This book comprehensively investigates an advanced chirp-based waveform— Affine Frequency Division Multiplexing (AFDM)—for next-generation wireless networks (NGWN) particular for high-mobility scenarios, such as vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V), unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV), and satellite networks. Adopting a holistic perspective, this book outlines the evolutionary road towards AFDM, demonstrates its mathematical fundamentals and theoretical performance limits in both wireless communications and sensing, and highlights its native flexibility, backward compatibility, security, and versatility. Moreover, this book discusses the main challenges of AFDM, including channel estimation, signal detection, multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO), multiple access, and integrated sensing and communications (ISAC), providing promising solutions to achieve a compelling trade-off between effectiveness and complexity. Looking ahead, this book explores several potential applications of AFDM and outlines key open research directions to guide its future development.
