INTEGRATE · joInt wireless commuNicaTion and sEnsinG by hologRaphic surfAce TranscEivers

joInt wireless commuNicaTion and sEnsinG by hologRaphic surfAce TranscEivers

As the standardization of 5G wireless networks progresses, the research community has started focusing on what 6G will be. Motivated by the need of ensuring high data-rates, while at the same time saving spectrum, a major technology that has been proposed for 6G is the integration of communication and sensing services in the same infrastructure. To this end, INTEGRATE will leverage the technique of holographic beamforming by reconfigurable holographic surfaces. Placing holographic surfaces inside a base station transceiver to provide beamforming capabilities to accommodate both the communication and sensing tasks, while at the same time keeping complexity and energy consumption at bay. Specifically, holographic beamforming promises two key advantages compared to traditional architectures. Compared to existing hybrid MIMO architectures, it brings new degrees of freedom to the system, because the EM response of each RHS unit can be tuned and reconfigured in real time, in order for the whole RHS to exhibit a desired overall EM response. This can be exploited for example to focus the transmitted power in the direction of the intended receiver, and/or to minimize the interference towards non-intended receivers. Compared to existing massive MIMO architectures, these new degrees of freedom come at a lower energy consumption and cost. RHSs are nearly-passive devices, only requiring a small amount of energy to power the hardware components that enable the reconfiguration (low-power switches like PIN diodes or varactors). Then, hundreds of units can be equipped on one RHS, in contrast to the dozens of antennas that are used in massive MIMO arrays. Moreover, the RHS operates in the analog domain, without requiring energy-consuming conversion to/from the digital domain. In this context, the INTEGRATE project focuses on the theoretical, algorithmic, and architectural foundations of integrated communication and sensing networks, developing the first open access network-level simulator for joint communication and sensing. In particular, the INTEGRATE project will: Develop reconfigurable holographic surfaces capable of supporting joint communication and sensing tasks and that can be integrated in wireless transceivers with minimal cost and energy requirements. Characterize the fundamental performance limits of integrated communication and sensing networks, developing an algorithmic framework and protocol suite to approach these limits. Build the first open access software simulation platform for joint communication and sensing networks.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union