Call for Papers

Network resilience indicates an ability to provide and maintain an acceptable level of services when facing the problems of faults and other threats to normal network operations. It is an important property for a network to properly function in harsh environments under challenging conditions. Mobile networking has been attracting more and more attention in recent years due to its broad applications, but its quality of service strongly relies on the resilience of the network. Resilient mobile networking refers to the networking technologies that can enhance the survivability and fault-tolerance of mobile networks, especially those that consist of vehicles in outer space (satellites), in the atmospheric layer (aircraft), on the ground and sea levels (vehicles, trains, and watercraft), and underwater (submarines), as they play significant roles in advancing our society and human daily life nowadays. Such networks feature high mobility and induced high-degree dynamism, which result in dynamic topologies and unstable transmissions in networks, and cause significant challenges for the design and implementation of resilient communication protocols and algorithms. This motivates us to ponder questions on dynamic networking and unstable transmissions raised by high mobility, such as how to handle the doppler effects and synchronization issues between satellites, how to maintain robust topologies to support communications and networking among the unmanned aerial vehicles in complex environments, and how to guarantee stable and low-latency transmission services for mobile users in trains and subways, just to name a few. Effective and elegant solutions to these questions should not only advance technologies in resilient mobile networking and communications, they must also bring convenience and smartness to our daily life.

Recently, due to the widespread implementation of Internet of Things, the applications of resilient mobile networks nowadays have been greatly extended, for example, public safety, proximity-based services, and fog/edge computing. With the broader applications, there exists an enormous demand to provide faster, more efficient and energy-saving communications, rather than a simple connectivity requirement in resilient mobile networks as in the past. Many state-of-the-art techniques developed in recent years have exhibited high potential to inspire the design and implementation of smart communication protocols and algorithms for resilient mobile networks nowadays, including millimeter-wave communications, eMBB, mMTC, and uRLLC services in 5G networks, and Artificial Intelligence (AI) and blockchain technologies, to support resilient network services in new broad applications. More specifically, one can see that advances in 5G and beyond have pointed out the directions that may lead to faster (uRLLC), higher (eMBB), and more robust (mMTC) communication services, that recent developments in AI and big data can facilitate effective and efficient resource allocation and management, and that Blockchain has been envisioned as a promising technology to improve efficiency, reduce cost, and mitigate security and privacy threats because of its ability to establish trusted data sharing and computing environments, with all contributing significantly to enhance mobile network resilience. However, it is unclear whether these technologies can be seamlessly integrated together to serve the needs of resilient mobile networks and enhance the degree of mobile network resiliency. How to effectively tackle the challenges resulting from resilient mobile networking via the current state-of-the-art technologies remains an open and active research area.

This Special Issue aims at providing a platform for researchers and practitioners who are interested in smart communication protocols and algorithms for resilient mobile networking and communications to exchange ideas and report their recent developments. Unpublished articles covering theoretical, technical, and practical aspects of algorithms and protocols for resilient mobile networking and communications are all welcome. The relevant topics include, but are not limited to:

• Communication protocols for resilient mobile networks
• Communication algorithms for resilient mobile networks
• System architectures for smart resilient mobile networks
• Artificial intelligence enabled resilient networking
• Real‐time communications in resilient mobile networks
• Multipath communications over wireless mobile networks
• Secure transmission for high dynamic heterogeneous networks
• Models of wireless channel and electromagnetic noise in resilient mobile networks
• QoE based radio resource management in resilient mobile networks
• Edge computing and offloading in resilient mobile networks
• 5G/6G-enabled communications in resilient mobile networks
• Routing innovation for smart communications
• Device‐to‐device communications and networking
• Spectrum utilization and massive MIMO communications
• Security in resilient mobile networks

Submission Guidelines

Prospective authors should prepare their submissions in accordance with the rules specified in the Information for Authors of the IEEE Wireless Communications guidelines. Authors should submit a PDF version of their complete manuscript to Manuscript Central. Select ‘June 2022/Smart Communication Protocols and Algorithms for Resilient Mobile Networks’ from the drop-down menu of Special Issues.

Important Dates

Manuscript Submission Deadline: 1 October 2021
Initial Decision Date: 1 December 2021
Revised Manuscript Due: 1 January 2022
Final Decision Date: 1 February 2022
Final Manuscript Due: 15 April 2022
Publication Date: June 2022

Guest Editors

Dongxiao Yu
Shandong University

Zhu Han
University of Houston

Tao Jing
Beijing Jiaotong University

Falko Dressler
TU Berlin

Weiyi Zhang
AT&T Labs Research