Call for Papers

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According to recent studies, information technology systems and infrastructures represent approximately 4% of the net contribution towards greenhouse gas emissions. As a result, network and cloud operators have an important role to play in meeting sustainability goals not just by deploying energy-efficient technologies to reduce their reliance on energy but also by making networks and infrastructure more sustainable themselves. Emergent technologies and trends like network softwarization, edge and cloud computing, Artificial intelligence (AI), Machine Learning (ML) have been helpful in the design of more performant networks and infrastructures; However, they may lead to an increase in complexity and carbon footprints. Hence, both performance and energy efficiency are critical aspects to consider throughout the design and the implementation of next generation technologies, protocols, networks and services deployed from the access networks to the core networks including wireless and wired networks, Internet of Thing (IoT) devices as well as the edge and cloud infrastructures. 

This Special Issue seeks for papers focusing on the development of sustainable yet performant technologies and solutions for the design and management of computer networks and infrastructures. Hence, we solicit original and innovative work presenting novel algorithms, architectures, systems, protocols and also analytics, simulations, prototypes addressing performance and sustainability issues and aiming at improving and even disrupting existing solutions and technologies. Topics of interest for this Special Issue, include, but are not limited to the following:

• Solutions for sustainable and energy-efficient management of the Edge-to-Cloud Continuum (access to core networks, edge to cloud, IoT)
• Performance-sustainability analysis of centralized and distributed cloud computing, fog and edge computing
• Lightweight network and service management based on Extended Berkeley Packet Filters (eBPF) and eXpress Data Path (XDP)
• Network and service management for the dynamic optimization of the trade-off between power consumption and performance
• Centralized and distributed AI/ML techniques for the management of power and performance in wireless or wired networks
• Energy-aware network softwarization and slicing 
• Performance and sustainability aspects of 5G/6G, fog/cloud MEC virtualization, self-x technologies, adaptation, automation, and zero-touch
• Sustainable data, computing and communications architectures and infrastructures, e.g., data centers, clouds and edge
• Energy-efficient network and service management for High Performance Computing
• Energy-efficient telemetry mechanisms
• Performance and sustainability aspects of Cyber-Physical Systems and Cyber-Human Systems
• Security and privacy aspects of sustainable and distributed systems
• Green sources of energy to support edge and cloud deployments

The guest editors are part of the IEEE CNOM Special Interest Group (SIG) on Sustainable Network Operations (SNO).

Submission Format

Papers will be evaluated based on their originality, presentation, relevance and contribution to the field of design and management of reliable communication networks, as well as their overall quality and suitability for the special issue. The submitted papers must be written in a good English and describe original research which has not been published nor currently under review by other journals or conferences. Previously published conference papers should be clearly identified by the authors at the initial submission stage and an explanation should be provided of how such papers have been extended in order to be considered for this special issue.

View the author guidelines for the preparation of manuscript (including number of pages and potential extra page costs.)

For more information, please contact Alessio Sacco.

Submission Guidelines

All manuscripts and any supplementary material should be submitted through Manuscript Central. Authors must indicate in the submission system that their manuscript is intended for the “Research Advances Towards Effective and Sustainable Next Generation Networks” Special Issue.

Important Dates

Paper Submission Deadline: 21 June 2024
Publication Date: February 2025

Guest Editor

Alessio Sacco (Lead Guest Editor)
Politecnico di Torino, Italy

Kohei Shiomoto
Tokyo City University, Japan

Mohamed Faten Zhani
University of Sousse, Tunisia

Guido Marchetto
Politecnico di Torino, Italy

Shahid Mumtaz
Nottingham Trent University, UK

Michael Welzl
University of Oslo, Norway

Ramón Durán Barroso
Universidad de Valladolid, Spain