Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs) offer a promising means of reshaping the wireless propagation environment, yet practical methods for configuring large passive arrays to achieve reliable signal equalization remain limited. Equalization is essential in wideband links to counteract multipath-induced pulse distortion that otherwise degrades symbol recovery. This work investigates RIS-assisted pulse response equalization and signal boosting using both classical adaptive filtering and model-free deep reinforcement learning (DRL). We develop a steepest descent (SD) method that exploits cascaded base station-RIS-user equipment (UE) channel information to configure RIS coefficients for multipath mitigation and SNR enhancement, and we show that the tradeoffs between SD and DRL primarily arise from the extensive channel estimation required for accurate equalization with passive RIS hardware. Unlike traditional adaptive filtering, which updates delayed filter coefficients after signal reception, our approach uses the RIS positioned within the cascaded channel to perform equalization without delay elements, prior to reception at the UE. In this framework, the channel is estimated before equalization, forming the basis of what we term adaptive RIS equalization (ARISE). To overcome the reliance on channel estimation required for ARISE, we explore several DRL algorithms – DDPG, TD3, and SAC – that optimize RIS coefficients directly from the received pulse response without explicit channel estimation. Through extensive simulations across diverse channel conditions and RIS sizes, we show that SAC achieves fast, stable convergence and equalization performance comparable to ARISE while offering significantly lower implementation complexity. These results highlight the potential of DRL as a practical and scalable solution for real-time RIS control in future wireless systems.

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs) enhance wireless communication by steering electromagnetic waves through tunable reflection elements. However, scaling conventional RIS architectures to large arrays introduces significant wiring and control complexity. To address this, we investigate a wave-controlled RIS that uses biasing transmission lines carrying biasing standing waves (BSWs), which are sampled at each element to generate control voltages. We propose a sample-and-hold (S/H) circuit for precise temporal voltage acquisition and evaluate its performance in scenarios where neither channel state information (CSI) nor mathematical RIS models are available. Instead, optimization is fully data-driven: received power measurements are used to train a neural network (NN) that estimates the radiation pattern. A Genetic Algorithm (GA) refines the NN architecture, while Simulated Annealing (SA) tunes the BSW amplitudes to maximize a signal-to-leakage-plus-noise ratio (SLNR) metric using NN-based feedback. Optimized configurations are stored in a lookup table for real-time RIS control. We assess performance across diverse propagation conditions – including multipath and non-line-of-sight (NLoS) channels – under varying dataset sizes and SLNR targets. Relative to envelope-detector-based sampling, the proposed S/H circuit yields more accurate radiation pattern control and SLNR performance approaching that of an ideal system with perfect CSI and exact models. This idealized baseline further confirms that the S/H-based wave-controlled RIS can effectively optimize SLNR even in NLoS-dominated channels such as Rayleigh fading.

This paper addresses the problem of maximizing the received power at a user equipment via reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) characterized by phase-dependent amplitude (PDA) and discrete phase shifts over a limited phase range. Given complex RIS coefficients, that is, discrete phase shifts and PDAs, we derive the necessary and sufficient conditions to achieve the optimal solution. To this end, we propose an optimal search algorithm that is proven to converge in linear time within at most NK steps, significantly outperforming the exhaustive search approach that would otherwise be needed for RISs with amplitude attenuation. Furthermore, we introduce a practical quantization framework for PDA-introduced RISs termed amplitude-introduced polar quantization (APQ), and extend it to a novel algorithm named extended amplitude-introduced polar quantization (EAPQ) that works with geometric projections. We derive closed-form expressions to assess how closely the performance of the proposed RIS configuration can approximate the ideal case with continuous phases and no attenuation. Our analysis reveals that increasing the number of discrete phases beyond K = 4 yields only marginal gains, regardless of attenuation levels, provided the RIS has a sufficiently wide phase range R. Furthermore, we also show and quantify that when the phase range R is limited, the performance is sensitive to attenuation for larger R, and sensitive to R when there is less attenuation. Finally, the proposed optimal algorithm provides a generic upper bound that could serve as a benchmark for discrete beamforming in RISs with amplitude constraints.

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs), an emerging technology proposed for inclusion in next generation wireless communication systems, are programmable surfaces that can adaptively reflect incident electromagnetic radiation in different desired directions. To reduce the complexity and physical profile of conventional RIS designs, a novel concept known as Wave-Controlled RIS has been proposed, in which standing waves along a transmission line are used to generate the required dc bias for reflective control. This paper shows the design of such a Wave-Controlled RIS and its biasing transmission line. The effectiveness of this approach in generating the correct dc bias from a single standing wave frequency is analyzed through both theoretical modeling and experimental validation, which uncovered a dependence on impedance matching not accounted for by the theory. Additionally, the potential for reflective control using only a single standing wave frequency on the biasing transmission line is explored, demonstrating the ability of single-beam steering toward angles near broadside.

