Beyond Massive MIMO: Living at the Interface of Electromagnetics and Information Theory

Project Information

BEATRICE

Grant agreement ID: 101001331

DOI

10.3030/101001331

EC signature date 18 December 2020

Start date 1 June 2021

End date 31 May 2027

Funded under

• EXCELLENT SCIENCE - European Research Council (ERC)

Total cost

€ 1 997 797,00

EU contribution

€ 1 997 797,00

Coordinated by

THE QUEEN'S UNIVERSITY OF BELFAST
United Kingdom

Periodic Reporting for period 3 - BEATRICE (Beyond Massive MIMO: Living at the Interface of Electromagnetics and Information Theory)

Reporting period: 2024-06-01 to 2025-11-30

Summary of the context and overall objectives of the project

Every generation of wireless technologies has a lifespan of 10 years from theoretical conception to commercial rollout. With the rollout of 5G around the globe currently under way, we have started looking into the development of 6G-enabling technologies. 6G is expected to be rolled out by 2030 and research is currently ramped up around the world. The main vision of this project is to amalgamate information theory and electromagnetics in order to develop 6G-enabling technologies.

Unfortunately, this is a very challenging exercise: information theory is based on probabilistic tools whilst electromagnetic theory encompasses Maxwell’s wave equations. BEATRICE aims to use these two theories in parallel in order to create new fundamental understanding, modulation techniques and physical prototypes. These findings will have far-reaching impact on not only cellular communications, but also, wireless power transfer, radar, and optical wireless communications. This will be achieved by innovating across some transformative concepts such as super-directivity and resonant evanescent wave coupling. The former refers to the ability of create strong oscillatory behaviour across adjacent antenna elements and synthesize super directive beams towards selected directions. The second concept is referring to the ability to transfer energy in the near field of an array or a metasurface with maximum efficiency.

The project has substantial societal impact as it help the people's connectivity, create new jobs in the ICT sector as the proposed prototypes will be commercialised. This will require expertise not only in the information theoretic domains but also in electronics, optical wireless communications, MMIC and VLSI design to name but a few. The concept of resonant evanescent wave coupling will create formidable opportunities in the recycling of radio waves, thereby contributing to the reduction of CO2 emissions from the ICT sector and reduced usage of batteries.

The specific project objectives are to:

O1) Redefine the information theoretic modelling of concurrent and future MaMi-based systems using knowledge of unique electromagnetic characteristics, thereby quantifying their realisable potential.
O2) Develop new topological designs and modulation techniques for robust communication by harnessing knowledge about the electromagnetic properties of the transceivers and the propagation medium.
O3) Leverage the world-class test and measurement facilities at the host institution (Queen's University Belfast), to design, fabricate and measure novel array topologies which will be able to support a plethora of future wireless applications

Work performed from the beginning of the project to the end of the period covered by the report and main results achieved so far

In the first reporting perdiod, we have mostly been focused on setting up the research team and identifying the research gaps. Nevertheless, we have managed to publish some 10 scientific papers on the following topics in the context of WP1: electromagnetic modeling of holographic MIMO, Communication and localization with extremely large linear distributed lens antenna arrays and Intelligent reflecting surface-aided wideband THz communications.

In the context of WP2, we have published papers in the context of: Modeling of intelligent reflecting surface-aided communications, near-field channel reconstruction for extremely large linear array systems to name but a few.

These results are squarely aligned with the project objectives and they are testament to the smooth execution of the project.

Progress beyond the state of the art and expected potential impact (including the socio-economic impact and the wider societal implications of the project so far)

Our preliminary results have succesfully outperformed the state of the art in the context of superdirective antenna arrays and RIS-aided communications ans power transfer. Our proposed superdirective antenna topology offers a 46% improvement in the energy efficiency compared to conventional linear arrays with half-wavelength spacings. This impressive improvement can be further leveraged by using parasitic antenna arrays - a topic that our fresh PhD student (Mrs Konstantinou) is currently working on.

In the context of RIS-aided communications and power transfer, our results in this paper:
Y. Lin, S. Jin, M. Matthaiou, and X. You, “Conformal IRS-empowered MIMO-OFDM: Channel estimation and environment mapping,” IEEE Transactions on Communications, vol. 70, no. 7, pp. 4884–4899, July 2022.

have shown that we can achieve 0.1degree-level resolution with a substantial reduction in the computational complexity compared to the state of the art.

In the following paper:
A. Almradi, M. A. B. Abbasi, M. Matthaiou, and V. F. Fusco, “On the spectral efficiency of orbital angular momentum with mode offset,” IEEE Transactions on Vehicular Technology, vol. 70, no.11 pp. 11748–11760, November 2021.

we presented, for the first time ever, 9 × 9MDM-OAM practical communication experiment for different OAM mode settings at a microwave frequency of 5.8 GHz to validate our theoretical analysis. The findings of these results align extremely well with the objectives of WP1 and WP3.

OAM antenna geometry

A proposed twin structure for intelligent metasurfaces