about the SIG

Radar sensing, wireless communications and localization are most common civil and military applications via radio frequency signals for decades. Recently, with the wide deployment of mmWave and massive MIMO in 5G and beyond, the integration of radar sensing, localization and communications (ISLC) holds great potential in many spectrums and cost limited scenarios by realizing dual/multiple functions besides communication, such as autonomous vehicles networking, WiFi-based indoor localization, collaborative sensing, etc.

The feasibility of ISLC is based on following facts. First, radar sensing, wireless localization and communications have similar hardware structure and system components in both baseband and RF ends, especially in the modern digital implementation era. Second, the larger spectrum bandwidth utilized in 5G and beyond would not only enable higher data rates but also higher radar sensing range resolution, which motivates the potential of joint spectrum sharing among communication, localization and radar systems to harvest the large spectrum. Furthermore, large-scale antenna arrays are capable of formulating “pencil-like” beams that accurately point to the directions of interest with high beam gain. Nevertheless, the success of spectrum and hardware sharing among radar, localization and communication systems heavily depends on smart joint designs, to fully exploit the system potentials.

Research efforts are well underway to address the issues arising with communication, localization and radar spectrum sharing, as well as the design of dual/multi-functional radar communications, to make full use of radio frequencies that are usually designed for only a single function. However, many challenges arise when wireless communication meets radar sensing and localization, such as the unified theoretical frameworks, the fundamental performance limits, the waveform design, and the signal processing in the integration of multi-function systems including localization, detection, imaging and communication, as well as prototype implementations.

Scope of the SIG

With the above vision, this proposed Special Interest Group (SIG) within the Radio Communications Technical Committee (RCC) of the IEEE Communications Society is aimed at promoting, coordinating, and supporting research activities on integration of localization, radar sensing and communication (ILSAC). The SIG will constitute a platform for gathering together the latest and most promising research advances on the modeling, analysis, design, and implementation of ILSAC.