Robust Joint Beamforming and Configuration Design in FARIS-Aided Systems

Abstract

In this paper, we propose a robust transmission design for multi-user systems assisted by a fluid active reconfigurable intelligent surface (FARIS), which enables both active reflection and dynamic port selection and thereby offers enhanced flexibility, under imperfect channel state information (CSI). We formulate a robust minimum sum-rate maximization problem by jointly optimizing the base station beamformer, the utilized FARIS coefficients, and the active element selection, while explicitly accounting for CSI errors and practical power constraints. The resulting problem is inherently nonconvex due to the coupled optimization variables and discrete port-selection structure. To tackle this challenge, we first reformulate the original problem via a weighted minimum mean square error (WMMSE) approach and then devise an alternating optimization (AO) framework, where each resulting subproblem admits efficient solutions and the overall algorithm converges to a stationary point. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed robust FARIS scheme consistently outperforms conventional designs, highlighting the effectiveness of jointly leveraging degree-of-freedom (DoF) enhancement and active signal amplification under CSI uncertainty.