This paper considers an intelligent reflecting surface (IRS)-assisted bi-static localization architecture for the sixth-generation (6G) integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) network. The system consists of a transmit user, a receive base station (BS), an IRS, and multiple passive targets in either the far-field or near-field region of the IRS. In particular, we focus on the challenging scenario where the line-of-sight (LOS) paths between targets and the BS are blocked, such that the emitted orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) signals from the user reach the BS merely via the user-target-IRS-BS path. Our objective is to localize the targets by estimating their relative positions to the IRS from the received signal at the BS, instead of the BS. We show that subspace-based methods, such as the multiple signal classification (MUSIC) algorithm, can be applied to estimate the relative states from the targets to the IRS, while the spectrum ambiguity exhibits caused by the low-rank IRS-BS channel. To overcome this issue, we propose a novel spatiotemporal IRS phase profile and create a virtual signal model by concatenating the temporal signals over multiple OFDM symbols. Furthermore, we rigorously prove that the spectrum ambiguity issue can be resolved almost surely, if the MUSIC algorithm is applied to our properly constructed temporal-domain signals. Numerical results verify the effectiveness and efficiency of our proposed IRS-assisted localization scheme over the other localization counterparts. Our paper demonstrates the potential of employing passive anchors, i.e., IRSs, to improve the sensing coverage of the active anchors, i.e., BSs.

Traditional discrete-array-based systems fail to exploit interactions between closely spaced antennas, resulting in inadequate utilization of the aperture resource. In this paper, we propose a holographic intelligence surface (HIS) assisted integrated sensing and communication (HISAC) system, wherein both the transmitter and receiver are fabricated using a continuous-aperture array. A continuous-discrete transformation of the HIS pattern based on the Fourier transform is proposed, converting the continuous pattern design into a discrete beamforming design. We formulate a joint transmit-receive beamforming optimization problem for the HISAC system, aiming to balance the performance of multi-target sensing while fulfilling the performance requirement of multi-user communication. To solve the non-convex problem with coupled variables, an alternating optimization-based algorithm is proposed to optimize the HISAC transmit-receive beamforming in an alternate manner. Specifically, the transmit beamforming design is solved by decoupling into a series of feasibility-checking sub-problems while the receive beamforming is determined by the Rayleigh quotient-based method. Simulation results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed HISAC system over traditional discrete-array-based ISAC systems, achieving significantly higher sensing performance while guaranteeing predetermined communication performance.

Future wireless systems are envisioned to utilize the large spectra available at THz bands for wireless communications. Extremely massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) antennas can be costly and power inefficient for wideband THz communications. An alternative antenna technology, which can achieve low-cost and power-efficient THz signaling, is based on leaky wave antennas (LWAs). In this paper, we explore the usage of the LWAs for wideband downlink multi-user THz communications. We propose a model for LWA-aided communication systems that faithfully captures the antenna operations. We show that LWAs yield frequency-dependent beams, where the equivalent wideband channel induces a dependence between angle, frequency, and spectral lobe width. We identify the LWA's inherent frequency-selective beamsteering capabilities as motivating multi-band THz communications, in which subbands are allocated among users based on their relative angles. Then, we propose an alternating optimization algorithm for jointly optimizing the LWA configuration along with the spectral division and power allocation to maximize the achievable sum-rate performance. Our numerical results show that a single LWA can generate diverse beampatterns, exhibiting performance comparable to costly MIMO architectures in wideband THz multi-user systems.

Terahertz (THz) communication combined with ultra-massive multiple-input multiple-output (UM-MIMO) technology is promising for 6G wireless systems, where fast and precise direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation is crucial for effective beamforming. However, finding DOAs in THz UM-MIMO systems faces significant challenges: while reducing hardware complexity, the hybrid analog-digital (HAD) architecture introduces inherent difficulties in spatial information acquisition the large-scale antenna array causes significant deviations in eigenvalue decomposition results; and conventional two-dimensional DOA estimation methods incur prohibitively high computational overhead, hindering fast and accurate realization. To address these challenges, we propose a hybrid dynamic subarray (HDS) architecture that strategically divides antenna elements into subarrays, ensuring phase differences between subarrays correlate exclusively with single-dimensional DOAs. Leveraging this architectural innovation, we develop two efficient algorithms for DOA estimation: a reduced-dimension MUSIC (RD-MUSIC) algorithm that enables fast processing by correcting large-scale array estimation bias, and an improved version that further accelerates estimation by exploiting THz channel sparsity to obtain initial closed-form solutions through specialized two-RF-chain configuration. Furthermore, we develop a theoretical framework through Cramér-Rao lower bound analysis, providing fundamental insights for different HDS configurations. Extensive simulations demonstrate that our solution achieves both superior estimation accuracy and computational efficiency, making it particularly suitable for practical THz UM-MIMO systems.

