Call for Papers

Fast-evolving user practices of newer information creation, sensing, sharing, and consumption in our community, business, and industry have stimulated a huge surge in data traffic with heterogeneous quality of user experience requirements. To cater to these changes, next generation communication networks need to be endowed with the capability of providing high data rate, stringent latency, and ubiquitous services. Optical wireless communication systems are being actively developed to derive the combined benefits from advanced optical and wireless technologies. With the inherent advantages, such as ultra-high bandwidth, long communication distance, and strong data privacy, optical wireless systems will become an essential building block of the future communication network infrastructure. Optical wireless communications will play an important role in network operations for 6G, WLANs, AR/VR, and beyond. Optical wireless system design and coordination is also an open topic.

The field of optical wireless communication and network systems has evolved beyond classical communication and network applications and the technologies involve deeper science principles. On one hand, besides renewed interest from Electrical Communication Engineering, Computer Engineering, Computer Science and AI communities, many of the technological advances draw learnings from the newer findings in Applied Sciences, such as, Engineering Physics and Optoelectronics. On the other hand, the applications of optical communication technologies continue to transcend beyond conventional high speed data communication. Terahertz communications, holographic representation, optical meta-materials based reconfigurable intelligent surface for beamforming, are a few example uses of advanced technologies towards fulfilling future-generation multi-disciplinary applications. This special issue is aimed to capture the advances in optical wireless communication technologies and the associated future multi-disciplinary applications.

This Special Issue is an avenue to explore the applications of optical wireless communications in emerging networks and services. It will present the latest research and technology development endeavors, network design, as well as system implementation in the advanced fields of holographic representation, terahertz communication, visible light communication, underwater communication, and low-earth orbit (LEO) satellite connectivity. These technical advances are promising in developing 6G, WiFi 8, AR/VR, and other network and service solutions. This Special Issue will also report investigations on theoretical and practical challenges to encourage joint efforts from both academia and industry. The topics of interest include, but not limited to:

• Challenges and new advances of optical wireless technologies
• Optical wireless solutions for 6G and WLANs
• New applications of optical wireless communications in AR/VR, AI, IoT, Industry 4.0
• Software defined optical wireless network with AI
• Fiber to the Room (FTTR), WiFi and PON integration, and Fixed 6G
• Optical wireless communication for space-air-ground integrated network
• Optical wireless system management, optimization, data security and reliability
• Energy transfer, harvesting and saving in optical wireless systems
• Optical reconfigurable intelligent surface aided communications
• Standards and recommendations on optical wireless communications
• Experiments, trials, testbeds, and integration of optical wireless systems

Submission Guidelines

Prospective authors should prepare their submissions in accordance with the rules specified in the Information for Authors of the IEEE Wireless Communications guidelines.

Authors should submit a PDF version of their complete manuscript to Manuscript Central. The timetable is as follows:

Important Dates

Manuscript Submission Deadline: 15 February 2023 (Extended Deadline)
Initial Decision Date: 1 April 2023
Revised Manuscript Due: 1 May 2023
Final Decision Date: 1 June 2023
Final Manuscript Due: 1 August 2023
Publication Date: October 2023

Guest Editors

Yuanqiu Luo
Futurewei Technologies, USA

Admela Jukan
Technical University of Braunschweig, Germany

Krishna M. Sivalingam
Indian Institutes of Technology Madras, India

Xiaojun (Matt) Cao
Georgia State University, USA

Suresh Subramaniam
George Washington University, USA

Gangxiang (Steven) Shen
Soochow University, China