Exploiting Segmented Waveguide-Enabled Pinching-Antenna Systems (SWANs) for Uplink Tri-Hybrid Beamforming

A segmented waveguide-enabled pinching-antenna system (SWAN)-based tri-hybrid beamforming architecture is proposed for uplink multi-user MIMO communications, which jointly optimizes digital, analog, and pinching beamforming. Both fully-connected (FC) and partially-connected (PC) structures between RF chains and segment feed points are considered. For the FC architecture, tri-hybrid beamforming is optimized using the weighted minimum mean-square error (WMMSE) and zero-forcing (ZF) approaches. Specifically, the digital, analog, and pinching beamforming components are optimized via a closed-form solution, Riemannian manifold optimization, and a Gauss-Seidel search, respectively. For the PC architecture, an interleaved topology tailored to the SWAN receiver is proposed, in which segments assigned to each RF chain (sub-array) are interleaved with those from other sub-arrays. Based on this structure, a WMMSE-based tri-hybrid design is developed, in which the Riemannian-manifold update used for the FC structure is replaced by element-wise phase calibration to exploit sparsity in analog beamforming. To gain insight into the performance of the proposed system, the rate-scaling laws with respect to the number of segments are derived for both the FC and PC structures. Our results demonstrate that: i)~SWAN with the proposed tri-hybrid beamforming consistently outperforms conventional hybrid beamforming and conventional pinching-antenna systems with pinching beamforming for both the FC and PC structures; and ii)~the PC structure can strike a good balance between sum rate and energy consumption when the number of segments is large; and iii) the achievable rate does not necessarily increase with the number of segments.

Leaky Coaxial Cable based Generalized Pinching-Antenna Systems with Dual-Port Feeding

By leveraging the distributed leakage radiation of leaky coaxial cables (LCXs), the concept of pinching antennas can be generalized from the conventional high-frequency waveguide based architectures to cable based structures in lower-frequency scenarios. This paper investigates an LCX based generalized pinching-antenna system with dual-port feeding. By enabling bidirectional excitation along each cable, the proposed design significantly enhances spatial degrees of freedom. A comprehensive channel model is developed to characterize intra-cable attenuation, bidirectional phase progression, slot based radiation, and wireless propagation. Based on this model, both analog and hybrid beamforming frameworks are studied with the objective of maximizing the minimum achievable data rate. For analog transmission, slot activation, port selection, and power allocation are jointly optimized using matching theory, coalitional games, and bisection based power control. For hybrid transmission, zero-forcing (ZF) digital precoding is incorporated to eliminate inter-user interference, thereby simplifying slot activation and enabling closed-form optimal power allocation. Simulation results demonstrate that dual-port feeding provides notable performance gains over single-port LCX systems and fixed-antenna benchmarks, validating the effectiveness of the proposed beamforming and resource allocation designs under various transmit power levels and cable parameters.

Failure Detection for Pinching-Antenna Systems

A signal processing-based framework is proposed for detecting random segment failures in segmented waveguide-enabled pinching-antenna systems. To decouple the passively combined uplink signal and to provide per-segment observability, tagged pilots are employed. A simple tag is attached to each segment and is used to apply a known low-rate modulation at the segment feed, which assigns a unique signature to each segment. Based on the tagged-pilot model, a low-complexity per-segment maximum-likelihood (ML) detector is developed for the case in which the pilot length is no smaller than the number of segments. For the case in which the pilot length is smaller than the number of segments, sparsity in the failure-indicator vector is exploited and a compressive sensing-based detector is adopted. Numerical results show that the per-segment detector approaches joint ML performance, while the compressive sensing-based detector achieves reliable detection with a short pilot and can outperform baselines that require much longer pilots.

