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Cited by 175Advanced Wireless Communication TechnologiesAdvanced Antenna and Metasurface TechnologiesAdvanced MIMO Systems Optimization

Stacked Intelligent Metasurfaces for Holographic MIMO-Aided Cell-Free Networks

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Li, Qingchao, El-Hajjar, Mohammed, Xu, Chao, An, Jiancheng, Yuen, Chau, Hanzo, Lajos·2024·IEEE Transactions on Communications
DOI 10.1109/tcomm.2024.3403499
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Abstract

Large-scale multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO) systems are capable of achieving high date rate. However, given the high hardware cost and excessive power consumption of massive MIMO systems, as a remedy, intelligent metasurfaces have been designed for efficient holographic MIMO (HMIMO) systems. In this paper, we propose a HMIMO architecture based on stacked intelligent metasurfaces (SIM) for the uplink of cell-free systems, where the SIM is employed at the access points (APs) for improving the spectral- and energy-efficiency. Specifically, we conceive distributed beamforming for SIM-assisted cell-free networks, where both the SIM coefficients and the local receiver combiner vectors of each AP are optimized based on the local channel state information (CSI) for the local detection of each user equipment (UE) information. Afterward, the central processing unit (CPU) fuses the local detections gleaned from all APs to detect the aggregate multi-user signal. Specifically, to design the SIM coefficients and the combining vectors of the APs, a low-complexity layer-by-layer iterative optimization algorithm is proposed for maximizing the equivalent gain of the channel spanning from the UEs to the APs. At the CPU, the weight vector used for combining the local detections from all APs is designed based on the minimum mean square error (MMSE) criterion, where the hardware impairments (HWIs) are also taken into consideration based on their statistics. The simulation results show that the SIM-based HMIMO outperforms the conventional single-layer HMIMO in terms of the achievable rate. We demonstrate that both the HWI of the radio frequency (RF) chains at the APs and the UEs limit the achievable rate in the high signal-to-noise-ratio (SNR) region.

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  • Shi et al. [101], [111] derived a closed-form expression for the spectrum efficiency of a SIM-enhanced CF massive MIMO uplink system.

    “Additionally, Shi et al. [101], [111] derived a closed-form expression for the spectrum efficiency of a SIMenhanced CF massive MIMO uplink system, based on which a wave-domain beamforming scheme and a max-min power control algorithm were designed based on the statistical CSI.”

    From Emerging Technologies in Intelligent Metasurfaces: Shaping the Future of Wireless Communications (2026) · cites this paper as [101]

    Section IV (page unavailable) gives an achievable-rate expression for a SIM-aided cell-free uplink, and the beamforming-design section describes optimizing the SIM and receiver combiners. However, this paper is by Li et al., not Shi et al.; its described design uses local CSI and iterative optimization, not the claimed statistical-CSI wave-domain beamforming and max-min power-control algorithm. The cited copy therefore does not substantiate the specific derivation and design attributed to it. (LLM, conf=0.84)

    Experimental — accuracy not yet measured

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Cited by

Sorted by citations

Authors
Li, Q., El-Hajjar, M., Xu, C., An, J., Yuen, C., & Hanzo, L.
Affiliations
  • University of Southampton (GB)
  • School of Electronics and Computer Science, University of Southampton, Southampton, U.K.
  • Nanyang Technological University (SG)
ORCID
Venue
IEEE Transactions on Communications
Publisher
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE)
Published
2024-11
Volume
72
Issue
11
Pages
7139-7151
ISSN
  • 0090-6778 (ISSN-L)
  • 1558-0857
DOI
10.1109/tcomm.2024.3403499
OpenAlex
W4398151367
Cited by
175
References
2
Citations by year
2026: 90 · 2025: 79 · 2024: 6
FWCI
18.15
Type
journal article
Language
en
Open access
Licence
Locations
  • IEEE Transactions on Communications (publishedVersion)
  • ePrints Soton (University of Southampton) (acceptedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (submittedVersion, cc-by)
  • DR-NTU (Nanyang Technological University) (submittedVersion)
  • arXiv (Cornell University) (cc-by)
Funders
  • Ministry of Education, Singapore, under its Ministry of Education (MOE) Tier 2 (MOE-T2EP50220-0019)
  • Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council projects (EP/W016605/1, EP/X01228X/1, EP/Y026721/1, EP/W032635/1)
  • European Research Council’s Advanced Fellow Grant QuantCom (789028)
Topics
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Advanced Wireless Communication Technologies
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Aerospace Engineering › Advanced Antenna and Metasurface Technologies
  • Physical Sciences › Engineering › Electrical and Electronic Engineering › Advanced MIMO Systems Optimization
Keywords
stacked intelligent metasurfaces, holographic MIMO, cell-free networks, distributed beamforming, uplink, MMSE combining, hardware impairments, achievable rate, energy efficiency, spectral efficiency, iterative optimization algorithm, local channel state information

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