Channel reconstruction and generalization capability are of equal importance for developing channel estimation schemes within deep learning (DL) framework. In this paper, we exploit a novel DL-based scheme for efficient OFDM channel estimation where the neural networks for channel reconstruction and generalization are respectively designed. For the former, we propose a dual-attention-aided super-resolution neural network (DA-SRNN) to map the channels at pilot positions to the whole time-frequency channels. Specifically, the channel-spatial attention mechanism is first introduced to sequentially infer attention maps along two separate dimensions corresponding to two types of underlying channel correlations, and then the lightweight SR module is developed for efficient channel reconstruction. For the latter, we introduce continual learning (CL)-aided training strategies to make the neural network adapt to different channel distributions. Specifically, the elastic weight consolidation (EWC) is introduced as the regularization term in regard to loss function of channel reconstruction, which can constrain the direction and space of updating the important weights of neural networks among different channel distributions. Meanwhile, the corresponding training process is provided in detail. By evaluating under 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) channel models, numerical results verify the superiority of the proposed channel estimation scheme with significantly improved channel reconstruction and generalization performance over counterparts.

This paper focuses on an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted lossy communication system with correlated Rayleigh fading. We analyze the correlated channel model and derive the outage probability of the system. Then, we design a deep reinforce learning (DRL) method to optimize the phase shift of IRS, in order to maximize the received signal power. Moreover, this paper presents results of the simulations conducted to evaluate the performance of the DRL-based method. The simulation results indicate that the outage probability of the considered system increases significantly with more correlated channel coefficients. Moreover, the performance gap between DRL and theoretical limit increases with higher transmit power and/or larger distortion requirement.

Over-the-Air Computation is a beyond-5G communication strategy that has recently been shown to be useful for the decentralized training of machine learning models due to its efficiency. In this paper, we propose an Over-the-Air federated learning algorithm that aims to provide fairness and robustness through minmax optimization. By using the epigraph form of the problem at hand, we show that the proposed algorithm converges to the optimal solution of the minmax problem. Moreover, the proposed approach does not require reconstructing channel coefficients by complex encoding-decoding schemes as opposed to state-of-the-art approaches. This improves both efficiency and privacy.

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Texas A&M University Abstract Pre-trained transformers can perform in-context learning, where they adapt to a new task using only a small number of prompts without any explicit model optimization. Inspired by this attribute, we propose a novel approach, called in-context estimation, for the canonical communication problem of estimating transmitted symbols from received symbols. A communication channel is essentially a noisy function that maps transmitted symbols to received symbols, and this function can be represented by an unknown parameter whose statistics depend on an (also unknown) latent context. Conventional approaches typically do not fully exploit hierarchical model with the latent context. Instead, they often use mismatched priors to form a linear minimum mean-squared error estimate of the channel parameter, which is then used to estimate successive, unknown transmitted symbols. We make the basic connection that transformers show excellent contextual sequence completion with a few prompts, and so they should be able to implicitly determine the latent context from pilot symbols to perform end-to-end in-context estimation of transmitted symbols. Furthermore, the transformer should use information efficiently, i.e., it should utilize any pilots received to attain the best possible symbol estimates. Through extensive simulations, we show that in-context estimation not only significantly outperforms standard approaches, but also achieves the same performance as an estimator with perfect knowledge of the latent context within a few context examples. Thus, we make a strong case that transformers are efficient in-context estimators in the communication setting. Recent advances in our understanding of transformers have brought to the fore the notion that they are capable of in-context learning. The transformer itself is pre-trained, either implicitly or explicitly over a variety of contexts and so acquires the ability to generate in-distribution outputs conditioned on a specific context.

Deep learning has been extensively used in wireless communication problems, including channel estimation. Although several data-driven approaches exist, a fair and realistic comparison between them is difficult due to inconsistencies in the experimental conditions and the lack of a standardized experimental design. In addition, the performance of data-driven approaches is often compared based on empirical analysis. The lack of reproducibility and availability of standardized evaluation tools (e.g., datasets, codebases) hinder the development and progress of data-driven methods for channel estimation and wireless communication in general. In this work, we introduce an initiative to build benchmarks that unify several data-driven OFDM channel estimation approaches. Specifically, we present CeBed (a testbed for channel estimation) including different datasets covering various systems models and propagation conditions along with the implementation of ten deep and traditional baselines. This benchmark considers different practical aspects such as the robustness of the data-driven models, the number and the arrangement of pilots, and the number of receive antennas. This work offers a comprehensive and unified framework to help researchers evaluate and design data-driven channel estimation algorithms.

