Vodafone Trial 5G and 6G Mobile Tech that Turns Smartphones into Radars

Mobile operator Vodafone has announced that they’ve begun working with Tiami Networks to test a new technology for current 5G and future 6G mobile broadband networks called Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC). This essentially turns modern Smartphones and mobile networks into something akin to a Radar, with many potential applications.

Imagine if your Smartphone could be used to detect a burst water pipe hidden behind the walls of your home or shopping malls being able to count visitor volumes without using cameras. In recent years we’ve seen a growth in wireless radio frequency based sensing technologies and ISAC represents the latest industry attempt to deliver this by harnessing hardware and networks that people already have to hand.

Modern 5G Mobile and WiFi networks are highly complex, harnessing radio waves through many different methods, frequency bands and devices. But this also ends up making it possible to convert some of this into echo radar-like features that can be used to “sense and visualise” unconnected objects (people, pipes, structures etc.) in the surrounding environment.

The potential applications for ISAC are vast. It is expected to help monitor natural disasters, track livestock, enable 3D mapping via smart glasses, detect contaminated food, help robots understand human hand commands, locate misplaced house keys and help airports / industrial facilities detect intruders or unauthorised drones etc.

Suffice to say that ISAC is widely considered an important component of future software-driven 6G network, but Vodafone has now demonstrated that it can also operate with current mobile spectrum, base stations, and smartphones. At Vodafone’s R&D lab in Malaga, Spain, the companies used Tiami Network’s distributed application, PolyRAN – which transforms base stations into wide-area sensors – to successfully detect unconnected objects, including colleagues, across a 5G network.

Marco Zangani, Vodafone’s Director of Network Strategy and Architecture, said:

“Our 6G-ready test shows that your phone could soon do a lot more than connect you. It could be used to help keep you safe wherever you go.”

The Proof of Concept (PoC) also demonstrated that current networks could detect objects using radio waves “without interfering with calls, messages, or internet connectivity“, which is very important. Few people would want to enable a feature that might potentially reduce the quality or performance of the core mobile service.

The industry standards group 3GPP, with input from Vodafone, is defining ISAC in its Release 19. Meanwhile, both Vodafone and Tiami plan to continue their testing, focusing on performance and AI-RAN (Radio Access Network) models through 2026. But it’s unclear whether this will become a commercial solution for existing 5G networks before 6G starts to arrive around 2028-2030.