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This paper presents a novel parametric scattering model (PSM) for sensing extended targets in integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems. The PSM addresses the limitations of traditional models by efficiently capturing the target’s angular characteristics through a compact set of key parameters, including the central angle and angular spread, enabling efficient optimization. Based on the PSM, we first derive the Cram´er-Rao bound (CRB) for parameter estimation and then propose a beamforming design algorithm to minimize the CRB while meeting both communication signal-to-interference-plusnoise ratio (SINR) and power constraints. By integrating the PSM into the beamforming optimization process, the proposed framework achieves superior CRB performance while balancing the tradeoff between sensing accuracy and communication quality. Simulation results demonstrate that the PSM-based approach consistently outperforms traditional unstructured and discrete scattering models, particularly in resource-limited scenarios, highlighting its practical applicability and scalability. 

Integrated sensing and communication has been identified as an enabling technology for forthcoming wireless networks. In an effort to achieve an improved performance trade-off between multiuser communications and radar sensing, this paper considers a dynamically-partitioned antenna array architecture for monostatic ISAC systems, in which each element of the array at the base station can function as either a transmit or receive antenna. To fully exploit the available spatial degrees of freedom for both communication and sensing functions, we jointly design the partitioning of the array between transmit and receive antennas together with the transmit beamforming in order to minimize the direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation error, while satisfying constraints on the communication signal-to-interference-plusnoise ratio and the transmit power budget. An alternating algorithm based on Dinkelbach’s transform, the alternative direction method of multipliers, and majorization-minimization is developed to solve the resulting complicated optimization problem. To reduce the computational complexity, we also present a heuristic three-step strategy that optimizes the transmit beamforming after determining the antenna partitioning. Simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms in significantly reducing the DOA estimation error. 

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is a key enabling technique for future wireless networks owing to its efficient hardware and spectrum utilization. In this paper, we focus on dual-functional waveform design for a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) ISAC system, which is considered to be a promising solution for practical deployment. Since the dual-functional waveform carries communication information, its random nature leads to high range-Doppler sidelobes in the ambiguity function, which in turn degrades radar sensing performance. To suppress range- Doppler sidelobes, we propose a novel symbol-level precoding (SLP)-based waveform design for MIMO-OFDM ISAC systems by fully exploiting the available temporal degrees of freedom. Our goal is to minimize the range-Doppler integrated sidelobe level (ISL) while satisfying the constraints of target illumination power, multi-user communication quality of service (QoS), and constant-modulus transmission. To solve the resulting non-convex waveform design problem, we develop an efficient algorithm using the majorization-minimization (MM) and alternative direction method of multipliers (ADMM) methods. Simulation results show that the proposed waveform has significantly reduced range-Doppler sidelobes compared with signals designed only for communications and other baselines. In addition, the proposed waveform design achieves target detection and estimation performance close to that achievable by waveforms designed only for radar, which demonstrates the superiority of the proposed SLP-based ISAC approach. 

A diffraction-based channel model is developed for characterizing the line-of-sight channel where the receive array is partially blocked by near-field obstacles. An analytic receive signal model is established where the range and size parameters of the blockage are explicitly modeled in the array steering vector. Based on the proposed model, we consider the joint estimation of the direction of arrivals (DoAs) of impinging RF signals and the parameters of interest for the blockage. General analytical expressions are derived for the Cram´er-Rao bounds (CRBs) of both the source-dependent parameters and environmental (common) parameters using both deterministic and stochastic maximum likelihood models. Finally, a Newton’s method-based approach is developed to optimize the maximum likelihood criterion to obtain estimates of the DoAs and blockage range of the sensing problem. Numerical results reveal that the maximum likelihood estimates for the DoAs and the blockage range attain the CRB for the stochastic model. 

