5G (the fifth-generation mobile communication system) has enabled high-speed and low-latency wireless communications and has become a fundamental infrastructure supporting our daily lives and various industries. However, toward a future in which applications such as autonomous driving, smart cities, drones, and XR (extended reality) become widely deployed, it is no longer sufficient for networks to simply provide faster and more reliable connectivity.
In these application domains, it is essential not only to communicate data but also to accurately perceive the surrounding environment. For example, vehicles and robots must detect the positions and movements of pedestrians and other vehicles, as well as conditions in areas with limited visibility, while sharing such information through the network to ensure safe operation. In other words, there is a growing need to treat environmental perception (sensing) and information transmission (communication) as an integrated function.
What is ISAC (Integrated Sensing and Communication)?
Against this backdrop, Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) has attracted significant attention. ISAC is a technology that aims to perform environmental sensing—such as detecting the presence, location, and movement of people and objects—while simultaneously using the same wireless signals and frequency resources for communication.
By integrating communication and sensing within a single wireless system, rather than implementing them as separate mechanisms, ISAC enables more efficient use of limited radio resources while supporting advanced functionalities required by next-generation services. As an extension of 5G, ISAC is regarded as a key enabling technology for Beyond 5G (B5G) and 6G, and is being actively studied worldwide.
This Research
This research aims to establish control methods and computational platforms that satisfy the performance requirements of both communication and sensing, with a view toward deploying ISAC in practical network environments envisioned for Beyond 5G (B5G). While communication demands high data rates, low latency, and reliability, sensing requires high detection accuracy and responsiveness, making it challenging to achieve both simultaneously.
To address this challenge, we develop control schemes that flexibly allocate radio resources—such as frequency, time, and spatial resources—in a spatiotemporal manner according to network conditions, as well as sensing control techniques optimized for ISAC. In addition, we design and develop computational platforms and control mechanisms on edge mobile cores to efficiently process ISAC streaming data in real time.
