcome the technical challenge of self-interference (SI). To address this challenge, a photonics-assisted self-interference cancellation (SIC) scheme for an IBFD ISAC transceiver is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. By utilizing wavelength division multiplexing, the SI is cancelled by a cancellation reference with matched amplitude and time delay, using two counter-biased Mach-Zehnder modulators. In proof-of-concept experiments, the proposed IBFD ISAC transceiver is tested using a 10 GHz quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM) constant envelope linear frequency modulation orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (CE-LFM-OFDM) ISAC signal with a carrier frequency and a bandwidth of 10 GHz and 2 GHz, respectively. Experimental results show that cancellation depths of 35.29 dB and 32.59 dB are achieved with bandwidths of 1 GHz and 2 GHz, respectively, in the communication receiver. The corresponding weak signal of interest is successfully recovered after effective SIC in the wireless link. The ranging and imaging functions are also experimentally verified. The experimental results show that the cancellation depth of the SI after de-chirping is 23.6 dB when the center frequency and bandwidth of the CE-LFM-OFDM RF signal are 10 GHz and 2 GHz, respectively. A dynamic range increase of 23.84 dB is achieved in imaging function. The corresponding radar ranging resolution of 10 cm is also achieved for radar function. The proposed scheme cancels the SI in both communication and radar receivers, demonstrating excellent performance in the IBFD ISAC transceiver system.

An experimental study on beamforming architecture and full-duplex wireless across two operational outdoor massive MIMO networks

Full-duplex (FD) wireless communication refers to a communication system in which both ends of a wireless link transmit and receive data simultaneously in the same frequency band. One of the major challenges of FD communication is self-interference (SI), which refers to the interference caused by transmitting elements of a radio to its own receiving elements. Fully digital beamforming is a technique used to conduct beamforming and has been recently repurposed to also reduce SI. However, the cost of fully digital systems dramatically increases with the number of antennas, as each antenna requires an independent Tx-Rx RF chain. Hybrid beamforming systems use a much smaller number of RF chains to feed the same number of antennas, and hence can significantly reduce the deployment cost. In this paper, we aim to quantify the performance gap between these two radio architectures in terms of SI cancellation and system capacity in FD multi-user Multiple Input Multiple Output (MIMO) setups. We first obtained over-the-air channel measurement data on two outdoor massive MIMO deployments over the course of three months. We next study SoftNull and M-HBFD as two state-of-the-art transmit (Tx) beamforming based FD systems, and introduce two new joint transmit-receive (Tx-Rx) beamforming based FD systems named TR-FD2 and TR-HBFD for fully digital and hybrid radio architectures, respectively. We show that the hybrid beamforming systems can achieve 80%–99% of the fully digital systems capacity, depending on the number of users. Our results show that it is possible to get many benefits associated with fully digital massive MIMO systems with a hybrid beamforming architecture at a fraction of the cost.

Multi-head self-attention mechanism combined with feedforward network for time-varying nonlinear digital self-interference cancellation

In-band full duplex (IBFD) allows simultaneous communication in the same frequency band, thus significantly improving spectral efficiency. However, self-interference (SI) at the local transmitter affects decoding at the receiver, and SI intensity increases when the channel is time-varying. Existing techniques concentrate on dealing with digital self-interference (DSI) in static channels, which are difficult to adapt to time-varying environments. For this purpose, firstly, the recursive least squares (RLS) method is utilized to counteract linear DSI. Secondly, a new feedforward neural network based on the multi-head self-attention mechanism (MHSAM-FFNN) is designed to eliminate dynamically changing nonlinear DSI. RLS can track signals and update linear coefficients. The self-attention mechanism computes the attention between any two signals in a time-varying sequence and aggregates the temporal relations by the obtained attention weights. MHSAM-FFNN utilizes multiple self-attention modules in parallel, which enhances the acquisition of different effective information in the time-varying sequence to better learn the feature relationships between the current signal and other signals. It ultimately reconstructing the nonlinearity and memory effects of DSI. As tested in different time-varying environments, results show that this paper's scheme successfully reduces DSI to the noise floor. In addition, this paper considers two scenarios where both the power amplifier (PA) and the low noise amplifier (LNA) are nonlinear and where PA is nonlinear while LNA is linear. Results demonstrate that our scheme can achieve higher interference cancellation in different nonlinear scenarios.

