Parametric Channel Estimation and Design for Active-RIS-Assisted Communications

TL;DR

This paper introduces a parametric channel estimation method for active RIS-assisted wireless communications, reducing pilot overhead and improving spectral efficiency compared to passive RISs.

Contribution

It proposes an adaptive MLE-based channel estimation and configuration strategy tailored for active RISs, utilizing an orthogonal angle-pair codebook for enhanced performance.

Findings

Achieves near-optimal performance with minimal pilots.

Outperforms non-parametric methods in spectral efficiency.

Active RIS surpasses passive RIS in practical deployments.

Abstract

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) technology has emerged as a key enabler for future wireless communications. However, its potential is constrained by the difficulty of acquiring accurate user-to-RIS channel state information (CSI), due to the cascaded channel structure and the high pilot overhead of non-parametric methods. Unlike a passive RIS, where the reflected signal suffers from multiplicative path loss, an active RIS amplifies the signal, improving its practicality in real deployments. In this letter, we propose a parametric channel estimation method tailored for active RISs. The proposed approach integrates an active RIS model with an adaptive Maximum Likelihood Estimator (MLE) to recover the main channel parameters using a minimal number of pilots. To further enhance performance, an adaptive active RIS configuration strategy is employed, which refines the beam direction based on an initial user location estimate. Moreover, an orthogonal angle-pair codebook is used instead of the conventional Discrete Fourier Transform (DFT) codebook, significantly reducing the codebook size and ensuring reliable operation for both far-field and near-field users. Extensive simulations demonstrate that the proposed method achieves near-optimal performance with very few pilots compared to non-parametric approaches. Its performance is also benchmarked against that of a traditional passive RIS under the same total power budget to ensure fairness. Results show that active RIS yields higher spectral efficiency (SE) by eliminating the multiplicative fading inherent in passive RISs and allocating more resources to data transmission