He Sun

The emerging Massive Communication (MC) highlights the need for efficient short-length error-correction coding schemes with effective decoders. Classical Reed-Muller (RM) codes combined with the recently developed Recursive Projection-Aggregation (RPA) decoder present a promising solution, as the RPA decoder demonstrates near Maximum Likelihood (ML) performance and supports highly parallel implementation. To address the speed and flexibility requirements of Cloud Radio Access Networks (C-RANs) across various MC applications, this paper proposes a fast and scalable RPA decoder on Graphics Processing Units (GPUs). By leveraging a thread-per-projection mapping strategy, we develop an optimized thread block architecture for the RPA decoding of second-order RM codes, which can be easily extended to construct a multi-dimensional block array for decoding higher-order RM codes. Additionally, we introduce a stationary projection pruning technique that seamlessly adapts the RPA decoder kernel to simplified variants, facilitating flexible trade-offs between error-correction performance and implementation complexity. Experimental results show that the pruned RPA decoder kernel on the NVIDIA A100 GPU achieves throughputs of 1.69 Gbps and 1.33 Gbps for the RM (6, 2) and RM (7, 2) codes, respectively, delivering speedups of 2.95× and 3.69× compared to a state-of-the-art software-based Successive Cancellation List (SCL) decoder.

Intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) enhance wireless network performance by intelligently reconfiguring the propagation environment to improve capacity, coverage, and energy efficiency, making them an appealing technology for future sixth-generation (6G) systems. However, conventional IRS design paradigms typically rely on pilot-training-based reflection updates to maintain communication quality in a dynamic environment, which are hindered by significant practical challenges, such as the high implementation overhead caused by frequent channel estimation and reflection reconfiguration, excessive system cost due to base station (BS)-IRS coordination, and lack of robustness against non-ideal channel conditions. To tackle these challenges, this article provides a comprehensive overview of the promising quasi-static IRS reflection design framework for wireless network coverage enhancement, by utilizing easily accessible received signal power measurements at user terminals. Practical design issues and open problems in optimizing this framework are discussed, including long-term network coverage performance characterization, power measurement collection under existing network protocols, and power-measurement-based IRS reflection optimization and robust design strategies. Ray tracing-based simulation results validate the effectiveness of the quasi-static IRS reflection design in practical narrowband and wideband systems. Lastly, promising approaches for IRS deployment and reflection optimization in more general settings are discussed to guide future research.

This paper proposes an efficient method for modeling and reconstructing the channel gain map (CGM) based on virtual scatterers. Specifically, we develop a virtual scatterer model to characterize the channel gain distribution in three-dimensional (3D) space, by capturing the multi-path propagation environment structure and exploiting the angular-domain spatial correlation of scatterer response. In this model, the CGM is represented as a function over a set of tunable parameters for virtual scatterers, including their number, positions, and scatterer response coefficients (SRCs), which can be estimated from a limited number of channel gain measurements at a given set of locations within the region of interest. This new representation offers a flexible and scalable modeling framework for efficient and accurate CGM reconstruction. Furthermore, we propose a progressive estimation algorithm to acquire the scatterers’ parameters. In this algorithm, we gradually increase the number of virtual scatterers to balance the computational complexity and reconstruction accuracy, and derive the closed-form solutions of SRCs with any given number and positions of virtual scatterers. In addition, by exploiting the spatial correlation of scatterer response, we propose a Gaussian process regression (GPR)-based inference method to predict the SRCs that cannot be directly estimated. Finally, ray-tracing-based simulation results under realistic physical environments validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, demonstrating that it achieves higher reconstruction accuracy compared to conventional CGM estimation approaches, especially for the scenario with limited channel measurements.

Reconfigurable antennas (RAs) and movable antennas (MAs) have been recognized as promising technologies to enhance the performance of wireless communication and sensing systems by introducing additional degrees of freedom (DoFs) in tuning antenna radiation and/or placement. This paradigm shift from conventional non-reconfigurable/movable antennas offers tremendous new opportunities for realizing multi-functional, more adaptive, and efficient next-generation wireless networks. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on the fundamentals, architectures, and applications of these two emerging antenna technologies. First, we provide a chronological overview of the parallel historical development of both RA and MA technologies. Next, we review and classify the state-of-the-art hardware architectures for implementing RAs and MAs, followed by a detailed comparison of their distinct mechanisms, performance metrics, and functionalities. Subsequently, we focus on various applications of RAs and MAs in wireless communication systems, analyzing their respective performance advantages and key design considerations such as mode selection, movement optimization, and channel acquisition. We also explore the significant roles of RAs and MAs in advancing wireless sensing and integrated sensing and communication (ISAC). Furthermore, we present numerical performance comparisons to illustrate the distinct characteristics and complementary advantages of RA and MA systems. Finally, we outline key challenges and identify promising future research directions to inspire further innovations in this burgeoning field.

