Pinching Antenna Systems (PASS): Enabling Reconfigurable and Controllable Wireless Channels -- A Comprehensive Survey

TL;DR

This paper provides a comprehensive survey of Pinching Antenna Systems (PASS), a novel reconfigurable wireless channel technique that enhances coverage, data rate, and security, with insights into future deployment challenges.

Contribution

It offers the first extensive review of PASS, categorizing existing schemes, analyzing their potential and limitations, and discussing future research directions.

Findings

PASS can improve network coverage and data rates.

PASS enhances sensing capabilities and security.

Several PASS schemes have promising potential but face deployment challenges.

Abstract

The evolution of wireless networks is driving new paradigms for consideration in upcoming generations. To this end, the 6G anticipates the development of several data-rate-hungry applications, in addition to a forecast growth in sensing-centric applications. Such an evolution, however, is unbalanced on the other side by the accentuated scarcity of spectrum, which opens up urgent needs to develop spectrum-efficient communication and sensing techniques. Due to the inability of the traditional multi-antenna schemes to enhance a wireless channel quality, increasing interest has been paid to wireless channel-altering schemes, such as reconfigurable intelligent surfaces and movable antennas. Recently, a new technique in this category, called pinching antennas (PAs), was introduced and tested. PA systems (PASS) are based on extending the reach of a base station by connecting its radio-frequency chains to long waveguides, on which one or many radiating antennas are pinched at custom positions of interest. Thus, such a technique can provide a means of overcoming several unfavorable channel conditions, such as the absence of a line-of-sight and increased free-space path loss. Importantly, such a channel-tuning feature can provide notable enhancements in terms of sensing, network coverage, data rate, and resilience against eavesdropping. In this work, we provide a comprehensive review of research on PASS, designed to meet various system design objectives, such as network coverage and data rate, information-theoretically secure transmission, sensing, integrated sensing and communication, and energy efficiency. A categorization of the surveyed work is established by comparing the various PASS schemes presented. Several takeaways are illustrated on the proposed schemes' potential and limitations, along with several directions forward discussed, in terms of future deployment and implementation.