Special Session 9

Topic: Environment-Aware Communication and Sensing for Low-altitude Networks

Driven by the rapid development of crewed and uncrewed aircraft such as unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) and electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) vehicles in recent years, the low-altitude airspace is on the verge of a major transformation. Different from the terrestrial applications, low-altitude applications generally face the complex three-dimensional (3D) environments, which have imposed significant challenges in system optimization due to the increasingly large parameter space. This, in turn, render it necessary for future low-altitude networks to be aware of the wireless environment before any online channel estimation or environment sensing is applied. The recent advancements of integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), channel knowledge map (CKM), multi-modal system, and digital twins, enable the low-altitude networks know the wireless environment a priori, thereby enhancing the low-altitude network operation, such as assisting the trajectory optimization and UAV placement, facilitating real-time channel estimation, and enabling efficient resource allocation. This session focuses on exploiting the above techniques in low-altitude networks for robust and safe aircraft operation..

 Submission Link: https://easychair.org/conferences/?conf=icccas2026
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Special Session Chairs

 

Ruoguang Li

Hohai University, China

Biography: Ruoguang Li received the Ph.D. degree from the School of Electrical Engineering, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, in 2020. From 2017 to 2019, he was a visiting Ph.D. student with the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, University of Houston, TX, USA. From 2021 to 2024, he was a Postdoctoral Fellow with the National Mobile Communications Research Laboratory, Southeast University, Nanjing, China. He is currently an Associate Professor with the College of Information Science and Engineering, Hohai University, Changzhou, China. His current research interests include integrated sensing and communication, channel knowledge map, and low-altitude networking. He obtained the Best Paper Award of WCSP 2022. He served as the TPC for IEEE GLOBECOM 2025/2024/2023,IEEE VTC 2025/2024, IEEE/CIC ICCC 2025, etc.

Benedetta Picano

University of Florence, Italy

Biography: Benedetta Picano received the M.S. degree in computer engineering and the Ph.D. degree in information engineering from the University of Florence, Firenze, Italy, in 2016 and 2020, respectively. She was a Visiting Scholar with Houston University, Houston, TX, USA. She is currently an Assistant Professor with the University of Florence. Her research interests include computer networking, wireless communications, and machine learning application, with emphasis on system performance optimization and generation of multimodal trajectories with generative flow networks. Dr. Picano served on the Editorial Boards of IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON VEHICULAR TECHNOLOGY and PEER-TO-PEER NETWORKING AND APPLICATIONS JOURNAL, and she was the Guest Editor of the Special Issue: Applications of Internet of Things Networks in 5 G and Beyond, in Sensors. She was Workshop Program Chair with ISSRE 2023, and Co-chair of Track 11: Wireless Networks: Protocols, Security and Services, for IEEE Vehicular Technology Conference 2024.

Yu Zhang

University College London, United Kingdom

Biography: Yu Zhang received the B.Eng. degree in Communication Engineering from Shandong University, China, in 2016, and the Ph.D. degree in Control Science and Engineering from Tsinghua University, China, in 2021. She was a visiting Ph.D. student at the University of Houston, USA, from 2018 to 2019. From 2021 to 2023, he was a Senior Algorithm Engineer with Huawei Technologies, working on large-scale IoT access. From 2024 to 2025, she was a Research Associate at Newcastle University, UK. Since 2025, she has been a Research Fellow with the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering, University College London. Dr. Zhang has authored more than 20 peer-reviewed papers in leading IEEE journals and conferences. Her research interests include zero/ultra-low-power backscatter communication, integrated sensing and communication, smart healthcare, Ambient IoT, and machine learning for wireless networks. She has served as a Technical Program Committee (TPC) member for flagship IEEE conferences, including GLOBECOM and ICC, and as a Session Chair at IEEE PIMRC. She has also been an active reviewer for leading IEEE journals such as JSAC, TCOM, TWC, TVT, and IoT-J.