Rate Region of ISAC for Pinching-Antenna Systems

The Pinching-Antenna SyStem (PASS) reconstructs wireless channels through pinching beamforming, wherein the activated positions of pinching antennas along dielectric waveguides are optimized to shape the radiation pattern. The aim of this article is to analyze the performance limits of employing PASS in integrated sensing and communications (ISAC). Specifically, a PASS-assisted ISAC system is considered, where a pinched waveguide is utilized to simultaneously communicate with a user and sense a target. Closed-form expressions for the achievable communication rate (CR) and sensing rate (SR) are derived to characterize the information-theoretic limits of this dual-functional operation. 1) For the single-pinch case, closed-form solutions for the optimal pinching antenna location are derived under sensing-centric (S-C), communications-centric (C-C), and Pareto-optimal designs. On this basis, the CR-SR trade-off is characterized by deriving the full CR-SR rate region, which is shown to encompass that of conventional fixed-antenna systems. 2) For the multiple-pinch case, an antenna location refinement method is applied to obtain the optimal C-C and S-C pinching beamformers. As a further advance, inner and outer bounds on the achievable CR-SR region are derived using an element-wise alternating optimization technique and by invoking Cauchy-Schwarz and Karamata's inequalities, respectively. Numerical results demonstrate that: 1) the derived bounds closely approximate the true CR-SR region; and 2) PASS can achieve a significantly larger rate region than conventional-antenna systems.