As the technologies empowering our connected future begin to take shape, engineers and inventors at InterDigital have been at the forefront of the advanced research to make 6G capabilities real. Among its novel capabilities, 6G will introduce Integrated Sensing and Communication, or ISAC, as a feature that equips networks with the ability to better understand their surroundings by "sensing." This enables diverse objects and surfaces to be detected in the environment. ISAC is poised to enable future cellular systems to act as radars and sense their environment, ultimately improving network efficiency while also enabling many new applications that contribute to what’s possible with 6G.
To better understand the potential for this new technology, InterDigital hosted a June webinar to evoke expert insights from relevant industry groups and associations actively developing ISAC. The speakers included InterDigital’s Head of Wireless Lab Europe and Chair of the ETSI ISAC Industry Specification Group (ISG) Alain Mourad, Wireless Communications Researcher at Continental Automotive Technologies David Gonzalez, 6G Project Director at Robert Bosch and Chair of 5G-ACIA Andreas Mueller, and Research Expert at Huawei Technologies and Vice-Chair of the ETSI ISAC ISG Richard A. Stirling-Gallacher. Together, they shared their diverse perspectives on the benefits and impact of ISAC for new services, verticals, and enterprises. Though the researchers shared nuanced perspectives from different industry groups like ETSI and vertical sectors such as automotive and Industry 4.0, they shared a common goal of establishing the technical foundations for ISAC development and standardization in 6G.
Moderated by Dimitris Mavrakis, ABI Research Senior Director and author of InterDigital’s latest report “Driving 5G-Advanced to 6G,” the webinar posed important questions addressing the requirements to achieve ISAC, the Return on Investment (ROI) and applications that ISAC can deliver, and the unique challenges to implement ISAC. Among their insights, the experts discussed the need to optimize new technologies in 5G, plan for new frequency bands in 6G, and balance investment with economic value to drive positive ISAC outcomes, while reiterating the critical importance of global standards and strong privacy mechanisms to engender public trust around the technology.
ISAC has been accepted in the IMT-2030 framework as one of six 6G usage scenarios, whereby integrating sensing data into the network from various sources, whether from within the network or dedicated auxiliary device sensors, would allow for the optimization of network functions and services running on top. The panelists pointed to the transformative potential of 6G-enabled sensing network infrastructure across diverse sectors like mobility, industry, and intelligent buildings to optimize tasks like urban parking management, safety feature enhancement, improving network performance, and advancing other principles of 6G development. In the automotive sector, for example, David Gonzalez shared that there is already state of the art technology for blending sensing data from various sensors in or on the vehicle, but ISAC will equip the network with yet an additional sensing source capability and enable these operations at scale. This integration, along with the capability of radar sensing using cellular network signals, highlights the significance of not only the ISAC technology for new applications but of the derived value from the sensing data itself.
ROI remains an important consideration when exploring the business and consumer viability of new technologies. Rather than evaluating ISAC in terms of “extra dollars per bits” and benchmark it with eMBB services, InterDigital’s Alain Mourad introduced the suggestion of evaluating it in terms of “extra dollars per hertz” or evaluating the ways existing network resources can be leveraged to produce additional sensing capabilities atop the communication requirements. Mobile network operators must balance trade-offs in deployment costs, component costs, and revenue generated, while finding a compromise between high sensing accuracy and high data rates. To date, these trade-offs are easier to manage in private networks, like in enterprise and industrial settings, and in fact, panelists like Andreas Muller suggested that the first commercial roll-outs for ISAC are likely to be in local and private networks because they allow for greater control in the optimization of radio resources between sensing and communication.
As advanced researchers and experts continue to develop improvements and weave new network capabilities through globalized standards ecosystems, it’s predicted that ISAC will become commercially available around 2027 or 2028, though with limited radar capabilities. Until then, each 3GPP standards release may bring incremental improvements that enhance ISAC features, performance, and capabilities to support a more comprehensive realization of its transformative potential in 6G. Not only will ISAC make our networks and connected operations better and smarter, but the wealth of data and information gathered through ISAC operations will fundamentally shift the roles and responsibilities of network operators and service providers and shape the future landscape of telecommunications.
Explore the full webinar discussion, “Unpacking the Potential for ISAC,” here.