A promising type of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) employs tunable control of its varactors using biasing transmission lines below the RIS reflecting elements. Biasing standing waves (BSWs) are excited by a time-periodic signal and sampled at each RIS element to create a desired biasing voltage and control the reflection coefficients of the elements. A simple rectifier can be used to sample the voltages and capture the peaks of the BSWs over time. Like other types of RIS, attempting to model and accurately configure a wave-controlled RIS is extremely challenging due to factors such as device nonlinearities, frequency dependence, element coupling, etc., and thus significant differences will arise between the actual and assumed performance. An alternative approach to solving this problem is data-driven: Using training data obtained by sampling the reflected radiation pattern of the RIS for a set of BSWs, a neural network (NN) is designed to create an input-output map between the BSW amplitudes and the resulting sampled radiation pattern. This is the approach discussed in this paper. In the proposed approach, the NN is optimized using a Genetic Algorithm (GA) to minimize the error between the estimated and measured radiation patterns. The BSW amplitudes are then designed via Simulated Annealing (SA) to optimize a signal-to-leakage-plus-noise ratio measure by iteratively forward-propagating the BSW amplitudes through the NN and using its output as feedback to determine convergence. The resulting optimal solutions are stored in a lookup table to be used both as settings to instantly configure the RIS and as a basis for determining more complex radiation patterns.

We present new ways of producing a channel chart [1] employing model-based approaches. We estimate the angle of arrival theta and the distance rho between the base station and the user equipment by employing our algorithms, inverse of the root sum squares of channel coefficients (ISQ) algorithm, linear regression (LR) algorithm, and MUSIC/MUSIC (MM) algorithm. We compare these methods with the channel charting algorithms principal component analysis (PCA), Sammon's method (SM), and autoencoder (AE) [1]. We show that ISQ, LR, and MM surpass PCA, SM, and AE in performance. We also compare our algorithm MM with an algorithm from the literature that uses the MUSIC algorithm jointly on theta and rho. We call this algorithm the JM algorithm. JM performs very slightly better than MM but at a substantial increase in complexity. Finally, we introduce the rotate-and-sum (RS) algorithm which has about the same performance as the MM and JM algorithms. Unlike MUSIC, RS does not employ eigenvalue and eigenvector analysis. Thus, it is more suitable for direct register transfer logic (RTL) implementation.

To maximize the received power at a user equipment, the problem of optimizing a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) with a limited phase range and nonuniform discrete phase shifts with adjustable gains is addressed. Necessary and sufficient conditions to achieve this maximization are given. These conditions are employed in two algorithms to achieve the global optimum in linear time. Depending on the phase range limitation, it is shown that the global optimality is achieved in NK or fewer and N(K+1) or fewer steps, where N is the number of RIS elements and K is the number of discrete phase shifts which may be placed nonuniformly over the limited phase range. In addition, we define two quantization algorithms that we call nonuniform polar quantization (NPQ) algorithm and extended nonuniform polar quantization (ENPQ) algorithm, where the latter is a novel quantization algorithm for RISs with a significant phase range restriction. With NPQ, we provide a closed-form solution for the approximation ratio with which an arbitrary set of nonuniform discrete phase shifts can approximate the continuous solution. We also show that with a phase range limitation, equal separation among the nonuniform discrete phase shifts maximizes the normalized performance. Furthermore, for a larger RIS phase range limitation, we show that the gain of increasing K is only marginal, whereas, ON/OFF selection for the RIS elements can bring significant performance compared to the case when the RIS elements are strictly ON.

We investigate the use of conventional angle of arrival (AoA) algorithms the Bartlett's algorithm, the Minimum Variance Distortion Response (MVDR or Capon) algorithm, and the Minimum Norm algorithm for estimating the AoA theta together with our previously introduced algorithms linear regression (LR), inverse of the root sum squares of channel coefficients (ISQ), as well as a novel use of the MUSIC algorithm for estimating the distance from the base station, rho in the context of channel charting. We carry out evaluations in terms of the visual quality of the channel charts, the dimensionality reduction performance measures trustworthiness (TW) and connectivity (CT), as well as the execution time of the algorithms. We find that although the Bartlett's algorithm, MVDR, and Minimum Norm algorithms have sufficiently close performance to techniques we studied earlier, the Minimum Norm algorithm has significantly higher computational complexity than the other two. Previously, we found that the use of the MUSIC algorithm for estimation of both theta and rho has a very high performance. In this paper, we investigated and quantified the performance of the Bartlett algorithm in its use for estimating both theta and rho, similar to the our previously introduced technique of using MUSIC for estimating both.

