Generalized Pinching-Antenna Systems: A Tutorial on Principles, Design Strategies, and Future Directions

Pinching-antenna systems have emerged as a novel and transformative flexible-antenna architecture for next-generation wireless networks. They offer unprecedented flexibility and spatial reconfigurability by enabling dynamic positioning and activation of radiating elements along a signal-guiding medium (e.g., dielectric waveguides), which is not possible with conventional fixed antenna systems. In this paper, we introduce the concept of generalized pinching antenna systems, which retain the core principle of creating localized radiation points on demand, but can be physically realized in a variety of settings. These include implementations based on dielectric waveguides, leaky coaxial cables, surface-wave guiding structures, and other types of media, employing different feeding methods and activation mechanisms (e.g., mechanical, electronic, or hybrid). Despite differences in their physical realizations, they all share the same inherent ability to form, reposition, or deactivate radiation sites as needed, enabling user-centric and dynamic coverage. We first describe the underlying physical mechanisms of representative generalized pinching-antenna realizations and their associated wireless channel models, highlighting their unique propagation and reconfigurability characteristics compared with conventional antennas. Then, we review several representative pinching-antenna system architectures, ranging from single- to multiple-waveguide configurations, and discuss advanced design strategies tailored to these flexible deployments. Furthermore, we examine their integration with emerging wireless technologies to enable synergistic, user-centric solutions. Finally, we identify key open research challenges and outline future directions, charting a pathway toward the practical deployment of generalized pinching antennas in next-generation wireless networks.

MC for Gastroretentive Drug Delivery

Recently, bacterial nanocellulose (BNC), a biological material produced by non-pathogenic bacteria that possesses excellent material properties for various medical applications, has received increased interest as a carrier system for drug delivery. However, the vast majority of existing studies on drug release from BNC are feasibility studies with modeling and design aspects remaining largely unexplored. To narrow this research gap, this paper proposes a novel model for the drug release from BNC. Specifically, the drug delivery system considered in this paper consists of a BNC fleece coated with a polymer. The polymer coating is used as an additional diffusion barrier, enabling the controlled release of an active pharmaceutical ingredient. The proposed physics-based model reflects the geometry of the BNC and incorporates the impact of the polymer coating on the drug release. Hence, it can be useful for designing BNC-based drug delivery systems in the future. The accuracy of the model is validated with experimental data obtained in wet lab experiments.

Pinching-Antenna Systems (PASS): A Tutorial

Pinching antenna systems (PASS) present a breakthrough among the flexible-antenna technologies, and distinguish themselves by facilitating large-scale antenna reconfiguration, line-of-sight creation, scalable implementation, and near-field benefits, thus bringing wireless communications from the last mile to the last meter. A comprehensive tutorial is presented in this paper. First, the fundamentals of PASS are discussed, including PASS signal models, hardware models, power radiation models, and pinching antenna activation methods. Building upon this, the information-theoretic capacity limits achieved by PASS are characterized, and several typical performance metrics of PASS-based communications are analyzed to demonstrate its superiority over conventional antenna technologies. Next, the pinching beamforming design is investigated. The corresponding power scaling law is first characterized. For the joint transmit and pinching design in the general multiple-waveguide case, 1) a pair of transmission strategies is proposed for PASS-based single-user communications to validate the superiority of PASS, namely sub-connected and fully connected structures; and 2) three practical protocols are proposed for facilitating PASS-based multi-user communications, namely waveguide switching, waveguide division, and waveguide multiplexing. A possible implementation of PASS in wideband communications is further highlighted. Moreover, the channel state information acquisition in PASS is elaborated with a pair of promising solutions. To overcome the high complexity and suboptimality inherent in conventional convex-optimization-based approaches, machine-learning-based methods for operating PASS are also explored, focusing on selected deep neural network architectures and training algorithms. Finally, several promising applications of PASS in next-generation wireless networks are highlighted.

