On a balcony not far from World Cup venue AT&T Stadium in Arlington, Texas, a dot suddenly popped up on a large screen, representing an unwelcome drone snaking toward a rectangular no-fly zone. Within a few seconds, a “friendly” drone zipped past the balcony to intercept and encourage the unwelcome aircraft to turn back.
The wayward drone wasn’t identified using standard methods such as radar, however. Instead, its flight path was tracked by 5G cellular radios just like the ones you see on towers and buildings.
This proof-of-concept demo was put on by AT&T and Ericsson to show off their Integrated Sensing and Communication technology, timed to coincide with one of the world’s largest sporting events. Drones were the focus that day, but the same technology could be applied to track other subjects like vehicles or people within range of the 5G network.
Ericsson representatives Kristen Cone and Rahul Patel demonstrated ISAC, a tracking technology for identifying objects such as drones using 5G signals.
Although it was a small-scale demo, it comes amid a growing proliferation of drones operating in areas they’re not supposed to fly. According to Reuters, the FBI said more than 700 drones were confiscated by US agencies during the World Cup, some of them piloted by operators who didn’t realize they were in no-fly zones that had been extended for the matches.
But as we’ve seen in Ukraine and Russia, tiny drones can be highly elusive and destructive — a nightmare scenario for planners of events like the 2028 Olympics in Los Angeles or even small public gatherings.
Real-time data from a trio of towers
For this demonstration, the companies created a “multistatic sensing configuration” using three cell towers, each containing the same kind of Ericsson Massive MIMO, or multiple-input multiple-output, radios found on other nearby cell sites, with a sensing capability enabled. They were spaced about 1.6 miles away from the demo area.
In this demonstration, tracking software identified a potentially threatening drone (the blue dot) and tracked it before it crossed into the no-fly zone (in red).
When the rogue object was sensed by the network, well outside the no-fly zone, the system’s software classified it, using signal processing and AI algorithms, as a drone flying about 11 mph. If the drone had been a real threat, other agencies, such as law enforcement and the Department of Homeland Security, would have received the same live data to determine what action to take.
Although only two drones were tracked during the demo, AT&T says the system can track swarms of them.
Why use the 5G network for this type of tracking?
Identifying flying objects isn’t new: Radar installations around the world continuously scan the skies to track aircraft and detect potential threats. But they tend to scan at high altitudes and require dedicated hardware to operate.
A cellular network, by contrast, already has an established footprint of towers and cell sites that provide continuous phone coverage across much of the US. The demonstration tracked drones flying at around 300 to 400 feet, but the range of detection can be up to 6 kilometers.
A pilot controls a “friendly” drone during a demonstration of technology that can track and identify unwanted drones using 5G network signals.
Robert Soni, vice president of Radio Access Network technology at AT&T, pointed to the company’s 75,000 sites across North America.
“This is a significant number that is difficult to replicate by building a purposeful radar,” Soni said during a briefing after the demo. “We’re also closer to the ground, and because of our angle of elevation, we can go down to a lower altitude than you could with traditional airborne-based radar. We’re able to see more of the nation.”
Akhil Gokul, vice president and head of technology for the Americas at Ericsson, explained that the density of towers enabled for sensing leads to greater accuracy “because you’re getting reflections [of radio frequency waves] from multiple towers,” he said. “You can get a much richer set of data that can be fed to our models.”
This approach also makes a 5G-based tracking system more resilient, with no single point of failure; cell networks already have the ability to automatically compensate when a tower goes offline for maintenance or during extreme weather events.
Demonstrating new uses for existing hardware is also a big part of the appeal of something like ISAC, because adding components to towers is expensive and time-consuming.
“I think the industry is always looking for what else the wireless network can do,” said Yigal Elbaz, senior vice president and network chief technology officer at AT&T. “Like anything else, you always want to drive to see what you can already do with your existing infrastructure.”
The drone demonstration used a standard Ericsson Massive MIMO radio like the one shown here mounted on the metal frame.
Pushing for 6G technologies today
The sensing technology that was demonstrated is expected to be part of the eventual 6G standards, but the AT&T and Ericsson people I talked to didn’t want to wait to get started on testing.
“From a technology point of view, this was viewed as a 6G capability, and this is something that’s actually being developed in the standards,” said Gokul. “What we’re doing in collaboration with AT&T is accelerating that much earlier.”
Disrupting the old process shifts the timelines for technologies that are needed in the next couple of years. Soni doesn’t want to wait for 2030 to start that cycle, around when 6G may start rolling out.
“[Previously,] standards have to get done first, proof of concepts happen second, trials happen later and then finally we see technology at home,” Soni said. “We’re trying to break that cycle … of the Gs themselves by introducing this early.”
The drone demonstration in Texas involved just two drones on the outskirts of an empty stadium, but it showed that the technology can track and identify objects in real time using existing 5G hardware. Real-world uses, from potential threats to assisting autonomous vehicles, aren’t going to wait for standards to mature, and neither are AT&T and Ericsson.
