Next-generation cellular technologies, commonly referred to as the sixth generation (6G), are envisioned to support a higher system capacity, better performance, and network sensing capabilities. The terahertz (THz) band is one potential enabler to this end due to the large unused frequency bands and the high spatial resolution enabled by the short signal wavelength and large bandwidth. Different from earlier surveys, this paper presents a comprehensive treatment and technology survey on THz communications and sensing in terms of advantages, applications, propagation characterization, channel modeling, measurement campaigns, antennas, transceiver devices, beamforming, networking, the integration of communications and sensing, and experimental testbeds. Starting from the motivation and use cases, we survey the development and historical perspective of THz communications and sensing with the anticipated 6G requirements. We explore the radio propagation, channel modeling, and measurement for the THz band. The transceiver requirements, architectures, technological challenges, and state-of-the-art approaches to compensate for the high propagation losses, including appropriate antenna design and beamforming solutions. We overview several related technologies that either are required by or are beneficial for THz systems and networks. The synergistic design of sensing and communications is explored in depth. Practical trials, demonstrations, and experiments are also summarized. The paper gives a holistic view of the current state of the art and highlights the open research challenges towards 6G and beyond.

A reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) can shape the radio propagation environment by virtue of changing the impinging electromagnetic waves towards any desired directions, thus, breaking the general Snell's reflection law. However, the optimal control of the RIS requires perfect channel state information (CSI) of the individual channels that link the base station (BS) and the mobile station (MS) to each other via the RIS. Thereby super-resolution channel (parameter) estimation needs to be efficiently conducted at the BS or MS with CSI feedback to the RIS controller. In this paper, we adopt a two-stage channel estimation scheme for RIS-aided millimeter wave (mmWave) MIMO systems without a direct BS-MS channel, using atomic norm minimization to sequentially estimate the channel parameters, i.e., angular parameters, angle differences, and the products of propagation path gains. We evaluate the mean square error of the parameter estimates, the RIS gains, the average effective spectrum efficiency bound, and average squared distance between the designed beamforming and combining vectors and the optimal ones. The results demonstrate that the proposed scheme achieves super-resolution estimation compared to the existing benchmark schemes, thus offering promising performance in the subsequent data transmission phase.

Millimeter-wave (mmWave) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system for the fifth generation (5G) cellular communications can also enable single-anchor positioning and object tracking due to its large bandwidth and inherently high angular resolution. In this paper, we introduce the newly invented concept, large intelligent surface (LIS), to mmWave positioning systems, study the theoretical performance bounds (i.e., Cramér-Rao lower bounds) for positioning, and evaluate the impact of the number of LIS elements and the value of phase shifters on the position estimation accuracy compared to the conventional scheme with one direct link and one non-line-of-sight path. It is verified that better performance can be achieved with a LIS from the theoretical analyses and numerical study.

The concept of reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) has been proposed to change the propagation of electromagnetic waves, e.g., reflection, diffraction, and refraction. To accomplish this goal, the phase values of the discrete RIS units need to be optimized. In this paper, we consider RIS-aided millimeter-wave (mmWave) multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) systems for both accurate positioning and high data-rate transmission. We propose an adaptive phase shifter design based on hierarchical codebooks and feedback from the mobile station (MS). The benefit of the scheme lies in that the RIS does not require deployment of any active sensors and baseband processing units. During the update process of phase shifters, the combining vector at the MS is sequentially refined. Simulation results show the performance improvement of the proposed algorithm over the random phase design scheme, in terms of both positioning accuracy and data rate. Moreover, the performance converges to that of the exhaustive search scheme even in the low signal-to-noise ratio regime.

Envisioned as one of the most promising technologies, holographic multiple-input multiple-output (H-MIMO) recently attracts notable research interests for its great potential in expanding wireless possibilities and achieving fundamental wireless limits. Empowered by the nearly continuous, large and energy-efficient surfaces with powerful electromagnetic (EM) wave control capabilities, H-MIMO opens up the opportunity for signal processing in a more fundamental EM-domain, paving the way for realizing holographic imaging level communications in supporting the extremely high spectral efficiency and energy efficiency in future networks. In this article, we propose a generalized EM-domain near-field channel modeling and study its capacity limit of point-to-point H-MIMO systems that equips arbitrarily placed surfaces in a line-of-sight (LoS) environment. Two effective and computational-efficient channel models are established from their integral counterpart, where one is with a sophisticated formula but showcases more accurate, and another is concise with a slight precision sacrifice. Furthermore, we unveil the capacity limit using our channel model, and derive a tight upper bound based upon an elaborately built analytical framework. Our result reveals that the capacity limit grows logarithmically with the product of transmit element area, receive element area, and the combined effects of 1/ d ² _mn , 1/ d ⁴ _mn , and 1/ d ⁶ _mn over all transmit and receive antenna elements, where d_mn indicates the distance between each transmit element n and receive element m . Particularly, 1/ d ⁶ _mn dominates in the near-field region whereas 1/ d ² _mn dominates in the far-field region. Numerical evaluations validate the effectiveness of our channel models, and showcase the slight disparity between the upper bound and the exact capacity, which is beneficial for predicting practical system performance.