Dr Ahmed Elzanaty

The deployment of 5G networks is sometimes questioned due to the impact of ElectroMagnetic Field (EMF) generated by Radio Base Station (RBS) on users. The goal of this work is to analyze such issue from a novel perspective, by comparing RBS EMF against exposure generated by 5G smartphones in commercial deployments. The measurement of exposure from 5G is hampered by several implementation aspects, such as dual connectivity between 4G and 5G, spectrum fragmentation, and carrier aggregation. To face such issues, we deploy a novel framework, called 5G-EA , tailored to the assessment of smartphone and RBS exposure through an innovative measurement algorithm, able to remotely control a programmable spectrum analyzer. Results, obtained in both outdoor and indoor locations, reveal that smartphone exposure (upon generation of uplink traffic) dominates over the RBS one. Moreover, Line-of-Sight locations experience a reduction of around one order of magnitude on the overall exposure compared to Non-Line-of-Sight ones. In addition, 5G exposure always represents a small share (up to 38%) compared to the total one radiated by the smartphone. This work was supported by the PLAN-EMF Project (KAUST-CNIT) under Award OSR-2020-CRG9-4377.

In this letter, we investigate the signal-to-interference-plus-noise-ratio (SINR) maximization problem in a multi-user massive multiple-input-multiple-output (massive MIMO) system enabled with multiple reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs). We examine two zero-forcing (ZF) beamforming approaches for interference management namely BS-UE-ZF and BS-RIS-ZF that enforce the interference to zero at the users (UEs) and the RISs, respectively. Then, for each case, we resolve the SINR maximization problem to find the optimal phase shifts of the elements of the RISs. Also, we evaluate the asymptotic expressions for the optimal phase shifts and the maximum SINRs when the number of the base station (BS) antennas tends to infinity. We show that if the channels of the RIS elements are independent and the number of the BS antennas tends to infinity, random phase shifts achieve the maximum SINR using the BS-UE-ZF beamforming approach. The simulation results illustrate that by employing the BS-RIS-ZF beamforming approach, the asymptotic expressions of the phase shifts and maximum SINRs achieve the rate obtained by the optimal phase shifts even for a small number of the BS antennas.

The fifth-generation cellular network requires dense installation of radio base stations (BS) to support the ever-increasing demands of high throughput and coverage. The ongoing deployment has triggered some health concerns among the community. To address this uncertainty, we propose an EMF-aware probabilistic shaping design for hardware-distorted communication systems. The proposed scheme aims to minimize human exposure to radio frequency (RF) radiations while achieving the target throughput using probabilistic shaping. The joint optimization of the transmit power and nonuniform symbol probabilities is a non–convex optimization problem. Therefore, we employ alternate optimization and successive convex approximation to solve the subsequent problems. Our findings reveal a significant reduction in the users' exposure to EMF while achieving the requisite quality of service with the help of probabilistic shaping in a hardware-distorted communication system.

Installing more base stations (BSs) into the existing cellular infrastructure is an essential way to provide greater network capacity and higher data rates in the 5th-generation cellular networks (5G). However, a non-negligible amount of the population is concerned that such network densification will generate a notable increase in exposure to electric and magnetic fields (EMF) over the territory. In this paper, we analyze the downlink, uplink, and joint downlink&uplink exposure induced by the radiation from BSs and personal user equipment (UE), respectively, in terms of the received power density and exposure index. In our analysis, we consider the EMF restrictions set by the regulatory authorities such as the minimum distance between restricted areas (e.g., schools and hospitals) and BSs, and the maximum permitted exposure. Exploiting tools from stochastic geometry, mathematical expressions for the coverage probability and statistical EMF exposure are derived and validated. Tuning the system parameters such as the BS density and the minimum distance from a BS to restricted areas, we show a trade-off between reducing the population’s exposure to EMF and enhancing the network coverage performance. Then, we formulate optimization problems to maximize the performance of the EMF-aware cellular network while ensuring that the EMF exposure complies with the standard regulation limits with high probability. For instance, the exposure from BSs is two orders of magnitude less than the maximum permissible level when the density of BSs is less than 20 BSs/km^2.

In this chapter, we consider the design of localization algorithms for reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided models under different practical channel model settings. More specifically, we utilize the compressed sensing (CS) to localize user equipment (UE) direction and position in both far-field and near-field multipath environments respectively; we extend our work by performing a super-resolution localization using the atomic norm minimization for a user located in a single and path near-field channel. On the other hand, we propose RIS phase design that aims to minimize the localization error by maximizing the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR).

