2026· IEEE Transactions on Wireless Communications· Vol 25, pp. 22306-22322· 0 citations· 57 references
Abstract
This paper investigates a downlink integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system utilizing non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), empowered by an active simultaneously transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS) operating in energy splitting mode. We maximize the communication sum rate subject to per-user quality-of-service constraints, target sensing requirements, and practical active STAR-RIS hardware constraints. The proposed formulation is further generalized to a unified framework covering active/passive STAR-RIS architectures and NOMA/space-division multiple access schemes. To solve the resulting highly non-convex problem, we develop a computationally efficient optimization framework that alternately optimizes the base station transmit beamforming and STAR-RIS beamforming by introducing a common set of auxiliary variables, thereby accelerating convergence in solving the subproblems. We also develop a worst-case robust design under norm-bounded channel state information (CSI) uncertainty, where the uncertain rate expressions are replaced with tractable conservative bounds. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm converges much faster than fractional programming-based benchmarks, and that the active STAR-RIS assisted NOMA achieves the best performance under various system constraints. The results also demonstrate the resilience of the proposed robust design against CSI errors, while revealing that excessive active amplification may degrade the achievable sum rate under practical nonlinear amplifier distortion.
Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) is emerging as a key technology for next-generation wireless networks, enabling simultaneous communication and sensing functionalities. This paper focuses a RIS-assisted full-duplex (FD) ISAC system, in which a multi-antenna base station (BS) concurrently performs multi-user uplink and downlink transmission while also carrying out radar sensing. To maximize the joint uplink–downlink sum rate, an optimization problem is formulated under practical constraints, such as radar detection SINR, self-interference, BS transmit power, user power budgets, and RIS unit-modulus conditions. To address the nonconvexity of this problem, a two-stage hybrid optimization approach is developed. In the first stage, the augmented Lagrangian technique decomposes the complex problem into simpler subproblems involving beamforming, power allocation, and RIS phase optimization, leading to a feasible initial solution. The second stage employs a Multi-Agent Deep Deterministic Policy Gradient (MADDPG) framework to refine this solution adaptively, enabling the system to respond effectively to variations in the channel environment, mobility patterns, and interference levels. The proposed hybrid framework achieves optimal resource allocation while maintaining feasibility, robustness, and adaptability. Analytical results confirm its convergence behavior, and extensive simulation results confirm that the proposed scheme consistently outperforms conventional optimization and single-agent DRL baselines in sum-rate maximization, interference mitigation, and sensing accuracy, confirming its effectiveness for RIS-assisted full-duplex ISAC systems.
S. Waqas, Fenghua Huang, Fakhar Abbas et al.· IEEE Transactions on Wireles...· 0 citations
Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) under a cell-free (CF) architecture enables seamless connectivity and sensing coverage by allowing multiple distributed access points (APs) to jointly serve users and detect targets, thereby mitigating cell-edge effects and enhancing spatial diversity. However, wideband CF-ISAC also suffers from frequency-selective fading and strong inter-AP interference. To address these challenges, we investigate a simultaneously transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS)-assisted ISAC framework, which extends full-space coverage and mitigates multiplicative fading and blockage effects. A joint optimization strategy is developed to maximize the weighted ISAC joint rate by jointly optimizing bandwidth and power allocation, receive beamforming, and active STAR-RIS beamforming. To tackle the non-convexity caused by variable coupling and intricate constraints, an efficient alternating optimization algorithm is developed. The original problem is decomposed into several subproblems: first, a closed-form solution for receive beamforming is derived; next, the resource allocation semi-analytical solutions are obtained via Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions. Subsequently, the active STAR-RIS coefficients are optimized by capitalizing on fractional programming and majorization-minimization (MM) techniques. Finally, simulation results reveal that the proposed scheme achieves a 20.34% weighted ISAC joint-rate gain over the passive scheme, validating its effectiveness in wideband CF-ISAC systems.
