UC San Diego Paper Defining Vision for 6G ISAC Among Most Downloaded in Proceedings of the IEEE
Written by Nuria González-Prelcic
Media contact:
Published Date
Media contact:
Topics covered:
Share This:
Article Content
Nuria González-Prelcic, a professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the University of California San Diego Jacobs School of Engineering, has co-authored a paper that outlines the future of 6G wireless networks and has been recognized as one of the most downloaded and cited articles of 2025 in Proceedings of the IEEE, the flagship journal of the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE). The article, “The Integrated Sensing and Communication Revolution for 6G: Vision, Techniques, and Applications,” lays out a vision for how future wireless networks will sense and map their physical surroundings while delivering high-speed connectivity and learning to autonomously adapt to dynamic propagation conditions. According to the journal’s official 2025 highlights announcement, the paper ranks among its most downloaded publications of the year.
Beyond Data Transmission: Networks That Sense
Today’s cellular networks are designed primarily for communication, moving information from one device to another. But as researchers worldwide look ahead to 6G, networks are expected to take on a much broader role. Future infrastructure and cellular devices will need to detect objects, map environments, track motion and enable autonomous systems, all while maintaining high-speed connectivity. In this evolution, wireless networks will increasingly function as both the sensory system and the distributed intelligence of an automated society populated by robots, autonomous vehicles and smart machines of all kinds.
This emerging paradigm, known as Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC), embeds sensing capabilities directly into wireless networks. The Proceedings of the IEEE paper lays out a communication-centric approach to ISAC, showing how sensing and data transmission can be jointly designed within the same hardware, spectrum and signal processing framework.
A smart phone reusing its communication waveform for sensing, processing reflected signals at the receiver to estimate object locations and construct an environmental map while maintaining data connectivity.
The article examines multiple sensing modes — including bistatic, multistatic and monostatic configurations — and explores how large antenna arrays, reconfigurable intelligent surfaces, and machine learning can be combined to enable sensing-native cellular systems. The work also introduces concepts such as cellular-enabled radio simultaneous localization and mapping (radio SLAM) and ISAC maps, which allow networks to build and continuously update environmental awareness.
From State of the Art to Future Integration Strategies
The recognition of this paper reflects growing global interest in ISAC as a foundational 6G technology. Building on this work, a follow-on tutorial style article published in IEEE Vehicular Technology Magazine, titled “Six Integration Avenues for ISAC in 6G and Beyond,” outlines future challenges to be addressed to exploit the full sensing potential of a network in which nodes can jointly observe the environment from multiple perspectives, exploiting diverse frequency bands and terrestrial and non-terrestrial platforms. Together, these publications position ISAC not as an incremental feature, but as a defining architectural principle for future wireless systems.
Illustration of distributed integrated sensing, communication, and learning in a 6G network. Multiple infrastructure nodes, user devices, aerial platforms, and satellites cooperate through multi-level control signaling to implement different sensing configurations, exchange data, and collaboratively construct and refine a shared environmental model.
Shaping the Future of 6G
Proceedings of the IEEE has provided in-depth coverage of transformative engineering advances for more than a century. Being named among its most downloaded papers of 2025 underscores the broad impact and relevance of this research.
The work aligns with ongoing efforts at UC San Diego to advance large-scale MIMO systems, distributed sensing, learning-enabled wireless networks and next-generation communication architectures. As global standards bodies and industry partners shape the roadmap for 6G, UC San Diego researchers are helping define how future networks will communicate and perceive the world around them.
Full tutorial: “The Integrated Sensing and Communication Revolution for 6G: Vision, Techniques, and Applications.” Collaborators of González-Prelcic for this work expand across countries and institutions, including Murat Bayraktar also at UC San Diego, Musa Furkan Keskin and Henk Wymeersch from Chalmers University, Sweden, Ossi Kaltiokallio and Mikko Valkama from Tampere University, Finland, Davide Dardari from the University of Bologna, Italy, and Yuan Shen from Tsinghua University, China.
Stay in the Know
Keep up with all the latest from UC San Diego. Subscribe to the newsletter today.
