The last seventy years have witnessed the transition of communication from Shannon’s theoretical concept to current high-efficiency practical systems. With respect to Shannon information theory, to fulfill the high-bandwidth utilization, any further increase in the data rate requires a significant augmentation in the received signal power unless the bandwidth is extended in proportion to the incremental data rate. Although many such technologies have achieved tremendous success in today’s communication systems, they also lead to severe high-frequency coverage costs, complicated signal processing, high energy consumption, etc. Together with extraordinary promises, naively increasing channel capacity cannot address all communication problems, especially in future intelligent eras. It is the very time for radical rethinking of classical communication mechanisms.
Recall Weaver’s famous comments on Shannon theory, communication problems have been categorized as three levels, i.e., the technical level, the semantic level, and the effectiveness level. Nevertheless, current communication paradigms work merely at the technical level, regardless of the semantics the bits convey or how they would be used. Since an interesting common characteristic of all future communication technology breakthroughs is that they attempt to introduce native intelligence as integral part of the wireless system design, that enables a hierarchical upgradation from the technical level to the semantic level. Thus, future communications will envision a departure from the established way of architecting and assessing communication systems by incorporating the semantics of information relative to the purpose of the data exchange. However, the field is still at its infancy as there are a wide range of important theoretical and practical questions remaining unsolved or even completely open, including the lack of a complete mathematical theory, the lack of a general semantic transceiver, quantifying semantic noise, and robustness against adversarial semantics, how to allocate resources in a network employing the semantic paradigm, objective performance measures, etc. This special issue will focus on exploring the information theoretic foundations and promising technologies of semantic communications.
Topics include (but not limited to):
● Mathematical frameworks and performance limits of semantic communications
● Novel models and system architecture of semantic communications
● Advanced quality assessment metrics for semantic communications
● Emerging learning methods for semantic feature extraction
● Semantic information compression for various sources
● Coding technologies for semantic information transmission over wireless channels
● Compatible design of semantic information processing with current communication networks
● Task-oriented semantic information processing for machine-type communications
● Domain-specific applications of semantic communications, e.g., automatic driving, industrial Internet, etc.
● Scheduling and resource allocation for semantic communications
● Multiuser semantic communications
● Network architectures of semantic communications
● Security issues in semantic communications
● Integration of semantic communications with emerging topics, e.g., age of information (AoI), reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS), satellite communication, etc.
● Performance evaluation and optimization for semantic communications
● Standards, prototypes, and applications for semantic communications
Schedule:
Submission Deadline: January 10, 2024
Acceptance Notification (1st round): February 20, 2024
Minor Revision Due: March 25, 2024
Final Decision Due: April 30, 2024
Final Manuscript Due: May 25, 2024
Publication Date: July 15, 2024
Guest editors
Ping Zhang (Leader), Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China
Guangming Shi, Xidian University, China
Shuguang Cui, Chinese University of Hong Kong (Shenzhen), China
Zhaoyang Zhang, Zhejiang University, China
Kai Niu, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China
Yong Xiao, Huazhong University of Science and Technology, China
Zhijin Qin, Tsinghua University, China
Jincheng Dai, Beijing University of Posts and Telecommunications, China
Shuo Shao, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, China
Deniz Gunduz, Imperial College London, UK
Eleonora Grassucci, Sapienza University of Rome, Italy
Submission guidelines
This feature topic “Semantic Communications: Theories, Technologies and Applications” seeks for original, UNPUBLISHED research papers reporting substantive new work in various aspects of topics above. Papers MUST clearly indicate your contributions to the topic field and properly cite related work in this field.
Papers should be submitted in two separate .doc files (preferred) or .pdf files: 1) Main Document (including paper title, abstract, key words, and full text); 2) Title page (including paper title, author affiliation, acknowledgement and any other information related with the authors’ identification) through the Manuscript Central. Please register or login at http://mc03.manuscriptcentral.com/chinacomm, then go to the author center and follow the instructions there. Remember to select “Semantic Communications: Theories, Technologies and Applications—July Issue 2024” as your manuscript type when submitting; otherwise, it might be considered as a regular paper.
Each submission must be accompanied by the following information:
● an abstract of no more than 150 words
● 3-8 keywords
● original photographs with high-resolution (300 dpi or greater); eps. ortif. format is preferred; sequentially numbered references.
● sequentially numbered references. The basic reference format is: author name, “article name”, issue name (italic), vol., no., page, month, year. for example: Y. M. Huang, “peradventure in wireless heterogeneous”, IEEE Journal on Selected Areas, vol. 27, no. 5, pp 34-50, May, 2009.
● brief biographies of authors (50-75 words)
● contact information, including email and mailing addresses