Joint Activity Detection and Channel Estimation For Fluid Antenna System Exploiting Geographical and Angular Information

The fluid antenna system (FAS) refers to a family of reconfigurable antenna technologies that provide substantial spatial gains within a compact, predefined small space, thereby offering extensive degrees of freedom in the physical layer for future communication networks. The acquisition of channel state information (CSI) is critical, as it determines the placement of ports/antennas, which directly impacts FAS-based optimization. Although various channel estimation methods have been developed, significant flaws persist. For instance, the performance of greedy-based algorithms is heavily influenced by signal assumptions, and current model-free methods are infeasible due to prohibitively high computational complexity issue. Consequently, there is a pressing need for a well-balanced solution that exhibits flexibility, feasibility, and low complexity to support massive connectivity in FAS. In this work, we propose methods based on approximate message passing (AMP) integrated with adaptive expectation maximization (EM). The EM-AMP framework uniquely enables efficient large matrix computations with adaptive learning capabilities, independent of prior knowledge of the model or parameters within potential distributions, making it a robust candidate for FAS networks. We introduce two variants of the EM-AMP framework that leverage geographical and angular features in a FAS network. These proposed algorithms demonstrate improved estimation precision, fast convergence, and low computational complexity in large activity regions. Additionally, we analytically elucidate the reasons behind the inherent performance floor of greedy-based methods and highlight the critical role of angular information in algorithm design. Extensive numerical results validate the promising efficacy of the proposed algorithm designs and the derived analytical findings.