Multi-UE Networked Sensing: A New Paradigm for 6G Perceptive Mobile Networks

Abstract

Networked sensing, which jointly exploits observations from multiple distributed nodes, is essential for unlocking the full sensing potential of integrated sensing and communications (ISAC). This article introduces multi-UE sensing, a new networked sensing paradigm for future perceptive mobile networks that exploits the correlated sensing observations naturally arising from distributed user equipment devices (UEs) interacting with common targets. Representative uplink, downlink, and hybrid sensing architectures are presented, together with a multi-view signal processing framework encompassing synchronization, correlation-aware parameter estimation, and sensing fusion. Key open challenges, including correlation modelling, target association, sensing information compression, and communication-sensing co-optimization, are also discussed.