CNS Core: Small: Network Wide Sensing by Leveraging Cellular Communication Networks

5G communication networks are densely deployed to provide a higher data rate and wider coverage. The high-frequency bands used in 5G systems are more susceptible to the environment, such as rain fade, blockage, reflections, and transceiver displacement due to wind. The sensitivity of communication signals to the environment could benefit the task of sensing: the impact of the environment on the communication signal is also delivered to the communication receiver, from which the information of the environment can be inferred.

When all the environmental information carried by the communication signal can be gleaned by base stations or user equipment, the communication network can infer the information and thus monitor the environment. The 5G networks further enhance the capability of sensing that cannot be achieved by 4G cellular networks, due to the features of large bandwidth, wide-area coverage, ultra-dense deployment, massive antennas, and network slicing.

The proposed research serves as a platform for wide-area sensing, with a marginal cost added to existing communication infrastructure, which benefits various applications, such as traffic surveillance, weather monitoring, civil engineering, et al.

Communication signals illuminate various targets and regions, besides conveying information to receivers. It saves frequency bandwidth and transmit power to leverage the communication signal for sensing. To this end, the information-theoretic trade-off between communications and sensing is identified, which provides performance bounds.

Then, sensing algorithms are designed, including environment imaging and weather monitoring (including wind gauge and precipitation monitoring), based on the characteristic of communication signals. By incorporating various practical concerns, sensing protocols are devised. They mainly consist of the mechanism of signaling and the software-defined sensing using the network function virtualization, network slicing, and multiaccess edge computing in 5G (or beyond) networks.

Finally, the proposed algorithms of sensing, signaling, and computing are evaluated in both hardware and software testbeds.

This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.