Each issue of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (J-SAC) is devoted to a specific technical topic and thus provides to J-SAC readers a collection of up-to-date papers on that topic. These issues are valuable to the research community and become valuable references. The technical topics covered by J-SAC issues span the entire field of communications and networking. J-SAC publishes only papers that are submitted in response to a Call-for-Papers. These calls are published in J-SAC issues and other publications of the IEEE Communications Society as appropriate to the subject area of the call. Papers submitted for review for possible publication in a J-SAC issue must be submitted to one of the Guest Editors listed in the Call-for-Papers. 

Recent issue themes included:

    Speech and Image Coding.
    Medical Communications.
    HDTV and Digital Video Communications.
    B-ISDN Applications and Economics.
    Wireless Personal Communications.
    Advances in Satellite Communication.
    Fading Channels and Equalization.
    Spread Spectrum.

Special Issue on Integrated Ground-Air-Space Wireless Networks for 6G Mobile
Submission Date: 2024-02-15

With the deployment of 5G mobile, the research toward 6G wireless has arisen in both industries and academy. Among several potentially disruptive ambitions, 6G wireless is envisioned to provide seamless connectivity for global broadband coverage and computing services. For this purpose, integrated ground-air-space three-dimensional networks (3D networks) that cover satellites, aerial platforms and terrestrial nodes are generally recognized as a promising key component.

Though the full concepts are still under development, one common vision is to provide not only wireless connections but also computing services, owing to the fast development of computational capability of ground, aerial and space platforms.

Despite many results on LEO satellite and aerial platform communication, integrated networks across space-air-ground impose technical challenges for communication and computing, calling for a rethinking integrated ground-air-space system in communication and computing. There has been substantial research recently, such as on LEO and aerial platform based broadband access, multilayer satellite network-based distributed computing, satellite-assisted sensing and integrated communication, IoT-over-satellite, air IoT etc.

This Special Issue will provide a comprehensive collection of the state-of-the-art theory, design, optimization, and applications of 3D networks for communication and computing. Original technical contributions are solicited in the relevant areas including, but not limited to, the following:
- Satellite-based distributed machine learning and computing, and satellite-assisted remote sensing and communications
- Aerial platforms for computing offloading and cooperative communication
- Optimized resource allocation, scheduling of communication and computation, network optimization and routing design
- Spectrum management and engineering
- Mobility and handover management
- Theoretical limits for communications and computing
- Error control, modulation and waveform design, and MAC layer design

Special Issue on Next Generation Advanced Transceiver Technologies
Submission Date: 2024-03-01

Next generation wireless networks, notably 6G, will embrace a horizon of new Internet-of-Everything (IoE) applications, such as autonomous vehicles, industry automation, holographic telepresence, virtual/augmented reality (VR/AR), etc. To accommodate these applications, future 6G wireless networks need to achieve much more stringent performance requirements than that in 5G, such as ultra high data rates and energy efficiency, extremely high reliability and low latency, as well as global coverage and connectivity. These demanding performance requirements cannot be achieved by existing 5G technologies, thus motivating the need for developing revolutionary technologies and new network paradigms for future 6G networks.

Among others, next generation advanced transceiver (NGAT) design is a core technology that represents a broad concept comprising innovative designs in the transceiver architecture, hardware, modulation and channel coding, waveform, channel estimation, detection, interference management, etc., which lay the foundations for efficient signal transmission and reception. Unlike existing transceiver designs that mainly target low-frequency bands, data-oriented communications, and terrestrial networks, NGAT has an ambitious goal to boost next generation network performance in broader frequency-bands, diverse applications, and new systems and networks, which introduce both opportunities and challenges. For example, NGAT is expected to achieve efficient communications across a broad spectrum, ranging from sub-6 GHz to the mmWave and even Terahertz bands. Second, NGAT will not only support communication services, but also offer other exciting functionalities such as computing, sensing, control, security, localization, and energy harvesting. Third, NGAT will enable a communication paradigm shift from conventional terrestrial-only networks to new integrated space/air/ground networks, thus realizing all-time, all-domain, and all-space communications. However, realizing the full potential of NGAT in practical communication scenarios is highly challenging and many important open problems remain unsolved.

This Special Issue (SI) seeks novel contributions from researchers and practitioners that explore NGAT technologies, innovations, and applications for next generation wireless systems, in order to bridge the gap between theory and applications. We solicit high-quality original research papers on topics with an NGAT focus including, but not limited to:

- Terahertz/mmWave implementations
- Modulation, waveform design, and channel coding
- Relevant channel estimation methodologies
- Multiple access issues
- Full duplex designs
- Uses in combination with reconfigurable intelligent surfaces
- Modeling and analysis of non-linear transceiver behavior
- Semantic-aware transceiver designs
- Native-AI empowered architectures
- Multi-functional transceivers
- Related circuit theory and architectures
- Energy efficient hardware implementations
- Transceiver specifications/requirements for various use cases

Special Issue on Advances in Internet Routing and Addressing
Submission Date: 2024-05-31

Applications are placing increasingly sophisticated demands on the network for better quality, more predictability, and greater reliability. Some of these applications are futuristic predictions (for example, holographic conferencing, immersive digital worlds, intelligent industry, telemedicine, automated agriculture, and sensory Internet), while existing applications are already seeing real network demands (such as multiplayer augmented- or virtual-reality games, industrial networking, and distributed AI). This overlaps with a growing trend to extend end-to-end communications to include highly computational processes (e.g., emergent intelligent application), machines and moving objects (such as autonomous cars and drones), while increasing the ability to virtualize and replicate any network or service for improved efficiency and redundancy. Also, new environments, such as beyond 5G, manufacturing, or Non-Terrestrial Networks pose new challenges to the requirements, such as time-variance of connectivity availability. At the same time, integrating connectivity with computational services is seen as another important consideration to improve the overall system’s efficiency and, ultimately, carbon footprint.

In this Special Issue, we solicit work on use cases, design principles, architectures, and techniques, but also insights into implementations and experiments with novel solutions that address the highlighted objectives.

Topics of Interest
- Advanced applications and use case analysis and requirements
- Goals and challenges in future and evolving routing and addressing schemes
- Architecture frameworks for multi-purpose routing
- Domain specific interconnection architectures
- Routing on multiple optimality criteria
- Compute-aware routing and forwarding
- Low latency forwarding techniques
- Time-variable routing and forwarding
- Enhanced host protocol stacks for advanced routing and forwarding solutions
- Routing on new forms of identification
- Coordination of information and decisions across multiple domains (regions & technology layers)
- Routing based on formal routing algebras and regular expressions approaches
- Routing for constrained and intermittently connected environments
- Routing and forwarding based on AI-based methods, such as federated learning
- Centralized and other platforms for routing and addressing architectures
- Routing with modern SDN architectures and protocols
- Programmable forwarding architectures for data and for control.
- Security & Privacy of semantic enhancements
- Scalability analysis of novel routing mechanisms and semantic enhancements
- Economic and game-theoretical analysis of enhanced network semantics
- Stability design and analysis
- Experience and deployment