STAR-RIS-Aided Wideband Cell-Free ISAC: Joint Resource Allocation and Beamforming

Abstract

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) under a cell-free (CF) architecture enables seamless connectivity and sensing coverage by allowing multiple distributed access points (APs) to jointly serve users and detect targets, thereby mitigating cell-edge effects and enhancing spatial diversity. However, wideband CF-ISAC also suffers from frequency-selective fading and strong inter-AP interference. To address these challenges, we investigate a simultaneously transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS)-assisted ISAC framework, which extends full-space coverage and mitigates multiplicative fading and blockage effects. A joint optimization strategy is developed to maximize the weighted ISAC joint rate by jointly optimizing bandwidth and power allocation, receive beamforming, and active STAR-RIS beamforming. To tackle the non-convexity caused by variable coupling and intricate constraints, an efficient alternating optimization algorithm is developed. The original problem is decomposed into several subproblems: first, a closed-form solution for receive beamforming is derived; next, the resource allocation semi-analytical solutions are obtained via Karush-Kuhn-Tucker (KKT) conditions. Subsequently, the active STAR-RIS coefficients are optimized by capitalizing on fractional programming and majorization-minimization (MM) techniques. Finally, simulation results reveal that the proposed scheme achieves a 20.34% weighted ISAC joint-rate gain over the passive scheme, validating its effectiveness in wideband CF-ISAC systems.