Presents the table of contents for this issue of the publication.

We would like to welcome the readers to the second issue of the IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials in 2021. This issue includes 21 articles covering different aspects of communication networks. In particular, these articles survey and tutor various issues in “Wireless Communications,” “Vehicular and Sensor Communications,” “IoT and M2M,” “Network Security,” “Multimedia Communications,” “Internet

A High Altitude Platform Station (HAPS) is a network node that operates in the stratosphere at an of altitude around 20 km and is instrumental for providing communication services. Precipitated by technological innovations in the areas of autonomous avionics, array antennas, solar panel efficiency levels, and battery energy densities, and fueled by flourishing industry ecosystems, the HAPS has emerged

Joint radar and communication (JRC) has recently attracted substantial attention. The first reason is that JRC allows individual radar and communication systems to share spectrum bands and thus improves the spectrum utilization. The second reason is that JRC enables a single hardware platform, e.g., an autonomous vehicle or a UAV, to simultaneously perform the communication function and the radar function

Internet of Things (IoT) is an emerging technology that makes people’s lives smart by conquering a plethora of diverse application and service areas. In near future, the fifth-generation (5G) wireless networks provide the connectivity for this IoT ecosystem. It has been carefully designed to facilitate the exponential growth in the IoT field. Network slicing is one of the key technologies in the 5G

Recently, there has been an increase in studies relating to the Internet of Things (IoT) in various fields, such as smart cities, smart homes, smart factories, and healthcare. In an IoT environment, several entities, including users, devices, and information resources, are interconnected and interworked with services. Therefore, interoperability between different entities is essential to accomplish

In the above article [1] , the references in Tables V – IX were incorrectly assigned. The corrected tables are provided here.

In the current network-based computing world, where the number of interconnected devices grows exponentially, their diversity, malfunctions, and cybersecurity threats are increasing at the same rate. To guarantee the correct functioning and performance of novel environments such as Smart Cities, Industry 4.0, or crowdsensing, it is crucial to identify the capabilities of their devices (e.g., sensors

In order to meet their stringent dependability requirements, most modern packet-switched communication networks support fast-recovery mechanisms in the data plane. While reactions to failures in the data plane can be significantly faster compared to control plane mechanisms, implementing fast recovery in the data plane is challenging, and has recently received much attention in the literature. This

Driven by the quality of experience (QoE) requirement of video streaming applications in the smart city, smart education, immersive service, and connected vehicle scenarios, the existing network poses significant challenges, including ultra-high bandwidth, ultra-large storage, and ultra-low latency requirements, etc. Multi-access edge computing (MEC) is a potential technology, which can provide computation-intensive

Modern electronic devices have become “smart” as well as omnipresent in our day-to-day lives. From small household devices to large industrial machines, smart devices have become very popular in every possible application domain. Smart devices in our homes, offices, buildings, and cities can connect with other devices as well as with the physical world around them. This increasing popularity has also

Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) has recently witnessed significant advances that have led to multiple successes in solving sequential decision-making problems in various domains, particularly in wireless communications. The next generation of wireless networks is expected to provide scalable, low-latency, ultra-reliable services empowered by the application of data-driven Artificial Intelligence

Presents the table of contents for this issue of the publication.

We welcome you to the first issue of the IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials in 2021. This issue includes 20 papers covering different aspects of communication networks. In particular, these articles survey and tutor various issues in “Wireless Communications,” “Vehicular and Sensor Communications,” “Network Virtualization,” “Network Security,” “Multimedia Communications,” “IoT and M2M,” and

Underwater wireless sensor network (UWSN) is currently a hot research field in academia and industry with many underwater applications, such as ocean monitoring, seismic monitoring, environment monitoring, and seabed exploration. However, UWSNs suffer from various limitations and challenges: high ocean interference and noise, high propagation delay, narrow bandwidth, dynamic network topology, and limited

Today’s emerging needs (Internet of Things applications, Network Function Virtualization services, Mobile Edge computing, etc.) are challenging the classic approach of deploying a few large data centers to provide cloud services. A massively distributed Cloud-Edge architecture could better fit these new trends’ requirements and constraints by deploying on-demand infrastructure services in Point-of-Presences

