Call for Papers
IEEE Communications Magazine

Security in Wireless Multimedia Communications

With the proliferation of mobile devices and the popularity of mobile multimedia applications, systematic research of the overall aspects of security in mobile multimedia communications is crucial. The emerging mobile multimedia communications can be used for various pervasive and ubiquitous applications in consumers, enterprises and government agencies. Besides the consumer cellular systems and residential homes, mobile devices are being rapidly integrated into enterprises with the increase in Bring-Your-Own-Device (BYOD) in many organizations. As mobile multimedia communications become more popular in both consumer and enterprise markets, the need for tighter security is inevitable.

The topics on secure mobile multimedia communications have attracted much attention from scholars and engineers all over the world. Despite the large amount of research work proposed in recent years, there are still many issues and open problems in secure mobile multimedia communications. Due to the unique characteristics of multimedia content and the mobile environment, the problems that mobile multimedia security needs to address are different from traditional wireless scenarios. First, mobile multimedia security methods are highly services-dependent. For example, different services require different methods for content transmission, distribution and interaction. Second, secure transmissions are becoming increasingly difficult to obtain in mobile and distributed environment, due to the broadcast nature of wireless channels. To solve this problem, many studies have been devoted to physical layer security, which exploits the physical characteristics of the wireless channel to transmit messages securely. Third, because mobile devices hold valuable and sensitive content, they face a similar level or higher level of the malicious attacks that have existed in traditional communication networks for years. Security solutions for mobile devices must defend against these attacks through the deployment of a wide array of mobile applications. Fourth, the recent growth of wireless multimedia networks has increased the demand for the protection of digital media in terms of intellectual property rights. Copyright protection mainly addresses two issues: the authentication of image ownership, and the identification of illegal copies of an image. Placing images or video sequences on a public network puts them at risk of theft and alteration, without the techniques of preventing copying, forgery and unauthorized distribution.

The objective of this feature topic is to cover the most recent research and development on the enabling technologies for security in mobile multimedia communications and to stimulate discussions on state-of-the-art and innovative aspects in the field. We plan this feature topic to help both the industry and research communities better understand the recent progress and potential research directions on mobile multimedia security. Topics of interest include, but are not limited to, the following:

Manuscript Submission
Articles should be tutorial in nature and written in a style comprehensible to readers outside the specialty of the article. References should be limited to 10, figures and tables to a combined total of 6 (mathematical equations should be avoided). Paper length should not exceed 4,500 words. Complete guidelines can be found at http://www.comsoc.org/commag/paper-submission-guidelines. All articles must be submitted through the IEEE Manuscript Central at http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/commag-ieee. Please send a pdf (preferred) or MSWORD formatted paper via Manuscript Central (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/commag-ieee). Register or log in, and go to Author Center. Follow the instructions there. Select "March 2014/Security in Wireless Multimedia Communications" as the feature topic category for your submission.

Important Dates
Manuscript submission: August 1, 2013
Notification of acceptance: November 1, 2013
Final manuscript due: January 1, 2014
Publication: March 2014

Guest Editors
Rose Qingyang Hu
Utah State University, USA
Email: rosehu@ieee.org

Bo Rong
Communications Research Centre Canada, Canada
Email: bo.rong@ieee.org

Chonggang Wang
InterDigital Communications, USA
Email: cgwang@ieee.org

Yi Qian
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA
Email: yqian@ieee.org

Hsiao-Hwa Chen
National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan
Email: hshwchen@ieee.org