Holographic Integrated Sensing and Communications: Principles, Technology, and Implementation

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) has attracted much attention as a promising approach to alleviate spectrum congestion. However, traditional ISAC systems rely on phased arrays to provide high spatial diversity, where enormous power-consuming components such as phase shifters are used, leading to the high power consumption of the system. In this article, we introduce holographic ISAC, a new paradigm to enable high spatial diversity with low power consumption by using reconfigurable holographic surfaces (RHSs), which is an innovative type of planar antenna with densely deployed metamaterial elements. We first introduce the hardware structure and working principle of the RHS and then propose a novel holographic beamforming scheme for ISAC. Moreover, we build an RHS-enabled hardware prototype for ISAC and evaluate the system performance in the built prototype. Simulation and experimental results verify the feasibility of holographic ISAC and reveal the great potential of the RHS for reducing power consumption. Furthermore, future research directions and key challenges related to holographic ISAC are discussed.