Integrated Sensing and Communication Meets Smart Propagation Engineering: Opportunities and Challenges

TL;DR

This work addresses how integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) can be effectively realized through smart propagation engineering. By presenting a holistic view of enabling technologies—intelligent surfaces, fluid antenna systems, and mobile platforms like UAVs—and exploring near-field and cooperative network opportunities, the authors show how sensing can guide environment control to boost communication performance and vice versa. A case-study demonstrates tangible rate improvements from collaborative UAV, RIS, and FAS configurations, while highlighting trade-offs where sensing priorities may divert resources from data transmission. The paper identifies open problems and future directions, emphasizing AI-driven adaptation, secure ISAC, and vehicular cooperation as key paths toward robust, low-overhead, and scalable ISAC-enabled smart environments.

Abstract

Both smart propagation engineering as well as integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) constitute promising candidates for next-generation (NG) mobile networks. We provide a synergistic view of these technologies, and explore their mutual benefits. First, moving beyond just intelligent surfaces, we provide a holistic view of the engineering aspects of smart propagation environments. By delving into the fundamental characteristics of intelligent surfaces, fluid antennas, and unmanned aerial vehicles, we reveal that more efficient control of the pathloss and fading can be achieved, thus facilitating intrinsic integration and mutual assistance between sensing and communication functionalities. In turn, with the exploitation of the sensing capabilities of ISAC to orchestrate the efficient configuration of radio environments, both the computational effort and signaling overheads can be reduced. We present indicative simulation results, which verify that cooperative smart propagation environment design significantly enhances the ISAC performance. Finally, some promising directions are outlined for combining ISAC with smart propagation engineering.

Figures (5)

• Figure 1: Illustration of Smart Environments for ISAC.
• Figure 2: Illustration of ISAC for Near-field Smart Environments.
• Figure 3: Illustration of ISAC for smart environments.
• Figure 4: Illustration of simulation scenarios.
• Figure 5: Rate improvement by smart propagation engineering.