Integrated sensing and communication has emerged as a transformative technology for future wireless communication networks, enabling the simultaneous realization of radar sensing and communication functions by sharing available resources. To fully exploit the available spatial degrees of freedom in monostatic ISAC systems, we propose a dynamic array partitioning architecture that allows the base station to allocate antennas for transmitting dual-functional signals and receiving the corresponding echoes. Based on this architecture, we jointly design the transmit beamforming and array partitioning to minimize the Cram´er-Rao bound (CRB) for target directionof- arrival estimation, while ensuring compliance with signalto- interference-plus-noise ratio requirements for multiuser communication, power budget constraints, and array partitioning limitations. To address the resulting optimization problem, we develop an alternating algorithm leveraging alternating direction method of multipliers and semi-definite relaxation. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed joint array partitioning and beamforming design significantly improves the CRB and the resulting DOA estimation performance. 

Downlink reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted multi-input-multi-output (MIMO) systems are considered with far-field, near-field, and hybrid-far-near-field channels. According to the angular or distance information contained in the received signals, 1) a distance-based codebook is designed for near-field MIMO channels, based on which a hierarchical beam training scheme is proposed to reduce the training overhead; 2) a combined angular-distance codebook is designed for hybrid-far-near-field MIMO channels, based on which a two-stage beam training scheme is proposed to achieve alignment in the angular and distance domains separately. For maximizing the achievable rate while reducing the complexity, an alternating optimization algorithm is proposed to carry out the joint optimization iteratively. Specifically, the RIS coefficient matrix is optimized through the beam training process, the optimal combining matrix is obtained from the closed-form solution for the mean square error (MSE) minimization problem, and the active beamforming matrix is optimized by exploiting the relationship between the achievable rate and MSE. Numerical results reveal that: 1) the proposed beam training schemes achieve near-optimal performance with a significantly decreased training overhead; 2) compared to the angular-only far-field channel model, taking the additional distance information into consideration will effectively improve the achievable rate when carrying out beam design for near-field communications. 

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communications using low-resolution analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) is a promising technology for providing high spectral and energy efficiency with affordable hardware cost and power consumption. However, the use of low-resolution ADCs requires special signal processing methods for channel estimation and data detection since the resulting system is severely non-linear. This paper proposes joint channel estimation and data detection methods for massive MIMO systems with low-resolution ADCs based on the variational Bayes (VB) inference framework. We first derive matched-filter quantized VB (MF-QVB) and linear minimum mean-squared error quantized VB (LMMSE-QVB) detection methods assuming the channel state information (CSI) is available. Then we extend these methods to the joint channel estimation and data detection (JED) problem and propose two methods we refer to as MF-QVB-JED and LMMSE-QVB-JED. Unlike conventional VB-based detection methods that assume knowledge of the second-order statistics of the additive noise, we propose to float the elements of the noise covariance matrix as unknown random variables that are used to account for both the noise and the residual inter-user interference. We also present practical aspects of the QVB framework to improve its implementation stability. Finally, we show via numerical results that the proposed VB-based methods provide robust performance and also significantly outperform existing methods. 

In this paper, we investigate the integration of integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) and reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) for providing wide-coverage and ultrareliable communication and high-accuracy sensing functions. In particular, we consider an RIS-assisted ISAC system in which a multi-antenna base station (BS) simultaneously performs multiuser multi-input single-output (MU-MISO) communications and radar sensing with the assistance of an RIS. We focus on both target detection and parameter estimation performance in terms of the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and Cramér-Rao bound (CRB), respectively. Two optimization problems are formulated for maximizing the achievable sum-rate of the multi-user communications under an SNR constraint for target detection or a CRB constraint for parameter estimation, the transmit power budget, and the unit-modulus constraint of the RIS reflection coefficients. Efficient algorithms are developed to solve these two complicated non-convex problems. We then extend the proposed joint design algorithms to the scenario with imperfect self-interference cancellation. Extensive simulation results demonstrate the advantages of the proposed joint beamforming and reflection designs compared with other schemes. In addition, it is shown that more RIS reflection elements bring larger performance gains for directof- arrival (DoA) estimation than for target detection.