STARS for Integrated Sensing and Communications: Challenges, Solutions, and Future Directions

TL;DR

This paper explores the use of STARS surfaces for integrated sensing and communication, proposing novel designs and implementations to enhance system performance and address key challenges.

Contribution

It introduces a sensing-at-STARS design and practical implementations, advancing the integration of sensing and communication in ISAC networks.

Findings

Proposed sensing-at-STARS improves echo signal energy.

Three practical implementations enable flexible sensing-communication tradeoffs.

Numerical results demonstrate the superiority of the proposed design.

Abstract

This article discusses the employment of simultaneously transmitting and reflecting surface (STARS) for integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) networks. First, two fundamental configurations of STARS-enabled ISAC systems are introduced, namely integrated full-space configuration and separated half-space configuration, as well as their respective advantages and common challenges are identified. To address the aforementioned challenges, a novel sensing-at-STARS design is proposed, where the sensing functionality is achieved at the STARS instead of at the base station. Such a design significantly improves the echo signal energy by eliminating undesired echo energy attenuation/leakage, in addition to establishing favorable echo propagation paths to facilitate sensing information extraction. We also present three practical implementations for sensing-at-STARS, including separated elements, mode-selection elements, and power-splitting elements. Each implementation enables flexible sensing-communication tradeoffs. Numerical results are provided to demonstrate the superiority of the proposed STARS-enabled ISAC design. Finally, we discuss several future research directions.