Guard Beams: Coverage Enhancement of UE-Centered ISAC via Analog Multi-Beamforming

This paper introduces an Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) approach to safeguard communication User Equipment (UE) from approaching objects or people, such as potential blockers, without the need to scan the entire environment, while providing continuous communication services. The proposed UE-centered ISAC system utilizes a communication-centric waveform, transmitted through guard beams to monitor the area within the UE proximity. These guard beams are generated through a multi-beamforming technique employing a shared analog array that also generates the communication beam. The parameters for generating the guard beams are optimized to maximize sensing coverage while adhering to the communication Signal-to-Noise Ratio (SNR) constraints. In comparison to the detection using the communication-beam-only system, our optimized guard beams enhance the detection range and coverage area by over 1.5 times while maintaining the required communication SNR. Our multi-stage sensing pipeline applied to the guard beams significantly reduces the complexity of sensing signal processing required to detect approaching blockers while maintaining accuracy comparable to that of exhaustive scanning based on the grid-searching method. Furthermore, the guard beams approach reduces the impact on communication SNR by 0.7 dB factor compared to exhaustive scanning with a balanced communication-sensing power allocation, offering a less pronounced impact on the communication performance in an ISAC system.