Call For Papers - Special Sessions

Nowadays, we are witnessing a proliferation in the usage of mobile devices including smartphones, tablets, and laptops which has induced an important growth in the amount of mobile data traffic. The increase in the number of mobile devices that uses wireless connectivity is expected to continue in the future, which will put a huge pressure on the currently established 3G and 4G mobile communication networks. To overcome this issue, the research and industrial communities had already began working on the development of the new generation of mobile technology named as the 5G mobile network. The main target of the new standard is to improve the capacity and the transmission performances by 1000 times compared to the existing technologies. To achieve this, the research community has a broad agreement that the higher ranges of the electromagnetic spectrum must be considered to enable increased data rates and that the 5G concept will not be based on a single technology but it will be the result of a combination of many innovative internetworking schemes that will collaborate to meet the required performances. One emerging aspect of the 5G vision is the concept of heterogeneous networks (HetNets)  
A detailed description of papers submission procedure is available via this link

• Optical transport architectures for 5G networks
• SDN and NVF solutions to enable control and management in optical transport architectures for 5G networks
• Optical access solutions to support 5G communication infrastructures
• Models for optimizing optical transport for 5G networks
• Security, reliability, resilience and survivability solutions for 5G optical transport networks
• Optical switching techniques for 5G networks
• Slicing and virtualization techniques for 5G optical transport networks
• HetNet architectures for 5G networks
• Optical wireless communication in access and backhaul 5G Networks
• Cognitive optical transport architectures for 5G networks
• IoT in optical networks
• Cooperation in optical 5G networks

Smart Grid is an approach that enables an efficient control and monitoring of every element of the electrical grid. Smart Grid allows consumers to play a part in optimizing the use of energy, and provides them with greater information and choice of supply. It can be seen as the innovation that will transform the electrical grid from centralized and producer-controlled to a distributed and consumer-driven grid. In a smart grid, user safety should be ensured while monitoring, updating and continuously reliably distributing electricity grid by adding smart meters and monitoring systems to the power grid. Stability of a smart grid may be challenged by the use of volatile renewable energy sources. This special session offers the opportunity to discuss all aspects that are relevant to smart grid communication. It will bring together researchers with backgrounds in communications, energy control, signal processing and information systems to share relevant experiences, exchange novel ideas and explore the inherent challenges in developing future Smart Grids and Smart Buildings.  
A detailed description of papers submission procedure is available via this link

• Enabling technologies for Smart Grids
• Distributed Energy Resources
• Energy Storage Systems
• Energy Efficiency, Smart metering
• Demand Response and Dynamic Pricing
• Intelligent Monitoring Systems
• Control and Operation for Smart Grids
• Cyber Security and Privacy
• Smart Grids and Enhancement of Energy Management Systems

In the last decade, new advancements in unmanned autonomous systems and especially Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) technology are being increasingly used in a large number of contexts and for diverse applications domains to support humans in hazardous areas and difficult environments. Accordingly, UAVs and networked UAVs will be widely deployed for public safety, inspection, supervision, smart agriculture and smart logistics…Furthermore, UAVs offer the capability to form ad-hoc wireless networks to facilitate communication in temporary hot spots or areas with scarce coverage, accordingly, UAVs could be used to increase the performance and to boost the coverage of existing cellular systems. Therefore, the next-generation of cellular networks will basically integrate UAVs. In this context, new investigations and contributions should be done related to UAVs enabling technologies and communication systems. In the literature, still lacks a coordinated approach towards a unified networking vision related UAV networks. Thus, this special issue aims to cover the most recent results and research, addressing innovative solutions defining new wireless networking approaches, emerging applications and enabling technologies empowering context-awareness UAVs solutions. Prospected authors are invited to submit their original contributions, surveys and case studies that address the world of UAV networks.  
A detailed description of papers submission procedure is available via this link

