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.

Rate Region of ISAC for Pinching-Antenna Systems

The Pinching-Antenna SyStem (PASS) reconstructs wireless channels through \emph{pinching beamforming}, wherein the activated positions of pinching antennas along dielectric waveguides are optimized to shape the radiation pattern. The aim of this article is to analyze the performance limits of employing PASS in integrated sensing and communications (ISAC). Specifically, a PASS-assisted ISAC system is considered, where a pinched waveguide is utilized to simultaneously communicate with a user and sense a target. Closed-form expressions for the achievable communication rate (CR) and sensing rate (SR) are derived to characterize the information-theoretic limits of this dual-functional operation. \romannumeral1) For the single-pinch case, closed-form solutions for the optimal pinching antenna location are derived under \emph{sensing-centric (S-C)}, \emph{communications-centric (C-C)}, and \emph{Pareto-optimal} designs. On this basis, the CR-SR trade-off is characterized by deriving the full CR-SR rate region, which is shown to encompass that of conventional fixed-antenna systems. \romannumeral2) For the multiple-pinch case, an antenna location refinement method is applied to obtain the optimal C-C and S-C pinching beamformers. As a further advance, inner and outer bounds on the achievable CR-SR region are derived using an element-wise alternating optimization technique and by invoking Cauchy-Schwarz and Karamata's inequalities, respectively. Numerical results demonstrate that: \romannumeral1) the derived bounds closely approximate the true CR-SR region; and \romannumeral2) PASS can achieve a significantly larger rate region than conventional-antenna systems.

Energy-Efficient Resource Allocation for NOMA-Assisted Uplink Pinching-Antenna Systems

The pinching-antenna architecture has emerged as a promising solution for reconfiguring wireless propagation environments and enhancing system performance. While prior research has primarily focused on sum-rate maximization or transmit power minimization of pinching-antenna systems, the critical aspect of energy efficiency (EE) has received limited attention. Given the increasing importance of EE in future wireless communication networks, this work investigates EE optimization in a non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA)-assisted multi-user pinching-antenna uplink system. The problem entails the joint optimization of the users' transmit power and the pinching-antenna position. The resulting optimization problem is non-convex due to tightly coupled variables. To tackle this, we employ an alternating optimization framework to decompose the original problem into two subproblems: one focusing on power allocation and the other on antenna positioning. A low-complexity optimal solution is derived for the power allocation subproblem, while the pinching-antenna positioning subproblem is addressed using a particle swarm optimization algorithm to obtain a high-quality near-optimal solution. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme significantly outperforms both conventional-antenna configurations and orthogonal multiple access-based pinching-antenna systems in terms of EE.

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.