In a multi-agent system, agents can cooperatively learn a model from data by exchanging their estimated model parameters, without the need to exchange the locally available data used by the agents. This strategy, often called federated learning, is mainly employed for two reasons: (i) improving resource-efficiency by avoiding to share potentially large datasets and (ii) guaranteeing privacy of local agents' data. Efficiency can be further increased by adopting a beyond-5G communication strategy that goes under the name of Over-the-Air Computation. This strategy exploits the interference property of the wireless channel. Standard communication schemes prevent interference by enabling transmissions of signals from different agents at distinct time or frequency slots, which is not required with Over-the-Air Computation, thus saving resources. In this case, the received signal is a weighted sum of transmitted signals, with unknown weights (fading channel coefficients). State of the art papers in the field aim at reconstructing those unknown coefficients. In contrast, the approach presented here does not require reconstructing channel coefficients by complex encoding-decoding schemes. This improves both efficiency and privacy.

In recent years, deep learning has been widely applied in communications and achieved remarkable performance improvement. Most of the existing works are based on data-driven deep learning, which requires a significant amount of training data for the communication model to adapt to new environments and results in huge computing resources for collecting data and retraining the model. In this paper, we will significantly reduce the required amount of training data for new environments by leveraging the learning experience from the known environments. Therefore, we introduce few-shot learning to enable the communication model to generalize to new environments, which is realized by an attention-based method. With the attention network embedded into the deep learning-based communication model, environments with different power delay profiles can be learnt together in the training process, which is called the learning experience. By exploiting the learning experience, the communication model only requires few pilot blocks to perform well in the new environment. Through an example of deep-learning-based channel estimation, we demonstrate that this novel design method achieves better performance than the existing data-driven approach designed for few-shot learning.

Direct-to-satellite (DtS) communication has gained importance recently to support globally connected Internet of things (IoT) networks. However, relatively long distances of densely deployed satellite networks around the Earth cause a high path loss. In addition, since high complexity operations such as beamforming, tracking and equalization have to be performed in IoT devices partially, both the hardware complexity and the need for high-capacity batteries of IoT devices increase. The reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) have the potential to increase the energy-efficiency and to perform complex signal processing over the transmission environment instead of IoT devices. But, RISs need the information of the cascaded channel in order to change the phase of the incident signal. This study evaluates the pilot signal as a graph and incorporates this information into the graph attention networks (GATs) to track the phase relation through pilot signaling. The proposed GAT-based channel estimation method examines the performance of the DtS IoT networks for different RIS configurations to solve the challenging channel estimation problem. It is shown that the proposed GAT both demonstrates a higher performance with increased robustness under changing conditions and has lower computational complexity compared to conventional deep learning methods. Moreover, bit error rate performance is investigated for RIS designs with discrete and non-uniform phase shifts under channel estimation based on the proposed method. One of the findings in this study is that the channel models of the operating environment and the performance of the channel estimation method must be considered during RIS design to exploit performance improvement as far as possible.

Indoor multi-robot communications face two key challenges: one is the severe signal strength degradation caused by blockages (e.g., walls) and the other is the dynamic environment caused by robot mobility. To address these issues, we consider the reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) to overcome the signal blockage and assist the trajectory design among multiple robots. Meanwhile, the non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) is adopted to cope with the scarcity of spectrum and enhance the connectivity of robots. Considering the limited battery capacity of robots, we aim to maximize the energy efficiency by jointly optimizing the transmit power of the access point (AP), the phase shifts of the RIS, and the trajectory of robots. A novel federated deep reinforcement learning (F-DRL) approach is developed to solve this challenging problem with one dynamic long-term objective. Through each robot planning its path and downlink power, the AP only needs to determine the phase shifts of the RIS, which can significantly save the computation overhead due to the reduced training dimension. Simulation results reveal the following findings: I) the proposed F-DRL can reduce at least 86% convergence time compared to the centralized DRL; II) the designed algorithm can adapt to the increasing number of robots; III) compared to traditional OMA-based benchmarks, NOMA-enhanced schemes can achieve higher energy efficiency.

We study over-the-air model aggregation in federated edge learning (FEEL) systems, where channel state information at the transmitters (CSIT) is assumed to be unavailable. We leverage the reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) technology to align the cascaded channel coefficients for CSIT-free model aggregation. We then develop a difference-of-convex algorithm for the resulting non-convex optimization. Numerical experiments on image classification show that the proposed method is able to achieve a similar learning accuracy as the state-of-the-art CSIT-based solution, demonstrating the efficiency of our approach in combating the lack of CSIT. With the explosive increase in the number of connected devices at mobile edge networks, machine learning (ML) over a vast volume of data at edge devices has attracted considerable research attention.