This paper integrates the emerging ultra-massive multiple-input multiple-output (UM-MIMO) technique with orthogonal chirp division multiplexing (OCDM) waveform to tackle the challenging near-field integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) problem. Specifically, we conceive a comprehensive ISAC architecture, where an UM-MIMO base station adopts OCDM waveform for communications and a co-located sensing receiver adopts the frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) detection principle to simplify the associated hardware. For sensing tasks, several OCDM subcarriers, namely, dedicated sensing subcarriers (DSSs), are each transmitted through a dedicated sensing antenna (DSA) within the transmit antenna array. By judiciously designing the DSS selection scheme and optimizing receiver parameters, the FMCW-based sensing receiver can decouple the echo signals from different DSAs with significantly reduced hardware complexity. This setup enables the estimation of ranges and velocities of near-field targets in an antenna-pairwise manner. Moreover, by leveraging the spatial diversity of UM-MIMO, we introduce the concept of virtual bistatic sensing (VIBS), which incorporates the estimates from multiple antenna pairs to achieve high-accuracy target positioning and three-dimensional velocity measurement. The VIBS paradigm is immune to hostile channel environments characterized by spatial non-stationarity and uncorrelated multipath environment. Furthermore, the channel estimation of UM-MIMO OCDM systems enhanced by the sensing results is investigated. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed ISAC scheme enhances sensing accuracy, and also benefits communication performance.

The rapid growth of low-altitude aerial services and applications, driven by uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs), calls for a new class of digital infrastructure beyond conventional terrestrial networks. The low-altitude wireless network (LAWN) has been proposed as dynamically reconfigurable three-dimensional architectures that integrate aerial and ground nodes to provide connectivity, sensing, and control in open, safety-critical airspace. This tutorial presents a comprehensive treatment of LAWNs from the joint perspectives of artificial intelligence (AI) and signal processing. We first review the historical evolution and architectural foundations of LAWNs, introducing altitude-based layers and functional planes, and summarizing the regulatory and standardization landscape. Building on this system view, we then discuss signal processing fundamentals for LAWNs, including 3D channel and system models, performance metrics, waveform and receiver design, localization and tracking, and multi-functionality co-design. Next, we survey AI techniques for LAWNs, covering discriminative and generative models for perception, control, resource management, and security, as well as emerging paradigms such as foundation models, large language models, and digital twins for mission planning and closed-loop optimization. To illustrate AI-signal processing integration in practice, we provide a case study of an AI-driven multi-tier LAWN with hybrid satellite, high-altitude, and ground nodes. The tutorial concludes by outlining key research challenges in architecture design, signal processing-AI co-design, safety and security, experimentation, and standardization, and by highlighting opportunities for LAWNs to evolve into dependable, AI-native infrastructure for the intelligent skies.

In this paper, we investigate channel estimation for reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) empowered millimeter-wave (mmWave) multi-user single-input multiple-output communication systems using low-resolution quantization. Due to the high cost and power consumption of analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) in large antenna arrays and for wide signal bandwidths, designing mmWave systems with low-resolution ADCs is beneficial. To tackle this issue, we propose a channel estimation design using task-based quantization that considers the underlying hybrid analog and digital architecture in order to improve the system performance under finite bit-resolution constraints. Our goal is to accomplish a channel estimation task that minimizes the mean squared error distortion between the true and estimated channel. We develop two types of channel estimators: a cascaded channel estimator for an RIS with purely passive elements, and an estimator for the separate RIS-related channels that leverages additional information from a few semi-passive elements at the RIS capable of processing the received signals with radio frequency chains. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed channel estimation designs exploiting task-based quantization outperform purely digital methods and can effectively approach the performance of a system with unlimited resolution ADCs. Furthermore, the proposed channel estimators are shown to be superior to baselines with small training overhead.

