Convergent Communication, Sensing and Localization in 6G Systems: An Overview of Technologies, Opportunities and Challenges

By Carlos H. M. de Lima, D. Belot, Rafael Berkvens, A. Bourdoux, Davide Dardari, M. Guillaud, M. Isomursu, E. Lohan, Yang Miao, A. Barreto and 10 more. IEEE Access, 2021

408 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Herein, we focus on convergent 6G communication, localization and sensing systems by identifying key technology enablers, discussing their underlying challenges, implementation issues, and recommending potential solutions. Moreover, we discuss exciting new opportunities for integrated localization and sensing applications, which will disrupt traditional design principles and revolutionize the way we live, interact with our environment, and do business. Regarding potential enabling technologies, 6G will continue to develop towards even higher frequency ranges, wider bandwidths, and massive antenna arrays. In turn, this will enable sensing solutions with very fine range, Doppler, and angular resolutions, as well as localization to cm-level degree of accuracy. Besides, new materials, device types, and reconfigurable surfaces will allow network operators to reshape and control the electromagnetic response of the environment. At the same time, machine learning and artificial intelligence will leverage the unprecedented availability of data and computing resources to tackle the biggest and hardest problems in wireless communication systems. As a result, 6G will be truly intelligent wireless systems that will provide not only ubiquitous communication but also empower high accuracy localization and high-resolution sensing services. They will become the catalyst for this revolution by bringing about a unique new set of features and service capabilities, where localization and sensing will coexist with communication, continuously sharing the available resources in time, frequency, and space. This work concludes by highlighting foundational research challenges, as well as implications and opportunities related to privacy, security, and trust.

Subfields: Electrical and Electronic Engineering, Ocean Engineering

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/642196d0f29b693620355626f784c31fad7ace08

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In Electrical and Electronic Engineering

Citations in the corpus

Evolution of Non-Terrestrial Networks From 5G to 6G: A Survey (2021, background): “On the one hand, dense communication devices can aid the simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) service, and on the other hand, location information can enable context-aware communication [354].”
Survey on 6G Frontiers: Trends, Applications, Requirements, Technologies and Future Research (2021, background): “work including [14], [19]–[23], [32] are focussed on elaborating technologies including THz communication, edge intelligence, blockchain, swarm networks, and 3D networks that are envisaged to become enablers of 6G mobile communication networks.”