Transmit Pinching-Antenna Systems (T-PASS): Connecting Wired to Wireless Communications

TL;DR

This paper introduces T-PASS, a novel framework connecting wired and wireless communications using a single pinched waveguide, optimizing antenna placement, power, and scheduling to enhance data rates and reduce interference.

Contribution

It proposes a new integrated transmit pinching-antenna system with joint optimization strategies for wired and wireless UEs, including novel protocols and algorithms for multiuser scenarios.

Findings

T-PASS achieves higher weighted sum rate than conventional systems.

Optimal antenna placement and power allocation are derived for two-user case.

Multiple protocols with low-complexity optimization are proposed for multiuser scenarios.

Abstract

A transmit pinching-antenna system (T-PASS) framework is proposed, in which a single pinched waveguide is employed to jointly serve one wired user equipment (UE) and multiple wireless UEs. The signal radiated by the pinching antennas (PAs) is used to serve the wireless UEs, whereas the residual guided signal at the waveguide termination is used to serve the wired UE. To facilitate T-PASS transmission and mitigate inter-user interference, a hybrid non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) scheme is introduced. Wireless UEs are scheduled by time-division multiple access (TDMA), and, in each slot, the scheduled wireless UE is paired with the wired UE through power-domain NOMA. Within this framework, the PA positions, PA radiation coefficients, power allocation, and TDMA time-slot allocation are jointly optimized to maximize a weighted sum rate (WSR). i) For the two-user case with one wired UE and one wireless UE, the optimal PA position and successive interference cancellation (SIC) decoding order are derived. Closed-form optimal power allocation is obtained, and a near-optimal PA radiation coefficient is determined through a low-complexity one-dimensional search. ii) For the multiuser case with one wired UE and multiple wireless UEs, four protocols with different PA-position and PA-radiation configurations are proposed. For each protocol, a low-complexity element-wise alternating optimization algorithm is developed to optimize the PA positions and radiation coefficients, while closed-form solutions are derived for the optimal power allocation and time-slot allocation. Numerical results are presented to show that: i) under typical T-PASS configurations, the wired UE is selected as the strong user in the optimal SIC decoding order; ii) the proposed T-PASS framework achieves a significantly higher WSR than conventional wireless-only PASS.