Antenna Activation and Resource Allocation in Multi-Waveguide Pinching-Antenna Systems

Pinching antennas, as a novel flexible-antenna technology capable of establishing line of sight (LoS) connections and effectively mitigating large-scale path loss, have recently attracted considerable research interests. However, the implementation of ideal pinching-antenna systems involves determining and adjusting pinching antennas to an arbitrary position on waveguides, which presents challenges to both practical deployment and related optimization. This paper investigates a practical pinching-antennas system in multi-waveguide scenarios, where pinching antennas are installed at pre-configured discrete positions to serve downlink users with non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA). To improve system throughput, a sophisticated optimization problem is formulated by jointly considering waveguide assignment, antenna activation, successive interference cancellation (SIC) decoding order design, and power allocation. By treating waveguide assignment and antenna activation as two coalition-formation games, a novel game-theoretic algorithm is developed, in which the optimal decoding order is derived and incorporated. For power allocation, monotonic optimization and successive convex approximation (SCA) are employed to construct global optimal and low-complexity solutions, respectively. Simulation results demonstrate that the NOMA-based pinching-antenna system exhibits superior performance compared to the considered benchmark systems, and the proposed solutions provide significant improvement in terms of sum rate and outage probability.

Sum Rate Maximization for NOMA-Assisted Uplink Pinching-Antenna Systems

In this paper, we investigate an uplink communication scenario in which multiple users communicate with an access point (AP) employing non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA). A pinching antenna, which can be activated at an arbitrary point along a dielectric waveguide, is deployed at the AP to dynamically reconfigure user channels. The objective is to maximize the system sum rate by jointly optimizing the pinching-antenna's position and the users' transmit powers. The formulated optimization problem is non-convex, and addressed using the particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. For performance benchmarking, two time division multiple access (TDMA) schemes are considered: one based on the pinching antenna individually activated for each user, and the other based on the single-pinching-antenna configuration serving all users. Numerical results demonstrate that the use of the pinching antenna significantly enhances the system sum rate compared to conventional antenna architectures. Moreover, the NOMA-based scheme outperforms the TDMA-based scheme with a single pinching antenna but is outperformed by the TDMA-based approach when the pinching antenna is adaptively configured for each user. Finally, the proposed PSO-based method is shown to achieve near-optimal performance for both NOMA and TDMA with a common pinching-antenna configuration.

Age of Information Analysis for NOMA-Assisted Grant-Free Transmissions with Randomly Arrived Packets

This paper investigates the application of non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) to grant-free transmissions to reduce the age of information (AoI) in uplink status update systems, where multiple sources upload their {status updates} to {a common} receiver. Unlike existing studies which {adopted} the idealized generate-at-will (GAW) model, {i.e., a status} update data can be generated and transmitted at any time, this paper utilizes a more practical model {to characterize} the inherent randomness of the generation of the status updating data packets. A rigorous analytical framework is established to precisely evaluate the average AoI achieved by the NOMA-assisted grant-free schemes for both {the} cases with and without retransmission. The impact of the choice of the probability {of transmission} on the average AoI is investigated. Extensive simulation results are provided to validate the accuracy of the developed analysis. It is shown that NOMA-assisted schemes are more superior in reducing AoI{, compared} to orthogonal multiple access (OMA) based schemes. In addition, compared to schemes without retransmission, the AoI performance {of} the schemes with retransmission can {be improved} significantly when the status update generation rate is low or the user density is relatively high.

QoS-Aware NOMA Design for Downlink Pinching-Antenna Systems

Pinching antennas, implemented by applying small dielectric particles on a waveguide, have emerged as a promising flexible-antenna technology ideal for next-generation wireless communications systems. Unlike conventional flexible-antenna systems, pinching antennas offer the advantage of creating line-of-sight links by enabling antennas to be activated on the waveguide at a location close to the user. This paper investigates a typical two-user non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) downlink scenario, where multiple pinching antennas are activated on a single dielectric waveguide to assist NOMA transmission. We formulate the problem of maximizing the data rate of one user subject to the quality-of-service requirement of the other user by jointly optimizing the antenna locations and power allocation coefficients. The formulated problem is nonconvex and difficult to solve due to the impact of antenna locations on large-scale path loss and two types of phase shifts, namely in-waveguide phase shifts and free space propagation phase shifts. To this end, we propose an iterative algorithm based on block coordinate descent and successive convex approximation techniques. Moreover, we consider the special case with a single pinching antenna, which is a simplified version of the multi-antenna case. Although the formulated problem is still nonconvex, by using the inherent features of the formulated problem, we derive the global optimal solution in closed-form, which offers important insights on the performance of pinching-antenna systems. Simulation results demonstrate that the pinching-antenna system significantly outperforms conventional fixed-position antenna systems, and the proposed algorithm achieves performance comparable to the computationally intensive exhaustive search based approach.

Channel Estimation for mmWave Pinching-Antenna Systems

The full potential of pinching-antenna systems (PAS) can be unblocked if pinching antennas can be accurately activated at positions tailored for the serving users', which means that acquiring accurate channel state information (CSI) at arbitrary positions along the waveguide is essential for the precise placement of antennas. In this work, we propose an innovative channel estimation scheme for millimeter-wave (mmWave) PAS. The proposed approach requires activating only a small number of pinching antennas, thereby limiting antenna switching and pilot overhead. Specifically, a base station (BS) equipped with a waveguide selectively activates subarrays located near and far from the feed point, each comprising a small number of pinching antennas. This configuration effectively emulates a large-aperture array, enabling high-accuracy estimation of multipath propagation parameters, including angles, delays, and path gains. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method achieves accurate CSI estimation and data rates while effectively reducing hardware switching and pilot overhead.

