In recent years, pursuing open, global standards has become a critical element of the business and product development strategies that are used to bring new communications technologies to market. High-quality consensus standards contribute to cost savings, expand market potential, and can extend the useful lifetime of a given technology. In addition, international standards can help reduce the negative business impact of complex, country-oriented regulatory requirements. The value proposition for a company or a group of companies in creating an international standard can be seen in how often we are able to observe today the intense effort expended as they orient their approach to product development, from initial research and intellectual property creation, to branding and product marketing, around the creation of a globally accepted, widely adopted, technical standard.

Given that ubiquity and interoperability are the key factors in the adoption of communications and networking standards, such standards need to come from a technically credible source. In this respect, IEEE has few peers when it comes to offering standards of the highest possible technical quality because of the deep reservoir of intellectual and technical talent among its membership and constituencies. Global industry has long recognized the value proposition that IEEE offers in the standardization arena. A global scholarly organization with a mission to serve its membership, industry, and the public good, IEEE brings to the standardization process a sophisticated ecosystem that enables high quality technical standards to be created in a fair, open, and timely fashion. IEEE's communications and networking standards portfolio contains globally recognized standards that enable widely used communications and networking applications for industry and consumers. IEEE's communications standards portfolio spans a wide range of technology areas: traditional telephony, short range wireless communications, wireless and wireline local and metropolitan area networking, cognitive radio, and power line communications.

Scope of Contributions

We solicit contributions for a Feature Topic issue that address IEEE standards related to communications and networking technologies. The contributions should include (but do not need to be limited to) the following areas:

• The IEEE standardization ecosystem:
  • An overview of the IEEE standardization mechanisms, the IEEE-SA, the IEEE-ISTO, standards sponsors - technical societies and committees
  • The individual and entity development models - their merits and applicability
  • The standards development process (Policies and Procedures, IPR policy, building consensus, peer review, IEEE ethics, etc)
• Telephony-related IEEE Standards
• Standards in Carrier Ethernet
• Wireless MAN including: 802.16, 802.20 and 802.22
• Local Area and in-home networking including 802.3, 802.11, 802.15 and Sensor Networking
• Spectrum management standards: 1900 series (SCC41) in Cognitive Radio and Cognitive Networks technologies.
• Power Line Communications technology for access and in-home networking

Contributions should provide a tutorial type of technology overview, provide insights into the emerging standard, and address its features and challenges. For manuscript submission, the authors should follow the IEEE Communications Magazine guidelines under "Information for Authors" at http://www.comsoc.org/pubs/commag/sub_guidelines.html. Manuscripts should be submitted through Manuscript Central at http://commag-ieee.manuscriptcentral.com/. On the Manuscript Details page please click the drop-down menu to select "July 2008/IEEE Standards in Communications and Networking." All submissions will be peer reviewed at least by three experts.

Important Dates

1. Manuscript Submission Due: January 15, 2008
2. Acceptance Notification: March 15, 2008
3. Final Manuscript due: April 25, 2008

Guest Editors

Alexander D. Gelman, NETovations Group, USA
ComSoc Director of Standards, Member of the IEEE Standards Board
adg@ieee.org

Steven Mills, Hewlett–Packard Company, USA
Chair of the IEEE Standards Board
steve.mills@hp.com

Robert S. Fish, NETovations Group, USA
Member of the IEEE-SA Corporate Advisory Group, Member of the ComSoc Standards Board
rob.fish@ieee.org