Shi Jin

Jiajia Guo, Chao-Kai Wen, Shi Jin et al.

Many performance gains achieved by massive multiple-input and multiple-output depend on the accuracy of the downlink channel state information (CSI) at the transmitter (base station), which is usually obtained by estimating at the receiver (user terminal) and feeding back to the transmitter. The overhead of CSI feedback occupies substantial uplink bandwidth resources, especially when the number of the transmit antennas is large. Deep learning (DL)-based CSI feedback refers to CSI compression and reconstruction by a DL-based autoencoder and can greatly reduce feedback overhead. In this paper, a comprehensive overview of state-of-the-art research on this topic is provided, beginning with basic DL concepts widely used in CSI feedback and then categorizing and describing some existing DL-based feedback works. The focus is on novel neural network architectures and utilization of communication expert knowledge to improve CSI feedback accuracy. Works on bit-level CSI feedback and joint design of CSI feedback with other communication modules are also introduced, and some practical issues, including training dataset collection, online training, complexity, generalization, and standardization effect, are discussed. At the end of the paper, some challenges and potential research directions associated with DL-based CSI feedback in future wireless communication systems are identified.

Jianwei Zhao, Feifei Gao, Qihui Wu et al.

Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-satellite communication has drawn dramatic attention for its potential to build the integrated space-air-ground network and the seamless wide-area coverage. The key challenge to UAV-satellite communication is its unstable beam pointing due to the UAV navigation, which is a typical SatCom on-the-move scenario. In this paper, we propose a blind beam tracking approach for Ka-band UAVsatellite communication system, where UAV is equipped with a large-scale antenna array. The effects of UAV navigation are firstly released through the mechanical adjustment, which could approximately point the beam towards the target satellite through beam stabilization and dynamic isolation. Specially, the attitude information can be realtimely derived from data fusion of lowcost sensors. Then, the precision of the beam pointing is blindly refined through electrically adjusting the weight of the massive antennas, where an array structure based simultaneous perturbation algorithm is designed. Simulation results are provided to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed method over the existing ones.

Yuelin Wang, Kai Yi, Xinliang Liu et al.

Neural message passing is a basic feature extraction unit for graph-structured data considering neighboring node features in network propagation from one layer to the next. We model such process by an interacting particle system with attractive and repulsive forces and the Allen-Cahn force arising in the modeling of phase transition. The dynamics of the system is a reaction-diffusion process which can separate particles without blowing up. This induces an Allen-Cahn message passing (ACMP) for graph neural networks where the numerical iteration for the particle system solution constitutes the message passing propagation. ACMP which has a simple implementation with a neural ODE solver can propel the network depth up to one hundred of layers with theoretically proven strictly positive lower bound of the Dirichlet energy. It thus provides a deep model of GNNs circumventing the common GNN problem of oversmoothing. GNNs with ACMP achieve state of the art performance for real-world node classification tasks on both homophilic and heterophilic datasets. Codes are available at https://github.com/ykiiiiii/ACMP.

Jiajia Guo, Chao-Kai Wen, Shi Jin et al.

The 3rd Generation Partnership Project started the study of Release 18 in 2021. Artificial intelligence (AI)-native air interface is one of the key features of Release 18, where AI for channel state information (CSI) feedback enhancement is selected as the representative use case. This article provides an overview of AI for CSI feedback enhancement in 5G-Advanced. Several representative non-AI and AI-enabled CSI feedback frameworks are first introduced and compared. Then, the standardization of AI for CSI feedback enhancement in 5G-advanced is presented in detail. First, the scope of the AI for CSI feedback enhancement in 5G-Advanced is presented and discussed. Then, the main challenges and open problems in the standardization of AI for CSI feedback enhancement, especially focusing on performance evaluation and the design of new protocols for AI-enabled CSI feedback, are identified and discussed. This article provides a guideline for the standardization study of AI-based CSI feedback enhancement.

Jie Zhang, Jun Li, Yijin Zhang et al.

Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is envisioned to be widely applied in future wireless networks. In this paper, we investigate a multi-user communication system assisted by cooperative IRS devices with the capability of energy harvesting. Aiming to maximize the long-term average achievable system rate, an optimization problem is formulated by jointly designing the transmit beamforming at the base station (BS) and discrete phase shift beamforming at the IRSs, with the constraints on transmit power, user data rate requirement and IRS energy buffer size. Considering time-varying channels and stochastic arrivals of energy harvested by the IRSs, we first formulate the problem as a Markov decision process (MDP) and then develop a novel multi-agent Q-mix (MAQ) framework with two layers to decouple the optimization parameters. The higher layer is for optimizing phase shift resolutions, and the lower one is for phase shift beamforming and power allocation. Since the phase shift optimization is an integer programming problem with a large-scale action space, we improve MAQ by incorporating the Wolpertinger method, namely, MAQ-WP algorithm to achieve a sub-optimality with reduced dimensions of action space. In addition, as MAQ-WP is still of high complexity to achieve good performance, we propose a policy gradient-based MAQ algorithm, namely, MAQ-PG, by mapping the discrete phase shift actions into a continuous space at the cost of a slight performance loss. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed MAQ-WP and MAQ-PG algorithms can converge faster and achieve data rate improvements of 10.7% and 8.8% over the conventional multi-agent DDPG, respectively.

