Cohere Technologies launched a new waveform called Pulsone Technology designed for enabling real-time situational awareness to support integrated sensing and communications (ISAC) on 5G networks, across non-terrestrial networks (NTN) and emerging 6G networks.

The  Zak-Orthogonal Time Frequency Space (OTFS) waveform improves wireless performance in complex, high-speed environments by operating in the Delay-Doppler domain, which enhances predictability and stability.

Cohere chairman and CEO Ray Dolan (pictured) told Mobile World Live (MWL) the company first started working on OTFS in 2011 and had trademarked the Pulsone Technology brand several years ago. He explained the brand combines “pulse” and “tone” for the product’s name.

Pulsone merges radar-like sensing with communications, allowing networks to detect and analyse high-speed objects and environmental conditions in real time.

Dolan said the time is now ripe for its Zak-OTFS-based offering due to use cases like drone swarm detection and battlefield awareness through high-resolution sensing and secure communication.

“Integrated sensing has been discussed for many years and there are many potential use cases,” AvidThink founder and principal Roy Chua told MWL. “I think the drone threat has really brought it into focus as a key new use case that has national security ramifications.”

The Golden Dome is a proposed multi-layer defence system for the US, intended to detect and destroy various foreign threats, including drone swarms and missiles. Congress appropriated $24.4 billion specifically for the Golden Dome initiative through the 2025 budget reconciliation law.

“We’ll expand into the frontier of massive drone forms and public safety events that want to use every network antenna as a sensor, which will eventually go to street poles,” Dolan said.

For enterprises, it provides real-time monitoring across factories, warehouses and smart cities, by enabling autonomous systems and predictive maintenance. On the consumer side, it improves AR devices, autonomous vehicles and user safety through precise environmental data.

“You can think of OTFS as an umbrella suite of technology concepts which are generally speaking tied to transforming the time frequency domain into the Delay Doppler domain,” Dolan explained. “OTFS operates at the first physical layer, at layer one. It can sense like TDMA, and it can communicate like FDMA.”

The company’s focus has been on its universal spectrum multiplier (USM) for the past several years. USM is designed to improve performance on the radio operators, already deployed

While Dolan expects USM to be deployed next year following trials with Bell Canada and Vodafone, he said the company is proposing OTFS be a part of 3GPP’s upcoming 6G standards.

“We may be successful, we may not,” Dolan said. “If we are, OTFS will become part of the standard set of options for operators and partners.

“If we’re not successful, we’re still going to bring that product to market because since OTFS is programmable.”

For mobile operators, 4G and 5G handsets can attach to an OTFS base station.

“Regardless of what happens with the 6G standard, we have a path that’s independent of the standard,” said Anton Monk, SVP of technology strategy with Cohere Technologies. “We know now we can build on top of the standard using the majority of the same stack.”

Cohere is also targeting the NTN sector with its software-based Pulsone. Satellite operators are faced with long delay spreads and high Doppler shifts. Cohere’s waveform’s Delay Doppler model offers remedies for those issues, enabling broadband connectivity in even more remote or underserved areas.

Dolan said Cohere has conducted talks with satellite operators and the US War Department about using Pulsone.

“Whether the dome works this year or not, I don’t have a dog in that argument. But whether money gets allocated this year by not only the US, but all of NATO, that ship is sailing right now,” Dolan said.

The CEO said Cohere is fully funded after it raised capital last year and noted it has strong partnerships with major silicon and handset manufacturers

The first demonstration of Pulsone will take place on 27-29 October at Nvidia’s GTC government conference in collaboration with researchers Duke University and Virginia Tech.

The demonstration of the Zak-OTFS waveform and a real-time neural receiver will use Nvidia’s Jetson platform which combines a GPU with specialised AI hardware and software.