The Role of ISAC in 6G Networks: Enabling Next-Generation Wireless Systems
Hangzhou International Innovation Institute of Beihang University（北京航空航天大学杭州国际创新研究院）；Southern University of Science and Technology（南方科技大学）；Technische Universität Dortmund（多特蒙德工业大学）；Linköping University（林雪平大学）；Tampere University（坦佩雷大学）；Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications（北京邮电大学）；School of Automation Science and Electrical Engineering at Beihang University（北京航空航天大学自动化科学与电气工程学院）；State Key Laboratory of Intelligent Manufacturing Systems Technology（智能制造系统技术国家重点实验室）；University of California, San Diego（加州大学圣地亚哥分校）；Université Paris-Saclay（巴黎萨克雷大学）；CNRS（法国国家科学研究中心）；CentraleSupélec（中央理工-高等电力学院）
Muhammad Umar Farooq Qaisar, Weijie Yuan, Onur Günlü, Taneli Riihonen, Yuanhao Cui, Lin Zhang, Nuria Gonzalez-Prelcic, Marco Di Renzo, Zhu Han
备注：
38 pages, 6 figures, and 8 tables
发表信息：
IEEE Transactions on Network Science and Engineering, 2026
The commencement of the sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks represents a fundamental shift in the integration of communication and sensing technologies to support next-generation applications. Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is a key concept in this evolution, enabling end-to-end support for both communication and sensing within a unified framework. It enhances spectrum efficiency, reduces latency, and supports diverse use cases, including smart cities, autonomous systems, and perceptive environments. This tutorial provides a comprehensive overview of ISAC's role in 6G networks, beginning with its evolution since 5G and the technical drivers behind its adoption. Core principles and system variations of ISAC are introduced, followed by an in-depth discussion of the enabling technologies that facilitate its practical deployment. The paper further analyzes current research directions to highlight key challenges, open issues, and emerging trends. Design insights and recommendations are also presented to support future development and implementation. This work ultimately tries to address three central questions: Why is ISAC essential for 6G? What innovations does it bring? How will it shape the future of wireless communication?
Flexible Multi-Target Angular Emulation for Over-the-Air Testing of Large-Scale ISAC Base Stations: Principle and Experimental Verification
National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory, School of Information Science and Engineering, Southeast University（东南大学信息科学与工程学院移动通信国家重点实验室）；Purple Mountain Laboratories（紫金山实验室）；China Academy of Information and Communications Technology（中国信息通信研究院）
Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) has recently emerged as a candidate 6G technology, aiming to unify the two key operations of the future network in spectrum/energy/cost efficient way. ISAC involves communicating information to receivers and simultaneously sensing targets, while both operations use the same waveforms, the same transmitter and ultimately the same network infrastructure. Nevertheless, the inclusion of information signalling into the probing waveform for target sensing raises unique and difficult challenges from the perspective of information security. At the same time,…
Clutter-Resilient ISAC for Low-Altitude Wireless Networks: A 5G Base Station-Compatible Protocol, Waveform, and Prototype
Nanjing University of Information Science and Technology（南京信息工程大学）；Southern University of Science and Technology（南方科技大学）；Southeast University（东南大学）；Aerospace Information Research Institute, Chinese Academy of Sciences（中国科学院空天信息创新研究院）
Next-generation mobile communication network (i.e., 6G) has been envisioned to go beyond classical communication functionality and provide integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) capability to enable more emerging applications, such as smart cities, connected vehicles, AIoT and health care/elder care. Among all the ISAC proposals, the most practical and promising approach is to empower existing wireless network (e.g., WiFi, 4G/5G) with the augmented ability to sense the surrounding human and environment, and evolve wireless communication networks into intelligent communication and sensing …
As the standardization of 5G is being solidified, researchers are speculating what 6G will be. Integrating sensing functionality is emerging as a key feature of the 6G Radio Access Network (RAN), allowing to exploit the dense cell infrastructure of 5G for constructing a perceptive network. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive overview on the background, range of key applications and state-of-the-art approaches of Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC). We commence by discussing the interplay between sensing and communications (S&C) from a historical point of view, and then consider …
Multi-Objective RIS Deployment Optimization for Physical Layer Security in ISAC Networks
Intelligent Networks Research Group, German Research Center for Artificial Intelligence（智能网络研究组，德国人工智能研究中心）；Institute for Wireless Communication and Navigation, RPTU University Kaiserslautern-Landau（无线通信与导航研究所，莱茵兰-普法塔尔大学凯泽斯劳滕-兰道分校）
Tensor Decomposition-Based Wireless Sensing for MIMO-OFDM ISAC via Flexible Spatial-Temporal-Spectral Optimization
