Description
Cellular (4G LTE / 5G NR) appears in the bibliography in the context of Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) — the wireless community's umbrella term for sensing services delivered by communication infrastructure. 5G NR's millimetre-wave bands (FR2, 24-52 GHz) and beam-scanning architecture make cellular base stations natural radar emitters, and 3GPP Release 19/20 specifies sensing use cases at the standards level. For the thesis, cellular sensing is the adjacent research community that overlaps with Wi-Fi sensing on methods (channel-response inversion, beamforming) but not on deployment scale (cellular = operator-controlled, Wi-Fi = building-controlled).
Specs / capabilities
- LTE: sub-6 GHz, 1.4-20 MHz channels, OFDMA downlink
- 5G NR: FR1 (sub-7.125 GHz, up to 100 MHz channels) and FR2 (24-52 GHz, up to 400 MHz channels)
- Massive MIMO (64+ antennas) at base station
- Beamforming with codebook-based or hybrid beam scanning
- 5G-Advanced (3GPP Rel-18+) introduces native sensing primitives
Used by (papers)
- ISAC / Joint Communication and Sensing (JCAS) survey papers
- 5G-based positioning (3GPP Rel-16 NR Positioning) papers
- Cellular vs Wi-Fi sensing comparisons