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This letter explores an implementation of a novel thin film 1-by-4 reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) designed for future communication and sensing scenarios. Utilizing cost-effective inkjet printing methods and additive manufacturing, our approach significantly simplifies the RIS construction process and reduces production costs. The RIS, fabricated on a flexible and lightweight polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrate, integrates antennas, switching circuitry, and a microcontroller unit (MCU), without a ground shield. This setup enables individual and simultaneous control of each RIS element, manipulating the captured carrier signal by reflecting and refracting its dominant harmonics. Beams of the harmonics can be steered to multiple desired directions at both front and back sides of the surface. Measurement results of the beam steering show that the RIS has the potential to enable RIS-aided communication and sensing applications., Comment: 5 pages, 4 figures, IEEE letter

Over the past two decades, the Internet-of-Things (IoT) has become a transformative concept, and as we approach 2030, a new paradigm known as the Internet of Senses (IoS) is emerging. Unlike conventional Virtual Reality (VR), IoS seeks to provide multi-sensory experiences, acknowledging that in our physical reality, our perception extends far beyond just sight and sound; it encompasses a range of senses. This article explores the existing technologies driving immersive multi-sensory media, delving into their capabilities and potential applications. This exploration includes a comparative analysis between conventional immersive media streaming and a proposed use case that leverages semantic communication empowered by generative Artificial Intelligence (AI). The focal point of this analysis is the substantial reduction in bandwidth consumption by 99.93% in the proposed scheme. Through this comparison, we aim to underscore the practical applications of generative AI for immersive media. Concurrently addressing major challenges in this field, such as temporal synchronization of multiple media, ensuring high throughput, minimizing the End-to-End (E2E) latency, and robustness to low bandwidth while outlining future trajectories.

Low-cost, resource-constrained, maintenance-free, and energy-harvesting (EH) Internet of Things (IoT) devices, referred to as zero-energy devices (ZEDs), are rapidly attracting attention from industry and academia due to their myriad of applications. To date, such devices remain primarily unsupported by modern IoT connectivity solutions due to their intrinsic fabrication, hardware, deployment, and operation limitations, while lacking clarity on their key technical enablers and prospects. Herein, we address this by discussing the main characteristics and enabling technologies of ZEDs within the next generation of mobile networks, specifically focusing on unconventional EH sources, multi-source EH, power management, energy storage solutions, manufacturing material and practices, backscattering, and low-complexity receivers. Moreover, we highlight the need for lightweight and energy-aware computing, communication, and scheduling protocols, while discussing potential approaches related to TinyML, duty cycling, and infrastructure enablers like radio frequency wireless power transfer and wake-up protocols. Challenging aspects and open research directions are identified and discussed in all the cases. Finally, we showcase an experimental ZED proof-of-concept related to ambient cellular backscattering., Comment: 8 pages, 4 Figures

The latest assessments of the emerging technologies for reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) have indicated the concept's significant potential for localization and sensing, either as individual or simultaneously realized tasks. However, in the vast majority of those studies, the RIS state (i.e., its position and rotation angles) is required to be known a priori. In this paper, we address the problem of the joint three-dimensional (3D) localization of a hybrid RIS (HRIS) and a user. The most cost- and power-efficient hybrid version of an RIS is equipped with a single reception radio-frequency chain and meta-atoms capable of simultaneous reconfigurable reflection and sensing. This dual functionality is controlled by adjustable power splitters embedded at each hybrid meta-atom. Focusing on a downlink scenario where a multi-antenna base station transmits multicarrier signals to a user via an HRIS, we propose a multistage approach to jointly estimate the metasurface's 3D position and 3D rotation matrix (i.e., 6D parameter estimation) as well as the user's 3D position. Our simulation results verify the validity of the proposed estimator via extensive comparisons of the root-mean-square error of the state estimations with the Cram\'{e}r-Rao lower bound (CRB), which is analytically derived. Furthermore, it is showcased that there exists an optimal hybrid reconfigurable intelligent surface (HRIS) power splitting ratio for the desired multi-parameter estimation problem. We also study the robustness of the proposed method in the presence of scattering points in the wireless propagation environment., Comment: 14 pages, 6 figures, IEEE Transactions Journal

