Algorithm-Unrolling-Based Distributed Optimization for RIS-Assisted Cell-Free Networks

The user-centric cell-free network has emerged as an appealing technology to improve the wireless communication’s capacity of the Internet of Things (IoT) networks thanks to its ability to eliminate intercell interference effectively. However, the cell-free network inevitably brings in higher hardware cost and backhaul overhead as a larger number of base stations (BSs) are deployed. Additionally, severe channel fading in high-frequency bands constitutes another crucial issue that limits the practical application of the cell-free network. In order to address the above challenges, we amalgamate the cell-free system with another emerging technology, namely reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), which can provide high spectrum and energy efficiency with low hardware cost by reshaping the wireless propagation environment intelligently. To this end, we formulate a weighted sum-rate (WSR) maximization problem for RIS-assisted cell-free systems by jointly optimizing the BS precoding matrix and the RIS reflection coefficient vector. Subsequently, we transform the complicated WSR problem to a tractable optimization problem and propose a distributed cooperative alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMMs) to fully utilize parallel computing resources. Inspired by the model-based algorithm unrolling concept, we unroll our solver to a learning-based deep distributed ADMM (D2-ADMM) network framework. To improve the efficiency of the D2-ADMM in distributed BSs, we develop a monodirectional information exchange strategy with a small signaling overhead. In addition to benefiting from domain knowledge, D2-ADMM adaptively learns hyperparameters and nonconvex solvers of the intractable RIS design problem through data-driven end-to-end training. Finally, numerical results demonstrate that the proposed D2-ADMM achieves around 210% improvement in capacity compared with the distributed noncooperative algorithm and almost 96% compared with the centralized algorithm.

I. Introduction

Next-generation wireless communication systems are expected to meet an even greater demand for higher capacity, denser connectivity, and broader coverage with the advent of the Internet of Things (IoT) network [1], [2], [3], [4]. The conventional IoT network relies on cellular topology where effective communication paradigms, such as small-cell network and cellular massive multiple-input–multiple-output (MIMO) are developed based on cell-centric principles [5], [6]. Specifically, a single base station (BS) serves all users in the same cell while appropriate resource reuse policies are adopted among different cells. As a result, users at the cell edge are more likely to be disturbed by the uplink/downlink signals from other adjacent cells, resulting in the common issue of intercell interference [7].