Due to its ability to precisely control wireless beams, holographic multiple-input multiple-output (HMIMO) is expected to be a promising solution to achieve high-accuracy localization. However, as the scale of HMIMO increases to improve beam control capability, the corresponding near-field (NF) region expands, indicating that users may exist in both NF and far-field (FF) regions with different electromagnetic transmission characteristics. As a result, existing methods for pure NF or FF localization are no longer applicable. We consider a hybrid NF and FF localization scenario in this paper, where a base station (BS) locates multiple users in both NF and FF regions with the aid of a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), which is a low-cost implementation of HMIMO. In such a scenario, it is difficult to locate the users and optimize the RIS phase shifts because whether the location of the user is in the NF or FF region is unknown, and the channels of different users are coupled. To tackle this challenge, we propose a RIS-enabled localization method that searches the users in both NF and FF regions and tackles the coupling issue by jointly estimating all user locations. We derive the localization error bound by considering the channel coupling and propose an RIS phase shift optimization algorithm that minimizes the derived bound. Simulations show the effectiveness of the proposed method and demonstrate the performance gain compared to pure NF and FF techniques.

Collaborative perception allows each agent to enhance its perceptual abilities by exchanging messages with others. It inherently results in a trade-off between perception ability and communication costs. Previous works transmit complete full-frame high-dimensional feature maps among agents, resulting in substantial communication costs. To promote communication efficiency, we propose only transmitting the information needed for the collaborator's downstream task. This pragmatic communication strategy focuses on three key aspects: i) pragmatic message selection, which selects task-critical parts from the complete data, resulting in spatially and temporally sparse feature vectors; ii) pragmatic message representation, which achieves pragmatic approximation of high-dimensional feature vectors with a task-adaptive dictionary, enabling communicating with integer indices; iii) pragmatic collaborator selection, which identifies beneficial collaborators, pruning unnecessary communication links. Following this strategy, we first formulate a mathematical optimization framework for the perception-communication trade-off and then propose PragComm, a multi-agent collaborative perception system with two key components: i) single-agent detection and tracking and ii) pragmatic collaboration. The proposed PragComm promotes pragmatic communication and adapts to a wide range of communication conditions. We evaluate PragComm for both collaborative 3D object detection and tracking tasks in both real-world, V2V4Real, and simulation datasets, OPV2V and V2X-SIM2.0. PragComm consistently outperforms previous methods with more than 32.7K times lower communication volume on OPV2V. Code is available at github.com/PhyllisH/PragComm.

We study sparse principal component analysis in the high-dimensional, sample-limited regime, aiming to recover a leading component supported on a few coordinates. Despite extensive progress, most methods and analyses are tailored to the flat-spike case, offering little guidance when spike energy is unevenly distributed across the support. Motivated by this, we propose Spectral Energy Pursuit (SEP), an effective iterative scheme that repeatedly screens and reselects coordinates, with a sample complexity that adapts to the energy profile. We develop our framework around a structure function s(p) that quantifies how spike energy accumulates over its top p entries. We establish that SEP succeeds with a sample size of order max_1≤ p≤ k p s^2(p) log n, which matches the classical k^2log n sample complexity for flat spikes and improves toward the klog n regime as the profile becomes more concentrated. As a lightweight post-processing, a single truncated power iteration is proven to enable the final estimator to attain a uniform statistical error bound. Empirical simulations across flat, power-law, and exponential signals validate that SEP adapts to profile structure without tuning and outperforms existing algorithms.

Combining wireless sensing and edge intelligence, edge perception networks enable intelligent data collection and processing at the network edge. However, traditional sample partition based horizontal federated edge learning (HFEEL) struggles to effectively fuse complementary multi-view information from distributed devices. To address this limitation, we propose a vertical federated edge learning (VFEEL) framework tailored for feature-partitioned sensing data. In this paper, we consider an integrated sensing, communication, and computation (ISCC)-enabled edge perception network, where multiple edge devices utilize wireless signals to sense environmental information for updating their local models, and the edge server aggregates feature embeddings via over-the-air computation (AirComp) for global model training. First, we analyze the convergence behavior of the ISCC-enabled VFEEL in terms of the loss function degradation in the presence of wireless sensing noise and aggregation distortions during AirComp. Then, to accelerate convergence, we aim to optimize the batch size, sensing power, and transmission power control at edge devices as well as the denoising factors at the edge server under limited network constraints on overall energy consumption and per-round latency. Due to the tight coupling of variables, the problem is non-convex. To address this problem, we design an alternating optimization-based algorithm to efficiently obtain a high-quality solution. Numerical results are conducted based on a human motion recognition task to verify that the proposed ISCC-enabled VFEEL algorithm achieves higher accuracy compared with other benchmarking schemes including ISCC-enabled HFEEL approach.

