11 What the shape of the paperwork says

11.1 One ratio worth more than the rest

Of the 3492 documents this record ties to sensing, 2036 are pCRs — proposed text for a study report ^[1] — and 136 are change requests to a published specification ^[2].

2036 pieces of homework against 136 alterations to a live rule. That single comparison tells you more about the state of this area than any other number in this course.

An area that has finished studying and started specifying looks the other way round: a thin trail of study text and a thick one of change requests landing in documents people already build from. This one has not turned that corner yet.

11.2 The five kinds, and the ones not broken out

Kind	How many	What it is
pCR	2036 [1]	proposed text for a study report
discussion	968 [3]	an argument with no text attached
CR	136 [2]	a change to a published specification
draft TR	41 [4]	a whole report, put up for approval
LS out	38 [5]	a letter to another group

Those five are the kinds the register breaks out. Documents of other kinds are not counted separately.

The second row deserves as much attention as the first. 968 discussion papers ^[3] are documents that propose no text at all. Somebody is making a case, and in a study that is the normal way a position is put before anybody writes a paragraph.

41 draft reports ^[4] is the count of whole documents put up for approval. That is a small number by design: a report is only put to a plenary when its editor thinks it is done.

11.3 Where the change requests landed

136 change requests, and the record shows which documents received them. Largest first:

Document	Change requests
TR 22.837 TR 22.837	46
TR 38.901 TR 38.901	23
TS 23.255 TS 23.255	22
TS 23.501 TS 23.501	13
TS 23.502 TS 23.502	8
TS 23.437 TS 23.437	7
TS 22.261 TS 22.261	4
TS 23.286 TS 23.286	3
TS 29.510 TS 29.510	3

Two of the top three are study reports, not rules — the use-case study and the channel model. So even inside the change requests, a large share is maintenance of homework rather than alteration of live specifications.

The one row to watch is TS 23.501 with 13. That is the 5G architecture, the document everything else in the core network refers to, and thirteen changes is where sensing has actually reached it so far.

11.4 Two counts that do check out

Where numbers do reconcile, it is worth saying so, because it is the only evidence you get that the record hangs together.

The per-year figures are one. 205 documents in 2022 ^[6], 405 in 2023 ^[7], 476 in 2024 ^[8], 1297 in 2025 ^[9] and 1031 in 2026 ^[10]. Those five years fall short of the total only by the 78 documents that carry no upload time at all ^[11] — together they account for the whole 3492 ^[12], with nothing left over.

The release figures are the other, and they nearly do. 1416 documents are marked Release 19 ^[13] and 2069 Release 20 ^[14]. Those two markings together fall a little short of the 3492 total, and the record does not count what the remainder carries.

That second one is a small discrepancy and it is left standing rather than explained, because this record does not say which documents they are or why.

11.5 The trend, and what it is not

Read across those year counts and the work is plainly accelerating: 205, 405, 476, 1297, and 1031 so far in 2026. The last figure is a "so far" and not a finished year, so the curve does not turn down at the end of it.

More documents marked Release 20 than Release 19 says the same thing differently: most of this work is still ahead of the record rather than behind it.

11.6 Where the work sat

79 separate meetings have handled a sensing document ^[15], and one of them handled 154 of them on its own: SA1#101 ^[16].

One company filed more than any other single source: OPPO, with 163 ^[17]. That is 163 out of 3492 ^[12] — no single source dominates this area, and a working group's own submission often carries the work of many companies behind it.

11.7 What would change this shape

If you come back to this record later and want to know in one look whether the area has moved, four numbers do the job.

• The pCR-to-CR ratio. 2036 to 136 today ^{[1] [2]}. Rule-writing shows up here before it shows up anywhere else.

• Change requests against TS 23.501 TS 23.501. Thirteen today. This is the document the rest of the 5G core reads.

• The count under NR_Sensing_bis-Core ^[18]. One today. A run of documents means the radio rule-writing is actually under way.

• Versions crossing 1.0.0 — TS 23.137 at 0.3.0 TS 23.137, TS 23.138 at 0.1.0 TS 23.138, TS 29.545 at 0.1.0 TS 29.545, TR 33.777 at 0.6.0 TR 33.777.

None of those four requires reading a single specification. All of them are countable from the same document database this course was built from, and How to follow this area yourself says how.

11.8 The floor under every number here

None of the counts in this chapter is a total.

Everything was counted by work item acronym. 440 documents whose titles say "integrated sensing" or "ISAC" carry no acronym at all ^[19] — every plenary approval document among them, and everything filed before there was a work item to file it under. None of those 440 is inside the 3492.

So every figure here is a floor. The real pile is larger, and this record cannot say by how much.

11.9 Where to read the real thing

Counts point at documents, not at text. To see what any of these change requests actually said, the documents to open are the specifications themselves — TR 22.837 TR 22.837, TR 38.901 TR 38.901 and TS 23.501 TS 23.501 carry the most of them — and none of their text is here.

Next: what all of this adds up to as a statement of where the work stands, and why that statement can carry no dates — Where the work stands, and why there are no dates.