The problem of optimizing discrete phases in a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) to maximize the received power at a user equipment is addressed. Necessary and sufficient conditions to achieve this maximization are given. These conditions are employed in an algorithm to achieve the maximization. New versions of the algorithm are given that are proven to achieve convergence in N or fewer steps whether the direct link is completely blocked or not, where N is the number of the RIS elements, whereas previously published results achieve this in KN or 2N number of steps where K is the number of discrete phases. Thus, for a discrete-phase RIS, the techniques presented in this paper achieve the optimum received power in the smallest number of steps published in the literature. In addition, in each of those N steps, the techniques presented in this paper determine only one or a small number of phase shifts with a simple elementwise update rule, which result in a substantial reduction of computation time, as compared to the algorithms in the literature. As a secondary result, we define the uniform polar quantization (UPQ) algorithm which is an intuitive quantization algorithm that can approximate the continuous solution with an approximation ratio of sinc^2(1/K) and achieve low time-complexity, given perfect knowledge of the channel.

A Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) consists of many small reflective elements whose reflection properties can be adjusted to change the wireless propagation environment. Envisioned implementations require that each RIS element be connected to a controller, and as the number of RIS elements on a surface may be on the order of hundreds or more, the number of required electrical connectors creates a difficult wiring problem. A potential solution to this problem was previously proposed by the authors in which “biasing transmission lines” carrying standing waves are sampled at each RIS location to produce the desired bias voltage for each RIS element. This paper presents models for the RIS elements that account for mutual coupling and realistic varactor characteristics, as well as circuit models for sampling the transmission line to generate the RIS control signals. The paper investigates two techniques for conversion of the transmission line standing wave voltage to the varactor bias voltage, namely an envelope detector and a sample-and-hold circuit. The paper also develops a modal decomposition approach for generating standing waves that are able to generate beams and nulls in the resulting RIS radiation pattern that maximize either the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) or the Signal-to-Leakage-plus-Noise Ratio (SLNR). The paper provides five algorithms, two for the case of the envelope detector, one for the sample-and-hold circuit, one for pursuing the global minimum for both circuits, and one for simultaneous beam and null steering. Extensive simulation results show that while the envelope detector is simpler to implement, the sample-and-hold circuit has substantially better performance and runs in substantially less time. In addition, the wave-controlled RIS is able to generate strong beams and deep nulls in desired directions. This is in contrast with the case of arbitrary control of each varactor element and idealized RIS models.

We present a new way of producing a channel chart for cellular wireless communications in polar coordinates. We estimate the angle of arrival $\theta$ and the distance between the base station and the user equipment $\rho$ using the MUSIC algorithm and inverse of the root sum squares of channel coefficients (ISQ) or linear regression (LR). We compare this method with the channel charting algorithms principal component analysis (PCA), Samson’s method (SM), and autoencoder (AE). We show that ISQ and LR outperform all three in both performance and complexity. The performance of LR and ISQ are close, with ISQ having less complexity.

Deep learning (DL) finds rich applications in the wireless domain to improve spectrum awareness. Typically, DL models are either randomly initialized following a statistical distribution or pretrained on tasks from other domains in the form of transfer learning without accounting for the unique characteristics of wireless signals. Self-supervised learning (SSL) enables the learning of useful representations from Radio Frequency (RF) signals themselves even when only limited training data samples with labels are available. We present a self-supervised RF signal representation learning method and apply it to the automatic modulation recognition (AMR) task by specifically formulating a set of transformations to capture the wireless signal characteristics. We show that the sample efficiency (the number of labeled samples needed to achieve a certain performance) of AMR can be significantly increased (almost an order of magnitude) by learning signal representations with SSL. This translates to substantial time and cost savings. Furthermore, SSL increases the model accuracy compared to the state-of-the-art DL methods and maintains high accuracy when limited training data is available.

The problem of optimizing discrete phases in a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) to maximize the received power at a user equipment is addressed. Comments on [1] are provided. Updated necessary and sufficient conditions for its Lemma 1 are given. Consequently, an updated Algorithm 1 is provided with full specification. Simulation results with improved performance over the implementation of Algorithm 1 are provided. New versions of the algorithm are given that are proven to achieve convergence in N or fewer steps, where N is the number of the elements in the reconfigurable intelligent surface. This is in contrast with KN or 2N number of steps on the average specified for Algorithm 1 in [1], where K is the number of discrete phases. As a result, for a discrete-phase RIS, the techniques presented here achieve the optimum received power in the smallest number of steps published in the literature.

