Call for Papers

The Wi-Fi technical community has been able to keep up with the increased traffic demand by employing recent advances in communication systems and signal processing and the release of a new IEEE 802.11 PHY amendment roughly every five years, achieving an exponential improvement in the supported data rates. An illustrative example is the successful release of IEEE 802.11ac (a.k.a. Wi-Fi 5) at the end of 2013 with a maximum supported data rate of 6.9 G/ps. With the expectation that mass commercialization would take place as soon as possible, Wi-Fi 6, which is developed based on the IEEE 802.11ax standard that was recently published in 2021, is gathering increased momentum around the world and will bring increased data rate and capabilities. WiGig enhancements, based on the IEEE 802.11ay standards in the 60 GHz band that is soon to be published in mid-2021, will also deliver faster speeds and longer ranges providing connectivity for many advanced use cases in connected homes, connected enterprises, carrier services, and fixed wireless access.

The increasingly popularity of Wi-Fi, combined with excellent market forecasts from reputable market research and intelligence firms, indicate that Wi-Fi is and will continue to have a significant presence in wireless communications devices and in people’s daily lives. This proposed Special Issue aims at providing a timely and concise reference to the state-of-the-art, the latest research findings and the future directions around Wi-Fi technologies, as well as providing a unique insight into emerging and novel applications of Wi-Fi.

The IEEE 802.11 standard, often referred to as Wi-Fi, underpins wireless networking applications around the world that impact our daily lives, such as wireless access to the Internet from offices, homes, airports, hotels, restaurants, trains and aircraft. Today’s laptops, tablets and smartphones are typically equipped with an IEEE 802.11 radio. IEEE 802.11 standards have enabled a whole range of applications and economy for wireless communications, and their relevance continues to expand with the emergence of new devices, supporting new applications such as Internet of Things (IoT), localization, and sensing. Wi-Fi is, and will continue to be, a key technology that is shaping the future of consumers and businesses worldwide.

In this proposed Special Issue (SI), papers are solicited reporting on the following representative and important topics that are closely related to the standardization process in IEEE 802.11:

• Technological overview of the latest and upcoming Wi-Fi standards
• PHY, MAC, and network layer architectures and protocols
• Privacy and security
• Spectrum and regulatory
• Implementation and deployment challenges
• Emerging applications and services

Submission Guidelines

Manuscripts should conform to the standard format as indicated in the Information for Authors section of the Paper Submission Guidelines. All manuscripts to be considered for publication must be submitted by the deadline through Manuscript Central. Select “March 2022/ Recent and Future Evolution of Wi-Fi” from the drop-down menu of Topic/Series titles.

Important Dates

Manuscript Submission Deadline: 15 September 2021 31 October 2021 (Extended Deadline)
First Review Due: 15 December 2021
Revision Due: 15 January 2022
Decision Notification: 1 February 2022
Final Manuscript Due: 15 February 2022
Publication Date: March 2022

Guest Editors

Edward Au
Huawei Technologies

Leif Wilhelmsson
Ericsson Research

Tunçer Baykaş
Kadir Has University

Joongheon Kim
Korea University