Wireless Energy Transfer Beamforming Optimization for Intelligent Transmitting Surface

Radio frequency (RF) wireless energy transfer (WET) is a promising technology for powering the growing ecosystem of Internet of Things (IoT) devices using power beacons (PBs). Recent research focuses on designing efficient PB architectures that can support numerous antennas. In this context, PBs equipped with intelligent surfaces present a promising approach, enabling physically large, reconfigurable arrays. Motivated by these advantages, this work aims to minimize the power consumption of a PB equipped with a passive intelligent transmitting surface (ITS) and a collocated digital beamforming-based feeder to charge multiple single-antenna devices. To model the PB's power consumption accurately, we consider power amplifiers nonlinearities, ITS control power, and feeder-to-ITS air interface losses. The resulting optimization problem is highly nonlinear and nonconvex due to the high-power amplifier (HPA), the received power constraints at the devices, and the unit-modulus constraint imposed by the phase shifter configuration of the ITS. To tackle this issue, we apply successive convex approximation (SCA) to iteratively solve convex subproblems that jointly optimize the digital precoder and phase configuration. Given SCA's sensitivity to initialization, we propose an algorithm that ensures initialization feasibility while balancing convergence speed and solution quality. We compare the proposed ITS-equipped PB's power consumption against benchmark architectures featuring digital and hybrid analog-digital beamforming. Results demonstrate that the proposed architecture efficiently scales with the number of RF chains and ITS elements. We also show that nonuniform ITS power distribution influences beamforming and can shift a device between near- and far-field regions, even with a constant aperture.

Joint Radiation Power, Antenna Position, and Beamforming Optimization for Pinching-Antenna Systems with Motion Power Consumption

Pinching-antenna systems (PASS) have been recently proposed to improve the performance of wireless networks by reconfiguring both the large-scale and small-scale channel conditions. However, existing studies ignore the physical constraints of antenna placement and assume fixed antenna radiation power. To fill this research gap, this paper investigates the design of PASS taking into account the motion power consumption of pinching-antennas (PAs) and the impact of adjustable antenna radiation power. To that end, we minimize the average power consumption for a given quality-of-service (QoS) requirement, by jointly optimizing the antenna positions, antenna radiation power ratios, and transmit beamforming. To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first work to consider radiation power optimization in PASS, which provides an additional degree of freedom (DoF) for system design. The cases with both continuous and discrete antenna placement are considered, where the main challenge lies in the fact that the antenna positions affect both the magnitude and phase of the channel coefficients of PASS, making system optimization very challenging. To tackle the resulting unique obstacles, an alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM)-based framework is proposed to solve the problem for continuous antenna movement, while its discrete counterpart is formulated as a mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem and solved by the block coordinate descent (BCD) method. Simulation results validate the performance enhancement achieved by incorporating PA movement power assumption and adjustable radiation power into PASS design, while also demonstrating the efficiency of the proposed optimization framework. The benefits of PASS over conventional multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems in mitigating the large-scale path loss and inter-user interference is also revealed.

Communicating Smartly in the Molecular Domain: Neural Networks in the Internet of Bio-Nano Things

Recent developments in the Internet of Bio-Nano Things (IoBNT) are laying the groundwork for innovative applications across the healthcare sector. Nanodevices designed to operate within the body, managed remotely via the internet, are envisioned to promptly detect and actuate on potential diseases. In this vision, an inherent challenge arises due to the limited capabilities of individual nanosensors; specifically, nanosensors must communicate with one another to collaborate as a cluster. Aiming to research the boundaries of the clustering capabilities, this survey emphasizes data-driven communication strategies in molecular communication (MC) channels as a means of linking nanosensors. Relying on the flexibility and robustness of machine learning (ML) methods to tackle the dynamic nature of MC channels, the MC research community frequently refers to neural network (NN) architectures. This interdisciplinary research field encompasses various aspects, including the use of NNs to facilitate communication in MC environments, their implementation at the nanoscale, explainable approaches for NNs, and dataset generation for training. Within this survey, we provide a comprehensive analysis of fundamental perspectives on recent trends in NN architectures for MC, the feasibility of their implementation at the nanoscale, applied explainable artificial intelligence (XAI) techniques, and the accessibility of datasets along with best practices for their generation. Additionally, we offer open-source code repositories that illustrate NN-based methods to support reproducible research for key MC scenarios. Finally, we identify emerging research challenges, such as robust NN architectures, biologically integrated NN modules, and scalable training strategies.

