Alain Mourad

David Rico Menéndez, Pablo Picazo-Martínez, Antonio de la Oliva et al.

Emerging integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) applications require large volumes of data, but collecting such datasets in real networks is costly, time consuming, and often infeasible due to limited access to low level measurements. In this paper we present NextSense, an open and modular semi-synthetic data generation platform that consists of a 5G stack, a channel emulator, and an UE emulator. The platform allows users full customization on radio configuration, channel and mobility, and traffic profiles through an API and GUI, and produces multi-perspective outputs that combine symbol-level IQ samples, protocol traces, and key performance indicators across UE, RAN, and CN. This paper describes the NextSense's architecture, and validates its ability to act as a faithful proxy for real measurements in sensing use cases.

Muhammad Ali Jamshed, Rohit Singh, Malik Muhammad Saad et al.

Non-Terrestrial Networks (NTN) have emerged as a key enabler to fully realize the vision of integrated, intelligent, and ubiquitous connectivity in 6G systems. However, several operational challenges, including severe Doppler effects, interference, and latency, hinder the seamless integration of NTN and Terrestrial Networks (TN). In this context, Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC), which unifies sensing and communication functionalities within a common framework, offers great potential to address these challenges while enabling new network capabilities. Due to its complementary functionalities, ISAC can play a pivotal role in enhancing NTN performance, although its practical adoption requires a fundamental rethinking of existing architectural and standardization frameworks. Motivated by this need, this article examines key aspects of ISAC-enabled NTN, including architectural design principles, application scenarios, standardization challenges, and key performance tradeoffs. Finally, a representative case study is presented to illustrate major technical challenges and highlight promising future research directions for ISAC-enabled NTN.