Introduction
Sensing refers to the use of radio signals to detect and estimate characteristics of target objects in the environment. By integrating sensing into the communications network, the network acts as a “radar” sensor, using its own radio signals to sense and comprehend the physical world in which it operates. This allows the network to collect data on the range, velocity, position, orientation, size, shape, image, materials of objects and devices.
The sensing data collected and processed by the network can then be leveraged to enhance the network’s own operations, augment existing services such as XR and digital twinning, and enable new services, such as gesture and activity recognition, object detection and tracking, along with imaging and environment reconstruction.
Our Role & Activities
ETSI ISG ISAC performs pre-standards work covering the following areas:
- Develop a roadmap of prioritized ISAC 6G use cases and sensing types, focusing on advanced 6G use cases and sensing types that are not expected to be covered by 3GPP Release 19 and therefore have the potential to be included in future 6G releases of 3GPP, IEEE and ITU-R IMT-2030 deliverables.
- Develop advanced radio channel models for the target ISAC use cases and sensing types that can overcome the limitations of current baseline radio communication channels (e.g. 3GPP, IEEE 802, ITUR) and validate them through extensive measurement campaigns, address scattering for both communications and sensing channel measurements within the same framework, to enable verification of the different stochastic and deterministic cluster models.
- Specify KPIs and their evaluation methodology.
- Study architectural changes at System and RAN levels for ISAC in 6G, including end-to-end deployment considerations for different aspects:
- Level of integration of sensing and communication (full, partial, etc.).
- Sensing type to be performed (monostatic, multistatic, or combinations thereof).
- Deployment modes to be used (DL, UL, SL, or cross-link) and nodes involved (TRP, UE, non3GPP device).
- Radio access technologies (3GPP and non-3GPP) to be used for sensing
- Study mechanisms in the System and RAN architectures to meet security and privacy requirements for sensing.
- Study of impact of widespread deployment of ISAC on UN sustainability goals
Specifications
A full list of related standards in the public domain is accessible via the ETSI ISAC committee page.