Toward a Quiet Wireless World: Multi-Cell Pinching-Antenna Transmission

2026-02-22

AI Summary

This work proposes a novel approach to multi-cell wireless communication by introducing coupled antenna pairs—termed “pinch antennas”—at both transmitter and receiver ends. Conventional systems often rely on high transmit power to ensure quality of service for cell-edge users, resulting in excessive energy consumption and severe inter-cell interference. In contrast, the proposed architecture enables reliable communication at extremely low power levels by leveraging near-field coupling between closely spaced antenna elements. This paradigm shift establishes a “whisper-mode” communication environment that simultaneously reduces base station transmit power, effectively suppresses inter-cell interference, and meets user quality-of-service requirements. The approach thus offers a promising pathway toward green and spectrally efficient wireless networks.

Technology Category

• Multiagent Systems: Agent Communication
• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
• Machine Learning: Learning on the Edge & Model Compression

Application Category

• Systems and Infrastructure for Web, Mobile and WoT: Energy management for devices in mobile Web and WoT environments
• Security and Privacy: Privacy-enhancing technologies
• Economics, Online Markets and Human Computation: Incentives in network design for Web infrastructures and ecosystems

Abstract

Conventional-antenna-based multi-cell interference management can lead to excessive power consumption. For example, in order to serve those users which are close to the cell edge, base stations often must transmit at very high power levels to overcome severe large-scale path-loss, i.e., the base stations have to ``shout" at the users to realize the users' target quality of service (QoS). This letter focuses on the application of pinching antennas to multi-cell interference management and demonstrates that the use of multi-cell pinching-antenna transmission leads to a quiet wireless world. In particular, each transceiver pair can be positioned in close proximity, and hence the users' QoS requirements can be met with only low transmit power, i.e., via ``whispering" rather than high-power transmission.

Problem

• multi-cell interference
• power consumption
• path-loss
• cell-edge users
• quality of service

Innovation

• pinching antenna
• multi-cell interference management
• low-power transmission
• whispering communication
• energy-efficient wireless