Rethinking RSSI for WiFi Sensing

The Received Signal Strength Indicator (RSSI) is widely available on commodity WiFi devices but is commonly regarded as too coarse for fine-grained sensing. This paper revisits its sensing potential and presents WiRSSI, a bistatic WiFi sensing framework for passive human tracking using only RSSI measurements. WiRSSI adopts a 1Tx-3Rx configuration and is readily extensible to Multiple-Input Multiple-Output (MIMO) deployments. We first reveal how CSI power implicitly encodes phase-related information and how this relationship carries over to RSSI, showing that RSSI preserves exploitable Doppler, Angle-of-Arrival (AoA), and delay cues associated with human motion. WiRSSI then extracts Doppler-AoA features via a 2D Fast Fourier Transform and infers delay from amplitude-only information in the absence of subcarrier-level phase. The estimated AoA and delay are then mapped to Cartesian coordinates and denoised to recover motion trajectories. Experiments in practical environments show that WiRSSI achieves median XY localization errors of 0.905 m, 0.784 m, and 0.785 m for elliptical, linear, and rectangular trajectories, respectively. In comparison, a representative CSI-based method attains median errors of 0.574 m, 0.599 m, and 0.514 m, corresponding to an average accuracy gap of 0.26 m. These results demonstrate that, despite its lower resolution, RSSI can support practical passive sensing and offers a low-cost alternative to CSI-based WiFi sensing.

Towards SISO Bistatic Sensing for ISAC

Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) is a key enabler for next-generation wireless systems. However, real-world deployment is often limited to low-cost, single-antenna transceivers. In such bistatic Single-Input Single-Output (SISO) setup, clock asynchrony introduces random phase offsets in Channel State Information (CSI), which cannot be mitigated using conventional multi-antenna methods. This work proposes WiDFS 3.0, a lightweight bistatic SISO sensing framework that enables accurate delay and Doppler estimation from distorted CSI by effectively suppressing Doppler mirroring ambiguity. It operates with only a single antenna at both the transmitter and receiver, making it suitable for low-complexity deployments. We propose a self-referencing cross-correlation (SRCC) method for SISO random phase removal and employ delay-domain beamforming to resolve Doppler ambiguity. The resulting unambiguous delay-Doppler-time features enable robust sensing with compact neural networks. Extensive experiments show that WiDFS 3.0 achieves accurate parameter estimation, with performance comparable to or even surpassing that of prior multi-antenna methods, especially in delay estimation. Validated under single- and multi-target scenarios, the extracted ambiguity-resolved features show strong sensing accuracy and generalization. For example, when deployed on the embedded-friendly MobileViT-XXS with only 1.3M parameters, WiDFS 3.0 consistently outperforms conventional features such as CSI amplitude, mirrored Doppler, and multi-receiver aggregated Doppler.

Water Level Sensing via Communication Signals in a Bi-Static System

Accurate water level sensing is essential for flood monitoring, agricultural irrigation, and water resource optimization. Traditional methods require dedicated sensor deployments, leading to high installation costs, vulnerability to interference, and limited resolution. This work proposes PMNs-WaterSense, a novel scheme leveraging Channel State Information (CSI) from existing mobile networks for water level sensing. Our scheme begins with a CSI-power method to eliminate phase offsets caused by clock asynchrony in bi-static systems. We then apply multi-domain filtering across the time (Doppler), frequency (delay), and spatial (Angle-of-Arrival, AoA) domains to extract phase features that finely capture variations in path length over water. To resolve the $2\pi$ phase ambiguity, we introduce a Kalman filter-based unwrapping technique. Additionally, we exploit transceiver geometry to convert path length variations into water level height changes, even with limited antenna configurations. We validate our framework through controlled experiments with 28 GHz mmWave and 3.1 GHz LTE signals in real time, achieving average height estimation errors of 0.025 cm and 0.198 cm, respectively. Moreover, real-world river monitoring with 2.6 GHz LTE signals achieves an average error of 4.8 cm for a 1-meter water level change, demonstrating its effectiveness in practical deployments.