Microwave quantum information networks require reliable transmission of single photon propagating modes over lossy channels. In this article we propose a microwave noise-less linear amplifier (NLA) suitable to circumvent the losses incurred by a flying photon undergoing an amplitude damping channel (ADC). The proposed model is constructed by engineering a simple one-dimensional four node cluster state. Contrary to conventional NLAs based on quantum scissors (QS), single photon amplification is realized without the need for photon number resolving detectors (PNRDs). Entanglement between nodes comprising the device's cluster is achieved by means of a controlled phase gate (CPHASE). Furthermore, photon measurements are implemented by quantum non demolition detectors (QNDs), which are currently available as a part of circuit quantum electrodynamics (cQED) toolbox. We analyze the performance of our device practically by considering detection inefficiency and dark count probability. We further examine the potential usage of our device in low power quantum sensing applications and remote secret key generation (SKG). Specifically, we demonstrate the device's ability to prepare loss-free resources offline, and its capacity to overcome the repeater-less bound of SKG. We compare the performance of our device against a QS-NLA for the aforementioned applications, and highlight explicitly the operating conditions under which our device can outperform a QS-NLA. The proposed device is also suitable for applications in the optical domain.

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are considered as an enabling technology for the upcoming sixth generation of wireless systems, exhibiting significant potential for radio localization and sensing. An RIS is usually treated as an anchor point with known position and orientation when deployed to offer user localization. However, it can also be attached to a user to enable its localization in a semi-passive manner. In this paper, we consider a static user equipped with an RIS and study the RIS localization problem (i.e., joint three-dimensional position and orientation estimation), when operating in a system comprising a single-antenna transmitter and multiple synchronized single-antenna receivers with known locations. We present a multi-stage estimator using time-of-arrival and spatial frequency measurements, and derive the Cram\'er-Rao lower bounds for the estimated parameters to validate the estimator's performance. Our simulation results demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed RIS state estimation approach under various system operation parameters.

This paper addresses the challenging problem of enabling reliable immersive teleoperation in scenarios where an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) is remotely controlled by an operator via a cellular network. Such scenarios can be quite critical particularly when the UAV lacks advanced equipment (e.g., Lidar-based auto stop) or when the network is subject to some performance constraints (e.g., delay). To tackle these challenges, we propose a novel architecture leveraging Digital Twin (DT) technology to create a virtual representation of the physical environment. This virtual environment accurately mirrors the physical world, accounting for 3D surroundings, weather constraints, and network limitations. To enhance teleoperation, the UAV in the virtual environment is equipped with advanced features that maybe absent in the real UAV. Furthermore, the proposed architecture introduces an intelligent logic that utilizes information from both virtual and physical environments to approve, deny, or correct actions initiated by the UAV operator. This anticipatory approach helps to mitigate potential risks. Through a series of field trials, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed architecture in significantly improving the reliability of UAV teleoperation., Comment: Accepted by IEEE Globecom 2023

In quantum illumination (QI) the non-classical correlations between continuous variable (CV) entangled modes of radiation are exploited to detect the presence of a target embedded in thermal noise. The extreme environment where QI outperforms its optimal classical counterpart suggests that applications in the microwave domain would benefit the most from this new sensing paradigm. However all the proposed QI receivers rely on ideal photon counters or detectors, which are not currently feasible in the microwave domain. Here we propose a new QI receiver that utilizes a CV controlled not gate (CNOT) in order to perform a joint measurement on a target return and its retained twin. Unlike other QI receivers, the entire detection process is carried out by homodyne measurements and square-law detectors. The receiver exploits two squeezed ancillary modes as a part of the gate's operation. These extra resources are prepared offline and their overall gain is controlled passively by a single beamsplitter parameter. We compare our model to other QI receivers and demonstrate its operation regime where it outperforms others and achieves optimal performance. Although the main focus of this study is microwave quantum sensing applications, our proposed device can be built as well in the optical domain, thus rendering it as a new addition to the quantum sensing toolbox in a wider sense.

The recent research in the emerging technology of reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) has identified its high potential for localization and sensing. However, to accurately localize a user placed in the area of influence of an RIS, the RIS location needs to be known a priori and its phase profile is required to be optimized for localization. In this paper, we study the problem of the joint localization of a hybrid RIS (HRIS) and a user, considering that the former is equipped with a single reception radio-frequency (RF) chain enabling simultaneous tunable reflections and sensing via power splitting. Focusing on the downlink of a multi-antenna base station, we present a multi-stage approach for the estimation of the HRIS position and orientation as well as the user position. Our simulation results, including comparisons with the Cram\'er-Rao lower bounds, demonstrate the efficiency of the proposed localization approach, while showcasing that there exists an optimal HRIS power splitting ratio for the desired multi-parameter estimation problem.

