한국통신학회 KICS

JCN SPECIAL ISSUE ON

Reconfigurable Intelligent Surface for B5G & 6G

PUBLICATION DATE: October 2022

Reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS) or intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) is recently recognized as one of the most promising technologies to effectively increase coverage and improve communication performance for future wireless communications beyond 5G and 6G (B5G & 6G). Specifically, the RIS is a planar surface consisting of an array of passive reflecting elements, each of which can independently induce a controllable reflection coefficient on the incident signal. By installing an RIS on the facade of buildings, an additional virtual line of sight (LoS) link can be established between the base station (BS) and the user. By judiciously adjusting the phase shifts of the reflecting elements, the reflected signal can be constructively superimposed with the signal from the direct path to enhance the desired signal power or destructively mitigate unfavourable signals such as multi-user interference or signal leakage to eavesdroppers. The RIS is less expensive to deploy than conventional active transmitters since its reflecting elements only passively reflect the incoming signal without any signal processing operations and does not require costly and power-hungry radio frequency (RF) chains. Moreover, it is lightweight and has limited layer thickness, so it can be easily integrated into the environment. Despite the above-mentioned appealing advantages of RIS, it also brings some new signal processing challenges such as channel estimation, robust transmission design, angle/position estimation, distributed algorithm design, etc. This IEEE/KICS Journal of Communication Networks special issue aims to solicit high-quality unpublished research papers by experts from mobile communication industries (operators, telecom vendors, as well as consulting firms) and academia in the fields of RIS-assisted wireless communications. Topics of interests include but are not limited to:

l  Low pilot overhead channel estimation

l  New use cases, application scenarios, and techno-economic analysis

l  Robust transmission design based on imperfect cascaded channel state information (CSI)

l  Feedback-aware RIS beamforming design and channel estimation

l  Transceiver design based on long-term/two-timescale CSI

l  Massive access for RIS‐based wireless networks

l  AI‐inspired control and orchestration of RIS‐empowered wireless networks

l  AI-based transmission design/channel estimation

l  Indoor/outdoor localization solutions in RIS-empowered wireless networks

l  Resource allocation or interference management in RIS-aided wireless communications

l  Experimental results, testbed, prototypes

l  Distributed configuration and deployment of Large-scale RIS-empowered wireless networks

l  Integration of RISs in emerging wireless applications (mobile edge computing, energy harvesting, UAV, physical layer security, etc.)

l  Integration of RISs with state‐of‐the‐art wireless technologies (e.g., small cells, Massive MIMO, millimeter‐wave communications, THz communication, free space optics, Internet of Things, etc.)

l  New types of RISs

 Continuing JCN’s tradition of fast turnaround together with full peer reviews, a tentative schedule is set as follows:  

​​April 15, 2022 Paper submission deadline (Extended) 
June 15, 2022 First round of review 
July 15, 2022 Revised paper due 
August 15, 2022 Final acceptance notification 
September 15, 2022 Final paper due 
October 30, 2022 Special issue published

Zhengyu Zhu, Zhengzhou University, Henan, China, iezyzhu@zzu.edu.cn
Cunhua Pan, Southeast University, China, cunhuapan21@gmail.com
Qingqing Wu, University of Macau, Macau, China, qingqingwu@um.edu.mo
Marco Di Renzo，Paris-Saclay University, France, marco.di.renzo.upsaclay@gmail.com
A. Lee Swindlehurst, University of California Irvine, USA, swindle@uci.edu
Yajun Zhao, ZTE Corporation, China, zhao.yajun1@zte.com.cn
 

Electronic submissions should be made through http://mc.manuscriptcentral.com:/jcommnet. Information for authors is available on the JCN web site, http://www.jcn.or.kr. The manuscript should be formatted in LaTex file and uploaded in PDF version. Nominally papers should be greater than 8 pages in double column, but shorter papers that make a significant contribution will also be considered. Please direct inquiries and intent to submit notifications to the Lead Guest Editor. JCN is a high-quality bimonthly archival journal, published by the Korean Institute of Communications and Information Sciences with the technical co-sponsorship of the IEEE Communications Society, covering the fields of Communication Theory and Systems, Wireless Communications, and Networks and Services. JCN began publication in March 1999 and is available in IEEE Xplore.