This paper presents an integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system that utilizes multi-input multi-output (MIMO) radar for beam training and tracking in uncrewed aerial vehicle (UAV) communication environments. The ISAC system is based on the dual-functional radar-communication (DFRC) technique, where the base station generates and tracks beams using radar echoes instead of relying on communication signals. To achieve accurate two-dimensional (2D) direction of arrival (DOA) estimation, we propose an off-grid structured Sparse Bayesian Learning (2D-OGSSBL) algorithm that exploits the joint sparsity structure between the grid component and the bias component, as well as among different snapshots. By leveraging the estimated DOAs from echoes, we further introduce a downlink beamforming and beam tracking method, which utilizes the Bayesian Cram & eacute;r-Rao bound of the proposed DOA estimation algorithm to optimize the beamforming design. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm achieves high DOA estimation accuracy even with a coarse sampling grid. Additionally, numerical results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed DOA estimation algorithm and ISAC beamforming scheme, highlighting the advantages of incorporating sensing functionality in communication beamforming compared to other beamforming schemes that rely on auxiliary information.

In sparse phase retrieval, the spectral initialization step is critical for successful recovery. Current research on spectral initialization often focuses on the algorithmic procedure or the asymptotic properties of the matrix, while the fundamental design of the initialization matrix for strong non-asymptotic performance remains underexplored. This paper introduces a new design philosophy for the initialization matrix. We propose a centralization technique that reduces estimator variance and then extend it to a family of matrices that balances both strong non-asymptotic performance and desirable asymptotic properties. Through theoretical analysis and simulations, we demonstrate our approach yields robust and efficient estimators that significantly outperform the classical method.

In signal processing, the data collected from sensing devices is often a noisy linear superposition of multiple components, and the estimation of components of interest constitutes a crucial pre-processing step. In this work, we develop a Bayesian framework for signal component decomposition, which combines Gibbs sampling with plug-and-play (PnP) diffusion priors to draw component samples from the posterior distribution. Unlike many existing methods, our framework supports incorporating model-driven and data-driven prior knowledge into the diffusion prior in a unified manner. Moreover, the proposed posterior sampler allows component priors to be learned separately and flexibly combined without retraining. Under suitable assumptions, the proposed DiG sampler provably produces samples from the posterior distribution. We also show that DiG can be interpreted as an extension of a class of recently proposed diffusion-based samplers, and that, for suitable classes of sensing operators, DiG better exploits the structure of the measurement model. Numerical experiments demonstrate the superior performance of our method over existing approaches.

To achieve ultra-high precision positioning, the extremely large-scale antenna array (ELAA), consisting of hundreds or even thousands of antenna elements, has garnered significant attention. However, due to increased antenna aperture, it inevitably encounters both near-field effects and spatial non-stationarity effects. In the near-field region, the traditional assumption of far-field plane wavefront no longer holds, necessitating consideration of spherical wave characteristics. Spatial non-stationarity arises when signals fail to reach the entire array, but instead only impinge on a subset of antennas, which is referred to as the signal’s visible region (VR). Both effects cause model mismatch and therefore reduce positioning accuracy. In this paper, we introduce an exact near-field signal model in the context of ELAA. Based on this model, we prove that the steering vectors of source signals and the eigenvectors of the signal subspace become collinear as the number of antennas approaches infinity, which makes it easier to estimate the VR and source location parameters. Accordingly, we develop an estimation method to effectively extract the VR information of signals even when the VRs are discontinuous or overlapping. After obtaining the VR information, we propose three source localization methods that leverage the estimated VR and eigenvectors. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed methods achieve high-precision localization while reducing computational complexity, thereby overcoming the model mismatch induced by near-field effects and spatial non-stationarity effects in ELAA.