• Routing and MAC protocols for UAVs
• Cross layer protocols for UAVs
• Wireless Mesh and 802.11s for UAVs
• Multicast on UAV Networks
• Content Delivery in UAV Networks
• Security approaches and Protocols for UAV Networks
• Software-Defined-Network Approaches for UAV Networks
• Networking Simulation/Emulation for UAV environments
• Testbed Results for UAV Network
• Bio-Inspired approaches for UAV Networks
• Topology , coverage extension and Formation Control for UAV Networks
• UAV Connectivity Maintenance in Highly Mobile Environments
• Models and Algorithms for Control of UAV Communication Networks
• UAV QoS provisioning
• Networked Control Optimization for UAVs
• Distributed Networked UAVs Control Systems
• UAV Networks Survivability and Reliability
• Innovative P2P and FANET cross-layer architectures and protocols for FANET
• Radio resource management schemes for UAVs
• Power control schemes for UAVs
• Spectrum sharing and future spectrum requirements for UAVs
• Smart and time-efficient trajectory generation schemes
• Tracking mechanisms using UAVs
• Sound and electromagnetic waves detection schemes
• Thermal imaging-based UAVs detection scheme
• Context-aware localization schemes
• Location detection technologies and protocols
• 3D location detection protocols
• Disaster resilient location detection protocols
• Robust location accuracy technology development
• Multi-hop and relay-based communications
• Drone classification and identification using data mining techniques
• Emerging applications based on UAVs

Over the last decade, communications have been witnessing a noteworthy increase of data traffic demand that is causing enormous energy consumption in wireless networks. Following the proliferation of the internet of Things (IoT) and bandwidth-hungry applications, it is expected that this increase will follow an exponential trend that must be coped due to the detrimental economic and environmental effects. Therefore, there is a growing need to consider this main criterion when designing next-generation wireless networks. Providing novel communication mediums and technologies that meet the evolving demand (e.g., increasing capacity, stricter quality of service, lower latency) while ensuring energy saving and environmental friendly behavior becomes an extremely challenging topic. This special session aims to gather research contributions related to green and energy efficient communications in ubiquitous networks. We invite the submission of original, unpublished and not under review papers that address the energy management challenge in ubiquitous networks.  
A detailed description of papers submission procedure is available via this link

• Green and energy-efficient 5G solutions
• Energy efficiency design for Internet of Things
• Green and energy efficient resource allocation
• Green and energy-efficient mmWave communications
• Green and energy-efficient massive MIMO techniques
• Green and energy-efficient Device-to-Device communication
• Green network planning
• Protocols and algorithms for green networking
• Security, privacy, and trust issues of green networking
• Renewable and hybrid powered ubiquitous communications
• Smart grid and energy management for ubiquitous networks
• Energy harvesting models
• Green Data Centers
• Test bed results
• Regulatory Issues
• New technologies and research trends

The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm represents an umbrella keyword that extends the Internet and the Web into the physical world thanks to the widespread deployment of embedded devices having sensing and communication capabilities. The IoT market is expected to grow tremendously due to the significant increase in the number of smart devices, smart wearables, etc. There are a plenty of examples of possible application scenarios of IoT in the near future such as assisted living, smart homes, automation and industrial manufacturing, logistics, business process management, intelligent transportation of people and goods, which opens up new promising research directions. It is expected that the upcoming 5G technologies will be the backbone of IoT and will support IoT systems. Indeed, massive IoT has to face a lot of challenges to provide reliable and secure connections to the massive number of resource-constrained IoT devices. The central issues are how to achieve full interoperability between connected devices and how to provide them access with a high degree of smartness with low latency and low energy consumption while guaranteeing security and privacy of the users and their data. Indeed, conventional communication protocols may not be suitable for these systems. Hence, it is of prime importance to design reliable, secure and resource-efficient wireless communication protocols for heterogeneous IoT systems. Another challenging issue is how to enabling a large number of low-cost devices transmitting data through the resource-limited infrastructure. Thus, novel energy efficient protocols have to be designed for both PHY and MAC layers. It is worth noting that not all machine communications have low QoS requirements. In fact, video-based applications such as inspection drones or connected security cameras require intensive bandwidth. Moreover, massive IoT deployments require a new level of scalability. Indeed, the network must be engineered to handle far more simultaneous connections than before. This special session focuses on recent research activities in the areas of reliable, secure and resource-efficient wireless communication technologies for IoT systems, low-complexity data acquisition and processing techniques for efficient management of heterogeneous IoT networks. In this direction, we invite researchers from academia, industries and governmental organizations to submit their novel works on system architectures, theoretical models, system-level simulations/experimental results, and hardware demonstration results in the related areas. 
A detailed description of papers submission procedure is available via this link

