Providing on-demand connectivity from the sky is a new and innovative trend in wireless communications for beyond 5G or coming 6G communication systems. Satellites, high and low altitude platforms, drones, aircrafts, and airships are being considered as candidates for deploying wireless communications, complementing terrestrial communication infrastructure. Utilising modern information network technologies and interconnecting space, air, and ground network segments, aerial access networks (AANs) have attracted much attention from both academia and industry for a potential solution for 6G systems.

AANs are subject to heterogeneous networks that are engineered to utilise satellites, high altitude platforms (HAPs), and low-altitude platforms (LAPs) to build network access platforms. Compared to terrestrial wireless networks, AANs are characterised by frequently changing network topologies and more vulnerable communication connections. AANs can provide data services in underserved and unserved areas that cannot be covered by terrestrial cellular networks and can reinforce 6G service reliability by providing service continuity for machine to machine (M2M)/Internet of Things (IoT) devices or on-board moving platforms. However, it is difficult to achieve the integration of AAN and terrestrial networks. In addition, the current mechanisms and protocols cannot satisfy the demand for the seamless integration of heterogeneous networks and improved network quality of service (QoS). It is also very challenging to design new methods that enable 6G network scalability for data delivery towards the network edges or even user terminals. Until now, limited research efforts have been made and few papers have been published on enabling techniques in AANs for 6G networks.

This Special Issue aims to address these topics and invite the contributions of leading researchers from academia and industry across the globe. We invite papers that address challenges related to network architecture, signal processing, security and privacy, resource management, performance modelling and optimisation, and other enabling techniques of AANs for future 6G networks. We welcome both original research and review articles.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Hybrid architecture for aerial access networks
• Antenna design for aerial access networks
• Signal detection and estimation for aerial access networks
• Multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO)/massive MIMO/mm Wave/THz technologies for aerial access networks
• Integration of integrated reception systems (RIS/IRS) with aerial access networks
• Coding, modulation, and synchronisation schemes for aerial access networks
• Security, privacy, and trust in aerial access networks
• Radio resource management in aerial access networks
• Network function virtualisation in aerial access networks
• Routing in aerial access networks
• QoS and quality of experience (QoE) in aerial access networks
• Aerial access networks with caching/edge computing/wireless power transfer
• AI-enabled aerial access networks
• Aerial access networks for Internet of Things