Joint communication and radar sensing (JCR) represents an emerging research field aiming to integrate the above two functionalities into a single system, by sharing the majority of hardware, signal processing modules and, in a typical case, the transmitted signal. The close cooperation of the communication and sensing functions can enable significant improvement of spectrum efficiency, reduction of device size, cost and power consumption, and improvement of performance of both functions. Advanced signal processing techniques are critical for making the integration efficient, from transmission signal design to receiver processing. This paper provides a comprehensive overview of the state-of-the-art on JCR systems from the signal processing perspective. A balanced coverage on both transmitter and receiver is provided for three types of JCR systems, namely, communication-centric, radar-centric, and joint design and optimization.

Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC) has the advantages of efficient spectrum utilization and low hardware cost. It is promising to be implemented in the fifth-generation-advanced (5G-A) and sixth-generation (6G) mobile communication systems, having the potential to be applied in intelligent applications requiring both communication and high-accurate sensing capabilities. As the fundamental technology of ISAC, ISAC signal directly impacts the performance of sensing and communication. This article systematically reviews the literature on ISAC signals from the perspective of mobile communication systems, including ISAC signal design, ISAC signal processing, and ISAC signal optimization. We first review the ISAC signal design based on 5G, 5G-A, and 6G mobile communication systems. Then, radar signal processing methods are reviewed for ISAC signals, mainly including the channel information matrix method, spectrum lines estimator method, and super-resolution method. In terms of signal optimization, we summarize peak-to-average power ratio (PAPR) optimization, interference management, and adaptive signal optimization for ISAC signals. This article may provide the guidelines for the research of ISAC signals in 5G-A and 6G mobile communication systems.

Thanks to the advantages of flexible deployment and high mobility, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have been widely applied in the areas of disaster management, agricultural plant protection, environment monitoring, and so on. With the development of UAV and sensor technologies, UAV-assisted data collection for the Internet of Things (IoT) has attracted increasing attention. In this article, the scenarios and key technologies of UAV-assisted data collection are comprehensively reviewed. First, we present the system model, including the network model and the mathematical model of UAV-assisted data collection for IoT. Then, we review the key technologies, including clustering of sensors, UAV data collection mode as well as joint path planning and resource allocation. Finally, the open problems are discussed from the perspectives of efficient multiple access as well as joint sensing and data collection. This article hopefully provides some guidelines and insights for researchers in the area of UAV-assisted data collection for IoT.

With autonomous driving developing in a booming stage, accurate object detection in complex scenarios attract wide attention to ensure the safety of autonomous driving. Millimeter wave (mmWave) radar and vision fusion is a mainstream solution for accurate obstacle detection. This article presents a detailed survey on mmWave radar and vision fusion based obstacle detection methods. First, we introduce the tasks, evaluation criteria, and datasets of object detection for autonomous driving. The process of mmWave radar and vision fusion is then divided into three parts: sensor deployment, sensor calibration, and sensor fusion, which are reviewed comprehensively. Specifically, we classify the fusion methods into data level, decision level, and feature level fusion methods. In addition, we introduce three-dimensional(3D) object detection, the fusion of lidar and vision in autonomous driving and multimodal information fusion, which are promising for the future. Finally, we summarize this article.

The emerging joint sensing and communication (JSC) technology is expected to support new applications and services, such as autonomous driving and extended reality (XR), in the future wireless communication systems. Pilot (or reference) signals in wireless communications usually have good passive detection performance, strong anti-noise capability and good auto-correlation characteristics, hence they bear the potential for applying in radar sensing. In this paper, we investigate how to apply the positioning reference signal (PRS) of the 5th generation (5 G) mobile communications in radar sensing. This approach has the unique benefit of compatibility with the most advanced mobile communication system available so far. Thus, the PRS can be regarded as a sensing reference signal to simultaneously realize the functions of radar sensing, communication and positioning in a convenient manner. Firstly, we propose a PRS based radar sensing scheme and analyze its range and velocity estimation performance, based on which we propose a method that improves the accuracy of velocity estimation by using multiple frames. Furthermore, the Crámer-Rao lower bound (CRLB) of the range and velocity estimation for PRS based radar sensing and the CRLB of the range estimation for PRS based positioning are derived. Our analysis and simulation results demonstrate the feasibility and superiority of PRS over other pilot signals in radar sensing. Finally, some suggestions for the future 5G-Advanced and 6th generation (6 G) frame structure design containing the sensing reference signal are derived based on our study.

Accurate prediction of user traffic in cellular networks is crucial to improve the system performance in terms of energy efficiency and resource utilization. However, existing work mainly considers the temporal traffic correlation within each cell while neglecting the spatial correlation across neighboring cells. In this letter, machine learning models that jointly explore the spatio-temporal correlations are proposed. Specifically, several recurrent neural network structures are utilized. Furthermore, a multi-task learning approach is adopted to explore the commonalities and differences across cells in improving the prediction performance. Base on real data, we demonstrate the benefits of joint learning over spatial and temporal dimensions.