Nanjing University of Science and Technology（南京理工大学）；Key Laboratory of Near-Range RF Sensing ICs and Microsystems (NJUST), Ministry of Education, School of Electronic and Optical Engineering, Nanjing University of Science and Technology（南京理工大学电子与光学工程学院、近场射频集成电路与微系统教育部重点实验室）；Qian Xuesen College, Nanjing University of Science and Technology（南京理工大学钱学森学院）；College of Communications Engineering, Army Engineering University of PLA（中国人民解放军陆军工程大学通信工程学院）；The Sixty-Third Research Institute, National University of Defense Technology（国防科技大学第六十三研究所）；National University of Singapore（新加坡国立大学）；Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, National University of Singapore（新加坡国立大学电气与计算机工程系）
Multi-Functional Chirp Signalling for Next-Generation Multi-Carrier Wireless Networks: Communications, Sensing and ISAC Perspectives
University of Essex（埃塞克斯大学）；University of Surrey（萨里大学）；University College London（伦敦大学学院）；Nanyang Technological University（南洋理工大学）；University of Southampton（南安普顿大学）
Cross-Domain Continual Learning for Edge Intelligence in Wireless ISAC Networks
College of Computing and Data Science, Nanyang Technological University（南洋理工大学计算与数据科学学院）；School of Cyber Science and Engineering, Xi’an Jiaotong University（西安交通大学网络空间安全学院）
Toward Multi-Functional LAWNs with ISAC: Opportunities, Challenges, and the Road Ahead
Southern University of Science and Technology（南方科技大学）；University of Technology Sydney（悉尼科技大学）；Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications（北京邮电大学）；National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory, Southeast University（东南大学国家移动通信重点实验室）；Jilin University（吉林大学）；Nanyang Technological University（南洋理工大学）；Sungkyunkwan University（成均馆大学）
The first two parts of this tutorial on orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) modulation have discussed the fundamentals of delay-Doppler (DD) domain communications as well as some advanced technologies for transceiver design. In this letter, we will present an OTFS-based integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) system, which is regarded as an enabling technology in next generation wireless communications. In particular, we illustrate the sensing as well as the communication models for OTFS-ISAC systems. Next, we show that benefiting from time-invariant DD channels, the sensing parameters…
Phase noise (PN) can become a major bottleneck for integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) systems towards 6G wireless networks. In this paper, we consider an OFDM ISAC system with oscillator imperfections and investigate the impact of PN on monostatic sensing performance by performing a misspecified Cramér-Rao bound (MCRB) analysis. Simulations are carried out under a wide variety of operating conditions with regard to SNR, oscillator type (free-running oscillators (FROs) and phase-locked loops (PLLs)), 3-dB bandwidth of the oscillator spectrum, PLL loop bandwidth and target range. The r…
Advances in wireless communication and signal processing facilitate integrated sensing and communication a compelling technology that intrinsically combines sensing and communication functionalities for the dual purpose exploitation of wireless hardware resources and pursues mutual benefits. Consequently, the next generation communications network will be perceptive. In this article, we provide a review of human related sensing in the context of ISAC. We first present a general ISAC receiver signal processing framework, with a focus on human activity recognition. Based on its specific spatial …
A Tutorial on Movable Antenna-Enabled ISAC Systems: Fundamentals, Parameter Estimation, and Security Issues
Xi’an Jiaotong University（西安交通大学）；Rocket Force University of Engineering（火箭军工程大学）；Shanghai Jiao Tong University（上海交通大学）；Beijing Institute of Technology（北京理工大学）；Beihang University（北京航空航天大学）；University of Electronic Science and Technology of China（电子科技大学）
Physical Layer Security for Integrated Sensing and Communication: A Survey
Graduate School of Engineering, Osaka University（大阪大学大学院工学研究科）；Graduate School of Environment and Information Sciences, Yokohama National University（横滨国立大学环境信息科学研究院）
The integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), in which the sensing and communication share the same frequency band and hardware, has emerged as a key technology in future wireless systems. Early works on ISAC have been focused on the design, analysis and optimization of practical ISAC technologies for various ISAC systems. While this line of works are necessary, it is equally important to study the fundamental limits of ISAC in order to understand the gap between the current state-of-the-art technologies and the performance limits, and provide useful insights and guidance for the developmen…
Recent advances in wireless communication and solid-state circuits together with the enormous demands of sensing ability have given rise to a new enabling technology, integrated sensing and communications (ISAC). The ISAC captures two main advantages over dedicated sensing and communication functionalities: 1) Integration gain to efficiently utilize congested resources, and even, 2) Coordination gain to balance dual-functional performance or/and perform mutual assistance. Meanwhile, triggered by ISAC, we are also witnessing a paradigm shift in the ubiquitous IoT architecture, in which the sens…
