Holographic Beamforming for Integrated Sensing and Communication with Mutual Coupling Effects

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is envisioned as a key technology in 6G networks, owing to its potential for high spectral and cost efficiency. As a promising solution for extremely large-scale arrays, reconfigurable holographic surfaces (RHS) can be integrated with ISAC to form the holographic ISAC paradigm, where enlarged radiation apertures of RHS can achieve significant beamforming gains, thereby improving both communication and sensing performance. In this paper, we investigate holographic beamforming designs for ISAC systems. However, unlike existing holographic beamforming schemes developed for RHS-aided communications, such designs require explicit consideration of mutual coupling effects within RHS. This is because, unlike prior works only considering communication performance, ISAC systems incorporate sensing functionality, which is sensitive to sidelobe levels. Ignoring mutual coupling in holographic beamforming can lead to notable undesired sidelobes, thus degrading sensing performance. The consideration of mutual coupling introduces new challenges, i.e., it induces non-linearity in beamforming problems, rendering them inherently non-convex. To address this issue, we propose a tractable electromagnetic-compliant holographic ISAC model that characterizes mutual coupling in a closed form using coupled dipole approximations. We then develop an efficient holographic beamforming algorithm to suppress sidelobes and enhance ISAC performance. Numerical results validate effectiveness of the proposed algorithm.