We’re still several years away from 6G’s standardization, but that’s not stopping companies at the forefront of 6G development exploring how the technology could potentially be used.

LG UPlus, the South Korean mobile carrier owned by LG, has released a white paper discussing one of the most intriguing innovations expected to be powered by 6G, called Information and Sensing Convergence, or ISAC.

Making use of 5G base stations

The technology will take 6G beyond being a faster version of 5G, to enable platforms to understand environments and interact with them, all using 5G base stations that are already in place.

This is what makes LG Plus’s paper on ISAC intriguing. According to it, ISAC will re-purpose existing 5G communication network infrastructure as a sensor array, turning the equipment from only transmitting data to “detecting people and objects even when they aren’t carrying a device.”

The white paper discusses how the communication network will be able to recognize people moving around, objects and obstructions in the road, and machinery operating through tiny vibrations.

It’s apparently possible due to similarities between current radar sensing technology and 5G base stations. The white paper states:

This means that communication networks go beyond simply exchanging data, acting as sensors that “see and sense” their surroundings

These environmental sensing features, which don’t necessarily require the use of a receiving sensor or device on the person or object tracked, could be the core 6G feature enabling autonomous cars, smart factories, and interactive smart cities, according to LG.

ISAC, Digital Twins, and beyond

LG’s white paper envisages “sensing-as-a-service” coming with the introduction of 6G and ISAC technology. It’s also not the only company investigating how it could be used in the 6G era.

Huawei wrote about ISAC in 2022, saying:

The 6G network will serve as a sensing network and 6G terminals will serve as sensing terminals. With network sensing and terminal sensing working in tandem, we can model the physical world covered by the entire network based on 6G.

However, it did not discuss the use of existing infrastructure to enable it. Qualcomm followed this up in 2024 with an in-depth look at wireless sensing and how it will be used when 6G arrives, which it explained like this:

Wireless sensing is an innovative technology that utilizes RF signals to detect the environment, all without the need for active electronics on the sensing target. It can enable spatial monitoring without using cameras, and is capable of presence detection, motion and gesture recognition, and even environmental monitoring.

Like Huawei, Qualcomm talks about recreating the physical world digitally through Digital Twins, where everything from predicting network performance requirements using AI, to training automated factories could be planned virtually.

More recently, Samsung mentioned ISAC during a talk on how 6G needs to be marketed to customers in a different way to 5G, emphasizing 6G’s real-world benefits over performance gains.

LG UPlus’s head of technology strategy, Lee Hye-jin, told ETNews.com:

ISAC is a game changer in the 6G era. It is a foundational technology that will enable communications networks to evolve beyond simple data pipes into intelligent infrastructure that senses and understands the world.

The first 6G standards are expected to be published in 2029, and Ericsson expects the first commercial 6G networks to arrive around 2030.