Many concepts for future generations of wireless communication systems use coherent processing of signals from many distributed antennas. The aim is to improve communication reliability, capacity, and energy efficiency and provide possibilities for new applications through integrated communication and sensing. The large bandwidths available in the higher bands have inspired much work regarding sensing in the mmWave and sub-THz bands; however, the sub-6 GHz cellular bands will still be the main provider of wide cellular coverage due to the more favorable propagation conditions. In this paper, we present a measurement system and results of sub-6 GHz distributed MIMO measurements performed in an industrial environment. From the measurements, we evaluated the diversity for both large-scale and small-scale fading and characterized the link reliability. We also analyzed the possibility of multistatic sensing and positioning of users in the environment, with the initial results showing a mean-square error below 20 cm on the estimated position. Further, the results clearly showed that new channel models are needed that are spatially consistent and deal with the nonstationary channel properties among the antennas.

翻译：面向未来无线通信系统的众多概念均采用分布式天线信号的相干处理技术，旨在提升通信可靠性、容量和能效，并通过通信感知一体化为新应用提供可能。高频段的大带宽特性推动了毫米波与太赫兹频段感知领域的大量研究，然而由于亚6 GHz蜂窝频段具有更优的传播特性，其仍将是广域蜂窝覆盖的主要载体。本文介绍了一套测量系统及在工业环境中进行的亚6 GHz分布式MIMO测量结果。基于实测数据，我们评估了大尺度与小尺度衰落的多样性，并量化了链路可靠性。同时分析了多站感知与用户定位的可行性，初步结果表明定位均方误差低于20 cm。进一步研究清晰显示，需要建立空间一致且能处理天线间非平稳信道特性的新型信道模型。