Ziyan Yin, Zhe Wang, Jun Li et al.

The explosive growth of dynamic and heterogeneous data traffic brings great challenges for 5G and beyond mobile networks. To enhance the network capacity and reliability, we propose a learning-based dynamic time-frequency division duplexing (D-TFDD) scheme that adaptively allocates the uplink and downlink time-frequency resources of base stations (BSs) to meet the asymmetric and heterogeneous traffic demands while alleviating the inter-cell interference. We formulate the problem as a decentralized partially observable Markov decision process (Dec-POMDP) that maximizes the long-term expected sum rate under the users' packet dropping ratio constraints. In order to jointly optimize the global resources in a decentralized manner, we propose a federated reinforcement learning (RL) algorithm named federated Wolpertinger deep deterministic policy gradient (FWDDPG) algorithm. The BSs decide their local time-frequency configurations through RL algorithms and achieve global training via exchanging local RL models with their neighbors under a decentralized federated learning framework. Specifically, to deal with the large-scale discrete action space of each BS, we adopt a DDPG-based algorithm to generate actions in a continuous space, and then utilize Wolpertinger policy to reduce the mapping errors from continuous action space back to discrete action space. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of our proposed algorithm to benchmark algorithms with respect to system sum rate.

José A. Carrillo, Shi Jin, Haoyu Zhang et al.

This paper presents a particle-based optimization method designed for addressing minimization problems with equality constraints, particularly in cases where the loss function exhibits non-differentiability or non-convexity. The proposed method combines components from consensus-based optimization algorithm with a newly introduced forcing term directed at the constraint set. A rigorous mean-field limit of the particle system is derived, and the convergence of the mean-field limit to the constrained minimizer is established. Additionally, we introduce a stable discretized algorithm and conduct various numerical experiments to demonstrate the performance of the proposed method.

Xiangyi Li, Jiajia Guo, Chao-Kai Wen et al.

Deep learning has revolutionized the design of the channel state information (CSI) feedback module in wireless communications. However, designing the optimal neural network (NN) architecture for CSI feedback can be a laborious and time-consuming process. Manual design can be prohibitively expensive for customizing NNs to different scenarios. This paper proposes using neural architecture search (NAS) to automate the generation of scenario-customized CSI feedback NN architectures, thereby maximizing the potential of deep learning in exclusive environments. By employing automated machine learning and gradient-descent-based NAS, an efficient and cost-effective architecture design process is achieved. The proposed approach leverages implicit scene knowledge, integrating it into the scenario customization process in a data-driven manner, and fully exploits the potential of deep learning for each specific scenario. To address the issue of excessive search, early stopping and elastic selection mechanisms are employed, enhancing the efficiency of the proposed scheme. The experimental results demonstrate that the automatically generated architecture, known as Auto-CsiNet, outperforms manually-designed models in both reconstruction performance (achieving approximately a 14% improvement) and complexity (reducing it by approximately 50%). Furthermore, the paper analyzes the impact of the scenario on the NN architecture and its capacity.

Fuwang Dong, Fan Liu, Yifeng Xiong et al.

In the low-altitude wireless networks, the simultaneous sensing data acquisition and sharing (SDAS) through an ISAC signaling strategy becomes a typical application scenario. In this paper, we mainly investigate three primary aspects of the SDAS system, namely, the information-theoretic framework, the optimal distribution of channel input, and the optimal waveform design for Gaussian signaling. First, we establish the information-theoretic framework and develop a modified source-channel separation theorem (MSST) tailored for the SDAS systems. The proposed MSST elucidates the relationship between achievable distortion, coding rate, and communication channel capacity in cases where the distortion metric is separable for sensing and communication (S\&C) processes. Second, we present an optimal channel input design for dual-functional signaling, which aims to minimize SDAS distortion under the constraints of the MSST and resource budget. We then conceive a two-step Blahut-Arimoto (BA)-based optimal search algorithm to numerically solve the functional optimization problem. Third, to provide practical design insights, we further propose an optimal waveform design for Gaussian signaling in multi-input multi-output (MIMO) SDAS systems. The associated covariance matrix optimization problem is addressed using a successive convex approximation (SCA)-based waveform design algorithm. Finally, we provide numerical simulation results to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms, which characterize the unique performance tradeoff between S&C processes.

Yucheng Sheng, Kai Huang, Le Liang et al.

In this letter, we use large language models (LLMs) to develop a high-performing and robust beam prediction method. We formulate the millimeter wave (mmWave) beam prediction problem as a time series forecasting task, where the historical observations are aggregated through cross-variable attention and then transformed into text-based representations using a trainable tokenizer. By leveraging the prompt-as-prefix (PaP) technique for contextual enrichment, our method harnesses the power of LLMs to predict future optimal beams. Simulation results demonstrate that our LLM-based approach outperforms traditional learning-based models in prediction accuracy as well as robustness, highlighting the significant potential of LLMs in enhancing wireless communication systems.

