Hybrid Pinching-Fluid Antenna Assisted Wireless Communications: Modeling and Performance Analysis

TL;DR

This paper introduces a hybrid pinching-fluid antenna system (HPFAS) that combines the strengths of pinching and fluid antennas to improve wireless communication performance across different propagation environments.

Contribution

It proposes a novel hybrid antenna architecture, develops a tractable channel model, and derives outage probability expressions validated by simulations.

Findings

HPFAS outperforms single-antenna systems in diverse conditions.

The model accurately predicts outage probabilities in various scenarios.

Simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the hybrid approach.

Abstract

Reconfigurable-antenna systems have received increasing attention for their ability to adapt wireless channels. However, existing architectures exhibit scenario-dependent limitations: fluid antennas provide strong diversity gains in rich-scattering environments but offer limited benefits under line-of-sight (LoS)-dominant conditions, while pinching antennas can effectively reduce path loss by adjusting the radiation point along a waveguide, yet perform poorly in severe non-LoS (NLoS) scenarios. This letter proposes a hybrid pinching-fluid antenna system (HPFAS), where pinching antenna (PA) is employed at the transmitter and a fluid antenna (FA) is used at the receiver to jointly exploit LoS enhancement and spatial diversity. A tractable channel model is developed, and outage probability expressions are derived for both single-user and multi-user scenarios. Simulation results validate the analysis and show that the proposed HPFAS consistently outperforms systems using only pinching antennas or only fluid antennas under various propagation conditions.