Comparative Analysis of Digital Self-Interference Cancellation Methods for Simultaneous Transmit and Receive Arrays

This paper provides a comprehensive theoretical derivation of the residual noise power and effective isotropic isolation (EII) signal models in baseband digital cancellation, aperture-level digital cancellation, and beamforming spatial cancellation models in simultaneous transmit and receive (STAR) arrays. We simulated and analyzed the isolation performance and self-interference (SI) noise cancellation of STAR systems using digital SI cancellation (SIC) and beamforming in a 32-element planar array. The simulation results show that in the absence of SIC or baseband digital SIC, the EII obtained by receive adaptive beamforming (ABF) is 20 dB higher than that obtained by transmit ABF. On the basis of aperture-level digital SIC, the EII obtained from transmit ABF and receive ABF is basically the same. The EII obtained by baseband digital SIC is 22.5 dB and 41.1 dB lower than that of transmit ABF and receive ABF, respectively. Therefore, baseband digital SIC technology is not required when using transmit ABF and receive ABF.

A diplexer antenna with extremely high isolation for co-site duplex applications

Co-site full-duplex communication system is facing self-interference (SI) issues caused by tremendous gap between Tx power and Rx sensitivity. SI suppression in the propagation domain is addressed by a co-polarized diplexer antenna with high port isolation in this paper. It shares a dual-band microstrip antenna with a small frequency ratio, at 1.5 and 2.0 GHz as an example. A shorting pin directly connects the antenna and diplexer, avoiding 50-Ω interface and impedance matching circuit. The diplexer is composed of open-loop resonators (OLRs) and step-impedance resonators (SIRs). Compact channel filters are constituted by OLRs, and SIRs are adopted to improve the filtering response of the diplexer. General guidelines of the diplexer are given through rigorous analysis. The fractional bandwidths of the lower and higher channels of the diplexer are 4% and 3%, and the fractional bandwidths of the diplexer antenna are 1.5% and 1%, respectively. The port isolation is greater than 53 dB for both channels. Size of the diplexer antenna is 0.65 λ×0.60 λ×0.016 λ, where λ is the free-space wavelength at the lowest operation frequency. Potential advantages of the proposed antenna in suppressing SI are validated using Software-Defined Radio, which is potentially useful in full-duplex communications.

Deep Learning-Driven Interference Perceptual Multi-Modulation for Full-Duplex Systems

In this paper, a novel data transmission scheme, interference perceptual multi-modulation (IP-MM), is proposed for full-duplex (FD) systems. In order to unlink the conventional uplink (UL) data transmission using a single modulation and coding scheme (MCS) over the entire assigned UL bandwidth, IP-MM enables the transmission of UL data channels based on multiple MCS levels, where a different MCS level is applied to each subband of UL transmission. In IP-MM, a deep convolutional neural network is used for MCS-level prediction for each UL subband by estimating the potential residual self-interference (SI) according to the downlink (DL) resource allocation pattern. In addition, a subband-based UL transmission procedure is introduced from a specification point of view to enable IP-MM-based UL transmission. The benefits of IP-MM are verified using simulations, and it is observed that IP-MM achieves approximately 20% throughput gain compared to the conventional UL transmission scheme.

Experimental full-duplex amplify-and-forward relay scheme for OFDM with power gain control

The fundamental challenges for full-duplex (FD) relay networks are the self-interference cancellation (SIC) and the cooperative transmission design at the relay. This paper presents a practical amplify-and-forward (AF) FD one-way relay scheme for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) transmission with multi-domain SIC. It is found that the residual self-interference (SI) signals at the relay can be regarded as an equivalent multipath model. The effects of the residual SI at the relay are incorporated into the equivalent end-to-end channel model, and the inter-block interference can be removed at the destination by using cyclic prefix (CP) protection. Based on the equivalent multipath model, we present a solution for optimizing the amplification factor on the performance of signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) when the equivalent multipath length is longer than the CP. Furthermore, a practical one way FD relay network with 3 nodes is built and measured. The simulation and measured results verify the superior performance of the proposed scheme.

