Xianxin Song

Integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) is a disruptive technology enabling future sixth-generation (6G) networks. This paper investigates target detection in a bistatic ISAC system, in which the base station (BS) transmits superimposed ISAC signals comprising both Gaussian information-bearing and deterministic sensing components to simultaneously provide communication and sensing functionalities. First, we develop a Neyman-Pearson (NP)-based detector that effectively utilizes both the deterministic sensing and random communication signals. Closed-form analysis reveals that both signal components contribute to improving the overall detection performance. Subsequently, we optimize the BS transmit beamforming to maximize the detection probability, subject to a minimum signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) constraint for the communication user (CU) and a total transmit power budget at the BS. The resulting non-convex beamforming optimization problem is addressed via semi-definite relaxation (SDR) and successive convex approximation (SCA) techniques. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed NP-based detector, which leverages both types of signals, over benchmark schemes that treat information signals as interference. They also reveal that a higher communication-rate threshold directs more transmit power to Gaussian information-bearing signals, thereby diminishing deterministic-signal power and weakening detection performance.

This paper studies the active intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-enabled integrated sensing and communications (ISAC), in which an active IRS is deployed to assist the base station (BS) in serving multiple communication users (CUs) and simultaneously sensing an \emph{extended} target at the non-line-of-sight (NLoS) area of the BS. The active IRS has the capability of amplifying the reflected signals so as to overcome significant reflection path loss in NLoS communication and sensing. In particular, we derive the sensing Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) for estimating the target response matrix. Accordingly, we jointly optimize the transmit beamforming at the BS and the reflective beamforming at the active IRS to minimize the sensing CRB, subject to the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) requirements at the CUs, the transmit power budgets at the BS and active IRS, as well as the power amplification gain constraints at the active IRS. The CRB minimization problem is highly non-convex and thus difficult to solve in general. To address this challenge, we first focus on two specified conditions by considering the sensing-only scenario via ignoring the SINR constraints for communications, for which the closed-form optimal transmit beamforming is derived. Then, we propose two efficient alternating optimization (AO)-based algorithms to obtain high-quality solutions for the general ISAC scenarios. Next, we analyze the inherent relationship between the power scaling at the BS and the amplification scaling at the active IRS. It is shown that the active IRS always amplifies the signal using the maximum amplification gain under practical system settings. Finally, numerical results are provided to verify the effectiveness of the proposed AO-based algorithms and the benefits of active IRS-enabled ISAC compared to its passive IRSs counterparts.

In this paper, we investigate a bistatic integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) system, consisting of a multi-antenna base station (BS), a multi-antenna sensing receiver, a single-antenna communication user (CU), and a point target to be sensed. Specifically, the BS transmits a superposition of Gaussian information and deterministic sensing signals. The BS aims to deliver information symbols to the CU, while the sensing receiver aims to estimate the target's direction-of-arrival (DoA) with respect to the sensing receiver by processing the echo signals. For the sensing receiver, we assume that only the sequences of the deterministic sensing signals and the covariance matrix of the information signals are perfectly known, whereas the specific realizations of the information signals remain unavailable. Under this setup, we first derive the corresponding Cramér-Rao bounds (CRBs) for DoA estimation and propose practical estimators to accurately estimate the target's DoA. Subsequently, we formulate the transmit beamforming design as an optimization problem aiming to minimize the CRB, subject to a minimum signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR) requirement at the CU and a maximum transmit power constraint at the BS. When the BS employs only Gaussian information signals, the resulting beamforming optimization problem is convex, enabling the derivation of an optimal solution. In contrast, when both Gaussian information and deterministic sensing signals are transmitted, the resulting problem is non-convex and a locally optimal solution is acquired by exploiting successive convex approximation (SCA). Finally, numerical results demonstrate that employing Gaussian information signals leads to a notable performance degradation for target sensing and the proposed transmit beamforming design achieves a superior ISAC performance boundary compared with various benchmark schemes.