Digital Twins for Energy-Related Applications
Submission Deadline: 1 July 2025
IEEE Access invites manuscript submissions in the area of Digital Twins for Energy-Related Applications.
Emerging technologies such as Artificial Intelligence (AI), Internet of Things (IoT), big data analytics, Blockchain Technology (BT) and cloud computing are accelerating the trend of Industry 4.0 digital transformation, creating enormous opportunities, and allowing for a paradigm shift in operation and control in energy sectors, such as thermal power plants, nuclear power plants, wind energy, solar energy and oil and gas installations. Building upon these technologies, digital twins (DTs), which are virtual representations of real-world physical objects, are gaining momentum as promising tools for the realization of intelligent energy production systems, and receiving significant interest from both the research and industrial communities. With DTs, the energy production sectors can achieve a real-time simulation environment that can be used for several purposes, including control, safety and reliability improvement, maintenance cost reduction, operational disruption minimization, operational efficiency improvement, profit maximization and precise intelligent decision-making possibilities. In this context, DT is regarded as a promising enabling technology with the potential to revolutionize the energy system’s design, operation and optimization.
This Special Section covers all energy-related sectors, including thermal power plants, nuclear power plants, wind energy, solar energy and oil and gas installations. In the advent of industry 4.0, DT is a current trend for academic and industrial communities not only in the IEEE but also in many other institutions across the globe. The aim of this Special Section is to provide a platform for academic and industrial communities to share their new ideas and developments relevant to DTs, and to promote, collect and present recent research advancements including both methodological developments and practical deployments of DTs for energy-related applications.
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- DT design, data management, modeling and simulation
- DT-enabling technologies for multi-physics modeling and analysis of energy production assets
- DT architectural design, development and standard for emerging technologies in energy sectors
- DT for lifetime prediction and reliability assessment
- AI/ML-based DT approaches for Prognostics and System Health Management
- Blockchains and Federated AI/ML-based DT design and development for energy systems
- Grey-box based DT approaches for energy-related applications
- Data fusion/assimilation techniques for DT development and management
- DT-based risk-informed system health and asset management
- Big-data-based intelligent prediction and assistant decision-making
- DT-based energy equipment maintenance plan
- DT-enabling technologies for safety and security assessment of energy production systems
- Recent developments and future perspectives of DT in emerging technological applications in energy sector
We also highly recommend the submission of a video with each article as it significantly increases the visibility of articles.
Lead Editor: Enrico Zio, Politecnico di Milano, Italy and MINES Paris-PSL, CRC, France
Guest Editors:
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- Syed Bahauddin Alam, University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, USA
- Rui Kang, Beihang University, China
IEEE Access Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Mehrdad Saif, University of Windsor, Ontario, Canada
Article submission: Submit manuscripts to: http://ieee.atyponrex.com/journal/ieee-access
For information regarding IEEE Access, including its peer review policies and APC information, please visit the website http://ieeeaccess.ieee.org
For inquiries regarding this Special Section, please contact: enrico.zio@polimi.it.
Planar Microwave Sensors
Submission Deadline: 31 May 2025
IEEE Access invites manuscript submissions in the area of Planar Microwave Sensors.
This Special Section of IEEE Access is focused on Planar Microwave Sensors, a topic of growing research interest. Within today’s paradigms of the Internet of Things (IoT), the Fourth Industrial Revolution (also known as Industry 4.0), and the Digital Transformation (or Smart World), there is an increasing demand for cost-effective, small-sized, and smart sensors and sensor networks, to be applied in a wide diversity of scenarios, such as Smart Cities, Smart Health, Smart Agriculture, Civil Engineering, Structural Health Monitoring, Biosensing, Agrifood Industry, Security, Motion Control, Automotive Industry, and Space, etc. There are many sensing technologies (e.g., optics/photonics, acoustics, electrochemical, etc.), but RF/microwaves (extending the spectrum from UHF up to THz frequencies) offer a series of unique advantages aligned with the requirements of the above-cited paradigmatic concepts. Thus, besides their low cost and size, microwave sensors, and particularly planar sensors, can be implemented in flexible substrates, including plastics, organic substrates, and even fabric, by means of subtractive (etching) or additive (printing) processes, and they are also compatible with other technologies of interest for sensing, such as microfluidics, micromachining, 3D-printing, etc. Additionally, microwaves are very sensitive to the electromagnetic properties of the materials with which they interact. Thus, microwave sensors are very useful for the dielectric characterization of materials (solids or liquids), and for the measurement of many physical, chemical, and biological variables related to material permittivity.
