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Stacked intelligent metasurfaces for efficient holographic MIMO communications in 6G

Stacked intelligent metasurfaces for efficient holographic MIMO communications in 6G
Stacked intelligent metasurfaces for efficient holographic MIMO communications in 6G
A revolutionary technology relying on Stacked Intelligent Metasurfaces (SIM) is capable of carrying out advanced signal processing directly in the native electromagnetic (EM) wave regime. An SIM is fabricated by a sophisticated amalgam of multiple stacked metasurface layers, which may outperform its single-layer metasurface counterparts, such as reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) and metasurface lenses. We harness this new SIM for implementing holographic multiple-input multiple-output (HMIMO) communications without requiring excessive radio-frequency (RF) chains, which is a substantial benefit compared to existing implementations. First of all, we propose an HMIMO communication system based on a pair of SIM at the transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX), respectively. In sharp contrast to the conventional MIMO designs, SIM is capable of automatically accomplishing transmit precoding and receiver combining, as the EM waves propagate through them. As such, each spatial stream can be directly radiated and recovered from the corresponding transmit and receive port. Secondly,
we formulate the problem of minimizing the error between the actual end-to-end channel matrix and the target diagonal one, representing a flawless interference-free system of parallel subchannels. This is achieved by jointly optimizing the phase shifts associated with all the metasurface layers of both the TXSIM and RX-SIM. We then design a gradient descent algorithm to solve the resultant non-convex problem. Furthermore, we theoretically analyze the HMIMO channel capacity bound and provide some fundamental insights. Finally, extensive simulation results are provided for characterizing our SIM-aided HMIMO system, which quantifies its substantial performance benefits, e.g., 150% capacity improvement over both conventional MIMO and its RIS-aided counterparts.
2380-2396
An, Jiancheng
38f5bae7-e6d1-4767-8e81-b402ac61943f
Xu, Chao
5710a067-6320-4f5a-8689-7881f6c46252
Ng, Derrick Wing Kwan
8e2a32d3-cb0d-4c38-b05c-03ef16a5c707
Alexandropoulos, George C.
652f87e4-3c86-4e0d-9166-994c55611b0f
Huang, Chongwen
cb95630b-82c2-45c1-959e-b636774b8c61
Yuen, Chau
1b26b32e-5822-4bf8-b39b-2ea02385037d
Hanzo, Lajos
66e7266f-3066-4fc0-8391-e000acce71a1
An, Jiancheng
38f5bae7-e6d1-4767-8e81-b402ac61943f
Xu, Chao
5710a067-6320-4f5a-8689-7881f6c46252
Ng, Derrick Wing Kwan
8e2a32d3-cb0d-4c38-b05c-03ef16a5c707
Alexandropoulos, George C.
652f87e4-3c86-4e0d-9166-994c55611b0f
Huang, Chongwen
cb95630b-82c2-45c1-959e-b636774b8c61
Yuen, Chau
1b26b32e-5822-4bf8-b39b-2ea02385037d
Hanzo, Lajos
66e7266f-3066-4fc0-8391-e000acce71a1

An, Jiancheng, Xu, Chao, Ng, Derrick Wing Kwan, Alexandropoulos, George C., Huang, Chongwen, Yuen, Chau and Hanzo, Lajos (2023) Stacked intelligent metasurfaces for efficient holographic MIMO communications in 6G. IEEE Selected Areas on Communications, 41 (8), 2380-2396. (doi:10.1109/JSAC.2023.3288261).

Record type: Article

Abstract

A revolutionary technology relying on Stacked Intelligent Metasurfaces (SIM) is capable of carrying out advanced signal processing directly in the native electromagnetic (EM) wave regime. An SIM is fabricated by a sophisticated amalgam of multiple stacked metasurface layers, which may outperform its single-layer metasurface counterparts, such as reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) and metasurface lenses. We harness this new SIM for implementing holographic multiple-input multiple-output (HMIMO) communications without requiring excessive radio-frequency (RF) chains, which is a substantial benefit compared to existing implementations. First of all, we propose an HMIMO communication system based on a pair of SIM at the transmitter (TX) and receiver (RX), respectively. In sharp contrast to the conventional MIMO designs, SIM is capable of automatically accomplishing transmit precoding and receiver combining, as the EM waves propagate through them. As such, each spatial stream can be directly radiated and recovered from the corresponding transmit and receive port. Secondly,
we formulate the problem of minimizing the error between the actual end-to-end channel matrix and the target diagonal one, representing a flawless interference-free system of parallel subchannels. This is achieved by jointly optimizing the phase shifts associated with all the metasurface layers of both the TXSIM and RX-SIM. We then design a gradient descent algorithm to solve the resultant non-convex problem. Furthermore, we theoretically analyze the HMIMO channel capacity bound and provide some fundamental insights. Finally, extensive simulation results are provided for characterizing our SIM-aided HMIMO system, which quantifies its substantial performance benefits, e.g., 150% capacity improvement over both conventional MIMO and its RIS-aided counterparts.

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Accepted/In Press date: 3 May 2023
e-pub ahead of print date: 21 June 2023
Published date: 1 August 2023

Identifiers

Local EPrints ID: 476888
URI: http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/id/eprint/476888
PURE UUID: d94def39-3ac0-44c3-9d8b-252a896f4c37
ORCID for Chao Xu: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-8423-0342
ORCID for Lajos Hanzo: ORCID iD orcid.org/0000-0002-2636-5214

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Date deposited: 18 May 2023 16:59
Last modified: 07 Sep 2023 01:41

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Contributors

Author: Jiancheng An
Author: Chao Xu ORCID iD
Author: Derrick Wing Kwan Ng
Author: George C. Alexandropoulos
Author: Chongwen Huang
Author: Chau Yuen
Author: Lajos Hanzo ORCID iD

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