In 6G networks, integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is envisioned as a key technology that enables wireless systems to perform joint sensing and communication using shared hardware, antenna(s) and spectrum. ISAC designs facilitate emerging applications such as digital twins, smart cities and autonomous driving. Such applications also demand ultra-reliable and low-latency communication (URLLC), a feature that was first introduced in 5G and is expected to be further enhanced in 6G. Thus, an ISAC-enabled URLLC system can prioritize critical and time-sensitive targets and ensure information delivery under strict latency and reliability constraints. We propose a bi-static multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) ISAC system to detect the arrival of URLLC messages and prioritize their delivery. In this system, a dual-function base station (BS) communicates with a user equipment (UE) and a sensing receiver (SR) is deployed to collect echo signals reflected from a target of interest. The BS regularly transmits messages of enhanced mobile broadband (eMBB) services to the UE. During each eMBB transmission, if the SR senses the presence of a target of interest, it immediately triggers the transmission of an additional URLLC message. To reinforce URLLC transmissions, we propose a dirty-paper coding (DPC)-based technique that mitigates the interference of both eMBB and sensing signals. To decode the eMBB message, we consider two approaches for handling the URLLC interference: treating interference as noise (TIN) and successive interference cancellation (SIC). For this system, we formulate the rate-reliability-detection trade-off in the finite blocklength (FBL) regime by evaluating the communication rate of the eMBB transmissions, the reliability of the URLLC transmissions and the probability of the target detection. Our numerical analysis show that our proposed DPC-based ISAC scheme significantly outperforms power-sharing based ISAC and traditional time-sharing schemes. In particular, it achieves higher eMBB transmission rate while satisfying both URLLC and sensing constraints.

Enabling multi-target sensing in near-field integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems is a key challenge, particularly when line-of-sight paths are blocked. This paper proposes a beamforming framework that leverages a reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) to achieve multi-target indication. Our contribution is the extension of classic beampattern gain and inter-target cross-correlation metrics to the near-field, leveraging both angle and distance information to discriminate between multiple users and targets. We formulate a problem to maximize the worst-case sensing performance by jointly designing the beamforming at the base station and the phase shifts at the RIS, while guaranteeing communication rates. The non-convex problem is solved via an efficient alternating optimization (AO) algorithm that utilizes semidefinite relaxation (SDR). Simulations demonstrate that our RIS-assisted framework enables high-resolution sensing of co-angle targets in blocked scenarios.

Knowledge Distillation (KD) is a central paradigm for transferring knowledge from a large teacher network to a typically smaller student model, often by leveraging soft probabilistic outputs. While KD has shown strong empirical success in numerous applications, its theoretical underpinnings remain only partially understood. In this work, we adopt a Bayesian perspective on KD to rigorously analyze the convergence behavior of students trained with Stochastic Gradient Descent (SGD). We study two regimes: $(i)$ when the teacher provides the exact Bayes Class Probabilities (BCPs); and $(ii)$ supervision with noisy approximations of the BCPs. Our analysis shows that learning from BCPs yields variance reduction and removes neighborhood terms in the convergence bounds compared to one-hot supervision. We further characterize how the level of noise affects generalization and accuracy. Motivated by these insights, we advocate the use of Bayesian deep learning models, which typically provide improved estimates of the BCPs, as teachers in KD. Consistent with our analysis, we experimentally demonstrate that students distilled from Bayesian teachers not only achieve higher accuracies (up to +4.27\%), but also exhibit more stable convergence (up to 30\% less noise), compared to students distilled from deterministic teachers.

In this paper, we investigate contact-free blood pressure (BP) monitoring using a chest radar. We propose a dictionary-learning framework that leverages multimodal recordings including radar, ICG, ECG, and BP to learn shared physiological representations. After training, BP waveforms are reconstructed by weighting the learned BP dictionary with sparse codes estimated solely from the radar signal. The learned representation enables interpretable cardiac coding from radar signals alone, allowing the synthesis of high-fidelity BP waveforms. Experiments on public datasets demonstrate interpretable modeling and accurate BP inference, enabling practical single-sensor BP monitoring with multimodal supervision.

Fluid antenna systems (FASs) have emerged as a promising antenna technology for 6G networks by tapping into new degrees of freedom (DoF) in antenna positions to harness multiplexing gains. In this paper, we propose an implementation of FASs enabled by reconfigurable holographic surfaces (RHSs) and construct a 384-element prototype with amplitude-modulation capabilities, RHSs can adjust the antenna positions by activating different subsets of elements. Due to unknown user locations, multiple antenna ports, and varying channel environments, however, the design of beamforming schemes relying on acquiring accurate channel state information (CSI) suffers high complexity. To avoid CSI acquisition, we design a low-overhead fluid beam training scheme for RHS-enabled FAS. Unlike fixed-position antennas, fluid beam training employs different antenna positions via element activation, namely sliding windows, for each codeword to improve the channel quality, thereby enhancing the received signal strength (RSS). Such an element activation method is also applied to reprogram the effective array aperture, hence the fluid beam training adopts a hierarchical structure where the beamwidth of codewords narrows across layers. Experimental and simulation results verify the variation of RSS with sliding windows. Compared to traditional schemes, the proposed fluid beam training utilizing sliding windows achieves higher training accuracy and data rates.