Toward Integrated Sensing and Communications in IEEE 802.11bf Wi-Fi Networks

TL;DR

This paper explores the integration of sensing capabilities into Wi-Fi networks, analyzing physical, MAC, and application layers, and discusses challenges and practical implications for future standards.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of sensing enablers in Wi-Fi, analyzes communication parameter impacts, and discusses research challenges for IEEE 802.11bf integration.

Findings

Analysis of physical and MAC layer sensing mechanisms

Impact of communication parameters on sensing performance

Identification of key research challenges

Abstract

As Wi-Fi becomes ubiquitous in public and private spaces, it becomes natural to leverage its intrinsic ability to sense the surrounding environment to implement groundbreaking wireless sensing applications such as human presence detection, activity recognition, and object tracking. For this reason, the IEEE 802.11bf Task Group is defining the appropriate modifications to existing Wi-Fi standards to enhance sensing capabilities through 802.11-compliant devices. However, the new standard is expected to leave the specific sensing algorithms open to implementation. To fill this gap, this article explores the practical implications of integrating sensing into Wi-Fi networks. We provide an overview of the physical and medium access control layers sensing enablers, together with the application layer perspective. We analyze the impact of communication parameters on sensing performance and detail the main research challenges. To make our evaluation replicable, we pledge to release all of our dataset and code to the community.