Advanced Signal Processing for Integrated Sensing and Communications

Dear Colleagues,

Integrated Sensing and Communications (ISAC) has emerged as one of the most promising enabling technologies for sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks. By jointly utilizing wireless resources for both communication and sensing functionalities, ISAC offers unprecedented opportunities to improve spectral efficiency, hardware utilization, environmental awareness, and network intelligence. It is expected to play a critical role in numerous applications, including autonomous transportation, intelligent manufacturing, extended reality, digital twins, smart cities, and human-centric wireless networks.

Despite significant progress in recent years, the practical deployment of ISAC systems still faces many fundamental challenges. The integration of sensing and communication functionalities introduces complex trade-offs among sensing accuracy, communication reliability, latency, energy efficiency, and computational complexity. Furthermore, emerging wireless architectures such as massive MIMO, extremely large-scale MIMO (XL-MIMO), reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RISs), cell-free networks, and distributed sensing systems create new opportunities while also imposing unprecedented signal processing challenges. In addition, hardware impairments, dynamic propagation environments, and heterogeneous network requirements demand more robust and intelligent signal processing frameworks.

Recent advances in artificial intelligence (AI), machine learning, Bayesian inference, optimization theory, and electromagnetic signal processing have opened new avenues for addressing these challenges. Advanced signal processing techniques are becoming essential for realizing efficient waveform design, channel estimation, target detection, localization, beamforming, resource allocation, semantic information extraction, and joint sensing-communication optimization in future ISAC systems.

This Special Issue aims to provide a forum for researchers and practitioners to present the latest theoretical advances, algorithmic developments, and practical implementations of advanced signal processing techniques for ISAC. Both original research articles and review papers are welcome.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Signal processing architectures and frameworks for ISAC systems;
• Joint waveform design for sensing and communications;
• Channel estimation, channel prediction, and environment reconstruction for ISAC;
• Target detection, localization, tracking, and imaging in ISAC networks;
• Joint communication and sensing beamforming design;
• Bayesian inference, sparse signal recovery, and compressed sensing for ISAC;
• AI-enabled and data-driven signal processing for ISAC;
• ISAC for massive MIMO, XL-MIMO, and holographic MIMO systems;
• RIS-assisted and intelligent surface-enabled ISAC;
• Cell-free and distributed ISAC networks;
• Cooperative, networked, and multi-static sensing for ISAC;
• Hardware impairments, nonlinear distortions, and calibration techniques in ISAC;
• Joint resource allocation and optimization for sensing and communication performance.

We look forward to receiving your contributions and advancing the state of the art in integrated sensing and communications together.

Dr. Dawei Gao
Dr. Yaxing Yue
Dr. Yufeng Chen
Guest Editors

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