Planar microwave sensors can operate by contact or contactless with the material under test (MUT), or analyte, and can be wirelessly connected to the reader (of interest in many IoT applications), in schemes based on the so-called sensing tags (which act as a “smart skin,” able to provide information of the material or sample under study). Another important aspect of planar sensors is that the necessary associated electronics for signal generation, processing, and communication purposes can be seamlessly integrated within the sensor’s substrate, representing a reduction in system costs and complexity. In summary, planar microwave sensors constitute an enabling technology for the deployment of the IoT, Industry 4.0, and Smart World, where sensing is necessary to obtain information of the system under consideration, in order to gain insight on its current state and take appropriate decisions and actions (either through human intervention or autonomously) when necessary.
The main objective of this Special Section of IEEE Access is to publish high-quality papers related to the theory, techniques, technologies, and applications of planar microwave sensors.
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Sensor Phenomenology, modeling, and evaluation
- Sensitivity, resolution, and selectivity optimization techniques
- Dielectric characterization and permittivity sensors
- Resonant and non-resonant planar sensors
- Contactless, nonintrusive, and non-invasive sensors
- Liquid and microfluidic sensors
- Physical sensors (displacement and proximity, temperature, humidity, pressure, etc.).
- Chemical sensors (gas detection, impurity detection in liquids, etc.).
- Biosensors (bacterial growth, glucose measurements, electrolyte content measurements, cells and organs analysis, etc.) for in vitro and in vivo investigations.
- Microwave spectroscopy
- Wireless sensors, RFID sensors, and sensor networks
- Artificial Intelligence (AI) and related techniques applied to planar microwave sensors
- New materials and technologies for microwave sensing
- Active planar sensors
- “Green” sensors
- Sensor systems and applications
- Sensors for structural health monitoring (SHM)
- Sensors for smart agriculture and agrifood industry
- Sensors for smart Cities
- Sensors for civil engineering
- Sensors for smart industry
- Sensors for smart healthcare and vital signs monitoring
- Sensors for motion control
- Sensors for automotive and space industry
- Wearable sensors
We also highly recommend the submission of a video with each article as it significantly increases the visibility of articles.
Lead Editor: Ferran Martín, Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona, Spain
Guest Editors:
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- Katia Grenier, LAAS-CNRS, Toulouse, France
- Amir Ebrahimi, RMIT University, Melbourne, Australia
- Mohammad Zarifi, University of British Columbia, Canada
- Carlos G. Juan, Universidad Miguel Hernández, Elche, Spain
IEEE Access Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Derek Abbott, University of Adelaide
Article submission: Submit manuscripts to: http://ieee.atyponrex.com/journal/ieee-access
For information regarding IEEE Access, including its peer review policies and APC information, please visit the website http://ieeeaccess.ieee.org
For inquiries regarding this Special Section, please contact: Ferran.Martin@uab.cat.
Innovative Trends in 6G Ecosystems
Submission Deadline: 15 September 2023
IEEE Access invites manuscript submissions in the area of Innovative Trends in 6G Ecosystems.
Next generation wireless networks will need to provide a variety of efficient and flexible services, such as improved mobile broadband access, ultra-reliable low-latency communications (URLLC), and massive machine-type communications. Future networks will have to support multiple operational standards to exploit the network heterogeneity, which stems from different types of base stations and user equipment as well as from traffic variability. Future networks should be able to process information generated from a huge volume of heterogeneous sources and should have an intrinsic durability to deal with potential security threats. These networks are expected to make intelligent and informed decisions by adapting to appropriate network functionality under constraints set by the time-varying workload. Therefore, the key question is how to set up a wireless ecosystem, which is not only faster, but also more energy-efficient and smarter.
The proposal refers to new technological solutions to deal with high data rate, increased capacity, efficient spectrum usage, reduced latency, adaptive traffic routing, longer battery life, etc. New principles are expected to be proposed for licensed shared access in the millimeter wave (mmWave) band in line with optimal business models, in order to improve capacity, data rate and reliability of future networks. New artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms must be introduced in order to perform network prediction and also to ensure quality of experience in wireless ecosystems. Also, an intelligent Network Function Virtualisation (NFV) architecture is expected to be developed to support a Management and Orchestration (MANO) framework. In addition, novel beamforming techniques and direction of arrival estimation algorithms must be introduced in a massive multiple-input-multiple-output (MIMO) environment by using machine learning, neural networks as well as deep learning concepts, in order to enhance the communication efficiency, save energy and thus make the ecosystem environmentally friendly. The communication efficiency will further be enhanced in the mmWave and terahertz band by newly proposed antennas installed either on base stations, or on unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) or on users (wearable antennas, antennas on terminal equipment), and based on recent technological solutions, like metamaterials, periodic metasurfaces, graphene, and graphene products.
