%0 Journal Article %A Meng, K %A Masouros, C %A Petropulu, AP %A Hanzo, L %D 2024 %F discovery:10199757 %J IEEE Wireless Communications %T Cooperative ISAC Networks: Opportunities and Challenges %U https://discovery.ucl.ac.uk/id/eprint/10199757/ %X 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. %Z This version is the author accepted manuscript. For information on re-use, please refer to the publisher's terms and conditions.