Analog Self-Interference Cancellation in Full-Duplex Radios: A Fundamental Limit Perspective

Analog self-interference cancellation (A-SIC) plays a crucial role in the implementation of in-band full-duplex (IBFD) radios, due to the fact that the inherent transmit (Tx) noise can only be addressed in the analog domain. It is thus natural to ask what the performance limit of A-SIC is in practical systems, which is still quite underexplored so far. In this paper, we aim to close this gap by characterizing the fundamental performance of A-SIC which employs the common multi-tap delay (MTD) architecture, by accounting for the following practical issues: 1) Nonstationarity of the Tx signal; 2) Nonlinear distortions on the Tx signal; 3) Multipath channel corresponding to the self-interference (SI); 4) Maximum amplitude constraint on the MTD tap weights. Our findings include: 1) The average approximation error for the cyclostationary Tx signals is equal to that for the stationary white Gaussian process, thus greatly simplifying the performance analysis and the optimization procedure. 2) The approximation error for the multipath SI channel can be decomposed as the sum of the approximation error for the single-path scenario. By leveraging these structural results, the optimization framework and algorithms which characterize the fundamental limit of A-SIC, by taking into account all the aforementioned practical factors, are provided.

Dual-UAV-Enabled Secure Communication and Sensing for A2G-ISAC Systems with Maneuverable Jamming

In this paper, we propose a dual-unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-enabled secure communication and sensing (SCS) scheme for an air-to-ground integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system, in which a dual-functional source UAV and jamming UAV collaborate to enhance both the secure communication and target sensing performance. From a perspective of hybrid monostatitc-bistatic radar, the jamming UAV maneuvers to aid the source UAV to detect multiple ground targets by emitting artificial noise, meanwhile interfering with the ground eavesdropper. Residual interference is considered to reflect the effects of imperfect successive interference cancellation (SIC) on the receive signal-plus-interference-to-noise ratios, which results in a degraded system performance. To maximize the average secrecy rate (ASR), the dual-UAV trajectory and dual-UAV beamforming are jointly optimized subject to the transmit power budget, UAV maneuvering constraint, and sensing requirements. To tackle the highly complicated non-convex ASR maximization problem, the dual-UAV trajectory and dual-UAV beamforming are optimized for the secure communication (SC) purpose and the SCS purpose, sequentially. In the SC phase, a block coordinate descent algorithm is proposed to optimize the dual-UAV trajectory and dual-UAV beamforming iteratively, using the trust-region successive convex approximation (SCA) and semidefinite relaxation (SDR) techniques. Then, a weighted distance minimization problem is formulated to determine the dual-UAV maneuvering positions suitable for the SCS purpose, which is solved by a heuristic greedy algorithm, followed by the joint optimization of source beamforming and jamming beamforming.

Experiment Study on Reference-Path-Aided System Calibration for mmWave Bistatic ISAC Systems

Integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) has been regarded as a key enabling technology for next-generation wireless networks. Compared to monostatic ISAC, bistatic ISAC can eliminate the critical challenge of self-interference cancellation and is well compatible with the existing network infrastructures. However, the synchronization between the transmitter and the sensing receiver becomes a crucial problem. The extracted channel state information (CSI) for sensing under communication synchronization contains different types of system errors, such as the sampling time offset (STO), carrier frequency offset (CFO), and random phase shift, which can severely degrade sensing performance or even render sensing infeasible. To address this problem, a reference-path-aided system calibration scheme is designed for mmWave bistatic ISAC systems, where the line-of-sight (LoS) path can be blocked. By exploiting the delay-angle sparsity feature in mmWave ISAC systems, the reference path, which can be either a LoS or a non-LoS (NLoS) path, is first identified. By leveraging the fact that all the paths suffer the same system errors, the channel parameter extracted from the reference path is utilized to compensate for the system errors in all other paths. A mmWave ISAC system is developed to validate our design. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme can support precise estimation of Doppler shift and delay, maintaining time-synchronization errors within 1 nanosecond.

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.

Uplink Sum Rate Maximization for Pinching Antenna-Assisted Multiuser MISO

This article investigates the application of pinching-antenna systems (PASS) in multiuser multiple-input single-output (MISO) communications. Two sum-rate maximization problems are formulated under minimum mean square error (MMSE) decoding, with and without successive interference cancellation (SIC). To address the joint optimization of pinching antenna locations and user transmit powers, a fractional programming-based approach is proposed. Numerical results validate the effectiveness of the proposed method and show that PASS can significantly enhance uplink sum-rate performance compared to conventional fixed-antenna designs.

A Fully Asynchronous Unsourced Random Access Scheme

We investigate fully asynchronous unsourced random access (URA), and propose a high-performing scheme that employs on-off division multiple access (ODMA). In this scheme, active users distribute their data over the transmit block based on a sparse transmission pattern without any limitations on the starting time. At the receiver side, we adopt a double sliding-window decoding approach, utilizing a smaller inner decoding window of two block lengths within a larger outer window to enhance the interference cancellation process. Within the inner window, the receiver iteratively applies preamble-free joint starting time and pattern detection, single-user decoding, and successive interference cancellation operations. A notable feature of the proposed scheme is its elimination of the need for a preamble for starting time detection; this is achieved using ODMA transmission patterns. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed asynchronous URA scheme outperforms existing alternatives.

