Call for Papers

Nowadays, there will be more requirements for humans exploiting space, terrestrial and ocean systems as enormous connections of devices with different services, such as intelligent transportation systems, environmental monitoring, security surveillance, and unmanned border awareness systems. With the recent technological advancement and convergence of satellite communications, the fixed network, and mobile networking, the new future connection paradigm has been envisioned. Future connection is designed to integrate the extended space network, the fixed network, and mobile networks in order to provide comprehensive services and global anytime anywhere network access. However, with the development of these new services and scenarios, the expectations for the performance, reliability, and security of communications networks are greater than ever. The future connection should be intelligent enough to adapt to very dynamic topologies, and diverse high-precision QoS requirements for ultra-high efficiency and resiliency purposes.

Recently, Artificial Intelligence (AI) and Machine Learning (ML) has seen great success in solving problems from various domains. It is envisioned that AI/ML will be an important technology for the successful development of future networks, especially in dynamic service provisioning, adaptive traffic control, and security issues. Compared to meticulously manually designed strategies, AI/ML provides a generalized model and uniform learning method without pre-specified processes for various network scenarios. In addition, such techniques can effectively handle complex problems and high-dimensional situations. Indeed, AI/ML methods have already achieved remarkable success in many complex system control domains, including computer games and robotic control.

Until now, limited research efforts have been done and a limited number of papers have been published on Artificial Intelligence Powered Future Connection. The scope of this proposal is to present and highlight the advances and the latest intelligent technologies, implementations and applications in the field of future connection, to move the theoretical and practical frontiers forward for a deeper understanding from both the academic and industrial viewpoints. The topics of interest for this special issue include, but are not limited to:

• AI/ML powered beyond 5G networks
• AI/ML powered space-terrestrial integrated networks
• Intelligent space-terrestrial integrated network applications such as smart transportation, intelligent UAV networks, aerial surveillance, etc.
• Big data and learning fusion in future connection
• Closed-loop network intelligent control systems
• Edge intelligence for future connection
• In-network intelligent for future connection
• Congestion control with AI/ML
• Network QoS with AI & ML
• Network security with AI/ML
• Protocol design and optimization using machine learning
• Resource allocation for shared/virtualized networks using machine learning
• Intelligent future connection experiment testbeds

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 the “July 2021/Artificial Intelligence Empowered Future Connection” topic from the drop-down menu of Topic/Series titles.

Important Dates

Manuscript Submission Deadline: 15 October 2020
Initial Decision: 1 December 2020
Revised Manuscript Due: 1 January 2021
Final Decision: 1 February 2021
Final Manuscript Due: 1 March 2021
Publication Date: July 2021

Guest Editors

Song Guo
The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong, China

Haipeng Yao
Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China

Manqing Wu

China Electronics Technology Group Corporation, China

Sherman Shen
University of Waterloo, Canada

Yuanyuan Yang
Stony Brook University, USA

Pascal Lorenz
University of Haute-Alsace, France