Subspace-Based Super-Resolution Sensing for Bi-Static ISAC with Clock Asynchronism

Bi-static sensing is an attractive configuration for integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) systems; however, clock asynchronism between widely separated transmitters and receivers introduces time-varying time offsets (TO) and phase offsets (PO), posing significant challenges. This paper introduces a signal-subspace-based framework that estimates decoupled angles, delays, and complex gain sequences (CGS)-- the target-reflected signals -- for multiple dynamic target paths. The proposed framework begins with a novel TO alignment algorithm, leveraging signal subspace or covariance, to mitigate TO variations across temporal snapshots, enabling coherent delay-domain analysis. Subsequently, subspace-based methods are developed to compensate for TO residuals and to perform joint angle-delay estimation. Finally, leveraging the high resolution in the joint angle-delay domain, the framework compensates for the PO and estimates the CGS for each target. The framework can be applied to both single-antenna and multi-antenna systems. Extensive simulations and experiments using commercial Wi-Fi devices demonstrate that the proposed framework significantly surpasses existing solutions in parameter estimation accuracy and delay resolution. Notably, it uniquely achieves a super-resolution in the delay domain, with a probability-of-resolution curve tightly approaching that in synchronized systems.

Bayesian Sensing for Time-Varying Channels in ISAC Systems

Future mobile networks are projected to support integrated sensing and communications in high-speed communication scenarios. Nevertheless, large Doppler shifts induced by time-varying channels may cause severe inter-carrier interference (ICI). Frequency domain shows the potential of reducing ISAC complexity as compared with other domains. However, parameter mismatching issue still exists for such sensing. In this paper, we develop a novel sensing scheme based on sparse Bayesian framework, where the delay and Doppler estimation problem in time-varying channels is formulated as a 3D multiple measurement-sparse signal recovery (MM-SSR) problem. We then propose a novel two-layer variational Bayesian inference (VBI) method to decompose the 3D MM-SSR problem into two layers and estimate the Doppler in the first layer and the delay in the second layer alternatively. Subsequently, as is benefited from newly unveiled signal construction, a simplified two-stage multiple signal classification (MUSIC)-based VBI method is proposed, where the delay and the Doppler are estimated by MUSIC and VBI, respectively. Additionally, the Cram\'er-Rao bound (CRB) of the considered sensing parameters is derived to characterize the lower bound for the proposed estimators. Corroborated by extensive simulation results, our proposed method can achieve improved mean square error (MSE) than its conventional counterparts and is robust against the target number and target speed, thereby validating its wide applicability and advantages over prior arts.

Integrated Sensing and Communications Over the Years: An Evolution Perspective

Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC) enables efficient spectrum utilization and reduces hardware costs for beyond 5G (B5G) and 6G networks, facilitating intelligent applications that require both high-performance communication and precise sensing capabilities. This survey provides a comprehensive review of the evolution of ISAC over the years. We examine the expansion of the spectrum across RF and optical ISAC, highlighting the role of advanced technologies, along with key challenges and synergies. We further discuss the advancements in network architecture from single-cell to multi-cell systems, emphasizing the integration of collaborative sensing and interference mitigation strategies. Moreover, we analyze the progress from single-modal to multi-modal sensing, with a focus on the integration of edge intelligence to enable real-time data processing, reduce latency, and enhance decision-making. Finally, we extensively review standardization efforts by 3GPP, IEEE, and ITU, examining the transition of ISAC-related technologies and their implications for the deployment of 6G networks.

Deep Learning-based OTFS Channel Estimation and Symbol Detection with Plug and Play Framework

Orthogonal Time Frequency Space (OTFS) modulation has recently attracted significant interest due to its potential for enabling reliable communication in high-mobility environments. One of the challenges for OTFS receivers is the fractional Doppler that occurs in practical systems, resulting in decreased channel sparsity, and then inaccurate channel estimation and high-complexity equalization. In this paper, we propose a novel unsupervised deep learning (DL)-based OTFS channel estimation and symbol detection scheme, capable of handling different channel conditions, even in the presence of fractional Doppler. In particular, we design a unified plug-and-play (PnP) framework, which can jointly exploit the flexibility of optimization-based methods and utilize the powerful data-driven capability of DL. A lightweight Unet is integrated into the framework as a powerful implicit channel prior for channel estimation, leading to better exploitation of the channel sparsity and the characteristic of the noise simultaneously. Furthermore, to mitigate the channel estimation errors, we realize the PnP framework with a fully connected (FC) network for symbol detection at different noise levels, thereby enhancing robustness. Finally, numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the algorithm.

