@article{discovery10199757, month = {October}, note = {This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.}, title = {Cooperative ISAC Networks: Opportunities and Challenges}, journal = {IEEE Wireless Communications}, year = {2024}, url = {https://doi.org/10.1109/MWC.008.2400151}, author = {Meng, K and Masouros, C and Petropulu, AP and Hanzo, L}, abstract = {The integration of sensing and communication (ISAC) emerges as a cornerstone technology for the sixth generation era, seamlessly incorporating sensing functionality into wireless networks as a native capability. The main challenges in efficient ISAC are constituted by its limited sensing and communication (S\&C) coverage as well as severe inter-cell interference. Network-level ISAC relying on multi-cell cooperation is capable of effectively expanding both the S\&C coverage, and of providing extra degrees of freedom (DoF) for realizing increased integration gains between S\&C. In this work, we provide new considerations for ISAC networks, including new metrics, the optimization of the DoF, and cooperation regimes, and we highlight new S\&C trade-offs. Then, we discuss a suite of cooperative S\&C architectures, both at the task, as well as, data and signal levels. Furthermore, the interplay between S\&C at the network level is investigated, and promising research directions are outlined.} }