Holographic Integrated Sensing and Communications: Principles, Technology, and Implementation

TL;DR

This paper introduces holographic ISAC, a low-power, high-spatial-diversity system using reconfigurable holographic surfaces, demonstrating its feasibility through prototype experiments and simulations.

Contribution

It proposes a novel holographic beamforming scheme and hardware prototype for ISAC, significantly reducing power consumption compared to traditional phased array systems.

Findings

Feasibility confirmed by simulation and experiments

Holographic surfaces enable high spatial diversity with low power

Potential for future low-power, high-performance ISAC systems

Abstract

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) has attracted much attention as a promising approach to alleviate spectrum congestion. However, traditional ISAC systems rely on phased arrays to provide high spatial diversity, where enormous power-consuming components such as phase shifters are used, leading to the high power consumption of the system. In this article, we introduce holographic ISAC, a new paradigm to enable high spatial diversity with low power consumption by using reconfigurable holographic surfaces (RHSs), which is an innovative type of planar antenna with densely deployed metamaterial elements. We first introduce the hardware structure and working principle of the RHS and then propose a novel holographic beamforming scheme for ISAC. Moreover, we build an RHS-enabled hardware prototype for ISAC and evaluate the system performance in the built prototype. Simulation and experimental results verify the feasibility of holographic ISAC and reveal the great potential of the RHS for reducing power consumption. Furthermore, future research directions and key challenges related to holographic ISAC are discussed.