A General Integrated Sensing and Communication Channel Model Combined With Scattering Clusters

Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) technology, utilizing shared spectrum and hardware, has been widely recognized as a pivotal technology in future sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks. The study of ISAC channel modeling underpins technical advancement and system performance assessment. Therefore, this paper presents a novel framework for the ISAC channel model combined with environmental scattering clusters in 6G ISAC systems. Initially, we established three-dimensional positions of scattering clusters to consider the correlation between sensing and communication channels. Subsequently, environmental signal echoes are categorized as line-of-sight, non-line-of-sight, and clutter echoes. A more precise ISAC channel impulse response is obtained by weighting and summing the responses of these three signal echoes. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed ISAC channel modeling method effectively integrates the characteristics of the sensing channel into existing communication models compatibly. This research contributed significantly to Xiaomi's successful ISAC channel modeling study proposal in 3GPP Release 19.