Yucheng Sheng, Le Liang, Hao Ye et al.

Cooperative perception, offering a wider field of view than standalone perception, is becoming increasingly crucial in autonomous driving. This perception is enabled through vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) communication, allowing connected automated vehicles (CAVs) to exchange sensor data, such as light detection and ranging (LiDAR) point clouds, thereby enhancing the collective understanding of the environment. In this paper, we leverage an importance map to distill critical semantic information, introducing a cooperative perception semantic communication framework that employs intermediate fusion. To counter the challenges posed by time-varying multipath fading, our approach incorporates the use of orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) along with channel estimation and equalization strategies. Furthermore, recognizing the necessity for reliable transmission, especially in the low SNR scenarios, we introduce a novel semantic error detection method that is integrated with our semantic communication framework in the spirit of hybrid automatic repeated request (HARQ). Simulation results show that our model surpasses the traditional separate source-channel coding methods in perception performance, both with and without HARQ. Additionally, in terms of throughput, our proposed HARQ schemes demonstrate superior efficiency to the conventional coding approaches.

Shunfeng Chu, Jun Li, Jianxin Wang et al.

As an emerging technology, digital twin (DT) can provide real-time status and dynamic topology mapping for Internet of Things (IoT) devices. However, DT and its implementation within industrial IoT networks necessitates substantial, distributed data support, which often leads to ``data silos'' and raises privacy concerns. To address these issues, we develop a dynamic resource scheduling algorithm tailored for the asynchronous federated learning (FL)-based lightweight DT empowered IoT network. Specifically, our approach aims to minimize a multi-objective function that encompasses both energy consumption and latency by optimizing IoT device selection and transmit power control, subject to FL model performance constraints. We utilize the Lyapunov method to decouple the formulated problem into a series of one-slot optimization problems and develop a two-stage optimization algorithm to achieve the optimal transmission power control and IoT device scheduling strategies. In the first stage, we derive closed-form solutions for optimal transmit power on the IoT device side. In the second stage, since partial state information is unknown, e.g., the transmitting power and computational frequency of IoT device, the edge server employs a multi-armed bandit (MAB) framework to model the IoT device selection problem and utilizes an efficient online algorithm, namely the client utility-based upper confidence bound (CU-UCB), to address it. Numerical results validate our algorithm's superiority over benchmark schemes, and simulations demonstrate that our algorithm achieves faster training speeds on the Fashion-MNIST and CIFAR-10 datasets within the same training duration.

Zhiwei Shan, Xinping Yi, Le Liang et al.

Device-to-device (D2D) spectrum sharing in wireless communications is a challenging non-convex combinatorial optimization problem, involving entangled link scheduling and power control in a large-scale network. The state-of-the-art methods, either from a model-based or a data-driven perspective, exhibit certain limitations such as the critical need for channel state information (CSI) and/or a large number of (solved) instances (e.g., network layouts) as training samples. To advance this line of research, we propose a novel hybrid model/datadriven spectrum sharing mechanism with graph reinforcement learning for link scheduling (GRLinQ), injecting information theoretical insights into machine learning models, in such a way that link scheduling and power control can be solved in an intelligent yet explainable manner. Through an extensive set of experiments, GRLinQ demonstrates superior performance to the existing model-based and data-driven link scheduling and/or power control methods, with a relaxed requirement for CSI, a substantially reduced number of unsolved instances as training samples, a possible distributed deployment, reduced online/offline computational complexity, and more remarkably excellent scalability and generalizability over different network scenarios and system configurations.

Xiaolu Wang, Zijian Li, Shi Jin et al.

Federated learning (FL) is an emerging distributed training paradigm that aims to learn a common global model without exchanging or transferring the data that are stored locally at different clients. The Federated Averaging (FedAvg)-based algorithms have gained substantial popularity in FL to reduce the communication overhead, where each client conducts multiple localized iterations before communicating with a central server. In this paper, we focus on FL where the clients have diverse computation and/or communication capabilities. Under this circumstance, FedAvg can be less efficient since it requires all clients that participate in the global aggregation in a round to initiate iterations from the latest global model, and thus the synchronization among fast clients and straggler clients can severely slow down the overall training process. To address this issue, we propose an efficient asynchronous federated learning (AFL) framework called Delayed Federated Averaging (DeFedAvg). In DeFedAvg, the clients are allowed to perform local training with different stale global models at their own paces. Theoretical analyses demonstrate that DeFedAvg achieves asymptotic convergence rates that are on par with the results of FedAvg for solving nonconvex problems. More importantly, DeFedAvg is the first AFL algorithm that provably achieves the desirable linear speedup property, which indicates its high scalability. Additionally, we carry out extensive numerical experiments using real datasets to validate the efficiency and scalability of our approach when training deep neural networks.

