Wireless networks are becoming key to the digitalization of society. For example, more than 80% of the Internet traffic is relayed by Wi-Fi — ubiquitous in homes, offices, shops, and even in outdoor spaces, trains, and aircraft — with more than 21.1 billion Wi-Fi devices in use worldwide. Wireless devices continuously monitor the way signals are modified when propagating in the environment to properly precode and decode data, compensating for radio channel impairments. This channel estimation can be effectively leveraged to extract information about the environment from channel data. Using this intrinsic sensing capability, the research community is developing different communication-assisted sensing and sensing-assisted communication applications for next-generation wireless networks. However, why integrate sensing into wireless networks, and how can radio signals monitor the environment? This tutorial answers these fundamental questions by providing an overview of integrated sensing and communications (ISAC), explaining the principles behind this new paradigm and its potential impact on wireless networks.
Dr. Francesca Meneghello (Northeastern University, USA) is a Principal Research Scientist at the Institute for Intelligent Networked Systems (INSI) at Northeastern University, USA. She received her Ph.D. degree in Information Engineering in 2022 from the University of Padova, Italy, and has been a Postdoctoral Researcher at the Department of Information Engineering at the same University. Her work focuses on wireless communications and machine learning, contributing to defining and developing next-generation data-driven wireless technologies that can adapt to the context. She serves as TPC co-chair of the IEEE INFOCOM DeepWireless Workshop and guest editor of npj Wireless Technology. She has received a Best Paper Award at IEEE INFOCOM 2025 and 2026. She is a 2023 Fulbright-Schuman alumna and is a recipient of an MSCA Global Postdoctoral Fellowship funded by the European Commission under the Horizon Europe scheme (2026–2029).
Prof. Francesco Restuccia (Northeastern University, USA) is an Associate Professor in the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering at Northeastern University. He received his Ph.D. in Computer Science from Missouri University of Science and Technology in 2016. His research interests lie in the design and experimental evaluation of next-generation edge-assisted data-driven wireless systems. Prof. Restuccia's research is funded by the US National Science Foundation and the Department of Defense. He received the Office of Naval Research Young Investigator Award, the Air Force Office of Scientific Research Young Investigator Award, the DARPA Young Faculty Award, and the Mario Gerla Award in Computer Science, as well as best paper awards at IEEE INFOCOM (three times) and IEEE WOWMOM (twice). He regularly serves as a TPC reviewer and co-chair for several top-tier IEEE and ACM conferences. He is an Associate Editor of Computer Networks. Prof. Restuccia is a Senior Member of IEEE and ACM.