Temporal Broadening-Aware Multiplexing for Joint Sensing and Communication in THz Band

Saira Rafique, Ahmed Naeem, Huseyin Arslan

High-resolution wireless sensing has become an integral component of futuristic 6G networks alongside high-rate communication. Terahertz (THz) band enables both functions through its extremely large bandwidth, providing sub-centimeter level sensing precision and multi-gigabit data rates. However, THz propagation suffers from severe channel impairments such as molecular absorption (MoA) and the resulting temporal broadening effect (TBE). For sensing, TBE causes temporal spreading of received echoes, leading to degraded range resolution and necessitating long guard intervals between consecutive sensing pulses to avoid overlap. These guards, while necessary for far sensing receiver (Rxsens), cause latency and inefficient temporal use. To overcome this limitation, this paper proposes a TBE-aware multiplexing framework that exploits the distance-dependent nature of TBE to enable interference-free coexistence of sensing and communication (S&C) pulses. A guard interval preallocated for the worst-case TBE at far Rxsens is opportunistically reused to embed a low-power single-carrier communication pulse for a nearby user experiencing minimal broadening. Limited TBE confines S&C pulses within their designated slots at short distances, while the broadened and attenuated communication pulse at the distant Rxsens becomes negligible, eliminating the need for successive interference cancellation (SIC). Simulation results reveal that compared with power-domain non-orthogonal multiple access (PD-NOMA) and fixed-guard alternative, the proposed scheme achieves superior bit-error rate, sensing accuracy, and latency performance, with up to 66.5% latency reduction under heavy traffic.