Theme & Aims
Standards play a key role in the success of the communications industry, as enablers of global systems inter-operability. IEEE CSCN aims for closing the gap between researchers, scientists and standards experts from academia, industry and different standardization bodies. It will serve as a platform for presenting and discussing standards-related topics in the areas of communications, networking and related disciplines, facilitating standards development as well as cooperation among the key players. IEEE CSCN will deliver high quality technical as well as visionary papers, which will be reviewed and selected by an international technical program committee (TPC) representing both academia and industry, with a strong standardization background. In 2016, IEEE CSCN will be divided into 5 tracks designed to cover the diverse space of technologies which together comprise a modern communication system and our connected society. The track descriptions are available below.

* Track on Wireless Communication and Networking:
The track solicits new and previously unpublished papers that address these emerging architecture and the standardization approaches and strategies that these may take. Paper topics may include (but are not limited to):
- Physical layer and MAC layer design for cellular and other wireless networks
- Dynamic scheduling, power control, interference management, and QoS management in 5G wireless networks
- Topology, deployment, and optimization of wireless networks, including heterogeneous, ultra-dense, and mesh networks, device to device communication, and wireless backhaul as well as dynamic radio topology based on moving cells
- Application of SDN, NFV, and cloud computing to RAN and CN architectures and implementations, such as network slicing
- R&D and standardization activities towards 5G and IMT-2020
- Green and energy efficient wireless networks
- Simulation, prototyping, and experiment results.

* Track on Internet of Things:
This track invites original articles on the following topics, but are not limited to: ·
- IoT architecture design and optimizations
- IoT security and privacy of IoT devices and services
- System optimization to support Ultra-Low complexity devices
- Standardised semantic data description framework and technologies
- IoT communication procedure enhancements
- Experience and lessons learnt for standards based IoT large scale pilots · IoT standards platforms interworking
- IoT standards gap analysis
- 5G Networks and IoT
- Software Defined Network (SDN) and IoT
- Industrial Internet of Things
- Factory of Things
- Edge Computing, Fog Computing and IoT
- IPv6-based IoT Networks
- IoT protocols such as IPv6, 6LoWPAN, RPL, 6TiSCH, WoT
- IoT security in the sense of massive IoT deployments, e.g., embedded SIM management

* Track on Network Softwarization:
This track is looking for discussing standards-related topics on network softwarization. Potential topics include, but are not limited to, aspects related with standardization in:
- SDN and NFV frameworks and architectures.
- SDN northbound, southbound and east-west interfaces.
- SDN programming languages and data models.
- Progress and future challenges in ETSI NFV.
- Progress and future challenges in IETF/IRTF related WGs/RGs.
- SDN and NFV in wireless and mobile networks.
- Orchestration and Management in SDN and NFV.
- Multi-domain considerations in SDN and NFV.
- SDN and NFV in multi-tenancy environment.
- Experimentation experience in NFV and SDN.
- Open Source efforts (e.g., ETSI NFV, OPNFV, OpenStack, OpenMANO).

* Track on Application and Services:
This track addresses the above issues. The following topic are of interest, but are not limited to:
- Standardization efforts for SoA
- Standards for constrained situations
- Communication and Networking standards for low resource situations
- Standardization under W3C
- Standard for future web interoperability
- Web standardization for interactivity
- Standardization of human interactions with web platforms
- IETF standardization for CPS
- Development of mobile service enabler specifications & Standards
- Interoperability for end-to-end mobile services.
- Standard architectures for service enabler
- Open interfaces

* Track on Emerging Computing Infrastructures:
The objective of this track is to bring together the state-of-the-art research and standardization that address challenges related to edge-cloud or cloudlets in the mobile network design evolution towards 5G. Topics of interest include but not limited to:
- Application QoS/QoE enhancements and location services
- Network function decentralization and application optimization
- Decentralized mobility management and service continuity
- Mobility management across edge-cloud platforms
- Evolving traffic offloading services in edge-computing platforms ·Flexible Cloud-RAN design and management
- Orchestrating C-RAN and application services across edge-cloud platforms
- Joint optimization of applications, services and network functions· Supporting multi-tenancy in open edge-cloud platforms
- Mobile – Fixed covered control plane and network agnostic access
- Enterprise/business and home gateway virtualization
- Hybrid Access architecture and solutions

Note: These topics, but not limited to, are to be covered in this special session.

Contact for more information:

· Steering Committee Chair: Prof. Tarik Taleb, Aalto University, Finland
· General Chair: Prof. Dr. Thomas Magedanz, Fraunhofer FOKUS, Germany
· TPC Co-Chairs: Dr. Adlen Ksentini (INRIA/Rennes, France) and Dr. Alex Reznik (InterDigital, USA)