Environment-Aware Network-Level Design of Generalized Pinching-Antenna Systems--Part II: Geometry-Aware Case

This two-part paper aims to develop an environment-aware network-level design framework for generalized pinching-antenna systems to overcome the limitations of conventional link-level optimization, which is tightly coupled to instantaneous user geometry and thus sensitive to user mobility and localization errors. Part I investigates the traffic-aware case, where user presence is characterized statistically by a spatial traffic map and deployments are optimized using traffic-aware network-level metrics. Part II complements Part I by developing geometry-aware, blockage-aware network optimization for pinching-antenna systems in obstacle-rich environments. We introduce a grid-level average signal-to-noise (SNR) model with a deterministic LoS visibility indicator and a discrete activation architecture, where the geometry-dependent terms are computed offline in advance. Building on this model, we formulate two network-level activation problems: (i) average-SNR-threshold coverage maximization and (ii) fairness-oriented worst-grid average-SNR maximization. On the algorithmic side, we prove the coverage problem is NP-hard and derive an equivalent mix-integer linear programming reformulation through binary coverage variables and linear SNR linking constraints. To achieve scalability, we further develop a structure-exploiting coordinate-ascent method that updates one waveguide at a time using precomputed per-candidate SNR contributions. For the worst-grid objective, we adopt an epigraph reformulation and leverage the resulting monotone feasibility in the target SNR, enabling an efficient bisection-based solver with low-complexity feasibility checks over the discrete candidate set. Simulations results validate the proposed designs and quantify their gains under different environments and system parameters.

On the Maintainability of Pinching-Antenna Systems: A Failure-Repair Perspective

The pinching-antenna system (PASS) enables wireless channel reconfiguration through optimized placement of pinching antennas along dielectric waveguides. In this article, a unified analytical framework is proposed to characterize the maintainability of PASS. Within this framework, random waveguide failures and repairs are modeled by treating the waveguide lifetime and repair time as exponentially distributed random variables, which are characterized by the failure rate and the repair rate, respectively. The operational state of the waveguide is described by a two-state continuous-time Markov chain, for which the transition probabilities and steady-state probabilities of the waveguide being working or failed are analyzed. By incorporating the randomness of the waveguide operational state into the transmission rate, system maintainability is characterized using the probability of non-zero rate (PNR) and outage probability (OP). The proposed framework is applied to both a conventional PASS employing a single long waveguide and a segmented waveguide-enabled pinching-antenna system (SWAN) composed of multiple short waveguide segments under two operational protocols: segment switching (SS) and segment aggregation (SA). Closed-form expressions for the PNR and OP are derived for both architectures, and the corresponding scaling laws are analyzed with respect to the service-region size and the number of segments. It is proven that both SS-based and SA-based SWAN achieve higher PNR and lower OP than conventional PASS, which confirms the maintainability advantage of segmentation. Numerical results demonstrate that: i) the maintainability gain of SWAN over conventional PASS increases with the number of segments, and ii) SA provides stronger maintainability than SS.

A Survey of Pinching-Antenna Systems (PASS)

The pinching-antenna system (PASS), recently proposed as a flexible-antenna technology, has been regarded as a promising solution for several challenges in next-generation wireless networks. It provides large-scale antenna reconfiguration, establishes stable line-of-sight links, mitigates signal blockage, and exploits near-field advantages through its distinctive architecture. This article aims to present a comprehensive overview of the state of the art in PASS. The fundamental principles of PASS are first discussed, including its hardware architecture, circuit and physical models, and signal models. Several emerging PASS designs, such as segmented PASS (S-PASS), center-fed PASS (C-PASS), and multi-mode PASS (M-PASS), are subsequently introduced, and their design features are discussed. In addition, the properties and promising applications of PASS for wireless sensing are reviewed. On this basis, recent progress in the performance analysis of PASS for both communications and sensing is surveyed, and the performance gains achieved by PASS are highlighted. Existing research contributions in optimization and machine learning are also summarized, with the practical challenges of beamforming and resource allocation being identified in relation to the unique transmission structure and propagation characteristics of PASS. Finally, several variants of PASS are presented, and key implementation challenges that remain open for future study are discussed.

