Artificial Intelligence for Physical-Layer Design of MIMO Communications with One-Bit ADCs

Wireless systems continue to go toward higher carrier frequencies, including terahertz bands, to take advantage of higher bandwidth channels. At the same time, antenna arrays remain important with continued increases in array elements. However, the power consumption of RF and digital circuits can increase proportionally to both the amount of signal bandwidth and the number of antennas. The use of one-bit analog-to-digital converters at the receiver is a cost- and power-efficient solution for wideband and/or massive antenna wireless systems. The nonlinearity of one-bit received signals brings challenges in physical-layer (PHY) design at the receiver. At the same time, the binary nature of these signals opens new opportunities for artificial intelligence (AI)-based PHY design. This article covers recent progress in incorporating AI into the design of classical PHY techniques and emerging studies on establishing AI-inspired frameworks that fundamentally replace classical model-driven techniques with data-driven AI techniques. It concludes with a discussion, including practical challenges and future research directions.