RIS-empowered integrated location sensing and communication with superimposed pilots

In addition to enhancing wireless communication coverage quality, reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) technique can also assist in positioning. In this work, we consider RIS-assisted superimposed pilot and data transmission without the assumption availability of prior channel state information and position information of mobile user equipments (UEs). To tackle this challenge, we design a frame structure of transmission protocol composed of several location coherence intervals, each with pure-pilot and data-pilot transmission durations. The former is used to estimate UE locations, while the latter is time-slotted, duration of which does not exceed the channel coherence time, where the data and pilot signals are transmitted simultaneously. We conduct the Fisher Information matrix (FIM) analysis and derive Cram´er-Rao bound (CRB) for the position estimation error. The inverse fast Fourier transform (IFFT) is adopted to obtain the estimation results of UE positions, which are then exploited for channel estimation. Furthermore, we derive the closed-form lower bound of the ergodic achievable rate of superimposed pilot (SP) transmission, which is used to optimize the phase profile of the RIS to maximize the achievable sum rate using the genetic algorithm. Finally, numerical results validate the accuracy of the UE position estimation using the IFFT algorithm and the superiority of the proposed SP scheme by comparison with the regular pilot scheme.