School of Specs Sensing — the network as a radarIn depth

What the work is for · chapter 4 of 14 · 8 minutes

4 The map of the groups, and where the weight sat

Every group with sensing documents on the record, what each one did, the acronyms to search for, and what the document counts can and cannot tell you about effort.

4.1 Why an area needs a map and a document does not

A course about one specification has one owner. TS 23.501 belongs to SA2, and that is the end of the question.

An area of work has no owner. Sensing has been argued in the requirements group, the physical-layer group, the interface group, the architecture group, the security group, the management group, the application-layer group and the protocol group, and each of them was answering a different question.

So the first thing to build for an area is the map: who appears, what each one did, and which acronym to type when you want their documents. That is this chapter. The rest of this part of the course takes the main ones one at a time.

The register gives an entry of its own to nine working groups and two plenaries. 79 separate meetings have had a sensing document on the table [2].

4.2 Everybody who filed

Group Documents From, to What it did
SA2 SA2 995 SA2#167, SA2#175 architecture: how the system is put together
RAN1 RAN1 872 RAN1#116, RAN1#126 the radio problem itself
SA1 SA1 640 SA1#98-e, SA1#109 what the system must be able to do
SA6 SA6 284 SA6#68, SA6#73 the application layer above the network
RAN3 RAN3 259 RAN3#129-bis, RAN3#133 the interfaces, and now the radio rule-writing
SA3 SA3 227 SA3#124, SA3#128 security and privacy
SA5 SA5 127 SA5#165, SA5#167 charging and management
CT4 CT4 9 CT4#135, CT4#135 the protocol detail
RAN2 RAN2 1 RAN2#133, RAN2#133 one liaison, no work of its own
RAN plenary RAN 53 — opened and approved the radio work
SA plenary SA 25 — opened and approved the SA work

Three of those rows carry most of the area. SA2, RAN1 and SA1 together account for far more documents than everybody else put together, and each of them was the lead group for a different stage.

Two of the rows are almost empty, and both are informative. CT4's nine documents at a single meeting are the sound of stage 3 having only just started. RAN2's single document is a liaison, which means the radio-protocol group has been told about sensing and has not yet had to do anything about it.

4.3 How to read a row of that table

Two columns, two different meanings, and mixing them up is the commonest mistake made with numbers like these.

Documents counts paper. It goes up when many companies file into the same report at the same meeting, which is what a study at full stretch looks like.

Meetings counts persistence. It goes up when a subject stays on a group's agenda for a long time, whether or not much was filed.

A group can be high on one and low on the other. SA5's 127 documents across three meetings SA5 is a burst: two studies opened and immediately worked. RAN1's 872 documents across 16 meetings RAN1 is a long grind.

The prefix in front of a meeting number tells you which family a group belongs to, and it is consistent across the whole record: S for the SA groups, R for the RAN groups, C for the CT groups. Drop the digit and you have a plenary — SA#111 and RAN#112 are plenaries, SA1#109 and RAN1#126 are working groups.

That last distinction matters more than it looks. Working groups argue; plenaries decide. Every study and every work item in this area was opened by a document filed at one of the two plenaries in the table.

4.4 Where the weight sat, and what that does not prove

SA2 filed the most documents; RAN1 sat with the subject at the most meetings, 16 of them. Those are two different kinds of heaviness and it is worth keeping them apart.

A large document count in one group means many companies filing text into one report at once — that is what a study looks like at full stretch, and SA1#101 is the extreme case with 154 documents at a single meeting [4].

A long run of meetings means the subject stayed open. RAN1 across 16 meetings is a group that could not settle the question quickly, which for a radio question is not surprising and which RAN1 and the radio problem takes apart.

One company stands at the top of the filing list: OPPO, with 163 documents [5].

