IEEE Communications Magazine covers all areas of communications such as lightwave telecommunications, high-speed data communications, personal communications systems (PCS), ISDN, and more. It includes special feature technical articles and monthly departments: book reviews, conferences, short courses, standards, governmental regulations and legislation, new products, and Society news such as administration and elections.

Special Issue on Aerial Communications
Submission Date: 2021-10-01

Over the past few years, Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) and other aerial platforms have become central to several aspects of business and daily life. From remote delivery to acquire landscape information to providing connectivity in emergency scenarios, drone features are proving to be extremely beneficial in places where man cannot reach or is unable to perform in a timely, efficient, or secure manner. This is paving the way for several disruptive new applications.

Nevertheless, management and operation of aerial platforms require the study and development of novel solutions in the field of Aerial Communications. Indeed, one of the most interesting aspect of these platforms is concerned with communications and networking. This includes two complementary areas: 1) the design of proper aerial communication solutions to enable (inter-UAV or ground-to-UAV) in a reliable and affordable manner, and 2) the usage of aerial platforms as mobile nodes, capable of moving the 3D space to support communications and service provisioning.

Research is still in its early stages with the goal of understanding how to characterize the aerial communication channel and the challenges and complexity of securing longer operation and battery life. This Feature Topic (FT) aims at addressing these two challenges by innovative solutions. Areas of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:
- Networking architectures and communication protocols for aerial communications
- Aerial channel measurement and modeling for air-ground and air-air links
- Spectrum management and multiple access schemes for aerial communications
- Intelligent swarm and UAV communication systems
- Joint trajectory design and resource allocation in aerial communications
- UAV-assisted wireless communications
- 3-D networking
- Energy consumption models and energy-efficient aerial communications
- Connectivity for and among aerial platforms
- Large-scale experimentation, trial, and deployment of communicating aerial vehicles