Will 6G Mobile Communications Have Security Sensing Capacity As Well As Superfast Communications?
Will 6G Mobile Communications Have Security Sensing Capacity – A key characteristic of 6G wireless communications is integrated sensing and communication (ISAC).
Essentially, ISAC enables radio infrastructure used for data transmission to simultaneously operate as a distributed spatial sensor. Especially interesting, rather than relying on dedicated hardware for environmental sensing, ISAC uses existing base stations and user equipment to transmit and receive signals that are analysed to extract spatial data.
ISAC networks derive object range, position, speed, dimensions and material composition by measuring the characteristics of reflected radio waves. This means the physical environment becomes part of the communication layer that is sensed, analysed and adapted to in near real time using the same spectrum and radio front end.
Using radar-like techniques, transmitted signals bounce off nearby objects, and the characteristics of the reflected signal are interpreted by the network to identify dynamic and static entities in the environment. Reflected signal attributes such as time delay, Doppler shift, phase and amplitude variation are correlated with known models to estimate object parameters.
This spatial data is fused with communication functions to improve performance. This includes predictive handover, beamforming decisions, interference mitigation and blockage avoidance. It also supports new applications that depend on high-resolution environmental awareness, such as collaborative robotics, autonomous navigation, and of interest to all of us, security monitoring.
ISAC systems use shared channel resources to maximise spectral and energy efficiency as part of the detection process. The same antenna arrays and hardware support both sensing and communication functions, and processing occurs either at the edge or in cloud-native cores depending on latency and bandwidth requirements.
Will 6G Mobile Communications Have Security Sensing Capacity
The potential of the technology is lateral – for instance, ISAC can be used for environmental mapping, with static and mobile network elements working together to build real-time 3D representations of surrounding streets. This data can support automation of smart transport and crowd movement analysis.
Another emerging use case is detection of human presence and health monitoring. By analysing micro-movements and signal interference patterns, ISAC may be able to extract respiratory and heart-rate data without requiring physical contact or wearable devices.
The integrated nature of ISAC offers significant advantages over legacy systems that treat sensing and communication as separate functions. With ISAC, the network becomes an active, intelligent observer of its physical surroundings, closing the loop between radio propagation, signal processing, and application intelligence.
It’s all very well to write things like this but wrapping your head around a network that handles intrusion detection of people, vehicles and drones while it communicates is a little more difficult. It’s also hard not to imagine big communications companies horning into security provision, though they’d need a business case and absolute comms security. Certainly, for smart city applications, there’s plenty of scope.
Cost per tower is not as frightening as you’d imagine at $50-100,000 – it’s also worth bearing in mind that earlier 15-metre 6G comms ranges have now been expanded to 500 metres, which is much more realistic. You can read more about the 6G communications roadmap here or find more SEN news here.
“Will 6G Mobile Communications Have Sensing Capacity As Well As Superfast Communications?”
