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For many of us, 2020 has been a lost year in some ways. On top of an enormous loss of human lives, the pandemic paused much of our progress on long-planned family and career goals. It forced international conferences and holiday trips to either be changed to virtual events or to be cancelled. It warped many people's sense of time, causing months-long stretches to seem interminable in the moment but

5G networks and devices are being rolled out at an unprecedented speed in all corners of the globe. These rollouts are all based on 3GPP's Release 15 standard that includes the first version of 5G NR specifications and was released in June/2019. 3GPP has since been actively working to expand the functionalities of 5G, and this paper presents the 5G evolution path brought by 3GPP release 16, 17, and

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Mobile data traffic grew by more than 50 percent between the first quarters of 2019 and 2020 and is projected to grow by close to a factor of 5 to reach 164 exabytes per month by 2025. This insatiable demand for mobile broadband communication services, including video, social networking, web browsing, audio, software updates, and peer-to-peer file sharing, has been driven by both the rising number

In-band full duplex (IBFD) radio represents one of the key technologies for future wireless communication and radar applications. A major challenge of this technology is to mitigate the strong self-interfer-ence (SI) so that the residual SI level falls below the receiver's noise floor. Radio frequency (RF) self-inter-ference cancellation (SIC) is essential for preventing an IBFD receiver from becoming

Prospective authors are requested to submit new, unpublished manuscripts for inclusion in the upcoming event described in this call for papers.

Full duplex (FD) communication has the potential to double the throughput of wireless links while occupying the same bandwidth of half duplex communication. To enable FD communication, the self-interference (S1) signal is to be suppressed down to the noise floor. S1 cancellation can be achieved via antenna suppression, active analog cancellation, and digital cancellation. At high transmit power levels

The ability of in-band full duplex (IBFD) technology to support multiple simultaneous functions within wireless systems will enable it to be adopted into both existing networks and innovative applications that have not yet been fully realized. In order to accomplish this goal, an effective way to mitigate the consequential self-interference must be employed. One of the many techniques considered to

Equipping millimeter-wave (mmWave) systems with full duplex capability would accelerate and transform next-generation wireless applications and forge a path for new ones. Full duplex mmWave transceivers could capitalize on the already attractive features of mmWave communication by supplying spectral efficiency gains and latency improvements while also affording future networks deployment solutions

Although in cellular networks full duplex and dynamic time-division duplexing promise increased spectrum efficiency, their potential is so far challenged by increased interference. While previous studies have shown that self-interference can be suppressed to a sufficient level, we show that the cross-link interference for both duplexing modes, especially from base station to base station, is the remaining

Full duplex is a scheme that changes the duplexing paradigm in wireless communication networks. Enabled by self-interference cancellation methodology, it unlocks the potential to improve frequency utilization efficiency and reduce resource allocation latency. However, embracing the full duplex scheme in a mobile network can lead to complications in terms of cross-link interference among network entities

One of the key technologies for the future cellular networks is full duplex (FD)-enabled integrated access and backhaul (IAB) networks operating in the millimeter-wave (mmWave) frequencies. The main challenge in realizing FD-IAB networks is mitigating the impact of self-interference (SI) in the wideband mmWave frequencies. In this article, we first introduce the 3GPP IAB network architectures and wideband

Full duplex (FD) systems are able to transmit and receive signals over the same frequency band simultaneously with the potential of even doubling the spectral efficiency in comparison with traditional half duplex (HD) systems. When combined with relaying, FD systems are expected to dramatically increase the throughput of future wireless networks. However, the degrading effect of self-interference (SI)

Ultra-reliable low-latency communication (URLLC) is one of the key use cases of 5G wireless communications to facilitate specific application scenarios with stringent latency and reliability demands, such as industrial automation and Tactile Internet. A full duplex (FD) relay with simultaneous transmission and reception in the same frequency band is an effective approach to enhance the reliability

The use of joint communication and sensing (JCAS) systems in efficiently utilizing the scarce RF spectrum has received increased interest in recent years. Due to the (re)use of the same resources by both functions (e.g., frequency of operation, waveforms, and hardware), various design challenges are evident in integrating communication and sensing/radar systems, and novel techniques are required to

Prospective authors are requested to submit new, unpublished manuscripts for inclusion in the upcoming event described in this call for papers.

