A CSP's View on Opportunities and Challenges of Integrated Communications and Sensing

During the last years, wireless sensing systems have come into focus of research and development across the world. Especially, the integration of sensing and communication into a common system approach. This disruption of paradigm, where each has been done separately, is being identified as one of the potential technology components of the upcoming 6G systems with expected market deployment in 2030+. In this paper, we provide an introduction on potential use cases for integrated communications and sensing, present state of the art of the technology and highlight business and technical opportunities, as seen from the viewpoint of a communication service provider (CSP). The integration of communication and sensing provides novel opportunities for the CSP to extend its service portfolio in the future via this synergetic approach, but it also raises novel challenges and open research topics with regards to the integration into the mobile radio network infrastructure. Therefore, challenges and research topics from the point of view of a CSP are provided.