Zhentian Zhang

Zhentian Zhang, Kai-Kit Wong, Hao Jiang et al.

In this letter, we develop a unified Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) framework to characterize the fundamental performance limits of transmission activity detection in fluid antenna systems (FASs) and conventional multiple fixed-position antenna (FPA) systems. To facilitate CRB analysis applicable to activity indicators, we relax the binary activity states to continuous parameters, thereby aligning the bound-based evaluation with practical threshold-based detection decisions. Closed-form CRB expressions are derived for two representative detection formulations, namely covariance-oriented and coherent models. Moreover, for single-antenna FASs, we obtain a closed-form coherent CRB by leveraging random matrix theory. The results demonstrate that CRB-based analysis provides a tractable and informative benchmark for evaluating activity detection across architectures and detection schemes, and further reveal that FASs can deliver strong spatial-diversity gains with significantly reduced complexity.

Zhentian Zhang, Kai-Kit Wong, Kaitao Meng et al.

Accurate channel state information (CSI) acquisition is critical for exploiting the spatial flexibility of fluid antenna systems (FASs). However, port selection and transmission optimization require CSI over a large number of candidate port positions, making direct port-wise estimation prohibitively costly in terms of pilot overhead. This paper addresses this challenge through geometry-structured channel reconstruction, which exploits the fact that the port-domain CSI can be parameterized by a small number of dominant propagation paths. We first establish fundamental mean square error (MSE) and normalized MSE (NMSE) benchmarks for both geometry-structured and unstructured channel reconstruction, providing analytical references for evaluating the intrinsic benefit of geometric modeling in conventional antenna systems and FASs. Motivated by the strong spatial correlation induced by densely distributed fluid antenna ports, we further propose a Bayesian reconstruction framework, termed geometry-structured expectation-maximization approximate message passing (GS-EM-AMP). The proposed algorithm incorporates geometric channel structure into the EM-AMP procedure and adaptively learns unknown statistical parameters from noisy observations. Numerical results demonstrate that GS-EM-AMP achieves near-bound reconstruction accuracy while maintaining strong robustness against steering-domain correlation, thereby offering an efficient and reliable solution for large-scale CSI acquisition in FASs.

Zhentian Zhang, Hao Jiang, Kai-Kit Wong et al.

Fluid antenna systems (FAS) enable unprecedented spatial diversity within a compact form factor by flexibly switching among high-density antenna ports. To activate this capability, channel state information (CSI) over the ports is required, which implies high estimation overhead because the number of ports is usually very large. Conventional estimation schemes tend to first estimate the CSI for a small number of ports and then infer the CSI for the remaining antenna ports by interpolation exploiting correlation characteristics. However, existing correlation-based techniques lack generalization ability, and the fundamental limits of interpolating the CSI from sparse observations remain poorly understood. This paper adopts a generative modeling framework for characterizing the channel correlation among the FAS ports that departs fundamentally from covariance-descriptive models. Specifically, we represent the spatially sampled channel as a $p$th-order autoregressive (AR) Gauss-Markov process, which provides a principled and tunable tradeoff between model complexity and approximation accuracy via the AR order. In so doing, we can characterize the limits of channel interpolation by deriving the globally optimal minimum mean-square error (MMSE) estimator and establishing a tight lower bound on the minimum number of observations required to meet a prescribed reconstruction error. To reduce the complexity of MMSE estimation, we then exploit the state-space structure due to the ${\rm AR}(p)$ model and develop a Kalman filtering/smoothing-based interpolation algorithm. The resulting method attains the optimal MMSE performance with strictly linear complexity $\mathcal{O}(N)$ with $N$ denoting the number of ports, resulting in a scalable, efficient, and theoretically grounded framework for practical FAS channel reconstruction.

Zhentian Zhang, Jingyuan Xu, Kai-Kit Wong et al.

