Multistatic Sensing Performance Maps for Evaluating Integrated Sensing and Communication Deployments

The use of existing communication infrastructure to position passive objects in the environment has attracted much attention due to its potential to deliver new features to communication networks with limited overhead in terms of additional hardware. Here, it is analyzed to what extent existing deployments of outdoor base stations lend themselves to provide such positioning. Assuming that multi static sensing uses all base stations that are in line-of-sight of the passive object, a map is drawn that shows where sensing can be done and what the predicted performance would be. Whether a base station is in line-of-sight is determined from a three-dimensional model of the environment, and performance is predicted using the Cramér-Rao bound. An idealized scenario illustrates the concept followed by a realistic scenario taken from Covent Garden in London. It is noted that present base station deployments might give only limited coverage for line-of-sight based, base-station only sensing, and that the standard deviation of the sensing error often is in tens of meters. The proposed performance maps clearly visualize the sensing performance given a base station deployment. As such, they can serve as an important tool for evaluating communication networks that are designed to provide sensing capabilities and for identifying areas where the deployment needs to be modified to achieve a desired sensing performance.