arXiv subjects

Qiaoyan Peng

Publications and source records attributed to Qiaoyan Peng.

At least 19 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces for Integrated Sensing and Communications: From System Coexistence to Networked Mutualism

The rapid development of sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks requires seamless integration of communication and sensing to support ubiquitous intelligence and real-time, high-reliability applications. Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) has emerged as a key solution for achieving this convergence, offering joint utilization of spectral, hardware, and computing resources. However, realizing high-performance ISAC remains challenging due to environmental line-of-sight (LoS) blockage, limited spatial resolution, and the inherent coverage asymmetry and resource coupling between sensing and communication. Intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs), featuring low-cost, energy-efficient, and programmable electromagnetic reconfiguration, provide a promising solution to overcome these limitations. This article presents a comprehensive overview of IRS-aided wireless sensing and ISAC technologies, including IRS architectures, target detection and estimation techniques, beamforming designs, and performance metrics. It further explores IRS-enabled new opportunities for more efficient performance balancing, coexistence, and networking in ISAC systems, focuses on current design bottlenecks, and outlines future research directions. This article aims to offer a unified design framework that guides the development of practical and scalable IRS-aided ISAC systems for the next-generation wireless network.

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arXiv2026

Cooperative Rotatable IRSs for Wireless Communications: Joint Beamforming and Orientation Optimization

Rotatable intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) introduce a new degree of freedom (DoF) for shaping wireless propagation by adaptively adjusting the orientation of IRSs. This paper considers an angle-dependent reflection model in a wireless communication system aided by two rotatable IRSs. Specifically, we study the joint design of the base station transmit beamforming, as well as the cooperative passive beamforming and orientation of the two IRSs, to maximize the received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR). Under the light-of-sight (LoS) channels, we first develop a particle swarm optimization (PSO) based method to determine the IRS rotation and derive an optimal rotation in a closed-form expression for a two-dimensional IRS deployment. Then, we extend the design to the general Rician fading channels by proposing an efficient alternating optimization and PSO (AO-PSO) algorithm. Numerical results validate the substantial gains achieved by the IRS rotation over fixed-IRS schemes and also demonstrate the superior performance of the double rotatable IRSs over a single rotatable IRS given a sufficient total number of IRS elements.

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arXiv2026

Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces for THz Communications: Fundamentals, Key Solutions, and System Prototyping

Intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) have emerged as a cost-effective technology for terahertz (THz) communications by enabling programmable control of the wireless environment. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of IRSs-aided THz communications, covering hardware designs, advanced signal processing techniques, and practical deployment strategies. It first examines key THz reconfigurable metasurface architectures, including electronic, optical, phase-change material, and micro-electromechanical systems (MEMS)-based implementations, highlighting their reconfiguration mechanisms and challenges. Then, fundamental effects including near field and beam squint in wideband THz systems are analyzed, along with their impacts on system performance. The paper further explores conventional and beam-squint-assisted channel estimation methods, innovative beam management strategies, and deployment considerations across large- and small-scale scenarios. Practical experiments at 220 gigahertz (GHz) validate the effectiveness of IRS in improving signal strength and communication reliability for both single-user and multi-user setups.

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arXiv2026

Wireless Communication with Cross-Linked Rotatable Antenna Array: Architecture Design and Rotation Optimization

Rotatable antenna (RA) technology can harness additional spatial degrees of freedom by enabling the dynamic three-dimensional orientation control of each antenna. Unfortunately, the hardware cost and control complexity of traditional RA systems is proportional to the number of RAs. To address the issue, we consider a cross-linked (CL) RA structure, which enables the coordinated rotation of multiple antennas, thereby offering a cost-effective solution. To evaluate the performance of the CL-RA array, we investigate a CL-RA-aided uplink system. Specifically, we first establish system models for both antenna element-level and antenna panel-level rotation. Then, we formulate a sum rate maximization problem by jointly optimizing the receive beamforming at the base station and the rotation angles. For the antenna element-level rotation, we derive the optimal solution of the CL-RA array under the single-user case. Subsequently, for two rotation schemes, we propose an alternating optimization algorithm to solve the formulated problem in the multi-user case, where the receive beamforming and the antenna rotation angles are obtained by applying the minimum mean square error method and feasible direction method, respectively. In addition, considering the hardware limitations, we apply the genetic algorithm to address the discrete rotation angles selection problem. Simulation results show that by carefully designing the row-column partition scheme, the performance of the CL-RA architecture is quite close to that of the flexible antenna orientation scheme. Moreover, the CL antenna element-level scheme surpasses the CL antenna panel-level scheme by 25% and delivers a 128% performance improvement over conventional fixed-direction antennas.