• PHY/MAC layer algorithms for supporting IoT devices in 5G systems such as massive MIMO, small cells, full duplex and mmWave systems
• Communication challenges and solutions for the applications of IoT in WBANs, WSNs, M2M, D2D, V2V, SatCom and cellular systems
• Adaptive waveforms, RF energy harvesting, and adaptive modulation and coding techniques for low-power IoT systems
• Orthogonal/non-orthogonal multiple access and access control schemes for IoT systems
• Energy-efficient data acquisition, reporting and fusion echniques
• Resource allocation, spectrum sharing and interference mitigation
• Data aggregation, prioritization and offloading techniques
• Multi-hop and cooperative communications for IoT systems
• SDN and virtualization techniques for IoT networks
• Architectures/topologies for hierarchical IoT-cloud networks
• Cloud-assisted solutions for resource management in IoT systems
• IoT Protocols and standards (IPv6, 6LoWPAN, RPL, 6TiSCH, oneM2M, BLE, EPCgobal, ZWave, LTE-M, and NB-IoT)
• Security enhancement and privacy preservation techniques
• Hardware prototype design for IoT applications

The Internet of Things (IoT) paradigm has seen the proliferation of a large number of small, embedded devices for sensing and actuating in industrial, home and commercial settings. Generally, all these sensors and actuators use low-energy, low bitrate communications standard such as Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) or Zigbee. These protocols are designed for low traffic, but as the number of IoT nodes increases, very dense or very large networks have considerably different dynamics than the short range, one hop solution currently offered in IoT solutions. Large and dense networks require a new an intelligent way to move data from one source to the destination through the network while preserving battery life and keeping performance high. This special session aims at attracting novel and relevant work on the design, operation and testing of protocols and methods for distributed network management for large and/or dense IoT networks. The focus is on distributed signal processing, machine learning and artificial intelligence applied to routing, data aggregation, reconfigurable and self-organizing IoT networks. 
A detailed description of papers submission procedure is available via this link

• Performance, simulation, and modelling of IoT
• Robust communication protocols for IoT
• Protocols for distributed-oriented processing in IoT
• Heterogeneous multi-RAT IoT networks design and management
• Self-organizing and self-reconfiguring IoT systems
• Artificial intelligence and machine learning applied to communication in IoT
• Automated commissioning in IoT

As a result of the expected proliferation of millions of intelligent devices in the Internet of Things (IoT), the volume of data is envisioned to be rapidly increasing at rates never seen before. This data comes mostly in the form of streams. Therefore, new real time mechanisms and techniques are required to handle these streams of data. Real-time stream processing must deal with data collection, storage, processing, and analysis of hundreds of millions of events per hour. Learning from this ever-growing amount of data requires developing flexible learning models able to self-adapt over time. Extensive research is being carried out on enabling digital technologies including network and cloud infrastructures, sensing technologies and Internet of things (IoT), data integration, and big data analytics. In particular, integrative solutions and advanced computing techniques can facilitate creating novel applications and value-added services. This special session welcomes novel research about IoT data streams processing, platforms and architectures, applications and services, and learning from IoT data streams in evolving environments. It will provide the researchers and participants with a forum for exchanging ideas, presenting recent advances and discussing challenges related to IoT data streams processing. 
A detailed description of papers submission procedure is available via this link

• IoT stream processing architectures and frameworks
• IoT data streams aggregation
• IoT data streams federation
• IoT data streams semantic integration
• Cloud computing and network infrastructures to support IoT streams processing
• Advanced communication systems and approaches for IoT streams
• Application, deployment, test-bed, and experiences in IoT streams processing
• Data privacy and security issues in IoT streams processing
• IoT data streams applications in
• Monitoring and surveillance
• Quality control
• Fault detection, isolation and diagnosis
• Internet analytics
• Decision Support Systems
• Etc.