arXiv subjects

Peilan Wang

Publications and source records attributed to Peilan Wang.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Reconfigurable Antenna-Enhanced ISAC: A Unified Perspective on Electromagnetic Adaptation

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) enables sensing and communication (S&C) functions to share time, frequency, and hardware resources, offering an efficient paradigm for next-generation wireless systems. However, conventional fixed-configuration antenna (FCA) architectures provide limited flexibility in adapting the physical electromagnetic (EM) response of the end-to-end wireless link. This article develops a unified EM-adaptation perspective on reconfigurable antenna (RA)-enhanced ISAC systems. We distinguish transceiver-side (TSc-side) and environment-side (Env-side) RA deployments and identify five fundamental EM reconfiguration dimensions: position, orientation, radiation pattern, polarization, and frequency response. Building on this framework, we examine how these dimensions customize communication channels, actively control target information mapping for sensing, and reshape the interplay between S&C, particularly by improving compatibility between S&C requirements under shared resources. Two case studies illustrate how TSc-side and Env-side EM reconfiguration can improve spatial selectivity and the achievable S&C performance tradeoff. Finally, we discuss several promising directions for advancing RA-enhanced ISAC systems, including fundamental performance limits, low-overhead black-box optimization, and artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled semantic ISAC.

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arXiv2026

Beyond Fresnel Approximation: Exact Airy Beamforming for Near-Field THz Communications

Line-of-sight (LoS) blockage can severely degrade the performance of conventional focused beams in terahertz (THz) communications. Recently, bending beams (e.g., Airy beams) have attracted increasing attention due to their ability to bypass obstacles by propagating along curved trajectories under near-field propagation conditions. However, existing Airy-beam designs in wireless communications often rely on the Fresnel approximation for the focal distance, which becomes inaccurate at large steering angles or short propagation distances. To address this limitation, this letter proposes a more accurate Airy beamforming design method based on the exact focal-distance expression and the corresponding caustic geometry. Specifically, we jointly optimize the bending curvature, virtual focal distance, and steering angle to maximize the received signal power subject to receiver-alignment and obstacle-avoidance constraints. To tackle the resulting non-convex problem, we first use geometric preprocessing to narrow the feasible range of the bending curvature. Then, a two-layer optimization framework is developed with the outer and inner layers optimizing the bending curvature and the other two parameters, respectively. Numerical results based on the cascaded geometrical and wave channel model demonstrate that the proposed method achieves higher received signal power than conventional Airy-beam designs and offers complementary advantages over conventional focused beams under different blockage ratios.

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arXiv2026

Exploiting Beam Squint for Near-Field Wideband Beamforming in Multi-User OFDMA Systems

The beam squint effect has traditionally been viewed as detrimental to near-field wideband beamforming due to the reduction of beamforming gain towards the desired direction. In this paper, we show that it can instead be harnessed as a benefit in a hardware-constrained orthogonal frequency division multiple access (OFDMA) system, where the system, equipped with a single radio-frequency (RF) chain, aims to serve multiple spatially distributed users by allocating different subcarriers to different users. By exploiting the beam squint effect, flexible frequency-dependent beamfocusing patterns are realized via parallel true-time-delay (TTD) units, enabling nearly full beamforming gain across users. In particular, we formulate a max-min rate optimization problem that jointly designs the time delays, subcarrier-user association, analog beamforming, and power allocation. To tackle the resulting nonconvex mixed-integer problem, a two-stage optimization framework is proposed. In Stage~I, subcarrier-user association and structured analog beamforming are jointly optimized. In Stage~II, power allocation is obtained via bisection search and inverse water-filling. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed method can achieve a significant improvement by utilizing beam squint to serve multiple spatially distributed users in OFDMA systems.

