RF Hardware Reconfigurability for Privacy-Preserving Integrated Sensing and Communication

This paper introduces a reconfigurable radio frequency (RF) front-end based management of accuracy and other sensing key performance indicators (KPIs) as means for privacy control in the context of integrated sensing and communications (ISAC). Being part of the sensing devices (especially user equipments), the reconfigurable front-end would enable the users to control dynamically the sensing KPIs of their devices. This would allow the enablement of sensing-based applications while maintaining privacy and ensuring that the sensing application only receives the minimal amount of necessary sensing data. In this work, the use of RF front-end reconfigurability is highlighted for different types of systems and an architecture to integrate the controls in privacy-preserving User Equipments (UEs) is proposed. The active KPI management with RF front-end controls can be a key factor for the deployment of joint/integrated communication and sensing systems without causing a privacy nightmare in future sixth generation (6G) networks.