Pinching Antennas in Blockage-Aware Environments: Modeling, Design, and Optimization

Pinching-antenna (PA) systems have recently emerged as a promising member of the flexible-antenna family due to their ability to dynamically establish line-of-sight (LoS) links. While most existing studies assume ideal environments without obstacles, practical indoor deployments are often obstacle-rich, where LoS blockage significantly degrades performance. This paper investigates pinching-antenna systems in blockage-aware environments by developing a deterministic model for cylinder-shaped obstacles that precisely characterizes LoS conditions without relying on stochastic approximations. Based on this model, a special case is first studied where each PA serves a single user and can only be deployed at discrete positions along the waveguide. In this case, the waveguide-user assignment is obtained via the Hungarian algorithm, and PA positions are refined using a surrogate-assisted block-coordinate search. Then, a general case is considered where each PA serves all users and can be continuously placed along the waveguide. In this case, beamforming and PA positions are jointly optimized by a weighted minimum mean square error integrated deep deterministic policy gradient (WMMSE-DDPG) approach to address non-smooth LoS transitions. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithms significantly improve system throughput and LoS connectivity compared with benchmark methods. Moreover, the results reveal that pinching-antenna systems can effectively leverage obstacles to suppress co-channel interference, converting potential blockages into performance gains.

Robust Energy-Efficient Sleep-Mode Strategy for Multi-RIS-Aided Cell-Free Massive MIMO

With the explosive growth of data traffic and the ubiquitous connectivity of wireless devices, the energy demands of wireless networks have inevitably escalated. Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) has emerged as a promising solution for 6G networks due to its energy efficiency (EE) and low cost, while cell-free massive multiple-input multiple-output (CF-mMIMO) was proposed as an innovative network architecture without fixed cell boundaries to enhance these measures even further. However, existing studies often assume consistently high traffic loads, neglecting the dynamic nature of user demand. This can result in underutilized access points (APs) and unnecessary energy expenditure during low-demand periods. To tackle the challenge of EE in CF-mMIMO systems during low load periods, this paper proposes a novel energy-efficient transmission scheme that jointly coordinates active APs and multiple passive RISs. Specifically, a dynamic AP sleep-mode strategy is designed, where certain APs are selectively deactivated while nearby RISs assist in maintaining coverage. We formulate the EE maximization objective as a fractional programming problem and adopt the Dinkelbach method in conjunction with alternating optimization (AO) to iteratively solve the three coupled subproblems: (i) AP selection via a hybrid branch-and-bound (BnB) and greedy algorithm, (ii) transmit power optimization using a sequential convex approximation (SCA) method, initialized by a heuristic zero-forcing strategy, and (iii) RIS phase shift optimization using gradient projection. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme achieves significantly higher EE than existing methods in both low and moderate user scenarios.

Segmented Waveguide-Enabled Pinching-Antenna Systems (SWANs) for ISAC

A segmented waveguide-enabled pinching-antenna system (SWAN)-assisted integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) framework is proposed. Unlike conventional pinching antenna systems (PASS), which use a single long waveguide, SWAN divides the waveguide into multiple short segments, each with a dedicated feed point. Thanks to the segmented structure, SWAN enhances sensing performance by significantly simplifying the reception model and reducing the in-waveguide propagation loss. To balance performance and complexity, three segment controlling protocols are proposed for the transceivers, namely i) \emph{segment selection} to select a single segment for signal transceiving, ii) \emph{segment aggregation} to aggregate signals from all segments using a single RF chain, and iii) \emph{segment multiplexing} to jointly process the signals from all segments using individual RF chains. The theoretical sensing performance limit is first analyzed for different protocols, unveiling how the sensing performance gain of SWAN scales with the number of segments. Based on this performance limit, the Pareto fronts of sensing and communication performance are characterized for the simple one-user one-target case, which is then extended to the general multi-user single-target case based on time-division multiple access (TDMA). Numerical results are presented to verify the correctness of the derivations and the effectiveness of the proposed algorithms, which jointly confirm the advantages of SWAN-assisted ISAC.

Dynamic and Static Energy Efficient Design of Pinching Antenna Systems

We study the energy efficiency of pinching-antenna systems (PASSs) by developing a consistent formulation for power distribution in these systems. The per-antenna power distribution in PASSs is not controlled explicitly by a power allocation policy, but rather implicitly through tuning of pinching couplings and locations. Both these factors are tunable: (i) pinching locations are tuned using movable elements, and (ii) couplings can be tuned by varying the effective coupling length of the pinching elements. While the former is feasible to be addressed dynamically in settings with low user mobility, the latter cannot be addressed at a high rate. We thus develop a class of hybrid dynamic-static algorithms, which maximize the energy efficiency by updating the system parameters at different rates. Our experimental results depict that dynamic tuning of pinching locations can significantly boost energy efficiency of PASSs.