EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking: Special Issue on EuCNC 2019: "Enabling Technologies for Networks beyond 5G"

Luis M. Correia
2021 EURASIP Journal on Wireless Communications and Networking  
5G wireless mobile networks were already fully standardised in their release regarding the radio interface, and since 2019 many field trials led to the launch of commercial services together with the availability mobile phones. While 5G starts being a reality, many open challenges in research and development still exist related to network virtualisation, slicing, optimisation, new frequency bands, massive MIMO implementation and optimisation of initial radio access network deployments, among
more » ... ers. It is also relevant to follow the new ideas for the evolution of 5G towards future industrial and IoT massive services, as well as the expected new human interfaces and their effect on the mobile network behaviour, not only for the so-called beyond 5G (5G+) but also aiming already at 6G. This Special Issue originates from the international conference EuCNC 2019 (European Conference on Networks and Communications), which was held in June 2019 in Valencia (Spain). The Technical Programme Chairs of the conference selected the best papers, and subsequently invited the authors to submit an extended version of their paper, by at least one third of their length, for possible consideration in this Special Issue. The main target was to collect and present quality research contributions in the most recent activities related to 5G+ networks. Through this Special Issue, the state-ofthe-art is presented and new challenges are highlighted, regarding the latest advances on system radio interfaces and network architectures, including cloud and virtualisation solutions, management technologies, and vertical application areas, among others, suitable for various 5G+ industries. The motivation for this Special Issue was to present the latest and finest results on the evolution of 5G+ research and prototyping activities, coming, but not exclusively (since EuCNC is a conference open to the whole research community), from projects co-financed by the European Commission within its R&D programmes. The scope of this Special Issue is quite large, covering from the basic aspects of radio propagation at the bands of hundreds of GHz to applications dealing with autonomous Open Access
doi:10.1186/s13638-021-02004-3 doaj:30b4e3aa112d4e928bc9122447aeac11 fatcat:nao3sgavmzbk7pvxy6gqclmqm4