Call for Papers

As networks continued to gain popularity throughout the 1980s and well into today, communication technologies have taken a critical number of major turns and twists, with a wide variety of wireless technologies, protocols, services and configurations developed and deployed. There have been murmurs of network functions virtualization and software-defined networking in the past ten years, but these technologies have been caught in the spotlight of attention in recent years. Today, network functions, e.g., firewalls, reside in the cloud to increase network agility and scalability while also enabling effective use of network resources. Similarly, mobility has advanced from an employee former luxury to today’s business necessity. Mobile devices and smartphones have not only transformed personal communications but also increased business productivity and revolutionized our societies. Consonantly, the Internet of Things (IoT) has been dominating the technological landscape, from autonomous connected vehicles to wearable devices.

Communication is pivotal to IoT. Networking technologies allow IoT devices to communicate with other devices, applications and services. There exists a broad range of connectivity technologies available for system engineers and developers building IoT products and systems. Depending on the application, requirements such as range, data features, power demands, intermittent connectivity, interoperability and security will mandate the choice of one or more technologies.

With the significant development of intelligent communication technology, IoT is expected to play a major role in several application domains such as e-health, intelligent transportation systems and smart cities. This feature topic focuses on the key challenges and considerations that are related to communications within IoT, including power usage, intermittent connectivity, interoperability, orchestration and security.

In this Feature Topic (FT), researchers from academia and practitioners from industry are invited to submit their innovative research on future communication architectures and protocols to support IoT services and applications. This FT aims at addressing advances in research on future communication and networking technologies, covering topics ranging from enabling technologies to emerging applications and industrial experiences. Potential topics include, but not limited to the following:

• IoT communication architectures, standards and protocol stacks
• Innovative middleware, frameworks and services for coordinating devices in IoT networks
• Communication security and privacy for IoT networks
• Interoperability and dynamic adaptation of IoT networks
• Practical and innovative applications of IoT networks, including smart cities, intelligent transportation systems and e-health
• IoT enabling technologies, including low power and energy harvesting, machine-type communications, radio frequency identification, sensors, wireless sensor networks, real-time systems and embedded software
• Things-centric, data-centric and service-centric architecture
• Optical communications for IoT
• State-of-the-art reviews on future communication trends and IoT

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 “December 2019: Future Communication Trends towards Internet of Things Services and Applications” topic from the drop-down menu of Topic/Series titles.

Important Dates

Manuscript Submission Deadline: 1 March 2019
Initial Decision: 1 June 2019
Revised Manuscript Due: 1 July 2019
Final Decision: 15 August 2019
Final Manuscript Due: 1 September 2019
Publication Date: December 2019

Guest Editors

Joel J. P. C. Rodrigues
National Institute of Telecommunications – Inatel; Instituto de Telecomunicaçõe

Sohail Jabbar
National Textile University

Mohamed Abdallah
Hamid Bin Khalifa University

Christos Verikoukis
Telecommunications Technological Centre of Catalonia

Mohsen Guizani
Qatar University, Qatar