Beam-Squint-Aided Hierarchical Sensing for Integrated Sensing and Communications with Uniform Planar Arrays

In this paper, we propose a novel hierarchical sensing framework for wideband integrated sensing and communications with uniform planar arrays (UPAs). Leveraging the beam-squint effect inherent in wideband orthogonal frequency-division multiplexing (OFDM) systems, the proposed framework enables efficient two-dimensional angle estimation through a structured multi-stage sensing process. Specifically, the sensing procedure first searches over the elevation angle domain, followed by a dedicated search over the azimuth angle domain given the estimated elevation angles. In each stage, true-time-delay lines and phase shifters of the UPA are jointly configured to cover multiple grid points simultaneously across OFDM subcarriers. To enable accurate and efficient target localization, we formulate the angle estimation problem as a sparse signal recovery problem and develop a modified matching pursuit algorithm tailored to the hierarchical sensing architecture. Additionally, we design power allocation strategies that minimize total transmit power while meeting performance requirements for both sensing and communication. Numerical results demonstrate that the proposed framework achieves superior performance over conventional sensing methods with reduced sensing power.

No Vision, No Wearables: 5G-based 2D Human Pose Recognition with Integrated Sensing and Communications

With the increasing maturity of contactless human pose recognition (HPR) technology, indoor interactive applications have raised higher demands for natural, controller-free interaction methods. However, current mainstream HPR solutions relying on vision or radio-frequency (RF) (including WiFi, radar) still face various challenges in practical deployment, such as privacy concerns, susceptibility to occlusion, dedicated equipment and functions, and limited sensing resolution and range. 5G-based integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) technology, by merging communication and sensing functions, offers a new approach to address these challenges in contactless HPR. We propose a practical 5G-based ISAC system capable of inferring 2D HPR from uplink sounding reference signals (SRS). Specifically, rich features are extracted from multiple domains and employ an encoder to achieve unified alignment and representation in a latent space. Subsequently, low-dimensional features are fused to output the human pose state. Experimental results demonstrate that in typical indoor environments, our proposed 5G-based ISAC HPR system significantly outperforms current mainstream baseline solutions in HPR performance, providing a solid technical foundation for universal human-computer interaction.

Efficient Joint Resource Allocation for Wireless Powered ISAC with Target Localization

Wireless powered integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) faces a fundamental tradeoff between energy supply, communication throughput, and sensing accuracy. This paper investigates a wireless powered ISAC system with target localization requirements, where users harvest energy from wireless power transfer (WPT) and then conduct ISAC transmissions in a time-division manner. In addition to energy supply, the WPT signal also contributes to target sensing, and the localization accuracy is characterized by Cramér-Rao bound (CRB) constraints. Under this setting, we formulate a max-min throughput maximization problem by jointly allocating the WPT duration, ISAC transmission time allocation, and transmit power. Due to the nonconvexity of the resulting problem, a suitable reformulation is developed by exploiting variable substitutions and the monotonicity of logarithmic functions, based on which an efficient successive convex approximation (SCA)-based iterative algorithm is proposed. Simulation results demonstrate convergence and significant performance gains over benchmark schemes, highlighting the importance of coordinated time-power optimization in balancing sensing accuracy and communication performance in wireless powered ISAC systems.

A Uniform Pilot and Data Payload Optimization Framework for OTFS-Based ISAC

The orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) signal is considered a promising solution for high-mobility wireless environments. It manages Doppler effects by utilizing delay-Doppler (DD) domain processing. However, the relatively long OTFS frame duration could introduce considerable sensing or communication latency when radar and communication are performed separately. By operating in a dual-functional radar and communication (DFRC) mode, the OTFS system performs sensing and data transmission simultaneously, thereby reducing the resulting latency. Nevertheless, the optimal OTFS DFRC signal strategy remains insufficiently explored. This paper investigates the optimal signal design for OTFS DFRC systems, focusing on pilot symbol design and data symbol power allocation. Specifically, we derive a channel capacity lower bound metric for communication that considers channel estimation errors in OTFS. For sensing, we derive an integrated sidelobe level (ISL), accounting for the randomness of the data symbols alongside the deterministic pilot symbols. Leveraging the above metrics, we formulate an optimization problem that balances radar and communication performance, and then solve it using an alternating optimization framework. We validate the proposed signal through numerical analysis and Monte Carlo simulations. Our analysis shows that OTFS DFRC enforces a deterministic pilot signal that is characterized by a concentrated peak in the DD domain, which furnishes a common structure in the DD domain facilitating sensing and channel estimation, with data multiplexed in other DD grids, thereby unifying sensing and communication within a single OTFS signal. Compared with conventional OTFS signals, the proposed OTFS DFRC signal expands the achievable sensing-communication performance region, delivering at least a 9.45 dB ISL suppression for sensing and a 4.82 dB SINR ratio gain for communication.

Ultra-Massive MIMO with Orthogonal Chirp Division Multiplexing for Near-Field Sensing and Communication Integration

This paper integrates the emerging ultra-massive multiple-input multiple-output (UM-MIMO) technique with orthogonal chirp division multiplexing (OCDM) waveform to tackle the challenging near-field integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) problem. Specifically, we conceive a comprehensive ISAC architecture, where an UM-MIMO base station adopts OCDM waveform for communications and a co-located sensing receiver adopts the frequency-modulated continuous wave (FMCW) detection principle to simplify the associated hardware. For sensing tasks, several OCDM subcarriers, namely, dedicated sensing subcarriers (DSSs), are each transmitted through a dedicated sensing antenna (DSA) within the transmit antenna array. By judiciously designing the DSS selection scheme and optimizing receiver parameters, the FMCW-based sensing receiver can decouple the echo signals from different DSAs with significantly reduced hardware complexity. This setup enables the estimation of ranges and velocities of near-field targets in an antenna-pairwise manner. Moreover, by leveraging the spatial diversity of UM-MIMO, we introduce the concept of virtual bistatic sensing (VIBS), which incorporates the estimates from multiple antenna pairs to achieve high-accuracy target positioning and three-dimensional velocity measurement. The VIBS paradigm is immune to hostile channel environments characterized by spatial non-stationarity and uncorrelated multipath environment. Furthermore, the channel estimation of UM-MIMO OCDM systems enhanced by the sensing results is investigated. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed ISAC scheme enhances sensing accuracy, and also benefits communication performance.

