ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks
Special Issue on Low Power Wide Area Networks

Guest Editors:
• Dr. Mo Li, School of Computer Science and Engineering, Nanyang Technological University, limo@ntu.edu.sg
• Dr. Jiliang Wang, School of Software, Tsinghua University, jiliangwang@tsinghua.edu.cn
• Dr. Swarun Kumar, Electrical and Computer Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, swarun@cmu.edu
• Dr. Yuanqing Zheng, Department of Computing, Hong Kong Polytechnic University, yqzheng@polyu.edu.hk

Low Power Wide Area Networks (LPWAN) are emerging as promising wireless technologies and networking paradigms for connecting billions of low-power Internet of Things (IoT) devices. Representative LPWAN technologies include but are not limited to LoRa, NB-IoT, and SigFox. With the rapid development of LPWAN technologies, an ever-increasing number of IoT devices will be deployed and connected to enable a great variety of innovative applications such as smart metering in smart cities, machine-to-machine communication in connected factories, road traffic monitoring in smart transportation, and carbon emission tracking in green cities.

We see practical challenges and great research opportunities in the development and application of LPWAN technologies. It remains highly challenging to network billions of IoT devices in a scalable, reliable, secure, and power-efficient manner. For example, benefiting from long communication range, sensor nodes can send data over one-hop uplink to an LPWAN gateway. On one hand, such a network topology greatly simplifies the design and deployment of LPWAN compared with the data collection methods in multi-hop wireless sensor networks. On the other hand, an LPWAN gateway suffers more collisions of sensor nodes in a larger coverage area. Recent advances in media access control as well as concurrent transmission methods mitigate the collision problem. Yet, the limited scalability of such methods has room for improvement and calls for further investigation. Moreover, a gateway can become the bottleneck of LPWAN and suffers the single point of failure, which calls for security analysis and countermeasures. We urgently need comprehensive in-field measurement study to increase our understanding of LPWAN in practical scenarios to guide our design, implementation, adoption, and optimization of the emerging technologies. The wireless signal of LPWANs can also be leveraged to support wireless sensing. We also call for the sharing of lessons learned and experiences from all stakeholders. In addition, breakthroughs and advances in big data analytics, machine learning and artificial intelligence, edge computing, ubiquitous computing, digital twin, and 5G and NextG technologies could stimulate innovative thinking and development of LPWAN.

This special issue aims to foster discussions about the design, implementation, deployment, evaluation, and application of the emerging LPWAN technologies among practitioners, researchers, and educators. The topics of this special issue include but not limited to the following:

• LPWAN testbed development, measurement, and performance optimization
• New network/link/physical layer design for LPWAN technologies including LoRa, NB-IoT, etc.
• Novel LPWAN architecture and protocol design
• Security aspects of LPWAN
• Machine learning and artificial intelligence application in LPWAN
• Innovative applications of LPWAN, e.g., in smart cities, smart transportation, environment monitoring, energy conservation, etc.
• Localization and tracking of LPWAN
• Joint communication and sensing with LPWAN
• New LPWAN communication schemes including backscattering, MIMO, C-RAN, etc.
• LPWAN spectrum efficiency and co-existence with other technologies

Important Dates
• Submission deadline: February 25th, 2022
• First-round review decisions: April 22th, 2022
• Deadline for revision submissions: May 20th, 2022
• Notification of final decisions: June 3rd, 2022
• Tentative publication: Late 2022

Submission Information
Submissions to this special issue will be reviewed by the special Issue Editors to ensure the quality standards of ACM Transactions on Sensor Networks (TOSN). Papers that do not pass this initial screening will be immediately returned. Reviewers will apply those standards in forming recommendations for acceptance, revision, or rejection. Papers should be formatted with TOSN style (https://dl.acm.org/journal/tosn/author-guidelines). Prospective contributors should submit their papers directly to the online submission system (https://mc.manuscriptcentral.com/tosn). Authors please choose the special Issue on “SI: Low Power Wide Area Networks” in the online submission

For questions and further information, please contact Dr. Mo Li: limo@ntu.edu.sg