Hybrid Quantum-Classical Detection for RIS-Assisted SC-FDE via Grover Adaptive Search

TL;DR

This paper proposes a hybrid quantum-classical detection method for RIS-assisted 6G communications, reformulating ML detection as a QUBO problem solved by Grover adaptive search, demonstrating near-optimal performance with quantum speedup and robustness under noise.

Contribution

It introduces a novel quantum-enhanced detection framework for RIS-assisted SC-FDE, combining MMSE initialization with Grover search to achieve scalable, low-complexity near-ML detection.

Findings

Achieves near-optimal detection performance with Grover's quadratic speedup.

Demonstrates robustness of the quantum detector under realistic noise conditions.

Provides a detailed analysis of quantum circuit complexity and feasibility for 6G applications.

Abstract

Wideband and low-latency requirements in sixth-generation (6G) networks demand detectors that approach maximum-likelihood (ML) performance without incurring exponential complexity. This work develops a hybrid quantum-classical detection framework for reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted single-carrier (SC) frequency-domain equalization (FDE) over frequency-selective channels. The ML detection objective is reformulated as a quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problem and solved via Grover adaptive search (GAS). To accelerate convergence, we introduce a frequency-domain MMSE threshold that exploits the circulant structure of SC-FDE channels, yielding low-complexity initialization. The framework is evaluated across varying channel lengths and RIS sizes, confirming robustness and scalability. In addition, GAS requirements are quantified through register widths and gate counts, and its query complexity is analyzed to characterize the algorithm's cost for block transmission in frequency-selective channels. Quantum circuit simulations are conducted in Qiskit under both ideal and noisy conditions. In the ideal case, the detector achieves near-optimal performance while benefiting from Grover's quadratic speedup, reducing the search cost from from O(M^N) exhaustive evaluations to O(SQRT(M^N)) oracle queries. Under noise, the shallow depth of the GAS circuits, aided by MMSE initialization, makes depolarizing errors negligible, while readout errors introduce moderate degradation yet still preserve performance close to the MMSE baseline. These results establish the feasibility of quantum-enhanced detection for RIS-assisted broadband communications, highlighting both algorithmic scalability and practical robustness for 6G networks.