Smart radio environments aided by reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) have attracted much research attention recently. We propose a joint optimization strategy for beamforming (BF), RIS phases, and power allocation to maximize the minimum signal-to-noise ratio (SINR) of an uplink RIS-aided communication system. The users are subject to constraints on their transmit power. We derive a closed-form expression for the BF vectors and a geometric programming-based solution for power allocation. We propose two solutions for optimizing the phase shifts at the RIS, one based on the matrix lifting method and one using an approximation for the minimum function. We also propose a heuristic algorithm for optimizing quantized phase shift values. The proposed algorithms are of practical interest for systems with constraints on the maximum allowable electromagnetic field exposure. For instance, considering 16-element RIS, 4-antenna base station, and 2 users, numerical results show that the proposed algorithm achieves a gain close to 300% in terms of minimum SINR compared to a scheme with random RIS phases.

Over the past few years, the prevalence of wireless devices has become one of the essential sources of electromagnetic (EM) radiation to the public. Facing with the swift development of wireless communications, people are skeptical about the risks of long-term exposure to EM radiation. As EM exposure is required to be restricted at user terminals, it is inefficient to blindly decrease the transmit power, which leads to limited spectral efficiency and energy efficiency (EE). Recently, rate-splitting multiple access (RSMA) has been proposed as an effective way to provide higher wireless transmission performance, which is a promising technology for future wireless communications. To this end, we propose using RSMA to increase the EE of massive MIMO uplink while limiting the EM exposure of users. In particularly, we investigate the optimization of the transmit covariance matrices and decoding order using statistical channel state information (CSI). The problem is formulated as non-convex mixed integer program, which is in general difficult to handle. We first propose a modified water-filling scheme to obtain the transmit covariance matrices with fixed decoding order. Then, a greedy approach is proposed to obtain the decoding permutation. Numerical results verify the effectiveness of the proposed EM exposure-aware EE maximization scheme for uplink RSMA.

Environmental monitoring of delicate ecosystems or pristine sites is critical to their preservation. The communication infrastructure for such monitoring should have as little impact on the natural ecosystem as possible. Because of their wide range capabilities and independence from heavy infrastructure, low-power wide area network protocols have recently been used in remote monitoring. In this regard, we propose a mobile vehicle-mounted gateway architecture for IoT data collection in communication-network-free areas. The limits of reliable communication are investigated in terms of gateway speed, throughput, and energy consumption. We investigate the performance of various gateway arrival scenarios, focusing on the trade-off between freshness of data, data collection rate, and end-node power consumption. Then we validate our findings using both real-world experiments and simulations. In addition, we present a case study exploiting the proposed architecture to provide coverage for Wadi El-Gemal national park in Egypt. The results show that reliable communication is achieved over all spreading factors (SFs) for gateway speeds up to 150 km/h with negligible performance degradation at SFs=11,12 at speeds more than 100 km/h. The synchronized transmission model ensures the best performance in terms of throughput and power consumption at the expense of the freshness of data. Nonsynchronized transmission allows time-flexible data collection at the expense of increased power consumption. The same throughput as semisynchronized transmission is achieved using four gateways at only five times the energy consumption, while a single gateway requires seventeen times the amount of energy. Furthermore, increasing the number of gateways to ten increases the throughput to the level achieved by the synchronized scenario while consuming eight times the energy.

—Recent advances in Big Data Analytics are primarily driven by innovations in Artificial Intelligence and Machine Learning Methods. Due to the richness of data sources at the edge and with the increasing privacy concerns, Distributed privacy-preserving machine learning (ML) methods are increasingly becoming the norm for training ML models on federated big data. In a popular approach known as Federated learning (FL), service providers leverage end-user data to train ML models to improve services such as text auto-completion, virtual keyboards, and item recommendations. FL is expected to grow in importance with the increasing focus on big data, privacy and 5G/6G technologies. However, FL faces significant challenges such as heterogeneity, communication overheads, and privacy preservation. In practice, training models via FL is time-intensive and worse its dependent on client participation who may not always be available to join the training. Our empirical analysis shows that client availability can significantly impact the model quality which motivates the design of an availability-aware selection scheme. We propose A2FL to mitigate the quality degradation caused by the under-representation of the global client population by prioritizing the least available clients. Our results show that, compared to state-of-the-art methods, A2FL can improve the client diversity during the training and hence boost the trained model quality.

Next-generation cellular networks could witness the creation of smart radio environments (SREs), where walls and objects will be coated with reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) to strengthen the communication and localization performance. In fact, RISs have been recently introduced not only to overcome communication blockages due to obstacles but also for high-precision localization of mobile users in GPS denied environments, e.g., indoors. Towards such a vision, this paper presents the localization performance limits for communication scenarios where a single next generation NodeB base station (gNB), equipped with multiple antennas, infers the position and the orientation of a user equipment (UE) in a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted smart radio environment (SRE). We consider a signal model that is valid also for near-field propagation conditions, as the usually adopted far-field assumption does not always hold, especially for large RISs. For the considered scenario, we derive the Cramér-Rao lower bound (CRLB) for assessing the ultimate localization and orientation performance of synchronous and asynchronous signalling schemes. In addition, we propose a closed-form RIS phase profile that well suits joint communication and localization, and we perform extensive numerical results to assess the performance of our scheme for various localization scenarios and for various RIS phase design. Numerical results show that the proposed scheme can achieve remarkable performance even in asynchronous signalling, and that the proposed phase design, based on signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), approaches the numerical optimal phase design that minimizes the CRLB.

