The 6th generation of mobile network technology (6G) will be at the centre of a human-centric hyper-connected world. To enable this, 6G will not only have to offer unprecedented throughput, latency, and reliability but also accurate sensing of people and environments. This will enable novel spatially aware applications, such as extended reality, human-robot collaboration, and autonomous transportation. Achieving this vision requires the design of new perceptive radios, that can perform integrated sensing and communications (ISAC). Moreover, the required 6G performance and sensing accuracy can only be achieved by employing mmWave frequencies (i.e., 24-300 GHz).
However, commercial-off-the-shelf mmWave devices do not offer the needed flexibility. As such, to go beyond simulation, and enable research into and prototyping of 6G mmWave perceptive radio systems, more flexible hardware, based on software-defined radios and programmable beamformers, is required. The goal of this project is to develop an indoor perceptive radio lab that offers such equipment, to enable the design of novel 6G ISAC solutions for future spatially aware cyber-physical applications. The lab will be equipped with a motion-capture system to collect ground truth data, which can be used to validate sensing accuracy and as input data for training AI algorithms. XR devices will be integrated to enable human-centric experimentation with realistic 6G applications.