Yucheng Sheng, Jiacheng Wang, Xingyu Zhou et al.

With the growing complexity and dynamics of the mobile communication networks, accurately predicting key system parameters, such as channel state information (CSI), user location, and network traffic, has become essential for a wide range of physical (PHY)-layer and medium access control (MAC)-layer tasks. Although traditional deep learning (DL)-based methods have been widely applied to such prediction tasks, they often struggle to generalize across different scenarios and tasks. In response, we propose a unified foundation model for multi-task prediction in wireless networks that supports diverse prediction intervals. The proposed model enforces univariate decomposition to unify heterogeneous tasks, encodes granularity for interval awareness, and uses a causal Transformer backbone for accurate predictions. Additionally, we introduce a patch masking strategy during training to support arbitrary input lengths. After trained on large-scale datasets, the proposed foundation model demonstrates strong generalization to unseen scenarios and achieves zero-shot performance on new tasks that surpass traditional full-shot baselines.

Hao Fang, Kai Huang, Hao Ye et al.

The pursuit of rate maximization in wireless communication frequently encounters substantial challenges associated with user fairness. This paper addresses these challenges by exploring a novel power allocation approach for delay optimization, utilizing graph neural networks (GNNs)-based reinforcement learning (RL) in device-to-device (D2D) communication. The proposed approach incorporates not only channel state information but also factors such as packet delay, the number of backlogged packets, and the number of transmitted packets into the components of the state information. We adopt a centralized RL method, where a central controller collects and processes the state information. The central controller functions as an agent trained using the proximal policy optimization (PPO) algorithm. To better utilize topology information in the communication network and enhance the generalization of the proposed method, we embed GNN layers into both the actor and critic networks of the PPO algorithm. This integration allows for efficient parameter updates of GNNs and enables the state information to be parameterized as a low-dimensional embedding, which is leveraged by the agent to optimize power allocation strategies. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method effectively reduces average delay while ensuring user fairness, outperforms baseline methods, and exhibits scalability and generalization capability.

Yandi Liu, Guowei Liu, Le Liang et al.

Stand-alone perception systems in autonomous driving suffer from limited sensing ranges and occlusions at extended distances, potentially resulting in catastrophic outcomes. To address this issue, collaborative perception is envisioned to improve perceptual accuracy by using vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communication to enable collaboration among connected and autonomous vehicles and roadside units. However, due to limited communication resources, it is impractical for all units to transmit sensing data such as point clouds or high-definition video. As a result, it is essential to optimize the scheduling of communication links to ensure efficient spectrum utilization for the exchange of perceptual data. In this work, we propose a deep reinforcement learning-based V2X user scheduling algorithm for collaborative perception. Given the challenges in acquiring perceptual labels, we reformulate the conventional label-dependent objective into a label-free goal, based on characteristics of 3D object detection. Incorporating both channel state information (CSI) and semantic information, we develop a double deep Q-Network (DDQN)-based user scheduling framework for collaborative perception, named SchedCP. Simulation results verify the effectiveness and robustness of SchedCP compared with traditional V2X scheduling methods. Finally, we present a case study to illustrate how our proposed algorithm adaptively modifies the scheduling decisions by taking both instantaneous CSI and perceptual semantics into account.

Jiaming Yu, Le Liang, Chongtao Guo et al.

This paper investigates the use of multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) to address distributed channel access in wireless local area networks. In particular, we consider the challenging yet more practical case where the agents heterogeneously adopt value-based or policy-based reinforcement learning algorithms to train the model. We propose a heterogeneous MARL training framework, named QPMIX, which adopts a centralized training with distributed execution paradigm to enable heterogeneous agents to collaborate. Moreover, we theoretically prove the convergence of the proposed heterogeneous MARL method when using the linear value function approximation. Our method maximizes the network throughput and ensures fairness among stations, therefore, enhancing the overall network performance. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed QPMIX algorithm improves throughput, mean delay, delay jitter, and collision rates compared with conventional carrier-sense multiple access with collision avoidance (CSMA/CA) mechanism in the saturated traffic scenario. Furthermore, the QPMIX algorithm is robust in unsaturated and delay-sensitive traffic scenarios. It coexists well with the conventional CSMA/CA mechanism and promotes cooperation among heterogeneous agents.

Yifan Fan, Le Liang, Peng Liu et al.

Multi-access point coordination (MAPC) is a key technology for enhancing throughput in next-generation Wi-Fi within dense overlapping basic service sets. However, existing MAPC protocols rely on static, protocol-defined rules, which limits their ability to adapt to dynamic network conditions such as varying interference levels and topologies. To address this limitation, we propose a novel Agentic AI Wi-Fi framework where each access point, modeled as an autonomous large language model agent, collaboratively reasons about the network state and negotiates adaptive coordination strategies in real time. This dynamic collaboration is achieved through a cognitive workflow that enables the agents to engage in natural language dialogue, leveraging integrated memory, reflection, and tool use to ground their decisions in past experience and environmental feedback. Comprehensive simulation results demonstrate that our agentic framework successfully learns to adapt to diverse and dynamic network environments, significantly outperforming the state-of-the-art spatial reuse baseline and validating its potential as a robust and intelligent solution for future wireless networks.

