Reconfigurable Antenna-Enhanced ISAC: A Unified Perspective on Electromagnetic Adaptation

Abstract

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) enables sensing and communication (S&C) functions to share time, frequency, and hardware resources, offering an efficient paradigm for next-generation wireless systems. However, conventional fixed-configuration antenna (FCA) architectures provide limited flexibility in adapting the physical electromagnetic (EM) response of the end-to-end wireless link. This article develops a unified EM-adaptation perspective on reconfigurable antenna (RA)-enhanced ISAC systems. We distinguish transceiver-side (TSc-side) and environment-side (Env-side) RA deployments and identify five fundamental EM reconfiguration dimensions: position, orientation, radiation pattern, polarization, and frequency response. Building on this framework, we examine how these dimensions customize communication channels, actively control target information mapping for sensing, and reshape the interplay between S&C, particularly by improving compatibility between S&C requirements under shared resources. Two case studies illustrate how TSc-side and Env-side EM reconfiguration can improve spatial selectivity and the achievable S&C performance tradeoff. Finally, we discuss several promising directions for advancing RA-enhanced ISAC systems, including fundamental performance limits, low-overhead black-box optimization, and artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled semantic ISAC.