Xintong Zhou, Feng Ke, Xiu-Yin Zhang et al.· IEEE Transactions on Communi...· 0 citations
In integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems, stringent sensing performance constraints can severely limit the power available for communication. Hybrid reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (HRISs) with capabilities of both passive reflection and active signal amplification can significantly improve communication performance in the power-limited regime. This motivates us to analyze and optimize the performance of an HRIS-aided multiple-input-multiple-output (mMIMO) ISAC system. We first estimate the effective uplink/downlink channels using the minimum mean square error method. We then derive closed-form expressions for the communication sum-rate and sensing Cram\'er-Rao lower bound (CRLB). It is shown that under the equal power allocation strategy, the CRLB remains independent of the HRIS coefficients. Then, we formulate a joint optimization problem of power allocation and HRIS beamforming to maximize the communication sum-rate while ensuring specified sensing CRLB constraints. To solve the formulated non-convex problem, we propose an alternating optimization algorithm based on fractional programming and successive convex approximation. Extensive simulations validate our analysis and proposed algorithm, showing significant improvements in both communication and sensing performances enabled by the HRIS. For example, an HRIS with only $4$ active elements offers $97.30\%$ improvement in the communication sum-rate, while ensuring a sensing CRLB constraint of $-30$ dB.
Smriti Uniyal, Tian-Yu Fang, M. di Renzo et al.· 0 citations
This letter investigates the sensing-centric design of reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-enabled rate-splitting multiple access-integrated sensing and communication (RSMA-ISAC) systems. Specifically, we propose a new beam-gain approximation method to enhance the sensing beam gain while satisfying communication quality-of-service (QoS) constraints. Since the joint optimization of the beamforming vectors and RIS phase shifts is highly coupled and non-convex, existing methods typically rely on generic optimization solvers involving substantial computational complexity. To address this issue, we propose an efficient constraints-separation-based alternating optimization algorithm (CS-AO). Our proposed algorithm effectively decouples the optimization variables and yields closed-form solutions for all subproblems, thereby significantly reducing the computational burden. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm achieves sensing beam-gain performance comparable to successive convex approximation (SCA) and semidefinite relaxation (SDR) benchmarks, while achieving more than 120-fold and 50-fold runtime reductions. In addition, compared with conventional space-division multiple access (SDMA) schemes, the proposed design exhibits substantial sensing beam gain.
Xue-Jun Cheng, Qian Zhang, Y. Jiao et al.· IEEE Wireless Communications...· 0 citations
This letter proposes a hybrid cascaded reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) architecture for downlink non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA)-enabled integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems with a dual-functional radar-communication (DFRC) base station, where a passive RIS assists both sensing and phase control while an active RIS provides signal amplification. By jointly optimizing the cascaded passive-active RIS coefficients and NOMA beamforming under radar signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) constraints, we develop a low-complexity alternating optimization framework based on weighted minimum mean-square error (WMMSE), penalty method, and rotation phase algorithm. Closed-form solutions are derived for the active RIS amplification coefficients. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed scheme achieves superior weighted sum-rate and sensing performance compared to dual-passive RIS and orthogonal multiple access (OMA) baselines, revealing a favorable sensing-communication tradeoff.
In this paper, we investigate the covert communication performance and sensing performance of integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems enhanced by simultaneously transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS). A novel non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) enabled covert framework is proposed, where the covert transmission can be enhanced by eliminating the interference of public signals and sensing signals at the covert user. The large system analytic estimation is employed to effectively decouple the correlation of the warden’s channel fading gains and derive a closed-form expression for the minimum average detection error probability of the warden. Both sensing and covert rate optimization problems are investigated through jointly designing base station transmit beamforming and STAR-RIS passive beamforming. To optimize sensing performance, we aim at minimizing the Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) while satisfying the covert rate requirement. Conversely, when maximizing the covert rate, the CRB is incorporated as a constraint in the sensing. To address these challenging optimization problems, an iterative algorithm based on penalty methods and semidefinite programming are proposed to obtain the transmit beamforming and the beamforming of STAR-RIS. Simulation results indicate that the CRB and covert rate of the proposed ISAC systems, assisted by STAR-RIS and NOMA, outperform the ISAC systems enhanced by orthogonal multiple access and conventional RIS.
Zheng Yang, Haoyang Li, Gaojie Chen et al.· IEEE Transactions on Wireles...· 0 citations
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