Air-Ground Integrated Sensing and Communications: Opportunities and Challenges

TL;DR

This paper reviews the integration of air-ground sensing and communication networks using UAVs, highlighting system architecture, use cases, key techniques, and future challenges to advance the technology.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive overview of AG-ISAC, introduces UAVs as relay nodes, and discusses critical techniques and future research directions.

Findings

UAVs can serve as relay nodes for enhanced sensing and communication.

Four use cases demonstrate the potential applications of AG-ISAC.

Identifies key technical challenges and future research directions.

Abstract

The air-ground integrated sensing and communications (AG-ISAC) network, which consists of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and ground terrestrial networks, offers unique capabilities and demands special design techniques. In this article, we provide a review on AG-ISAC, by introducing UAVs as ``relay'' nodes for both communications and sensing to resolve the power and computation constraints on UAVs. We first introduce an AG-ISAC framework, including the system architecture and protocol. Four potential use cases are then discussed, with the analysis on the characteristics and merits of AG-ISAC networks. The research on several critical techniques for AG-ISAC is then discussed. Finally, we present our vision of the challenges and future research directions for AG-ISAC, to facilitate the advancement of the technology.