We address the localization of a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) for a single-input single-output multi-carrier system using bi-static sensing between a fixed transmitter and a fixed receiver. Due to the deployment of RISs with a large dimension, near-field (NF) scenarios are likely to occur, especially for indoor applications, and are the focus of this work. We first derive the Cramer-Rao bounds (CRBs) on the estimation error of the RIS position and orientation and the time of arrival (TOA) for the path transmitter-RIS-receiver. We propose a multi-stage low-complexity estimator for RIS localization purposes. In this proposed estimator, we first perform a line search to estimate the TOA. Then, we use the far-field approximation of the NF signal model to implicitly estimate the angle of arrival and the angle of departure at the RIS center. Finally, the RIS position and orientation estimate are refined via a quasi-Newton method. Simulation results reveal that the proposed estimator can attain the CRBs. We also investigate the effects of several influential factors on the accuracy of the proposed estimator like the RIS size, transmitted power, system bandwidth, and RIS position and orientation.

Radio localization is applied in high-frequency (e.g., mmWave and THz) systems to support communication and to provide location-based services without extra infrastructure. {For solving localization problems, a simplified, stationary, narrowband far-field channel model is widely used due to its compact formulation.} However, with increased array size in extra-large MIMO systems and increased bandwidth at upper mmWave bands, the effect of channel spatial non-stationarity (SNS), spherical wave model (SWM), and beam squint effect (BSE) cannot be ignored. In this case, localization performance will be affected when an inaccurate channel model deviating from the true model is adopted. In this work, we employ the MCRB (misspecified Cram\'er-Rao lower bound) to lower bound the localization error using a simplified mismatched model while the observed data is governed by a more complex true model. The simulation results show that among all the model impairments, the SNS has the least contribution, the SWM dominates when the distance is small compared to the array size, and the BSE has a more significant effect when the distance is much larger than the array size.

We study a backscatter communication protocol over a AWGN channel, where a transmitter illuminates a tag with a directional multi-antenna. The tag performs load modulation on the signal while hiding its physical presence from a warden. We show that, if the transmitter-to-tag channel is inaccessible to the warden, then $\Theta(n)$ reliable and covert bits can be transmitted over $n$ channel usages. This overcomes the square-root law for covert communication. This paper provides the first evidence for practical implementation of covert backscatter communication, with potential applications in IoT security., Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures

Ambient backscatter communication (AmBC) is becoming increasingly popular for enabling green communication amidst the continual development of the Internet-of-things paradigm. Efforts have been put into backscatter signal detection as the detection performance is limited by the low signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) of the signal at the receiver. The low SINR can be improved by adopting a multi-antenna receiver. In this paper, the optimum multi-antenna receiver that does not impose any constraints on the types of binary modulation performed by the backscatter device and the waveform used by the ambient source system is studied. The proposed receiver owns a simple structure formed by two beamformers. Bit error rate (BER) performances of the optimum receiver are derived under constant-amplitude ambient signal and Gaussian-distributed ambient signal. Moreover, to facilitate the implementation of the optimum receiver, a simplified receiver is proposed and practical approximations to required beamformers are provided. The derived optimum receiver avoids the complex direct path interference cancellation and coherent reception, but exploits the fact that backscatter signal changes the composite channel impinging at the receiver and the directivity of receiver antenna array. Comparative simulation results show that the performance of the optimum receiver achieves the same performance as the coherent receiver even though it realizes non-coherent reception. The studied receivers provide high flexibility for implementing simple and low-cost receivers in different AmBC systems.

