CALL FOR PAPERS Special Issue of Computer Networks (Elsevier) on Future Advances in Military Communications Systems & Technologies

Since the end of the Cold War there have been numerous advances in the Telecommunications Technologies that support the tactical operational support of modern military personnel. The requirement today is for rapid deployment of military assets in remote parts of the world, often in environmentally hostile geography. This places an ever-increasing dependence on Information and Communications Technology to provide real-time fault-tolerant QoS command, control and data management over fixed and freespace communications transport infrastructures. The ability of the modern combatant to have an array of 'on-board' sensor feeds to various components of the central command and control stack using a combination of HF Radio, SATCOM, spread spectrum or IP protocols places added pressure on the communications stack to provide an fully integrated network management solution for the Digital Battlefield.

Key services that need to be provided include: node and network mobility (NEMO, MIP), request admission control, energy efficient device operation (e.g. IP address management or DNS), intelligent QoS-based network resource provisioning, error-free physical and MAC-layer protocols and robust security. In all of these sub-level communications technologies there is a challenge to provide more effective topology transition and data management mechanisms in order that any ad-hoc network can self-heal without impacting user data communications sessions after exception condition events have been detected.

This special issue of Computer Networks is intended to foster the dissemination of high quality research in Integrated Mobility and Ad-hoc Networking in Military Networks (e.g. dealing with geolocation, rapid deployment of real-time intelligence data gathering). In recent years this has become an area of great interest with sessions at NOMS, MILCOM, and IFIP/IEEE IM as well as papers in COMNET, IEEE and ACM Journals. It is the objective of this special issue to publish papers presenting methodology, performance, and methods for providing/increasing mobility and the ability to configure an ah-hoc network at the necessary levels of QoS in support of military operations. This performance can be shown by analysis, simulation or implementation with preference being given to papers providing comparisons of alternatives used via air, land and sea.

Only technical papers describing previously unpublished, original, state-of-the-art research, and not currently under review by another conference or journal will be considered. We solicit papers covering a variety of topics related to Future Advances in Military Communications Systems & Technologies including, but not limited to:

Mobility Management in Tactical Networks Routing Protocols for the Digital Battlefield Supporting Mobility in Topology Transition Networks Address Allocation & Management in Hostile Networking Environments Security Architectures for Ad-Hoc Networking Tactical Self-organising Sensor Networks QoS Resource Provisioning for MANET Emerging SATCOM systems and architectures Physical and MAC-Layer Protocols Intelligent Agents for Network & Data Management Network Switching Architectures and Protocols Modeling and simulation of tactical communications systems Real-time Fault Tolerant Protocols Quantum Key Distribution in SATCOM

Authors should follow the Computer Networks (Elsevier) manuscript format described at http://www.elsevier.nl/locate/comnet. Prospective authors should initially submit a PDF version of an Extended Abstract of their proposed paper topic and relevant details (not to exceed three pages) to Professor Gerard Parr at: gp.parr@ulster.ac.uk by Thursday 31st August 2003. On review of the extended abstracts complete manuscripts will be invited according to the following timetable :-

Manuscript Due : Friday 31st November 2003 Acceptance Notification : Friday 23rd February 2004 Final manuscript Due : Friday 16th May 2004 Publication Date : October 2004

Guest Editors: Professor Gerard Parr Chair in Telecommunications Internet Technologies Research Group School of Computing and Information Engineering University of Ulster Coleraine Campus Northern Ireland United Kingdom BT52 1SA Tel: +44 (0) 28 70 324131 Fax: +44 (0) 28 70 324916 E.mail: gp.parr@ulster.ac.uk

Dr David Robinson Senior Engineer/Scientist KIS COM MSIN QinetiQ, Malvern, PC316 United Kingdom

LTC Dr. Erdal Cayirci Director of Combat Models Operations Department Turkish War Colleges Yeni Levent, 80625 Istanbul Turkey

Dr Jadranka Alilovic-Curgus Research Scientist Boeing Research Laboratories The Boeing Company Seattle, USA

Dr. David H. Hughes Physicist US Air Force Research Laboratories /IFGC 525 Brooks Rd. Rome, New York, USA