SPECIAL SESSION

Special Session 3: Integrated Wireless Sensing, Low-Altitude Communications, Positioning and Navigation for Intelligent Aerial Networks

The rapid development of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), low-altitude economy, intelligent transportation, and next-generation wireless networks is driving an increasing demand for seamless communication, accurate positioning, environmental sensing, and autonomous navigation in complex low-altitude environments. Unlike conventional terrestrial communication systems, low-altitude networks are characterized by highly dynamic three-dimensional mobility, rapidly varying wireless channels, heterogeneous sensing modalities, intermittent satellite navigation availability, and stringent requirements on latency, reliability, positioning accuracy, and situational awareness.
Meanwhile, emerging technologies such as 5G-Advanced and 6G, integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), Wi-Fi sensing, millimeter-wave and sub-THz communications, artificial intelligence, multi-sensor fusion, and edge intelligence are fundamentally changing the way wireless systems support perception, communication, localization, and navigation. Rather than treating these functionalities as independent components, future intelligent aerial networks are expected to integrate communication, sensing, positioning, and navigation into a unified framework.
This Special Session aims to provide a dedicated forum for researchers and practitioners from wireless communications, signal processing, sensing, localization, navigation, robotics, and artificial intelligence to present recent advances and discuss emerging challenges in integrated wireless systems for low-altitude and intelligent aerial applications.
A particular focus of the session is on the convergence of wireless sensing and communication with positioning and navigation technologies. Such an interdisciplinary perspective is becoming increasingly important for UAV operations, low-altitude intelligent networks, GNSS-denied navigation, air-ground integrated communications, and autonomous aerial systems.
The novelty of this Special Session lies in bridging traditionally separated research communities—including wireless communications, RF sensing, localization, navigation, and autonomous systems—and exploring how shared wireless signals, radio infrastructures, sensing information, and AI-enabled algorithms can jointly improve communication efficiency, environmental awareness, positioning accuracy, and navigation robustness.

Related topics: （此专题涉及的征稿主题）
• Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) for low-altitude networks;
• Wireless sensing based on Wi-Fi, cellular, millimeter-wave, and other radio signals;
• Low-altitude wireless communications and air-ground integrated networks;
• UAV communications and networking;
• Channel measurement, modeling, and characterization for low-altitude environments;
• Radio-based positioning and localization using RSS, CSI, ToA/TDoA, AoA, RTT/FTM, Doppler, and related measurements;
• GNSS-denied and GNSS-degraded positioning and navigation;
• Multi-sensor fusion involving wireless signals, IMU, vision, LiDAR, radar, and GNSS;
• Cooperative positioning and navigation for UAV swarms and aerial networks;
• Communication-assisted navigation and sensing-assisted communications;
• AI- and machine-learning-enabled wireless sensing, positioning, and navigation;
• Edge intelligence for low-altitude communication and sensing systems;
• Millimeter-wave and sub-THz sensing, communication, and localization;
• Digital twins and ray-tracing-assisted modeling for communication and positioning;
• Semantic and context-aware sensing and localization;
• Robust localization and navigation in NLoS, multipath, and highly dynamic environments;
• Resource allocation and waveform design for joint communication, sensing, and localization;
• Experimental platforms, datasets, prototypes, and field trials for low-altitude intelligent systems.

Submit Method:
1, Submit it via the link: http://confsys.iconf.org/submission/icece2026 (after entering the link, click on the corresponding topic)
2, Send your manuscript to icece_conf@vip.163.com with subject "Submit+Special Session-3+Paper Title". (请通过邮件发送稿件，邮件题目：Submit+Special Session-3+Paper Title) before the submission date.

Assoc. Prof. Wei Cheng, Northwestern Polytechnical University, China

Dr. Wei Cheng is an Associate Professor with the School of Electronics and Information, Northwestern Polytechnical University (NPU), Xi’an, China. He received the B.S. degree in Electronic Information Engineering and the M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Communication and Information Systems from Northwestern Polytechnical University in 2003, 2006, and 2011, respectively. His research interests include wireless sensing, wireless sensor networks, Ad Hoc networks, radar signal processing, indoor localization, and intelligent signal processing. His research has addressed a range of topics related to wireless signal-based sensing and localization, including Wi-Fi sensing, fingerprint-based indoor positioning, mobile sensor networks, and radar-based perception. He has published research papers in international journals and conferences in the fields of wireless communications, sensing, positioning, and signal processing. Dr. Cheng has also been actively engaged in teaching and research in electronic information engineering. His work emphasizes the integration of wireless communications, sensing, positioning, and intelligent signal processing, which is closely aligned with emerging research on integrated sensing and communication and intelligent low-altitude networks.

Dr. Junhua Yang, Xi’an University of Posts and Telecommunications, China

Dr. Junhua Yang is a faculty member and Master’s Supervisor with the School of Electronic Engineering, Xi’an University of Posts and Telecommunications (XUPT), Xi’an, China. He received the Ph.D. degree in Information and Communication Engineering from Northwestern Polytechnical University. His research interests mainly include wireless sensing and localization, Wi-Fi-based indoor positioning, multi-source information fusion, intelligent positioning algorithms, and positioning and navigation technologies for complex and GNSS-challenged environments. He has conducted extensive research on wireless fingerprint localization, multi-band Wi-Fi positioning, radio-map construction and optimization, and UAV positioning. Dr. Yang has led a research project supported by the Ministry of Industry and Information Technology of China on indoor location sensing for 6G mobile communication networks and wireless local area networks, and has participated in research projects supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China and provincial research programs. His recent work focuses particularly on the integration of wireless communications, wireless sensing, positioning and navigation, including Wi-Fi-based localization, data-driven radio-map optimization, and three-dimensional positioning for unmanned aerial vehicles. His research provides a strong interdisciplinary connection among wireless communications, sensing, localization, and low-altitude intelligent systems.

Dr. Yang Liu, Guangdong Baiyun University, Guangzhou, China

Dr. Yang Liu is a faculty member of the School of Electrical and Information Engineering, Guangdong Baiyun University, Guangzhou, China. He received his doctoral degree in Information and Communication Engineering from Northwestern Polytechnical University. His main research areas cover wireless sensing, air-ground integrated networks, Crowd intelligence with the deep fusion of heterogeneous “Human-Machine-IoT” agents (CrowdHMT), wireless sensor networks and related fields. He has long been engaged in research on perception fusion, multi-task collaboration mechanisms, HMT heterogeneous fusion, world models, heterogeneous perception models, as well as multi-task collaborative scheduling and incentive mechanism algorithms. He has published numerous academic papers in domestic and international journals and conferences in the fields of wireless communication and wireless sensing. Dr. Liu has presided over the Guangdong Provincial Characteristic Innovation Project entitled Research on Key Technologies of Collaborative Scheduling and Quality Assurance for Air-Ground Integrated HMT Collaborative Swarm Intelligence Sensing Oriented to Smart Emergency Response. He has also participated in multiple scientific research programs including the National Natural Science Foundation of China and the Key Research and Development Program of Shaanxi Province. His current research focuses on the in-depth integration of air-ground integration and HMT collaboration technologies, with emphasis on human-machine-thing collaboration, heterogeneous perception fusion and system quality assurance. He has formed a distinctive interdisciplinary research feature combining wireless communication, wireless sensing and air-ground integrated networks.