Wireless systems beyond 5G evolve towards embracing both sensing and communication, resulting in increased convergence of the digital and the physical world. The existence of fused digital-physical realms raises critical questions regarding temporal ordering, causality, and the synchronization of events. This paper addresses the temporal challenges arising from the fact that the wireless infrastructure becomes an entity with multisensory perception. With the growing reliance on real-time interactions and applications such as digital twins, extended reality, and the metaverse, the need for accurate timestamping and temporal forensics becomes crucial. The paper introduces a model that incorporates Temporal Windows of Integration (TWI) to emulate human multisensory perception and discusses the implications for setting timing constraints in real-time applications and enabling temporal forensics. The analysis explores trade-offs, probabilities, and bounds for simultaneity and causality violation in the context of wireless systems evolving towards perceptive networks. This work underscores the significance of timestamping in the evolving wireless landscape, provide insights into system-level implications, and points out new research avenues for systems that combine sensing and communications.

翻译：超越5G的无线系统正朝着融合感知与通信的方向发展，导致数字世界与物理世界的日益交汇。这种数字物理融合领域的存在引发了关于时间顺序、因果关系以及事件同步的关键性问题。本文探讨了因无线基础设施成为具备多感官感知能力的实体而产生的时间挑战。随着对实时交互及数字孪生、扩展现实、元宇宙等应用的依赖日益增长，精确时间戳与时间取证变得至关重要。本文提出了一种融合时间整合窗口（TWI）的模型，用以模拟人类多感官感知，并讨论了在实时应用中设定时间约束及实现时间取证的意义。分析探索了在向感知网络演进的无线系统中，同时性与因果关系违背的权衡、概率与边界。本研究强调了在不断演进的无线格局中时间戳的重要性，提供了对系统级影响的见解，并指出了面向融合感知与通信系统的全新研究方向。