A Microwave Photonic 2 × 2 IBFD-MIMO Communication System with Narrowband Self-Interference Cancellation.

Combined in-band full duplex-multiple input multiple output (IBFD-MIMO) technology can significantly improve spectrum efficiency and data throughput, and has broad application prospects in communications, radar, the Internet of Things (IoT), and other fields. Targeting the self-interference (SI) issue in microwave photonic-based IBFD-MIMO communication systems, a microwave photonic self-interference cancellation (SIC) method applied to the narrowband 2 × 2 IBFD-MIMO communication system was proposed, simulated, and analyzed. An interleaver was used to construct a polarization multiplexing dual optical frequency comb with a frequency shifting effect, generating a dual-channel reference interference signal. The programmable spectrum processor was employed for filtering, attenuation, and phase-shifting operations, ensuring amplitude and phase matching to eliminate the two self-interference (SI) signals. The simulation results show that the single-frequency SIC depth exceeds 45.8 dB, and the narrowband SIC depth under 30 MHz bandwidth exceeds 32.7 dB. After SIC, the desired signal, employing a 4QAM modulation format, can be demodulated with an error vector magnitude (EVM) as low as 4.7%. Additionally, further channel expansion and system performance optimization are prospected.

Exploring Design Tradeoffs and Rate Gain Regions in Full-Duplex Wireless Communications

Conventional HD wireless networks operated by using distinct time slots or frequency (freq.) sub-bands for transmission and reception within the same family. Therefore, the wireless research community aims to develop FD operation to enable simultaneous transmission along with reception inside a single time/ freq. channel. This research aims to conduct an analytical investigation of the conditions under which real FD systems may attain higher data rates compared to analogous HD systems. The primary obstacle in real FD systems is to the uncancelled self-interference (SI) signal, which arises due to a confluence of hardware along with implementation defects. First, provide a signal model that encompasses the impact of notable impairments, including oscillator phase noise (PN), along with low-noise amplifier (LNA) noise figure, along with mixer noise, along with analog-to-digital converter quantization noise. The rate gain area (RGA) is examined in this research using the comprehensive signal model. A~1.2x to ~1.4x that of HD systems for short-range applications like class-3 Bluetooth. To get the same rate gain with Class-1 Bluetooth, −70dB in-band PN must be paired with 50dB passive SI suppression.

Joint Hybrid Beamforming Design for Millimeter Wave Amplify-and-Forward Relay Communication Systems

Hybrid beamforming (HBF) has been regarded as one of the most promising technologies in millimeter Wave (mmWave) communication systems. In order to guarantee the communication quality in non-line-of-sight (NLOS) scenarios, joint HBF design for the mmWave amplify-and-forward (AF) relay communication system is studied in this paper. The ideal case is first considered where the mmWave half-duplex (HD) AF relay system operates with channel state information (CSI) accurately known. In order to tackle the non-convex problem, a manifold optimization (MO)-based alternating optimization algorithm is proposed, where an optimization problem containing only constant modulus constraints in Euclidean space can be converted to an unconstrained optimization problem in a Riemann manifold. Furthermore, considering more practical cases with estimation errors of CSI, we investigate the robust joint HBF design with the system operating in full-duplex (FD) mode to obtain higher spectral efficiency (SE). A null-space projection (NP) based self-interference cancellation (SIC) algorithm is developed to attenuate the self-interference (SI). Different from the traditional SI suppression algorithm, there’s no limit on the number of RF chains. Numerical results reveal that our proposed algorithms has a good convergence and can effectively deal with the influence of different CSI estimation errors. A significant performance improvement can be achieved in contrast with other approaches.

