6G Positioning and Sensing Through the Lens of Sustainability, Inclusiveness, and Trustworthiness

TL;DR

From a joint industrial/academic perspective, this article aims to shed light on these important value indicators and their relationship with the conventional key performance indicators in the context of positioning and sensing.

Abstract

6G promises a paradigm shift by integrating positioning and sensing, enhancing not only the communication performance but also enabling location- and context-aware services. Historically, positioning and sensing were focused on cost and performance tradeoffs, implying an escalated demand for resources, such as radio, physical, and computational resources, for improved performance. However, 6G expands this perspective, embracing a set of broader values, namely sustainability, inclusiveness, and trustworthiness. From a joint industrial/academic perspective, this paper aims to shed light on these important value indicators and their relationship with the conventional key performance indicators in the context of positioning and sensing.

Figures (5)

• Figure 1: A methodology for accounting for KVI in 6G design. The conventional design optimizes the conventional KPI with respect to the resources, while we propose a broader approach, where first-order KVI are transformed to KPI and these KVI-induced KPI are optimized instead.
• Figure 2: Synergies (green) and trade-offs (red) among KPIs and KVIs, including higher-order effects. KPIs must be extended to quantify the KVIs in 6G design, when possible.
• Figure 3: Quantitative analysis of KVIs with mapping to KPIs. Conventional KPI (positioning accuracy and communication rate), vs. number of BS (representing the CAPEX). Sustainability is measured through the number of BS and the total power consumption. Inclusiveness is measured through the 95% (across users or locations) attainable KPI values. Increasing the power consumption (OPEX) $10 \times$ improves the inclusive KPIs. Trustworthiness is measured through the protection level.
• Figure 4: Proof-of-concept for joint communication and sensing, showing how existing communication infrastructure and signals can be repurposed for sensing, in support of sustainability and inclusiveness. The hardware comprises Sivers semiconductors EVK06002 as TX and RX, each with 1×16 arrays. Standard 5G waveform with 120 kHz subcarrier spacing, 800 MHz bandwidth, 69 GHz carrier frequency, and 64 QAM modulation are employed, yielding a maximum rate of 560 Mb/s. Besides the data transmission (top middle), beam sweeping (top left) provides bearing measurement of the passive target. Bistatic time measurements provide a sensing ellipse to further improve the target position estimate (bottom left). The sensing resolution is 40 cm and the sensing duration is 6.25 ms (2800 beam combinations and 2 OFDM symbols per beam pair) hexax_d33.
• Figure 5: A 6G ISAC attack example, where a transmitter modifies its beamforming vector to fool an analog/hybrid receiver, each with 16 elements into believing there are additional (strong) paths at controlled AoD or AoA, shifted $\pi/4$ in each domain with respect to the LoS path at AoD and AoA of $0$ radians.