InterDigital’s Mourad elected Chair of ETSI ISG
November 21, 2023
InterDigital, a mobile and video technology research and development company, has announced that Dr Alain Mourad, Head of InterDigital’s Wireless Lab Europe, has been elected Chair of the ETSI’s newly developed Industry Specification Group (ISG) on Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC).
The election was held at the inaugural ETSI ISAC ISG meeting on November 17th, which also saw the election of vice chairs Dr Ayman Naguib from Apple, Dr Richard Stirling Gallacher from Huawei, and Professor Henk Wymeersch from Chalmers University. More than 80 representatives from across industry and academia participated in the kickoff meeting in Sophia Antipolis, France, and collectively agreed that the ISG will establish the technical foundation for the development of ISAC technology and its standardisation in 6G.
Sensing refers to the use of radio signals to detect and estimate characteristics of target objects in the environment and its integration enables the network to act as a ‘radar’ sensor and utilise its own radio signals to comprehend the physical world it operates within. This enables the network to collect data on a plethora of device and object features, including range, velocity, position, orientation, size, shape, image, materials, and more. The sensing data gathered and processed by the network can be used to enhance network operations, augment existing services such as XR and digital twins, and enable new services like gesture and activity recognition, object detection and tracking, and imaging and environment reconstruction.
“I’m delighted to lead the ISAC ISG for its inaugural two-year release. ISAC is a pillar technology for 6G and it’s timely for ETSI’s ISAC ISG to streamline the ongoing research on ISAC towards its future specifications in the first release of 6G,” said Mourad. “I look forward to working with all the stakeholders to deliver on the exciting mission of this ISAC ISG.”
The ETSI ISAC ISG will define a prioritised set of 6G use cases and sensing types and develop an evaluation roadmap focused on advanced 6G use cases and sensing types not expected to be covered by 3GPP Release 19, though may be included in future 6G releases. The ISG also aims to develop advanced channel models for ISAC use cases and validate them through extensive measurement campaigns to address gaps in existing communications-based channel models.
“Alain’s strong leadership as the chair of the ETSI ISG on ISAC will provide a bedrock for enhanced capabilities and new use cases to explore in 6G,” said Rajesh Pankaj, Chief Technology Officer, InterDigital. “Alain’s election adds to the list of leadership positions InterDigital holds in other ETSI ISGs like Reconfigurable Intelligent Surfaces, Permissioned Distributed Ledger, and Securing AI, all of which do the critical, early work of shaping of our 6G future.”
As part of their purview, the ETSI ISAC ISG will undertake two studies, one on privacy and security aspects associated with sensing data within the ISAC 6G framework and the other on the impact of widespread deployment of ISAC on UN sustainability goals.