The present Special Section aspires to provide researchers with a body of knowledge in different interdisciplinary areas that are critical to the future development of mobile and wireless communications, and to contribute to the development of innovative solutions to significant challenges in future wireless networks. This Special Section also aims to provide researchers with the opportunity to understand both the scientific and business aspects of future ecosystems. The research results are expected to activate many new areas related to AI in wireless communications, antenna design, spectrum management, business models, UAV communications, and IoT platforms, and will attract the interest not only of large research institutes and organizations, but also of private companies and government agencies.
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- AI-assisted spectrum sharing in 6G ecosystems
- Propagation and channel modeling in the mmWave and terahertz bands
- MIMO techniques in 6G ecosystems
- Antenna design in 6G ecosystems
- Network prediction in 6G ecosystems
- Other relevant topics in 6G ecosystems
We also highly recommend the submission of a video with each article as it significantly increases the visibility of articles.
Associate Editors:
- Zaharias Zaharis, Aristotle University of Thessaloniki, Greece
- Pavlos Lazaridis, University of Huddersfield, UK
Guest Editors:
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- Ramjee Prasad, Aarhus University, Denmark
- Alexandros Feresidis, University of Birmingham, UK
- Vladimir Poulkov, Technical University of Sofia, Bulgaria
- Karu Esselle, University of Technology Sydney, Australia
- Ashutosh Dutta, Johns Hopkins University, USA
- Seshadri Mohan, University of Arkansas at Little Rock, USA
- Anand Prasad, Deloitte Tohmatsu Cyber LLC, Japan
IEEE Access Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Derek Abbott, University of Adelaide
Article submission: Submit manuscripts to: http://ieee.atyponrex.com/journal/ieee-access
For information regarding IEEE Access, including its peer review policies and APC information, please visit the website http://ieeeaccess.ieee.org
For inquiries regarding this Special Section, please contact: zaharis@auth.gr.
Positioning and Navigation in Challenging Environments
Submission Deadline: 31 July 2022
IEEE Access invites manuscript submissions in the area of Positioning and Navigation in Challenging Environments.
In recent years, positioning and navigation has become a vital part of modern life especially with the continuous performance enhancement and modernization of the four global navigation satellite systems. Positioning and navigation industry has been growing quickly and has played a significant role in the industrial chain. Although great progress and many achievements have been made over the past few decades, there are a range of significant issues to be dealt with, especially in challenging environments.
In complex (e.g. large, multi-floor) indoor environments, it is a challenge to generate a valid positioning and navigation solution by a remote cloud platform with both offline and online data (e.g. WiFi and magnetic fingerprint data) recorded with smartphones The problem may become more complex if a pedestrian goes through different scenarios, such as from one floor to another floor of the same building, or from one building to another connected or neighboring building. There is a preference to avoid any interruption in the provision of valid position information. Thus, in the design of next-generation (beyond 5G) communication systems, the positioning functions need to be enabled and standardization of positioning technology such as in 3GPP should be taken into account.
As natural resources of the earth’s surface and shallow sea are becoming scarce, it is inevitable to acquire resources from deep underground, deep underwater and outer space. Regarding deep underground mining, there are currently a good number of deep mines in the world, including Mponeng Gold Mine and Tau Tona Mine, both located in South Africa with a depth of about 3.9km, and Kidd Creek Copper and Zinc Mine located in Ontario, Canada with a depth of about 2.9km. Deep underground mining is a challenging scenario which usually has high humidity and irregular space distribution, requiring stricter restrictions on the design and building of positioning and navigation systems.
Deep sea mining is promising because of abundant minerals on and under the deep seabed. For instance, a large amount of polymetallic nodules, containing rich concentrations of manganese, nickel, copper, and cobalt, are found in the Clarion-Clipperton Zone, a great abyssal plain as wide as the continental United States that lies 4 to 6 km below the surface of the eastern Pacific Ocean. Abundant naturel gas and oil also exist deep under the sea. Positioning and navigation is important for vehicles and robots to pick up the seabed surface minerals and to perform drilling and extraction of minerals under the seabed.
Space mining is currently a hot topic and should become a reality in the next few decades. , It is crucial to provide accurate and reliable positioning and navigation information for spacecraft and/or space robots which will approach and then usually land on the target planet (e.g. moon) or asteroid, followed by exploration, mining and so on; or simply catch and hold a rather small asteroid and move it back to Earth. For instance, a small Japanese space capsule carrying pristine pieces of the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu touched down on 5 December 2020, northwest of the South Australian capital of Adelaide. This was a successful initial step towards space mining on asteroids.
Positioning and navigation is vital for safe, reliable and effective operations in the scenarios of the frontier applications mentioned above. This Special Section aims to report the recent advances on positioning and navigation in such challenging scenarios. Researchers and engineers are also encouraged to perform more research and development to make advances in this area.
