Ling Qiu

Channel knowledge map (CKM) has emerged as a pivotal technology for environment-aware wireless communications and sensing, which provides a priori location-specific channel knowledge to facilitate network optimization. Efficient CKM construction is an important technical problem for its effective implementation. This article provides a comprehensive overview of recent advances in CKM construction. First, we examine classical interpolation-based CKM construction methods, highlighting their limitations in practical deployments. Next, we explore image processing and generative artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, which leverage feature extraction to construct CKMs based on environmental knowledge. Furthermore, we present emerging wireless radiance field (WRF) frameworks that exploit neural radiance fields or Gaussian splatting to construct high-fidelity CKMs from sparse measurement data. Finally, we outline various future research directions in real-time and cross-domain CKM construction, as well as cost-efficient deployment of CKMs.

In this article, we propose a novel downlink multiple access system with a multiantenna transmitter and two single-antenna receivers, inspired by the underlying principles of hierarchical quadrature amplitude modulation (H-QAM)-based multiple access (QAMA) and space-division multiple access (SDMA). In the proposed scheme, coded bits from two users are split and assigned to one shared symbol and two private symbols carried by different beams. Based on joint symbol mapping of H-QAM constellations and phase-aligned precoding at the transmitter, each receiver observes a different H-QAM constellation with Gray mapping, a unique parallax feature not shared by existing schemes. In addition to avoiding successive interference cancellation (SIC), each user independently demodulates its own bits on separate $I$ and $Q$ branches with calculations based on closed-form expressions. Hence, the receiver complexity is on par with that of orthogonal multiple access (OMA), which is much lower than that in other competing alternatives such as non-OMA (NOMA) and rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA). We carry out system optimization and determine the achievable rate region. Numerical results show that the proposed system achieves superior performance compared with benchmark schemes employing SIC-free receivers, and further demonstrates competitive results across various performance metrics even relative to benchmark schemes relying on SIC-based receivers. The proposed scheme is attractive to 6G and the Internet of Things (IoT) applications, where the increased system complexity is at the transmitter while the receivers maintain low complexity.

Channel knowledge map (CKM) has emerged as a pivotal technology for environment-aware wireless communications and sensing, which provides a priori location-specific channel knowledge to facilitate network optimization. Efficient CKM construction is an important technical problem for its effective implementation. This article provides a comprehensive overview of recent advances in CKM construction. First, we examine classical interpolation-based CKM construction methods, highlighting their limitations in practical deployments. Next, we explore image processing and generative artificial intelligence (AI) techniques, which leverage feature extraction to construct CKMs based on environmental knowledge. Furthermore, we present emerging wireless radiance field (WRF) frameworks that exploit neural radiance fields or Gaussian splatting to construct high-fidelity CKMs from sparse measurement data. Finally, we outline various future research directions in real-time and cross-domain CKM construction, as well as cost-efficient deployment of CKMs.

In this paper, we propose a novel downlink multiple access system with a multi-antenna transmitter and two single-antenna receivers, inspired by the underlying principles of hierarchical quadrature amplitude modulation (H-QAM) based multiple access (QAMA) and space-division multiple access (SDMA). In the proposed scheme, coded bits from two users are split and assigned to one shared symbol and two private symbols carried by different beams. Based on joint symbol mapping of H-QAM constellations and phase-aligned precoding at the transmitter, each receiver observes a different H-QAM constellation with Gray mapping, a unique parallax feature not shared by existing schemes. In addition to avoiding successive interference cancellation (SIC), each user independently demodulates its own bits on separate I and Q branches with calculations based on closed-form expressions. Hence the receiver complexity is on par with that of orthogonal multiple access (OMA), which is much lower than that in other competing alternatives such as non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) and rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA). We carry out system optimization and determine the achievable rate region. Numerical results show that the proposed system has a larger rate region relative to other benchmark schemes with receivers not using SIC, and even achieves a comparable rate region to those benchmark schemes with SIC receivers.

In this paper, we study a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) beamforming design in an integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system, in which an ISAC base station (BS) is used to communicate with multiple downlink users and simultaneously the communication signals are reused for sensing multiple targets. Our interested sensing parameters are the angle and delay information of the targets, which can be used to locate these targets. Under this consideration, we first derive the Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) for joint angle and delay estimation. Then, we optimize the transmit beamforming at the BS to minimize the CRB, subject to the communication rate requirement and the maximum transmit power constraint. In particular, we obtain the closed-form optimal solution in the case of single-target and single-user, and in the case of multi-target and multi-user scenario, the sparsity of the optimal solution is proven, leading to a reduction in computational complexity during optimization. The numerical results demonstrate that the optimized beamforming yields excellent positioning performance and effectively reduces the requirement for a large number of antennas at the BS.

This paper investigates robust secure communications in a near-field integrated sensing, communication, and powering (ISCAP) system, in which the base station (BS) is equipped with an extremely large-scale antenna array (ELAA). In this system, the BS transmits confidential messages to a single legitimate communication user (CU), simultaneously providing wireless power transfer to multiple energy receivers (ERs) and performing point target sensing. We consider a scenario in which both the ERs and the sensing target may act as potential eavesdroppers attempting to intercept the confidential messages. To safeguard secure communication, the BS employs a joint beamforming design by transmitting information beams combined with dedicated triple-purpose beams serving as energy and sensing signals, as well as artificial noise (AN) for effectively jamming potential eavesdroppers. It is assumed that only coarse location information of the ERs and sensing targets or eavesdroppers is available at the BS, leading to imperfect channel state information (CSI). Under this setup, we formulate a robust beamforming optimization problem with the objective of maximizing the secrecy rate for the CU, while ensuring worst-case performance requirements on both target sensing and wireless energy harvesting at the ERs. To address the non-convex robust joint beamforming problem and facilitate the deployment of a low-complexity algorithm, we employ the S-procedure alongside an eavesdropping CSI error-bound determination method to acquire a high-quality solution.

