Active or Passive STAR-RIS-Assisted ISAC-NOMA: A Unified Approach

Abstract

This paper investigates a downlink integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) system utilizing non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA), empowered by an active simultaneously transmitting and reflecting reconfigurable intelligent surface (STAR-RIS) operating in energy splitting mode. We maximize the communication sum rate subject to per-user quality-of-service constraints, target sensing requirements, and practical active STAR-RIS hardware constraints. The proposed formulation is further generalized to a unified framework covering active/passive STAR-RIS architectures and NOMA/space-division multiple access schemes. To solve the resulting highly non-convex problem, we develop a computationally efficient optimization framework that alternately optimizes the base station transmit beamforming and STAR-RIS beamforming by introducing a common set of auxiliary variables, thereby accelerating convergence in solving the subproblems. We also develop a worst-case robust design under norm-bounded channel state information (CSI) uncertainty, where the uncertain rate expressions are replaced with tractable conservative bounds. Simulation results show that the proposed algorithm converges much faster than fractional programming-based benchmarks, and that the active STAR-RIS assisted NOMA achieves the best performance under various system constraints. The results also demonstrate the resilience of the proposed robust design against CSI errors, while revealing that excessive active amplification may degrade the achievable sum rate under practical nonlinear amplifier distortion.