Call for Papers

With the standardization of 5G systems, the research focus is slowly shifting towards the potential designs, use cases, and performance targets for 6G systems. To enable the future heterogeneous services and applications, including fully immersive Virtual/Augmented Reality (VR/AR), holographic telepresence, industry 4.0, and robotics, the 6G wireless networks need to provide unprecedented massive user access, heterogeneous data traffic, high bandwidth efficiency, and low latency services. Thus, to support the aforementioned services and applications, the novel next generation multiple access (NGMA) schemes have to go beyond merely combining existing schemes and incorporate novel concepts such as massive non-orthogonal multiple access and advanced space division multiple access.

NGMA schemes can achieve higher bandwidth efficiency and higher connectivity by supporting multiple users in the allotted resource blocks, including time slots, frequency bands, spreading codes, and power levels. Thus, NGMA can improve the 6G network performance in terms of massive connectivity, energy efficiency and low latency. Moreover, to facilitate the intelligent applications in 6G, NGMA schemes must embrace intelligence. Recent advances in artificial intelligence/machine learning and big data can provide promising approaches to tackle new challenges in intelligent NGMA.

This Special Issue (SI) aims to not only serve as a collection of new ideas and recent developments to address challenges arising in exploring NGMA schemes in 6G, but also to inspire researchers to contribute to this promising field. Prospective authors are invited to submit original manuscripts on topics including, but not limited to:

• Resource allocation and mobility management for NGMA
•  NGMA for ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC)
• Massive NOMA schemes
• Non-orthogonal random access schemes
• Machine learning (ML)/AI aided NGMA
• Multiple antenna-assisted NGMA
• Interplay between reconfigurable intelligent surfaces (RIS)/simultaneously transmitting and reflecting (STAR) RIS and NGMA
• Security provisioning for NGMA
• NGMA for integrated terrestrial and aerial 6G networks
• Grant free and semi-grant free multiple access schemes
• NGMA for emerging technologies, e.g., THz, CoMP, OTFS, VLC, UAV, integrated sensing and communication (ISAC)
• Integration of NGMA with multi-access edge computing (MEC)
• NGMA in wireless sensor network
• NGMA in semantic communications
• Hardware implementation challenges of NGMA
• Other possible multiple access schemes towards NGMA

Submission Guidelines

Manuscripts should conform to the standard format as indicated in the “Information for Author'' section of the Paper Submission Guidelines.

All manuscripts to be considered for publication must be submitted by the deadline through Manuscript Central. Select “January 2023/Next Generation Multiple Access for 6G'' from the drop-down menu of topic titles.

Important Dates

Manuscript Submission Deadline: 20 September 2022
Initial Decision Notification: 15 October 2022
Revised Manuscript Due: 15 November 2022
Final Decision: 30 November 2022
Final Manuscript Due: 15 December, 2022
Publication Date: January/February, 2023

Guest Editors

Fang Fang (Leading Editor)
Western University, Canada

Yuanwei Liu
Queen Mary University of London, U.K.

Harpreet S. Dhillon
Virginia Tech, USA

Yiqun Wu
Huawei Technologies Company Ltd., China

Zhiguo Ding
The University of Manchester, U.K.

Ertugrul Basar
Koç University, Turkey