Call for Papers

The 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) completed 5G Release 16 and approved the OpenAPI specification in July 2020. 5G is expected to support numerous future applications that can be classified as one or a mix of three usage scenarios: enhanced Mobile Broadband (eMBB), massive Machine Type Communications (mMTC), and Ultra Reliable Low Latency Communications (URLLC).

However, 5G is still lacking its killer applications. Which vertical applications will fully utilize the capabilities offered by 5G that cannot be provided by 4G? Which unprecedented performance gain these applications can get by 5G in practice? To answer these and similar questions, 3GPP started to focus on specific applications and field performance evaluations in Release 17 which include Communication Service Requirements for Critical Medical Applications, 5G Enhancements for Unmanned Aerial Vehicles, Enhancements for Cyber-Physical Control Applications in Vertical Domains, enhanced Relays for Energy efficiency and Extensive Coverage.

This Feature Topic (FT) aims at shedding some light on the novel applications that can be realized by exploiting the features provided by 5G, the performance improvement of the current applications by 5G, and the limitations of 5G on meeting the requirements of future applications. This will also help in identifying the roadmap for the development of the next generation mobile network (6G).

We invite submissions in areas including (but not limited to) the following topics:

• Verticals considered in 5G testbeds, 5G field trials, and 5G deployments
• Critical medical applications in 5G
• Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in 5G
• Cyber-physical control applications in vertical domains
• Enhanced relays for energy efficiency and extensive coverage
• Business models for 5G-supported verticals
• Lessons learned from early 5G deployments by vertical industries
• Limitations and constraints found on existing standards
• Integration of public and non-public networks
• Mapping of vertical functional requirements to 5G KPIs
• Societal issues in 5G, as emerged by field trials and early deployments, and possible solutions (e.g., coverage, energy and sustainability in hyper connected society, electro smog, human centricity and trust, data control and governance)

Submission Guidelines

Manuscripts should conform to the standard format as indicated in the Information for Authors section of the Manuscript Submission Guidelines. Please, check these guidelines carefully before submitting since submissions not complying with them will be administratively rejected without review.

All manuscripts to be considered for publication must be submitted by the deadline through Manuscript Central. Select the “June2021/5GforVerticals” topic from the drop-down menu of Topic/Series titles. Please observe the dates specified here below noting that there will be no extension of submission deadline.

Important Dates

Manuscript Submission Deadline: 4 December 2020, 3:00 pm US Eastern time
Decision Notification: 1 March 2021
Final Manuscript Due: 15 April 2021
Publication Date: June 2021

Guest Editors

Luca Valcarenghi
Scuola Superiore Sant’Anna, Pisa, Italy

Jun Shan Wey
ZTE TX Inc., USA

Luis M. Contreras Murillo
Telefonica, Spain

Antony Franklin
Indian Institute of Technology Hyderabad (IITH), India