Two-Timescale Design for Active STAR-RIS Aided Massive MIMO Systems

Simultaneously transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS) is a promising implementation of RIS-assisted systems that enables full-space coverage. However, STAR-RIS as well as conventional RIS suffer from the double-fading effect. Thus, in this paper, we propose the marriage of active RIS and STAR-RIS, denoted as ASTARS for massive multiple-input multiple-output (mMIMO) systems, and we focus on the energy splitting (ES) and mode switching (MS) protocols. Compared to prior literature, we consider the impact of correlated fading, and we rely our analysis on the two timescale protocol, being dependent on statistical channel state information (CSI). On this ground, we propose a channel estimation method for ASTARS with reduced overhead that accounts for its architecture. Next, we derive a closed-form expression for the achievable sum-rate for both types of users in the transmission and reflection regions in a unified approach with significant practical advantages such as reduced complexity and overhead, which result in a lower number of required iterations for convergence compared to an alternating optimization (AO) approach. Notably, we maximize simultaneously the amplitudes, the phase shifts, and the active amplifying coefficients of the ASTARS by applying the projected gradient ascent method (PGAM). Remarkably, the proposed optimization can be executed at every several coherence intervals that reduces the processing burden considerably. Simulations corroborate the analytical results, provide insight into the effects of fundamental variables on the sum achievable SE, and present the superiority of ASTARS compared to passive STAR-RIS for a practical number of surface elements.