Jinshuo Zhang, Yafei Wang, Xinping Yi et al.

Although symbol-level precoding (SLP) based on constructive interference (CI) exploitation offers performance gains, its high complexity remains a bottleneck. This paper addresses this challenge with an end-to-end deep learning (DL) framework with low inference complexity that leverages the structure of the optimal SLP solution in the closed-form and its inherent tensor equivariance (TE), where TE denotes that a permutation of the input induces the corresponding permutation of the output. Building upon the computationally efficient model-based formulations, as well as their known closed-form solutions, we analyze their relationship with linear precoding (LP) and investigate the corresponding optimality condition. We then construct a mapping from the problem formulation to the solution and prove its TE, based on which the designed networks reveal a specific parameter-sharing pattern that delivers low computational complexity and strong generalization. Leveraging these, we propose the backbone of the framework with an attention-based TE module, achieving linear computational complexity. Furthermore, we demonstrate that such a framework is also applicable to imperfect CSI scenarios, where we design a TE-based network to map the CSI, statistics, and symbols to auxiliary variables. Simulation results show that the proposed framework captures substantial performance gains of optimal SLP, while achieving an approximately 80-times speedup over conventional methods and maintaining strong generalization across user numbers and symbol block lengths.

Yajiao Dai, Jun Li, Zhen Mei et al.

Intelligent fault diagnosis (IFD) plays a crucial role in ensuring the safe operation of industrial machinery and improving production efficiency. However, traditional supervised deep learning methods require a large amount of training data and labels, which are often located in different clients. Additionally, the cost of data labeling is high, making labels difficult to acquire. Meanwhile, differences in data distribution among clients may also hinder the model's performance. To tackle these challenges, this paper proposes a semi-supervised federated learning framework, SSFL-DCSL, which integrates dual contrastive loss and soft labeling to address data and label scarcity for distributed clients with few labeled samples while safeguarding user privacy. It enables representation learning using unlabeled data on the client side and facilitates joint learning among clients through prototypes, thereby achieving mutual knowledge sharing and preventing local model divergence. Specifically, first, a sample weighting function based on the Laplace distribution is designed to alleviate bias caused by low confidence in pseudo labels during the semi-supervised training process. Second, a dual contrastive loss is introduced to mitigate model divergence caused by different data distributions, comprising local contrastive loss and global contrastive loss. Third, local prototypes are aggregated on the server with weighted averaging and updated with momentum to share knowledge among clients. To evaluate the proposed SSFL-DCSL framework, experiments are conducted on two publicly available datasets and a dataset collected on motors from the factory. In the most challenging task, where only 10\% of the data are labeled, the proposed SSFL-DCSL can improve accuracy by 1.15% to 7.85% over state-of-the-art methods.

Yu Ma, Xingyu Zhou, Xiao Li et al.

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) are key enablers for 6G wireless systems. This paper studies downlink transmission in an RIS-assisted MISO-OFDMA system, addressing resource allocation challenges. A two-stage unsupervised learning-based framework is proposed to jointly design RIS phase shifts, BS beamforming, and resource block (RB) allocation. The framework includes BeamNet, which predicts RIS phase shifts from CSI, and AllocationNet, which allocates RBs using equivalent CSI derived from BeamNet outputs. Active beamforming is implemented via maximum ratio transmission and water-filling. To handle discrete constraints while ensuring differentiability, quantization and the Gumbel-softmax trick are adopted. A customized loss and phased training enhance performance under QoS constraints. Simulations show the method achieves 99.93% of the sum rate of the SCA baseline with only 0.036% of its runtime, and it remains robust across varying channel and user conditions.

Yu Ma, Xiao Li, Chongtao Guo et al.

This paper investigates a joint beamforming and resource allocation problem in downlink reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems to minimize the average delay, where data packets for each user arrive at the base station (BS) stochastically. The sequential optimization problem is inherently a Markov decision process (MDP), thus falling within the remit of reinforcement learning. To effectively handle the mixed action space and reduce the state space dimensionality, a hybrid deep reinforcement learning (DRL) approach is proposed. Specifically, proximal policy optimization (PPO)-Theta is employed to optimize the RIS phase shift design, while PPO-N is responsible for subcarrier allocation decisions. The active beamforming at the BS is then derived from the jointly optimized RIS phase shifts and subcarrier allocation decisions. To further mitigate the curse of dimensionality associated with subcarrier allocation, a multi-agent strategy is introduced to optimize the subcarrier allocation indicators more efficiently. Moreover, to achieve more adaptive resource allocation and accurately capture the network dynamics, key factors closely related to average delay, such as the number of backlogged packets in buffers and current packet arrivals, are incorporated into the state space. Furthermore, a transfer learning framework is introduced to enhance the training efficiency and accelerate convergence. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm significantly reduces the average delay, enhances resource allocation efficiency, and achieves superior system robustness and fairness compared to baseline methods.

