On the Impact of Pinching Antennas on Traffic Offloading
2026-06-02 • Information Theory
Information Theory
AI summaryⓘ
The authors study a special type of antenna called pinching antennas, which can create strong wireless links and change the shape of network coverage areas. They explore how these antennas can help share network traffic more efficiently between cells, reducing the energy used to transmit signals. Two strategies for moving users between cells are proposed, and the authors find the best settings for antenna placement and power use. Their simulations show that pinching antennas help balance network resources and save energy when managing user traffic.
pinching antennastraffic offloadingwireless cellsmulti-antenna systemstransmit power minimizationcell resource utilizationphysical layer designantenna location optimization
Authors
Zhiguo Ding, Robert Schober, H. Vincent Poor
Abstract
Pinching antennas are characterized by their capability to create strong line-of-sight connections and realize multi-antenna systems in a flexible manner. Existing works have demonstrated the significant potential of pinching antennas for physical layer design. The aim of this paper is to investigate how pinching antennas can be used to reshape the architecture of future networks. In particular, this paper is motivated by the key advantage of pinching antennas, which is to reconfigure the physical boundaries of wireless cells, and focuses on the impact of pinching antennas on traffic offloading. The models for traffic offloading and pinching antenna transmission are presented first. Then, two traffic offloading strategies are developed based on whether an offloading user releases its bandwidth in its original cell. An overall transmit power minimization problem is formulated, where the optimal solutions for the transmit powers and antenna locations are obtained. The presented simulation results demonstrate that the use of pinching antennas can efficiently support traffic offloading, yield low energy consumption, and achieve balanced cell resource utilization.