Integrated Sensing and Communication Patents: Leaders & Trends 2026
- Filing has cooled from its 2020 peak of 1,549 records — 2021's 1,483 fell 52% to 715 by 2024, the last year the data can be treated as complete.
- The top 10 assignees hold just 24.1% of all 1,557,658 records — concentration is real but nowhere near total, leaving a long tail of single- and few-filing entrants.
- H04W carries only 1.1% of records and H04L 0.6% — even the busiest wireless and digital-transmission classes are thinly claimed relative to the corpus as a whole.
Filing growth compares 2021 (1,483 records) with 2024 (715) — a three-year span. 2024 is the most recent year we treat as complete: publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 onwards are still filling in and any growth rate that ends there would understate the field. Top-5 share is the combined record count of the five largest assignees divided by all 1,557,658 records in scope (CR5), not by the ranked leaders only.
What the ISAC waveform filing record shows
Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) waveform design sits at the intersection of radar engineering and cellular signalling: the same transmission is asked to carry data and resolve range or velocity at once. That dual purpose shows up in the patent record as claims split across resource allocation, self-interference handling and ambiguity-function optimisation — the mechanics that decide how much sensing accuracy a system gives up for a given data rate, or vice versa.
Filing activity rose through the late 2010s, peaked in 2020, and has since pulled back sharply. That decline is not evidence the field is closing — publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, so 2025 and 2026 figures are still filling in — but the 2021-to-2024 span is complete enough to show a real slowdown in new filing volume even as the underlying assignee base stays broad.
Filing trends and technology composition
Two views of the same 1,557,658-record corpus: how filing volume has moved year over year, and which IPC subclasses carry the claim density.
Peak in 2020, pullback through 2024
Filings ran 1,077 in 2017 and climbed to a peak of 1,549 in 2020. The complete trend window shows 2021's 1,483 falling to 715 by 2024, a 52% drop over three years. 2025 and 2026 figures (down to 47) are too recent to read as decline — they simply have not finished publishing.
H04W and H04L dominate a thin field
H04W (wireless communication networks) leads at 1.1% of all records, with H04L (digital information transmission) next at 0.6%. Every other subclass — H04B, H04J, H04Q, G06F, H04M, G01S — sits at or below 0.2%, meaning most of the corpus is not concentrated in any single IPC bucket and classification alone is a weak filter for this topic.
Shares are the percentage of the 1,557,658 records in scope. A patent can carry several IPC classes, so the shares add up to more than 100%.
Go deeper on Integrated Sensing and Communication Waveforms with Eureka
This page is one run against one query. Ask Eureka your own question about integrated sensing and communication waveforms and every answer comes back with the patent numbers behind it.
Try EurekaA representative recent filing
Methods For Determining Array Associated With Resource Allocation In An Integrated Sensing And Communication System With Time-Division Duplexing Channel
Various solutions for determining array associated with resource allocation in an Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) system with Time-Division Duplexing (TDD) channel with respect to an apparatus in mobile communications are described. The apparatus may determine an array according to one or more kernels. The array may be associated with a resource allocation. In at least one kernel, elements may be associated with unavailable resource units. The apparatus may transmit a plurality of signals based on the array associated with the resource allocation.Filed by MediaTek; published March 2026, near the front of the current filing window.
| # | Publication no. | Patent title | Citations |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1 | US6452915B1 | IP-flow classification in a wireless point to multi-point (PTMP) transmission system | 1,216 |
| 2 | US20190149365A1 | Time domain resource allocation for mobile communication | 876 |
| 3 | US6640248B1 | Application-aware, quality of service (QoS) sensitive, media access control (MAC) layer | 860 |
| 4 | US6374112B1 | Flexible radio access and resource allocation in a universal mobile telephone system | 759 |
| 5 | US20020099854A1 | Transmission control protocol/internet protocol (TCP/IP) packet-centric wireless point to multi-point (PTMP) … | 659 |
| 6 | US20030128658A1 | Resource allocation for MIMO-OFDM communication systems | 639 |
| 7 | US20070206531A1 | Random access procedure with enhanced coverage | 623 |
| 8 | US20140328329A1 | Methods and apparatus for device-to-device communications system | 589 |
| 9 | US20110275316A1 | Device to device connection setup using near-field communication | 581 |
| 10 | US20170188391A1 | Methods and apparatus for resource collision avoidance in vehicle to vehicle communication | 550 |
Citation counts reward older filings that have had time to accumulate references — treat them as a signal of influence on the field, not a ranking of current importance.
Each row carries its publication number; clicking a row searches Eureka by that number.
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Browse MCP servers →Reading the concentration and momentum numbers together
Assignee concentration, receiving-office spread and recent-year momentum together describe a field that is broad at the base but shows real pullback among the largest recent filers.
A leader, then a long tail
The leading assignee holds 96,491 records and the top 5 combined hold 292,396 — 18.8% of everything in scope. The top 10 add up to only 24.1%, so three-quarters of the corpus sits outside the ranked leaders entirely.
Recent-year filing is pulling back across the board
Every assignee tracked for recent-year momentum shows a year-over-year decline in the latest year, from -75% to -94%, with one holding flat at 0%. That is consistent with the broader 2021–2024 pullback rather than a shift toward any single competitor.
