Pinching-Antenna System (PASS)-enabled Multicast Communications

2025-02-23

AI Summary

This paper addresses the limited multicast capacity and energy efficiency of Pinching-Antenna Systems (PASS) in multi-user line-of-sight (LoS) millimeter-wave scenarios. To tackle this, we propose a waveguide-integrated multi-pinching-antenna optimization framework. Specifically, multiple repositionable flexible pinching antennas (PAs) are deployed along a low-loss, long-range waveguide; their spatial placement is formulated as a non-convex optimization problem, solved efficiently via a modified particle swarm optimization (PSO) algorithm. Our key contributions are: (i) the first waveguide–multi-PA co-design architecture enabling simultaneous broadcast and joint position optimization; and (ii) overcoming fundamental bottlenecks—namely inter-antenna coupling and excessive power consumption—in conventional multi-antenna systems. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed scheme significantly outperforms baseline methods in both multicast capacity and energy efficiency, validating its effectiveness and superiority for near-field mmWave multicast applications.

Technology Category

• Planning, Routing, and Scheduling: Optimization of Spatio-temporal Systems
• Search and Optimization: Non-convex Optimization
• Machine Learning: Optimization

Application Category

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

Abstract

Pinching-antenna system (PASS) is a novel flexible-antenna technology, which employs long-spread waveguides to convey signals with negligible path loss and pinching antennas (PAs) with adjustable positions to radiate signals from the waveguide into the free space. Therefore, short-distance and strong line-of-sight transmission can be established. In this paper, a novel PASS-enabled multicast communication framework is proposed, where multiple PAs on a single waveguide radiate the broadcast signals to multiple users. The multicast performance maximization problem is formulated to optimize the positions of all PAs. To address this non-convex problem, a particle swarm optimization-based algorithm is developed. Numerical results show that PASS can significantly outperform the conventional multiple-antenna transmission.

Problem

• Optimize positions of pinching antennas
• Maximize multicast communication performance
• Develop particle swarm optimization algorithm

Innovation

• Pinching-antenna system for multicast
• Optimized PA positions via PSO
• Minimizes path loss in transmission