The European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) has introduced the paradigm of Multi-Access Edge Computing (MEC) to enable efficient and fast data processing in mobile networks. Among other technological requirements, security and privacy are significant factors in the realization of MEC deployments. In this paper, we analyse the security and privacy of the MEC system. We introduce a thorough

The Augmented Reality (AR) technology enhances the human perception of the world by combining the real environment with the virtual space. With the explosive growth of powerful, less expensive mobile devices, and the emergence of sophisticated communication infrastructure, Mobile Augmented Reality (MAR) applications are gaining increased popularity. MAR allows users to run AR applications on mobile

Robotic applications nowadays are widely adopted to enhance operational automation and performance of real-world Cyber-Physical Systems (CPSs) including Industry 4.0, agriculture, healthcare, and disaster management. These applications are composed of latency-sensitive, data-heavy, and compute-intensive tasks. The robots, however, are constrained in the computational power and storage capacity. The

Autonomous underwater vehicles (AUVs) are submersible underwater vehicles controlled by onboard computers. AUV formation is a cooperative control which focuses on controlling multiple AUVs to move in a group while executing tasks. In contrast to a single AUV, multi-AUV formation represents higher efficiency and better stability for many applications, such as oil and gas industries, hydrographic surveys

Current access infrastructures are characterized by heterogeneity, low latency, high throughput, and high computational capability, enabling massive concurrent connections and various services. Unfortunately, this design does not pay significant attention to mobile services in underserved areas. In this context, the use of aerial radio access networks (ARANs) is a promising strategy to complement existing

In the fifth-generation (5G) mobile communication system, various service requirements of different communication environments are expected to be satisfied. As a new evolution network structure, heterogeneous network (HetNet) has been studied in recent years. Compared with homogeneous networks, HetNets can increase the opportunity in the spatial resource reuse and improve users’ quality of service

While decade-long research has clearly demonstrated the vast potential of radio frequency (RF) for many human sensing tasks, scaling this technology to large scenarios remained problematic with conventional approaches. Recently, researchers have successfully applied deep learning to take radio-based sensing to a new level. Many different types of deep learning models have been proposed to achieve high

The communication and networking field is hungry for machine learning decision-making solutions to replace the traditional model-driven approaches that proved to be not rich enough for seizing the ever-growing complexity and heterogeneity of the modern systems in the field. Traditional machine learning solutions assume the existence of (cloud-based) central entities that are in charge of processing

In order to tackle the rapidly growing number of mobile devices and their expanding demands for Internet services, network convergence is envisaged to integrate different technology domains. For indoor wireless communications, one promising approach is to coordinate light fidelity (LiFi) and wireless fidelity (WiFi), namely hybrid LiFi and WiFi networks (HLWNets). This hybrid network combines the high-speed

Seamless and ubiquitous coverage are key factors for future cellular networks. Despite capacity and data rates being the main topics under discussion when envisioning the Fifth Generation (5G) and beyond of mobile communications, network coverage remains one of the major issues since coverage quality highly impacts the system performance and end-user experience. The increasing number of base stations

Since the emergence of wireless communication networks, a plethora of research papers focus their attention on the quality aspects of wireless links. The analysis of the rich body of existing literature on link quality estimation using models developed from data traces indicates that the techniques used for modeling link quality estimation are becoming increasingly sophisticated. A number of recent

The Internet of Underwater Things (IoUT) is an emerging communication ecosystem developed for connecting underwater objects in maritime and underwater environments. The IoUT technology is intricately linked with intelligent boats and ships, smart shores and oceans, automatic marine transportations, positioning and navigation, underwater exploration, disaster prediction and prevention, as well as with

This survey paper focuses on modulation aspects of molecular communication, an emerging field focused on building biologically-inspired systems that embed data within chemical signals. The primary challenges in designing these systems are how to encode and modulate information onto chemical signals, and how to design a receiver that can detect and decode the information from the corrupted chemical

In recent years, the Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) came into being. IIoT connects sensors, industrial equipment, products, and staff in the factory, enabling context-awareness and industrial equipment automate control. The identity resolution system is a core infrastructure in IIoT. Similar to the role of Domain Name System (DNS) on the Internet, it is the entrance to the IIoT. The difference

Authentication is an important issue in wireless communications because the open nature of the wireless medium provides more security vulnerabilities. Recently, Physical-Layer Authentication (PLA) attracts many research interests because it provides information-theory security and low complexity. Although many researchers focus on the PLA and exploit its potential in enhancing wireless security, the

Presents the table of contents for this issue of the publication.