Ambient Backscatter Communication (AmBC) is an emerging communication technology that can enable green Internet-of-Things deployments. The widespread acceptance of this paradigm is limited by low Signal-to-Interference-Plus-Noise Ratio (SINR) of the signal impinging on the receiver antenna due to the strong direct path interference and unknown ambient signal. The adverse impact of these two factors can be mitigated by using non-coherent multi-antenna receivers, which is known to require higher SINR to reach Bit-Error-Rate (BER) performance of coherent receivers. However, in literature, coherent receivers for AmBC systems are little-studied because of unknown ambient signal, unknown location of AmBC tags, and varying channel conditions. In this paper, a coherent multi-antenna receiver, which does not require a prior information of the ambient signal, for decoding Binary-Phase-shift-Keying (BPSK) modulated signal is presented. The performance of the proposed receiver is compared with the ideal coherent receiver that has a perfect phase information, and also with the performance of non-coherent receiver, which assumes distributions for ambient signal and phase offset caused by excess length of the backscatter path. Comparative simulation results show the designed receiver can achieve the same BER-performance of the ideal coherent receiver with 1-dB more SINR, which corresponds to 5-dB or more gain with respect to non-coherent reception of On-Off-Keying modulated signals. Variation of the detection performance with the tag location shows that the coverage area is in the close vicinity of the transmitter and a larger region around the receiver, which is consistent with the theoretical results.

The society as a whole, and many vertical sectors in particular, is becoming increasingly digitalized. Machine Type Communication (MTC), encompassing its massive and critical aspects, and ubiquitous wireless connectivity are among the main enablers of such digitization at large. The recently introduced 5G New Radio is natively designed to support both aspects of MTC to promote the digital transformation of the society. However, it is evident that some of the more demanding requirements cannot be fully supported by 5G networks. Alongside, further development of the society towards 2030 will give rise to new and more stringent requirements on wireless connectivity in general, and MTC in particular. Driven by the societal trends towards 2030, the next generation (6G) will be an agile and efficient convergent network serving a set of diverse service classes and a wide range of key performance indicators (KPI). This white paper explores the main drivers and requirements of an MTC-optimized 6G network, and discusses the following six key research questions: - Will the main KPIs of 5G continue to be the dominant KPIs in 6G; or will there emerge new key metrics? - How to deliver different E2E service mandates with different KPI requirements considering joint-optimization at the physical up to the application layer? - What are the key enablers towards designing ultra-low power receivers and highly efficient sleep modes? - How to tackle a disruptive rather than incremental joint design of a massively scalable waveform and medium access policy for global MTC connectivity? - How to support new service classes characterizing mission-critical and dependable MTC in 6G? - What are the potential enablers of long term, lightweight and flexible privacy and security schemes considering MTC device requirements?, Comment: White paper by http://www.6GFlagship.com

In bi-static Ambient Backscatter Communications (AmBC) systems, the direct path from the ambient source to the receiver can be several orders of magnitude stronger than the scattered path modulated by the AmBC device. Because of the large power difference between these two signals, the receiver needs to operate at a large dynamic range. In this paper, we propose a novel analog-digital hybrid null-steering beamformer which allows the backscatter receiver to detect and decode the weak AmBC-modulated signal buried in the strong direct path signals and the noise without requiring the instantaneous channel state information. The analog cancellation of the strong signal components allow the receiver automatic gain control to adjust to the level of the weak AmBC signals. This hence allows common analog-to-digital converters to be used for sampling the signal. After cancelling the strong components, the ambient source signal appears as zero mean fast fading from the AmBC system point of view. We use the direct path signal component to track the phase of the unknown ambient signal. In order to avoid channel estimation, we propose AmBC to use orthogonal channelization codes., Comment: 6 pages

In this paper, we propose a novel quantum backscatter communications (QBC) protocol, inspired by the quantum illumination (QI) concept. In the QBC paradigm, the transmitter generates entangled photon pair. The signal photon is transmitted and the idler photon is kept at the receiver. The tag antenna communicates by performing the pulse amplitude modulation (PAM), binary phase shift keying (BPSK) or quadratic phase shift keying (QPSK) on the signal impinging at the antenna. Using the sum-frequency-generation receiver, our QBC protocol achieves a 6 dB error exponent gain for PAM and BPSK, and 3 dB gain for QPSK over its classical counterpart. Finally, we discuss the QI-enhanced secure backscatter communication., Comment: 5 pages

Received signal strength based respiration rate monitoring is emerging as an alternative non-contact technology. These systems make use of the radio measurements of short-range commodity wireless devices, which vary due to the inhalation and exhalation motion of a person. The success of respiration rate estimation using such measurements depends on the signal-to-noise ratio, which alters with properties of the person and with the measurement system. To date, no model has been presented that allows evaluation of different deployments or system configurations for successful breathing rate estimation. In this paper, a received signal strength model for respiration rate monitoring is introduced. It is shown that measurements in linear and logarithmic scale have the same functional form, and the same estimation techniques can be used in both cases. The implications of the model are validated under varying signal-to-noise ratio conditions using the performances of three estimators: batch frequency estimator, recursive Bayesian estimator, and model-based estimator. The results are in coherence with the findings, and they imply that different estimators are advantageous in different signal-to-noise ratio regimes.

