Subject: [nemo] IEEE Network, SI on Broadband Access Networks

From: Yang Xiao <[email-masked]>
Date: Sun, 7 Jan 2007 23:11:07 -0800 (PST)

Call for Papers

A Special Issue of IEEE Network on 

Advances in Broadband Access Networks

Background
The explosive growth of the Internet as well as the emergence of 
various broadband services has been placing a huge bandwidth demand on
the 
underlying telecommunications infrastructure. To support this growth,
the 
backbone networks of the telecommunications infrastructure have 
experienced a tremendous growth in bandwidth capacity with the wide
deployment 
of fiber-optic technology in the past decade. However, the subscriber 
access networks, which cover the "last mile" communications and serve 
numerous residential and small business customers, have not been scaled

up commensurately. Thus the last mile is becoming a potential 
bottleneck, especially with the increasing demand for broadband
services like 
Internet telephony, video (including TV programming) and audio
streaming, 
massively multiuser online gaming, etc. In recent years, the subscriber

access networks have been extensively upgraded with the deployment of 
innovative xDSL and Cable TV technologies. However, these techno!
 logies still have their own limitations and will be severely 
challenged in meeting the ever-increasing bandwidth demands of
customers. For 
this reason, advanced optical access networks such as the various FTTx 
technologies (Fiber-to-the-home (H), curb (C), building (B)) have been 
envisioned as more scalable with respect to bandwidth, long-term 
solutions to the "last mile" problem in the future. Meanwhile, as a
transition 
solution, xDSL-based fiber-to-the-node (FTTN) architectures and 
HFC-based service delivery architectures are becoming more and more
central 
for the delivery of Triple Play converged services (TV, telephony, and 
Internet access) to residential customers. Moreover, wireless access 
networks such as WiMax, called "wireless last mile," have emerged as 
alternatives suitable for special situations or geographic areas
because of 
their convenient and inexpensive deployment with no need to extend 
expensive wireline infrastructure. 
No matter what kind of technology is employed, a successful broadband 
access solution must be not only scalable, upgradeable, and reliable, 
but also implemented at a low cost in order to increase the economic 
viability of many potential broadband applications. This presents many 
challenges in different aspects of access network design. In the
network 
architectural aspect, the main challenges include network architecture 
design and network scalability and upgradeability. A well-designed 
network architecture can not only largely improve network scalability
and 
upgradeability but also significantly reduce network implementation
costs. 
In the service delivery aspect, the main challenges include service 
convergence and quality of service (QoS) provisioning for
differentiated 
services as well as network reliability and security. For this purpose,

efficient resource allocation, scheduling, and admission control 
schemes are needed to guarantee QoS for differentiated services.
Effect!
 ive reliability and security schemes are also needed to make network 
services more reliable and secure. In addition, new revenue-generating 
broadband services are urgently desired. 

Scope of Special Issue
With this special issue, we aim to provide a reference issue covering 
the latest advances in the network architectural and service delivery 
aspects of advanced broadband access networks. The special issue will 
consider original research and survey articles prepared in accordance
to 
the guidelines of the IEEE Network magazine 
(http://www.comsoc.org/pubs/net/ntwrk/authors.html) written in a 
tutorial manner comprehensible to the non-specialists. Contributions
are 
solicited within the scope of this issue in the following subject 
categories: 

FTTx and HFC distribution networks 
WiMax access networks 
Network and service delivery architectures 
Service convergence (e.g., Triple Play) 
QoS provisioning and resource allocation schemes 
Admission control and scheduling schemes 
Network scalability and upgradeability 
Network reliability and security 
New broadband services and applications 
Industry report: deployment and standardization statuses 
***Note that submissions covering physical layer aspects are 
out-of-the-scope of this special issue. 
Manuscript Submission
Authors must submit their complete manuscript electronically in PDF 
format by email to Jun Zheng ([email-masked]) (not to the magazine?s 
Editor-in-Chief) before the deadline. Please also include information
about 
the manuscript (title, complete list of authors, corresponding author's

contact, abstract, and keywords) as a text file in the body of your 
submission email message. 

Important Dates
Submission deadline: January 15, 2007
Acceptance notification: May 2, 2007
Final manuscript due: July 10, 2007
Publication date: September 2007

Guest Editors Jun Zheng
School of Information Technology and Engineering
University of Ottawa
800 King Edward Street
Ottawa, Ontario K1N 6N5, Canada
Email: [email-masked]

Yang Xiao
Department of Computer Science
University of Alabama
101 Houser Hall, Box 870290
Tuscaloosa, AL 35487-0290, USA
Email: [email-masked]

Abbas Jamalipour
School of Electrical and Information Engineering
University of Sydney
Bldg J03
Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
Email: [email-masked]