This special issue of wireless personal communication focuses on digital and wireless communication technology promoting a smart society. A smart society is the use of technology to shape a better world. It employs the potential digital technology, connected devices, and communication networks to improve people’s lives. Simultaneously, it can be considered as an empowered society where human beings and emerging technologies are seamlessly connected. The emergence of multiple contexts and emerging technologies have resulted in new applications and services over a heterogeneous network. This special issue aims to present recent advances and challenges in different aspects relating to constructing a smart society covering from the principle knowledge, infrastructures, and applications. The initial goal is to extend some selected papers from the 6th Global Wireless Summit (GWS 2018) and the 21st International Symposium on Wireless Personal Multimedia Communications (WPMC2018). However, it is also open for the original and unpublished contributions solicited in relevant areas of the principle knowledge, infrastructure, technologies, and applications of digital and wireless communication technology for a smart society.

The contributions in this special issue can be classified into two groups. Firstly, the works relating to principle knowledge, infrastructure, and technologies are demonstrated for promoting the next generation of wireless communication and applications. Secondly, the smart applications-oriented works for the smart society are illustrated. The findings in this special issue have confirmed that digital and wireless technology’s emerging contribution is widely spread in many other disciplines, such as education, healthcare, business, and agriculture. Additionally, these pieces of evidence can guarantee that a smart society’s demand is approaching and appealing. The global awareness of smart innovations over a heterogeneous network is called out, requiring the long-term cross-collaboration among academics, research, and industry to satisfy the urgent need of incoming smart society.