Quantum illumination (QI) is a revolutionary photonic quantum sensing paradigm that enhances the sensitivity of photodetection in noisy and lossy environments. The QI concept has been recently used to propose a quantum backscatter communication (QBC), with the aim of increasing the receiver sensitivity beyond the limits of its classical counterpart. One of the practical challenges in microwave QI is the slow rate at which the entangled microwave modes can be generated. Here, we propose to mitigate this problem by using a multiple-input multiple-output antenna system to synthetically increase the number of efficiently-distinguishable modes in the QBC context., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures

The business potential of device-to-device (D2D) communication including public safety and vehicular communications will be realized only if direct communication between devices subscribed to different mobile operators (OPs) is supported. One possible way to implement inter-operator D2D communication may use the licensed spectrum of the OPs, i.e., OPs agree to share spectrum in a co-primary manner, and inter-operator D2D communication is allocated over spectral resources contributed from both parties. In this paper, we consider a spectrum sharing scenario where a number of OPs construct a spectrum pool dedicated to support inter-operator D2D communication. OPs negotiate in the form of a non-cooperative game about how much spectrum each OP contributes to the spectrum pool. OPs submit proposals to each other in parallel until a consensus is reached. When every OP has a concave utility function on the box-constrained region, we identify the conditions guaranteeing the existence of a unique equilibrium point. We show that the iterative algorithm based on the OP's best response might not converge to the equilibrium point due to myopically overreacting to the response of the other OPs, while the Jacobi-play strategy update algorithm can converge with an appropriate selection of update parameter. Using the Jacobi-play update algorithm, we illustrate that asymmetric OPs contribute an unequal amount of resources to the spectrum pool; However all participating OPs may experience significant performance gains compared to the scheme without spectrum sharing., Comment: Accepted to appear in IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC)

We present a generic approximation of the packet error rate (PER) function of uncoded schemes in the AWGN channel using extreme value theory (EVT). The PER function can assume both the exponential and the Gaussian Q-function bit error rate (BER) forms. The EVT approach leads us to a best closed-form approximation, in terms of accuracy and computational efficiency, of the average PER in block-fading channels. The numerical analysis shows that the approximation holds tight for any value of SNR and packet length whereas the earlier studies approximate the average PER only at asymptotic SNRs and packet lengths.

In ambient re-scatter communications, devices convey information by modulating and re-scattering the radio frequency signals impinging on their antennas. In this correspondence, we consider a system consisting of a legacy modulated continuous carrier multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) link and a multi-antenna modulated re-scatter (MRS) node, where the MRS node modulates and re-scatters the signal generated by the legacy transmitter. The receiver seeks to decode both the original message and the information added by the MRS. We show that the achievable sum rate of this system exceeds that which the legacy system could achieve alone. We further consider the impact of channel estimation errors under the least squares channel estimation and study the achievable rate of the legacy and MRS systems, where a linear minimum mean square error receiver with successive interference cancellation is utilized for joint decoding., Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures, accepted

Received signal strength based radio tomographic imaging is a popular device-free indoor localization method which reconstructs the spatial loss field of the environment using measurements from a dense wireless network. Existing methods solve an associated inverse problem using algebraic or compressed sensing reconstruction algorithms. We propose an alternative imaging method that reconstructs spatial field of occupancy using a back-projection based reconstruction algorithm. The introduced system has the following advantages over the other imaging based methods: i.) significantly lower computational complexity such that no floating point multiplication is required; ii.) each link's measured data is compressed to a single bit, providing improved scalability; iii.) physically significant and repeatable parameters. The proposed method is validated using measurement data. Results show that the proposed method achieves the above advantages without loss of accuracy compared to the other available methods.