I Welcome you to the fourth issue of the IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials in 2020. This issue includes 22 papers covering different aspects of communication networks. In particular, these articles survey and tutor various issues in “Wireless Communications,” “5G and Vehicular Communications,” “Internet of Things,” “Network Security,” and “Miscellaneous.” There are three papers in the miscellaneous

Future wireless networks will provide high-bandwidth, low-latency, and ultra-reliable Internet connectivity to meet the requirements of different applications, ranging from virtual reality to the Internet of Things. To this aim, edge caching, computing, and communication (edge-C3) have emerged to bring network resources (i.e., bandwidth, storage, and computing) closer to end users. Edge-C3 improves

Cyber Physical Systems (CPS) are characterized by their ability to integrate the physical and information or cyber worlds. Their deployment in critical infrastructure have demonstrated a potential to transform the world. However, harnessing this potential is limited by their critical nature and the far reaching effects of cyber attacks on human, infrastructure and the environment. An attraction for

A wide variety of works have been conducted in vehicle-to-everything (V2X) communications to enable a variety of applications for road safety, traffic efficiency and passenger infotainment. Although dedicated short-range communications (DSRC) based V2X is already in the deployment phase, cellular based V2X is gaining more interest in academia and industry most recently. This article surveys the existing

Recent years have seen rapid deployment of mobile computing and Internet of Things (IoT) networks, which can be mostly attributed to the increasing communication and sensing capabilities of wireless systems. Big data analysis, pervasive computing, and eventually artificial intelligence (AI) are envisaged to be deployed on top of the IoT and create a new world featured by data-driven AI. In this context

Presents the table of contents for this issue of the publication.

I Welcome you to the third issue of the IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials in 2020. This issue includes 20 papers covering different aspects of communication networks. In particular, these articles survey and tutor various issues in “Wireless, Optical, and Sensor Communications,” “IoT and M2M,” “Network Security,” and “Internet Technologies.” A brief account for each of these papers is given

Wireless data traffic is growing unprecedentedly and it may impede network performance by consuming an ever-greater amount of bandwidth. With the advancement in technology there exist profound techniques having potentials to improve performance of wireless networks. Artificial Intelligence (AI) is one such evolving technology that enables systems to take intelligent decisions. AI can be incorporated

Presents the table of contents for this issue of the publication.

I welcome you to the second issue of the IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials in 2020. This issue includes 20 papers covering different aspects of communication networks. In particular, these articles survey and tutor various issues in “Wireless and Optical Communications,” “Vehicular Communications,” “IoT and M2M,” “Network Security,” and “Internet Technologies.” A brief account for each of these

Presents the table of contents for this issue of the publication.

Presents the table of contents for this issue of the publication.

I welcome you to the fourth issue of the IEEE Communications Surveys and Tutorials in 2019. This issue includes 25 papers covering different aspects of communication networks. In particular, these articles survey and tutor various issues in “Wireless and Cellular Communications,” “5G Communications,” “Vehicular and Sensor Communications,” “IoT and M2M,” “Internet Technologies,” and “Network Security

Polar codes have attracted the attention of academia and industry alike in the past decade, such that the 5$^\text{th}$ generation wireless systems (5G) standardization process of the 3$^\text{th}$ generation partnership project (3GPP) chose polar codes as a channel coding scheme. In this tutorial, we provide a description of the encoding process of polar codes adopted by the 5G standard. We illustrate