Beamforming for the Successive Relaying-Based Cooperative Non-Orthogonal Multiple Access Transmission

In this paper, a set of cooperative non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) transmission schemes is proposed, in which two half-duplex relaying user terminals (UTs) successively deliver the AP signals toward two NOMA UTs. The successive relaying (SR) of two HD relays emulates the full-duplex (FD) relaying transmission such that the whole transmission of one data block is finished in one time slot. Different from FD relaying, where the removal of self-interference (SI) at the relay is challenging, the SR is suffering from cross-relay interference (CRI) between the two HD relays and the handling of this CRI is the key technical challenge. This CRI suppression is implemented by beamforming with multiple antennas at the relaying UTs, while the beamforming also does the role of maximizing the NOMA transmission efficiency. Two beamforming schemes are proposed, where the first method employs semi-definite relaxation (SDR) with four dimensional (4-D) search. Here, the four dimensions come from the four parameters reflecting the CRI levels at the relaying UTs and signal strengths at the NOMA UTs. This scheme alternates until the 4-D search range is reduced and the sum throughput rate saturates. The second method is computationally simpler than the first one since it avoids the SDR and alternation, and it finds the beamformer set in one shot calculation. Both schemes rely on zero forcing of the CRI. These two schemes along with the HDR relay-based cooperative NOMA scheme are compared in the numerical experiments, and the results exhibit their pros and cons in several aspects.

Digital Self-Interference Canceler with Joint Channel Estimator for Simultaneous Transmit and Receive System.

Simultaneous transmit and receive wireless communications have been highlighted for their potential to double the spectral efficiency. However, it is necessary to mitigate self-interference (SI). Considering both the SI channel and remote transmission (RT) channel need to be estimated before equalizing the received signal, we propose two adaptive algorithms for linear and nonlinear self-interference cancellation (SIC), based on a multi-layered joint channel estimator structure. The proposed algorithms estimate the RT channel while performing SIC, and the multi-layered structure ensures improved performance across various interference-to-signal ratios. The M-estimate function enhances the robustness of the algorithm, allowing it to converge even when affected by impulsive noise. For nonlinear SIC, this paper introduces an adaptive algorithm based on generalized Hammerstein polynomial basis functions. The simulation results indicate that this approach achieves a better convergence speed and normalized mean squared difference compared to existing SIC methods, leading to a lower system bit error rate.

Efficient symbol level precoding design for full-duplex integrated sensing and communication systems

Full-duplex (FD) integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system attracts much attention because adopting the FD mode can enhance the transmission efficiency and reduce the transmission time of the ISAC system. However, the inevitable self-interference (SI) in FD mode would result in severe performance degradation. This paper considers the FD ISAC system and investigates a symbol-level precoding (SLP) design, which minimizes the Cramér-Rao Bound of target angle estimation while considering the constant-envelope power restraint, SI suppression and the quality of service requirement. Due to the non-convex fractional problem and the unit-modulus constraint, the optimization problem is reformulated by implementing the Schur complement, where the optimal waveform is obtained via the semidefinite programming algorithm. The SLP design that optimizes each symbol vector for all users may suffer high computational complexity of matrix multiplication with high numbers of users. A grouped SLP strategy in which the communication users are divided into several groups on the basis of channel correlation is proposed to reduce the complexity. The proposed grouped SLP design only suppresses group-to-group interference and converts the intra-group interference into a constructive interference, which can reduce the dimension of each precoded signal significantly, resulting in a low computational complexity. Simulation results illustrate that the proposed SLP design can effectively mitigate SI, which can improve the accuracy of target detection. Moreover, the proposed grouped-SLP design can further reduce computational complexity without dramatic performance degradation.