Fluid antenna systems (FASs) are emerging as a reconfigurable-aperture technology that expands physical-layer design beyond fixed, rigid antenna geometries. While the \emph{fading diversity} of FASs -- which exploits spatial channel fluctuations for signal enhancement and interference avoidance -- has been widely studied, the \emph{geometry diversity} created by reconfigurable port placement remains far less understood, particularly for planar architectures under finite-aperture constraints. This paper develops a systematic analytical framework for finite-aperture planar fluid antenna arrays (FAAs). First, we derive a closed-form characterization of the minimum inter-port distance under uniform random placement over a rectangular aperture and show that it follows a Rayleigh law. Its mean scales as $\mathcal{O}(M^{-1})$, in sharp contrast to the $\mathcal{O}(M^{-2})$ behavior in the linear case in which $M$ represents the number of candidate ports, revealing a fundamentally more favorable packing geometry in two dimensions. Secondly, we establish a universal Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) for joint elevation-azimuth estimation, governed by a $2\times 2$ \emph{geometric inertia matrix} whose determinant and eigenstructure fully capture the role of port placement in estimation precision. We further prove that both the trace and determinant of this matrix are invariant to the azimuth look direction. Third, we uncover an intrinsic \emph{precision--ambiguity trade-off}: maximizing the geometric determinant to minimize the CRB drives ports toward the aperture boundary, but simultaneously increases sidelobe-induced spatial ambiguity.

Zhentian Zhang, Yuanhui Wu, Kai-Kit Wong et al.

Fluid antenna systems (FASs) have introduced a new paradigm for wireless system design by revealing how mutual correlation can be exploited to harvest inherent spatial diversity. While existing studies have mainly focused on one-sided FAS configurations, i.e., with FAS deployed at either the transmitter or the receiver, this work investigates the ergodic capacity of a jointly correlated dual-side FAS under statistical eigenmode transmission. Specifically, a jointly correlated dual-side channel model is developed, and the corresponding ergodic capacity together with a tight closed-form upper bound is derived. In addition, the optimal power allocation is studied, and a practical iterative algorithm is proposed for its implementation.

Zhentian Zhang, Kai-Kit Wong, Hao Jiang et al.

Finite-aperture constraints render array design nontrivial and can undermine the effectiveness of classical sparse geometries. This letter provides universal guidance for fluid antenna array (FAA) design under a fixed aperture. We derive a closed-form Cramér--Rao bound (CRB) that unifies conventional and reconfigurable arrays by explicitly linking the Fisher information to the geometric variance of port locations. We further obtain a closed-form probability density function of the minimum spacing under random FAA placement, which yields a principled lower bound for the minimum-spacing constraint. Building upon these analytical insights, we then propose a gradient-based algorithm to optimize continuous port locations. Utilizing a simple gradient update design, the optimized FAA can achieve about a $30\%$ CRB reduction and a $42.5\%$ reduction in mean-squared error.

Zhentian Zhang, Kai-Kit Wong, David Morales-Jimenez et al.

This paper investigates fluid antenna systems (FASs) subject to finite-blocklength (FBL) constraints, motivated by the strict reliability-latency and ultra-massive connectivity requirements of future wireless networks. While FAS performance has been widely studied in the asymptotic regime, its behavior under FBL remains largely unexplored. Our objective is to develop a unified set of analytical tools for evaluating FASs under FBL that remains applicable across different spatial-correlation models. First, to establish accurate benchmarks for non-orthogonal finite-length user signature design, we characterize both the average and the worst-case correlation coefficients via extreme value theory (EVT) and derive closed-form predictions of the achievable correlation levels. Second, taking block error rate (BLER) as the fundamental FBL metric, we study joint detection and decoding in FAS-assisted links and derive a closed-form BLER expression that is universally applicable across channel models. Additionally, we revisit outage probability (OP) in the FBL regime and obtain tractable OP characterizations for both FASs and conventional multiple fixed-position antenna (FPA) systems. In order to reduce the computational burden for multi-fold integrals in correlated fading models, we further propose a Taylor-expansion-assisted mean value theorem for integrals (MVTI), thus enabling efficient performance evaluation with marginal accuracy loss. Numerical results validate the analysis and reveal that even single-antenna FASs can have superior spatial diversity relative to conventional multi-FPA systems. Moreover, under both FBL and interference-limited environments, FASs provide improved energy, spectral, and hardware efficiencies, hence highlighting FAS as a promising enabler for next-generation wireless networks.