With the rapid development of electronic and information technologies, the Internet of Everything (IoE) has become one of the trendiest topics in both academia and industry. Therein, many types of space/air/ground platforms need to be connected to networks for breaking down the isolation of information islands and providing various services. Space/air/ground platforms, such as satellites, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), airships, balloons, terrestrial vehicles, and high-speed trains (HSTs) have emerged for accomplishing various complex tasks. Wireless communication is one of the most important technologies to support the real-time delivery of control commands and mission-related data. On the other hand, the space-air-ground integrated network has become a promising paradigm for the six-generation (6G) mobile communication network, where the aerospace and terrestrial vehicles may need to connect to existing mobile cellular networks or act as base stations (BSs) or relays to assist terrestrial wireless communications. To meet the ever-increasing demands of high capacity, wide coverage, low latency, and strong robustness for communications, it is promising to adopt large-scale antenna arrays at the transceivers to obtain considerable array gains and improve the channel quality. Antenna array-enabled beamforming technologies can facilitate spectrum reuse, interference mitigation, coverage enhancement, and physical-layer security. Antenna arrays can also be used to promote the sensing capability of space/air/ground networks, where the sensing information may be carefully processed to assist communications. However, enabling antenna array for space/air/ground communication networks poses specific, distinctive, and tricky challenges in antenna array design, physical layer, multiple access control layer, and network layer. As a result, numerous new research issues require to be addressed, which cover a wide range of disciplines including communication theory, network theory, antenna theory, signal processing, protocol design, resource allocation, optimization, hardware implementation, and experimentation.

中文翻译：

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关于天线阵列支持的空间/空中/地面通信和网络的客座社论特刊


随着电子信息技术的快速发展，万物互联（IoE）已成为学术界和工业界最热门的话题之一。其中，多种类型的空/空/地平台需要联网，打破信息孤岛，提供各种服务。卫星、无人机（UAV）、飞艇、气球、地面车辆和高速列车（HST）等太空/空中/地面平台已经出现，用于完成各种复杂的任务。无线通信是支持控制命令和任务相关数据实时传递的最重要技术之一。另一方面，天地一体化网络已成为六代（6G）移动通信网络的一个有前景的范例，其中航空航天和地面飞行器可能需要连接到现有的移动蜂窝网络或充当基站（BS）或中继来协助地面无线通信。为了满足日益增长的高容量、广覆盖、低时延和强鲁棒性等通信需求，在收发端采用大规模天线阵列以获得可观的阵列增益并提高信道质量。支持天线阵列的波束成形技术可以促进频谱重用、干扰减轻、覆盖范围增强和物理层安全。天线阵列还可用于提升空间/空中/地面网络的传感能力，其中可以仔细处理传感信息以协助通信。 然而，为空间/空中/地面通信网络启用天线阵列在天线阵列设计、物理层、多接入控制层和网络层方面提出了特定的、独特的和棘手的挑战。因此，需要解决许多新的研究问题，这些问题涵盖通信理论、网络理论、天线理论、信号处理、协议设计、资源分配、优化、硬件实现和实验等广泛学科。