Advances and Challenges in Future Networks

Dear Colleagues,

We are delighted to invite you to submit your papers to the upcoming Special Issue of Electronics, entitled “Advances and Challenges in Future Networks”.  The details are provided below.

Future networks, including the highly anticipated sixth-generation (6G) networks, are expected to facilitate real-time interactions between humans, cyber systems, and physical devices. They are also expected to natively integrate AI mechanisms, provide global coverage across different domains (space, air, ground, and water), and enable ubiquitous intelligence by integrating communications, sensing, and computing capabilities. Specifically, future wireless networks will revolutionize the mobile networking paradigm by elevating service quality and improving the user experience to meet the demands of a data-driven and AI-based society.

However, the current architectures, protocols, and technologies of the Internet and 5G networks may not be adequate to meet the demands of these future use cases. In particular, the need for continuous service in high-mobility scenarios presents significant challenges that require innovative designs and optimizations for both present and future networks. Such innovations should facilitate the exchange of information, such as policy, intent, and performance indicators, to support a growing number of active devices and larger volumes of data.

To address the importance of advancing future networks, this Special Issue aims to collect recent developments in communication systems that concentrate on novel optimization approaches, network designs, protocols, and technologies for future networking. Specifically, this Issue welcomes the submission of creative and original ideas from academia, industry, and government on optimization methods, network algorithms, design methodologies, communication protocols, service schemes, and practical systems. Potential topics for inclusion in this Issue include, but are not limited to, the following:

• Advanced radio resource management for 5G and beyond;
• Mathematical optimization for wireless communications;
• Distributed, centralized, and hybrid algorithms for future networking;
• Wireless power transfer and energy harvesting techniques;
• Energy-efficient communication schemes;
• Distributed learning and game theory for wireless communications;
• Model-based and data-driven network controls;
• Deep reinforcement learning enabled intelligent networks;
• AI-driven optimization technologies;
• Recent advances on Vehicle-to-Everything (V2X) networks;
• Novel designs of massive MIMO, MU-MIMO, Multi-RAT systems;
• Advanced beamforming and signal processing techniques;
• 6G space–air–ground integrated network architectures, protocols, and algorithms;
• Emerging technologies on small cell and cell-free wireless networks;
• Inventive algorithms and optimizations for future networks;
• Survey or review papers on future networks;
• Testbed or case studies on future networks.

We look forward to receiving your contributions.

Prof. Dr. Jain-Shing Liu
Dr. Chunhung Richard Lin
Guest Editors

Manuscript Submission Information

Manuscripts should be submitted online at www.mdpi.com by registering and logging in to this website. Once you are registered, click here to go to the submission form. Manuscripts can be submitted until the deadline. All submissions that pass pre-check are peer-reviewed. Accepted papers will be published continuously in the journal (as soon as accepted) and will be listed together on the special issue website. Research articles, review articles as well as short communications are invited. For planned papers, a title and short abstract (about 100 words) can be sent to the Editorial Office for announcement on this website.

Submitted manuscripts should not have been published previously, nor be under consideration for publication elsewhere (except conference proceedings papers). All manuscripts are thoroughly refereed through a single-blind peer-review process. A guide for authors and other relevant information for submission of manuscripts is available on the Instructions for Authors page. Electronics is an international peer-reviewed open access semimonthly journal published by MDPI.

Please visit the Instructions for Authors page before submitting a manuscript. The Article Processing Charge (APC) for publication in this open access journal is 2400 CHF (Swiss Francs). Submitted papers should be well formatted and use good English. Authors may use MDPI's English editing service prior to publication or during author revisions.

• 5G, B5G, and 6G
• key technologies for future networks
• algorithms, protocols, and optimizations for networking
• AI-enabled intelligent networks
• deep reinforcement learning for communication