This keynote was delivered at VTC2023Spring in Florence, Italy.

Speaker: Christos Masouros, University College London

The integration of sensing and communication functionalities is seen as a key enabling technology for 6G networks to provide services beyond communications. In this talk I argue that it is a natural evolution of the two technologies, as it has obvious gains in energy, hardware and cost efficiency through the use of dualfunctional hardware. I further explain that their codesign also offers opportunities in flexible tradeoffs and new synergies between sensing and communication. I discuss signalling strategies that enable information exchange together with target detection from a single transmission. These range from radarcentric and communicationcentric, to joint signalling. I present some results from my team’s work in the area, that underline the benefits of the codesign in offering a graceful tradeoff between the two functionalities. I then discuss use cases that highlight potential synergies between sensing and communications. I conclude with some thoughts on research opportunities and the road ahead.

Learn more about the IEEE Vehicular Technology Society at www.vtsociety.org.