Jiacheng Wang, Le Liang, Hao Ye et al.

Judicious resource allocation can effectively enhance federated learning (FL) training performance in wireless networks by addressing both system and statistical heterogeneity. However, existing strategies typically rely on block fading assumptions, which overlooks rapid channel fluctuations within each round of FL gradient uploading, leading to a degradation in FL training performance. Therefore, this paper proposes a small-scale-fading-aware resource allocation strategy using a multi-agent reinforcement learning (MARL) framework. Specifically, we establish a one-step convergence bound of the FL algorithm and formulate the resource allocation problem as a decentralized partially observable Markov decision process (Dec-POMDP), which is subsequently solved using the QMIX algorithm. In our framework, each client serves as an agent that dynamically determines spectrum and power allocations within each coherence time slot, based on local observations and a reward derived from the convergence analysis. The MARL setting reduces the dimensionality of the action space and facilitates decentralized decision-making, enhancing the scalability and practicality of the solution. Experimental results demonstrate that our QMIX-based resource allocation strategy significantly outperforms baseline methods across various degrees of statistical heterogeneity. Additionally, ablation studies validate the critical importance of incorporating small-scale fading dynamics, highlighting its role in optimizing FL performance.

Yuchang Sun, Zehong lin, Yuyi Mao et al.

Federated learning (FL) is a popular privacy-preserving distributed training scheme, where multiple devices collaborate to train machine learning models by uploading local model updates. To improve communication efficiency, over-the-air computation (AirComp) has been applied to FL, which leverages analog modulation to harness the superposition property of radio waves such that numerous devices can upload their model updates concurrently for aggregation. However, the uplink channel noise incurs considerable model aggregation distortion, which is critically determined by the device scheduling and compromises the learned model performance. In this paper, we propose a probabilistic device scheduling framework for over-the-air FL, named PO-FL, to mitigate the negative impact of channel noise, where each device is scheduled according to a certain probability and its model update is reweighted using this probability in aggregation. We prove the unbiasedness of this aggregation scheme and demonstrate the convergence of PO-FL on both convex and non-convex loss functions. Our convergence bounds unveil that the device scheduling affects the learning performance through the communication distortion and global update variance. Based on the convergence analysis, we further develop a channel and gradient-importance aware algorithm to optimize the device scheduling probabilities in PO-FL. Extensive simulation results show that the proposed PO-FL framework with channel and gradient-importance awareness achieves faster convergence and produces better models than baseline methods.

Peng Wei, Kun Guo, Ye Li et al.

Mobile edge computing (MEC) is considered a novel paradigm for computation-intensive and delay-sensitive tasks in fifth generation (5G) networks and beyond. However, its uncertainty, referred to as dynamic and randomness, from the mobile device, wireless channel, and edge network sides, results in high-dimensional, nonconvex, nonlinear, and NP-hard optimization problems. Thanks to the evolved reinforcement learning (RL), upon iteratively interacting with the dynamic and random environment, its trained agent can intelligently obtain the optimal policy in MEC. Furthermore, its evolved versions, such as deep RL (DRL), can achieve higher convergence speed efficiency and learning accuracy based on the parametric approximation for the large-scale state-action space. This paper provides a comprehensive research review on RL-enabled MEC and offers insight for development in this area. More importantly, associated with free mobility, dynamic channels, and distributed services, the MEC challenges that can be solved by different kinds of RL algorithms are identified, followed by how they can be solved by RL solutions in diverse mobile applications. Finally, the open challenges are discussed to provide helpful guidance for future research in RL training and learning MEC.

Kang Wei, Jun Li, Chuan Ma et al.

In federated learning (FL), model training is distributed over clients and local models are aggregated by a central server. The performance of uploaded models in such situations can vary widely due to imbalanced data distributions, potential demands on privacy protections, and quality of transmissions. In this paper, we aim to minimize FL training delay over wireless channels, constrained by overall training performance as well as each client's differential privacy (DP) requirement. We solve this problem in the framework of multi-agent multi-armed bandit (MAMAB) to deal with the situation where there are multiple clients confornting different unknown transmission environments, e.g., channel fading and interferences. Specifically, we first transform the long-term constraints on both training performance and each client's DP into a virtual queue based on the Lyapunov drift technique. Then, we convert the MAMAB to a max-min bipartite matching problem at each communication round, by estimating rewards with the upper confidence bound (UCB) approach. More importantly, we propose two efficient solutions to this matching problem, i.e., modified Hungarian algorithm and greedy matching with a better alternative (GMBA), in which the first one can achieve the optimal solution with a high complexity while the second one approaches a better trade-off by enabling a verified low-complexity with little performance loss. In addition, we develop an upper bound on the expected regret of this MAMAB based FL framework, which shows a linear growth over the logarithm of communication rounds, justifying its theoretical feasibility. Extensive experimental results are conducted to validate the effectiveness of our proposed algorithms, and the impacts of various parameters on the FL performance over wireless edge networks are also discussed.

