Journal of Communications and Information Networks

Call for Paper

We are entering a world where connected gadgets - commonly known as the Internet-of-Things (IoT) - are embedded in walls, wearables, machineries, and even within bodies to instrument almost every part of our lives and surroundings. Achieving this vision requires the gadgets to have ultra-low power consumption or even zero power consumption, ultra-low cost, compact size, etc. With techniques such as RF power harvesting and backscattering, near-zero power communication can well meet these new requirements. Due to its excellent characteristics, near-zero power communication is expected to become one important candidate for next-generation technology on the Internet of Things.

It can be predicted that near-zero power communication and sensing technologies will have significant advantages in a wide range of applications. For example, industrial wireless sensor network for vertical industries, smart transportation, smart logistics, smart warehousing, smart agriculture, smart cities, and energy field, as well as applications for individual consumers such as smart wearables, smart home and medical care, etc.

Despite significant research in near-zero power communication over the past decade, key technical open problems remain under-explored. Specifically, due to the extremely simplified terminal structure and extreme constraint on power consumption, the performance of today’s near-zero power IoT systems, in terms of data rate, operation distance, sensing accuracy, sensing rate, etc, is far from being satisfying. These hinder the widespread adoption of near-zero power IoT systems in real applications. It is necessary to provide new designs spanning across the network stack to include circuits, embedded systems, physical layer, MAC, and network protocols as well as applications. It is also necessary to explore innovative opportunities including Terahertz backscatter communication and acoustic backscatter for everyday IoT devices to communicate over surfaces or in air.

The objective of this special issue is to provide a forum across academia and industry to explore recent advances, research opportunities, and technical challenges in near-zero power communication and sensing for IoT. This special issue will bring together leading researchers to present their research in this area including novel ideas, models, methodologies, system designs and architectures, experiments and benchmarks, as well as research surveys. Authors are invited to submit original manuscripts on topics including, but not limited to:

(1)Low-power parallel transmission

(2)Low-power long-range communication

(3)Embedded and energy-harvesting systems

(4)Wireless sensing with radio, light, sound, and acoustics

(5)Wireless localization and tracking

(6)Security and privacy issues/solutions for low-power communication and sensing systems

(7)Multi-band and wide-band backscatter

(8)Millimeter, Terahertz and Quantum backscatter

(9)Visible light backscatter and acoustic backscatter

(10)Backscatter network and MAC protocols

(11)Multi-hop backscatter networks

(12)Other related areas

Important Dates

Submission Deadline: Jun. 30, 2024

Initial Decision: Jul. 25, 2024

Revised Manuscript: Aug.20, 2024

Final Decision: Sept. 5, 2024

Final Upload: Sept. 15, 2024

Guest editors

Meng Jin, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Email: jinm@sjtu.edu.cn

Meng Jin is currently an assistant professor at the School of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering, Shanghai Jiao Tong University. She was previously a post-doctoral researcher at the School of Software and BNRist, Tsinghua University. She received her B.S., M.S. and Ph.D. degrees in Computer Science from Northwest University in 2012, 2015, and 2018, respectively. Her main research interests include low-power wireless communication and wireless sensing. She has published more than 40 research papers in top international conferences such as ACM Mobicom, ACM MobiSys, ACM SenSys, IEEE INFOCOM, etc. She received the ACM China Rising Star Award in 2023, the ACM China Doctoral Dissertation Award in 2019, and CCF Doctoral Dissertation Award in 2019.

Li Lu, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China

Email: luli2009@uestc.edu.cn

Li Lu is a professor and doctoral supervisor at the School of Computer Science and Engineering at the University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC). His primary research interests include ultra-low-power wireless systems, Internet of Things (IoT), industrial control systems, and wireless system security. Li Lu obtained his bachelor's degree and master's degree in the College of Electrical Engineering from Zhejiang University in 2000 and 2003, respectively. He later earned his Ph.D. from the State Key Laboratory of Information Security at the Chinese Academy of Science, in 2007. From 2007 to 2009, he worked as a postdoctoral researcher in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology (HKUST). Currently, Li Lu holds the position of Vice Dean at UESTC's School of Computer Science and Engineering. He has been the principal investigator for over 20 projects, including key projects funded by the National Natural Science Foundation. He has published more than 80 research papers in top international conferences such as ACM Mobicom and USENIX NSDI. Additionally, he holds over 20 domestic patents and one U.S. patent. His significant contributions to the field of industrial control system security were recognized with the First Prize of the National Science and Technology Progress Award in 2019.