Filing office spread favours the US and EPO
United States filings (10,542) lead the receiving-office count, with Europe (5,491) and WIPO/PCT (2,840) next. Australia, Canada and the UK each sit in the low hundreds, indicating most applicants still route through US, European or PCT channels before regional filing.
Eureka can read the same corpus for gaps instead of for coverage: under-claimed branches adjacent to integrated sensing and communication waveforms, with the prior art for and against each one.
Who holds the largest families, and where the field opens up
The ranked leaders span handset, infrastructure and chipset makers; recent-year momentum has softened for all of them, which puts more weight on the branches nobody has claimed heavily yet.
A single dominant holder, well ahead of fifth place
The leading assignee's 96,491 records dwarf the fifth-place holder's 36,245 and tenth place's 11,591 — a steep drop-off rather than a gradual one, typical of a field anchored by one or two large diversified filers.
Co-assignee activity is sparse and concentrated
Only 10 co-assignee pairs are tracked, and the strongest sit around 40–60 shared records — evidence that most filing in this space happens under a single corporate entity rather than through joint development arrangements.
Every tracked leader has slowed in the latest year
No assignee in the recent-momentum tracking grew year over year; declines range from -75% to -94%, with one holding flat. That pattern matches the corpus-wide 2021–2024 pullback and suggests the slowdown is structural to the space, not company-specific.
| Assignee | Recent year | YoY |
|---|---|---|
| Huawei Technologies Co., Ltd. | 10 | -75% |
| Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd. | 5 | -88% |
| Qualcomm Inc. | 4 | -94% |
| ZTE Corporation | 2 | -75% |
| LG Electronics Inc. | 1 | -75% |
| Telefonaktiebolaget LM Ericsson | 1 | 0% |
| Sony Group Corporation | 1 | -92% |
| Electronics and Telecommunications Research Institute (ETRI) | 1 | -92% |
Where to take this analysis
The published record only shows what has cleared 18 months of lag and made it to publication. Two things sharpen the picture from here.
Track the 2025–2026 filings as they land
Because publication lags filing by roughly 18 months, the apparent 2024–2026 decline is partly an artefact of timing. Re-checking the trend in six to twelve months will separate genuine slowdown from a reporting gap.
Monitor filing trends in Eureka →Map claim language inside the thin IPC classes
H04B, H04J, G06F and G01S each sit at or below 0.2% of records — too thin to read from subclass counts alone. A claim-level pull inside those classes would show whether the low density is genuine white space or just cross-classification.
Run a claim-level search in Eureka →Common questions about ISAC waveform patents
The ranking is led by one assignee holding 96,491 records, well ahead of the field. The top 5 assignees combined hold 292,396 records — 18.8% of the 1,557,658 records in scope — and the top 10 add up to 24.1%. That leaves roughly three-quarters of the corpus spread across a long tail of smaller filers, so no single company controls the space outright.
Filing peaked in 2020 at 1,549 records and has fallen since; the complete window shows 2021's 1,483 dropping 52% to 715 by 2024. Figures for 2025 and 2026 look lower still, but publication lags filing by about 18 months, so those most recent years are not yet finished counting and should not be read as continued decline. The safest read is that growth cooled after 2021, with the true 2025–2026 trajectory still emerging.
H04W (wireless communication networks) carries the most records at 1.1% of the 1,557,658 in scope, followed by H04L (digital information transmission) at 0.6%. Every other tracked subclass — H04B, H04J, H04Q, G06F, H04M and G01S — sits at 0.2% or below. Because a single record can carry multiple IPC codes, these shares add up to more than the record total and should not be summed or treated as exhaustive.
The thinnest IPC classes relative to the corpus — H04B, H04J, G06F, H04M and G01S, all at 0.2% or below — point to under-claimed territory around self-interference cancellation, joint range-velocity scheduling, and TDD-based resource-array kernels. Co-assignee activity is also sparse, with only 10 tracked pairs, suggesting joint-development claims are rarer than solo filings. A first claim in these branches would likely combine a specific hardware-reuse mechanism with a named resource-allocation or interference-mitigation step rather than a broad system architecture claim.
US20260082369A1, filed by MediaTek and published in March 2026, describes methods for determining an array associated with resource allocation in an ISAC system using a time-division duplexing channel. The claims centre on selecting an array via one or more kernels, where elements of the array relate to unavailable resource units, and transmitting signals according to that array-derived allocation. It sits at the front edge of the current filing window, so its practical scope relative to earlier resource-allocation filings is still being tested against the broader corpus.
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Disclaimer. This page is generated from Patsnap Eureka data drawn from a limited snapshot of global patent and scientific-literature records, and is provided for general information and reference only.
Patent data carries inherent limitations: recent filings (typically the most recent 18–24 months) are under-counted due to standard publication lag; counts may be reported at either a patent-family or a patent-record basis and are not always directly comparable; classification, applicant-name, and citation data may contain errors, duplicates, or omissions; and the underlying search query defines and constrains the scope shown. As a result, the analysis may be incomplete or inaccurate and may not reflect the full technology landscape.
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Machine translation. Assignee and organisation names originally recorded in Chinese, Japanese or Korean have been rendered into English by an AI translation step so that the tables stay readable. These renderings are best-effort and may not match a company’s registered English name; the original name is what the underlying patent record carries, and it is what any Eureka query launched from this page uses.