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IEEE Communications Magazine

Feature Topic: Communications, Caching, and Computing for Content-Centric Mobile Networks

http://www.comsoc.org/commag/cfp/communications-caching-and-computing-content-centric-mobile-networks

The driving forces behind the exponential growth in mobile cellular network traffic have fundamentally shifted from being the steady increase in demand for “connection-centric” communications, such as phone calls and text messages, to the explosion of “content-centric” communications, such as video streaming and content sharing. The mobile cellular network architectures of today are, however, still designed with a connection-centric communication mindset. Moreover, the myriad technological advances proposed for beyond 4G and 5G mobile networks still mostly focus on capacity increase, which is fundamentally constrained by the limited radio spectrum resources as well as the diminishing investment efficiency for operators and, therefore, will always lag behind the growth rate of mobile traffic. It can be argued that the logjam in the cellular networks cannot be addressed by improving connection capability alone, but instead must be tackled by fundamentally addressing the underlying ineffectiveness of the current communication architecture for massive content delivery.

To cope with the shift to content-centric mobile cellular networks, a new design paradigm beyond the current connection-centric communication architecture is needed. In today’s mobile networks, caching and computing capabilities are already ubiquitous, both at the base-stations and on user devices themselves. How to effectively utilize these existing capabilities to address the needs for massive content distribution is a fundamental question the current and future research must address.

This feature topic aims to consolidate the timely and comprehensive overviews of the current state-of-the art in terms of fundamental research ideas and network engineering geared towards exploiting communications, caching, and computing (3C) for future content-centric mobile networks. The themes of interest within the scope of this FT (Feature Topic) include (but are not limited to):

• Theoretical Foundations: Fundamental limits of caching; coding for distributed storage, cooperative communications for content distribution
• Architectural Advances: Broadcast and cellular network convergence; content-centric resource virtualization, mobile edge computing & Cloud RAN
• Protocol Engineering: Distributed caching at wireless edge; pricing/incentive based content distribution
• Modeling/Analytics: Content-centric traffic modeling
• Prototyping, test-beds and field trials

 SUBMISSION GUIDELINES

Articles should be tutorial in nature, with the intended audience being all members of the communications technology community. They should be written in a style comprehensible to readers outside the specialty of the article. Mathematical equations should not be used (in justified cases up to three simple equations are allowed). Articles should not exceed 4500 words. Figures and tables should be limited to a combined total of six. The number of references is recommended not to exceed 15. In some rare cases, more mathematical equations, figures, and tables may be allowed, if well-justified. In general, however, mathematics should be avoided; instead, references to papers containing the relevant mathematics should be provided. Complete guidelines for preparation of the manuscript are posted at http://www.comsoc.org/commag/paper-submission-guidelines. Please send a pdf (preferred) or MSWORD formatted paper via Manuscript Central (http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/commag-ieee). Register or log in, and go to Author Center. Follow the instructions there. Select "August 2016/3C for Content-Centric Mobile Networks” as the FeatureTopic category for your submission.

 IMPORTANT DATES

• Manuscript Submission Due: Jan. 1, 2016
• Acceptance Notification: April 1, 2016
• Final Manuscript Due: June 1, 2016
• Publication date: August 2016.

GUEST EDITORS:

• Prof. Meixia Tao (leading guest editor), Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China, mxtao@sjtu.edu.cn
• Prof. Wei Yu, University of Toronto, Canada, weiyu@ece.utoronto.ca
• Dr. Wei (Andrew) Tan, Huawei Technologies, Shanghai, China andrew.tan@huawei.com
• Prof. Sumit Roy, University of Washington, Seattle, United States, sroy@u.washington.edu
• Prof. Tarik Taleb, Aalto University, Finland, talebtarik@gmail.com