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Positioning and navigation in complex indoor environments
- Deep underground positioning and navigation
- Positioning and navigation for deep ocean operations and mining
- Positioning and navigation for space exploration and mining
- Cloud computing for positioning and navigation
- High sensitivity GNSS receivers
- Suppression of GNSS jamming and spoofing
- Positioning for communication systems beyond 5G
- Standardization of positioning technology
We also highly recommend the submission of multimedia with each article as it significantly increases the visibility and downloads of articles.
Associate Editor: Kegen Yu, China University of Mining and Technology, Mainland of China
Guest Editors:
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- Andrew Dempster, University of New South Wales, Australia
- Pau Closas, Northeastern University, USA
- Shih-Hau Fang, Yuan Ze University, Taiwan
- Guenther Retscher, Vienna University of Technology, Austria
- Ali Broumandan, Hexagon Autonomy and Positioning, Canada
Relevant IEEE Access Special Sections:
IEEE Access Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Derek Abbott, University of Adelaide
Article submission: Contact Associate Editor and submit manuscript to:
http://ieee.atyponrex.com/journal/ieee-access
For inquiries regarding this Special Section, please contact: kegenyu@foxmail.com.
Internet of Space: Networking Architectures and Protocols to Support Space-Based Internet Services
Submission Deadline: 31 January 2022
IEEE Access invites manuscript submissions in the area of Internet of Space: Networking Architectures and Protocols to Support Space-Based Internet Services.
This Special Section is focused on the most recent scientific research and insights on the evolution of communication architectures and protocols for an Internet of Space, able to boost the creation of a truly global Internet by means of the integration of the current Internet with a new Internet of Space. Such evolution is expected to have a significant impact on several markets such as IoT/Industrial IoT, Mobile services, Industry 4.0, Government enterprise, and Connected mobility.
The section shall cover work focused on aspects such as how to support the operation of Tier-1, Tier-2 or even Tier-3 airborne/spaceborne networks; how to address interoperability, within and across different protocol layers in the network architecture, leveraging cross-layer design; and finally how to design a more unified next generation Internet architecture able to transparently include spaceborne and airborne platforms in a way that allows for user-centric services, and a smooth operation of transient networks.
However, an original and competent Internet of Space, calls for the definition of a networking framework able to accommodate specific properties of dynamic systems, including heterogeneous physical layers, frequent changes in network topology, high propagation delays, and intermittent connectivity. The dominant success factor for such a networking framework is low-cost bandwidth, although its capability to support low latency and high-throughput services plays an important role.
Secondly, a global Internet is only possible with a transparent integration of an Internet of Space with the current Internet, while supporting multi-tenants, multi-systems in different orbits and altitudes, as well as multiple markets. Such an integration requires rethinking the Internet architecture in order to extend its operation to all systems above the Earth’s surface, which requires the integration of heterogeneous communication devices and protocols. Such a unifying networking framework will have a truly global reach, allowing the connection between information producers and consumers in any corner of Earth and Space. Last but not least, the seamless integration of an Internet of Space with the current Internet will lead to a global empowerment, providing information access to everyone who may need it to sustain enriched human life, while mitigating some of the major limitations of a network infrastructure that is built on Earth’s surface, which is subjected not only to geographic limits but also to political limits.
From a technical perspective this Special Section is focused on the design and performance evaluation of networking architectures and protocols for the Internet of Space, as well as on a more unified design that best deals with the networking challenges to be faced.
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Network architectures, able to support multi-tenants, multi-systems in different orbits and altitudes, as well as multiple markets, while being transparently integrated in the current Internet architecture. Such new, unifying, network architecture may require the exploitation of paradigms such as Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN), and Information Centric Networking (ICN).
- Network virtualization, leveraging well-known technologies such as Software Defined Networking (SDN) and Network Function Virtualization (NFV), as well as their integration with the emerging concept of Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC), allowing the virtualization of networking, storage and computing fabrics at the edge, required for the offloading of tasks that have latency constraints from the core to the edge.
- Decentralized Internet Infrastructure, allowing a scalable Internetworking between computing processes and service hosted at the network edge (including flying platforms and spaceborne platforms, such as smart satellite constellations), leading to an end-to-end latency reduction due to user proximity, as well as a reduction of network traffic through traffic localization and device-to-device communications.
- Network management, such as support for the global orchestration of network functions on board spaceborne platforms (e.g., satellites) to best support data processing and aggregation; seamless interoperation of mobile Edge infrastructure and devices; resilience and seamless adaptation based on the capability to anticipate the behavior of services on a global scale.
- Cognitive networking, in which programmable spaceborne networks allow networked devices to perform customized computation, including the usage of Artificial Intelligence. Such cognitive functions will be exploited to develop more intelligent, adaptive networks, able to perceive network conditions, decide upon those conditions, and learn from the consequences of its actions.