This paper investigates a dual-layer heterogeneous communication network assisted by multiple unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) based on rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA). Considering the repulsion characteristics between UAVs' positions and terrestrial base stations (BSs), UAVs are deployed in non-hole areas outside the BSs. The positions of UAVs are modeled by Poisson hole process (PHP). Due to the difficulty of directly solving the user association problem under PHP, the nearest neighbor hole approximation method is introduced. Due to the complex interference caused by multiple communication links in the dual-layer heterogeneous network, we adopt the conditional Laplace transform method to represent interference, deriving expressions for coverage probability and area spectral efficiency (ASE). Considering the energy constraints of the UAV network, this paper defines the system-level network energy efficiency (EE) as the ratio of the ASE to the average energy consumption per unit area. Utilizing this framework, we jointly optimize the UAV network density and the RSMA power allocation coefficients to maximize EE. The numerical results ultimately validated the accuracy of the theoretical analysis. Through simulation analysis, this paper explores the impact of network deployment parameters on system performance and provided the UAV network density and RSMA power allocation scheme that maximizes EE.

This paper investigates the energy-efficient hybrid beamforming design for a multi-functional integrated sensing, communications, and powering (ISCAP) system. In this system, a base station (BS) with a hybrid analog-digital (HAD) architecture sends unified wireless signals to communicate with multiple information receivers (IRs), sense multiple point targets, and wirelessly charge multiple energy receivers (ERs) at the same time. To facilitate the energy-efficient design, we present a novel HAD architecture for the BS transmitter, which allows dynamic on-off control of its radio frequency (RF) chains and analog phase shifters (PSs) through a switch network. We also consider a practical and comprehensive power consumption model for the BS, by taking into account the power-dependent non-linear power amplifier (PA) efficiency, and the on-off non-transmission power consumption model of RF chains and PSs. We jointly design the hybrid beamforming and dynamic on-off control at the BS, aiming to minimize its total power consumption, while guaranteeing the performance requirements on communication rates, sensing Cramér-Rao bound (CRB), and harvested power levels. The formulation also takes into consideration the per-antenna transmit power constraint and the constant modulus constraints for the analog beamformer at the BS. The resulting optimization problem for ISCAP is highly non-convex due to the binary on-off non-transmission power consumption of RF chains and PSs, the non-linear PA efficiency, and the coupling between analog and digital beamformers. To tackle this problem, we first approximate the binary on-off non-transmission power consumption into a continuous form, and accordingly propose an iterative algorithm to find a high-quality approximate solution with ensured convergence, by employing techniques from alternating optimization (AO), sequential convex approximation (SCA), and semi-definite relaxation (SDR). Then, based on the optimized beamforming weights, we develop an efficient method to determine the binary on-off control of RF chains and PSs, as well as the associated hybrid beamforming solution. Numerical results show that the proposed design achieves an improved energy efficiency for ISCAP than other benchmark schemes without joint design of hybrid beamforming and dynamic on-off control. This validates the benefit of dynamic on-off control in energy reduction, especially when the multi-functional performance requirements become less stringent.

This paper studies a secure cell-free integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system, in which multiple ISAC transmitters collaboratively send confidential information to multiple communication users (CUs) and concurrently conduct target detection. Different from prior works investigating communication security against potential information eavesdropping, we consider the security of both communication and sensing in the presence of information and sensing eavesdroppers that aim to intercept confidential communication information and extract target information, respectively. Towards this end, we optimize the joint information and sensing transmit beamforming at these ISAC transmitters for secure cell-free ISAC. Our objective is to maximize the detection probability over a designated sensing area while ensuring the minimum signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) requirements at CUs. Our formulation also takes into account the maximum tolerable signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) constraints at information eavesdroppers for ensuring the confidentiality of information transmission, and the maximum detection probability constraints at sensing eavesdroppers for preserving sensing privacy. The formulated secure joint transmit beamforming problem is highly non-convex due to the intricate interplay between the detection probabilities, beamforming vectors, and SINR constraints. Fortunately, through strategic manipulation and via applying the semidefinite relaxation (SDR) technique, we successfully obtain the globally optimal solution to the design problem by rigorously verifying the tightness of SDR. Furthermore, we present two alternative joint beamforming designs based on the sensing SNR maximization over the specific sensing area and the coordinated beamforming, respectively. Numerical results reveal the benefits of our proposed design over these alternative benchmarks.

This correspondence presents a novel sensingassisted sparse channel recovery approach for massive antenna wireless communication systems. We focus on a fundamental configuration with one massive-antenna base station (BS) and one single-antenna communication user (CU). The wireless channel exhibits sparsity and consists of multiple paths associated with scatterers detectable via radar sensing. Under this setup, the BS first sends downlink pilots to the CU and concurrently receives the echo pilot signals for sensing the surrounding scatterers. Subsequently, the CU sends feedback information on its received pilot signal to the BS. Accordingly, the BS determines the sparse basis based on the sensed scatterers and proceeds to recover the wireless channel, exploiting the feedback information based on advanced compressive sensing (CS) algorithms. Numerical results show that the proposed sensing-assisted approach significantly increases the overall achievable rate than the conventional design relying on a discrete Fourier transform (DFT)-based sparse basis without sensing, thanks to the reduced training overhead and enhanced recovery accuracy with limited feedback.