Pinching-Antenna Assisted ISAC: A CRLB Perspective

Recently, pinching antennas have attracted significant research interest due to their capability to reconfigure wireless channels as well as their array configuration flexibility. This letter focuses on how these features can be used to support integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) from the Cramer Rao lower bound (CRLB) perspective. In particular, the CRLB achieved by pinching antennas is first derived and then compared to that of conventional antennas. The presented analytical and simulation results demonstrate that using pinching antennas can significantly reduce CRLB and, hence, enhance positioning accuracy. In addition, this letter also reveals that the low-cost and reconfigurability features of pinching antennas can be utilized to realize flexible user-centric positioning.

MIMO-PASS: Uplink and Downlink Transmission via MIMO Pinching-Antenna Systems

Pinching-antenna systems (PASSs) are a recent flexible-antenna technology that is realized by attaching simple components, referred to as pinching elements, to dielectric waveguides. This work explores the potential of deploying PASS for uplink and downlink transmission in multiuser MIMO settings. For downlink PASS-aided communication, we formulate the optimal hybrid beamforming, in which the digital precoding matrix at the access point and the location of pinching elements on the waveguides are jointly optimized to maximize the achievable weighted sum-rate. Invoking fractional programming and Gauss-Seidel approach, we propose two low-complexity algorithms to iteratively update the precoding matrix and activated locations of the pinching elements. We further study uplink transmission aided by a PASS, where an iterative scheme is designed to address the underlying hybrid multiuser detection problem. We validate the proposed schemes through extensive numerical experiments. The results demonstrate that using a PASS, the throughput in both uplink and downlink is boosted significantly as compared with baseline MIMO architectures, such as massive MIMO~and classical hybrid analog-digital designs. This highlights the great potential of PASSs, making it a promising reconfigurable antenna technology for next-generation wireless systems.

A Low-Complexity Placement Design of Pinching-Antenna Systems

Pinching-antenna systems have recently been proposed as a new candidate for flexible-antenna systems, not only inheriting the reconfiguration capability but also offering a unique feature: establishing line-of-sight links to mitigate large-scale path loss. However, sophisticated optimization of the placement of pinching antennas has very high complexity, which is challenging for practical implementation. This paper proposes a low-complexity placement design, providing the closed-form expression of the placement of pinching antennas, to maximize the sum rate of multiple downlink users. Orthogonal multiple access (OMA) and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) are both investigated when the pinching-antenna system is only equipped with a single antenna and only the OMA case is studied when there are multiple antennas equipped by the pinching-antenna system. Simulation results indicate pinching-antenna systems can outperform conventional fixed-antenna systems and are more suitable for large service areas.

Rate Maximization for Downlink Pinching-Antenna Systems

In this letter, we consider a new type of flexible-antenna system, termed pinching-antenna, where multiple low-cost pinching antennas, realized by activating small dielectric particles on a dielectric waveguide, are jointly used to serve a single-antenna user. Our goal is to maximize the downlink transmission rate by optimizing the locations of the pinching antennas. However, these locations affect both the path losses and the phase shifts of the user's effective channel gain, making the problem challenging to solve. To address this challenge and solve the problem in a low complexity manner, a relaxed optimization problem is developed that minimizes the impact of path loss while ensuring that the received signals at the user are constructive. This approach leads to a two-stage algorithm: in the first stage, the locations of the pinching antennas are optimized to minimize the large-scale path loss; in the second stage, the antenna locations are refined to maximize the received signal strength. Simulation results show that pinching-antenna systems significantly outperform conventional fixed-location antenna systems, and the proposed algorithm achieves nearly the same performance as the highly complex exhaustive search-based benchmark.

Beam Training for Pinching-Antenna Systems (PASS)

This article investigates the beam training design problems for pinching-antenna systems (PASS), where single-waveguide-single-user (SWSU), single-waveguide-multi-user (SWMU) and multi-waveguide-multi-user (MWMU) scenarios are considered. For SWSU-PASS, we design a scalable codebook, based on which we propose a three-stage beam training (3SBT) scheme. Specifically, 1) firstly, the 3SBT scheme utilizes one activated pinching antenna to obtain a coarse one-dimensional location at the first stage; 2) secondly, it achieves further phase matching with an increased number of activated antennas at the second stage; 3) finally, it realizes precise beam alignment through an exhaustive search at the third stage. For SWMU-PASS, based on the scalable codebook design, we propose an improved 3SBT scheme to support non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) transmission. For MWMU-PASS, we first present a generalized expression of the received signal based on the partially-connected hybrid beamforming structure. Furthermore, we introduce an increased-dimensional scalable codebook design, based on which an increased-dimensional 3SBT scheme is proposed. Numerical results reveal that: i) the proposed beam training scheme can significantly reduce the training overhead compared to the two-dimensional exhaustive search, while maintaining reasonable rate performance; ii) compared to fixed-location pinching antennas and conventional array antennas, the proposed dynamic pinching antennas yield better flexibility and improved performance.