Sensing Driven Autonomous Wireless Systems for Extreme Environments: UAV, Underwater, Industrial and Disaster Response Networks

Wireless networks are increasingly expected to sense their surroundings, make decisions and adapt without human input. Integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), the convergence of radar and wireless communication, allows a network to detect, localize and track objects and conditions while it carries data. In practice, sensing, communication, localization and control are still designed as separate functions. This limits reliability where conditions are unpredictable and failure is costly. UAV swarms must keep links and situational awareness while moving fast. Underwater networks face severe propagation loss, long delays and limited bandwidth. Industrial sites combine heavy interference with strict safety needs. Disaster response networks must be deployed quickly, often with damaged infrastructure. These extreme environments call for systems that sense, decide and communicate as one closed loop, within tight limits on latency, energy, reliability and safety.This Research Topic aims to advance autonomous wireless systems in which integrated sensing and communication, multi agent learning and edge intelligence work together in extreme environments. We seek contributions on intelligent agents that jointly process communication, sensing, localization and environmental information, coordinate with other agents, and select actions under constraints on latency, energy, reliability, security and safety. Particular attention will be given to physical layer and sensing methods, including joint sensing and communication design, beamforming, channel estimation, localization and resource allocation, together with multimodal sensing fusion across radar, vision and RF. We welcome new theories, algorithms, system architectures, prototypes, datasets, digital twins, and experimental validation and field trials in harsh conditions. Work on trustworthy, safe, explainable and energy efficient autonomy in these settings is especially encouraged. Submissions on general 6G network intelligence without a clear sensing or environmental focus fall outside the scope of this collection.Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:Integrated sensing and communication, the convergence of radar and wireless communication, for UAV, underwater, industrial and emergency networksJoint sensing, communication and localization for UAV swarms and robotic fleetsUnderwater acoustic and optical networks: sensing, localization and adaptive linksIndustrial and private wireless networks: sensing assisted reliability and safetyDisaster response and emergency networks: rapid deployment, resilience and situational awarenessMulti agent reinforcement learning for sensing and communication resource allocation under latency, energy and safety limitsMultimodal sensing fusion (radar, vision and RF) for network decisionsChannel and propagation measurements, modeling and over the air validation in harsh environmentsDigital twins, datasets, open testbeds and field trials in difficult conditionsTrustworthy, safe and explainable autonomy, including security and privacy of sensing dataEnergy efficient and resilient operation of autonomous wireless systemsEdge, distributed and federated learning as enablers of sensing driven autonomyThe Research Topic welcomes original research articles, review papers, methodology papers, system and architecture papers, brief research reports, and perspective articles. Topic editors: Ruhul Amin Khalil, Nagham Saeed, Sajid Ahmed Source: https://www.frontiersin.org/research-topics/87063/sensing-driven-autonomous-wireless-systems-for-extreme-environments-uav-underwater-industrial-and-disaster-response-networks