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arXiv2026

Zeroth-Order Blind Interference Suppression for Multi-RIS-Aided Wireless Systems

In this paper, we study measurement-driven signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) maximization for a multi-reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided single-input single-output (SISO) system with unknown strong interference sources. Specifically, the objective is to optimize the reflection coefficients such that the SINR is maximized at the receiver. As the interference channels are unknown, such an optimization problem is a black-box optimization problem with an objective function whose closed-form analytical expression is unknown. To address the high-dimensional black-box optimization problem with discrete variable constraints, we introduce a group-based phase parameterization that significantly reduces the search dimension. Building on this model, we develop a group-based zeroth-order adaptive moment (ZO-AdaMM) algorithm. Simulation results show that the proposed grouping strategy markedly accelerates the convergence speed and achieves a superior interference suppression performance under limited measurement budgets, especially in the small-budget regime.

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arXiv2026

Secure Communication in MIMOME Movable-Antenna Systems with Statistical Eavesdropper CSI

This paper investigates the potential of movable antennas (MAs) to enhance physical layer security within a multiple-input multiple-output multiple-antenna eavesdropper (MIMOME) system. We consider a practical scenario where the transmitter operates with imperfect eavesdropper channel state information (ECSI), knowing only the instantaneous line-of-sight (LoS) component and the statistical properties of non-line-of-sight (NLoS) component. To rigorously quantify secrecy performance under the ECSI uncertainty, we adopt the ergodic secrecy rate (ESR) as the metric. Since deriving an exact analytical expression for the ESR is intractable, we leverage random matrix theory to derive a deterministic equivalent. This avoids heavy Monte Carlo simulations and also provides explicit insights into the effects of channel spatial statistics on secrecy performance. Building upon the deterministic equivalent, we formulate a joint maximization problem for the transmit precoding matrix and the antenna positions at the legitimate transmitter. To tackle the non-convexity of this optimization problem, we develop a comprehensive alternating optimization framework. Specifically, the precoding matrix is optimized via a majorization-minimization (MM) algorithm, where the gradient is computed by solving an implicit fixed-point equation. For the antenna position optimization, the complexity of the objective function prevents the construction of standard MM surrogate. To this end, we further propose a novel AMSGrad-based surrogate function that relies solely on gradient information. We provide a rigorous theoretical proof that guarantees the convergence of this proposed algorithm despite relaxing the strict majorization conditions.

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arXiv2025

UAV-Enabled Passive 6D Movable Antenna for ISAC: Joint Location, Orientation, and Reflection Optimization

Improving the fundamental performance trade-off in integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems has been deemed as one of the most significant challenges. To address it, we propose in this letter a novel ISAC system that leverages an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-mounted intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) and the UAV's maneuverability in six-dimensional (6D) space, i.e., three-dimensional (3D) location and 3D rotation, thus referred to as passive 6D movable antenna (6DMA). We aim to maximize the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) for sensing a single target while ensuring a minimum SNR at a communication user equipment (UE), by jointly optimizing the transmit beamforming at the ISAC base station (BS), the 3D location and orientation as well as the reflection coefficients of the IRS. To solve this challenging non-convex optimization problem, we propose a two-stage approach. In the first stage, we aim to optimize the IRS's 3D location, 3D orientation, and reflection coefficients to enhance both the channel correlations and power gains for sensing and communication. Given their optimized parameters, the optimal transmit beamforming at the ISAC BS is derived in closed form. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed passive 6DMA-enabled ISAC system significantly improves the sensing and communication trade-off by simultaneously enhancing channel correlations and power gains, and outperforms other baseline schemes.

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arXiv2025

Power-Measurement-Based Channel Estimation for Beyond Diagonal RIS

Beyond diagonal reconfigurable intelligent surface (BD-RIS), with its enhanced degrees of freedom compared to conventional RIS, has demonstrated notable potential for enhancing wireless communication performance. However, a key challenge in employing BD-RIS lies in accurately acquiring its channel state information (CSI) with both the base station (BS) and users. Existing BD-RIS channel estimation methods rely mainly on dedicated pilot signals, which increase system overhead and may be incompatible with current communication protocols. To overcome these limitations, this letter proposes a new single-layer neural network (NN)-enabled channel estimation method utilizing only the easily accessible received power measurements at user terminals. In particular, we show that the received signal power can be expressed in a form similar to a single-layer NN, where the weights represent the BD-RIS's CSI. This structure enables the recovery of CSI using the backward propagation, based on power measurements collected under varying training reflection coefficients. Numerical results show that our proposed method can achieve a small normalized mean square error (NMSE), particularly when the number of training reflections is large.

