ETSI announces ISAC industry group

ETSI has launched an industry specification group for Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC).

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According to the organisation, the aim of the group is to establish the technical foundations for ISAC development and standardisation in 6G. The “kick off meeting” – which took place in Sophia Antipolis in November – attracted 87 participants from industry and academia.

Founding members of the group elected Dr Alain Mourad from InterDigital as chair. Vice chairs are Apple’s Dr Ayman Naguib, Dr Richard Stirling-Gallacher from Huawei, and professor Henk Wymeersch of Chalmers University.

Discussing the group, an ETSI spokesperson said: “The [group’s] mission is to enable ETSI members to coordinate their 6G pre-standard research efforts on ISAC. This is particularly across European/national-funded collaborative projects - extended through relevant global initiatives -, paving the way for the 6G standardisation of the technology.

“The ISG targets systematic outputs on ISAC into international standards organisations, namely future 3GPP 6G releases and ITU-R IMT-2030 deliverables”.

Defining ISAC, the spokesperson continued: “Within this context, sensing refers to the use of radio signals to detect and estimate characteristics of target objects in the environment.