2 What it is supposed to be for

2.1 The list it started with

Before 3GPP writes rules it does homework, and the homework is a study report. The report that opened this subject is TR 22.837, and its own scope names who it was written for.

"Verticals" is 3GPP's word for the industries that use a network rather than run one. Unpacked, that sentence names nine of them — driving, vehicle-to-everything links, drones, building maps of a space in three dimensions, cities, homes, factories, healthcare and shipping.

That is a wide list, and it is the answer to the question "who would ever pay for this". 518 meeting documents name that report, 46 of them change requests — the only way a published document is ever altered TR 22.837.

2.2 The list it is being built from

Now the short version. The specification that says how the system will actually be put together is TS 23.137, and it draws its own boundary in its first sentence.

Drones. One use case out of nine.

The other documents being written agree. The security study says it focuses on gNB-based sensing for aerial object sensing target use cases ^[4]. The radio work item says it will specify gNB-based mono-static sensing for drone sensing targets ^[5].

Two pieces of vocabulary come with that. gNB-based sensing means the base station is the thing doing the sensing ^[6]. Mono-static means the transmitter and the receiver sit in the same place — the base station shouts and listens for its own echo.

2.3 Where the rest of the list went

The other industries did not disappear. They moved up a level, to the part of 3GPP that builds services on top of a network rather than inside it.

The group that owns that layer is SA6, and its study set out to find what existing services could do with a sensing result.

Those three numbers are the drone systems specification, the vehicle services specification and the spatial maps specification. So driving and mapping did survive — not as things the radio is being taught to detect, but as services that would like to be handed a sensing result once one exists.

The change requests bear that out. TS 23.255, for drone systems, has collected 22 of them; the spatial maps document 7; the vehicle document 3 TS 23.255 TS 23.437 TS 23.286.

2.4 Two loose ends worth knowing

The requirements were also wired into the document that holds 3GPP's overall list of what a 5G system must do. TS 22.261 got a new section pointing at the new sensing requirements, and nothing more — four change requests in all TS 22.261.

And there is exactly one thread from this work to 6G. TR 22.870, the 6G use-case study, carries three documents tagged with a sensing work item TR 22.870. Three is thin. It is enough to say the subject was raised in that room, and not enough to say anything about what 6G will do with it. Nothing else in this record connects the two.

2.5 Where to read this yourself

Two documents hold this chapter. TR 22.837 is the use-case study, written to be read by somebody who does not already know why this work exists. TS 23.137 is the stage 2 specification, and it is a draft.

This school does not carry the text of either. Fetch them by number.