- Networking protocols, including support for inter-satellite communications, and satellite to ground communications, Quality of Service (QoS) and Quality of Experience (QoE), integrated security, and mobility, and their integration with existing protocols such as IP routing (e.g. segment routing), transport protocols from the Transmission Control Protocol (TCP) and User Datagram Protocol (UDP) to Quick UDP Internet Connections (QUIC), and application protocols such as Domain Name Service (DNS).
- Wireless technologies, including not only the usage of radio frequency systems but also free space optical systems, and a combination of both.
- Network measurement & performance, to assist in understanding and exposing the performance of spaceborne networking resources, infrastructure, and available communication protocols in a variety of ground-to-space, inter-satellite communication scenarios.
- Privacy, security and trustworthiness, assuming end-to-end scenarios involving satellites with computational and storage capabilities, and covering aspects such as data security, decentralized trust architectures.
- Impact on Internet services, such as advanced IoT services (e.g., Augmented Reality/Virtual Reality in manufacturing or farming) served by spaceborne platforms and spaceborne communications; real-time IoT applications (e.g., critical monitoring of public infrastructures); awareness services (e.g., public safety services).
- Impact on data management aspects, including the support of the next generation of Edge computing in space, as well as a fast cooperation between a large set of Edge-based producers of data.
We also highly recommend the submission of multimedia with each article as it significantly increases the visibility and downloads of articles.
Associate Editor: Rute C. Sofia, fortiss GmbH, Germany
Guest Editors:
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- Paulo Mendes, Airbus, Germany
- Vassilis Tsaoussidis, Democritus University of Thrace, Greece
- Tomaso de Cola, DLR, Germany
- Scott Burleigh, California Institute of Technology, USA
- Mianxiong Dong, Muroran Institute of Technology, Japan
- Eduardo Cerqueira, University Federal of Pará, Brazil
Relevant IEEE Access Special Sections:
IEEE Access Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Derek Abbott, University of Adelaide
Article submission: Contact Associate Editor and submit manuscript to:
http://ieee.atyponrex.com/journal/ieee-access
For inquiries regarding this Special Section, please contact: sofia@fortiss.org.
Deep Learning for Internet of Things
Submission Deadline: 20 September 2021
IEEE Access invites manuscript submissions in the area of Deep Learning for Internet of Things.
In recent years, the techniques of Internet of Things (IoT) and mobile communications have been developed to detect and collect human and environment information (e.g. geo-information, weather information, bio-information, human behaviors, etc.) for a variety of intelligent services and applications. The three layers in IoT are the sensor, networking, and application layers; several techniques and standards (e.g. oneM2M, Open Connectivity Foundation, etc.) have been proposed and established for these three layers. For the sensor and networking layers, the rise of mobile technology advancements (e.g. wireless sensor networks, LoRaWAN, Sigfox, narrow band-IoT, etc.) has led to a new wave of machine-to-machine (M2M), machine-to-human (M2H), human-to-human (H2H), and human-to-machine (H2M) communications. For the application layer, the IoT techniques in several applications, including energy, enterprise, healthcare, public services, residency, retail, and transportation, have been designed and implemented to detect environmental changes and send instant updates to a cloud computing server farm via mobile communications and middleware for big data analyses. One of the perfect examples is that the vehicle on-board units can instantly detect and share information about the vehicle geolocation, speed, following distance, as well as gaps with other neighboring vehicles. Big data can be collected by IoT techniques and then analyzed by deep learning techniques for a variety of applications and services.
Deep learning techniques, e.g. neural network (NN), convolutional neural network (CNN), recurrent neural network (RNN), long short-term memory (LSTM), etc., have been popularly applied into image recognition and time-series inference for IoT applications. Advanced driver assistance systems and autonomous cars, for instance, have been developed based on machine learning and deep learning techniques, which perform forward collision warning, blind spot monitoring, lane departure warning, traffic sign recognition, traffic safety, infrastructure management and congestion, and so on. Autonomous cars can share their detected information, such as traffic signs, collision events, etc., with other cars via vehicular communication systems, e.g., dedicated short range communications (DSRC), vehicular ad hoc networks (VANETs), long term evolution (LTE), and 5th generation mobile networks for cooperation. However, how to enhance the performance and efficiency of these deep learning techniques is one of the big challenges for implementing these real-time applications.
Furthermore, several optimization techniques, such as stochastic gradient descent algorithm (SGD), adaptive moment estimation algorithm (Adam), and Nesterov-accelerated Adaptive Moment Estimation (Nadam), have been proposed to support deep learning algorithms for faster solution searching; for example, the gradient descent method is a popular optimization technique to quickly seek the optimized weight sets and filters of CNN for image recognition. The IoT applications based on these image recognition techniques (autonomous cars, augmented reality navigation systems, etc.) have gained considerable attention, and the hybrid approaches typical of mathematics for engineering and computer science (deep learning and optimization techniques) can be investigated and developed to support a variety of IoT applications.