High-Resolution Uplink Sensing in Millimeter-Wave ISAC Systems

Perceptive mobile networks (PMNs), integrating ubiquitous sensing capabilities into mobile networks, represent an important application of integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) in 6G. In this paper, we propose a practical framework for uplink sensing of angle-of-arrival (AoA), Doppler, and delay in millimeter-wave (mmWave) communication systems, which addresses challenges posed by clock asynchrony and hybrid arrays, while being compatible with existing communication protocols. We first introduce a beam scanning method and a corresponding AoA estimation algorithm, which utilizes frequency smoothing to effectively estimate AoAs for both static and dynamic paths. We then propose several methods for constructing a ``clean'' reference signal, which is subsequently used to cancel the effect caused by the clock asynchrony. We further develop a signal ratio-based joint AoA-Doppler-delay estimator and propose an AoA-based 2D-FFT-MUSIC (AB2FM) algorithm that applies 2D-FFT operations on the signal subspace, which accelerates the computation process with low complexity. Our proposed framework can estimate parameters in pairs, removing the complicated parameter association process. Simulation results validate the effectiveness of our proposed framework and demonstrate its robustness in both low and high signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) conditions.

Multi-Carrier Faster-Than-Nyquist Signaling for OTFS Systems

Orthogonal time frequency space (OTFS) modulation technique is promising for high-mobility applications to achieve reliable communications. However, the capacity of OTFS systems is generally limited by the Nyquist criterion, requiring orthogonal pulses in both time and frequency domains. In this paper, we propose a novel multi-carrier faster-than-Nyquist (MC-FTN) signaling scheme for OTFS systems. By adopting non-orthogonal pulses in both time and frequency domains, our scheme significantly improves the capacity of OTFS systems. Specifically, we firstly develop the signal models for both single-input single-output (SISO) and multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) OTFS systems. Then, we optimize the delay-Doppler (DD) domain precoding matrix at the transmitter to suppress both the inter-symbol interference (ISI) and inter-carrier interference (ICI) introduced by the MC-FTN signaling. For SISO systems, we develop an eigenvalue decomposition (EVD) precoding scheme with optimal power allocation (PA) for achieving the maximum capacity. For MIMO systems, we develop a successive interference cancellation (SIC)-based precoding scheme via decomposing the capacity maximization problem into multiple sub-capacity maximization problems with largely reduced dimensions of optimization variables. Numerical results demonstrate that our proposed MC-FTN-OTFS signaling scheme achieves significantly higher capacity than traditional Nyquist-criterion-based OTFS systems. Moreover, the SIC-based precoding scheme can effectively reduce the complexity of MIMO capacity maximization, while attaining performance close to the optimal EVD-based precoding scheme.

Optimizing Fingerprint-Spectrum-Based Synchronization in Integrated Sensing and Communications

Asynchronous radio transceivers often lead to significant range and velocity ambiguity, posing challenges for precise positioning and velocity estimation in passive-sensing perceptive mobile networks (PMNs). To address this issue, carrier frequency offset (CFO) and time offset (TO) synchronization algorithms have been studied in the literature. However, their performance can be significantly affected by the specific choice of the utilized window functions. Hence, we set out to find superior window functions capable of improving the performance of CFO and TO estimation algorithms. We first derive a near-optimal window, and the theoretical synchronization mean square error (MSE) when utilizing this window. However, since this window is not practically achievable, we then develop a practical window selection criterion and test a special window generated by the super-resolution algorithm. Numerical simulation has verified our analysis.