4.5 The acronyms, largest first

Searching by the word "sensing" does not work — 2053 documents in this record say sensing and mean other work entirely [6]. Searching by acronym does. These are the 14, largest first:

Acronym Documents Whose
FS_Sensing_NR 776 [7] RAN1, channel model study
FS_Sensing_ARC 706 [8] SA2, architecture study
FS_Sensing 521 [9] SA1, the first study
FS_Sensing_NR_bis 407 [10] RAN1, second radio study
Sensing-ARC 302 [11] SA2, architecture rule-writing
FS_Sensing_SEC 227 [12] SA3, security study
FS_Sensing_APP 215 [13] SA6, application study
Sensing 128 [14] SA1, requirements rule-writing
Sensing-APP 75 [15] SA6, application rule-writing
FS_Sensing_CH 67 [16] SA5, charging study
FS_Sensing_OAM 61 [17] SA5, management study
Sensing-CT 9 [18] CT4, protocol rule-writing
NR_Sensing_bis-Core 1 [19] RAN3, radio rule-writing

That is thirteen rows for fourteen acronyms. The fourteenth, NR_Sensing_bis, is the radio work item filed as a feature; only its core part has a document against it so far NR_Sensing_bis NR_Sensing_bis-Core.

Two of those acronyms cover more than one work plan entry. Sensing has three entries Sensing Sensing Sensing and Sensing-CT has three Sensing-CT Sensing-CT Sensing-CT, all pointing at the same description document. That is why this area is 18 work plan entries [20] under 14 acronyms [21], and why anybody quoting either figure has to say which one they mean.

4.6 Who handed what to whom

An area crossing this many groups only works if each one accepts a boundary, and three handovers are visible in the record.

  • SA1 to SA2. The architecture study says it is based on the SA1 requirements [22], and the architecture report names TS 22.137 as the document it works from [23].

  • SA2 to SA3. The security study is bound to the Release 20 work in SA2 by its own first line [1].

  • RAN1 to RAN3. The radio work item says it builds on the conclusions of the study as documented in TR 38.765 [24], and it is RAN3 that leads it.

Each of those sentences is a group saying, in a document a plenary approved, which other group's output it depends on. Following those references is a better map of the area than any diagram, because each one is checkable.

The middle one, in full:

4.7 The counts are floors

Every figure above counts only documents that carry one of those 14 acronyms. It follows that:

  • 440 documents whose title says "integrated sensing" or "ISAC" are missing from all of it [25] — including every plenary approval document and everything filed before a work item existed to file it under.

  • A group's real involvement can be larger than its row. RAN2's single liaison is the clearest case.

  • Nothing here counts what a group said in the room, only what it wrote down and uploaded.

4.8 Where to read the real thing

The groups themselves publish nothing you can read directly; what you read is their documents. The two starting points are the work item descriptions — RP-261566, SP-260297, SP-260317 and CP-261274 for the four pieces of rule-writing now running RP-261566 SP-260297 SP-260317 CP-261274 — and the meeting folders themselves, which How to follow this area yourself explains how to walk.

Next, the group that had the hardest question: RAN1 and the radio problem.

