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The widespread use of mobile internet and smart applications has led to an explosive growth in mobile data traffic, which will continue due to the emerging need of connecting people, machines, and applications in an ubiquitous manner through the mobile infrastructure. The efficient and satisfactory operation of all these densely deployed networks hinges on a suitable backhaul and fronthaul provisioning. The research community is working to provide innovative technologies with extensive performance evaluation metrics along with the required standardisation milestones, hardware and components for a fully deployed network by 2020 and beyond.

Ambient intelligence (AmI) refers to environments that are sensitive, adaptive, and responsive to human presence and needs. By weaving AI, sensors, energy-harvesting technologies and computing into everyday surroundings, AmI systems act proactively, rather than waiting for commands, to make spaces like homes and workplaces more efficient and user-centric. By anticipating our needs, leveraging artificial intelligence (AI), and capturing and processing data through sensors, processors, and actuators, which are unobtrusively embedded throughout the environment, ambient systems provide seamless, connected, and uninterrupted everyday experiences that require minimal user intervention.

Antennas have evolved beyond telecommunications to support sensing, wireless power transfer, and energy-harvesting electronic systems. As wireless technologies move toward intelligent and interconnected infrastructures, electromagnetic and radio-frequency sensing are becoming essential components of next-generation healthcare monitoring and smart environments, as well as industrial inspection and autonomous systems. To fully leverage these opportunities, such systems require interdisciplinary expertise ranging from fundamental antennas and propagation research to active antennas and applied radio-frequency technologies, as well as circuits and systems, advanced materials, and AI and machine learning.

Transforming the way we live, work, and engage with our environment, 5G and beyond technologies will provide much higher bandwidth and connectivity to billions of devices. This brings enormous opportunities but of course the widespread deployment of these technologies faces challenges, including the need for reliable connectivity, a diverse range of bandwidths, dynamic spectrum sharing, channel modelling and wave propagation for ultra-dense wireless networks, as well as price pressures. The choice of an antenna system will also be a critical component of all node end devices and will present several design challenges such as size, purpose, shape and placement. In this edited book, the authors bring new approaches for exploiting challenging propagation channels and the development of efficient, cost-effective, scalable, and reliable antenna systems and solutions, as well as future perspectives.

Mobile communication systems rely on radiofrequency waves to operate. Given the popularity and ubiquity of mobile communication devices as well as network densification, the level of Electromagnetic Field (EMF) exposure to the public is expected to rise significantly over the next few years. Although there is no clear evidence linking short-term exposure to EMF emission from wireless communication systems with adverse health effects, the International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC) has concluded that EMF radiation is possibly carcinogenic. To cope with the concerns of the general public, the European Environmental Agency has recommended non-technical precautionary approaches to minimize exposure to EMF emissions. Rather than relying on these non-technical approaches, EMF, latency, network resilience and connection density, alongside traditional criteria such as spectral efficiency and energy efficiency are expected to take centre stage in the development of 5G systems.

In the race against climate change, the focus has turned towards achieving the 2050 net-zero carbon target. Achieving net-zero means balancing between the amount of greenhouse gas removed from the atmosphere and those produced and released. Efforts are needed on both sides to find suitable solutions to reduce released emissions and to remove current emissions from the atmosphere. A collective effort revolving around the utilisation of new technologies, particularly in wireless and mobile communications, is needed to achieve the net-zero carbon target.