About this Research Topic
Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC) is emerging as the next frontier of wireless technology. The technology will underpin “smart cities,” Internet-of-Things (IoT) applications, and the Metaverse. While historically, communication and sensing technologies have developed independently, duplicating devices that use the electromagnetic spectrum, ISAC creates one system with shared infrastructure. It can equip wireless networks with capabilities far beyond those we use today, to provide services beyond next generation communications such as localization, environment mapping, infrastructure monitoring, incident detection among others.
Decades of siloed development of separate sensing and communications technologies have led to a proliferation of equipment with overlapping functionality, creating congestion of devices, spectrum inefficiency, and financial loss. ISAC offers significant opportunities to address these challenges, boosting efficiency in hardware, energy, and cost. By using a unified system, ISAC enables a new generation of wireless networks with dual functionality, in a sustainable and resilient way.
The deployment of 6G networks by 2030 will enable ISAC’s full potential to be realized. 6G can use a wide variety of
frequency ranges, from traditional radio waves to much higher frequencies: millimeter waves, terahertz waves, and even light spectra, enhancing connectivity, data rates and sensing resolution. This will have a major impact on home and industrial environments and see the first commercial Dual-Functional Radar-and-Communications systems.
This special issue targets a timely coverage of the latest research advances on Integrated Sensing and Communication technologies. Specifically, we aim to investigate and address the following two major research problems:
1) How 5G-and-beyond communication and networking technologies (signalling, coding, hardware, architectures, among others) can be tailored and optimized for offering dual functionality across communications and sensing.
2) What are the new performance regimes for these dual functional networks founded on the realization of integrated sensing and communications.
The themes of interest include, but are not limited to:
• Fundamental information theoretical limits for ISAC
• Unified approaches/performance metrics for ISAC
• Network /antenna architectures for ISAC
• Waveform/sequence/coding/modulation/beamforming design for ISAC
• Joint receiver design for ISAC systems
• Hardware-efficient technologies, antenna selection, hybrid analog-digital, few bit representations for ISAC
• Machine learning/AI enabled ISAC
• Sensing-assisted communication and communication-assisted sensing
• Multi-cellular ISAC techniques
• Wi-Fi sensing for indoor positioning and target detection
• ISAC for vehicular-to-everything (V2X) networks
• Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) aided ISAC
• Security and privacy issues in ISAC
• Emerging technologies for ISAC and synergies of ISAC with other network functions
• Channel measurement and modeling for ISAC
• System-level simulation, prototyping, and field-tests for ISAC
The experts of the field are invited to submit their high-quality and original works for evaluation in this Research Topic. Both theoretical and simulation results as well as survey and case study papers are of interest.
Decades of siloed development of separate sensing and communications technologies have led to a proliferation of equipment with overlapping functionality, creating congestion of devices, spectrum inefficiency, and financial loss. ISAC offers significant opportunities to address these challenges, boosting efficiency in hardware, energy, and cost. By using a unified system, ISAC enables a new generation of wireless networks with dual functionality, in a sustainable and resilient way.
The deployment of 6G networks by 2030 will enable ISAC’s full potential to be realized. 6G can use a wide variety of
frequency ranges, from traditional radio waves to much higher frequencies: millimeter waves, terahertz waves, and even light spectra, enhancing connectivity, data rates and sensing resolution. This will have a major impact on home and industrial environments and see the first commercial Dual-Functional Radar-and-Communications systems.
This special issue targets a timely coverage of the latest research advances on Integrated Sensing and Communication technologies. Specifically, we aim to investigate and address the following two major research problems:
1) How 5G-and-beyond communication and networking technologies (signalling, coding, hardware, architectures, among others) can be tailored and optimized for offering dual functionality across communications and sensing.
2) What are the new performance regimes for these dual functional networks founded on the realization of integrated sensing and communications.
The themes of interest include, but are not limited to:
• Fundamental information theoretical limits for ISAC
• Unified approaches/performance metrics for ISAC
• Network /antenna architectures for ISAC
• Waveform/sequence/coding/modulation/beamforming design for ISAC
• Joint receiver design for ISAC systems
• Hardware-efficient technologies, antenna selection, hybrid analog-digital, few bit representations for ISAC
• Machine learning/AI enabled ISAC
• Sensing-assisted communication and communication-assisted sensing
• Multi-cellular ISAC techniques
• Wi-Fi sensing for indoor positioning and target detection
• ISAC for vehicular-to-everything (V2X) networks
• Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) aided ISAC
• Security and privacy issues in ISAC
• Emerging technologies for ISAC and synergies of ISAC with other network functions
• Channel measurement and modeling for ISAC
• System-level simulation, prototyping, and field-tests for ISAC
The experts of the field are invited to submit their high-quality and original works for evaluation in this Research Topic. Both theoretical and simulation results as well as survey and case study papers are of interest.
Keywords: 6G, smart cities, industry 4.0, security
Important Note: All contributions to this Research Topic must be within the scope of the section and journal to which they are submitted, as defined in their mission statements. Frontiers reserves the right to guide an out-of-scope manuscript to a more suitable section or journal at any stage of peer review.
