Pinching-Antenna Systems (PASS)-Based User-Side Navigation: An Anchor-Line-based Approach
arXiv:2607.13485
The paper proposes a user-side navigation framework for pinching‑antenna systems that lets mobile users determine their positions from downlink broadcasts without knowing antenna locations, using closed‑form algorithms for antenna positioning, pseudorange estimation, and weighted least‑squares navigation.
Abstract
Pinching-antenna systems (PASS) are capable of dynamically reconfiguring wireless channels by flexibly repositioning pinching antennas (PAs) along the waveguides to establish short-range line-of-sight links. In this paper, a user-side navigation framework for PASS is proposed, where mobile users determine their own positions using only downlink broadcast signals without any prior knowledge of the PA positions. First, a Lambert W function-based PA positioning and pseudorange estimation (LWF-PAP) algorithm is developed, in which the closed-form expressions for both the PA positions along the waveguide and the PA-user pseudoranges are derived. Second, a weighted least squares-based PASS navigation (WLS-PAN) algorithm is formulated, where the nonlinear PASS-based navigation equations are transformed into a closed-form linear system, and the optimal weight matrix is derived, achieving minimum-variance unbiased estimation. Third, the PA-derived position dilution of precision (PA-PDOP) metric is further defined to characterize the theoretical accuracy bound. Simulation results demonstrate that centimeter-level positioning accuracy is achieved for both PAs and users within the breakpoint distance. It is also shown that uniform PA deployment and a moderate increase in the number of PAs effectively improve navigation accuracy, thereby validating the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed framework for distributed real-time user-side self-navigation.
13 pages, 11 figures