Abstract
This Special Issue originates from the international conference EuCNC 2020 (European Conference on Networks and Communications), which was planned to be held in June 2020 in Dubrovnik (Croatia), but due to the COVID-19 pandemic was changed to an Online Conference. The Technical Programme Chairs of the conference have selected the best papers and invited authors to submit an extended version of their paper, by at least one third of their length. Only the top ranked papers were invited to this Special Issue, in order to fulfil its purpose. The main target was to collect and present quality research contributions in the most recent activities related to systems and networks beyond 5G, already presenting ideas for 6G. Through this Special Issue, the state-of-the-art is presented and the new challenges are highlighted, regarding the latest advances on systems and network perspectives that are already being positioned beyond 5G, bridging as well with the evolution of 5G, including applications and trials. Therefore, the motivation for this Special Issue is to present the latest and finest results on the evolution of research of mobile and wireless communications, coming, but not exclusively (since EuCNC is a conference open to the whole research community), from projects co-financed by the European Commission within its R&D programmes.