Computing Functions Over-the-Air Using Digital Modulations
2023 (English)In: ICC 2023: IEEE International Conference on Communications: Sustainable Communications for Renaissance, Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. , 2023, Vol. 2023, p. 5780-5786Conference paper, Published paper (Refereed)
Abstract [en]
Over-the-air computation (AirComp) is a known technique in which wireless devices transmit values by analog amplitude modulation so that a function of these values is computed over the communication channel at a common receiver. The physical reason is the superposition properties of the electromagnetic waves, which naturally return sums of analog values. Consequently, the applications of AirComp are almost entirely restricted to analog communication systems. However, the use of digital communications for over-the-air computations would have several benefits, such as error correction, synchronization, acquisition of channel state information, and easier adoption by current digital communication systems. Nevertheless, a common belief is that digital modulations are generally unfeasible for computation tasks because the overlapping of digitally modulated signals returns signals that seem to be meaningless for these tasks. This paper breaks through such a belief and proposes a fundamentally new computing method, named ChannelComp, for performing over-the-air computations by any digital modulation. In particular, we propose digital modulation formats that allow us to compute a wider class of functions than AirComp can compute, and we propose a feasibility optimization problem that ascertains the optimal digital modulation for computing functions over-the-air. The simulation results verify the superior performance of ChannelComp in comparison to AirComp, particularly for the product functions, with around 10 dB improvement of the computation error.
Place, publisher, year, edition, pages
Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers Inc. , 2023. Vol. 2023, p. 5780-5786
Series
IEEE International Conference on Communications, ISSN 1550-3607 ; 2023
Keywords [en]
Digital communication, modulation, nomo-graphic functions, over-the-air computation, symmetric function
National Category
Communication Systems Telecommunications
Identifiers
URN: urn:nbn:se:kth:diva-340806DOI: 10.1109/ICC45041.2023.10279784ISI: 001094862605145Scopus ID: 2-s2.0-85178299399OAI: oai:DiVA.org:kth-340806DiVA, id: diva2:1819612
Conference
2023 IEEE International Conference on Communications, ICC 2023, Rome, Italy, May 28 2023 - Jun 1 2023
Note
Part of ISBN 9781538674628
QC 20231214
2023-12-142023-12-142024-03-12Bibliographically approved