Over-the-air computation (AirComp) is a known technique in which wireless devices transmit values by analog amplitude modulation so that a function of these values is computed over the communication channel at a common receiver. The physical reason is the superposition properties of the electromagnetic waves, which naturally return sums of analog values. Consequently, the applications of AirComp are almost entirely restricted to analog communication systems. However, the use of digital communications for over-the-air computations would have several benefits, such as error correction, synchronization, acquisition of channel state information, and easier adoption by current digital communication systems. Nevertheless, a common belief is that digital modulations are generally unfeasible for computation tasks because the overlapping of digitally modulated signals returns signals that seem to be meaningless for these tasks. This paper breaks through such a belief and proposes a fundamentally new computing method, named ChannelComp, for performing over-the-air computations by any digital modulation. In particular, we propose digital modulation formats that allow us to compute a wider class of functions than AirComp can compute, and we propose a feasibility optimization problem that ascertains the optimal digital modulation for computing functions over-the-air. The simulation results verify the superior performance of ChannelComp in comparison to AirComp, particularly for the product functions, with around 10 dB improvement of the computation error.

翻译：空中计算（AirComp）是一种已知技术，其中无线设备通过模拟幅度调制传输数值，从而在公共接收端通过通信信道计算这些数值的函数。其物理原理在于电磁波的叠加特性，该特性自然返回模拟数值的总和。因此，AirComp的应用几乎完全局限于模拟通信系统。然而，将数字通信用于空中计算将带来诸多优势，例如纠错、同步、信道状态信息获取以及更易于被当前数字通信系统采纳。尽管如此，普遍观点认为数字调制通常不适用于计算任务，因为数字调制信号的重叠返回的信号似乎对这些任务毫无意义。本文突破了这一观念，提出了一种名为ChannelComp的全新计算方法，该方法通过任意数字调制实现空中计算。具体而言，我们提出了允许计算比AirComp更广泛函数类别的数字调制格式，并提出了一个可行性优化问题，以确定用于空中函数计算的最优数字调制。仿真结果验证了ChannelComp相比AirComp的卓越性能，特别是在乘积函数方面，计算误差改善了约10 dB。