This paper discusses a special kind of a simple yet possibly powerful algorithm, called single-kernel Gradraker (SKG), which is an adaptive learning method predicting unknown nodal values in a network using known nodal values and the network structure. We aim to find out how to configure the special kind of the model in applying the algorithm. To be more specific, we focus on SKG with a Gaussian kernel and specify how to find a suitable variance for the kernel. To do so, we introduce two variables with which we are able to set up requirements on the variance of the Gaussian kernel to achieve (near-) optimal performance and can better understand how SKG works. Our contribution is that we introduce two variables as analysis tools, illustrate how predictions will be affected under different Gaussian kernels, and provide an algorithm finding a suitable Gaussian kernel for SKG with knowledge about the training network. Simulation results on real datasets are provided.

Generative Adversarial Networks (GANs) are Machine Learning (ML) algorithms that have the ability to address competitive resource allocation problems together with detection and mitigation of anomalous behavior. In this paper, we investigate their use in next-generation (NextG) communications within the context of cognitive networks to address i) spectrum sharing, ii) detecting anomalies, and iii) mitigating security attacks. GANs have the following advantages. First, they can learn and synthesize field data, which can be costly, time consuming, and nonrepeatable. Second, they enable pre-training classifiers by using semi-supervised data. Third, they facilitate increased resolution. Fourth, they enable the recovery of corrupted bits in the spectrum. The paper provides the basics of GANs, a comparative discussion on different kinds of GANs, performance measures for GANs in computer vision and image processing as well as wireless applications, a number of datasets for wireless applications, performance measures for general classifiers, a survey of the literature on GANs for i)–iii) above, and future research directions. As a use case of GAN for NextG communications, we show that a GAN can be effectively applied for anomaly detection in signal classification (e.g., user authentication) outperforming another state-of-the-art ML technique, an autoencoder.

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RISs) are programmable metasurfaces that can adaptively steer received electromagnetic energy in desired directions by employing controllable phase shifting cells. Among other uses, an RIS can modify the propagation environment in order to provide wireless access to user locations that are not otherwise reachable by a base station. Alternatively, an RIS can steer the waves away from particular locations in space, to eliminate interference and allow for co-existence of the wireless network with other types of fixed wireless services (e.g., radars, unlicensed radio bands, and so on). The novel approach in this work is a wave-controlled architecture that properly accounts for the maximum possible change in the local reflection phase that can be achieved by adjacent RIS elements. It obviates the need for dense wiring and signal paths that would be required for individual control of every RIS element, and thus offers a substantial reduction in the required hardware. We specify this wave-controlled RIS architecture in detail and discuss signal processing and machine learning methods that exploit it in both point-to-point and multi-cell MIMO systems. Such implementations can lead to a dramatic improvement in next-generation wireless, radar, and navigation systems where RIS finds wide applications. They have the potential to improve the efficiency of spectrum utilization and coexistence by orders of magnitude.

We analyze the diversity gain for a distributed antenna subarray employing orthogonal frequencydivision multiplexing (OFDM) in millimeter-wave (mm-Wave) massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems. We show that the diversity gain depends on the number of transmitted data streams, the number of remote antenna units, and the number of propagation paths between RAUs. Furthermore, we show that by using bit-interleaved coded multiple beamforming (BICMB), one can achieve the maximum diversity gain in a distributed antenna subarray system. The assumption in both scenarios is that the number of the antennas at the transmitter and the receiver are large enough and channel state information (CSI) is known at the transmitter and the receiver.

We present the analysis of a single-carrier massive MIMO system for the frequency selective Gaussian multi-user channel, in both uplink and downlink directions. We develop expressions for the achievable sum rate when there is spatial correlation among antennas at the base station. It is known that the channel matched filter precoder (CMFP) performs the best in a spatially uncorrelated downlink channel. However, we show that, in a spatially correlated downlink channel with two different correlation patterns and at high long-term average power, two other precoders have better performance. For the uplink channel, part of the equivalent noise in the channel goes away, and implementing two conventional equalizers leads to a better performance compared to the channel matched filter equalizer (CMFE). These results are verified for uniform linear and uniform planar arrays. In the latter, due to more correlation, the performance drop with a spatially correlated channel is larger, but the performance gain against channel matched filter precoder or equalizer is also bigger. In highly correlated cases, the performance can be a significant multiple of that of the channel matched filter precoder or equalizers.

This letter investigates bit-interleaved coded multiple beamforming (BICMB) with perfect coding in millimeter-wave (mm-wave) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems to achieve the maximum diversity gain. Using perfect coding with BICMB enables us to do this. We show that by using BICMB and perfect coding, the diversity gain becomes independent of the number of transmitted data streams and the number of antennas in each remote antenna unit (RAU) at the transmitter and the receiver. The assumption is that the perfect channel state information (CSI) is known at both the transmitter and the receiver. With the assumption of the perfect CSI at the transmitter and the receiver, simulation results show that the use of BICMB with perfect coding results in the diversity gain values predicted by the analysis.