Information-Theoretic Perspectives on Integrated Sensing and Communication

Dear Colleagues,

Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) has emerged as a basic paradigm for future wireless systems, enabling communication and environmental awareness to be jointly supported through shared spectral, temporal, and spatial resources. Beyond terrestrial networks, ISAC is gaining increasing importance in satellite and non-terrestrial systems, where joint communication, sensing, and situational awareness must be achieved under stringent power, latency, and coverage constraints. While significant progress has been made in waveform design and signal processing, a unified information-theoretic understanding remains essential for characterizing fundamental limits and system design principles.

At the same time, learning-based and AI-enabled techniques are becoming powerful complements to model-based approaches, enabling adaptation to dynamic environments, imperfect channel and sensing models, and high-dimensional system configurations. Understanding how such data-driven methods interact with fundamental limits—rather than replacing them—poses new theoretical challenges and opportunities.

This Special Issue focuses on information-theoretic and learning-aware perspectives on joint sensing–communication systems. Topics of interest include capacity–estimation tradeoffs, joint rate–distortion formulations, Fisher-information-based sensing metrics, learning-assisted sensing and communication strategies, and unified performance bounds under shared resource constraints. Contributions addressing point-to-point, networked, satellite-based, and distributed ISAC architectures, including extensions to massive MIMO and mmWave/THz systems, are particularly encouraged.

By bridging information theory, estimation theory, and statistical learning, this Special Issue aims to connect theoretical limits with practical ISAC system design, fostering efficient, scalable, and robust terrestrial and satellite-enabled sensing–communication networks.

Prof. Dr. Giorgio Taricco
Guest Editor

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