Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC) for Vehicular Communication Networks (VCN)

With the unprecedented development of smart vehicles and roadside units equipped with wireless connectivity, the transportation system is undergoing revolutionary changes in the past decade or two. Bearing safety and efficiency as the utmost objectives, the vehicular environments are witnessing explosive increase of various sensors onboard vehicles and equipped at transportation infrastructures. On the one hand, these sensors are destined to be wirelessly connected to provide more comprehensive situational awareness for transportation purposes. On the other hand, the abundance of sensor data of the environment can potentially shed light on the channel propagation characteristics that lie at the core of any communications system design. The integrated sensing and communications (ISACs) is henceforth both necessary and natural in vehicular communications networks (VCN). Different from existing ISAC works that target generic environments but are limited to dual-function radar-communications (DFRC), in this article we focus on transportation scenarios and applications but take a wholistic view of ISAC possibilities. First, we argue that, even though many sensors in transportation settings are nonradio-frequency (RF)-based, functional ISAC (fISAC) is feasible and necessary, in both communication-centric (CC) or sensing-centric (SC) modes. To facilitate this, the concept of synesthesia is introduced to ISAC to accommodate “machine senses” in the RF and non-RF formats. We then zoom in to RF-based sensors and propose the so-termed signaling ISAC (sISAC), with either unified-hardware (UH) or separate-hardware (SH) platforms, and delineate the unique issues arising in transportation settings. Several transportation-specific case studies are included to demonstrate these various ISAC regimes. Toward the end, the relationships of these ISAC subcategories are discussed with a roadmap laid out.