HiSAC: high-resolution sensing with multiband communication signals

Abstract

Integrated Sensing And Communication ( ISAC ) systems are ex- pected to perform accurate radar sensing while having minimal impact on communication. Ideally, sensing should only reuse com- munication resources, especially for spectrum which is contended by many applications. However, this poses a great challenge in that communication systems often operate on narrow subbands with low sensing resolution. Combining contiguous subbands has shown sig- nificant resolution gain in active localization. However, multiband ISAC remains unexplored due to communication subbands being highly sparse (non-contiguous) and affected by phase offsets that prevent their aggregation (incoherent). To tackle these problems, we design HiSAC, the first multiband ISAC system that combines diverse subbands across a wide frequency range to achieve super- resolved passive ranging. To solve the non-contiguity and incoher- ence of subbands, HiSAC combines them progressively, exploiting an anchor propagation path between transmitter and receiver in an optimization problem to achieve phase coherence. HiSAC fully reuses pilot signals in communication systems, applies to different frequencies, and can combine diverse technologies, e.g., 5G-NR and WiGig. We implement HiSAC on an experimental platform in the millimeter-wave unlicensed band and test it on objects and humans. Our results show it enhances the sensing resolution by up to 20 times compared to single-band processing while occupying the same spectrum.