ISAC: Do We Need to Bring the Timing Forward?

Earlier in the year, I put together a few blog posts on ISAC (integrated sensing and comms, if you didn’t already know). One, coming off lots of attention at MWC26, was meant to explain the market’s interest. One was meant to explain why one of the most oft-cited obstacles to deployment – the need to leverage mmWave spectrum – isn’t really such a big deal. The last looked at privacy and security considerations which could prove to be the biggest deployment obstacle, at least in some regions.

There’s a lot more to be said about everyone’s favourite 6G use case. But ISAC discussions often feel incredibly theoretical given that it’s not actually here yet and, until it’s here, figuring out viable business models will be tough. Those business models, of course, are where many a promising technology falls short. 

So, it’s worth asking, how might we bring ISAC timelines forward? The answer, as any good Econ 101 prof would have told you, is really about Supply and Demand. 

With 6G networks still a few years away, you’d think the ISAC Supply dynamic is, well, less than dynamic. Not necessarily. 

• 6G Testbeds. The ISAC attention at MWC26 I mentioned earlier was accompanied by no shortage of 6G hype. Does that mean 5G’s successor has arrived? No. Does it mean ISAC-ready labs and innovation centres are imminent? Yep.
• OCUDU. The Linux Foundation’s Open Centralized Unit Distributed Unit Ecosystem Foundation (OCUDU to its friends) has been positioned as everything from Open RAN’s salvation to AI-RAN’s catalyst. What it promises is an open platform for 5G and 6G system development. What this means for the folks driving it (more on them later) is software-defined flexibility and waveform agility, allowing rapid roll out of new innovation…EG, think bringing ISAC to life early.
• Non-6G Solutions. What might pre-5G ISAC solutions look like? Well, 5G-Advanced promises sub-10cm positioning. Need something better? Pulsone from Cohere Technologies leverages Zak-OTFS for high-mobility comms and precise sensing, claiming ISAC support with minimal capacity sacrifice and situational awareness for tracking high-speed objects. 

In announcing its foundational investment in OCUDU, the US Department of War (DoW) noted, “The DoW is making its strategic investment in OCUDU to promote the development of custom wireless capabilities designed to meet defense mission requirements.” You can read that “custom” bit as “anything that helps us meet our requirements” whether it’s 5G, 6G, or something that straddles them (FWIW, Cohere positions itself as “multi-G”).  Here, “open” is about being, “able to tap into a large pool of talent capable of developing…advanced network features.”

If supply could be accelerated, what about the other side of the coin? A solid base of demand is obviously helpful for speeding up supply and signalling how, exactly, the industry it would commercialize ISAC. 

• Defence Circa 2026. Returning to OCUDU, the interest of the US Department of War in any innovation which could accelerate ISAC is easy to understand against the backdrop of heightened awareness of airborne threats (drones, missiles). investment in from the US Department of War came via its FutureG Office. These threats don’t look likely to take a lower profile anytime soon.
• Telco Efficiencies. It’s a fact of life that use cases which help businesses to become more efficient are often those that get deployed early – efficiencies are almost always more certain than new business opportunities. Here, then, it’s surprising that we haven’t seen ISAC’s positioning linked to better use of their most precious asset: spectrum. Realtime insights into the position and trajectory of connected devices, after all, should allow better targeting of RF energy not to mention better experiences for users. 

To be sure, we won’t have commercial ISAC availability tomorrow. If we did, however, it’s clear that there are plenty of folks with high-value applications ready to put it to use. Luckily, we may not need to wait that long to prove that out.