31. Analog Modulation and Over-the-Air Aggregation

A wave of digitalization is sweeping over the world, but not everything benefits from a transformation from analog to digital methods. In this episode, Emil Björnson and Erik G. Larsson discuss the fundamentals of analog modulation techniques to pinpoint their key advantages. Particular attention is given to how analog modulation enables over-the-air aggregation of data, which can be used for computations, efficient federated training of machine learning models, and distributed hypothesis testing. The conversation covers the need for coherent operation and power control and outlines the challenges that researchers are now facing when extending the methods to multi-antenna systems. Towards the end, the following paper is mentioned: “Optimal MIMO Combining for Blind Federated Edge Learning with Gradient Sparsification” (https://arxiv.org/pdf/2203.12957.pdf). Music: On the Verge by Joseph McDade. Visit Erik’s website https://liu.se/en/employee/erila39 and Emil’s website https://ebjornson.com/