Call for Papers

The sixth generation (6G) of wireless technology aims to use higher frequencies in the low-THz bands to achieve faster data transmission and improved energy-efficiency. However, this comes with the challenge of severe path loss, which can be compensated for by equipping wireless base stations with extremely large aperture arrays (ELAAs). This pushes the electromagnetic diffraction field from the far-field region to the near-field region, where the signal wavefront at the receiver is no longer a plane-wave. Instead, it is a spherical wavefront, which requires the wireless communication system to be designed differently. In near-field scenarios, the system performance depends on the propagation direction and the distance between the transmitter and the receiver. The near-field ELAA system design enables the generation of focusing signals at a specific location, providing high-resolution with range-dependent very narrow beamwidth. Thus, the near-field operation brings numerous benefits to both communications and localization, such as boosting the signal strength and providing a new degree of freedom in both the angle and distance domains. Consequently, the wireless communications community has experienced a substantial shift towards utilizing near-field signal processing capabilities, which offer increased degrees of freedom and high-resolution with range-dependent narrow beamwidth, to achieve spatial multiplexing. Therefore, this Special Issue (SI) aims to bring together researchers from both academia and industry to introduce a compendium of recent advances in wireless communications over near-field channels for 6G. Topics of interest include but are not limited to:

• Analog/digital beamforming for near-field communications.
• Resource allocation and channel estimation strategies for near-field communications.
• Near-field localization, sensing, and integrated sensing/communications.
• Wireless power transfer in near-field.
• Reconfigurable intelligent/holographic surfaces for near-field communications/sensing.
• Beam-squint/beam-split compensation in the near-field for millimeter-wave/THz systems.
• Spherical signal modeling/measurements for reactive/radiative near-field communications.
• Machine learning system design and processing for near-field communications
• Near-field internet-of-things applications.
• AI/ML-based design and processing of intelligent/tensorial surfaces-aided communications.
• Near-field orbital angular momentum for wireless communications.
• Modulation techniques and processing for near-field communications.
• Adaptive orientational beamforming techniques.
• Thermodynamics of near-field communications.
• Electromagnetic signal and information theory for near-field communications.
• Experiment and standardization efforts for near-field communications.
• Real-world prototypes and testbeds for near-field communications 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: 18 September 2023
Initial Decision Date: 1 December 2023
Revised Manuscript Due: 1 January 2024
Final Decision Date: 1 February 2024
Final Manuscript Due: 15 April 2024
Publication Date: June 2024

Guest Editors

Ahmet M. Elbir (Lead Guest Editor)
University of Luxembourg, Luxembourg

Angel Lozano
UPF Barcelona, Spain

Davide Dardari
University of Bologna, Italy

Henk Wymeersch
Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden

Peter Vouras
National Institute of Standards and Technology, USA

Shuai Wang
Beijing Institute of Technology, China