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arXiv2026

Joint Transmit and Receive Antenna Orientation Design for Secure MIMO Communications

Physical layer security (PLS) is a promising paradigm for safeguarding 6G wireless networks by exploiting the inherent characteristics of wireless channels. However, the efficiency of conventional PLS is often limited by fixed orientation antennas. This paper investigates a rotatable antenna (RA)-aided secure multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) communication system, where both the transmitter and the receiver are equipped with RAs in the presence of an eavesdropper. By dynamically optimizing the orientations of RAs, we can proactively reshape the effective MIMO channels to enhance legitimate transmission while simultaneously suppressing information leakage to the eavesdropper. We formulate a secrecy rate maximization problem by jointly optimizing the transmit beamforming, artificial noise (AN) covariance matrix, and the transmit/receive RA orientations, subject to the transmit power budget and antenna orientation constraints. To tackle the resulting highly coupled and non-convex problem, we first study a simplified single-input single-output (SISO) case to reveal the structure of the optimal RA orientation. For the general MIMO case, we develop an alternating optimization algorithm by reformulating the original problem through the minimum mean-square error framework. In particular, the transmit beamforming and AN covariance matrix are derived in semi-closed forms, while the RA orientations are updated via the Riemannian Frank-Wolfe method. The proposed design is further extended to the multi-receiver secure transmission scenario. Simulation results show that the proposed scheme converges rapidly and achieves significant secrecy rate gains over the conventional fixed-orientation scheme.

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arXiv2026

Active Sensing-assisted UAV Communications with Jittering: Framework and Performance Analysis

Providing reliable communication for unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) via existing cellular networks is crucial for enabling the rapid growth of the low-altitude economy. However, UAV jittering significantly degrades communication quality due to induced beam misalignment. Inspired by recent advances in integrated sensing and communication, we propose a novel two-stage active sensing-assisted communication framework tailored for ground-to-UAV links with jittering. Specifically, two schemes are conceived to leverage sensing for enhancing communication performance, namely the communication-oriented scheme and the sensing-oriented scheme. For the sensing-oriented scheme, deterministic signals are employed in the first stage to facilitate angle-of-arrival (AoA) acquisition at the UAV side, followed by pure communication service in the second stage by using the estimated AoA. In contrast, the communication-oriented scheme employs Gaussian information-bearing signals throughout both stages, with AoA estimation relying on Gaussian random signals. For both schemes, we provide maximum likelihood estimators for AoA, along with analytical results characterizing the Cramér-Rao bound. To capture the performance limit, closed-form expressions for the achievable rates of the two schemes are derived, unveiling a fundamental tradeoff between sensing and communication quality across the two stages by tuning the time allocated to the first stage. The optimal time allocation that maximizes the overall rate is obtained in semi-closed-form. Based on these results, we unveil a sufficient condition under which the communication-oriented scheme outperforms the sensing-oriented scheme, which admits an interesting threshold-based structure. Asymptotic analysis demonstrates that the performance loss of the proposed schemes relative to the jitter-free upper bound approaches zero in the high transmit power regime.

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arXiv2026

Mode Switching for RDARS-Aided ISAC Systems: From Optimization to Deep Unfolding

Reconfigurable distributed antennas and reflecting surface (RDARS) has recently emerged as a promising architecture for integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), owing to its flexible element-wise mode switching between connection and reflection modes. In this paper, to fully reap the benefits of mode configuration, muting elements that can absorb the incident energy are introduced into RDARS-aided ISAC systems to mitigate multi-user interference (MUI) and enhance sensing performance. To draw useful insights, we first investigate the special cases of single-UE communication, single-target sensing, and two-UE communication to reveal the importance of muting elements. Specifically, the maximum communication and sensing signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) expressions are respectively derived for the three cases, together with the optimal number of muting elements for explicitly characterizing the tradeoff between reflection gain loss and MUI suppression. Next, we consider the joint waveform and tri-mode switching design for RDARS-aided ISAC systems, where an alternating optimization (AO)-based penalty dual decomposition (APDD) algorithm is proposed to solve the mixed-integer nonlinear programming (MINLP) problem. Furthermore, a model-driven APDD-Net is developed by deeply unfolding the APDD iterations into a layer-wise architecture, where key parameters are learned to reduce the computational complexity and accelerate convergence. Simulation results verify the theoretical findings on the muting gain and demonstrate that the proposed APDD-Net achieves a better tradeoff between communication and sensing performance compared with benchmark schemes.

