An official website of the United States government
The performance of cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO)-aided integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is investigated. Each transmit access point (AP) sends a superimposed ISAC waveform from which the users are able to decode data, while the reflected echos off a target are used at the receive APs to perform sensing functionalities. Each transmit AP adopts a local conjugate precoder, which is designed based on the locally acquired channel state information (CSI) via user pilots. This approach reduces the implementation complexity as it does not necessitate CSI exchanges. An efficient transmit power optimization is also proposed to construct the superimposed ISAC waveform. The performance is evaluated by deriving the achievable user rates and quantifying the two-dimensional MUltiple SIgnal Classification (MUSIC) spectrum function at the receive APs. Our performance analysis captures practical impairments, including erroneously estimated CSI, spatially correlated Rician fading, and clutter interference. Our analytical and numerical results demonstrate the potential of our proposed cell-free massive MIMO aided ISAC systems.
more »
« less
This content will become publicly available on June 8, 2026
IRS-Aided Massive MIMO ISAC Systems
The performance of integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) empowered intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)aided massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems operating over spatially correlated Rician fading is investigated. Computationally-efficient linear precoders are used to construct the ISAC signal by invoking the maximal ratio transmission (MRT) criterion into the composite channels containing both direct and IRS reflected channels. The uplink communication channels are estimated based on the linear minimum mean square error criterion and used to construct user precoders. The IRS phase-shifts are optimized based on the statistical channel knowledge to maximize the minimum average power gains of the composite communication channels subject to an average power threshold for the reflected sensing channel. The communication performance is evaluated by deriving the achievable user rates, while the sensing performance is studies by locating the target via the 2D MUltiple SIgnal Classification (MUSIC) algorithm. Our numerical results are used to study the trade-off between the communication and sensing performance metrics in IRS-aided massive MIMO systems with MRT-based linear precoders.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 2326621
- PAR ID:
- 10652291
- Publisher / Repository:
- IEEE
- Date Published:
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 4044 to 4049
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
The transition to millimeter-wave and sub-THz frequency bands necessitates that the base-stations (BSs) utilize extra-large antenna arrays (ELAA) to compensate for the associated huge path-losses. However, when higher frequencies and shorter transmission distances are utilized, the spherical wave curvature can no longer be neglected. Hence, the ELAAbased wireless systems tend to operate primarily in the near-field. Thus, the far-field channel models used for near-field users may detrimentally affect wireless system designs and performance gains. To this end, we investigate the impact of mismatches between far-field and near-field channel models/precoders on the performance of ELAA-based integrated sensing and communication (ISAC). To this end, the achievable user rates are derived for the near-field. Two detectors for sensing a target are designed based on known/unknown BS/target channels. The performance of these detectors are investigated by deriving the probability of detection and probability of false-alarm. A transmit power optimization procedure is also proposed to maximize the minimum achievable user rate, while ensuring a power threshold for sensing. Numerical results are used to study the fundamental trade-off between the probability of detection and achievable rates for near-field ELAA-based ISAC. We unveil that ELAAs can be leveraged to improve the ISAC performance trade-offs.more » « less
-
Electronically tunable metasurfaces, or Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces (IRSs), are a popular technology for achieving high spectral efficiency in modern wireless systems by shaping channels using a multitude of tunable passive reflecting elements. Capitalizing on key practical limitations of IRS-aided beamforming pertaining to system modeling and channel sensing/ estimation, we propose a novel, fully data-driven Zerothorder Stochastic Gradient Ascent (ZoSGA) algorithm for general two-stage (i.e., short/long-term), fully-passive IRS-aided stochastic utility maximization. ZoSGA learns long-term optimal IRS beamformers jointly with short-term optimal precoders (e.g., WMMSE-based) via minimal zeroth-order reinforcement and in a strictly model-free fashion, relying solely on the effective compound channels observed at the terminals, while being independent of channel models or network/IRS configurations. Another remarkable feature of ZoSGA is being amenable to analysis, enabling us to establish a state-of-the-art (SOTA) convergence rate of the order of O( S −4) under minimal assumptions, where S is the total number of IRS elements, and is a desired suboptimality target. Our numerical results on a standard MISO downlink IRS-aided sumrate maximization setting establish SOTA empirical behavior of ZoSGA as well, consistently and substantially outperforming standard fully model-based baselines. Lastly, we demonstrate that ZoSGA can in fact operate in the field, by directly optimizing the capacitances of a varactor-based electromagnetic IRS model (unknown to ZoSGA) on a multiple user/IRS, link-dense network setting, with essentially no computational overheads or performance degradation.more » « less
-
In this paper, an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is leveraged to enhance the physical layer security of an integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system in which the IRS is deployed to not only assist the downlink communication for multiple users, but also create a virtual line-of-sight (LoS) link for target sensing. In particular, we consider a challenging scenario where the target may be a suspicious eavesdropper that potentially intercepts the communication-user information transmitted by the base station (BS). To ensure the sensing quality while preventing the eavesdropping, dedicated sensing signals are transmitted by the BS. We investigate the joint design of the phase shifts at the IRS and the communication as well as radar beamformers at the BS to maximize the sensing beampattern gain towards the target, subject to the maximum information leakage to the eavesdropping target and the minimum signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) required by users. Based on the availability of perfect channel state information (CSI) of all involved user links and the potential target location of interest at the BS, two scenarios are considered and two different optimization algorithms are proposed. For the ideal scenario where the CSI of the user links and the potential target location are perfectly known at the BS, a penalty-based algorithm is proposed to obtain a high-quality solution. In particular, the beamformers are obtained with a semi-closed-form solution using Lagrange duality and the IRS phase shifts are solved for in closed form by applying the majorization-minimization (MM) method. On the other hand, for the more practical scenario where the CSI is imperfect and the potential target location is uncertain in a region of interest, a robust algorithm based on the $$\cal S$$ -procedure and sign-definiteness approaches is proposed. Simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme in achieving a trade-off between the communication quality and the sensing quality, and also show the tremendous potential of IRS for use in sensing and improving the security of ISAC systems.more » « less
-
Joint communications and sensing (JCAS) is envisioned as a key feature in future wireless communications networks. In massive MIMO-JCAS systems, the very large number of antennas causes excessively high computational complexity in beamforming designs. In this work, we investigate a low-complexity massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO)-JCAS system employing the maximum-ratio transmission (MRT) scheme for both communications and sensing. We first derive closed-form expressions for the achievable communications rate and Cram´er–Rao bound (CRB) as functions of the large-scale fading channel coefficients. Then, we develop a power allocation strategy based on successive convex approximation to maximize the communications sum rate while guaranteeing the CRB constraint and transmit power budget. Our analysis shows that the introduction of sensing functionality increases the beamforming uncertainty and inter-user interference on the communications side. However, these factors can be mitigated by deploying a very large number of antennas. The numerical results verify our findings and demonstrate the power allocation efficiency.more » « less
