Call for Papers

Standards are fundamental in creating and maintaining an open and competitive market for equipment manufacturers and in assuring national and international interoperability of telecommunications technology and processes. Our interactive world is aided and achieved by standards which may be based on patented technologies that enable all types of devices to communicate efficiently with each other.

These technical standards that ensure interoperability in a vast range of technologies allow us to enjoy connectivity. Patents protect the inventor’s rights to telecommunication technologies, for instance those for data transmission, carrier aggregation and power saving solutions. The patents that protect technologies essential to their standards are called standard essential patents (SEPs). SEPs are typically self-declared by patent holders (i.e., businesses and/or individuals) as essential for the implementation of standards. The declared SEPs are not subject to any kind of review to determine their supposed essentially.

There are several contributions to the standard that are declared essential and they are covered by patents to solve open problems in the field of telecommunications. This Feature Topic (FT) is a call for such contributions and relevant research work that is considered essential to a standard in communication networks (e.g., cellular, such as 5G and 5G Advanced, wireless such as Wi-Fi, or wired networks). The contributions may either be based on already published patent applications or may tackle open problems in the standard without being necessarily filed as patents.

This Feature Topic (FT) precisely addresses recent advances in this aspect in the areas of 5G and 5G Advanced, Wi-Fi, IoT and wired networks. The objective is to have a selection of high-quality technical as well as visionary papers to create a link between research work and the standardization industry, which heavily relies on the world of patents to protect the innovation.

Scope of Submissions

The topics of interest within the scope of this issue include (but are not limited to) the following areas in the standards:

• 5G Advanced
  • PHY layer enhancements such as NR-MIMO Evolution, NR Sidelink Evolution, Carrier Aggregation Enhancements, Network energy savings,
  • Radio Layer 2 and layer 3 Radio Resource control advances such as Mobility Enhancements, Sidelink Relay Enhancements, In-Device Co-Existence Enhancements, Small Data, Mutliple SIM enhancements,
  • Architecture and Related network interfaces such as topological improvements (e.g., IAB/VMR), SON/MDT Enhancements, QoE enhancements
  • Radio Performance and Protocol Aspects
• Wi-Fi 7
  • Multi-Link Capabilities,
  • Modulation Evolution
  • Flexible Channel Utilization
• Tactile Internet such as teleoperation or remote touch applications
• Automated network management
• Internet of Things (IoT) / Internet of Everything (IoE)
• New transport technology
• New Access Technologies such as Passive Optical Networks
• Advances in optical solutions
• Network synchronization solutions
• Broadband Cable Access
• Fifth Generation Fixed Network, F5G
• Network Functions Virtualisation, NFV
• Zero touch network & Service Management, ZSM
• Multi-access Edge Computing, MEC
• Experiential Networked Intelligence, ENI
• O-RAN Overall Architecture, Non-real-time RAN Intelligent Controller and Interface, Open Fronthaul Interfaces and other open Interfaces, Cloudification and Orchestration

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 “FT-2216/Essential Technology in Mobile Communications and Networks” 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: 1 August 2022
Decision Notification: 15 January 2023
Final Manuscript Due Date: 1 February 2023
Publication Date: April 2023

Guest Editors

Georgia Tseliou
The European Patent Office, Netherlands

Stefano Ruffini
Ericsson, Italy

Steve Gorshe
Microchip Technology Inc., USA