Call for Papers

Currently, many aerial platforms, satellite systems, space and terrestrial integrated networks (STINs) have been developed while some of them are still under construction. The basic idea of STIN is to simply connect heterogeneous devices, systems and networks together via Internet, thus providing much more effective services than traditional infrastructures. Through effective acquisition, coordination, transmission and aggregation of multi-dimensional information, the resource planning, task distribution and action management of STIN can be realized. The goal is to provide all kinds of users a real-time and reliable communication infrastructure by conducting efficient collaboration. However, there are still many open issues need to be solved. For example, signal distortion and fading to the network connections in the atmosphere often occur. Therefore, the design of STIN typically needs to take into account signal distortion and fading, multiple-access interference and large latency, etc.

By now, the development of STIN has reached a crossroad. Radio resource management, transparent handover, network management, wireless communication and other promising technologies (e.g., long-term evolution, software-defined networks, or device to device communication) are the critical research trends for such hybrid satellite-aerial-terrestrial networks. This Special Issue is soliciting scientific research papers that address important research problems towards the realization of STIN. Research papers that describe seamless migration from the current wireless networks to the STIN and introduce the brand-new networking system for the STIN are of high interest. In general, topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

• Heterogeneous wireless network architectures and infrastructure for supporting STIN
• QoS and QoE improvement in STIN
• Wireless communication and networking in STIN
• Resource allocation and energy efficiency for STIN
• STIN-relevant network test-beds, simulators, open-source codes, and tools
• Network performance analysis and modeling optimization on STIN
• Security, privacy and trust issues for in STIN

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 “January 2019: Space and Terrestrial Integrated Network: Emerging Research Advances, Prospects, and Challenges” topic from the drop-down menu of Topic/Series titles.

Important Dates

Manuscript Submission Deadline: June 1, 2018
First Revision/Reject Notification: September 15, 2018
Acceptance Notification: October 15, 2018
Final Manuscript Due: November 15, 2018
Publication Date:  January 2019

Guest Editors

Han-Chieh Chao
National Dong Hwa University, Taiwan

Douglas Comer
Purdue University, USA

Odej Kao
Technical University of Berlin, Germany