2026· IEEE Open Journal of Vehicular Technology· Vol 7, pp. 2285-2300· 0 citations· 42 references
TL;DR
Simulation results demonstrate that RESCUE-ISAC improves energy efficiency, link reliability, sensing performance, mobility robustness, and runtime–performance trade-off compared with heuristic, lightweight, and optimization-based benchmark schemes.
Abstract
Emergency sixth-generation (6G) networks require rapid, reliable, and energy-efficient connectivity when terrestrial infrastructure is damaged or unavailable. Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) with integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) capabilities can provide flexible aerial coverage while enabling situational awareness in disaster-affected areas. However, their performance is constrained by limited onboard energy, obstructed air-to-ground links, and the competing requirements of communication reliability and sensing accuracy. To address these challenges, this paper proposes RESCUE-ISAC, an energy-efficient reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-assisted UAV-ISAC framework for emergency 6G networks. In the proposed system, a multi-antenna UAV serves ground emergency users and senses a target area, while an RIS improves the wireless propagation environment through passive beamforming. The energy-efficiency maximization problem is formulated as a joint optimization of UAV active beamforming and RIS phase shifts subject to communication signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR), sensing signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), transmit power, and unit-modulus constraints. An alternating block-wise optimization approach is developed to solve the resulting non-convex problem. Simulation results demonstrate that RESCUE-ISAC improves energy efficiency, link reliability, sensing performance, mobility robustness, and runtime–performance trade-off compared with heuristic, lightweight, and optimization-based benchmark schemes.
Driven by the vision of a thriving low-altitude economy and aiming to provide on-demand services for diverse entities, this paper investigates an integrated sensing and communication (ISAC)-enabled low-altitude wireless network (LAWN). Benefiting from flexible mobility and cost-effective cooperative deployment, multiple ISAC-enabled uncrewed aerial vehicles (UAVs) are emerging as an ISAC paradigm for on-demand deployment in LAWN. However, due to the complex inter-UAV interference and resource coupling in LAWN, it is difficult to properly coordinate different constrained resources, including spatial deployment, energy, and wireless channels, to simultaneously meet the sensing and communication requirements. To address these challenges, this paper formulates a sensing–communication optimization (SCO) problem in LAWN by jointly optimizing subcarrier allocation, transmit power allocation, and three-dimensional (3D) UAV deployments to maximize network utility while satisfying quality of service (QoS) requirements for multiple users and target sensing mutual information (MI) requirements. To enable efficient solutions, we propose a hierarchical optimization approach that vertically decouples the SCO problem into two subproblems: a top level employing a Gibbs Sampling–based multi-UAV 3D deployment algorithm for efficient exploration and deployment optimization, and a bottom level performing resource allocation via a dual-based joint power and subcarrier allocation algorithm. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed approach achieves a favorable trade-off between communication and sensing and significantly enhances the overall performance and adaptability of the LAWN.
Cheng Ma, Zewei Jing, Qinghai Yang et al.· IEEE Transactions on Wireles...· 0 citations
Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have emerged as promising aerial platforms for next-generation wireless networks, offering three-dimensional mobility, rapid deployment, and high line-of-sight (LoS) link probability. This paper presents a structured overview of UAV-assisted wireless communications, covering key network architectures, air-to-ground channel characteristics, mobility-aware deployment and trajectory design, resource management, and multi-UAV cooperation. We further review recent integrations of UAVs with emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI)-driven optimization, reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), and semantic communication. Integration scenarios and recent research trends in beyond-5G and 6G networks are discussed, and open challenges along with future research directions are identified. This survey aims to provide a concise yet comprehensive reference for researchers and engineers working on UAV-assisted wireless network design.