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arXiv2025

Derivative-Free Optimization-Empowered Wireless Channel Reconfiguration for 6G

Reconfigurable antennas, including reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), movable antenna (MA), fluid antenna (FA), and other advanced antenna techniques, have been studied extensively in the context of reshaping wireless propagation environments for 6G and beyond wireless communications. Nevertheless, how to reconfigure/optimize the real-time controllable coefficients to achieve a favorable end-to-end wireless channel remains a substantial challenge, as it usually requires accurate modeling of the complex interaction between the reconfigurable devices and the electromagnetic waves, as well as knowledge of implicit channel propagation parameters. In this paper, we introduce a derivative-free optimization (a.k.a., zeroth-order (ZO) optimization) technique to directly optimize reconfigurable coefficients to shape the wireless end-to-end channel, without the need of channel modeling and estimation of the implicit environmental propagation parameters. We present the fundamental principles of ZO optimization and discuss its potential advantages in wireless channel reconfiguration. Two case studies for RIS and movable antenna-enabled single-input single-output (SISO) systems are provided to show the superiority of ZO-based methods as compared to state-of-the-art techniques. Finally, we outline promising future research directions and offer concluding insights on derivative-free optimization for reconfigurable antenna technologies.

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arXiv2025

A Derivative-Free Position Optimization Approach for Movable Antenna Multi-User Communication Systems

Movable antennas (MAs) have emerged as a disruptive technology in wireless communications for enhancing spatial degrees of freedom through continuous antenna repositioning within predefined regions, thereby creating favorable channel propagation conditions. In this paper, we study the problem of position optimization for MA-enabled multi-user MISO systems, where a base station (BS), equipped with multiple MAs, communicates with multiple users each equipped with a single fixed-position antenna (FPA). To circumvent the difficulty of acquiring the channel state information (CSI) from the transmitter to the receiver over the entire movable region, we propose a derivative-free approach for MA position optimization. The basic idea is to treat position optimization as a closed-box optimization problem and calculate the gradient of the unknown objective function using zeroth-order (ZO) gradient approximation techniques. Specifically, the proposed method does not need to explicitly estimate the global CSI. Instead, it adaptively refines its next movement based on previous measurements such that it eventually converges to an optimum or stationary solution. Simulation results show that the proposed derivative-free approach is able to achieve higher sample and computational efficiencies than the CSI estimation-based position optimization approach, particularly for challenging scenarios where the number of multi-path components (MPCs) is large or the number of pilot signals is limited.

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arXiv2025

Near-Field THz Bending Beamforming: A Convex Optimization Perspective

Terahertz (THz) communication systems suffer severe blockage issues, which may significantly degrade the communication coverage and quality. Bending beams, capable of adjusting their propagation direction to bypass obstacles, have recently emerged as a promising solution to resolve this issue by engineering the propagation trajectory of the beam. However, traditional bending beam generation methods rely heavily on the specific geometric properties of the propagation trajectory and can only achieve sub-optimal performance. In this paper, we propose a new and general bending beamforming method by adopting the convex optimization techniques. In particular, we formulate the bending beamforming design as a max-min optimization problem, aiming to optimize the analog or digital transmit beamforming vector to maximize the minimum received signal power among all positions along the bending beam trajectory. However, the resulting problem is non-convex and difficult to be solved optimally. To tackle this difficulty, we apply the successive convex approximation (SCA) technique to obtain a high-quality suboptimal solution. Numerical results show that our proposed bending beamforming method outperforms the traditional method and shows robustness to the obstacle in the environment.

