Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) in 6G
Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) enables wireless networks to communicate while simultaneously sensing the physical environment. By analyzing radio signal reflections, ISAC can detect objects and gather information about their surroundings using shared signals, spectrum, and network infrastructure. As a native 6G capability, ISAC extends mobile networks beyond data transport, turning coverage into perception, and brings together connectivity, sensing, and AI. Qualcomm is advancing 6G ISAC through system-level research and prototypes for applications including drone and vehicle detection, tracking and classification, digital twin networks, and sensing-enhanced communications.
6G ISAC for AI-powered drone detection, tracking, and classification
6G digital twin network and sensing-enhanced communications
6G ISAC vehicle detection with simultaneous data communications
What is Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC)?
ISAC is the integration of wireless sensing into a mobile network, allowing the network to detect, locate, and track objects — including passive ones with no electronics of their own — using the same infrastructure that carries communications.
Wireless sensing uses radio frequency (RF) signals to detect and analyze the environment without requiring active electronics on the sensing target. It enables spatial monitoring and can detect presence, motion, gestures, and environmental changes by analyzing how RF signals vary as they travel from a transmitter to a receiver. When this capability is integrated into a mobile communication system, it is known as Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC).
How does sensing evolve from 5G Advanced to 6G?
5G Advanced provides a practical entry point. TRP-based monostatic sensing, using OFDM and existing reference signals, establishes early sensing capabilities — including specific UAV-detection scenarios. However, today's deployed 5G networks were designed primarily for communications, limiting sensing performance: antenna panels optimized for terrestrial users offer limited elevation-domain coverage, reducing effectiveness for applications such as aerial object detection.
A standards-compliant, sensing-optimized deployment can overcome these limits through expanded elevation field of view, appropriate RF-to-digital chain mappings, joint communications-and-sensing beamforming, and full-duplex operation for both monostatic and bistatic sensing. These deployment constraints are distinct from the limitations of 5G Advanced itself, such as sensing bandwidths limited to 100 MHz and the absence of a mature end-to-end framework for multi-object sensing, sensor fusion, and sensing service delivery.
Why is 6G ISAC important?
6G redefines the network architecture. Wider sensing bandwidths up to 400 MHz, a network designed for ISAC, multi-static and UE-assisted modes, coordinated sensing functions, sensor fusion, and integrated positioning and compute together turn distributed cellular infrastructure into a network-wide perception system. This unlocks applications that demand resolution, resilience, and coverage such as persistent low-altitude airspace awareness, adaptive smart-city infrastructure, industrial automation and safety, and context-aware XR tracking and navigation. It also enables sensing-assisted communications, using real-time knowledge of user motion, object locations, reflectors, blockers, and channel conditions to optimize the communications link.
Realizing these capabilities requires an end-to-end 6G evolution across radio, devices, spectrum, synchronization, processing, and service exposure — designing the network from the ground up to make sensing reliable, scalable, and operationally useful.
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