Each issue of the IEEE Journal on Selected Areas in Communications (JSAC) is devoted to a specific technical topic and thus provides to JSAC 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 JSAC issues span the entire field of communications and networking.

JSAC publishes only papers that are submitted in response to a Call-for-Papers. These calls are published in JSAC 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 JSAC issue must be submitted to one of the Guest Editors listed in the Call-for-Papers.

Special Issue on Intelligent Communications for Real-Time Computer Vision
Submission Date: 2024-11-01

Real-time Computer Vision (CV) is one of the essential building blocks for a wide range of emerging applications, including digital manufacturing, future transportation, telemedicine, robotics, Virtual/Augmented/Extended/Mixed Reality (VR/AR/XR/MR), digital twin and metaverse. However, real-time performance heavily depends on communication networks, sensors and computing resources disaggregated across different devices or locations over the end-to-end communications-compute continuum. While the performance of telecommunication networks has seen significant improvements over the past decades, there is a disconnect between the Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) used to measure network performance (e.g., data rate, latency, spectral efficiency, connection density, reliability, mobility, etc.) and those used in CV, which are typically associated with specific tasks. For example, in image semantic segmentation, a set of KPIs including Average Precision (AP) and mean Intersection Over Union (mIoU) are used to measure task performance. There is therefore need for better understanding the relationship and inter-dependencies between the two kinds of KPIs in the context of real-time applications. Furthermore, the performance of existing CV algorithms under variable levels of latency, jitter, and packet loss in communication systems remains relatively unexplored. For example, existing communication systems are designed to recover the original images or videos at the receiver side. This data-oriented design principle is not suitable for machine-type computer vision applications where high-fidelity reconstructions are often not required. Task-oriented design for emerging CV applications could be a promising solution. This fundamental difference reveals the gap between bit-level transmission built on Shannon’s theory, and the requirements of completing tasks successfully and safely in automation systems. Therefore, novel design principles and methodologies such as artificial intelligence for communications and CV are in urgent need.

This Special Issue (SI) is seeking interdisciplinary and integrated contributions to tackle the communication challenges for a wide range of real-time CV applications.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

Communication system designs for real-time CV applications

 - Network architectures and protocols for CV applications
 - Task/goal-oriented communications for CV applications
 - Network programmability, intelligence, and function virtualization for CV applications

Real-time CV algorithm design in the presence of latency, jitter, & packet losses in communications

 - 3D scene representations with delayed images
 - Split/Federated learning for distributed CV
 - Real-time CV for robotics and automation

Fundamentals and applications in communications and CV

 - Joint source and channel coding and semantic communications
 - Fidelity-timeliness trade-off
 - Computation and compression under latency or/and energy consumption constraints
 - Simultaneity, causality, and reasoning in real-time interactions
 - Real-time communications and CV for Metaverse
 - Recent results from testbeds, prototypes, and experiments/trails

Special Issue on The Future of Wi-Fi and Wireless Technologies in Unlicensed Spectra
Submission Date: 2024-11-30

The landscape of wireless communication is rapidly evolving and technologies operating in unlicensed spectra play a pivotal role in shaping the future of wireless connectivity. As we navigate the digital era, the demand for faster, more reliable, and ubiquitous connectivity is on the rise. Wi-Fi is the most prominent technology operating in unlicensed spectra and some estimates indicate that around 70% of the global Internet traffic crosses a Wi-Fi network.

Recent advances in Wi-Fi technology, including Wi-Fi 6 and Wi-Fi 7, have focused on keeping up with this growing traffic demand through the introduction of new technologies such as OFDMA to cope up with device density, wider 320 MHz channels in the 6 GHz band to provide high throughputs and lower latencies, puncturing to improve spectrum efficiency and deal with coexistence with incumbents in the 6 GHz band, and multi-link operation that enables seamless access to multiple channels thereby providing aggregate peak data rates that exceed 30 Gbps and single digit millisecond latency. The industry and academia are now researching the next generation technologies that can evolve Wi-Fi with the goal to provide deterministic operation and high reliability for applications such as AR/VR, industrial IoT, gaming, ultra-high-definition wireless display, to name a few.

At the same time, other technologies are also evolving and expanding their use of unlicensed spectra. Bluetooth and other narrowband technologies are in the process of being designed to operate in the 5 GHz and/or 6 GHz band. Ultra-wideband (UWB) is being widely deployed in the 6 GHz band to provide accurate and secure raging for applications such as access control. 5G NR-U is an extension of 5G technology that enables it to operate in unlicensed spectrum.

The evolution and coexistence of these various technologies is of utmost importance to ultimately provide the experience, performance and applications that users expect and is a major focus of this Specia Issue. Academia, industry, and regulatory bodies need to work together to define the future technologies, standards and regulatory frameworks that will provide the conditions necessary for adequate spectrum sharing and efficient spectrum utilization that will enable deterministic and reliable operation demanded by applications making use of unlicensed spectra.

This Special Issue aims to provide a comprehensive presentation of the state-of-the-art findings including technology, theory, design, optimization, and applications of Wi-Fi and other technologies operating in unlicensed spectra and their impact on the future of wireless communication. Original technical contributions are solicited in future Wi-Fi and related areas including, but not limited to, the following:

 - Analysis, experimentation, and performance evaluation of the latest and upcoming Wi-Fi and Bluetooth standards
 - Next generation PHY, MAC, and network layer architectures and protocols
 - Wi-Fi sensing and joint communication and sensing
 - Latency and time-sensitive services
 - Accurate and secure location and ranging
 - Spectrum sharing and coexistence
 - AI/ML applied to technologies operating in unlicensed spectra
 - Privacy and security
 - Spectrum and regulations
 - Implementation and deployment challenges
 - Emerging applications and services