Benefitting from the vast spatial degrees of freedom, the amalgamation of integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) and massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) is expected to simultaneously improve spectral and energy efficiencies as well as the sensing capability. However, a large number of antennas deployed in massive MIMO-ISAC raises critical challenges in acquiring both accurate channel state information and target parameter information. To overcome these two challenges with a unified framework, we first analyze their underlying system models and then propose a novel tensor-based approach that addresses both the channel estimation and target sensing problems. Specifically, by parameterizing the high-dimensional communication channel exploiting a small number of physical parameters, we associate the channel state information with the sensing parameters of targets in terms of angular, delay, and Doppler dimensions. Then, we propose a shared training pattern adopting the same time-frequency resources such that both the channel estimation and target parameter estimation can be formulated as a canonical polyadic decomposition problem with a similar mathematical expression. On this basis, we first investigate the uniqueness condition of the tensor factorization and the maximum number of resolvable targets by utilizing the specific Vandermonde structure. Then, we develop a unified tensor-based algorithm to estimate the parameters including angles, time delays, Doppler shifts, and reflection/path coefficients of the targets/channels. In addition, we propose a segment-based shared training pattern to facilitate the channel and target parameter estimation for the case with significant beam squint effects. Simulation results verify our theoretical analysis and the superiority of the proposed unified algorithms in terms of estimation accuracy, sensing resolution, and training overhead reduction.

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) has been widely recognized as a key technology in future sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks, especially for emerging applications and scenarios demanding both high-performance sensing and communication functionalities. The ISAC technique has the potential of enabling sensing and communication functionalities in a single hardware platform, even sharing the same waveform, thus, achieving the reduced cost of hardware implementation and the efficient use of spectrum resources. In this paper, we commence with the discussion on sensing and communication at the current stage from the view of motivations, applications, and challenges. Then, we provide a comprehensive survey of the state-of-the-art approaches to the ISAC technique from the waveform design perspective. To be specific, we classify the waveform design methods into three categories, namely, communication-centric waveform design, sensing-centric waveform design, and joint waveform optimization and design. In addition, potential research directions and challenges for future ISAC waveform design are outlined.

In this letter, we investigate the channel estimation problem for MIMO wireless communication systems with movable antennas (MAs) at both the transmitter (Tx) and receiver (Rx). To achieve high channel estimation accuracy with low pilot training overhead, we propose a tensor decomposition-based method for estimating the parameters of multi-path channel components, including their azimuth and elevation angles, as well as complex gain coefficients, thereby reconstructing the wireless channel between any pair of Tx and Rx MA positions in the Tx and Rx regions. First, we introduce a two-stage Tx-Rx successive antenna movement pattern for pilot training, such that the received pilot signals in both stages can be expressed as a third-order tensor. Then, we obtain the factor matrices of the tensor via the canonical polyadic decomposition, and thereby estimate the angle/gain parameters for enabling the channel reconstruction between arbitrary Tx/Rx MA positions. In addition, we analyze the uniqueness condition of the tensor decomposition, which ensures the complete channel reconstruction between the whole Tx and Rx regions based on the channel measurements at only a finite number of Tx/Rx MA positions. Finally, simulation results are presented to evaluate the proposed tensor decomposition-based method as compared to existing methods, in terms of channel estimation accuracy and pilot overhead.

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) integrated with millimeter-wave (mmWave) can provide unprecedented performance improvement for realizing future wireless communications. However, acquiring accurate channel state information in wideband mmWave massive MIMO systems with hybrid transceiver architectures is even challenging, especially in high-mobility scenarios with severe Doppler effects. In this paper, we propose a tensor decomposition-based method to estimate the time-varying and frequency-selective (TVFS) mmWave MIMO channels. Specifically, by exploiting the sparse scattering nature of TVFS channels, we model the frequency-domain received signal as a third-order tensor that admits a canonical polyadic (CP) decomposition format. Then, we analyze the uniqueness condition of the proposed CP decomposition-based channel estimation problem and propose a novel estimator to acquire TVFS channel parameters including angle of departure/arrival (AoD/AoA), time delay, path gain, and the Doppler shift. To address the sophisticated coupling among unknown parameters, we further propose a joint AoD and Doppler shift estimation (JADE) algorithm that provides reliable initial and iteratively refined estimates. The derived analysis and simulation results verify that the proposed JADE algorithm achieves higher estimation accuracy and guarantees the superiority of the proposed TVFS channel estimator over existing schemes.

The large antenna arrays with hybrid analog and digital (HAD) architectures can provide a large aperture with low cost and hardware complexity, resulting in enhanced direction-of-arrival (DOA) estimation and reduced power consumption. This paper investigates the trade-off between DOA estimation and power consumption in large antenna arrays with HAD architectures. Particularly, the DOA estimation problem of fully-connected, sub-connected (SC), and switches-based (SE) hybrid architectures is formulated into a unified expression, with the compression matrix in a time-varying form. Based on this model, we derive a dynamic maximum likelihood (D-ML) estimator that is suitable for both HAD and conventional fully digital (FD) structures, and the closed-form expression of Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) to evaluate the performance limit of the D-ML estimator for different HAD structures. The theoretical CRB analysis in the single-source case reveals that, the SC structure has the ability to achieve approximately the same performance as the FD structures at DOAs around zero, but suffers from the inherent angle ambiguity because of the antenna grouping. In addition, we propose a dynamic SC (D-SC) structure that is proved to eliminate the angle ambiguity with time-varying phase shifters, and a switch optimization (SWO) algorithm to minimize the CRB of SE structures. Finally, we introduce a new metric, DOA efficiency, to measure the trade-off between the DOA estimation performance and power consumption of different structures. Simulation results verify our theoretical analysis and the superiority of the proposed D-SC structure and the SWO algorithm.

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) can provide efficient usage for both spectrum and hardware resources. A critical challenge, however, is to design the dual-functional waveform for simultaneous radar sensing and communication. In this paper, we propose a sparse vector coding-based ISAC (SVC-ISAC) waveform to simultaneously provide low sidelobes for radar sensing and ultra reliability for communication transmission. The key idea of the proposed waveform is to embed the communication information into the support of one sparse vector and transmit a low-dimensional signal via the spreading codebook. We derive a closed-form expression of the ambiguity function for the proposed SVC-ISAC waveform, and prove that it exhibits low sidelobes in the delay and Doppler domains, regardless of the distribution of the transmitted bit stream. In addition, the information decoding at the communication receiver is solved through the support identification and sparse demapping. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed waveform improves the reliability while consistently suppressing the sidelobe levels.