# Stacked Intelligent Metasurface-Enhanced MIMO OFDM Wideband Communication Systems

arXiv: https://arxiv.org/abs/2503.00368 · HTML: https://mlsanity.com/paper/2503.00368/

## Key facts

- Cited by 1 papers in the map (data through 14 Oct 2026).
- First posted on arXiv 1 Mar 2025.

## Built on by (most cited first, 1 of 1)

- [Metasurfaces-Integrated Wireless Neural Networks for Lightweight Over-The-Air Edge Inference](https://mlsanity.com/paper/2602.19312/) (2026)

## Abstract (arXiv)

Multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems rely on digital or hybrid digital and analog designs for beamforming against frequency-selective fading, which suffer from high hardware complexity and energy consumption. To address this, this work introduces a fully-analog stacked intelligent metasurfaces (SIM) architecture that directly performs wave-domain beamforming, enabling diagonalization of the end-to-end channel matrix and inherently eliminating inter-antenna interference (IAI) for MIMO OFDM transmission. By leveraging cascaded programmable metasurface layers, the proposed system establishes multiple parallel subchannels, significantly improving multi-carrier transmission efficiency while reducing hardware complexity. To optimize the SIM phase shift matrices, a block coordinate descent and penalty convex-concave procedure (BCD-PCCP) algorithm is developed to iteratively minimize the channel fitting error across subcarriers. Simulation results validate the proposed approach, determining the maximum effective bandwidth and demonstrating substantial performance improvements. Moreover, for a MIMO OFDM system operating at 28 GHz with 16 subcarriers, the proposed SIM configuration method achieves over 300% enhancement in channel capacity compared to conventional SIM configuration that only accounts for the center frequency.