MC for Agriculture: A Framework for Nature-inspired Sustainable Pest Control

In agriculture, molecular communication (MC) is envisioned as a framework to address critical challenges such as smart pest control. While conventional approaches mostly rely on synthetic plant protection products, posing high risks for the environment, harnessing plant signaling processes can lead to innovative approaches for nature-inspired sustainable pest control. In this paper, we investigate an approach for sustainable pest control and reveal how the MC paradigm can be employed for analysis and optimization. In particular, we consider a system where herbivore-induced plant volatiles (HIPVs), specifically methyl salicylate (MeSA), is encapsulated into microspheres deployed on deployed on plant leaves. The controlled release of MeSA from the microspheres, acting as transmitters (TXs), supports pest deterrence and antagonist attraction, providing an eco-friendly alternative to synthetic plant protection products. Based on experimental data, we investigate the MeSA release kinetics and obtain an analytical model. To describe the propagation of MeSA in farming environments, we employ a three dimensional (3D) advection-diffusion model, incorporating realistic wind fields which are predominantly affecting particle propagation, and solve it by a finite difference method (FDM). The proposed model is used to investigate the MeSA distribution for different TX arrangements, representing different practical microsphere deployment strategies. Moreover, we introduce the coverage effectiveness index (CEI) as a novel metric to quantify the environmental coverage of MeSA. This analysis offers valuable guidance for the practical development of microspheres and their deployment aimed at enhancing coverage and, consequently, the attraction of antagonistic insects.

Energy Efficiency Optimization of Finite Block Length STAR-RIS-aided MU-MIMO Broadcast Channels

Energy-efficient designs are proposed for multi-user (MU) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) broadcast channels (BC), assisted by simultaneously transmitting and reflecting (STAR) reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS) operating at finite block length (FBL). In particular, we maximize the sum energy efficiency (EE), showing that STAR-RIS can substantially enhance it. Our findings demonstrate that the gains of employing STAR-RIS increase when the codeword length and the maximum tolerable bit error rate decrease, meaning that a STAR-RIS is more energy efficient in a system with more stringent latency and reliability requirements.

Resource Allocation for Pinching-Antenna Systems: State-of-the-Art, Key Techniques and Open Issues

Pinching antennas have emerged as a promising technology for reconfiguring wireless propagation environments, particularly in high-frequency communication systems operating in the millimeter-wave and terahertz bands. By enabling dynamic activation at arbitrary positions along a dielectric waveguide, pinching antennas offer unprecedented channel reconfigurability and the ability to provide line-of-sight (LoS) links in scenarios with severe LoS blockages. The performance of pinching-antenna systems is highly dependent on the optimized placement of the pinching antennas, which must be jointly considered with traditional resource allocation (RA) variables -- including transmission power, time slots, and subcarriers. The resulting joint RA problems are typically non-convex with complex variable coupling, necessitating sophisticated optimization techniques. This article provides a comprehensive survey of existing RA algorithms designed for pinching-antenna systems, supported by numerical case studies that demonstrate their potential performance gains. Key challenges and open research problems are also identified to guide future developments in this emerging field.

Joint User Association and Beamforming Design for ISAC Networks with Large Language Models

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) has been envisioned to play a more important role in future wireless networks. However, the design of ISAC networks is challenging, especially when there are multiple communication and sensing (C\&S) nodes and multiple sensing targets. We investigate a multi-base station (BS) ISAC network in which multiple BSs equipped with multiple antennas simultaneously provide C\&S services for multiple ground communication users (CUs) and targets. To enhance the overall performance of C\&S, we formulate a joint user association (UA) and multi-BS transmit beamforming optimization problem with the objective of maximizing the total sum rate of all CUs while ensuring both the minimum target detection and parameter estimation requirements. To efficiently solve the highly non-convex mixed integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) optimization problem, we propose an alternating optimization (AO)-based algorithm that decomposes the problem into two sub-problems, i.e., UA optimization and multi-BS transmit beamforming optimization. Inspired by large language models (LLMs) for prediction and inference, we propose a unified framework integrating LLMs with convex-based optimization methods. First, we propose a comprehensive design of prompt engineering, including few-shot, chain of thought, and self-reflection techniques to guide LLMs in solving the binary integer programming UA optimization problem. Second, we utilize convex-based optimization methods to handle the non-convex beamforming optimization problem based on fractional programming (FP), majorization minimization (MM), and the alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) with an optimized UA from LLMs. Numerical results demonstrate that our proposed LLM-enabled AO-based algorithm achieves fast convergence and near upper-bound performance with the GPT-o1 model, outperforming various benchmark schemes.