The IEEE Open Journal of Communications Society (OJ-COMS) invites manuscript submissions in the area of Integrated Sensing and Communications for Multi-functional Networks in 6G Era.

Driving a gradual integration of the physical and digital worlds is perceived to become a reality in the 6G era, from vehicles to drones, from surveillance facilities in cities to agricultural tools in the countryside. That is, future networks have the ability to "see" the physical world, which would be one of the unique capabilities of the next generation networks, rather than communication-only. This novel capability drives us to re-think the designs of current communication infrastructures and terminals, in terms of fundamental limits and tradeoffs, information extraction and processing technologies, as well as the new challenges to the public security and privacy.

For instance, terminals may efficiently complete high-precision positioning, navigation and even construct a 3D map of the surrounding environment. By analyzing the average downlink and uplink path loss of mmWave frequency, the unprecedented large-scale sensing network has the potential to realize city-level weather monitoring to assist in innovative smart city applications. By conducting a mapping between the moving pattern of the human motions and the signal echoes reflected by various human body components, the recognition of resident behaviors would improve our understanding of eHealth and biomedical engineering. Therefore, radio sensing capability is not just over-the-top, an improvement, or an extension of existing communication technologies, but a disruptive revolution of the next generation network.

In essence, a radio emission could simultaneously convey communication data from the transmitter to the receiver and extract environmental information from the scattered echoes. Therefore, sensing and communication functionalities are possible to be jointly designed to utilize wireless/hardware resources efficiently and optimized to assist each other for mutual benefits. This type of research is typically referred to as Integrated Sensing And Communications (ISAC), which has been widely recognized to trigger a paradigm shift to the digital world, and meanwhile, will conduct a multi-functional network in 6G era.

Despite having drawn huge attention from both academia and industry, there is a scope to reveal particular strategies for ISAC’s technical innovation, standardization, and novel applications. This new demand needs a transformation supported by multidisciplinary technical innovations, such as hardware design, signal processing strategies, communication and networking protocols, information fusion, and artificial intelligence. It is intended that this Special Issue of the IEEE Open Journal of the Communications Society will show the state-of-the-art in ISAC original research contributions, tutorials and review including (but not limited to):

Weijie Yuan, Southern University of Science and Technology, China
Marwa Chafii, New York University (NYU) Abu Dhabi, UAE
Fabiola Colone, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
Yan Chen, Huawei Technologies, Canada
Gerhard P. Fettweis, School of Electrical, Energy and Computer Engineering, TU Dresden, German

For inquiries regarding this Special Issue, please contact the Lead Guest Editor.