Muhan Chen, Jiajia Guo, Chao-Kai Wen et al.

Massive multiple-input multiple-output can obtain more performance gain by exploiting the downlink channel state information (CSI) at the base station (BS). Therefore, studying CSI feedback with limited communication resources in frequency-division duplexing systems is of great importance. Recently, deep learning (DL)-based CSI feedback has shown considerable potential. However, the existing DL-based explicit feedback schemes are difficult to deploy because current fifth-generation mobile communication protocols and systems are designed based on an implicit feedback mechanism. In this paper, we propose a DL-based implicit feedback architecture to inherit the low-overhead characteristic, which uses neural networks (NNs) to replace the precoding matrix indicator (PMI) encoding and decoding modules. By using environment information, the NNs can achieve a more refined mapping between the precoding matrix and the PMI compared with codebooks. The correlation between subbands is also used to further improve the feedback performance. Simulation results show that, for a single resource block (RB), the proposed architecture can save 25.0% and 40.0% of overhead compared with Type I codebook under two antenna configurations, respectively. For a wideband system with 52 RBs, overhead can be saved by 30.7% and 48.0% compared with Type II codebook when ignoring and considering extracting subband correlation, respectively.

Jiajia Guo, Chao-Kai Wen, Shi Jin

In frequency-division duplexing systems, the downlink channel state information (CSI) acquisition scheme leads to high training and feedback overheads. In this paper, we propose an uplink-aided downlink channel acquisition framework using deep learning to reduce these overheads. Unlike most existing works that focus only on channel estimation or feedback modules, to the best of our knowledge, this is the first study that considers the entire downlink CSI acquisition process, including downlink pilot design, channel estimation, and feedback. First, we propose an adaptive pilot design module by exploiting the correlation in magnitude among bidirectional channels in the angular domain to improve channel estimation. Next, to avoid the bit allocation problem during the feedback module, we concatenate the complex channel and embed the uplink channel magnitude to the channel reconstruction at the base station. Lastly, we combine the above two modules and compare two popular downlink channel acquisition frameworks. The former framework estimates and feeds back the channel at the user equipment subsequently. The user equipment in the latter one directly feeds back the received pilot signals to the base station. Our results reveal that, with the help of uplink, directly feeding back the pilot signals can save approximately 20% of feedback bits, which provides a guideline for future research.

Shengkai Zhang, Wei Wang, Sheyang Tang et al.

Recent years have witnessed the rapid proliferation of backscatter technologies that realize the ubiquitous and long-term connectivity to empower smart cities and smart homes. Localizing such backscatter tags is crucial for IoT-based smart applications. However, current backscatter localization systems require prior knowledge of the site, either a map or landmarks with known positions, which is laborious for deployment. To empower universal localization service, this paper presents Rover, an indoor localization system that localizes multiple backscatter tags without any start-up cost using a robot equipped with inertial sensors. Rover runs in a joint optimization framework, fusing measurements from backscattered WiFi signals and inertial sensors to simultaneously estimate the locations of both the robot and the connected tags. Our design addresses practical issues including interference among multiple tags, real-time processing, as well as the data marginalization problem in dealing with degenerated motions. We prototype Rover using off-the-shelf WiFi chips and customized backscatter tags. Our experiments show that Rover achieves localization accuracies of 39.3 cm for the robot and 74.6 cm for the tags.

Yong Zeng, Xiaoli Xu, Shi Jin et al.

Cellular-connected unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) is a promising technology to unlock the full potential of UAVs in the future. However, how to achieve ubiquitous three-dimensional (3D) communication coverage for the UAVs in the sky is a new challenge. In this paper, we tackle this challenge by a new coverage-aware navigation approach, which exploits the UAV's controllable mobility to design its navigation/trajectory to avoid the cellular BSs' coverage holes while accomplishing their missions. We formulate an UAV trajectory optimization problem to minimize the weighted sum of its mission completion time and expected communication outage duration, and propose a new solution approach based on the technique of deep reinforcement learning (DRL). To further improve the performance, we propose a new framework called simultaneous navigation and radio mapping (SNARM), where the UAV's signal measurement is used not only for training the deep Q network (DQN) directly, but also to create a radio map that is able to predict the outage probabilities at all locations in the area of interest. This thus enables the generation of simulated UAV trajectories and predicting their expected returns, which are then used to further train the DQN via Dyna technique, thus greatly improving the learning efficiency.

Kang Wei, Jun Li, Ming Ding et al.