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arXiv2024

UAV-Enabled Passive 6D Movable Antennas: Joint Deployment and Beamforming Optimization

Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is composed of numerous passive reflecting elements and can be mounted on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) to achieve six-dimensional (6D) movement by adjusting the UAV's three-dimensional (3D) location and 3D orientation simultaneously. Hence, in this paper, we investigate a new UAV-enabled passive 6D movable antenna (6DMA) architecture by mounting an IRS on a UAV and address the associated joint deployment and beamforming optimization problem. In particular, we consider a passive 6DMA-aided multicast system with a multi-antenna base station (BS) and multiple remote users, aiming to jointly optimize the IRS's location and 3D orientation, as well as its passive beamforming to maximize the minimum received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) among all users under the practical angle-dependent signal reflection model. However, this optimization problem is challenging to be optimally solved due to the intricate relationship between the users' SNRs and the IRS's location and orientation. To tackle this challenge, we first focus on a simplified case with a single user, showing that one-dimensional (1D) orientation suffices to achieve the optimal performance. Next, we show that for any given IRS's location, the optimal 1D orientation can be derived in closed form, based on which several useful insights are drawn. To solve the max-min SNR problem in the general multi-user case, we propose an alternating optimization (AO) algorithm by alternately optimizing the IRS's beamforming and location/orientation via successive convex approximation (SCA) and hybrid coarse- and fine-grained search, respectively. To avoid undesirable local sub-optimal solutions, a Gibbs sampling (GS) method is proposed to generate new IRS locations and orientations for exploration in each AO iteration. Numerical results validate our theoretical analyses.

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arXiv2024

Movable Antenna-Enhanced Wireless Communications: General Architectures and Implementation Methods

Movable antennas (MAs), traditionally explored in antenna design, have recently garnered significant attention in wireless communications due to their ability to dynamically adjust the antenna positions to changes in the propagation environment. However, previous research has primarily focused on characterizing the performance limits of various MA-assisted wireless communication systems, with less emphasis on their practical implementation. To address this gap, in this article, we propose several general MA architectures that extend existing designs by varying several key aspects to cater to different application scenarios and tradeoffs between cost and performance. Additionally, we draw from fields such as antenna design and mechanical control to provide an overview of candidate implementation methods for the proposed MA architectures, utilizing either direct mechanical or equivalent electronic control. Simulation results are finally presented to support our discussion.

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arXiv2024

Joint Transceiver Optimization for MmWave/THz MU-MIMO ISAC Systems

In this paper, we consider the problem of joint transceiver design for millimeter wave (mmWave)/Terahertz (THz) multi-user MIMO integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems. Such a problem is formulated into a nonconvex optimization problem, with the objective of maximizing a weighted sum of communication users' rates and the passive radar's signal-to-clutter-and-noise-ratio (SCNR). By exploring a low-dimensional subspace property of the optimal precoder, a low-complexity block-coordinate-descent (BCD)-based algorithm is proposed. Our analysis reveals that the hybrid analog/digital beamforming structure can attain the same performance as that of a fully digital precoder, provided that the number of radio frequency (RF) chains is no less than the number of resolvable signal paths. Also, through expressing the precoder as a sum of a communication-precoder and a sensing-precoder, we develop an analytical solution to the joint transceiver design problem by generalizing the idea of block-diagonalization (BD) to the ISAC system. Simulation results show that with a proper tradeoff parameter, the proposed methods can achieve a decent compromise between communication and sensing, where the performance of each communication/sensing task experiences only a mild performance loss as compared with the performance attained by optimizing exclusively for a single task.

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arXiv2023

Target-Mounted Intelligent Reflecting Surface for Joint Location and Orientation Estimation

Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) has been widely recognized as an efficient technique to reconfigure the electromagnetic environment in favor of wireless communication performance. In this paper, we propose a new application of IRS for device-free target sensing via joint location and orientation estimation. In particular, different from the existing works that use IRS as an additional anchor node for localization/sensing, we consider mounting IRS on the sensing target, whereby estimating the IRS's location and orientation as that of the target by leveraging IRS's controllable signal reflection. To this end, we first propose a tensor-based method to acquire essential angle information between the IRS and the sensing transmitter as well as a set of distributed sensing receivers. Next, based on the estimated angle information, we formulate two optimization problems to estimate the location and orientation of the IRS/target, respectively, and obtain the locally optimal solutions to them by invoking two iterative algorithms, namely, gradient descent method and manifold optimization. In particular, we show that the orientation estimation problem admits a closed-form solution in a special case that usually holds in practice. Furthermore, theoretical analysis is conducted to draw essential insights into the proposed sensing system design and performance. Simulation results verify our theoretical analysis and demonstrate that the proposed methods can achieve high estimation accuracy which is close to the theoretical bound.

