Call for Papers

Submit a Paper

Recently, the Internet of Things (IoT) has been considered for its applications in diverse settings, such as intelligent urban environments, advanced manufacturing facilities, and environmental surveillance. However, significant obstacles exist in the implementation of these IoT solutions due to its salient features, such as heterogeneity, application demands, restricted resources, and massive connectivity. To tackle these issues, merging satellite-based networks with conventional ground-based networks has been proposed as an effective and affordable option for enhancing IoT device connectivity.

With the coming 6G technologies, many groundbreaking applications are anticipated. The 6G network surpasses 5G in terms of spectral efficiency, communication energy efficiency, and data transmission rates, broader network spectral bandwidth, and support for non-terrestrial networks (NTNs). NTNs have been viewed as a critical element of the 6G framework to enable global, pervasive, and uninterrupted connectivity to overcome the coverage limitations of the existing 5G networks. Incorporating NTNs into the 6G wireless ecosystem is critical for ensuring service availability, continuity, ubiquity, and scalability. As a result, a work item for 3GPP Release 17 has been greenlit in December 2019 to outline and assess the solutions for the NTNs, which aimed to prioritize satellite access under the framework of NR. The study items for Releases 18 and 19 have also been identified, highlighting the necessity for long-term research within the 6G timeline. Moreover, to facilitate direct communications between IoT devices and NTNs, future IoT systems need to support a larger quantity of devices and multi-access environments, where various types of wireless spectrum, such as Sub-6GHz, Millimeter-wave, and Terahertz, should be employed efficiently. 

Considering its timeliness, we propose a Special Issue (SI) on 6G non-terrestrial networks for Intelligent IoT services. The goal of this SI is to promote the development of intelligent IoT based on 6G non-terrestrial networks. This SI will invite submissions from scientists, industry practitioners, and researchers working in the domains of Internet of things, artificial intelligence, 5G, 6G, non-terrestrial networks, etc. It will comprehensively cover the algorithms, frameworks, and technologies for intelligent IoT. The technical scope of the proposal includes, but not limited to: 

• Novel visions, concepts, and theories on 6G NTN IoT .
• Emerging NTN IoT models, protocols, and architectures.
• AI and big data driven self-sustainable 6G IoT .
• Non-terrestrial IoT services supported by blockchain and edge computing.
• 6G technologies for NTN-assisted IoT systems.
• Energy harvesting and energy efficiency for green NTN IoT.
• Holistic designs for 6G NTN IoT networks.
• Security, privacy, and trust challenges in 6G non-terrestrial IoT.
• Testbeds/experimental results, and real-world use cases.
• Applications or services over 6G NTN IoT networks.

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 the magazine’s Manuscript Central submission site. Select “May2024/6GNon-TerrestrialNetworks” from the drop-down menu of Topic titles.

Important Dates

Manuscript Submission Deadline: 30 November 2023 (Extended Deadline)
Initial Decision Notification: 15 January 2024
Revised Manuscript Due: 15 February 2024
Final Decision Notification: 15 March 2024
Final Manuscript Due: 31 March 2024
Publication Date: May/June 2024

Guest Editors

Min Jia
Harbin Institute of Technology in Harbin, China

Hsiao-Hwa Chen
National Cheng Kung University, Taiwan

Zheng Chang
University of Jyvaskyla, Finland

Ning Zhang
University of Windsor, Canada

Zhibin Wu
CETC Potevio Science & Technology Co., Ltd, China