Massive MIMO is a promising technique to meet the exponential growth of mobile traffic demand. However, contrary to the current systems, energy consumption of next generation networks is required to be load adaptive as the network load varies significantly throughout the day. In this paper, we propose a load adaptive multi-cell massive MIMO system where each base station (BS) adapts the number of antennas to the daily load profile (DLP) in order to maximize the downlink energy efficiency (EE). In order to incorporate the DLP, the load at each BS is modeled as an M/G/m/m state dependent queue under the assumption that the network is dimensioned to serve a maximum number of users at the peak load. The EE maximization problem is formulated in a game theoretic framework where the number of antennas to be used by a BS is determined through best response iteration. This load adaptive system achieves around 24% higher EE and saves around 40% energy compared to a baseline system where the BSs always run with the fixed number of antennas that is most energy efficient at the peak load and that can be switched off when there is no traffic., Comment: 27 pages, 10 Figures. arXiv admin note: substantial text overlap with arXiv:1510.00649

Massive MIMO is a promising technique to meet the exponential growth of global mobile data traffic demand. However, contrary to the current systems, energy consumption of next generation networks is required to be load adaptive as the network load varies significantly throughout the day. In this paper, we propose a load adaptive massive MIMO system that varies the number of antennas following the daily load profile (DLP) in order to maximize the downlink energy efficiency (EE). A multi-cell system is considered where each base station (BS) is equipped with a large number of antennas to serve many single antenna users. In order to incorporate DLP, each BS is modeled as an M/G/m/m state dependent queue under the assumption that the network is dimensioned to serve a maximum number of users at the peak load. For a given number of users in a cell, the optimum number of active antennas maximizing EE is derived. The EE maximization problem is formulated in a game theoretic framework where the number of antennas to be used by a BS is determined through best response iteration. This load adaptive system achieves overall 19% higher EE compared to a baseline system where the BSs always run with the fixed number of antennas that is most energy efficient at peak load and that can be switched-off when there is no traffic, Comment: 6 pages, 5 figures. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1411.1998

We consider a spectrum-sharing cognitive radio system with antenna selection applied at the secondary transmitter (ST). Based on the extreme value theory, we deduce a simple and accurate expression for the asymptotic distribution of the signal to interference plus noise ratio at the secondary receiver. Using this result, the asymptotic mean capacity and the outage capacity for the secondary user (SU) are derived. The obtained asymptotic capacities approach the exact results as the number of transmit antennas $N$ increases. Results indicate that the rate of the SU scales as $\log(N)$ when the transmit power of the ST is limited by the maximum allowable interference level, while rate scales as $\log(\log(N))$ if ST is limited by the maximum transmit power.

In future wireless networks, a significant number of users will be vehicular. One promising solution to improve the capacity for these vehicular users is to employ moving relays or car base stations. The system forms cell inside the vehicle and then uses rooftop antenna for back-hauling to overcome the vehicular penetration loss. In this paper, we develop a model for aggregate interference distribution generated from moving/parked cars to indoor users in order to study whether indoor femto-cells can coexist on the same spectrum with vehicular communications. Since spectrum authorization for vehicular communications is open at moment, we consider two spectrum sharing scenarios (i) communication from mounted antennas on the roof of the vehicles to the infrastructure network utilizes same spectrum with indoor femto-cells (ii) in-vehicle communication utilizes same spectrum with indoor femto-cells while vehicular to infrastructure (V2I) communication is allocated at different spectrum. Based on our findings we suggest that V2I and indoor femto-cells should be allocated at different spectrum. The reason being that mounted roof-top antennas facing the indoor cells generate unacceptable interference levels. On the other hand, in-vehicle communication and indoor cells can share the spectrum thanks to the vehicle body isolation and the lower transmit power levels that can be used inside the vehicle., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, 3rd IFAC Symposium on Telematics Applications

We consider spectrum sharing between a limited set of operators having similar rights for accessing spectrum. A coordination protocol acting on the level of the Radio Access Network (RAN) is designed. The protocol is non-cooperative, but assumes an agreement to a set of negotiation rules. The signaling overhead is low, and knowledge of competitor's channel state information is not assumed. No monetary transactions are involved; instead, spectrum sharing is based on a RAN-internal virtual currency. The protocol is applicable in a scenario of mutual renting and when the operators form a spectrum pool. The protocol is reactive to variations in interference and load of the operators, and shows gains in a simulated small cell scenario compared to not using any coordination protocol., Comment: To be published in IEEE Communications Magazine, Jul. 2015