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arXiv2022

Compressed CPD-Based Channel Estimation and Joint Beamforming for RIS-Assisted Millimeter Wave Communications

We consider the problem of channel estimation and joint active and passive beamforming for reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) assisted millimeter wave (mmWave) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. We show that, with a well-designed frame-based training protocol, the received pilot signal can be organized into a low-rank third-order tensor that admits a canonical polyadic decomposition (CPD). Based on this observation, we propose two CPD-based methods for estimating the cascade channels associated with different subcarriers. The proposed methods exploit the intrinsic low-rankness of the CPD formulation, which is a result of the sparse scattering characteristics of mmWave channels, and thus have the potential to achieve a significant training overhead reduction. Specifically, our analysis shows that the proposed methods have a sample complexity that scales quadratically with the sparsity of the cascade channel. Also, by utilizing the singular value decomposition-like structure of the effective channel, this paper develops a joint active and passive beamforming method based on the estimated cascade channels. Simulation results show that the proposed CPD-based channel estimation methods attain mean square errors that are close to the Cramer-Rao bound (CRB) and present a clear advantage over the compressed sensing-based method. In addition, the proposed joint beamforming method can effectively utilize the estimated channel parameters to achieve superior beamforming performance.

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arXiv2022

Perceptive Mobile Network with Distributed Target Monitoring Terminals: Leaking Communication Energy for Sensing

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) creates a platform to exploit the synergy between two powerful functionalities that have been developing separately. However, the interference management and resource allocation between sensing and communication have not been fully studied. In this paper, we consider the design of perceptive mobile networks (PMNs) by adding sensing capability to current cellular networks. To avoid the full-duplex operation, we propose the PMN with distributed target monitoring terminals (TMTs) where passive TMTs are deployed over wireless networks to locate the sensing target (ST). We jointly optimize the transmit and receive beamformers towards the communication user terminals (UEs) and the ST by alternating-optimization (AO) and prove its convergence. To reduce computation complexity and obtain physical insights, we further investigate the use of linear transceivers, including zero forcing and beam synthesis (B-syn). Our analysis revealed interesting physical insights regarding interference management and resource allocation between sensing and communication: 1) instead of forming dedicated sensing signals, it is more efficient to redesign the communication signals for both communication and sensing purposes and "leak" communication energy for sensing; 2) the amount of energy leakage from one UE to the ST depends on their relative locations.

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arXiv2022

Compressed Channel Estimation for IRS-Assisted Millimeter Wave OFDM Systems: A Low-Rank Tensor Decomposition-Based Approach

We consider the problem of downlink channel estimation for intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted millimeter Wave (mmWave) orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) systems. By exploring the inherent sparse scattering characteristics of mmWave channels, we show that the received signals can be expressed as a low-rank third-order tensor that admits a tensor rank decomposition, also known as canonical polyadic decomposition (CPD). A structured CPD-based method is then developed to estimate the channel parameters. Our analysis reveals that the training overhead required by our proposed method is as low as O(U^2), where U denotes the sparsity of the cascade channel. Simulation results are provided to illustrate the efficiency of the proposed method.

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arXiv2022

Beam Training and Alignment for RIS-Assisted Millimeter Wave Systems:State of the Art and Beyond

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) has recently emerged as a promising paradigm for future cellular networks. Specifically, due to its capability in reshaping the propagation environment, RIS was introduced to address the blockage issue in millimeter Wave (mmWave) or even Terahertz (THz) communications. The deployment of RIS, however, complicates the system architecture and poses a significant challenge for beam training (BT)/ beam alignment (BA), a process that is required to establish a reliable link between the transmitter and the receiver. In this article, we first review several state-of-the-art beam training solutions for RIS-assisted mmWave systems and discuss their respective advantages and limitations. We also present a new multi-directional BT method, which can achieve a decent BA performance with only a small amount of training overhead. Finally, we outline several important open issues in BT for RIS-assisted mmWave systems.

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