Beyond ISAC: Toward Integrated Heterogeneous Service Provisioning via Elastic Multi-Dimensional Multiple Access

Integrated heterogeneous service provisioning (IHSP) is a promising paradigm that is designed to concurrently support a variety of heterogeneous services, extending beyond sensing and communication to meet the diverse needs of emerging applications. However, a primary challenge of IHSP is addressing the conflicts between multiple competing service demands under constrained resources. In this paper, we overcome this challenge by the joint use of two novel elastic design strategies: compromised service value assessment and flexible multi-dimensional resource multiplexing. Consequently, we propose a value-prioritized elastic multi-dimensional multiple access (MDMA) mechanism for IHSP systems. First, we modify the Value-of-Service (VoS) metric by incorporating elastic parameters to characterize user-specific tolerance and compromise in response to various performance degradations under constrained resources. This VoS metric serves as the foundation for prioritizing services and enabling effective fairness service scheduling among concurrent competing demands. Next, we adapt the MDMA to elastically multiplex services using appropriate multiple access schemes across different resource domains. This protocol leverages user-specific interference tolerances and cancellation capabilities across different domains to reduce resource-demanding conflicts and co-channel interference within the same domain. Then, we maximize the system's VoS by jointly optimizing MDMA design and power allocation. Since this problem is non-convex, we propose a monotonic optimization-assisted dynamic programming (MODP) algorithm to obtain its optimal solution. Additionally, we develop the VoS-prioritized successive convex approximation (SCA) algorithm to efficiently find its suboptimal solution. Finally, simulations are presented to validate the effectiveness of the proposed designs.

Interference Mitigation and Spectral Efficiency Enhancement in a Multi-BD Symbiotic Radio

This study presents a framework designed to mitigate direct-link interference (DLI) and inter-backscatter device interference (IBDI) in multi-backscatter orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM)-based symbiotic radio (SR) systems. The framework employs OFDM signal designs with strategic allocation of null subcarriers and incorporates two backscatter modulation techniques: on-off frequency shift keying (OFSK) and multiple frequency shift keying (MFSK) for symbiotic backscatter communication (SBC). Additionally, we propose Fully-Orthogonal and Semi-Orthogonal multiple access schemes to facilitate SBC alongside primary communication. The Fully-Orthogonal scheme maintains orthogonality between direct link and SBC signals, thereby ensuring interference-free SBC, albeit at a reduced spectral efficiency. In contrast, the Semi-Orthogonal schemes eliminate IBDI but permit partial DLI, striking a balance between reliability and spectral efficiency. To address the partial DLI inherent in Semi-Orthogonal schemes, successive interference cancellation (SIC) is employed at the receiver, enhancing SBC reliability. To tackle channel estimation challenges in SBC within the SR system, we implement non-coherent detection techniques at the receiver. The performance of the proposed system is evaluated based on average bit error rate (BER) and sum-rate metrics, demonstrating the effectiveness of our schemes. We provide analytical results for the system's detection performance under both proposed modulation techniques and multiple access schemes, which are subsequently validated through extensive simulations. These simulations indicate a notable error-rate reduction of up to $10^{-3}$ at $20$ dB with the Fully-Orthogonal scheme with MFSK.

General Framework for Array Noise Analysis and Noise Performance of a Two-Element Interferometer With a Mutual-Coupling Canceler

This article investigates the noise performance of a two-element phased array and interferometer containing a recently introduced self-interference canceler, which in the context of this work acts as a mutual-coupling canceler. To this end, a general framework is proposed to permit noise analysis of this network and a large variety of other networks. The framework-based numerical analysis for a two-element-phased array shows that the addition of the canceler significantly increases the beam-equivalent noise temperature. For a two-element interferometer used in cosmology, this increase in noise temperature is still acceptable as the sky noise temperature in the 20-to-200 MHz band is high. When used in an interferometer, the canceler provides the ability to null mutual coherence at the interferometer output. The ability to provide matching to reduce the sensitivity of the null in mutual coherence to the phase of the 90deg hybrids in the canceler is discussed.

STAR-RIS-aided NOMA for Secured xURLLC

Short packet-based advanced Internet of things (A-IoT) calls for not only the next generation of ultra-reliable low-latency communications (xURLLC) but also highly secured communications. In this paper, we aim to address this objective by developing a non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) system with untrusted user. There exist two key problems: The confidential/private message for the far user will be exposed to the untrusted near user with successful SIC; The restrictive trade-off among reliability, security and latency poses a great challenge in achieving secured xURLLC. In order to solve these issues, we introduce simultaneous transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS), which provides additional degree of freedom to enable a secure and fair decoding order and achieve a desired trade-off among reliability, security and latency. To fully reveal the trade-off among reliability, security and latency, we characterize the reliability and security via decoding error probabilities. A leakage probability minimization problem is modeled to optimize the passive beamforming, power allocation and blocklength subject to secure successive interference cancellation (SIC) order, reliability and latency constraints. To solve this complex problem, we explore its intrinsic properties and propose an algorithm based on majorization minimization (MM) and alternative optimization (AO). Simulation results demonstrate the validness of our study in this paper.