Call for Papers

As the standardization of 5G gradually solidifies, researchers are speculating what 6G will be. Jointly motivated by recent advances in communication and signal processing, radio sensing functionality can be integrated into 6G radio access network (RAN) in a low-cost and fast manner. That is, future networks have the ability to "see" the physical world through imaging and measuring the surrounding environment, which enables advanced location-aware services, ranging from the physical to application layers. In essence, a radio emission could simultaneously convey communication data from the transmitter to the receiver and deliver environmental information from the scattered echoes. Therefore, sensing and communication functionalities are possible to be co-designed to utilize resources efficiently and to assist each other for mutual benefits. This type of research is typically referred to as Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC).

Technological trends are now driving ISAC to become a reality. To date, the combined use of mmWave frequencies and massive multi-input multi-output (MIMO) technology results in striking similarities between communication and sensing systems in terms of the hardware architecture, channel characteristics, and information processing pipeline. Through the shared use of spectral, hardware, and even signaling resources between communication and sensing, ISAC can be realized by a synergistic design to pursue the integration gain. Moreover, it can also be implemented from a co-design perspective, wherein the communications and sensing functionalities can mutually assist each other. Benefiting from these two advantages, applications of ISAC have been extended to numerous emerging areas, including vehicular networks, environmental monitoring, as well as indoor services such as human activity recognition. Despite having drawn huge attention from both academia and industry, many open problems still remain to be investigated. This Special Issue (SI) aims to bring together researchers, industry practitioners, and individuals working on the related areas to share their new ideas, latest findings, and state-of-the-art results. List of potential topics to be covered by the SI include, but are not limited to:

• Fundamental information theoretical limits for ISAC
• Network architectures/transmission protocols/frame designs for ISAC
• Spectrum analysis and management of ISAC
• Monostatic, bistatic and multistatic ISAC designs
• Full duplex/interference management techniques of ISAC
• Precoding/waveform/modulation/receiver design for ISAC
• Security and privacy issues for ISAC
• Machine learning/Network Intelligence for ISAC
• MIMO/Massive MIMO/Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface for ISAC
• Millimeter wave/THz technologies for ISAC
• Integrated sensing, localization, and communications
• ISAC for drones and vehicular networks
• Indoor sensing/positioning/detection for ISAC
• Standardization progress/prototyping for ISAC

Submission Guidelines

Manuscripts should conform to the standard format as indicated in the Information for Authors section of the Paper Submission Guidelines.

All manuscripts to be considered for publication must be submitted by the deadline through Manuscript Central.

Important Dates

Submission Deadline: 1 June 2022
Initial Decision Date: 1 August 2022
Revised Manuscript Due: 1 September 2022
Final Decision Date: 1 October 2022
Final Manuscript Due: 15 December 2022
Publication: February 2023

Guest Editors

Christos Masouros
University College London, UK

J. Andrew Zhang
University of Technology Sydney, Australia

Fan Liu
Southern University of Science and Technology, China

Le Zheng
Aptiv, USA

Henk Wymeersch
Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

Marco Di Renzo
CNRS & Paris-Saclay University, France