Extreme communication environments such as underwater, aerial, underground, and intra-body have been attracting growing interest from both academia and industry in an effort to conquer the last wireless communication frontiers. Novel wireless communication architectures and networking protocols for extreme communication environments enable a rich body of applications with unprecedented societal impact. The workshop will focus on communication, networking, and system-level developments related to underwater, aerial, underground, and intra-body environments, as well as on contributions towards the characterization and modeling of the different mediums based on real-world data measurements.

The goal of the workshop is to unveil the latest wireless technology developments, from the physical layer all the way to the application layer in realizing underwater, aerial, underground, and intra-body communication networks with a focus on bridging the gaps between theory, algorithms, and practical system implementations. The workshop will bring together academic and industrial researchers to identify and discuss technical challenges and recent results related to underwater, aerial, underground, and intra-body extreme communication environments.

Topics of interest include, but are not limited to:

-Energy efficient protocols and routing techniques
-Cognitive networking
-Cooperative communications
-Cross-medium protocol designs
-Secure physical layer communication schemes
-Signal waveform design
-Spectrally efficient modulation and coding techniques
-Multi-antenna communications
-Multiple-access and medium access control and sharing
-Low-power wireless communications
-Ad-hoc networking, routing, handover and meshing
-Distributed sensing and mobile networking
-Modeling and simulation tools
-Experimental results from prototypes, testbeds, and demonstrations
-Software defined wireless platforms and software-defined networking testbeds
-Applications for the internet of (underwater, aerial, underground, and intra-body) things
-Autonomously networked mobile or static (implantable in a living tissue or in a reservoir) communication system designs
-Health and environmental concerns for next-generation applications
-Hardware/software challenges in transceiver designs
-Cooperation of terrestrial, aerial and underwater (unmanned) vehicles
-Human-machine interaction
-Signal models
-Optimization techniques for multi-sensor processing
-Signal processing for network beamforming
-Localization, navigation, path planning
-Machine learning for cognitive networking
-Signal propagation and attenuation models (absorption, scattering, fading, multipath)
-Measurement and characterization (modeling) of real-world wireless (underwater, aerial, intra-body, underground) network deployments

Paper Submission

Manuscripts must be limited to 6 pages in IEEE 8.5x11 format. The reviews will be single blind. The manuscripts should be formatted in standard IEEE camera-ready format (double-column, 10-pt font) and be submitted as PDF files (formatted for 8.5x11-inch paper). Accepted papers will be published in the combined INFOCOM 2018 Workshop proceedings and will be submitted to IEEE Xplore. Submitted papers may not have been previously published in or under consideration for publication in another journal or conference. The reviews will be single blind. Manuscripts should be submitted as PDF files via EDAS.

Important Dates

Paper Submission: January 13, 2018 (extended-FIRM)
Author notifications: February 10, 2018
Camera ready: February 28, 2018
Workshop day: Monday, April 16, 2018. (Half Day)

Steering Committee

Dr. Stella N. Batalama (Florida Atlantic University, USA)
Dr. Tommaso Melodia (Northeastern University, USA)
Dr. Dimitris A. Pados (Florida Atlantic University, USA)

Technical Program Committee Co-Chairs

Dr. George Sklivanitis (Florida Atlantic University USA)
Dr. Emrecan Demirors (Northeastern University, USA)
Dr. Panos Markopoulos (Rochester Institute of Technology, USA)
Dr. G. Enrico Santagati (Bose Corporation, USA)