Near-Field Integrated Sensing and Communications

A near-field integrated sensing and communications (NF-ISAC) framework is proposed, where both a sensing target and multiple communication users are located within the near-field region. An extended multiple signal classification (MUSIC) algorithm is proposed for the joint distance and angle estimation. The performance tradeoff between communication and sensing is characterized by the proposed two-stage algorithm. Numerical results reveal 1) the additional advantage of the NF-ISAC in terms of distance estimation compared to the conventional far-field ISAC, and 2) the tradeoff between the distance and angle estimation.