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arXiv2026

Engineering Favorable Propagation: Near-Field IRS Deployment for Spatial Multiplexing

In intelligent reflecting surface IRS assisted multiple input multiple output MIMO systems, a strong line of sight LoS link is required to compensate for the severe cascaded path loss. However, such a link renders the effective channel highly rank deficient and fundamentally limits spatial multiplexing. To overcome this limitation, this paper leverages the large aperture of sparse arrays to harness near field spherical wavefronts, and establishes a deterministic deployment criterion that strategically positions the IRS in the near field of a base station BS. This placement exploits the spherical wavefronts of the BS IRS link to engineer decorrelated channels, thereby fundamentally overcoming the rank deficiency issue in far field cascaded channels. Based on a physical channel model for the sparse BS array and the IRS, we characterize the rank properties and inter user correlation of the cascaded BS IRS user channel. We further derive a closed form favorable propagation metric that reveals how the sparse array geometry and the IRS position can be tuned to reduce inter user channel correlation. The resulting geometry driven deployment rule provides a simple guideline for creating a favorable propagation environment with enhanced effective degrees of freedom. The favorable channel statistics induced by our deployment criterion enable a low complexity maximum ratio transmission MRT precoding scheme. This serves as the foundation for an efficient algorithm that jointly optimizes the IRS phase shifts and power allocation based solely on long term statistical channel state information CSI. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of our deployment criterion and demonstrate that our optimization framework achieves significant performance gains over benchmark schemes.

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arXiv2026

Multi-User MIMO with Rotatable Antennas and IRS: Joint Antenna Boresight and IRS Orientation Design

In this paper, we investigate an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted multi-user system, where the base station (BS) employs rotatable antennas (RAs) and the IRS can adjust the panel orientation.To alleviate the severe multiplicative path loss of the cascaded channel, the IRS is deployed near the BS, while the user-BS and user-IRS links remain in the far field. We formulate a sum-rate maximization problem by jointly optimizing the receive beamforming, IRS phase shifts, BS antenna boresights, and IRS panel orientation. To tackle the resulting highly coupled and non-convex problem, we first study a single-user case to reveal the structure of the dual-rotation gain, which is shown to be multiplicatively separable in the far field but coupled in the near field. For the general multi-user case, we develop an alternating optimization algorithm, where the receive beamforming is updated in closed form, the IRS phase shifts are optimized by an FP-assisted Riemannian conjugate gradient method, and the BS antenna boresights and IRS panel orientation are updated via projected gradient methods. Simulation results demonstrate the significant sum-rate gains achieved by the proposed coordinated rotation design over fixed-orientation and single-rotation benchmark schemes, and provide useful insights into near-field dual-rotation design.

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arXiv2026

Continuous Wavefront Design via Virtual Point Sources: A Holographic Paradigm for Near-Field XL-MIMO

Beamforming design for extremely large-scale multiple-input multiple-output (XL-MIMO) systems is challenging due to prohibitive computational complexity and complex near-field propagation effects. To address this, this paper introduces a holographic beamforming paradigm that reformulates the design from optimizing variables at spatially discrete antenna locations to shaping a continuous electromagnetic wave function over the array aperture, effectively mitigating the growth of algorithmic complexity as the array scale increases. We apply this paradigm to the challenging dual near-field (DNF) scenario, where strong transceiver coupling severely degrades conventional iterative algorithms. In this case, we propose a novel Virtual Point Source (VPS) method, which approximates the ideal wave function with a single and analytically tractable spherical-wave. A rigorous geometric-optical analysis is provided to show that the optimal VPS location can be determined in a fully non-iterative manner, thus decoupling the coupled DNF problem. The proposed method is demonstrated in an intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRS)-assisted system, where simulation results show that our non-iterative approach achieves performance comparable to converged alternating-optimization (AO) algorithms, while incurring significantly lower complexity and avoiding convergence uncertainty. This work offers a new theoretical framework for holographic beamforming design in XL-MIMO systems.

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arXiv2026

Joint Sparsity and Beamforming Design for RDARS-Aided Systems

Reconfigurable distributed antennas and reflecting surface (RDARS) has emerged as a promising architecture for communication and sensing performance enhancement. In particular, the new selection gain can be achieved by leveraging the dynamic working mode selection between connection and reflection modes, whereas low-complexity element configuration remains an open issue. In this paper, we consider a RDARS-assisted communication system, where the connected elements are formed as a uniform sparse array for simplified mode configuration while achieving enlarged physical array aperture. The sum rate maximization problem is then formulated by jointly optimizing the active and passive beamforming matrices and sparsity of connected element array. For the special cases of a single user equipment (UE) and two UEs, the optimal sparsity designs are derived in closed-form. Then, for an arbitrary number of UEs, a weighted minimum mean-square error-based alternating optimization (AO) algorithm is proposed to tackle the non-convex optimization problem. Numerical results demonstrate the importance of optimizing the sparsity and the effectiveness of low-complexity sparsity optimization.

