Integrated Sensing and Communication for Low Altitude Economy: Opportunities and Challenges

Driven by the prosperous vision of a low-altitude economy (LAE), the low-altitude airspace is expected to be exploited for commercial and social flying activities. The network architectures for supporting LAE are first introduced in this article, including the localized statistical channel modeling and performance analysis based on stochastic geometry. Then, the technological prerequisites for ground-to-air sensing and communication are discussed, including cellular access, spectrum sharing, three-dimensional beamforming, and interference cancellation, as well as cooperative active sensing and non-cooperative passive sensing. The aircraft-assisted sensing and communication functionalities for LAE are further reviewed, including terrestrial and non-terrestrial target sensing, ubiquitous coverage, relaying, and traffic offloading. Finally, several future directions are identified, including aircraft collaboration, energy efficiency, and artificial intelligence-enabled LAE.