Enabling NLOS Imaging Capabilities at the Initial Access of 6G Base Stations

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Bellini, Davide Tornielli, Tagliaferri, Dario, Grassi, Pietro, Scazzoli, Davide, Tebaldini, Stefano, Spagnolini, Umberto
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2025
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author Bellini, Davide Tornielli
Tagliaferri, Dario
Grassi, Pietro
Scazzoli, Davide
Tebaldini, Stefano
Spagnolini, Umberto
author_facet Bellini, Davide Tornielli
Tagliaferri, Dario
Grassi, Pietro
Scazzoli, Davide
Tebaldini, Stefano
Spagnolini, Umberto
contents Sensing in non-line-of-sight (NLOS) is one of the major challenges for integrated sensing and communication systems. Existing countermeasures for NLOS either use prior knowledge on the environment to characterize all the multiple bounces or deploy anomalous reflectors in the environment to enable communication infrastructure to ''\textit{see behind the corner}''. This work addresses the integration of monostatic NLOS imaging functionalities into the initial access (IA) procedure of a next generation base station (BS), by means of a non-reconfigurable modular reflector. During standard-compliant IA, the BS sweeps a narrow beam using a pre-defined dedicated codebook to achieve the beam alignment with users. We introduce the imaging functionality by enhancing such codebook with imaging-specific entries that are jointly designed with the angular configuration of the modular reflector to enable high-resolution imaging of a region in NLOS by \textit{coherently} processing all the echoes at the BS. We derive closed-form expressions for the near-field (NF) spatial resolution, as well as for the \textit{effective aperture} (i.e., the portion of the reflector that actively contributes to improve image resolution). The problem of imaging of moving targets in NLOS is also addressed, and we propose a maximum-likelihood estimation for target's velocity in NF and related theoretical bound. Further, we discuss and quantify the inherent communication-imaging performance trade-offs and related system design challenges through numerical simulations. Finally, the proposed imaging method employing modular reflectors is validated both numerically and experimentally, showing the effectiveness of our concept.
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id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2511_15416
institution arXiv
publishDate 2025
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Enabling NLOS Imaging Capabilities at the Initial Access of 6G Base Stations
Bellini, Davide Tornielli
Tagliaferri, Dario
Grassi, Pietro
Scazzoli, Davide
Tebaldini, Stefano
Spagnolini, Umberto
Signal Processing
Sensing in non-line-of-sight (NLOS) is one of the major challenges for integrated sensing and communication systems. Existing countermeasures for NLOS either use prior knowledge on the environment to characterize all the multiple bounces or deploy anomalous reflectors in the environment to enable communication infrastructure to ''\textit{see behind the corner}''. This work addresses the integration of monostatic NLOS imaging functionalities into the initial access (IA) procedure of a next generation base station (BS), by means of a non-reconfigurable modular reflector. During standard-compliant IA, the BS sweeps a narrow beam using a pre-defined dedicated codebook to achieve the beam alignment with users. We introduce the imaging functionality by enhancing such codebook with imaging-specific entries that are jointly designed with the angular configuration of the modular reflector to enable high-resolution imaging of a region in NLOS by \textit{coherently} processing all the echoes at the BS. We derive closed-form expressions for the near-field (NF) spatial resolution, as well as for the \textit{effective aperture} (i.e., the portion of the reflector that actively contributes to improve image resolution). The problem of imaging of moving targets in NLOS is also addressed, and we propose a maximum-likelihood estimation for target's velocity in NF and related theoretical bound. Further, we discuss and quantify the inherent communication-imaging performance trade-offs and related system design challenges through numerical simulations. Finally, the proposed imaging method employing modular reflectors is validated both numerically and experimentally, showing the effectiveness of our concept.
title Enabling NLOS Imaging Capabilities at the Initial Access of 6G Base Stations
topic Signal Processing
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2511.15416