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are expected to play a significant role in the next generation of wireless cellular technology. This paper proposes an uplink localization scheme using a single-snapshot solution for user equipment (UE) that is located in the near-field of the RIS. We propose utilizing the atomic norm minimization method to achieve super-resolution localization accuracy. We formulate an optimization problem to estimate the UE location parameters (i.e., angles and distances) by minimizing the atomic norm. Then, we propose to exploit strong duality to solve the atomic norm problem using the dual problem and semidefinite programming (SDP). The RIS is controlled and designed using estimated parameters to enhance the beamforming capabilities. Finally, we compare the localization performance of the proposed atomic norm minimization with compressed sensing (CS) in terms of localization error. The numerical results show a superior performance of the proposed atomic norm method over the CS where a sub-cm level of accuracy can be achieved under some of the system configuration conditions using the proposed atomic norm method.

Radio localization is applied in high-frequency (e.g., mmWave and THz) systems to support communication and provide location-based services without extra infrastructure. For solving localization problems, a simplified, stationary, narrowband far-field channel model is widely used due to its compact formulation. However, with increased array size in extra-large multiple-input-multiple-output (XL-MIMO) systems and increased bandwidth at upper mmWave bands, the effect of channel spatial non-stationarity (SNS), spherical wave model (SWM), and beam squint effect (BSE) cannot be ignored. In this case, localization performance will be affected when an inaccurate channel model deviates from the true model. In this work, we employ the misspecified Cramér-Rao lower bound to lower bound the localization error using a simplified mismatched model while the observed data is governed by a more complex true model. The simulation results show that among all the model impairments, the SNS has the least contribution, the SWM dominates when the distance is small compared to the array size, and the BSE has a more significant effect when the distance is much larger than the array size. Index Terms—5G/6G localization, spatial non-stationarity, spherical wave model, beam squint effect, MCRB.

The deployment of the 5th-generation cellular networks (5G) and beyond has triggered health concerns due to the electric and magnetic fields (EMF) exposure. In this letter, we propose a novel architecture to minimize the population exposure to EMF by considering a smart radio environment with a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS). Then, we optimize the RIS phases to minimize the exposure in terms of the exposure index (EI) while maintaining a minimum target quality of service. The proposed scheme achieves up to 20% reduction in EI compared to schemes without RISs.

Reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are considered among the key techniques to be adopted for sixth-generation cellular networks (6G) to enhance not only communications but also localization performance. In this regard, we propose a novel single-anchor localization algorithm for a state-of-the-art architecture where the position of the user equipment (UE) is to be estimated at the base station (BS) with the aid of a RIS. We consider a practical model that accounts for both near-field propagation and multipath environments. The proposed scheme relies on a compressed sensing (CS) technique tailored to address the issues associated with near-field localization and model mismatches. Also, the RIS phases are optimized to enhance the positioning performance, achieving more than one order of magnitude gain in the localization accuracy compared to RISs with non-optimized phases.

Visible light communication (VLC) is a promising technology for 6th-generation (6G) networks because of its attractive feature such as a wide unlicensed spectrum. In this paper, a novel adaptive coded spatial modulation scheme with probabilistic shaping (PS) is proposed to approach the capacity of the spatial modulation (SM) in VLC channels with intensity modulation and direct detection (IM/DD). In the proposed scheme, spatial and constellation symbols are probabilistically shaped depending on the user's location inside the room and the optical signal-to-noise ratio (OSNR). Moreover, we optimize the channel coding rate to maximize further the achievable rate of the proposed scheme for a given OSNR. Finally, we propose an algorithm to compute the capacity-achieving distribution of the proposed scheme with unipolar M-ary pulse amplitude modulation (PAM) signaling. The proposed scheme outperforms uniform and an orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) based scheme in terms of spectral efficiency (SE) and/or frame error rate (FER). For example, for 8-PAM signaling with N = 8 transmit antennas, the proposed scheme operates within 0.2 dB from the unipolar M-PAM SM VLC channel signaling capacity and outperforms the uniform and OFDM based schemes in terms of FER by at least 1.1 dB and 1.3 dB at a normalized data rate of 1.33 bits per channel use per sub-carrier (b/cu/sc), respectively.

—Internet of things (IoT) services have grown to become an integral part of our everyday lives. However, the gap in IoT connectivity between rural and urban areas is growing, leading to what is called the digital divide problem. In this regard, we propose an architecture for IoT data collection in rural areas via mobile fog nodes. We study the effect of gateway mobility in LoRaWAN on the network communication flow and transmission parameters. The limits for reliable communication at different moving speeds are analytically computed, then validated by both numerical simulations and real experiments. The numerical results show that it is beneficial to use spreading factors (SF) lower than 11 for vehicle speeds up to 150 km/hr, with SF7 being the optimum in synchronized transmission.