Guest Editorial Special Issue on Antenna Array Enabled Space/Air/Ground Communications and Networking

Abstract

With the rapid development of electronic and information technologies, the Internet of Everything (IoE) has become one of the trendiest topics in both academia and industry. Therein, many types of space/air/ground platforms need to be connected to networks for breaking down the isolation of information islands and providing various services. Space/air/ground platforms, such as satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), airships, balloons, terrestrial vehicles, and high-speed trains (HSTs) have emerged for accomplishing various complex tasks. Wireless communication is one of the most important technologies to support the real-time delivery of control commands and mission-related data. On the other hand, the space-air-ground integrated network has become a promising paradigm for the six-generation (6G) mobile communication network, where the aerospace and terrestrial vehicles may need to connect to existing mobile cellular networks or act as base stations (BSs) or relays to assist terrestrial wireless communications. To meet the ever-increasing demands of high capacity, wide coverage, low latency, and strong robustness for communications, it is promising to adopt large-scale antenna arrays at the transceivers to obtain considerable array gains and improve the channel quality. Antenna array-enabled beamforming technologies can facilitate spectrum reuse, interference mitigation, coverage enhancement, and physical-layer security. Antenna arrays can also be used to promote the sensing capability of space/air/ground networks, where the sensing information may be carefully processed to assist communications. However, enabling antenna array for space/air/ground communication networks poses specific, distinctive, and tricky challenges in antenna array design, physical layer, multiple access control layer, and network layer. As a result, numerous new research issues require to be addressed, which cover a wide range of disciplines including communication theory, network theory, antenna theory, signal processing, protocol design, resource allocation, optimization, hardware implementation, and experimentation.