Guest Editorial Positioning and Sensing Over Wireless Networks—Part I

Positioning and sensing have long been an important area of research. Recently, this field has attracted more attention due to the rapid deployment of emerging applications and next-generation communication networks. On the one hand, emerging applications like extended reality (XR) and autonomous vehicle systems need to precisely “see” the physical world, thus greatly increasing the demands on positioning and sensing technologies. Moreover, these applications also require data rate communication links, and thus technologies like cellular networks and WiFi are excellent for supporting these applications. On the other hand, with the evolution of wireless networks, positioning, and sensing have also been considered important functions of future wireless networks that can further enhance communication performance. Although existing wireless communication has achieved significant success in the past several decades, achieving satisfying positioning and sensing performance for these emerging applications remains a challenge due to the complexity of the wireless environment and the stringent performance requirements.