4 Where to look yourself, and what nobody can tell you yet

4.1 Search by acronym, never by the word

This is the most useful thing in the course, so it goes first.

"Sensing" is a word several other pieces of 3GPP work also use. 2053 documents say sensing and mean something else entirely — sidelink partial sensing, listen-before-talk channel sensing, or the separate 6G work ^[1].

Every document in this subject instead carries a work item acronym, and there are fourteen of them ^[2]. The naming is regular. In this area every study's acronym starts FS_, and the ones without that prefix are the rule-writing that follows a study.

• The radio studies are FS_Sensing_NR and FS_Sensing_NR_bis; the radio rule-writing is NR_Sensing_bis FS_Sensing_NR FS_Sensing_NR_bis NR_Sensing_bis

• The architecture is FS_Sensing_ARC, then Sensing-ARC FS_Sensing_ARC Sensing-ARC

• The requirements are FS_Sensing, then Sensing FS_Sensing Sensing

• The application layer is FS_Sensing_APP, then Sensing-APP FS_Sensing_APP Sensing-APP

• Security is FS_Sensing_SEC, charging FS_Sensing_CH, management FS_Sensing_OAM, and the protocol detail Sensing-CT FS_Sensing_SEC FS_Sensing_CH FS_Sensing_OAM Sensing-CT

That first point is worth spelling out, because it catches people. A 3GPP study is extended by revising the paper that opened it, not by starting a new one. The second radio study was opened by RP-251861, revised by RP-252819 and revised again by RP-253246, which is the version the work plan now points at RP-251861 RP-252819 RP-253246.

Three document numbers, one piece of work, one unchanged acronym. Search on the number and you find a third of the story.

4.2 What to read, in order

Five documents, and you can stop at whichever one answers your question.

• TS 22.137 first — short, and it defines the words TS 22.137

• TR 22.837 for the use cases the subject started from TR 22.837

• TR 23.700-14, then TS 23.137, for how the system is put together TR 23.700-14 TS 23.137

• TR 38.765 for the radio evaluation, and TR 38.901 for the channel model behind it TR 38.765 TR 38.901

• TR 33.777 for security and privacy TR 33.777

If you want to know what a group has promised to do next rather than what it has already written, read the paper that opened the work — RP-261566 for the radio, SP-260297 for the architecture, SP-260317 for the application layer, CP-261274 for the protocols RP-261566 SP-260297 SP-260317 CP-261274.

4.3 What nobody can tell you yet

The honest half of the course. None of this is in the record, so nothing here is an answer to it.

• No dates. Meeting codes and version numbers, never the day a release froze or a study ended. Nothing here supports a sentence beginning "Release 20 completes in".

• No people. The record carries the company or role a document came from, never a person's name.

• No reasons. A document is approved, revised, noted, endorsed, postponed or withdrawn, and the record stops there. Why is not in it.

• No conclusions. Titles, scopes, objectives and counts only. What the studies actually decided is inside the reports, and this school does not carry their text.

• No comparison. Nothing here measures sensing against positioning, AI or any other area of 3GPP work.

Two smaller cautions travel with every number in this course. All of them are floors, because 440 sensing documents carry no acronym ^[3]. And 78 documents carry no upload time at all, so any per-year figure is short ^[4].

4.4 Where to read this yourself

Everything named in this chapter is a 3GPP document number, and this school carries the text of none of them. What it carries is the map — which document answers which question, which acronym finds the paperwork, and which numbers are floors rather than totals.

The sources page of this course lists every entry behind every claim in it, with the file or database each number was read out of. Two longer courses in this track cover the same subject at greater depth, if you ever need the group-by-group account rather than the shape of it.