论文标题
连接光束形成和天线选择的最佳解决方案：从分支到图形神经模仿学习
Optimal Solutions for Joint Beamforming and Antenna Selection: From Branch and Bound to Graph Neural Imitation Learning
论文作者
论文摘要
这项工作将重新审视关节波束成形（BF）和天线选择（AS）问题，以及其在不完美的通道状态信息（CSI）下的稳健光束成形（RBF）版本。由于各种原因，例如射频链（RF）链和节能/节省资源的考虑因素，出现了此类问题。关节（r）bf \＆作为问题是一个混合整数和非线性程序，因此发现{\ it最佳解决方案}通常是昂贵的，即使不是完全不可能。绝大多数先前的作品都使用诸如连续近似，贪婪的方法和受监督的机器学习等技术解决了这些问题 - 但是这些方法并不能确保解决方案的最佳性甚至可行性。这项工作的主要贡献是三倍。首先，提出了一个有效的{\ it分支和绑定}（b \＆b）解决感兴趣问题的框架。利用现有的BF和RBF求解器，这表明B \＆B框架保证了所考虑的问题的全球最优性。其次，为了加快潜在昂贵的B \＆B算法，提出了一种基于机器学习（ML）的方案，以帮助跳过B \＆B搜索树的中间状态。学习模型具有基于{\ it图形神经网络}（GNN）的设计，该设计对无线通信中常见的挑战具有弹性，即，问题大小（例如，用户数量）在培训和测试阶段中的变化。第三，提出了全面的性能特征，表明基于GNN的方法在合理的条件下保留了B \＆B的全球最佳性，其复杂性可降低。数值模拟还表明，基于ML的加速度通常可以相对于B \＆b实现速度的加速。
This work revisits the joint beamforming (BF) and antenna selection (AS) problem, as well as its robust beamforming (RBF) version under imperfect channel state information (CSI). Such problems arise due to various reasons, e.g., the costly nature of the radio frequency (RF) chains and energy/resource-saving considerations. The joint (R)BF\&AS problem is a mixed integer and nonlinear program, and thus finding {\it optimal solutions} is often costly, if not outright impossible. The vast majority of the prior works tackled these problems using techniques such as continuous approximations, greedy methods, and supervised machine learning -- yet these approaches do not ensure optimality or even feasibility of the solutions. The main contribution of this work is threefold. First, an effective {\it branch and bound} (B\&B) framework for solving the problems of interest is proposed. Leveraging existing BF and RBF solvers, it is shown that the B\&B framework guarantees global optimality of the considered problems. Second, to expedite the potentially costly B\&B algorithm, a machine learning (ML)-based scheme is proposed to help skip intermediate states of the B\&B search tree. The learning model features a {\it graph neural network} (GNN)-based design that is resilient to a commonly encountered challenge in wireless communications, namely, the change of problem size (e.g., the number of users) across the training and test stages. Third, comprehensive performance characterizations are presented, showing that the GNN-based method retains the global optimality of B\&B with provably reduced complexity, under reasonable conditions. Numerical simulations also show that the ML-based acceleration can often achieve an order-of-magnitude speedup relative to B\&B.
