In order to satisfy the requirements on coverage, capacity and QoS (Quality of Service) at the lowest infrastructure cost and to reduce radio wave pollution, both 3G/4G and WLANs/WMANs need careful planning and optimisation. The planning and optimisation of 3G/4G (especially the radio network) and WLAN/WMAN is very complicated and faces many challenges. Traditional planning methods require experienced planners to manually select and configure network elements. As there are many network elements with many parameters to configure, it is very unlikely to find the optimal network configuration using a manual method. Approaches and tools that can automate 3G/4G/WLAN/WMAN planning and optimisation are urgently needed by the mobile communications industry.

The goal of this special issue is to highlight and systematically address the challenges arising from automatic 3G/4G/WLAN/WMAN planning and optimisation. The set of articles in this special issue will create a forum for researchers, developers and practitioners from both academia and industry to publish the key challenges and disseminate the state-of-the-art techniques in 3G/4G/WLAN/WMAN planning and optimisation.

Scope of Contributions

In this special issue we intend to present tutorials, survey and original research articles written in a tutorial manner readable by non-specialists. The special issue will mainly focus on the planning and optimisation of radio access networks, although it does not exclude core network planning. Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

• Approaches and tools for automatic 3G/4G radio network planning and optimisation
• Approaches and tools for automatic WLAN/WMAN planning and optimisation
• Coverage and topology planning of wireless mesh networks and multi-hop extensions of cellular systems
• Propagation models for indoor/outdoor environments
• Automatic propagation model selection and tuning in radio network planning
• Use of measurements in network planning tools (e.g., probe data and drive test data)
• Novel dynamic simulation methods for 3G radio networks to support parameter planning for RRM (Radio Resource Management) algorithms
• Traffic and traffic profile (the mix of voice and data services of various bit rates) modelling in multi-service environments
• Planning of networks for above the ground receivers
• Indoor coverage planning
• Planning and optimisation for hierarchical cell structure (HCS)

Authors should submit their manuscripts electronically in PDF format with a separate cover letter, which contains the paper title, authors with affiliations, and a 250-word abstract via email to either Jie Zhang (jie.zhang@luton.ac.uk) or Antonio Capone (capone@elet.polimi.it). To enforce the double blind reviewing policy, authors' names and affiliations can only appear in the separate cover letter. The "Subject field" of the email must contain "IEEE WCM 3G/4G/WLAN/WMAN Paper". Articles should have no more than 4500 words, no more than 6 tables/figures, and the abstract should have no more than 250 words. With regard to both the content and formatting style of the submissions, prospective contributors should follow the IEEE Wireless Communications guidelines for authors that can be found at http://www.comsoc.org/pubs/pcm/pub_guidelines.html.

Important Dates

Paper submission deadline: May 1, 2006
Feedback to authors: July 15, 2006
Final manuscript to publisher: October 1, 2006
Publication of completed special issue: December 2006

Guest Editors

Jie Zhang Dept. of Computing and Info. Sys., University of Luton, Luton, UK, jie.zhang@luton.ac.uk
Antonio Capone Dipartimento di Elettronica e Informazione, Politecnico di Milano, Italy, capone@elet.polimi.it
Iraj Saniee Bell Laboratories, Lucent Technologies, USA, iis@research.bell-labs.com
Dimitris Dernikas AIRCOM, UK, dimitris.dernikas@aircom.co.uk