Jueun Jeong, Sehyeon Kwon, Changhui Kim et al.· International Conference on...· 0 citations
Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) can enable sixth-generation (6G) unmanned aerial vehicle-assisted Internet of Things (UAV-IoT) networks to provide reliable Localization-as-a-Service (LaaS), but activating all aerial/terrestrial anchors and beams increases pilot overhead, energy use, and beam-training delay. This article proposes artificial intelligence (AI)-assisted ISAC resource selection for LaaS (AIRS-LaaS), an edge-intelligent framework that ranks candidate anchor--beam pairs using line-of-sight (LoS) likelihood, signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio (SINR), sensing confidence, geometry, mobility risk, and resource cost. A lightweight selector then activates only a compact subset before localization. Simulations compare AIRS-LaaS with all-anchor, Fisher information matrix/Cram\'er--Rao lower bound (FIM/CRLB)-greedy, strongest-SINR, nearest-anchor, and random schemes under LoS/non-line-of-sight (NLoS) conditions and UAV mobility. Results show a balanced localization--communication--overhead tradeoff, while the discussion highlights standard-driven key performance indicators (KPIs), ISAC reporting, localization confidence, fallback operation, AI model management, and privacy-aware data exchange.
The results confirm that the integration of artificial intelligence, energy-aware routing, and UAV trajectory optimization provides an effective and scalable solution for next-generation UAV-assisted IoT systems and establishes a robust foundation for intelligent 6G-enabled wireless sensor networks.
Mojtaba Nasehi· Internet of Things and Cloud...· 0 citations
In temporary emergency communication coverage scenarios where terrestrial communication infrastructure is damaged or lacks sufficient capacity, UAVs equipped with base stations have emerged as an effective solution due to their flexible deployment and rapid response capability. However, in multi-UAV networks, the three-dimensional deployment of UAVs significantly affects air-to-ground link quality, while power allocation further determines the level of system interference and throughput performance. To address this issue, this paper considers a multi-UAV communication system and jointly takes into account user link reliability and service requirement satisfaction, thereby establishing a joint optimization model for QoS-constrained coverage and network throughput. To address the non-convex joint optimization problem, a problem-tailored dual-population cooperative NSGA-II framework, termed IDPC-NSGA-II, is developed. By coupling dual-population evolution, adaptive mutation, uncovered-user-guided local search, and interference-aware repair with the characteristics of multi-UAV emergency communications, the proposed method improves the trade-off between QoS-constrained coverage and network throughput. Simulation results in a representative emergency communication scenario show that the proposed method achieves a favorable trade-off between QoS-constrained coverage and throughput, and outperforms the compared algorithms under the considered network setting.
Guifen Chen, Ruiyang Liu· Digital Signal and Computer...· 0 citations
The rapid proliferation of Uncrewed Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) introduces significant challenges to low-altitude airspace security, particularly from unauthorized intrusions. To address these vulnerabilities, Integrated Sensing and Communication (ISAC) has emerged as a key enabler for anti-UAV systems. However, existing studies focusing on cellular networks with fixed base stations are ill-suited for the continuous movement of target UAVs, thus failing to meet the dual demands of flexible sensing and reliable positioning. To address this, we propose an ISAC-enabled anti-UAV scheme solely based on cooperative UAVs. Specifically, we first derive the optimal transmit power under the constraint of space-air transmission outage probability tolerance. Subsequently, we deduce the sensing Fisher information matrix and Cramér-Rao Bound (CRB) by incorporating the position uncertainty of the target UAV. Then, we formulate a long-term CRB minimization problem to enhance cooperative sensing performance. To tackle this NP-hard problem, we design a robust optimization algorithm that jointly optimizes transmit-receive beamforming, association scheduling, and UAV trajectory, by transforming the structurally complex CRB matrix into a set of semi-definite constraints, and resolving the inherent position uncertainty. Numerical results demonstrate that our proposed algorithm outperforms representative algorithms in terms of sensing accuracy and robustness.
Xiaojie Wang, Lingfei Li, Zhaolong Ning et al.· IEEE Transactions on Wireles...· 1 citation