Image Super-Resolution-Based Signal Enhancement in Bistatic ISAC

Abstract

Bistatic Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) is poised to become a cornerstone technology in next-generation communication networks, such as Beyond 5G (B5G) and 6G, by enabling the concurrent execution of sensing and communication functions without requiring significant modifications to existing infrastructure. Despite its promising potential, a major challenge in bistatic cooperative sensing lies in the degradation of sensing accuracy, primarily caused by the inherently weak received signals resulting from high reflection losses in complex environments. Traditional methods have predominantly relied on adaptive filtering techniques to enhance the Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) by dynamically adjusting the filter coefficients. However, these methods often struggle to adapt effectively to the increasingly complex and diverse network topologies. To address these challenges, we propose a novel Image Super-Resolution-based Signal Enhancement (ISR-SE) framework that significantly improves the recognition and recovery capabilities of ISAC signals. Specifically, we first perform a time-frequency analysis by applying the Short-Time Fourier Transform (STFT) to the received signals, generating spectrograms that capture the frequency, magnitude, and phase components. These components are then mapped into RGB images, where each channel represents one of the extracted features, enabling a more intuitive and informative visualization of the signal structure. To enhance these RGB images, we design an improved denoising network that combines the strengths of the UNet architecture and diffusion models. This hybrid architecture leverages UNet's multi-scale feature extraction and the generative capacity of diffusion models to perform effective image denoising, thereby improving the quality and clarity of signal representations under low-SNR conditions.