This paper proposes an efficient method for modeling and reconstructing the channel gain map (CGM) based on virtual scatterers. Specifically, we develop a virtual scatterer model to characterize the channel power gain distribution in three-dimensional (3D) space, by capturing the multi-path propagation environment structure and exploiting the angular-domain spatial correlation of scatterer response. In this model, the CGM is represented as a function over a set of tunable parameters for virtual scatterers, including their number, positions, and scatterer response coefficients (SRCs), which can be estimated from a limited number of channel power gain measurements at a given set of locations within the region of interest. This new representation offers a flexible and scalable modeling framework for efficient and accurate CGM reconstruction. Furthermore, we propose a progressive estimation algorithm to acquire the scatterers' parameters. In this algorithm, we gradually increase the number of virtual scatterers to balance the computational complexity and estimation accuracy. In addition, by exploiting the spatial correlation of scatterer response, we propose a Gaussian process regression (GPR)-based inference method to predict the SRCs that cannot be directly estimated. Finally, ray-tracing-based simulation results under realistic physical environments validate the effectiveness of the proposed method, demonstrating that it achieves higher reconstruction accuracy compared to conventional CGM estimation approaches.

Reconfigurable antennas (RAs) and movable antennas (MAs) have been recognized as promising technologies to enhance the performance of wireless communication and sensing systems by introducing additional degrees of freedom (DoFs) in tuning antenna radiation and/or placement. This paradigm shift from conventional non-reconfigurable/movable antennas offers tremendous new opportunities for realizing multi-functional, more adaptive, and efficient next-generation wireless networks. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive survey on the fundamentals, architectures, and applications of these two emerging antenna technologies. First, we provide a chronological overview of the parallel historical development of both RA and MA technologies. Next, we review and classify the state-of-the-art hardware architectures for implementing RAs and MAs, followed by a detailed comparison of their distinct mechanisms, performance metrics, and functionalities. Subsequently, we focus on various applications of RAs and MAs in wireless communication systems, analyzing their respective performance advantages and key design considerations such as mode selection, movement optimization, and channel acquisition. We also explore the significant roles of RAs and MAs in advancing wireless sensing and integrated sensing and communication (ISAC). Furthermore, we present numerical performance comparisons to illustrate the distinct characteristics and complementary advantages of RA and MA systems. Finally, we outline key challenges and identify promising future research directions to inspire further innovations in this burgeoning field.

This paper proposes a new architecture for the low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite ground station aided by movable antenna (MA) array. Unlike conventional fixed-position antenna (FPA), the MA array can flexibly adjust antenna positions to reconfigure array geometry, for more effectively mitigating interference and improving communication performance in ultra-dense LEO satellite networks. To reduce movement overhead, we configure antenna positions at the antenna initialization stage, which remain unchanged during the whole communication period of the ground station. To this end, an optimization problem is formulated to maximize the average achievable rate of the ground station by jointly optimizing its antenna position vector (APV) and time-varying beamforming weights, i.e., antenna weight vectors (AWVs). To solve the resulting non-convex optimization problem, we adopt the Lagrangian dual transformation and quadratic transformation to reformulate the objective function into a more tractable form. Then, we develop an efficient block coordinate descent-based iterative algorithm that alternately optimizes the APV and AWVs until convergence is reached. Simulation results demonstrate that our proposed MA scheme significantly outperforms traditional FPA by increasing the achievable rate at ground stations under various system setups, thus providing an efficient solution for interference mitigation in future ultra-dense LEO satellite communication networks.

By applying tunable phase shifts to incident waves via passive signal reflection, intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) can offer significant performance improvement for wireless communication systems. To reap such performance gain, channel knowledge for IRS-cascaded links is generally required, which is practically challenging to acquire due to their high-dimensional and time-varying characteristics. Conventional pilot-based channel estimation incurs excessive overhead due to the large number of reflecting elements, thus undermining the IRS efficiency, especially for wideband systems with frequency-selective fading channels. To tackle this issue, we propose in this letter a power-measurement-based channel autocorrelation matrix estimation and coverage enhancement approach for IRS-aided orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. Specifically, by estimating equivalent channel autocorrelation matrices of IRS-cascaded OFDM channels based on receive signal power and optimizing the IRS reflection vector based on them, the average coverage performance in the IRS-aided region is enhanced without the need for frequent reconfiguration of IRS reflection coefficients based on user instantaneous channels. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach for improving the average channel gain over the coverage region.

Movable antenna (MA) has been regarded as a promising technology to enhance wireless communication performance by enabling flexible antenna movement. However, the hardware cost of conventional MA systems scales with the number of movable elements due to the need for independently controllable driving components. To reduce hardware cost, we propose in this paper a novel architecture named cross-linked MA (CL-MA) array, which enables the collective movement of multiple antennas in both horizontal and vertical directions. To evaluate the performance benefits of the CL-MA array, we consider an uplink multiuser communication scenario. Specifically, we aim to minimize the total transmit power while satisfying a given minimum rate requirement for each user by jointly optimizing the horizontal and vertical antenna position vectors (APVs), the receive combining at the base station (BS), and the transmit power of users. A globally lower bound on the total transmit power is derived, with closed-form solutions for the APVs obtained under the condition of a single channel path for each user. For the more general case of multiple channel paths, we develop a low-complexity algorithm based on discrete antenna position optimization. Additionally, to further reduce antenna movement overhead, a statistical channel-based antenna position optimization approach is proposed, allowing for unchanged APVs over a long time period. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed CL-MA schemes significantly outperform conventional fixed-position antenna (FPA) systems and closely approach the theoretical lower bound on the total transmit power. Compared to the instantaneous channel-based CL-MA optimization, the statistical channel-based approach incurs a slight performance loss but achieves significantly lower movement overhead, making it an appealing solution for practical wireless systems.