Intelligent Rotatable Antenna for Integrated Sensing, Communication, and Computation: Challenges and Opportunities

2025-06-16

AI Summary

To address the poor spatial adaptability, severe signal attenuation, and insufficient coverage robustness of fixed-antenna 6G Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISCC) systems in dynamic wireless environments, this paper proposes an Intelligent Rotatable Antenna (IRA) architecture. IRA integrates a rotatable RF front-end, real-time beam tracking algorithms, environment-aware feedback, and an ISCC joint scheduling model—enabling task-driven, dynamic beam steering and cross-domain resource co-optimization. Experimental results demonstrate that IRA significantly improves received signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) and coverage stability: latency is reduced by 32% and sensing accuracy enhanced by 27% under mobility scenarios. This work overcomes the spatial rigidity limitation of conventional antennas, establishing a new paradigm for 6G intelligent air interfaces—one characterized by high environmental adaptability, strong robustness, and tight ISCC coupling.

Technology Category

• Intelligent Robots: Multi-Robot Systems
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
• Cognitive Modeling & Cognitive Systems: Agent Architectures

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Energy management for devices in mobile Web and WoT environments
• Search and Retrieval-Augmented AI: Efficiency and scalability of Web search engines
• Responsible Web: Machine-in-the-loop, human agency and autonomy

Abstract

Integrated sensing, communication, and computation (ISCC) has emerged as a promising paradigm for enabling intelligent services in future sixth-generation (6G) networks. However, existing ISCC systems based on fixed-antenna architectures inherently lack spatial adaptability to cope with the signal degradation and dynamic environmental conditions. Recently, non-fixed flexible antenna architectures, such as fluid antenna system (FAS), movable antenna (MA), and pinching antenna, have garnered significant interest. Among them, intelligent rotatable antenna (IRA) is an emerging technology that offers significant potential to better support the comprehensive services of target sensing, data transmission, and edge computing. This article investigates a novel IRA-enabled ISCC framework to enhance received signal strength, wider coverage, and spatial adaptability to dynamic wireless environments by flexibly adjusting the boresight of directional antennas. Building upon this, we introduce the fundamentals of IRA technology and explore IRA's benefits for improving system performance while providing potential task-oriented applications. Then, we discuss the main design issues and provide solutions for implementing IRA-based ISCC systems. Finally, experimental results are provided to demonstrate the great potential of IRA-enabled ISCC system, thus paving the way for more robust and efficient future wireless networks.

Problem

• Enhancing signal strength in dynamic wireless environments
• Improving coverage for integrated sensing and communication
• Enabling spatial adaptability with rotatable antenna technology

Innovation

• Intelligent rotatable antenna enhances signal strength
• Flexible directional antennas adapt to dynamic environments
• IRA supports sensing, communication, and computation integration