We consider downlink of a multiuser massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system and focus on reducing the hardware costs by using a single common power amplifier and separate phase shifters (PSs) for antenna front-ends. In the previous literature, the use of analog PSs in this setup has been considered. Here, we study the use of practical digital PSs, which only support a limited set of discrete phases. Considering the sum of interference powers as a metric, we formulate the corresponding nonlinear discrete optimization problem and solve for the phases to be used during transmission. We devise a low-complexity algorithm, which employs a trellis structure providing suboptimal, but efficient and effective solutions. We demonstrate via examples that the proposed solutions have comparable performance to conventional analog PS-based algorithms. Furthermore, we prove that by utilizing discrete-phase constant envelope precoding, the interference can be made arbitrarily small by increasing the number of antennas. Therefore, the asymptotic gains promised by massive MIMO systems are preserved. We also obtain closed-form expressions for the rate loss due to errors in the phase and amplitude of the PSs, for both low and high SNR regimes.

We study the problem of unsourced random access (URA) over Rayleigh block-fading channels with a receiver equipped with multiple antennas. We propose a slotted structure with multiple stages of orthogonal pilots, each of which is randomly picked from a codebook. In the proposed signaling structure, each user encodes its message using a polar code and appends it to the selected pilot sequences to construct its transmitted signal. Accordingly, the transmitted signal is composed of multiple orthogonal pilot parts and a polar-coded part, which is sent through a randomly selected slot. The performance of the proposed scheme is further improved by randomly dividing users into different groups each having a unique interleaver-power pair. We also apply the idea of multiple stages of orthogonal pilots to the case of a single receive antenna. In all the set-ups, we use an iterative approach for decoding the transmitted messages along with a suitable successive interference cancellation technique. The use of orthogonal pilots and the slotted structure lead to improved accuracy and reduced computational complexity in the proposed set-ups, and make the implementation with short blocklengths more viable. Performance of the proposed set-ups is illustrated via extensive simulation results which show that the proposed set-ups with multiple antennas perform better than the existing MIMO URA solutions for both short and large blocklengths, and that the proposed single-antenna set-ups are superior to the existing single-antenna URA schemes.

We consider unsourced random access over fading channels with a massive number of antennas at the base station, and propose a simple, yet energy-efficient solution by dividing the transmission frame into slots. We utilize non-orthogonal pilot sequences followed by a polar codeword for transmission in each slot. At the receiver side, we first detect the transmitted pilot sequences by employing a generalized orthogonal matching pursuit algorithm and utilize a linear minimum mean square error solution to estimate the channel vectors. We then perform an iterative decoding based on maximal ratio combining, single-user polar decoding, and successive interference cancellation with re-estimation of the channel vectors to recover the data bits. We also analyze the performance of the proposed scheme using normal approximations and provide a detailed complexity analysis. Numerical examples demonstrate that the proposed scheme either outperforms the existing schemes in the literature or has a competitive performance with a lower complexity. Furthermore, it is suitable for fast-fading scenarios due to its excellent performance in the short blocklength regime.

We utilize the on-off division multiple access technique in unsourced random access and develop a high-performing solution operating on both Gaussian and fading multiple access channels based on polar coding. We propose a transmission structure where a fixed part of the transmission frame is utilized for pilot transmission while the users exploit a randomly-selected small fraction of the rest of the frame for data transmission. Our proposed scheme employs a simple, yet efficient pattern detection and single-user decoding algorithm at the receiver, which leads to a superior performance with similar complexity, or a competitive performance with a significantly lower complexity compared to the existing approaches.

The effects of hardware impairments (HWIs) on the secrecy performance of a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted millimeter wave system are investigated, where a multi-antenna base station (BS) transmits confidential messages to a single-antenna mobile user (MU) in the presence of a single-antenna passive eavesdropper (Eve). Artificial noise (AN)-aided transmission by the BS is proposed for improving the achievable secrecy rate. As the first step, we construct a system model in the absence of HWIs. For this case, we present optimal solutions for the signal and AN powers, the beamforming design at the BS, and the phase shifts of the RIS elements. Then closed-form expressions are derived for the cumulative distribution functions of the signal-to-noise-ratios experienced at the legitimate and eavesdropping nodes. Finally, a compact solution is presented for the ergodic secrecy rate (ESR) performance. At the next step, we extend our designs and analysis by considering the HWIs of the radio-frequency (RF) modules of the BS, MU and Eve. Our results highlight the detrimental impact of HWIs on the achievable ESR. Finally, we find that the ESR can be further increased by beneficially distributing the tolerable HWIs between the transmission and reception RF chains.

We examine federated learning (FL) with over-the-air (OTA) aggregation, where mobile users (MUs) aim to reach a consensus on a global model with the help of a parameter server (PS) that aggregates the local gradients. In OTA FL, MUs train their models using local data at every training round and transmit their gradients simultaneously using the same frequency band in an uncoded fashion. Based on the received signal of the superposed gradients, the PS performs a global model update. While the OTA FL has a significantly decreased communication cost, it is susceptible to adverse channel effects and noise. Employing multiple antennas at the receiver side can reduce these effects, yet the path-loss is still a limiting factor for users located far away from the PS. To ameliorate this issue, in this paper, we propose a wireless-based hierarchical FL scheme that uses intermediate servers (ISs) to form clusters in the areas where the MUs are more densely located. Our scheme utilizes OTA cluster aggregations for the communication of the MUs with their corresponding IS, and OTA global aggregations from the ISs to the PS. We present a convergence analysis for the proposed algorithm, and show through numerical evaluations of the derived analytical expressions and experimental results that utilizing ISs results in a faster convergence and a better performance than the OTA FL alone while using less transmit power. We also validate the results on the performance using different numbers of cluster iterations with different datasets and data distributions. We conclude that the best choice of cluster aggregations depends on the data distribution among the MUs and the clusters.