Perceptive Mobile Network with Distributed Target Monitoring Terminals: Leaking Communication Energy for Sensing

TL;DR

This paper proposes a perceptive mobile network with distributed passive target monitoring terminals, optimizing beamformers to enhance sensing and communication synergy by leveraging energy leakage from communication signals.

Contribution

It introduces a novel PMN design with distributed TMTs, joint optimization of beamformers, and insights into energy leakage for sensing without full-duplex operation.

Findings

Redesigning communication signals for sensing is more efficient than dedicated sensing signals.

Energy leakage from UEs to sensing targets depends on their relative locations.

Joint optimization converges and provides physical insights into interference management.

Abstract

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) creates a platform to exploit the synergy between two powerful functionalities that have been developing separately. However, the interference management and resource allocation between sensing and communication have not been fully studied. In this paper, we consider the design of perceptive mobile networks (PMNs) by adding sensing capability to current cellular networks. To avoid the full-duplex operation, we propose the PMN with distributed target monitoring terminals (TMTs) where passive TMTs are deployed over wireless networks to locate the sensing target (ST). We jointly optimize the transmit and receive beamformers towards the communication user terminals (UEs) and the ST by alternating-optimization (AO) and prove its convergence. To reduce computation complexity and obtain physical insights, we further investigate the use of linear transceivers, including zero forcing and beam synthesis (B-syn). Our analysis revealed interesting physical insights regarding interference management and resource allocation between sensing and communication: 1) instead of forming dedicated sensing signals, it is more efficient to redesign the communication signals for both communication and sensing purposes and "leak" communication energy for sensing; 2) the amount of energy leakage from one UE to the ST depends on their relative locations.