Adversarial bandit approach for RIS-aided OFDM communication

To assist sixth-generation wireless systems in the management of a wide variety of services, ranging from mission-critical services to safety-critical tasks, key physical layer technologies such as reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs) are proposed. Even though RISs are already used in various scenarios to enable the implementation of smart radio environments, they still face challenges with regard to real-time operation. Specifically, high dimensional fully passive RISs typically need costly system overhead for channel estimation. This paper, however, investigates a semi-passive RIS that requires a very low number of active elements, wherein only two pilots are required per channel coherence time. While in its infant stage, the application of deep learning (DL) tools shows promise in enabling feasible solutions. We propose two low-training overhead and energy-efficient adversarial bandit-based schemes with outstanding performance gains when compared to DL-based reflection beamforming reference methods. The resulting deep learning models are discussed using state-of-the-art model quality prediction trends.