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2025-07-02
Special Issue on Secure Communication, Sensing, and Computation in Future Intelligent Wireless Networks Submission Date: 2025-07-15 We are at a pivotal moment in defining what the sixth generation (6G) of wireless networks will be. Many promising new technologies have recently been proposed, ranging from the integration of sensing and communication capabilities to the deployment of reconfigurable antennas/elements, and from the adoption of machine learning (ML)-based designs to the integration of higher frequency bands, including millimeter wave (mmWave) and terahertz (THz) bands. While these exciting new technologies promise significant performance gains and offer new services and opportunities for 6G, they also introduce new security and privacy risks and attack surfaces that are of paramount concern and can even be a dealbreaker for some of these technologies.
With emerging technologies such as intelligent reflecting surfaces (IRS)/reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS), holographic multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), and extremely large-scale arrays (XL-array), electromagnetic wave propagation will shift from the traditional far-field model to the near-field model. This shift introduces new security issues in integrated sensing and communication (ISAC), such as increased susceptibility to eavesdropping due to higher spatial resolution and more precise jamming attacks targeting specific users or devices. In parallel, there is a significant move towards integrating ML-based solutions for future network designs; however, these come with associated risks in terms of the reliability and robustness of these models (e.g., against adversarial attacks), the privacy and security of data used in training, as well as the security of the models themselves. Another promising solution considered in 6G is semantic communications, where the meaning and intent behind raw data are transmitted, necessitating considerations of feature privacy and security. Moreover, a common solution approach for semantic communication relies on joint source-channel coding, which introduces new security risks due to the correlation between transmitted signals and the underlying data to be conveyed. It is clear that each of these new advancements comes with its own security challenges and vulnerabilities across communication, sensing, and computation layers, necessitating robust and comprehensive security measures. The real benefits of these technologies can only be fully assessed when considered alongside the associated multilayered security risks and collaborative mitigation strategies across all physical and application layers. On the other hand, new developments in ML techniques provide new capabilities for various security solutions that can be incorporated into future network designs.
In this context, this special issue will focus on security issues in future intelligent networks, including aspects of sensing and communication, semantic communications, artificial intelligence (AI)-native design of network components, as well as the privacy and security risks of AI services over wireless networks. Our goal is to attract novel research works that highlight such non-trivial security risks, propose rigorous solution approaches, and evaluate the pros and cons of emerging technologies in light of these security vulnerabilities. We solicit high-quality original research papers on topics including, but not limited to:
Security and privacy issues in positioning and sensing systems
IRS/RIS-aided anti-detection for secure sensing and communication
Data and model privacy in ML solutions for wireless systems
Security of ML-aided designs for future communication networks
Data and model poisoning attacks in federated/distributed learning over wireless networks
Security in semantic-based joint source-channel coding solution
Algorithm and hardware design for secure ISAC systems
ML-aided covert communication and anti-detection techniques
ML-aided jamming detection and anti-jamming techniques
Secure near-field communication and sensing systems
Secure integrated air-to-ground systems
Resource management to guarantee security
Secure mmWave and THz systems
Information-theoretic analysis of security in sensing/ISAC
Unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)-assisted wireless secure transmission
IRS/RIS-assisted secure transmission and secret key generation
Reconfigurable antenna technologies, e.g., fluid antenna system (FAS), movable antenna (MA), and rotatable antenna (RA), for secure transmission and sensing
Other advanced MIMO techniques, e.g., holographic MIMO, and XL-array, for secure transmission and sensing
Experimental testbeds for secure XL-array/ISAC systems
Secret key generation over near-field communication
Differential privacy for federated/distributed learning over wireless networks
Quantum entanglement and post-quantum AI for secure ISAC
Submission Guidelines
Prospective authors should submit their manuscripts following the IEEE JSAC guidelines. Authors should submit a PDF version of their complete manuscript through Scholar One Manuscripts (authors should have an account on the platform).
Important Dates
Manuscript Submission Deadline: 15 July 2025
First Notification: 1 November 2025
Acceptance Notification: 31 January 2026
Final Manuscript Due: 20 February 2026
Publication Date: Second Quarter 2026
Guest Editors
Beixiong Zheng
South China University of Technology, China
Deniz Gündüz
Imperial College London, UK
Ruiqi (Richie) Liu
ZTE Corporation, China
Jemin Lee
Yonsei University, South Korea
Si-Hyeon Lee
Korea Advanced Institute of Science and Technology (KAIST), South Korea
Georges Kaddoum
école de Technologie Supérieure, Canada
Onur Günlü
Link?ping University, Sweden