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Deep learning for massive IoT
- Deep learning for critical IoT
- Deep learning for enhancing IoT security
- Deep learning for enhancing IoT privacy
- Preprocessing of IoT data for AI modeling
- Deep learning for IoT applications (smart home, smart agriculture, interactive art, etc.)
We also highly recommend the submission of multimedia with each article as it significantly increases the visibility and downloads of articles.
Associate Editor: Chi-Hua Chen, Fuzhou University, China
Guest Editors:
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- Yi-Bing Lin, National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University, Taiwan
- Kuo-Ming Chao, Coventry University, UK
Relevant IEEE Access Special Sections:
IEEE Access Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Derek Abbott, University of Adelaide
Article submission: Contact Associate Editor and submit manuscript to:
http://ieee.atyponrex.com/journal/ieee-access
For inquiries regarding this Special Section, please contact: chihua0826@gmail.com.
Metal Additive Manufacturing
Submission Deadline: 15 December 2021
IEEE Access invites manuscript submissions in the area of Metal Additive Manufacturing.
Additive manufacturing (AM) is a main driver of the Industry 4.0 paradigm. While the additive manufacturing of plastics is common, metal additive manufacturing processes still face several research challenges. The high cost and unpredictable defects in final parts and products are preventing complete deployment and adoption of additive manufacturing in the metalworking industries. Several aspects need improvement, including robustness, stability, repeatability, speed and right-first-time manufacturing. Nevertheless, its potential to the production of structural parts is significant, from the medical to the aeronautics industry.
The industrialization of additive manufacturing requires holistic data management and integrated automation. End-to-end digital manufacturing solutions have been developed in the last few years, enabling a cybersecure bidirectional dataflow for a seamless integration across the entire AM chain. Novel manufacturing methodologies need to be developed to ensure the manufacturability, reliability and quality of a target metal component from initial product design, implementing a zero-defect manufacturing approach ensuring robustness, stability and repeatability of the process.
This Special Section in IEEE Access will bring together academia and industry to discuss technical challenges and recent results related to additive manufacturing. Theoretical, numerical and experimental development in this domain are welcome. The articles are expected to report original findings or innovative concepts featuring different topics related to metal additive manufacturing. Industry-related studies are welcome, especially the ones demonstrating advanced applications of metal additive manufacturing in challenging scenarios.
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Data interoperability
- Data analytics
- Digitalization and data security
- Topologic optimization
- Additive manufacturing building strategy
- Multi-physics process simulation and modeling
- Product engineering optimization
- Testing and characterization
- Zero defect manufacturing and process control
- Quality assurance
- From CAD design to real part production
- Advanced industry applications
We also highly recommend the submission of multimedia with each article as it significantly increases the visibility and downloads of articles.
Associate Editor: Pedro Neto, University of Coimbra, Portugal
Guest Editors:
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- Mustafa Megahed, ESI Group, Germany
- Matthew Gilbert, The University of Sheffield, UK
- Kaixiang Peng, University of Science and Technology Beijing, China
- Felix Vidal, AIMEN Technology Centre, Spain
- Leroy Gardner, Imperial College London, UK
- Xuemin Chen, Texas Southern University, USA
- Stasha Lauria, Brunel University London, UK
Relevant IEEE Access Special Sections:
IEEE Access Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Derek Abbott, University of Adelaide
Article submission: Contact Associate Editor and submit manuscript to:
http://ieee.atyponrex.com/journal/ieee-access
For inquiries regarding this Special Section, please contact: pedro.neto@dem.uc.pt.
Collaborative Intelligence for Internet of Vehicles
Submission Deadline: 01 September 2021
IEEE Access invites manuscript submissions in the area of Collaborative Intelligence for Internet of Vehicles.
Internet of vehicles (IoV) technology is one of the most important breakthroughs that can significantly support mobility systems toward achieving smart and sustainable societies. For example, cooperative driving features enabled by IoV can significantly decrease the risk of traffic accidents and reduce CO2 emissions, thus facilitating smarter transportation. Aerial vehicles, also known as drones, are useful for many applications, including environment and traffic monitoring, crowd mobility and gathering surveillance in pandemics, disaster recovery, and so on. Internet of underwater vehicles could enable many innovative maritime applications such as autonomous shipping, target detection, navigation, localization, and environmental pollution control. However, the development of IoV systems is dependent on overcoming the following two main challenges.
First, due to the heterogeneity of networking entities, strict application and data processing requirements, and limited resources in IoV environments, more advanced networking and computing technologies are required. Future IoV systems feature a larger number of devices and multi-access environments where different types of wireless spectrums should be efficiently utilized. At the same time, novel services, such as cooperative autonomous driving, IoV-based safety and traffic efficiency applications are emerging, and demand unprecedented high accuracy and reliability, ultra-low latency, and large bandwidth. This poses crucial challenges to the efficient use of the limited networking and computing resources.