In this paper, to effectively prevent information leakage, we propose a novel framework based on the concept of differential privacy (DP), in which artificial noises are added to the parameters at the clients side before aggregating, namely, noising before model aggregation FL (NbAFL). First, we prove that the NbAFL can satisfy DP under distinct protection levels by properly adapting different variances of artificial noises. Then we develop a theoretical convergence bound of the loss function of the trained FL model in the NbAFL. Specifically, the theoretical bound reveals the following three key properties: 1) There is a tradeoff between the convergence performance and privacy protection levels, i.e., a better convergence performance leads to a lower protection level; 2) Given a fixed privacy protection level, increasing the number $N$ of overall clients participating in FL can improve the convergence performance; 3) There is an optimal number of maximum aggregation times (communication rounds) in terms of convergence performance for a given protection level. Furthermore, we propose a $K$-random scheduling strategy, where $K$ ($1<K<N$) clients are randomly selected from the $N$ overall clients to participate in each aggregation. We also develop the corresponding convergence bound of the loss function in this case and the $K$-random scheduling strategy can also retain the above three properties. Moreover, we find that there is an optimal $K$ that achieves the best convergence performance at a fixed privacy level. Evaluations demonstrate that our theoretical results are consistent with simulations, thereby facilitating the designs on various privacy-preserving FL algorithms with different tradeoff requirements on convergence performance and privacy levels.

Shengkai Zhang, Wei Wang, Sheyang Tang et al.

Recent years have witnessed the rapid proliferation of low-power backscatter technologies that realize the ubiquitous and long-term connectivity to empower smart cities and smart homes. Localizing such low-power backscatter tags is crucial for IoT-based smart services. However, current backscatter localization systems require prior knowledge of the site, either a map or landmarks with known positions, increasing the deployment cost. To empower universal localization service, this paper presents Rover, an indoor localization system that simultaneously localizes multiple backscatter tags with zero start-up cost using a robot equipped with inertial sensors. Rover runs in a joint optimization framework, fusing WiFi-based positioning measurements with inertial measurements to simultaneously estimate the locations of both the robot and the connected tags. Our design addresses practical issues such as the interference among multiple tags and the real-time processing for solving the SLAM problem. We prototype Rover using off-the-shelf WiFi chips and customized backscatter tags. Our experiments show that Rover achieves localization accuracies of 39.3 cm for the robot and 74.6 cm for the tags.

Qisheng Wang, Keming Feng, Xiao Li et al.

In this letter, we investigate the hybrid beamforming for millimeter wave massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system based on deep reinforcement learning (DRL). Imperfect channel state information (CSI) is assumed to be available at the base station (BS). To achieve high spectral efficiency with low time consumption, we propose a novel DRL-based method called PrecoderNet to design the digital precoder and analog combiner. The DRL agent takes the digital beamformer and analog combiner of the previous learning iteration as state, and these matrices of current learning iteration as action. Simulation results demonstrate that the PrecoderNet performs well in spectral efficiency, bit error rate (BER), as well as time consumption, and is robust to the CSI imperfection.

Hengtao He, Chao-Kai Wen, Shi Jin et al.

In this paper, we investigate the model-driven deep learning (DL) for MIMO detection. In particular, the MIMO detector is specially designed by unfolding an iterative algorithm and adding some trainable parameters. Since the number of trainable parameters is much fewer than the data-driven DL based signal detector, the model-driven DL based MIMO detector can be rapidly trained with a much smaller data set. The proposed MIMO detector can be extended to soft-input soft-output detection easily. Furthermore, we investigate joint MIMO channel estimation and signal detection (JCESD), where the detector takes channel estimation error and channel statistics into consideration while channel estimation is refined by detected data and considers the detection error. Based on numerical results, the model-driven DL based MIMO detector significantly improves the performance of corresponding traditional iterative detector, outperforms other DL-based MIMO detectors and exhibits superior robustness to various mismatches.

Jing Zhang, Hengtao He, Chao-Kai Wen et al.

Channel estimation and signal detection are very challenging for an orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) system without cyclic prefix (CP). In this article, deep learning based on orthogonal approximate message passing (DL-OAMP) is used to address these problems. The DL-OAMP receiver includes a channel estimation neural network (CE-Net) and a signal detection neural network based on OAMP, called OAMP-Net. The CE-Net is initialized by the least square channel estimation algorithm and refined by minimum mean-squared error (MMSE) neural network. The OAMP-Net is established by unfolding the iterative OAMP algorithm and adding some trainable parameters to improve the detection performance. The DL-OAMP receiver is with low complexity and can estimate time-varying channels with only a single training. Simulation results demonstrate that the bit-error rate (BER) of the proposed scheme is lower than those of competitive algorithms for high-order modulation.

Hengtao He, Shi Jin, Chao-Kai Wen et al.

Intelligent communication is gradually considered as the mainstream direction in future wireless communications. As a major branch of machine learning, deep learning (DL) has been applied in physical layer communications and has demonstrated an impressive performance improvement in recent years. However, most of the existing works related to DL focus on data-driven approaches, which consider the communication system as a black box and train it by using a huge volume of data. Training a network requires sufficient computing resources and extensive time, both of which are rarely found in communication devices. By contrast, model-driven DL approaches combine communication domain knowledge with DL to reduce the demand for computing resources and training time. This article reviews the recent advancements in the application of model-driven DL approaches in physical layer communications, including transmission scheme, receiver design, and channel information recovery. Several open issues for further research are also highlighted after presenting the comprehensive survey.