Written by Andrew Wooden
European standardization body ETSI has launched a specialised group to nail down integrated sensing and communications technology and standards ahead of the emergence of 6G.
The Industry Specification Group for Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISG ISAC) is tasked with establishing the technical foundations for ‘ISAC’ technology, and standardization for 6G when it turns up.
Dr Alain Mourad from InterDigital was elected as Chair of the group by founding members, while Dr Ayman Naguib from Apple, Dr Richard Stirling-Gallacher from Huawei, and Professor Henk Wymeersch from Chalmers University are now Vice Chairs. All in all, 87 participants from industry and academia were involved in a kick-off meeting held at the ETSI office in Sophia Antipolis, France.
ETSI describes ‘sensing’ as ‘the use of radio signals to detect and estimate characteristics of target objects in the environment.’ Once this is integrated into a network it can acts as a ‘radar sensor’, using its own radio signals to ‘sense and comprehend the physical world in which it operates.’
What this does is allow the network to collect data on the range, velocity, position, orientation, size, shape, image, materials of objects and devices. This info can then be leveraged to enhance the network’s 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, claims ETSI.