Ensuring seamless coverage accounts for the lion's share of the energy consumed in a mobile network. Overlapping coverage of three to five mobile network operators (MNOs) results in enormous amount of energy waste which is avoidable. The traffic demands of the mobile networks vary significantly throughout the day. As the offered load for all networks are not same at a given time and the differences in energy consumption at different loads are significant, multi-MNO capacity/coverage sharing can dramatically reduce energy consumption of mobile networks and provide the MNOs a cost effective means to cope with the exponential growth of traffic. In this paper, we propose an energy saving market for a multi-MNO network scenario. As the competing MNOs are not comfortable with information sharing, we propose a double auction clearinghouse market mechanism where MNOs sell and buy capacity in order to minimize energy consumption. In our setting, each MNO proposes its bids and asks simultaneously for buying and selling multi-unit capacities respectively to an independent auctioneer, i.e., clearinghouse and ends up either as a buyer or as a seller in each round. We show that the mechanism allows the MNOs to save significant percentage of energy cost throughout a wide range of network load. Different than other energy saving features such as cell sleep or antenna muting which can not be enabled at heavy traffic load, dynamic capacity sharing allows MNOs to handle traffic bursts with energy saving opportunity., Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, to be published in ICC 2015 workshop on Next Generation Green ICT

In order to harvest the business potential of device-to-device (D2D) communication, direct communication between devices subscribed to different mobile operators should be supported. This would also support meeting requirements resulting from D2D relevant scenarios, like vehicle-to-vehicle communication. In this paper, we propose to allocate the multi-operator D2D communication over dedicated cellular spectral resources contributed from both operators. Ideally, the operators should negotiate about the amount of spectrum to contribute, without revealing proprietary information to each other and/or to other parties. One possible way to do that is to use the sequence of operators' best responses, i.e., the operators make offers about the amount of spectrum to contribute using a sequential updating procedure until reaching consensus. Besides spectrum allocation, we need a mode selection scheme for the multi-operator D2D users. We use a stochastic geometry framework to capture the impact of mode selection on the distribution of D2D users and assess the performance of the best response iteration algorithm. With the performance metrics considered in the paper, we show that the best response iteration has a unique Nash equilibrium that can be reached from any initial strategy. In general, asymmetric operators would contribute unequal amounts of spectrum for multi-operator D2D communication. Provided that the multi-operator D2D density is not negligible, we show that both operators may experience significant performance gains as compared to the scheme without spectrum sharing., Comment: To appear in IEEE ICC 2015

Sparsity and entropy are pillar notions of modern theories in signal processing and information theory. However, there is no clear consensus among scientists on the characterization of these notions. Previous efforts have contributed to understand individually sparsity or entropy from specific research interests. This paper proposes a mathematical formalism, a joint axiomatic characterization, which contributes to comprehend (the beauty of) sparsity and entropy. The paper gathers and introduces inherent and first principles criteria as axioms and attributes that jointly characterize sparsity and entropy. The proposed set of axioms is constructive and allows to derive simple or \emph{core functions} and further generalizations. Core sparsity generalizes the Hoyer measure, Gini index and $pq$-means. Core entropy generalizes the R\'{e}nyi entropy and Tsallis entropy, both of which generalize Shannon entropy. Finally, core functions are successfully applied to compressed sensing and to minimum entropy given sample moments. More importantly, the (simplest) core sparsity adds theoretical support to the $\ell_1$-minimization approach in compressed sensing., Comment: 33 pages, 4 figures, 9 tables This very preliminary work has been withdrawn by the author due to crucial errors. No future version will be available

In this paper, we provide an exact expression for the ergodic capacity of the secondary user, and a unified closed-form expression for its bounds with taking the consideration of the primary interference at the secondary receiver. In addition, a simple but accurate approximation of the the ergodic capacity of the primary user is presented. Moreover, a primary user capacity loss based power allocation scheme for the secondary user is also proposed. Finally, we compare the performance of the two power allocation schemes in terms of the sum capacity. The results are validated through using numerical results and simulations., Comment: 14 pages, 10 figures

This paper takes into consideration the non-ideal efficiency characteristics of realistic power amplifiers (PAs) along with the daily traffic profile in order to investigate the impact of PA dimensioning on the energy efficiency (EE) of load adaptive massive MIMO system. A multicellular system has been considered where each base station (BS) is equipped with a large number of antennas to serve many single antenna users. For a given number of users in a cell, the optimum number of active antennas maximizing EE has been derived where total BS downlink power is assumed to be fixed. Under the same assumption, the PAs have been dimensioned in a way that maximizes network EE not only for a single time snapshot but over twenty four hours of operation while considering dynamic efficiency characteristics of the PAs. In order to incorporate this daily load profile, each BS has been modeled as an M/G/m/m state dependent queue under the assumption that the network is dimensioned to serve a maximum number of users at a time corresponding to 100% cell traffic load. This load adaptive system along with the optimized PA dimensioning achieves 30% higher energy efficiency compared to a base line system where the BSs always run with a fixed number of active antennas which are most energy efficient while serving 100% traffic load., Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, to be published in Globecom GBA workshop 2014