Panlong Yang, University of Science and Technology of China

Email: plyang@ustc.edu.cn

Panlong Yang is at the University of Science and Technology of China. He has been supported by the NSF Jiangsu in the Distinguished Young Scholarship and was honored as a distinguished lecturer of CCF in 2015. He has published over 200 papers including over 60 papers in CCF A class. Since 2012, he has supervised 50 master’s and Ph.D. candidate students, including two excellent dissertation winners in Jiangsu Province and the PLA education system. He has been supported by the National Key Development Project and NSFC projects. He has been nominated by ACM MobiCom 2009 for the best demo honored mention awards and won best paper awards in IEEE MSN and MASS. He has been served as general chair of IEEE BigCom and TPC chair of IEEE MSN. Also, he has served as a TPC member of INFOCOM (CCF Class A) and a associate editor of the Journal of Communication of China. He is a Senior Member of IEEE (2019).

Wei Wang, Huazhong University of Science and Technology

Email: weiwangw@hust.edu.cn

Wei Wang is currently a full professor at the School of Electronic Information and Communications, Huazhong University of Science and Technology. He received his Ph.D. degree from the Department of Computer Science and Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology. His research interests include PHY/MAC design and mobile computing in wireless systems. He has published 2 books and over 100 refereed papers in international leading journals and primer conferences. He is the inventor of 3 US and 20 Chinese patents. He won the best paper award in IEEE ICC 2019. He was selected into Young Elite Scientist Sponsorship Program, China Association for Science and Technology, and the Hundred Talents Program, Hubei Province. He served on the TPC of INFOCOM, GBLOBECOM, ICC, etc. He served as an editor for IEEE TMC, IEEE Access, IJCS, China Communications.

Xinyu Tong, Tianjin University

Email: xytong@tju.edu.cn

Xinyu Tong received the B.E and Ph.D. degrees in the Department of Electronic Information and Electrical Engineering from Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai, China in 2015 and 2020. He is currently a postdoctor in the College of Intelligence and Computing of Tianjin University. His research interests include wireless sensor network and wireless localization. His research papers were published in many prestigious journals and conferences including the IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing, IEEE/ACM Transactions on Networking, MobiCom, UbiComp, and INFOCOM, etc.

Xiaohua Tian, Shanghai Jiao Tong University

Email: xtian@sjtu.edu.cn

Xiaohua Tian received the Ph.D. degree from the Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE), Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) in December 2010. Since March 2011, he has been with the Electronics Engineering Department, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, where he is currently a Professor and the Associate Dean of the Department. His research interests include wireless/wired networking, mobile computing, new services, applications, and devices in the Internet of Things. He received the Excellent Young Scientists Fund from the National Science Foundation of China (NSFC) in 2020. He was also recognized as a Distinguished Young Investigator of China Frontiers of Engineering 2021 (Chinese Academy of Engineering). He received the ACM China Rising Star Award in 2017, the ACM MobiCom 2018 Best Mobile APP Award, and the IEEE ICNC 2015 and IEEE VTC-Fall 2017 Best Paper Award. He is the IEEE Distinguished Lecturer of the Communications Society. He has been serving as the associate editor of IEEE Transactions on Mobile Computing since 2023, IEEE Internet of Things Journal since 2018, and the scanning the literature column editor of IEEE Network Magazine since 2016. He also served as the Vice Program co-chair of ACM Turing Celebration Conference (TURC) 2019, distinguished TPC member for IEEE INFOCOM 2016-2017, symposium co-chair of IEEE/CIC ICCC 2015, 2019, TPC member for IEEE GLOBECOM, IEEE ICC (2011).