Leveraging Secondary Reflections and Mitigating Interference in Multi-IRS/RIS Aided Wireless Network

Reconfigurable surfaces (RS) have recently emerged as an enabler for smart radio environments where they are used to actively tailor/control the radio propagation (e.g., to support users under adverse channel conditions). If multiple RSs are deployed (e.g., coated on various buildings) to support different groups of users, it is critical to jointly optimize the phase-shifts of all RSs to mitigate their interference as well as to leverage the secondary reflections amongst them. Motivated by the above, this paper considers the uplink transmissions of multiple users that are grouped and supported by multiple RSs to communicate with a multi-antenna base station (BS). We first formulate two optimization problems: the weighted sum-rate maximization and the minimum achievable rate (from all users) maximization. Unlike existing works that considered single user or single RS or multiple RSs without inter-RS reflections, the considered problems require one to optimize the phase-shifts of all RSs' elements and all beamformers at the multi-antenna BS. The two problems turn out to be non-convex and thus are difficult to be solved in general. Moreover, the inter-RS reflections give rise to the coupling of the phase-shifts amongst RSs, making the optimization problems even more challenging to solve. To tackle them, we design alternating optimization algorithms that provably converge to locally optimal solutions. Simulation results reveal that by properly managing interference and leveraging the secondary reflections amongst RSs, there is a great benefit of deploying more RSs to support different groups of users and so as to achieve a higher rate per user. This gain is even more significant with a larger number of elements per RS. In contrast, without properly managing the secondary reflections, increasing the number of RSs can adversely impact the network throughput, especially for higher transmit power.<br>

Leveraging Secondary Reflections and Mitigating Interference in Multi-IRS/RIS Aided Wireless Network

Reconfigurable surfaces (RS) have recently emerged as an enabler for smart radio environments where they are used to actively tailor/control the radio propagation (e.g., to support users under adverse channel conditions). If multiple RSs are deployed (e.g., coated on various buildings) to support different groups of users, it is critical to jointly optimize the phase-shifts of all RSs to mitigate their interference as well as to leverage the secondary reflections amongst them. Motivated by the above, this paper considers the uplink transmissions of multiple users that are grouped and supported by multiple RSs to communicate with a multi-antenna base station (BS). We first formulate two optimization problems: the weighted sum-rate maximization and the minimum achievable rate (from all users) maximization. Unlike existing works that considered single user or single RS or multiple RSs without inter-RS reflections, the considered problems require one to optimize the phase-shifts of all RSs' elements and all beamformers at the multi-antenna BS. The two problems turn out to be non-convex and thus are difficult to be solved in general. Moreover, the inter-RS reflections give rise to the coupling of the phase-shifts amongst RSs, making the optimization problems even more challenging to solve. To tackle them, we design alternating optimization algorithms that provably converge to locally optimal solutions. Simulation results reveal that by properly managing interference and leveraging the secondary reflections amongst RSs, there is a great benefit of deploying more RSs to support different groups of users and so as to achieve a higher rate per user. This gain is even more significant with a larger number of elements per RS. In contrast, without properly managing the secondary reflections, increasing the number of RSs can adversely impact the network throughput, especially for higher transmit power.<br>

Context-Aware Music Recommender Systems for Groups: A Comparative Study

Nowadays, recommender systems are present in multiple application domains, such as e-commerce, digital libraries, music streaming services, etc. In the music domain, these systems are especially useful, since users often like to listen to new songs and discover new bands. At the same time, group music consumption has proliferated in this domain, not just physically, as in the past, but virtually in rooms or messaging groups created for specific purposes, such as studying, training, or meeting friends. Single-user recommender systems are no longer valid in this situation, and group recommender systems are needed to recommend music to groups of users, taking into account their individual preferences and the context of the group (when listening to music). In this paper, a group recommender system in the music domain is proposed, and an extensive comparative study is conducted, involving different collaborative filtering algorithms and aggregation methods.

An Architecture for Collaborative Terrain Sketching with Mobile Devices

3D terrains used in digital animations and videogames are typically created by several collaborators with a single-user application, which constrains them to update the shared terrain from their PCs, using a turn-taking strategy. Moreover, collaborators have to visualize the terrain through 2D views, confusing novice users when conceiving its shape in 3D. In this article, we describe an architecture for collaborative applications, which allow co-located users to sketch a terrain using their mobile devices concurrently. Two interaction modes are supplied: the standard one and an augmented reality-based mode, which helps collaborators understand the 3D terrain shape. Using the painting with brushesparadigm, users can modify the terrain while visualizing its shape evolution through the camera of their devices. Work coordination is promoted by enriching the 3D space with each collaborator’s avatar, which provides awareness information about identity, location, and current action. We implemented a collaborative application from this architecture that was tested by groups of users, who assessed its hedonic and pragmatic qualities in both interaction modes and compared them with the qualities of a similar Web terrain editor. The results showed that the augmented reality mode of our prototype was considered more attractive and usable by the participants.