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arXiv2026

Rotatable IRS Aided Wireless Communication

Rotatable intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) introduces a new spatial degree of freedom (DoF) by dynamically adjusting orientations without the need of changing its elements' positions in real time. To unleash the full potential of rotatable IRSs for wireless communications, this paper investigates the joint optimization of IRS rotation angles to maximize the minimum expected signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) over all locations within a given target area. We first propose an angle-dependent channel model that accurately characterizes the reception and reflection of each IRS element. Different from the conventional cosine-law assumption, the proposed model captures the practical electromagnetic characteristics of the IRS, including the effective reception area and reflection efficiency. For the single target location case, a particle swarm optimization (PSO)-based algorithm is developed to solve the SNR maximization problem, and a closed-form expression for a near-optimal solution is derived to provide useful insights. For the general area coverage enhancement case, the optimal rotation is obtained through a two-loop PSO-based iterative algorithm with null-point detection. In this algorithm, the outer loop updates the global rotation angles to maximize the minimum SNR over the target area, whereas the inner loop evaluates the SNR distribution within the area to identify the location corresponding to the minimum SNR through null-point detection. Numerical results demonstrate significant SNR improvement achieved by the proposed rotatable IRS design over various benchmark schemes under different system setups.

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arXiv2026

Joint Antenna Rotation and IRS Beamforming for Multi-User Uplink Communications

Rotatable antenna (RA) enhances wireless coverage through directional gain steering, yet suffers from performance degradation under physical blockages. Intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) establishes reflective paths to bypass obstacles, but suffers from angular mismatch when deployed in the side-lobe region of base station (BS) antennas. To address this issue, we propose a new RA-enabled IRS-assisted multi-user uplink system, in which the BS antennas are capable of flexibly adjusting their 3D orientations to align their boresights with the IRS. We formulate a sum rate maximization problem by jointly optimizing the antenna 3D rotations, receive beamforming and IRS phase shifts. To tackle this non-convex problem, we propose an efficient alternating optimization (AO) algorithm. Specifically, we iteratively update the antenna rotations via projected gradient ascent (PGA), compute the receive beamforming via a closed-form solution, and optimize the IRS phase shifts via fractional programming (FP). Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed system yields significant performance gains over conventional fixed-antenna systems, especially under large angular misalignments.

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arXiv2025

Semi-Passive IRS Enabled Sensing with Group Movable Sensors

The performance of the sensing system is limited by the signal attenuation and the number of receiving components. In this letter, we investigate the sensor position selection in a semi-passive intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) enabled non-line-of-sight (NLoS) sensing system. The IRS consists of passive elements and active sensors, where the sensors can receive and process the echo signal for direction-of-arrival (DoA) estimation. Motivated by the movable antenna array and fluid antenna system, we consider the case where the sensors are integrated into a group for movement and derive the corresponding Cramer-Rao bound (CRB). Then, the optimal solution for the positions of the movable sensors (MSs) to the CRB minimization problem is derived in closed form. Moreover, we characterize the relationship between the CRB and system parameters. Theoretical analysis and numerical results are provided to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed MS scheme over the fixed-position (FP) scheme.

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arXiv2025

Model-Driven Deep Learning Enhanced Joint Beamforming and Mode Switching for RDARS-Aided MIMO Systems

Reconfigurable distributed antenna and reflecting surface (RDARS) is a promising architecture for future sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks. In particular, the dynamic working mode configuration for the RDARS-aided system brings an extra selection gain compared to the existing reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided system and distributed antenna system (DAS). In this paper, we consider the RDARS-aided downlink multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system and aim to maximize the weighted sum rate (WSR) by jointly optimizing the beamforming matrices at the based station (BS) and RDARS, as well as mode switching matrix at RDARS. The optimization problem is challenging to be solved due to the non-convex objective function and mixed integer binary constraint. To this end, a penalty term-based weight minimum mean square error (PWM) algorithm is proposed by integrating the majorization-minimization (MM) and weight minimum mean square error (WMMSE) methods. To further escape the local optimum point in the PWM algorithm, a model-driven DL method is integrated into this algorithm, where the key variables related to the convergence of PWM algorithm are trained to accelerate the convergence speed and improve the system performance. Simulation results are provided to show that the PWM-based beamforming network (PWM-BFNet) can reduce the number of iterations by half and achieve performance improvements of 26.53% and 103.2% at the scenarios of high total transmit power and a large number of RDARS transmit elements (TEs), respectively.