Non-binary codes approach on the performance of short-packet full-duplex transmissions

This paper illustrates the enhancement of the performance of short-packet full-duplex (FD) transmission by taking the approach of non-binary low density parity check (NB-LDPC) codes over higher Galois field. For the purpose of reducing the impacts of self-interference (SI), high order of modulation, complexity, and latency decoder, a blind feedback process composed of channels estimation and decoding algorithm is implemented. In particular, this method uses an iterative process to simultaneously suppress SI component of FD transmission, estimate intended channel, and decode messages. The results indicate that the proposed technique provides a better solution than both the NB-LDPC without feedback and the binary LDPC feedback algorithms. Indeed, it can significantly improve the performance of overall system in two important factors, which are bit-error-rate (BER) and <a name="_Hlk155778233"></a>mean square error (MSE), especially in high order of modulation. The suggested algorithm also shows a robustness in reliability and power consumption for both short-packet FD transmissions and high order modulation communications.

A Simultaneously Transmit and Receive Antenna Terminal for In-Band Full-Duplex Applications

In this paper, a low-profile co-linearly polarized simultaneously transmit-receive antenna (STRA) terminal is presented for 5G and upcoming technologies. The proposed STRA terminal comprises of an identical pair of spatially rotated half-circular microstrip antennas for transmission (Tx) and reception (Rx). The challenge of self-interference (SI) is addressed by employing passive SI cancellation techniques such as spatial diversity, field confinement, and surface perturbations. This has been accomplished by using fence-strip structure and V-shaped slots in the ground plane. The STRA was designed, fabricated, and tested for full-duplex operation in a sub-6 GHz band lying from 5.73 to 5.88 GHz, providing high interport isolation ranging from 35.5 dB to a maximum of 46.5 dB. The proposed STRA was implemented using Rogers 3003™ substrate. The measurements yield radiation characteristics with high gain of 5.45-6.0 dBi and 5-6.5 dBi for Tx and Rx antennas, respectively. The measured results are in good conformance with the simulated design. This antenna finds its potential usage in V2X and private 5G networks and can be extended for full-duplex MIMO implementations.

A Full-Duplex 60 GHz Transceiver with Digital Self-Interference Cancellation

This paper presents the design and measurement of an IEEE 802.11ad standard compatible RF transceiver for 60 GHz wireless communication systems. In addition to the traditional half-duplex (HD) mode, this work supports full-duplex (FD) operations to deliver better channel utilization and faster response times for the system. The isolation between the transmitter and receiver from the architecture design to system integration for FD operations has been fully considered. A digital self-interference cancellation (DSIC) is implemented in MATLAB to verify the FD performance. The super-heterodyne architecture with an intermediate frequency (IF) of 12 GHz is designed to suppress the image frequencies without using extra filters. A flexible phase-locked loop (PLL) synthesizer provides a local oscillator (LO) frequency with a 2 kHz resolution. Other than the time division duplex (TDD) mode used in the conventional 60 GHz system, a wide-bandwidth baseband digital variable-gain amplifier (DVGA) with a 3 dB bandwidth of more than 4 GHz also supports frequency division duplex (FDD) operations. The transceiver chip is fabricated using the Tower Jazz 0.18 µm SiGe BiCMOS process. With an on-board antenna, the transceiver covers all four channels in the 802.11ad standard, with MCS-12 (7.04 Gbps under 1.76 GSym/s and 16-QAM) under 1.5 m. In the proposed system design, the RF frontend-based self-interference (SI) suppression from the local transmitter to receiver LNA is around 54 dB. To achieve a practical FD application, the SI is further suppressed with the help of a digital SI compensation. The measured power consumption for the transmitter and receiver configurations are 194 mW and 231 mW, respectively, in HD mode and 398 mW for the FDD or FD operation mode.

A hybrid digital self-interference cancellation method with attention-based TCN-GRU for full-duplex systems

Full-duplex (FD) technology is expected to be widely used in future communication systems due to its excellent performance in spectral efficiency. Self-interference (SI) is the main problem affecting the transmission quality of the FD systems, thus it is crucial to research the SI cancellation (SIC) techniques. In this paper, we present an innovative hybrid digital SIC method named sliding time window, temporal convolutional network (TCN), gated recurrent unit (GRU) and attention mechanism (AM)-based deep learning network (STGAN). The proposed method can extract complete features and time information from the input sequence, and accurately estimate the SI in FD systems. We first present a preprocessing module that utilizes sliding time windows to handle the original signal sequence. Then, we utilize the TCN and GRU to extract the short-term features and long-term dependencies within the sequence. Finally, the AM is adopted to explore the significance of the information conveyed by the sequence at different time steps. The effectiveness of the STGAN is verified in multiple experimental scenarios. Simulation results indicate that the interference cancellation ratio (ICR) of the STGAN is significantly higher than existing methods.

