Integrated Sensing and Communications a Key Part of 6G: 5G Americas
Integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) will be a critical part of 6G and is growing in sophistication, 5G Americas said in a new white paper. “ISAC introduces sensing as a native function of the communication network, allowing network nodes to perform both communication and sensing tasks while enabling efficient spectrum sharing,” the group said. “Unlike current location capabilities (e.g., for e911), ISAC can detect passive objects not connected to the network. ISAC’s value has been demonstrated in other communication technologies such as Wi-Fi, with applications such as security intrusion detection and remote patient monitoring.”
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The combination of ISAC with 3rd Generation Partnership Project technology “expands sensing to much larger areas, offering high-value use cases including defense applications like drone detection,” 5G Americas said. The paper lists numerous potential use cases, including drone detection, emergency search and rescue, airborne-based environmental sensing and automated vehicle detection and tracking in factories.
ISAC “allows base stations and user devices to detect and characterize objects without requiring a connection to them,” 5G Americas President Viet Nguyen said in a blog post. “It uses the same radio signals already in play for communication to gather data about position, velocity, and even shape,” he said. “That means a 6G network equipped with ISAC could simultaneously manage a video stream and track a drone using the same infrastructure.”