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arXiv · 2601.05165

Fundamental Tradeoffs for ISAC Multiple Access in Finite-Blocklength Regime

Zhentian Zhang·Christos Masouros·Kai-Kit Wong·Jian Dang·Zaichen Zhang·Kaitao Meng·Farshad Rostami Ghadi·Mohammad Javad Ahmadi
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Abstract

This paper investigates the fundamental communication--sensing tradeoffs of uplink dual-functional integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) multiple access under finite blocklength (FBL) constraints. Unlike conventional asymptotic analyses, we explicitly account for the limitations under FBL constraints imposed by short packets and low-latency transmission. By examining the unbiased channel state sensing estimator, we establish a geometric decomposition of the sensing error, indicating that it is jointly determined by the signal-to-noise ratio and the correlation structure of the information codebook. This insight reveals how cross-correlation among active users in the codebook geometry fundamentally constrains dual-functional ISAC performance. Consequently, we derive achievability and converse bounds that characterize the tradeoff between communication code rate and sensing accuracy in the FBL regime, with the converse further bounded by Shannon capacity. Moreover, by treating channel state sensing as a high-level sensing objective, a universal Cram\'er--Rao bound is derived to link channel estimation accuracy to practical sensing parameters. Examples of parameter sensing are also provided based on 3GPP standard. Numerical results validate the theoretical analysis and demonstrate the impact of blocklength, antenna dimensions, and sensing requirements.

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Zhentian Zhang, Christos Masouros, Kai-Kit Wong, Jian Dang, Zaichen Zhang, Kaitao Meng, Farshad Rostami Ghadi, Mohammad Javad Ahmadi. 2026-01-08. Fundamental Tradeoffs for ISAC Multiple Access in Finite-Blocklength Regime. https://doi.org/10.1109/ccai69603.2026.11641918

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