Orbital angular momentum (OAM) multiplexing has recently been proposed as a solution to the ultimate goal of increasing the channel capacity of wireless communication links because of the existence of infinite orthogonal modes. It can be combined with the existing conventional multiplexing techniques to boost up the data rate multiple times for future wireless communication systems. We analyze the

Portable computing devices handling multi gigabit-per-second (Gb/s) data rates are anticipated to enter the wireless market with the rise of the 5G protocol in the future. The recent allocation of the above-100-GHz band by the Federal Communications Commission creates a great opportunity for developing wireless networks with distributed base station nodes targeting high data rates. This ever-in-creasing

Without any doubt, Machine Learning (ML) will be an important driver of future communications due to its foreseen performance when applied to complex problems. However, the application of ML to networking systems raises concerns among network operators and other stakeholders, especially regarding trustworthiness and reliability. In this article, we devise the role of network simulators for bridging

To support large-scale deployment of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) in the future, a new wireless communication paradigm, namely, cellular-connected UAV, has recently received an upsurge of interest in both academia and industry. Specifically, cellular base stations (BSs) and spectrum are reused to serve UAVs as new aerial user equipments (UEs) for meeting their communication requirements. However

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In this issue of IEEE Wireless Communications Magazine, we are pleased to present a special issue on “Service-Oriented Space-Air-Ground Integrated Networks” with a collection of 10 articles. We are also very glad to present 11 articles accepted from open calls.

Afrustrating aspect of spectrum policy is the fact that in virtually every band one looks at, in most locations one finds spectrum that appears to be underutilized. (Admittedly this is complicated by the fact that there is no general consensus on how to quantify spectrum utilization.) There are many reasons for this apparent underutilization, including uneven terrain and nonuniform spatial distribution

With the skyrocketing number of connected devices and dramatic growth in data traffic, terrestrial networks alone cannot meet the massive and global connectivity needs in an effective and efficient manner. It is envisioned that airborne and space communication infrastructures, such as low Earth orbit (LEO) satellite constellations and unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), will be integrated with terrestrial

The satellite tracking, telemetry, and command system, or TT&C, is utilized to transmit the telemetry and telecommand data, as well as to determine the satellite orbit. It is the lifeline of a satellite, and thus its safety and reliability are of fundamental importance to the satellite. After years of development, the traditional satellite TT&C technologies are relatively mature, while there are still

The integrated communication system has received increasing attention to establish a fully connected world in the eras of beyond fifth generation wireless communication and sixth generation wireless communication systems, where a wide range of services with distinct requirements needs to be accommodated, covering distinct scenarios such as terrestrial, ocean, outer space, and underwater. In this article

Modern Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) is often designed to support geographically disperse nodes in large quantities. Satellites have unparalleled superiority in terms of coverage, making themselves ideal candidates as wide area IIoT access points. Antenna arrays (AAs) empower the satellites with beamforming capability, a key feature to accommodate various technical challenges of IIoT. In this

The Internet of Things (IoT) has been extensively investigated as an enabling technology for improving our daily life. With increasing demands for seamless connectivity, the space-air-ground integrated network (SAGIN) is expected to provide reliable communications for IoT devices anywhere and anytime. Since IoT devices have sparse activity and low signaling overhead, random access can be an efficient

Space-air-ground integrated networks (SAGINs) provide global information sharing, large-scale coverage, and ubiquitous collaboration architecture, and alleviate the pressure of rapid traffic growth on terrestrial wireless networks. On the other hand, the emergence of artificial intelligence (AI) technology in all walks of life has attracted significant attention on intelligent services. However, frequent

With its potential versatility and reliability, the space-air-ground integrated vehicular network (SAGVN) is envisioned as a promising solution to deliver quality vehicular services anywhere at any time. This article proposes a software defined framework for SAGVN to achieve flexible, reliable, and scalable network resource management. First, key applications and research challenges in resource management

The rapid growth of maritime transportation and its regularization have imposed an increasing demand for developing a global maritime surveillance capacity. The existing cooperative maritime traffic monitoring relies on the shipborne automatic identification system (AIS), which is now confronting severe security threats due to the vulnerabilities of AIS at both the implementation and protocol levesl

In this article, we justify an online service provisioning (OSP) framework to provision virtualized and micro service (VMS) to users, which can achieve efficient, flexible, and scalable service provisioning. Compared to the onboard service provisioning framework, the system bottleneck shifts from the onboard computation limitation to the network capability and robustness in OSP, which the space-air-ground

Space-air-ground integrated networks (SAGINs) allow mobile nodes to gain access to the Internet anywhere and at any time, which has significantly broadened the communication coverage all over the world. Different from other heterogeneous networks, SAGINs have the characteristics of dynamic network and wide coverage, which make it vulnerable to various malicious attacks. To improve the security of SAGINs

A space-air-ground integrated network (SAGIN) provides comprehensive interconnection and quality of service. Such an integrated network poses security concerns by bringing together a variety of devices from different untrusted authorities. Blockchain, as a decentralized ledger, although showing great potential to solve the security issues in SAGIN, may bring up intolerable latency by sequentially validating

