CFP for Special Issue on

Security in Wireless Mobile Ad Hoc and Sensor Networks

IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine
Wireless mobile ad hoc networks (MANETs) and sensor networks have many applications in military, homeland security and other areas. Security is critical for such networks deployed in hostile environment, and the security concerns remain a serious impediment to widespread adoption of these wireless networks. The security issues in MANETs are more challenging than those in traditional wired computer networks and the Internet. Wireless communications use shared medium and broadcast, thus are vulnerable to jamming and other attacks. Node mobility causes lots of security issues in MANETs, such as dynamic membership, key management, configuration, etc. Nodes in MANETs are powered by battery and energy efficiency should be considered when designing security schemes.

Providing security in sensor networks is even more difficult than in MANETs, due to the resource limitations of sensor nodes. Compared with conventional computers, severe challenges exist since sensor nodes have limited processing capacity, storage, and energy, and wireless links have limited bandwidth. Techniques such as public key algorithms may not be applicable to sensor nodes due to the limited resource. Despite the above challenges, security is critical for applications in battlefield surveillance, military target tracking and other areas.

Scope of Contributions

The goal of this issue is to report recent advances and significant contributions on all aspects of security in resource-constrained mobile ad hoc and sensor networks. In this special issue we are soliciting the papers with tutorial nature covering the following topics in mobile ad hoc and sensor networks: Articles should be tutorial in nature and should be written in a style comprehensible to readers outside the specialty of the article. However, papers presenting original contributions will also be considered, as long as the presentation is accessible and the paper length is kept within the appropriate limits. Articles should not exceed 4500 words. Figures and tables should be limited to a combined total of six. For manuscript submission, authors should follow the IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine manuscript format described in the "Information for Authors" at http://www.comsoc.org/pubs/pcm/sub_guidelines.html. There will be one round of reviews and acceptance will be limited to the papers needing only moderate revisions. Therefore, the quality of initially submitted manuscripts is very important. Prospective authors should submit the all-in-one PDF version of their complete manuscripts (which should be compressed if the file size exceeds 1 MB) via email to mguizani@cs.wmich.edu before December 1, 2006. The other important dates for this special issue are given as follows:

Important Data (Tentative)

Manuscript Submission Due:      December 1, 2006
Acceptance Notification:     March 15, 2007
Final Manuscript Due:     May 15, 2007
Publication:     August 2007

Guest Editors

The contact information of the Guest Editors for this Special Issue is given below:

Mohsen Guizani, Professor and Chair
Computer Science Department
Western Michigan University
USA
mguizani@cs.wmich.edu

Xiaojiang (James) Du
Department of Computer Science
North Dakota State University
USA
xdu@web.cs.ndsu.nodak.edu

Hsiao-Hwa Chen
Institute of Communications Engineering
National Sun Yat-Sen University
Taiwan
hshwchen@mail.nsysu.edu.tw

Peter Mueller
IBM Zurich Research Laboratory
Switzerland
pmu@zurich.ibm.com