The IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking (TCCN) is committed to timely publishing of high-quality manuscripts that advance the state-of-the-art of cognitive communications and networking research. The focus of the Transactions will be on “cognitive” behaviors in all aspects of communications and network control, from the PHY functions (including hardware) through the applications (including architecture), and in all kinds of communication networks and systems regardless of type of traffic, transmission media, operating environment, or capabilities of communicating devices. IEEE TCCN will welcome papers dealing with the design, analysis, evaluation, experimentation and testing of cognitive communications and network systems. Inter-disciplinary approaches are encouraged. Papers that focus on experimental infrastructures or tools for cognitive communications and networking will also be considered, provided that they contain significant original contributions in the communications or networking areas.

Since the term “cognitive” may be interpreted in multiple ways, we define here a cognitive entity as one that is capable of selecting and carrying out actions depending on its own goals and its perception of the world and that may also be capable of learning from experience by interacting with the world. Thus, a cognitive entity means an intelligent entity which possesses the following basic components: perception, learning/reasoning and decision making. Papers that will be considered for publication in the IEEE Transactions on Cognitive Communications and Networking must BOTH explicitly include approaches related to the “intelligent entity” AND provide original contributions on communications or networking.

Topics of interest include (but are not limited to):

    Machine learning and artificial intelligence for communications and networking
    Distributed learning, reasoning and optimization for communications and networking
    Architecture, protocols, cross-layer, and cognition cycle design for intelligent communications and networking
    Information/communications theory and network science for intelligent communications and networking
    Ontologies, languages, and knowledge representation for intelligent communications and networking
    Security and privacy issues in intelligent communications and networking
    Cognitive radio and dynamic spectrum access
    Cognitive technologies supporting software-defined radios, systems and networks
    Emerging services and applications enabled by intelligent communications and networks

Special issues will form an integral part of IEEE TCCN. Guest editorial teams are welcome to propose special issues on new emerging areas in cognitive and intelligent communications and networking. Please contact the Editor-in-Chief if you are interested in submitting a proposal.

Co-Sponsors: IEEE Computer Society and IEEE Signal Society Processing

Special Issue on Symbiotic Communication: When Backscatter Communications Meet Cognitive Radio in the Era of IoT
Submission Date: 2024-02-01

To boost the development of the emerging applications in wireless networks, such as smart city, Intelligent transportation system, smart industry, smart agriculture, AR/VR/MR, a large number of Internet of Thing (IoT) devices will be widely deployed. Therefore, it is critical to design novel spectrum-, energy- and cost-efficient wireless communication technologies to support massive IoT devices over a large area. Recently, symbiotic communication that integrates active and passive communications has emerged as a promising technology to fulfill such demand. Symbiotic communication is emerging as an innovative wireless paradigm for simultaneously supporting active primary transmission and passive IoT transmission. The key idea is to modify and reflect the incident signals from the active primary transmitter instead of generating signals by itself (i.e., riding on the active communication for passive IoT information transfer), thus avoiding the need of power-hungry RF chains (e.g., oscillators and power amplifier) which achieves high spectrum- and energy-efficiency for both primary and secondary systems. The particular feature makes it possible to realize the passive information transfer where ambient backscatter communication can be used at IoT device by modulating signal on the incident signals from the active transmitter, and/or other advanced low power transmission/protocol design, such as Radio Frequency Identification (RFID) and reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS).

While with wide range of applications, the research of symbiotic communications for the IoT is still in its infancy and calls for more extensive and in-depth research efforts. Effective symbiotic communications will be created by drawing upon intertwined research areas including backscatter communications, ultra-low power transmission, cognitive radio, machine learning, and signal processing. This Special Issue (SI) aims to consolidate solid works of the current state-of-the art in terms of fundamental research ideas and network engineering, geared towards exploiting symbiotic communications for providing sophisticated wireless platform with ultra-low power even zero-power transmission over a large scale of wireless devices, to boost the development of connected autonomous driving, massive IoT, smart grid, intelligent manufactory, AR/VR/MR, and etc. Theoretical, experimental studies, and also case studies are highly encouraged. Relevant topics related to symbiotic communication include, but are not limited to:
- Signal processing technologies
- System Modelling
- Transceiver design
- Performance analysis
- Modulation and demodulation
- Secrecy and covert communication
- Standards and network protocols
- Multiple access schemes
- Radio resource management and scheduling
- AI-empowered designs
- Novel transmission technologies
- Enabling technologies such as wireless powered communication, integrated sensing and communication, edge computing and unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV)
- Emerging applications via edge intelligence: vehicular networking, massive IoT, smart grid, healthcare, intelligent manufactory, etc;
- Context-aware schemes: incentive mechanisms, game theoretic approach, network economic etc.
- Mobility management
- Tactile internet
- Prototyping, test-beds and field trials.