In this article, the 5G New Radio (NR) physical layer evolution to support beyond 52.6 GHz communications is addressed. The performance of both OFDM based and DFT-s-OFDM based networks are evaluated with special emphasis on the phase noise (PN) induced distortion. It is shown that DFT-s-OFDM is more robust against PN under 5G NR Release 15 assumptions, specifically regarding the supported phase tracking

In this article, we propose artificial intelligence (AI) enabled unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) aided wireless networks (UAWN) for overcoming the challenges imposed by the random fluctuation of wireless channels, blocking and user mobility effects. In UAWN, multiple UAVs are employed as aerial base stations, which are capable of promptly adapting to the randomly fluctuating environment by collecting

The concept of the Internet of Things (IoT) first appeared a few decades ago. Today, by the ubiquitous wireless connectivity, the boost of machine learning and artificial intelligence, and the advances in big data analytics, it is safe to say that IoT has evolved to a new concept called the Internet of Everything (IoE) or the Internet of All. IoE has four pillars, things, human, data, and processes

Full-spectrum ranging from sub-6 GHz to THz and visible light will be exploited in 6G in order to reach unprecedented key-performance-indica-tors. However, an extraordinary amount of energy will be consumed by network infrastructure, while functions of massively deployed Internet of Everything (IoE) devices are limited by embedded batteries. Therefore, energy self-sustainable (ESS) 6G is proposed in

LTE-Licensed Assisted Access (LAA) networks are beginning to be deployed widely in major metropolitan areas in the U.S. in the unlicensed 5 GHz bands, which have existing dense deployments of Wi-Fi as well. Various aspects of the coexistence scenarios such deployments give rise to have been considered in a vast body of academic and industry research. However, there is very little data and research

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The twelve articles in this special issue focus on spectrum and energy efficiency in wireless communications.

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Wireless Communications and Networking has experienced a tremendous growth over the past few years, due to the increased demand of the new wireless services and applications. The fifth generation (5G) is being deployed and the sixth generation (6G) is expected to offer higher data rates, ubiquitous coverage, scalability, lower latency and massive densification. Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) has witnessed

Spectrum-prediction-based dynamic spectrum access (DSA) has been considered as a promising approach to meet the higher spectral efficiency, more system throughput, and better network connectivity requirements of 5G Internet of Things (IoT) applications. This article discusses the feasibility of applying spectrum prediction in 5G followed by proposing a 5G architecture supporting the spectrum-prediction-based

Since the early days of wireless communication, wireless spectrum has been allocated according to a static frequency plan, whereby most of the spectrum is licensed for exclusive use by specific services or radio technologies. While some spectrum bands are overcrowded, many other bands are heavily underutilized. As a result, there is a shortage of available spectrum to deploy emerging technologies that

Massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA) are two key techniques for enabling massive connectivity in future wireless networks. A massive MIMO-NOMA system can deliver remarkable spectral improvements and low communication latency. Nevertheless, the uncontrollable stochastic behavior of the wireless channels can still degrade its performance. In this context

A wireless body area network (WBAN) is a physical network system with functions such as information collection and data transmission, and provides a key means for real-time health detection and medical services. However, if WBANs deployed in a dense environment lack internetwork coordination, it can cause high interference. In addition, WBANs have the characteristics of social mobility, and regular

Efficient transmit and receive beam management is necessary in millimeter-wave spectrum due to the inherently directional nature of antenna array transmissions in this regime. Energy efficiency of beam sweeping is further complicated when operating in shared or unlicensed spectrum, since receiving nodes are unaware if their designated transmitter has actually gained access to the medium. This article

Compared to terrestrial and airborne wireless communications using radio waves, underwater wireless communications encounter a longstanding challenge: the aqueous-medium seriously attenuates electromagnetic waves. As the only choice to this day, underwater wireless communication employing acoustic waves is still hindered by hydrophone device performance. Several shortcomings, such as the unsatisfactory

With the proliferation of versatile devices and data-consuming services, the quest for spectrum efficiency has led to the merging of three disruptive technologies: millimeter-wave (mmWave) communications, massive MIMO (maMIMO), and non-orthogonal multiple access (NOMA). Emerging wireless networks move toward ultra-dense deployment of massive devices with diverse service demands, which call for efficient

The potential of a system combining millimeter- wave (mmWave) communication and multiple- input multiple-output (MIMO) technology has motivated an extensive effort in both the research community and industry. With the much higher spectrum band, mmWave is considered to be a promising technology to solve the congestion problem in the sub-6 GHz band for future massive Internet of Things (IoT) systems

Although spectrum sensing is commonly used in modern wireless communications to determine spectrum resources, the rapid development of wireless communications has generated massive heterogeneous spectrum data, which has dramatically increased the complexity of spectrum sensing. Machine-learning-assisted spectrum sensing, as an emerging and promising technique, provides an effective way to find available