Call for Papers for a Special Issue on

"Wireless Technologies Advances for Emergency and Rural Communications"

IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine

Wireless communications for public safety, emergency communications and delivery of wideband services to rural communities have been receiving great attention from both research and industry communities. Whenever regular communications channels are down and/or commercial electric power systems have failed or are overloaded, temporary and reliable back-up system must be timely put into operation. Information dissemination during times of disasters is vital to help public safety and relief agencies provide quick response and support to areas hit by disasters such as floods, earthquakes, etc. Novel broadband wireless data systems can offer fast and effective access to databases for retrieving audio, video and geographical information that are essential to speed up the delivery of medical assistance and other relief efforts.

System requirements include robustness, low cost voice/video communications, ease of set up of different architecture functionalities (e.g. ad hoc modes), integration and interoperability among different wireless technologies including existing and operational systems, plug-and-play functionalities, and security (both encryption and authentication).

Topics of Interest

Papers in this Special Issue will focus on new technologies for public safety, emergency communications and delivery of wideband (i.e. Internet) services to rural communities.

We solicit papers covering a variety of topics that include, but are not limited to the following subjects:

Papers should be tutorial in nature and focus on issues and findings that will influence the development of communication services and applications for the selected area.

Submitted papers, which should not be considered elsewhere for publication and the authors must follow the IEEE Wireless Communications guidelines for preparation of the manuscripts. For further details, potential authors should refer to "Submission Guidelines" in IEEE Wireless Communications website at http://www.comsoc.org/pubs/pcm/sub_guidelines.html. Papers should have no more than 4500 words, a total of 6 figures and tables, 15 references and 3 simple equations. Please send PDF (preferred), Microsoft Word, or PostScript formatted papers to the Guest Editors by email no later than 15 October 2007.

Schedule

Manuscript Submission Due: October 15, 2007
Acceptance Notification: January 15, 2008
Final Manuscript Due: March 15, 2008
Publication Date: June 2008

Guest Editors

Prof. Ibrahim Habib
City University of New York
New York, NY, USA
habib@ccny.cuny.edu

Dr. Franco Mazzenga
University of Rome "Tor Vergata"
Rome, Italy
mazzenga@ing.uniroma2.it