Power Allocation for NOMA With Cache-Aided D2D Communication

Communication networks are becoming increasingly content-centric, and reusable content like viral information and video on demand are often requested by multiple users. Caching at the user equipment enables device-to-device (D2D) communications to be used to deliver requested contents which will help reduce data traffic at base stations and also enhance the achievable data rates. In this paper, we propose a system whereby users are able to exchange valuable cached content with each other via a D2D link which underlays the reception of a downlink non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) signal. We formulated a sum rate maximization problem that is subject to minimum rate constraints and derived optimal solutions depending on which user is the D2D transmitter. Additionally, sub-optimal solutions based on a negligible self-interference assumption are also proposed. Simulation results demonstrate the significant performance gains of underlaid D2D communications as compared with optimal downlink cellular NOMA. Furthermore, results on the self-interference (SI) cancellation factor highlight that the sub-optimal power allocation solution offers sum rate performance close to the optimal case. The performance gains are further enhanced when SI cancellation is high.

Joint Beamforming and Phase Shifts Design for RIS-Aided Multi-User Full-Duplex Systems in Smart Cities.

Full-duplex (FD) and reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) are potential technologies for achieving wireless communication effectively. Therefore, in theory, the RIS-aided FD system is supposed to enhance spectral efficiency significantly for the ubiquitous Internet of Things devices in smart cities. However, this technology additionally induces the loop-interference (LI) of RIS on the residual self-interference (SI) of the FD base station, especially in complicated urban outdoor environments, which will somewhat counterbalance the performance benefit. Inspired by this, we first establish an objective and constraints considering the residual SI and LI in two typical urban outdoor scenarios. Then, we decompose the original problem into two subproblems according to the variable types and jointly design the beamforming matrices and phase shifts vector methods. Specifically, we propose a successive convex approximation algorithm and a soft actor-critic deep reinforcement learning-related scheme to solve the subproblems alternately. To prove the effectiveness of our proposal, we introduce benchmarks of RIS phase shifts design for comparison. The simulation results show that the performance of the low-complexity proposed algorithm is only slightly lower than the exhaustive search method and outperforms the fixed-point iteration scheme. Moreover, the proposal in scenario two is more outstanding, demonstrating the application predominance in urban outdoor environments.

Secrecy performance evaluation and enhancement of vehicle-to-vehicle communications in the presence of big vehicles

Despite its significant role in providing and developing reliable and safe intelligent transportation services, the Internet of Vehicles faces several challenges and security threats, such as co-channel interference (CCI), node self-interference (SI), and eavesdropping. This paper investigates the secrecy performance of vehicular networks in terms of their secrecy outage probability (SOP) and average secrecy capacity (ASC) in the presence of an eavesdropper. The legitimate vehicles are assumed to operate in full-duplex mode. Hence, the impacts of CCI and SI are considered for practical modeling and performance evaluation. Moreover, the wireless communications among vehicles are assumed to be either subjected to Nakagami-m fading or Nakagami-N-Gamma shadowed fading due to the existence of a big vehicle and its location. Accordingly, closed-form mathematical expressions are derived for the SOP and the ASC. Furthermore, a power allocation (PA) model is proposed to improve the secrecy performance by maximizing the derived ASC. The numerical results validate the derived expressions by demonstrating the impact of the channel condition, the secrecy data rate threshold, the SI cancellation capability at the legitimate destination, the location of the eavesdropper, the location of the big vehicle, and the strength of shadowing on the SOP and the ASC. Also, it is shown that the proposed PA model can significantly enhance the secrecy performance.