Call for Papers

Networks deployed in in harsh environments, such as high-speed trains, subways, deserts, trenches, forests, and underground mining, should be specially constructed to withstand extreme conditions such as high or low temperatures, corrosive humidity, extreme weather or excessive dust and dirt. Such applications require specially designed wireless networks, sensor networks, fiber-optic networks, or satellite networks, that can perform under extreme conditions and meet QoS, security, and reliability requirements. Quite often, networks in harsh environments have an extremely low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), high doppler shift, and long latency, and often consume more power and energy. Bandwidth limitations in harsh environments require spectrum efficient communications. The current state of the art technologies such as edge computing, massive MIMO, advanced modulation and channel coding, artificial intelligence, and signal processing, provide different venues to explore this challenging area. Although 3GPP provides some standards for certain networks, such as 5G wireless networks and satellite networks, they are for general purpose networks; networks in harsh environments need further investigation.  

The goal of this Special Issue is to publish the most recent results of networking technologies for harsh environments. We invite survey and tutorial articles directed to the Special Issue. Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Network science foundation for networking in harsh environments
• Edge computing for networking in harsh environment
• Massive MIMO for networking in harsh environments
• MAC of networking in harsh environments
• Network layer design in harsh environments
• Spectrum and energy efficiency for networks in harsh environments
• New multiple access techniques for networks in harsh environments
• Artificial intelligence for networks in harsh environments

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 ‘May 2022/Networks in Harsh Environments’ from the drop-down menu of topic titles.

Important Dates

Manuscript Submission Deadline: 30 November 2021
Initial Decision Notification: 15 January 2022
Revised Manuscript Due: 15 February 2022
Final Decision Notification: 15 March 2022
Final Manuscript Due: 31 March 2022
Publication Date: May 2022

Guest Editors

Qilian Liang
University of Texas at Arlington, USA

Tariq S. Durrani
University of Strathclyde, UK

Jing Liang
University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, China

Xin Wang
LinkedIn Corp, USA

Jinhwan Koh
Gyeongsang National University, Korea

Shu Xiao
Cisco Systems Inc, USA