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arXiv2025

Active IRS Assisted Joint Uplink and Downlink Communications

In this paper, we investigate an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) aided wireless communication system, where active IRSs (AIRSs) are deployed to assist communication between a base station (BS) and users of both the uplink (UL) and downlink (DL). We aim to maximize the weighted sum rate (WSR) of UL and DL communications through joint optimization of BS, AIRS beamforming, and AIRS element allocation. First, we study three deployment schemes, namely distributed AIRSs, BS-side AIRS, and user-side AIRS. For distributed AIRSs, both optimal and near-optimal solutions are derived in closed form. To draw useful insights, we analytically compare the deployment schemes in terms of the rate performance under the single-user setup. For the multi-user case, we consider two beamforming setups at the distributed AIRSs to balance performance and complexity tradeoffs. Regarding the user-adaptive AIRS beamforming, different AIRS beamforming vectors are adopted for each user; while for the static AIRS beamforming, all users share the same beamforming vectors, with identical phase shifts but different amplitudes for UL and DL. With the user-adaptive AIRS beamforming, we focus on the optimization of element allocation for rate maximization. With static AIRS beamforming, we solve the rate maximization problem by optimizing the BS transmit/receive beamformers, user beamforming, and AIRS beamforming. Despite its non-convexity, we develop an efficient alternating optimization (AO) based algorithm that solves each sub-problem optimally. Numerical results validate the practical advantages of distributed AIRSs compared to passive IRS (PIRS), BS-side AIRS, and user-side AIRS, and highlight the benefits of dynamic IRS beamforming.

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arXiv2025

Reconfigurable Codebook-Based Beamforming for RDARS-Aided mmWave MU-MIMO Systems

Reconfigurable distributed antenna and reflecting surface (RDARS) is a new architecture for the sixth-generation (6G) millimeter wave (mmWave) communications. In RDARS-aided mmWave systems, the active and passive beamforming design and working mode configuration for reconfigurable elements are crucial for system performance. In this paper, we aim to maximize the weighted sum rate (WSR) in the RDARS-aided mmWave system. To take advantage of RDARS, we first design a reconfigurable codebook (RCB) in which the number and dimension of the codeword can be flexibly adjusted. Then, a low overhead beam training scheme based on hierarchical search is proposed. Accordingly, the active and passive beamforming for data transmission is designed to achieve the maximum WSR for both space-division multiple access (SDMA) and time-division multiple access (TDMA) schemes. For the TDMA scheme, the optimal number of RDARS transmit elements and the allocated power budget for WSR maximization are derived in closed form. Besides, the superiority of the RDARS is verified and the conditions under which RDARS outperforms RIS and DAS are given. For the SDMA scheme, we characterize the relationship between the number of RDARS connected elements and the user distribution, followed by the derivation of the optimal placement positions of the RDARS transmit elements. High-quality beamforming design solutions are derived to minimize the inter-user interference (IUI) at the base station and RDARS side respectively, which nearly leads to the maximal WSR. Finally, simulation results confirm our theoretical findings and the superiority of the proposed schemes.

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arXiv2025

Intelligent Reflecting Surfaces for Wireless Networks: Deployment Architectures, Key Solutions, and Field Trials

Intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRSs) have emerged as a transformative technology for wireless networks by improving coverage, capacity, and energy efficiency through intelligent manipulation of wireless propagation environments. This paper provides a comprehensive study on the deployment and coordination of IRSs for wireless networks. By addressing both single- and multi-reflection IRS architectures, we examine their deployment strategies across diverse scenarios, including point-to-point, point-to-multipoint, and point-to-area setups. For the single-reflection case, we highlight the trade-offs between passive and active IRS architectures in terms of beamforming gain, coverage extension, and spatial multiplexing. For the multi-reflection case, we discuss practical strategies to optimize IRS deployment and element allocation, balancing cooperative beamforming gains and path loss. The paper further discusses practical challenges in IRS implementation, including environmental conditions, system compatibility, and hardware limitations. Numerical results and field tests validate the effectiveness of IRS-aided wireless networks and demonstrate their capacity and coverage improvements. Lastly, promising research directions, including movable IRSs, near-field deployments, and network-level optimization, are outlined to guide future investigations.

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