Special Issue on intelligent communications for 6G

Introduction:

Sixth-generation (6G) networks are expected to provide the high-speed and efficient transmission required to support resource-hungry, compute-intensive and delay-intolerant applications, such as autonomous vehicular applications, augmented and virtual reality (AR and VR), smart cities and Metaverse. As well as computation resources, these applications require ubiquitous connectivity for real-time sharing of an enormous amount of information-rich and safety-critical data with ultra-low latency; a major challenge for the existing Internet infrastructure. Therefore, disruptive solutions are needed to cope with the demands of these future bandwidth-hungry and low-latency applications.

It is expected that artificial intelligence (AI) will play a major role in the evolution of 6G; for example, by providing intelligent communication, computation and security mechanisms. And intelligent distributed computing architectures, comprised of edge/fog computing and microservices-centric (MS-centric) in-network computations, will increase the efficiency of smart applications by taking into consideration the rituals of 6G. In addition, the adoption of auto-machine learning approaches, such as reinforcement learning, will enable the network to learn, train and evolve independently. In this special issue, we will explore the role of intelligent communications in 6G.

Topics covered include, but are not limited to:

• New state-of-the-art communication and networking architectures in 6G
• Auto-machine learning-enabled, self-organising 6G networks
• Recent trends and technology evolution in 6G
• Interference management in 6G
• Energy and bandwidth-efficient algorithms for 6G networks
• AI and machine learning for 6G-enabled intelligent communication
• AI-assisted resource optimisation and edge/fog computing
• Design and implementation of efficient, intelligent MS-centric in-network computation
• Intelligent resource management in 6G
• In-network computing mechanisms for 6G network performance improvements
• AI-based intelligent communication and protocol design for smart cities
• Secure and reliable communications in 6G
• Trust, security and virtualisation techniques in 6G communication and networking
• Efficient computation and data distribution mechanisms in a 6G environment
• SDN/NFV/ICN-based intelligent solutions for 6G
• Testbed and simulation tools for the Implementation and measurements of network performance

Important dates:

• Submission deadline: 31 May 2023
• First notification: 30 June 2023
• Revision submission deadline: 31 July 2023
• Final notification: 25 August 2023
• Publication date: 30 December 2023

Submission instructions:

Please read the Guide for Authors before submitting. All articles should be submitted online via the editorial management system; please select article type IntelligentCommun-6G.

Guest Editors:

• Prof. Byung-Seo Kim (Lead Guest Editor), Hongik University, Korea. Email: jsnbs@hongik.ac.kr
• Prof. Muhammad Khalil Afzal, COMSATS University at Wah Cantt, Pakistan. Email: khalilafzal@ciitwah.edu.pk
• Prof. Spyridon Mastorakis, University of Nebraska at Omaha, USA. Email: smastorakis@unomaha.edu
• Prof. Balázs Sonkoly, Budapest University of Technology and Economics, Hungary. Email: sonkoly.balazs@vik.bme.hu