The Wigner-Ville Transform as an Information Theoretic Tool in Radio-frequency Signal Analysis

This paper presents novel interpretations to the field of classical signal processing of the Wigner-Ville transform as an information measurement tool. The transform's utility in detecting and localizing information-laden signals amidst noisy and cluttered backgrounds, and further providing measure of their information volumes, are detailed herein using Tsallis' entropy and information and related functionals. Example use cases in radio frequency communications are given, where Wigner-Ville-based detection measures can be seen to provide significant sensitivity advantage, for some shown contexts greater than 15~dB advantage, over energy-based measures and without extensive training routines. Such an advantage is particularly significant for applications which have limitations on observation resources including time/space integration pressures and transient and/or feeble signals, where Wigner-Ville-based methods would improve sensing effectiveness by multiple orders of magnitude. The potential for advancement of several such applications is discussed.

Phase-Coherent D-MIMO ISAC: Multi-Target Estimation and Spectral Efficiency Trade-Offs

We investigate distributed multiple-input multiple-output (D-MIMO) integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) systems, in which multiple phase-synchronized access points (APs) jointly serve user equipments (UEs) while cooperatively detecting and estimating multiple static targets. To achieve high-accuracy multi-target estimation, we propose a two-stage sensing framework combining non-coherent and coherent maximum-likelihood (ML) estimation. In parallel, adaptive AP mode-selection strategies are introduced to balance communication and sensing performance: a communication-centric scheme that maximizes downlink spectral efficiency (SE) and a sensing-centric scheme that selects geometrically diverse receive APs to enhance sensing coverage. Simulation results confirm the SE-sensing trade-off, where appropriate power allocation between communication and sensing and larger array apertures alleviate performance degradation, achieving high SE with millimeter-level sensing precision. We further demonstrate that the proposed AP-selection strategy reveals an optimal number of receive APs that maximizes sensing coverage without significantly sacrificing SE.

Integrating Low-Altitude SAR Imaging into UAV Data Backhaul

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) deployed on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) is expected to provide burgeoning imaging services for low-altitude wireless networks (LAWNs), thereby enabling large-scale environmental sensing and timely situational awareness. Conventional SAR systems typically leverages a deterministic radar waveform, while it conflicts with the integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) paradigm by discarding signaling randomness, in whole or in part. In fact, this approach reduces to the uplink pilot sensing in 5G New Radio (NR) with sounding reference signals (SRS), underutilizing data symbols. To explore the potential of data-aided imaging, we develop a low-altitude SAR imaging framework that sufficiently leverages data symbols carried by the native orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) communication waveform. The randomness of modulated data in the temporal-frequency (TF) domain, introduced by non-constant modulus constellations such as quadrature amplitude modulation (QAM), may however severely degrade the imaging quality. To mitigate this effect, we incorporate several TF-domain filtering schemes within a rangeDoppler (RD) imaging framework and evaluate their impact. We further propose using the normalized mean square error (NMSE) of a reference point target's profile as an imaging performance metric. Simulation results with 5G NR parameters demonstrate that data-aided imaging substantially outperforms pilot-only counterpart, accordingly validating the effectiveness of the proposed OFDM-SAR imaging approach in LAWNs.

The MIMO-ME-MS Channel: Analysis and Algorithm for Secure MIMO Integrated Sensing and Communications

This paper studies precoder design for secure MIMO integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) by introducing the MIMO-ME-MS channel, where a multi-antenna transmitter serves a legitimate multi-antenna receiver in the presence of a multi-antenna eavesdropper while simultaneously enabling sensing via a multi-antenna sensing receiver. Using sensing mutual information as the sensing metric, we formulate a nonconvex weighted objective that jointly captures secure communication (via secrecy rate) and sensing performance. A high-SNR analysis based on subspace decomposition characterizes the maximum achievable weighted degrees of freedom and reveals that a quasi-optimal precoder must span a "useful subspace," highlighting why straightforward extensions of classical wiretap/ISAC precoders can be suboptimal in this tripartite setting. Motivated by these insights, we develop a practical two-stage iterative algorithm that alternates between sequential basis construction and power allocation via a difference-of-convex program. Numerical results show that the proposed approach captures the desirable precoding structure predicted by the analysis and yields substantial gains in the MIMO-ME-MS channel.

Target Classification for Integrated Sensing and Communication in Industrial Deployments

Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) systems enable cellular networks to jointly operate as communication technology and sense the environment. While opportunities and potential performance have been largely investigated in simulations, few experimental works have showcased Automatic Target Recognition (ATR) effectiveness in a real-world deployment based on cellular radio units. To bridge this gap, this paper presents an initial study investigating the feasibility of ATR for ISAC. Our ATR solution uses a Deep Learning (DL)-based detector to infer the target class directly from the radar images generated by the ISAC system. The DL detector is evaluated with experimental data from a ISAC testbed based on commercially available mmWave radio units in the ARENA 2036 industrial research campus located in Stuttgart, Germany. Experimental results demonstrate accurate classification performance, demonstrating the feasibility of ATR ISAC with cellular hardware in our setup. We finally provide insights about the open generalization challenges, that will fuel future work on the topic.