Recently, to further explore the value of big data from IoV systems, artificial intelligence (AI)-based approaches have been attracting great interest in empowering computer systems. Some collaborative learning approaches, such as federated learning and multi-agent systems, have been used to reduce network traffic and improve the learning efficiency of some smartphone applications. For IoV systems, collaborative intelligence can be achieved via an efficient collaboration among heterogeneous entities, including vehicles, edge servers, and the cloud.
Second, in order to enable a smarter society, more research should be conducted on developing collaborative IoV frameworks and systems to expedite the applications of emerging IoV technologies. An efficient use of cross-domain big data should be discussed, and academic-industrial collaborations should be promoted to solve the existing problems toward a smarter society.
This Special Section focuses on the technical challenges for enabling collaborative IoV systems, and the applications of IoV technologies for a smarter society.
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Collaboration among Space, Air, Ground, and Sea mobile networks
- Collaborative intelligence based on cross-domain big data for IoV
- Collaborative networking for IoV
- Collaborative computing for IoV
- Collaborative IoV for smart cities
- Collaborative IoV for intelligent transportation systems
- Collaborative IoV for energy-efficient sustainable cities
- Collaborative electric vehicles
- Collaborative unmanned aerial vehicles
- Collaborative heterogeneous unmanned ground and aerial vehicles
- Collaborative underwater vehicle technologies for smart ocean
- Collaborative IoV for smarter society
- Collaborative learning for IoV
- Data driven collaborative intelligence for IoV
- End-edge-cloud collaboration for IoV
- New networking and computing architectures for Collaborative IoV
- Security & privacy for IoV
We also highly recommend the submission of multimedia with each article as it significantly increases the visibility and downloads of articles.
Associate Editor: Celimuge Wu, The University of Electro-Communications, Japan
Guest Editors:
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- Soufiene Djahel, Manchester Metropolitan University, UK
- Damla Turgut, University of Central Florida, USA
- Sidi-Mohammed Senouci, University of Bourgogne, France
- Lei Zhong, Toyota Motor Corporation, Japan
Relevant IEEE Access Special Sections:
IEEE Access Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Derek Abbott, University of Adelaide
Article submission: Contact Associate Editor and submit manuscript to:
http://ieee.atyponrex.com/journal/ieee-access
For inquiries regarding this Special Section, please contact: celimuge@uec.ac.jp.
Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface Aided Communications for 6G and Beyond
Submission Deadline: 31 August 2021
IEEE Access invites manuscript submissions in the area of Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface Aided Communications for 6G and Beyond.
Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface (RIS) aided wireless communications is a hot research topic in academic and industry communities since it can enhance both the spectrum and energy efficiency of wireless systems by artificially reconfiguring the wireless propagation environment. RIS can configure tiny antenna elements or scatterers, which can be judiciously tuned to enhance signal power at desired users, such as primary users in cognitive radio networks, or suppress signal power at undesired users, such as eavesdroppers in physical layer security networks. The RIS also finds promising applications in dense urban areas or indoor scenarios, where electromagnetic waves are prone to be blocked by obstacles such as buildings and walls. There are numerous advantages associated with RIS. For instance, since RIS needs no analog-to-digital converters or radio frequency chains, it saves energy consumption to improve its sustainability, and reduces system cost. RIS can be fabricated in small size and light weight, which can be easily deployed on a building’s facade, walls, ceilings, street lamps, etc. Furthermore, since RIS is a complementary device, it can be readily integrated into current wireless networks (both cellular network and WIFI) without many standardization modifications. Due to these appealing advantages, RIS-aided wireless communications is envisioned to be a revolutionary technique, and one of the key technologies for the sixth-generation (6G) wireless networks.
To reap the full potential offered by RIS, a number of emerging challenges for the transceiver design of RIS-aided wireless communications needs to be tackled. The transceiver beamforming design requires advanced low complexity signal processing algorithms, the incorporation of RIS in wireless communications will consume more pilot resources for the RIS-related channel estimation, and the time slots left for data transmission will be reduced. It is imperative to justify the benefits of introducing RIS when taking into account additional pilot overhead. Furthermore, most of the existing contributions on transceiver design are based on perfect channel state information (CSI), which is challenging to achieve in RIS-aided communications. Hence, robust transmission design needs to be investigated. Finally, in practice, the RIS elements are designed with discrete shifts, which further pose new challenges for evaluating its performance.
This Special Section aims to summarize recent advancements in RIS-aided wireless communications and spur more efforts in this area to make it a reality. The scope of this Special Section covers a wide range of disciplines such as wireless communications, metamaterials, signal processing, and artificial intelligence. In this Special Section, we invite high-quality, original, technical and survey articles, which have not been published previously on RIS-related techniques and their applications in wireless communications.
