ISAC: From Human to Environmental Sensing

TL;DR

This paper reviews the integration of sensing and communications (ISAC) in 6G, unifying human and environmental sensing through signal analysis, and discusses real-world feasibility and future challenges.

Contribution

It provides the first comprehensive review of ISAC for both human and environmental sensing, analyzing signal mechanisms and practical implementation aspects.

Findings

CSI and Doppler profiles reveal physical phenomena impacts

Feasibility demonstrated through LTE NLOS sensing experiments

Open challenges identified for scalable ISAC architectures

Abstract

Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC) is poised to become one of the defining capabilities of the sixth generation (6G) wireless communications systems, enabling the network infrastructure to jointly support high-throughput communications and situational awareness. While recent advances have explored ISAC for both human-centric applications and environmental monitoring, existing research remains fragmented across these domains. This paper provides the first unified review of ISAC-enabled sensing for both human activities and environment, focusing on signal-level mechanisms, sensing features, and real-world feasibility. We begin by characterising how diverse physical phenomena, ranging from human vital sign and motion to precipitation and flood dynamics, impact wireless signal propagation, producing measurable signatures in channel state information (CSI), Doppler profiles, and signal statistics. A comprehensive analysis is then presented across two domains: human sensing applications including localisation, activity recognition, and vital sign monitoring; and environmental sensing for rainfall, soil moisture, and water level. Experimental results from Long-Term Evolution (LTE) sensing under non-line-of-sight (NLOS) conditions are incorporated to highlight the feasibility in infrastructure-limited scenarios. Open challenges in signal fusion, domain adaptation, and generalisable sensing architectures are discussed to facilitate future research toward scalable and autonomous ISAC.