Building on the ubiquity of electric power infrastructure, power line communications (PLC) has been successfully used in diverse application scenarios, including the smart grid and in-home broadband communications systems as well as industrial and home automation. However, the power line channel exhibits deleterious properties, one of which is its hostile noise environment. This article aims for providing

Satellite communications have recently entered a period of renewed interest motivated by technological advances and nurtured through private investment and ventures. The present survey aims at capturing the state of the art in SatComs, while highlighting the most promising open research topics. Firstly, the main innovation drivers are motivated, such as new constellation types, on-board processing

The unprecedented increase in the demand for mobile data, fuelled by new emerging applications such as HD video streaming and heightened online activities has caused massive strain on the existing cellular networks. As a solution, the 5G technology has been introduced to improve network performance through various innovative features such as mmWave spectrum and HetNets. In essence, HetNets include

Visible Light Communications (VLC) is becoming a mature communication technology, particularly for indoor usage. The application in outdoor environments is particularly interesting in the scope of Vehicular VLC (V-VLC), however, there are some critical challenges remaining. In general, VLC is a good complement to Radio Frequency (RF)-based communication. For automotive use cases, V-VLC is benefiting

Fixed and mobile telecom operators, enterprise network operators and cloud providers strive to face the challenging demands coming from the evolution of IP networks (e.g. huge bandwidth requirements, integration of billions of devices and millions of services in the cloud). Proposed in the early 2010's, the Segment Routing (SR) architecture helps facing these challenging demands and it is being adopted

Short-range audio channels have a few distinguishing characteristics: ease of use, low deployment costs, and easy to tune frequencies, to cite a few. Moreover, thanks to their seamless adaptability to the security context, many techniques and tools based on audio signals have been recently proposed. However, while the most promising solutions are turning into valuable commercial products, acoustic

Due to their specific features, such as decentralization and immutability, blockchains have become popular in recent years. Blockchains are full-stack distributed systems in terms of realization, where security is a critical factor for their success. However, despite increasing popularity and adoption, there is a lack of standardized models to study security threats related to blockchains in a similar

The Internet has made several giant leaps over the years, from a fixed to a mobile Internet, then to the Internet of Things, and now to a Tactile Internet. The Tactile Internet goes far beyond data, audio and video delivery over fixed and mobile networks, and even beyond allowing communication and collaboration among things. It is expected to enable haptic communication and allow skill set delivery

The increasing number of heterogeneous devices connected to the Internet, together with tight 5G requirements have generated new challenges for designing network infrastructures. Industrial verticals such as automotive, smart city and eHealthcare (among others) need secure, low latency and reliable communications. To meet these stringent requirements, computing resources have to be moved closer to

With the emergence of 4k/8k video, the throughput requirement of video delivery will keep grow to tens of Gbps. Other new high-throughput and low-latency video applications including augmented reality (AR), virtual reality (VR), and online gaming, are also proliferating. Due to the related stringent requirements, supporting these applications over wireless local area network (WLAN) is far beyond the

Artificial intelligence (AI) has achieved remarkable breakthroughs in a wide range of fields, ranging from speech processing, image classification to drug discovery. This is driven by the explosive growth of data, advances in machine learning (especially deep learning), and the easy access to powerful computing resources. Particularly, the wide scale deployment of edge devices (e.g., IoT devices) generates

The ambitious high data-rate applications in the envisioned future beyond fifth-generation (B5G) wireless networks require new solutions, including the advent of more advanced architectures than the ones already used in 5G networks, and the coalition of different communications schemes and technologies to enable these applications requirements. Among the candidate communications schemes for future

Terahertz communication is emerging as a future technology to support Terabits per second link with highlighting features as high throughput and negligible latency. However, the unique features of the Terahertz band such as high path loss, scattering, and reflection pose new challenges and results in short communication distance. The antenna directionality, in turn, is required to enhance the communication

This paper presents a literature review on recent applications and design aspects of the intelligent reflecting surface (IRS) in the future wireless networks. Conventionally, the network optimization has been limited to transmission control at two endpoints, i.e., end users and network controller. The fading wireless channel is uncontrollable and becomes one of the main limiting factors for performance