Experimental Validation of SBFD ISAC in an FR3 Distributed SIMO Testbed

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates a novel SBFD ISAC system using a distributed SIMO testbed that efficiently combines sensing and communication with minimal interference, validated through indoor experiments at 6.8 GHz.

Contribution

It introduces a sub-band full-duplex ISAC system with a distributed testbed, enabling simultaneous sensing and communication with resource-efficient subcarrier allocation.

Findings

Achieved velocity resolution of 0.145 m/s in sensing.

Maintained low BER of 3.63e-3 under NLoS conditions.

Compared favorably to multiband benchmarks with less spectrum use.

Abstract

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) is a key enabler for future radio networks. This paper presents a sub-band full-duplex (SBFD) ISAC system that assigns non-overlapping OFDM subbands to sensing and communication, enabling simultaneous operation with minimal interference. A distributed testbed with three SIMO nodes is implemented using USRP X410 devices operating at 6.8 GHz with 20 MHz bandwidth per channel. A total of 2048 OFDM subcarriers are partitioned into three subbands: two for sensing using Zadoff-Chu sequences and one for communication using QPSK. Each USRP transmits one subband while receiving signals across all three, forming a 1 x 3 SIMO node. Time synchronization is achieved through host-server coordination without external clock distribution. Indoor measurements, validated against MOCAP ground truth, confirm the feasibility of the SBFD ISAC system. The results demonstrate monostatic sensing with a velocity resolution of 0.145 m/s, and communication under NLoS conditions with a BER of 3.63e-3. Compared with a multiband benchmark requiring three times more spectrum, the SBFD configuration achieves comparable velocity estimation accuracy while conserving resources. The sensing and communication performance trade-off is determined by subcarrier allocation strategy rather than mutual interference.