Communication via Sensing

Abstract

We present an alternative take on the recently popularized concept of `\textit{joint sensing and communications}', which focuses on using communication resources also for sensing. Here, we propose the opposite, where we utilize the receiver's sensing capabilities for communication. Our goal is to characterize the fundamental limits of communication over such a channel, which we call `\textit{communication via sensing}'. We assume that changes in the sensed attributes, such as location and speed, are limited due to practical constraints, which are captured by assuming a finite-state channel (FSC) with an input cost constraint. We first formulate an upper bound on the \(N\)-letter capacity as a cost-constrained optimization problem over the input sequence distribution, and then convert it to an equivalent problem over the state sequence distribution. Moreover, by breaking a walk on the underlying Markov chain into a weighted sum of traversed graph cycles in the long walk limit, we obtain a compact single-letter formulation of the capacity upper bound. Finally, for a specific case of a two-state FSC with noisy sensing characterized by a binary symmetric channel (BSC), we obtain a closed-form expression for the capacity upper bound. Comparison with an existing numerical lower bound shows that our proposed upper bound is very tight for all crossover probabilities.