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- Integration of RIS in emerging wireless applications (e.g., RIS-aided wireless power transfer, RIS-aided mobile edge computing, RIS-aided physical layer security, IRS-aided UAV communications, etc)
- Pilot overhead reduction schemes for channel estimation in RIS-aided wireless communications (e.g. compressed-sensing method by exploiting the sparsity of the channels)
- Robust transceiver design based on imperfect channel state information or/and imperfect phase shift models
- Transceiver design based on statistical channel state information
- Joint active and beamforming for RIS-aided wireless communications
- Information theoretical results of the capacity of RIS
- The impact and design of using practical hardware, e.g. discrete phase shifts
- Energy supply of RIS
- Mobility and handover management for RIS-aided wireless communications
- Association and coordination among RIS, base stations and users
- Resource allocation and interference management in RIS-aided wireless communications
- Fundamental limits, scaling laws analysis, performance analysis, and information-theoretic analysis
- Channel and propagation models
- Control information exchange protocols design
- Energy efficient system design
- Machine learning based design
- RIS-aided mmWave/Terahertz communications
- Measurement studies and real-world prototypes and test-beds
- Integration of RIS-enabled networks into the standard
We also highly recommend the submission of multimedia with each article as it significantly increases the visibility and downloads of articles.
Associate Editor: Cunhua Pan, Queen Mary University of London, UK
Guest Editors:
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- Ying-Chang Liang, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China (UESTC), China
- Marco Di Renzo, Paris-Saclay University, France
- Lee Swindlehurst, University of California Irvine, USA
- Vincenzo Sciancalepore, NEC Laboratories Europe GmbH, Germany
Relevant IEEE Access Special Sections:
IEEE Access Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Derek Abbott, University of Adelaide
Article submission: Contact Associate Editor and submit manuscript to:
http://ieee.atyponrex.com/journal/ieee-access
For inquiries regarding this Special Section, please contact: c.pan@qmul.ac.uk.
Optimal Operation of Active Buildings as an Energy System
Submission Deadline: 31 August 2021
IEEE Access invites manuscript submissions in the area of Optimal Operation of Active Buildings as an Energy System.
The increasing share of buildings in the consumption of energy and carbon emission indicates that any solutions provided in this regard would have to consider the energy efficiency of the buildings, to obtain promising results. Active Buildings are viable solutions to this issue, in which intelligent integration of renewable-based energy technologies, heating, cooling, and transport systems would be able to make a multi-vector energy system.
Active Buildings can work in an isolated way as a self-sufficient energy system, or can interact with the other ABs in a district area and trade energy via the network. They have the potential of interacting with local as well as national level energy grids and, by behaving as zero or positive energy buildings, they are able to deliver various energy services to reduce the pressure on the upstream energy networks, and defer new investment requirements. As a result, the operation of Active Buildings is being developed as fundamental research and part of the future smart energy systems that call for a (re)thinking on the definition of the control, operation and optimization of the Active Buildings as an energy system.
This Special Section in IEEE Access will target numerous prospects in the operation of active buildings as an energy system. Both review and research articles are welcome. Real-world use cases discussing new application areas and resulting new developments are especially welcome.
The topics of interest include, but are not limited to:
- A holistic approach in modeling of the energy systems of Active Buildings (ABs)
- The role of ABs in energy systems
- Building physics-based modeling of ABs
- Zero energy and net-zero energy buildings
- Coordinated operation and control of ABs at the district/city level
- Application of model predictive control in ABs operation
- IoT-based operation and control of ABs
- Energy management systems of ABs
- AC, DC, or Hybrid model of ABs
- AB as a service provider in the electricity networks
- Resilience-based operation of ABs
- Reliability-based modeling of ABs
- Uncertainty aware energy management of ABs
- Artificial intelligence for the operation of ABs
- Market-based operation of ABs including Building-to-Building (B2B), Building-to-Grid (B2G), Building-to-Vehicle (B2V), and Vehicle-to-Building (V2B) energy transactions as well as peer-to-peer (P2P) energy transactions
We also highly recommend the submission of multimedia with each article as it significantly increases the visibility and downloads of articles.
Associate Editor: Behnam Mohammadi-Ivatloo, University of Tabriz, Iran
Guest Editors:
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- Vahid Vahidinasab, Newcastle University, UK
- Somayeh Asadi, Pennsylvania State University, USA
- Fei Wang, North China Electric Power University, China
Relevant IEEE Access Special Sections:
IEEE Access Editor-in-Chief: Prof. Derek Abbott, University of Adelaide
Article submission: Contact Associate Editor and submit manuscript to:
http://ieee.atyponrex.com/journal/ieee-access
For inquiries regarding this Special Section, please contact: mohammadi@ieee.org.
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