Integrated Sensing and Communications Towards 6G
Wednesday, 4 June 2025, 16:00 – 17:30, room 1.D
Session Chair:
- Xavier Costa Pérez (i2cat, )
Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC) is emerging as a pivotal paradigm for future 6G networks, moving beyond the traditional separation of communication and sensing functionalities. This special session will delve into the background and scope of this transformative technology. It will explore the fundamental principles enabling the dual-use of wireless resources for both information transfer and environmental perception, leveraging advancements in waveform design, signal processing, and hardware architectures. This session will feature four presentations from leading European projects in this domain: INSTINCT, MULTIX, 6G-DISAC, and BEGREEN, showcasing their latest findings and advancements in ISAC. The session will further investigate the potential of ISAC to revolutionize various applications, including autonomous driving, smart cities, industrial automation, and extended reality, by offering enhanced situational awareness, resource efficiency, and novel service capabilities. Contributions addressing theoretical frameworks, innovative algorithms, experimental prototypes, and standardization efforts related to ISAC are highly encouraged, aiming to pave the way for its seamless integration into future wireless ecosystems, with the insights shared from these key European initiatives providing valuable perspectives on the current state-of-the-art and future directions.
Programme
16:00 – 16:05: Welcome and speakers introduction – Xavier Costa, i2cat, NEC, ICREA
16:05 – 16:25: INSTINCT project presentation – Angeliki Alexiou, University of Piraeus
Title of the talk:
ISAC for Future Interactive, Immersive, and Intelligent Connectivity Beyond Communications
The concept of integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) introduces a new “beyond communications” paradigm shift, where communication nodes can be employed to read the shape of surrounding obstacles, map the environment, detect the presence of objects, focus power, localize, track mobility and navigate. Transforming the ISAC opportunity into a powerful 6G enabler for an intelligent beyond communications network capable of sensing, tuning, interacting with the world, is envisioned to emerge from the synthesis of three visionary pillars, namely sense-to-communicate, communicate-to-sense, and multifunctional ISAC connectivity. In this talk a number of technology enablers for ISAC will be presented, which are expected to play a crucial role in realizing this vision.
16:25 – 16:45: MULTI-X project presentation – Antonio de la Oliva, University Carlos III of Madrid
Title of the talk:
Initial thoughts on MultiX architecture and approach to sensing
In this talk, we will explore the design of the architecture of the MultiX project, diving into how multiple technologies, bands and types of sensors can be merged into an unified architecture enabling multi-static, multi-band sensing.
16:25 – 16:45: 6G-DISAC presentation – Vincenzo Sciancalepore, NEC Laboratories Europe GmbH
Title of the talk:
Shaping the Sensing Future with RIS: From Control to Construction
Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces (RIS) are emerging as key enablers of the ISAC (Integrated Sensing and Communication) paradigm, offering the ability to shape and control the wireless environment itself. Beyond their traditional role in enhancing communication links, RIS are now poised to play a central role in the construction of distributed sensing infrastructures under the EU-funded 6G-DISAC framework. This talk explores the potential of RIS in shifting from passive control elements to active components in sensing ecosystems. We discuss how RIS can enable fine-grained environmental awareness by acting as both sensors and signal shapers, contributing to a distributed, scalable, and energy-efficient sensing 6G-DISAC architecture. Emphasis will be placed on architectural design and the interplay between localization, mapping, and environment reconstruction. We will also address the challenges of coordinating multiple RIS units in dynamic environments and their integration with communication functions.
16:45 – 16:05: BEGREEN project presentation – Jesús Gutiérrez, IHP – Leibniz Institute for High Performance Microelectronics
Title of the talk:
ISAC for improved Network Energy Efficiency
In this talk, the work on ISAC carried out in the BeGREEN project is presented. The sensing performance of non-3GPP non-Wi-Fi technologies can outperform that of standard mobile and wireless technologies. By means of the integration of these technologies in an O-RAN system, additional sensing data would be available at the RICs. A Proof of Concept will be presented, able to experimentally demonstrate ISAC at Sub-6 GHz and its use for improving energy efficiency in the network.
