ETSI has released a groundbreaking report that delves into the realm of advanced Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) use cases and deployment scenarios, laying the groundwork for the future of 6G systems. This comprehensive report, ETSI GR ISC 001, developed by the ETSI ISAC ISG, marks a significant milestone in defining the essential functional and performance requirements needed to support these innovative use cases.
The report outlines 18 advanced ISAC use cases, ranging from human motion recognition and emergency rescue to autonomous vehicle navigation and industrial robotics. Each use case is examined in terms of deployment scenarios, enabling technologies, sensing modes, and required system capabilities.
ETSI’s analysis introduces three integration levels—tight, intermediate, and loose—as well as six sensing modes, including monostatic and bistatic sensing configurations for both base stations and User Equipment. These definitions play a crucial role in a proposed framework to standardize sensing capabilities within future 6G networks.
Key highlights from the report include:
- Deployment Versatility: Use cases cover indoor, outdoor, and mixed environments with various mobility and sensing targets such as people, vehicles, UAVs, and robots.
- Frequency Band Utilization: Sensing strategies incorporate low (sub-6 GHz), mid (~7–24 GHz), and high (mmWave/THz) frequency bands, often combined with non-RF sensors like cameras or environmental detectors.
- Fusion of Data Sources: Integration of data from both 6G System and non-6G System sources is deemed crucial, with architectural implications for system design and trust management.
- Security, Privacy, and Sustainability: The report emphasizes the importance of secure, private, and sustainable ISAC implementations, especially for human-centric use cases.
The ETSI report also defines functional requirement categories and suggests new Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) such as Fine Motion Accuracy and Sensing Service Range, ensuring a robust performance evaluation framework for 6G sensing services.
The insights from this report are already influencing other ETSI reports in development, focusing on channel modeling, System and RAN architecture, security, privacy, trustworthiness, sustainability, and the integration of computing with ISAC.
ETSI GR ISC 001 offers a thorough analysis that will influence the technical requirements for the next generation of 6G systems.
