English

A Grant-free Coded Random Access Scheme for Near-field Communications

Signal Processing 2025-08-22 v1

Abstract

The industrial Internet of things (IIoT) is revolutionizing industrial processes by facilitating massive machine-type communications among countless interconnected devices. To efficiently handle the resulting large-scale and sporadic traffic, grant-free random access protocols-especially coded random access (CRA)-have emerged as scalable and reliable solutions. At the same time, advancements in wireless hardware, including extremely large-scale MIMO arrays and high-frequency communication (e.g., mmWave, Terahertz), are pushing network operations into the near-field propagation regime, allowing for dense connectivity and enhanced spatial multiplexing. This paper proposes an innovative approach that combines near-field spatial multiplexing with the interference mitigation capabilities of CRA, utilizing an extremely large aperture array at the access point. This integration improves reliability and reduces access latency, offering a robust framework for IIoT connectivity in next-generation 6G networks.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.2508.15673,
  title  = {A Grant-free Coded Random Access Scheme for Near-field Communications},
  author = {Enrico Testi and Giulia Torcolacci and Nicolò Decarli and Davide Dardari and Enrico Paolini},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2508.15673},
  year   = {2025}
}
R2 v1 2026-07-01T05:00:22.753Z