IEEE Communications Magazine

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Feature Topic: Technologies in Multihop Cellular Networks

Wireless cellular networks have existed for decades of years. It plays an important role to provide public mobile communication services. The next generation cellular networks are expected to provide more rich and diverse multimedia services with even much higher data rates, possibly greater than 100 Mbps. However, the current cellular network architecture may not be flexible and powerful enough to cater for the requirements of next generation cellular systems. A new emerging cellular network structure, Multihop Cellular Network (MCN), which incorporates the ad hoc characteristic into the cellular system, draws more attention from researchers. The advantages of using MCN includes increasing the throughput of the network, enlarging the coverage area of base station, network scalability, and decreasing the power consumption of individual mobile user etc. Since MCN may require introducing another interface, such as WiFi/WiMAX, to provide ad hoc communication capability, it is not a trivial task for the MCN to be implemented. Much more unlike conventional one-hop cellular systems, in MCN we should consider issues like integration of other wireless system, routing strategy, relaying latency, end-to-end security, access mechanism, battery consumption, etc. Some standard organizations have proposed multihop cellular system as a potential candidate for the next generation cellular system. More test-bed design and experimental results should be achieved before the standard is finalized.

The goal of this special issue is to inspire experts in academia as well as in industry to publish their suggestions, challenges and techniques of multihop cellular network and trigger more brilliant ideas in this area. So that cellular network with access of anytime, anywhere, anyone could be realized in our future life.

This special issue presents tutorials, survey and original research articles related to technologies on multihop cellular network. Topics of interest include (but not limited to):

Submission of the papers:
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/. Please select "September 2007/Technologies in Multihop Cellular Networks" in the drop down menu.

Schedule:
Manuscripts Due: February 1 2007
Acceptance Notification: May 1 2007
Final Manuscripts Submission: July 1 2007
Publication Date: September 2007

Guest Editors
Dr. Peter H J Chong
Nanyang Technological University
Singapore
ehjchong@ntu.edu.sg

Dr. Fumiyuki Adachi
Tohoku University
Japan
adachi@ecei.tohoku.ac.jp

Dr. Seppo Hamalainen
Nokia Networks
Finland
seppo.o.hamalainen@nokia.com

Dr. Victor C M Leung
The University of British Columbia
Canada
vleung@ece.ubc.ca