Where the numbers in this chapter come from

  1. the objective of FS_Sensing_SEC section 4 of the work item description /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/data/wis/1090020/SP-251242_New SID on Security Aspects of Sensing.md, read 2026-08-04
  2. 79 meetings have had Sensing documents on the table distinct values of the meeting column over the Sensing documents, asked of /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite on 2026-08-04
  3. the objective of Sensing-CT section 4 of the work item description /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/data/wis/1120002/CP-261274-CP-261017.md, read 2026-08-04
  4. S1-101 handled 154 Sensing documents, more than any other meeting Sensing documents grouped by meeting, largest first, asked of /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite on 2026-08-04
  5. OPPO filed 163 Sensing documents, more than anyone else Sensing documents grouped by the source column, largest first; the column is free text, so one company under two spellings counts twice, asked of /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite on 2026-08-04
  6. 2053 documents say sensing but mean other work documents whose title contains "sensing" but neither "integrated sensing" nor "ISAC", and which carry some other work item — sidelink partial sensing, listen-before-talk channel sensing and the 6G studies, asked of /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite on 2026-08-04
  7. 776 documents carrying the work item FS_Sensing_NR rows of the tdoc table whose work item acronym column names FS_Sensing_NR; the first and last meeting are those of its earliest and latest upload time, asked of /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite on 2026-08-04
  8. 706 documents carrying the work item FS_Sensing_ARC rows of the tdoc table whose work item acronym column names FS_Sensing_ARC; the first and last meeting are those of its earliest and latest upload time, asked of /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite on 2026-08-04
  9. 521 documents carrying the work item FS_Sensing rows of the tdoc table whose work item acronym column names FS_Sensing; the first and last meeting are those of its earliest and latest upload time, asked of /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite on 2026-08-04
  10. 407 documents carrying the work item FS_Sensing_NR_bis rows of the tdoc table whose work item acronym column names FS_Sensing_NR_bis; the first and last meeting are those of its earliest and latest upload time, asked of /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite on 2026-08-04
  11. 302 documents carrying the work item Sensing-ARC rows of the tdoc table whose work item acronym column names Sensing-ARC; the first and last meeting are those of its earliest and latest upload time, asked of /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite on 2026-08-04
  12. 227 documents carrying the work item FS_Sensing_SEC rows of the tdoc table whose work item acronym column names FS_Sensing_SEC; the first and last meeting are those of its earliest and latest upload time, asked of /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite on 2026-08-04
  13. 215 documents carrying the work item FS_Sensing_APP rows of the tdoc table whose work item acronym column names FS_Sensing_APP; the first and last meeting are those of its earliest and latest upload time, asked of /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite on 2026-08-04
  14. 128 documents carrying the work item Sensing rows of the tdoc table whose work item acronym column names Sensing; the first and last meeting are those of its earliest and latest upload time, asked of /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite on 2026-08-04
  15. 75 documents carrying the work item Sensing-APP rows of the tdoc table whose work item acronym column names Sensing-APP; the first and last meeting are those of its earliest and latest upload time, asked of /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite on 2026-08-04
  16. 67 documents carrying the work item FS_Sensing_CH rows of the tdoc table whose work item acronym column names FS_Sensing_CH; the first and last meeting are those of its earliest and latest upload time, asked of /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite on 2026-08-04
  17. 61 documents carrying the work item FS_Sensing_OAM rows of the tdoc table whose work item acronym column names FS_Sensing_OAM; the first and last meeting are those of its earliest and latest upload time, asked of /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite on 2026-08-04
  18. 9 documents carrying the work item Sensing-CT rows of the tdoc table whose work item acronym column names Sensing-CT; the first and last meeting are those of its earliest and latest upload time, asked of /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite on 2026-08-04
  19. 1 documents carrying the work item NR_Sensing_bis-Core rows of the tdoc table whose work item acronym column names NR_Sensing_bis-Core; the first and last meeting are those of its earliest and latest upload time, asked of /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite on 2026-08-04
  20. 18 Sensing entries in the work plan folders under /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/data/wis whose metadata names this subject, read 2026-08-04
  21. 14 Sensing work item acronyms distinct acronyms over the 18 Sensing work item folders under /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/data/wis, read 2026-08-04
  22. the objective of FS_Sensing_ARC section 4 of the work item description /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/data/wis/1070012/SP-250809_SP-250790_SP-250481_S2-2505409_Update SID_Rel-20 Sensing_cl.md, read 2026-08-04
  23. the scope of 23.700-14 clause 1 of the parsed text at /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/friendlyspec/json/23700-14/20.0.0/, read 2026-08-04
  24. the objective of NR_Sensing_bis section 4 of the work item description /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/data/wis/1120123/RP-261566.md, read 2026-08-04
  25. 440 Sensing documents carry no work item acronym documents whose title contains "integrated sensing" or "ISAC" and whose work item acronym column is empty — proposals filed before a work item existed, and every plenary approval document, asked of /var/www/whatthespec.net/data/database/api/api.sqlite on 2026-08-04

Every source this course is built on

Check yourself

Answers appear when you pick one, with where they come from.

Q4.1 Which group filed more sensing documents than any other?

Q4.2 Which group spent the most meetings on sensing?

Q4.3 How many separate meetings have had a sensing document on the table?

Q4.4 RAN2 appears in this record with exactly one document. What is it?

Q4.5 Which group is named as doing half a job but has no entry at all?

Q4.6 What does "OPPO filed 163 documents" tell you?

This chapter was built from a source register generated 2026-08-04. A fresher build of the register may hold different numbers.