Received signal strength based device-free localization has attracted considerable attention in the research society over the past years to locate and track people who are not carrying any electronic device. Typically, the person is localized using a spatial model that relates the time domain signal strength measurements to the person's position. Alternatively, one could exploit spectral properties of the received signal strength which reflects the rate at which the wireless propagation medium is being altered, an opportunity that has not been exploited in the related literature. In this paper, the power spectral density of the signal strength measurements are related to the person's position and velocity to augment the particle filter based tracking algorithm with an additional measurement. The system performance is evaluated using simulations and validated using experimental data. Compared to a system relying solely on time domain measurements, the results suggest that the robustness to parameter changes is increased while the tracking accuracy is enhanced by 50% or more when 512 particles are used.

Radio frequency sensor networks are becoming increasingly popular as an indoor localization and monitoring technology for gaining unobtrusive situational awareness of the surrounding environment. The localization effort in these networks is built upon the well-established fact that the received signal strength measurements vary due to a person's presence on the line-of-sight of a transmitter-receiver pair. To date, modeling this decrease in received signal strength and utilizing it for localization purposes have received a considerable amount of attention in the research field. However, when the person is in the close vicinity of the line-of-sight but not obstructing it, the signal reflected from the human body is also affecting the received signal strength and can be used for occupancy assessment purposes. In this paper, we first model the effect of human-induced reflections as a function of communication frequency, and then use the model as a basis for energy based occupancy detection. The derived methods are evaluated numerically and the detection probability of the proposed detector is validated with experimental data. The results suggest that when more than eight frequency channels are utilized, presence of a person can be detected using RSS measurements of a single transmit-receive pair with detection probability higher than 0.95 and false alarm probability less than 0.01 in an area of 2 m x 2.5 m. Moreover, the important implications of the studied methods on the available narrowband radio frequency sensor network applications are discussed in detail.

The indoor radio propagation channel is typically modeled as a two-state time-variant process where one of the states represents the channel when the environment is static, whereas the other state characterizes the medium when it is altered by people. In this paper, the aforementioned process is augmented with an additional state. It is shown that the changes in received signal strength are dictated by: i) electronic noise, when a person is not present in the monitored area; ii) reflection, when a person is moving in the close vicinity of the line-of-sight; iii) shadowing, when a person is obstructing the line-of-sight component of the transmitter-receiver pair. Statistical and spatial models for the three states are derived and the models are empirically validated. Based on the models, a simplistic device-free localization application is designed which aims to: first, estimate the temporal state of the channel using a hidden Markov model; second, track a person using a particle filter. The results suggest that the tracking accuracy is enhanced by at least 65% while the link's sensitivity region is increased by 100% or more with respect to empirical models presented in earlier works.

Radio signals are sensitive to changes in the environment, which for example is reflected on the received signal strength (RSS) measurements of low-cost wireless devices. This information has been used effectively in the past years e.g. in device-free localization and tracking. Recent literature has also shown that the fading information of the wireless channel can be exploited to estimate the breathing rate of a person in a non-invasive manner; a research topic we address in this paper. To the best of our knowledge, we demonstrate for the first time that the respiration rate of a person can be accurately estimated using only a single IEEE 802.15.4 compliant TX-RX pair. We exploit channel diversity, low-jitter periodic communication, and oversampling to enhance the breathing estimates, and make use of a decimation filter to decrease the computational requirements of breathing estimation. In addition, we develop a hidden Markov model (HMM) to identify the time instances when breathing estimation is not possible, i.e., during times when other motion than breathing occurs. We experimentally validate the accuracy of the system and the results suggest that the respiration rate can be estimated with a mean error of 0.03 breaths per minute, the lowest breathing rate error reported to date using IEEE 802.15.4 compliant transceivers. We also demonstrate that the breathing of two people can be monitored simultaneously, a result not reported in earlier literature.